© 2010, Patrick Hester. All Rights Reserved
Chapter Twenty-Five
Eli was lost.
The keep had fifteen levels once you got inside and each one felt to him like a labyrinth of twists and turns designed to make it impossible to know where you were or where you’d been. Signs were posted in most places but the light was poor and most of those signs were dull and faded making it that much harder to find his way around. The tapestries on the walls only made it worse; they all seemed to depict mighty battles but one looked like the next after a while, just as the red and black carpets seemed to have the same patterns from one to the next, causing them to blend together in his mind. Jaycn hadn’t been any help, disappearing almost the moment they stepped into the keep and his own friends were struggling as much as he was.
He paused, staring at a tapestry that had an odd battle depicted. Men in blue uniforms were fighting men in gray uniforms-neither of which looked anything like the uniforms he’d ever seen. The entire thing was badly faded, the colors muted with time, but they seemed to be fighting in close quarters, with sabers and knives fixed to the ends of their rifles, which he’d never heard of before. He tried to make out the flags of the enemy armies but he didn’t recognize the red, blue and white of the one, nor the orange, blue and white of the other. (more…)