[prose-only version here]

II.

Frostmere 15, Goldday, Year 731.

The Root Gate stood on the western edge of Oakton, where an old road began to climb into the forested foothills of the Redwood Marches. Its name came from the sprawling, gnarled roots of the Argenoak—the miraculous tree that towered high over the entirety of the city. So vast was the Argenoak that its roots pushed up through the street even here, a quarter-day’s travel from the trunk. Generations ago, masons of the Carved House worked those thick, petrified root-knots into the construction of stone gate’s archway, giving the impression the city was cradled by its sacred tree.

Twin, squat towers of weather-stained granite, decorated with old shields and faded banners, guarded either side of the arch. Each tower had a pair of slit-eyed lookouts, watching footsore travelers and carts full of salted fish, apple barrels, bundles of wood, and clay tiles pass in and out of the city. Grizzled Iron Thorn wardens stood nearby, their blue-and-rust tabards fluttering in the morning breeze, sometimes pausing to usher visitors forward so they wouldn’t stand in the road, ogling at the reaching branches of the Argenoak across the sky. Nearby, a group of scribes worked busily at a ledger table beneath a faded canvas awning, recording tolls and weighing disputes.

Alric had long since unshouldered his travel pack and set it against a rock, and he stood awkwardly beside the road, breath steaming in the midmorning air. He wore a leather vest over a sturdy, homespun shirt, plus travel breeches, and his only pair of boots. His crescent-shaped foot already ached, and though he dreaded the days of travel ahead, he kept his dread buried beneath a scholar’s frown. It was his eyes, though, that held a thunderstorm of impatience and frustration, scanning each new person who approached the Root Gate.

The only thing that kept him from complaining constantly was that the muscled thug Maelen appeared even more annoyed. She stood well away from the gate and Iron Thorn wardens, broad back against a cedar, thick arms crossed, her face set like a hammer waiting for a nail. Alric had tried and failed to speak with her, and it was clear she had no more idea where Vessa was than Alric did.

The thought came unbidden: What if Vessa never came? Alric swallowed. He had no more money, so it was this crew or none. Alric didn’t like the idea of traveling deep into the wilds with a single protector, plus no one adept at picking locks or avoiding traps. Truth be told, he had little idea what they’d find at Thornmere Hold, but he assumed the ancient order there had guarded their secrets fiercely and thus he would need a proper thief. That is, if Thornmere Hold even existed, or hadn’t already been looted by brigands once the secretive lorekeepers left. Alric ground his teeth, wanting desperately both to get going and to abandon this whole folly.

One hand dipped into a pouch at his belt, brushing the dry parchment, either the key to Thornmere Hold, or a fool’s errand in ink. No, he needed answers. He would go, today, even if it was just with Maelen Marrosen. The woman was a criminal, wasn’t she? Perhaps she could pick a lock herself. Alric’s gray-green eyes watched Maelen, standing bunched and hard, like a clenched fist. Would she simply gut him and search his corpse once they were out of the city? Surely she wouldn’t—reputations mattered, even among blades-for-hire. Besides, he’d been told these two were both competent and reliable.

Abruptly, Maelen pushed away from the tree and began striding angrily toward the gate. Alric’s gaze followed her path and saw the thief Vessa approaching at a ragged half-jog, red-faced and short of breath. Her head was shaved down to dark stubble, but otherwise she wore the same battered leather armor and carried the same short blade at her hip. Alric exhaled with relief, murmuring a quick prayer of thanks to the Rootmother.

Vessa raised both hands, trying to offer a stumbling apology. Maelen stalked straight up to her and drove a fist into her jaw. Back at the Lodge, a missed deadline meant stern words and lost pay. Out here, apparently, it meant your teeth on the ground. Alric’s heart lurched. If they ended up in a cell before leaving the city, the whole job was doomed.

He scrambled toward them as fast as his clubbed foot would allow, awkwardly dragging the straps of his travel pack behind him. By the time he arrived, a small knot of onlookers had gathered, the Iron Thorn guards already hauling Maelen off Vessa, who had curled defensively on the dirt, cursing a blue streak.

Alric drew a deep breath and projected his baritone voice as loud and steady as he could manage.

“Excuse me! Please! These are my companions, please!” Alric shouted as he stepped out of the circle of gawkers. The larger of the two wardens, dressed in a faded blue-and-rust tabard stretched over chainmail, had pulled Maelen off Vessa. The thief’s lip was bleeding, and she held the back of her wrist to it while sitting on her knees in the dirt. Maelen, meanwhile, still held a furious expression across her scarred face, but she was allowing herself to be subdued without throwing further punches. Her thick fists still balled, knuckles white.

The other Iron Thorn warden, tall and lean with a narrow face and receding hairline, raised an eyebrow and turned to Alric as he approached.

“Your companions?” the man asked, his voice nasal. “Why are they fighting?”

“Yes, sir, my companions. I’m afraid the one on the ground,” he pointed to Vessa, “has arrived late, and the other,” he gestured at Maelen, “has objected to the breach of contract. They’re not criminals, sir, simply…” Alric cleared his throat. “Too passionate about their obligations.”

The tall warden snorted, unconvinced. “Passionate? Looks like a drunken street brawl to me. The one on the ground reeks.”

Alric offered a curt, respectful nod. “I agree it seems that way, sir. But they are under my employ, on contract from the Inkbinders Lodge. I have writ to show the Guild Council if needed. Any injury to them will be deducted from a sealed order of passage I’ve already filed with the Castellan’s clerks.”

This was all a lie, of course. None of what Alric did last night at the Heart & Dagger was known to the Lodge, and he had no formal contract. He reached to his belt, pulling a folded scrap of parchment with a careful flourish – not actually the sealed writ, but a page of scrawled supply notes, folded to hide the writing, with a broken wax blob still clinging to the corner.

“I assure you, sir, the Guild Council will demand to know why their contractors were delayed if you take them in. Please, let me handle their punishment. They’re mine to discipline, and they’ve hurt no one here but themselves.”

The warden glanced at the parchment in Alric’s hand, then looked the young scribe up and down, appraising. His eyes flicked at the crowd behind Alric, and he frowned.

“Let them go,” he said over his shoulder to the other warden. “You,” he said to Alric. “Get out of here with your riffraff. You’re causing a line, and I don’t have time for any of this nonsense.”

Alric bobbed his head. “Much obliged, sir. Maelen! Vessa! Let’s go,” he jerked his chin past the Root Gate.

Vessa blinked, still dazed, but obeyed. The big guard perhaps pushed Maelen a little harder than was necessary, and she stumbled. For a moment, Alric worried the mercenary would turn on the Iron Thorn warden. But she only cracked her neck, gave the man a wink and a grin, and stepped to Alric’s side. Tessa stood, brushed her leather breeches of dirt, and followed sullenly. As she joined, Alric’s nose wrinkled. She truly did reek.

“Do you really have a writ?” Vessa muttered, rubbing her jaw. They strode, shoulder to shoulder, away from the Root Gate, the two women shortening their steps to keep up with Alric’s limp.

“Absolutely not,” he said without blinking. “Just keep walking.”

A man, back bent by hard labor and waiting in the line that had formed outside the Root Gate, overheard the exchange as they passed. He whooped out a laugh.

“Oh! He’s a clever one, that one!” the man called out after them. With so many missing teeth he had a pronounced lisp. “I’ve got my eye on you, son! Well played!” Alric shot the man a desperate, disapproving look to shut up, and kept walking down the road.

When they’d passed, Alric glanced back. The man—stooped, toothless, grinning—gave a crooked salute. He frowned, unsettled, and kept walking.

With the city walls far in the distance and out of any earshot, Alric finally blew out a loud, relieved exhale of breath. Maelen snorted, cuffing him lightly on the shoulder. Vessa said nothing, following behind them both a step and keeping her eyes to the gathering trees.

“So,” Maelen said, the happiest Alric had seen her. “Where are we going?”

He didn’t answer, precisely. “We’ll follow the road for a bit, then go up and over the hills.”

“What are we looking for?” Maelen pressed, cocking an eyebrow.

He paused a heartbeat, then said, “A Lodge sanctuary. Well, the ruins of one. Less than a day over the ridge.”

“Ruins, eh? And what is Vessa breaking into, then? Scribes aren’t known for their hoarded treasure, lad.”

“Just get me there safely and we’ll see,” Alric said sourly.

Much to his surprise, the woman laughed. “Alright, alright. You’ve shown a spine to you, that’s for sure. Keep your secrets, and lead on, lad. We’ll get you back by Ashday, with whatever it is you’re after. And forty more silver richer for it, eh?”

Alric nodded back, pursing his lips, not yet sure how he’d avoid that second payment once the job was done. It might be his teeth in the dirt by the Root Gate then, or worse.

The old road, called unimaginatively Root Road, exited Oakton on its western wall. It passed first due west, then curved south, climbing higher all the way. Eventually the Marchlander trails branched off—narrow paths connecting remote logging camps and hill farms. After that, the Root Road followed the foothills south and, much later, west into the Redwood Marches proper. Alric had never been further than the stepstone trail that wound its way to the famed Skywarden Tower, and even then, only once.

Today, however, they stepped off the road just as the first trail branched west, well before the path to Skywarden Tower. Alric paused and unrolled his map, studying it carefully and comparing what he saw on the parchment with the surrounding countryside. His bad foot ached, but not as much as he’d feared it would, and he was pleased that neither of the mercenaries criticized or mocked his pace. True to her word, Maelen had not pestered him further about their destination. Mostly, the three of them had begun their journey traveling in companionable silence through the clear, autumn day. They were faintly terrifying, these rough-and-tumble mercenaries, but Alric had to admit that they had a certain kindness and honor to them. He was again grateful that his contacts had avoided connecting him with lowlifes who would simply slit his throat and loot his corpse once they’d left the city.

Satisfied with their location, he rolled the map and slid it back into the oiled leather tube at his belt.

“Now we go up and over the Greenwood Rise,” he said, pointing into the forest, climbing upwards to the western side of the road.

Maelen nodded. “I go first,” she said, brooking no argument. “And you follow right after me. If I say stop or shut up, you do it. These hills are wild places, full of danger.”

Alric nodded. “Fine.”

“Vessa will follow behind,” Maelen raised her voice so the thief could hear. Vessa stared back unblinking. “Both because she needs a bath and because she’s stealthy. If we do get into a scrap, we’ll be happy to have her surprise whatever’s bothering us.”

Alric swallowed and nodded. This would be his first time off a road or trail, something every Oaktowner of every profession would tell you would get you killed by all manner of criminal or beast. Monsters roamed the wilds, they said, and the demons who spawned them.

The climb up the Greenwood Rise hurt his foot significantly worse than the road. He and Maelen crunched through undergrowth as cedars and, eventually redwoods, towered over them. Birds called and insects chittered, but otherwise the only sounds were the crunch crunch crunch of their steps and Alric’s panting breath. He soon found himself gripping younger trees and pulling himself up the hill, trying to put some of the burden of the climb on his arms instead of his cursed legs.

Several times, Maelen stopped and watched him with a grim, serious expression. She never offered help, but also never showed outward frustration. Maelen became almost a fever dream manifestation of Alric’s will, a silent witness to his pain and progress. For his part, Alric grunted and struggled, focusing only on the next tree in front of him. So focused was he, that he never even thought to look back for Vessa, to see how far she tracked behind them.

It was impossible to tell how long they climbed. Alric felt his chest near to bursting, his legs numb, his foot in agony, sweat dripping into his eyes, and all the while the canopy above them obscured the sun. They climbed endlessly, each step a fresh misery, time stretched thin beneath the trees.

“Stop,” Maelen hissed, the first word she’d uttered since they began. Alric pulled himself forward by the trunk of the tree in front of him and paused, his breath heaving like a bellows.

“What—what is it?” he wheezed, reaching for his waterskin. Alric wiped his face for the hundredth time with a sleeve. He looked around for danger, but it was the same as everywhere else on these hills: A sea of trees, verdant underbrush, and fallen leaves and pine needles.

Maelen simply pointed, her eyes searching the hill above them. Alric’s gaze followed her thick finger, to the tree just beyond him. It would have been the next tree he used as a lever to pull himself forward, in fact. It was paler than the others—not unnatural, just a different species than the redwoods, firs, and laurels around it, its bark flaky and almost white.

A black-filled circle had been carved into its bark, glistening like tar.

“What is it?” Alric whispered, trying to control his rapid breathing.

“Well, it was carved by someone, wasn’t it?” Maelen whispered back. Quietly, she slid the sword on her back out of its scabbard. It was a massive weapon, fully two-thirds Alric’s height, he guessed. The blade glinted in the dappled spots of sun allowed by the canopy.

Alric’s eyes widened as he looked at Maelen. The woman put a finger to her lips, signaling quiet. His chest pounded, but he tried his best to silence his panting.

Up the hill above them, out of sight, someone laughed.

Next: The Lanternless [with game notes]