She stared up blinking at the sight before her.  The statue was on a pedestal that was nearly lost to the weeds that wilded about it.  Keto had taken an interest when she had first noticed the ruins.  At first it had just been a few moss and vine covered piles of rubble but her search had brought her to similarly overgrown walls and then the surviving structures were apparent enough that she could place the foundations of some buildings.  Then she had stepped into the clearing and had found the statue.

The years had not exactly been kind.  Part of the face had cracked and crumbled away.  The blade of the sword laid as a pile of rubble at the base of the pedestal, a fact which brought a smile to the bard’s face.  Still, the set of the shoulders and what was still there of the face, set in a familiar stern stare, left little doubt in her mind even if the years had worked to hide it.  So, she sat, strumming her harp and jotting down notes, working on her art as she waited.

The sun had parsed the sky, Keto had moved on to practicing the song, when he came and found her.  She stopped when she heard his boot falls, looking up to catch his reaction.  His hood was up which spoiled it some but that hooded gaze spotted her before shifting and taking in the statue.  She caught it then, the way he dropped back just a step, the silence as he took a breath.  The moment Quartes was surprised and the moment beyond where she knew he was remembering.

She gave him that moment, fingers finishing her song, before she stood and walked towards the Landian.  “What are you thinking?” she asked as she neared.  Haltingly his hands rose and lowered his hood, his pupil-less eyes on the statue but a slow blink allowed him to look away and to her.

“I never thought this would be here, and certainly not it would survive the Dragon years,” Quartes looked around, taking in the overgrown walls, the crumbling masonry.  He knelt down, hand brushing a flower that had pushed up from the vines and weeds.  “There was a garden in this spot, some of the residents, one an herbalist, cared for it.”

“What were you doing here?” she asked.  Quartes’ gaze darted back to the statue, to his statue, and then back about the clearing.

“I,” he started as he straightened, “was preparing for the end, but there had been word of a Hagerc that had somehow been overlooked.  It was rampaging about, threatening our rear as the armies prepared to enter the Carotark.”  Gaze on the statue, Quartes turned as he finished and began to walk through the ruined town.  Keto, harp in hand followed.

“Nearly everyone was in place, I didn’t want to risk anything happening to them and so I came here to deal with the Hagerc and its horde myself.  One of the few times I hunted east of the Hendarks.”  Quartes led them through the ruins as he talked, stepping over rumble and pulling aside vines, until he reached his destination.  “It was here I saw it,” he pointed to a ruined wall.  “I hadn’t gotten here fast enough to stop it from reaching this town.  Kercs were rampaging through it, people had fled but there were too few defenders.”  His arm dropped and he looked back towards Keto, “Most those who could fight were gathered outside the Carotark.  I heard the screams as the Kercs got to some of them, had answered with thunder, and so when I stepped into the ruin,” he looked towards the rubble again, “It was waiting for me.”

Quartes’ hand brushed the hilt of his sword.  “It’d been a few years by then since I had fought alone.  The Hagerc was one capable of breathing fire but it didn’t matter.  Lehn made short work of it and the Kercs.”

“It was my last battle before we pushed into the Carotark,” Quartes added after a moment, “and the battles at the end of the Cycle started.”

“And the statue?”  Keto asked.

Quartes’ head dipped, turning back to face her with the memory of a smile.  “I needed to get back but they insisted on celebrating.  They knew who I was, the stories painted them a picture that the Sword confirmed, but they had never met me.  It was a great honor to them and they wanted to at least have a large feast.  I stayed and during the night there was a stoneworker, an elderly woman.  She asked to make a sketch, said that the town’s leaders wanted to make a statue to commemorate when I had come to the town, when I had saved them on my way to saving everyone…”  Keto had to hold back herself from flinching as the bitterness seeped into Quartes’ voice.

“Why did they make it even after I failed?” he whispered, gaze drifting back the way they had come, hand clutching the hilt of his sword now.

“Because you had still been their hero, and even as maybe the world fell back under the Dragons that was something which helped them survive.”  Keto had neared as she spoke and her hand brushed against the white knuckles of his hand.  She kept her eyes on his and gave him a smile when his hand loosened its grip before taking her own.

“Why don’t you tell me about the feast,” she asked as she pulled him along.  After a moment of resistance he followed alongside her.  “Were there any songs sung?”