Aldric Vane's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Aldric Vane hunched over his books and muttered the names of men he once trusted. The temple had banished him for a crime he never committed. Somewhere behind its locked doors sat the records that could prove it. He needed those records. He had no way back inside. "It was one of the three," he told the old phoenix on the shelf. The bird ruffled its greying feathers and blinked one amber eye. Aldric tapped a page. "The senior keeper had the keys. But the archivist knew the charge before it was read." He crossed out a name, then wrote it again. The phoenix said nothing useful, which was its habit. A knock rattled the cottage door. Aldric did not move. The knock came again, softer, and a voice followed it. "Aldric. Please. It's Lunara." He knew that voice. Lunara Silvercoat was the young wolfkin priest he had once taught. He had already broken temple law once for her, sharing the moonstone tablet with its missing verses. He opened the door. She stood in her white robes, ears flat, mud caked to her paws. She had been running. "The rite failed," she said. "The grove is half-hallowed. It isn't safe. I said every verse from the tablet, exactly as you gave them." Her hands shook. "Something is still missing." Aldric's throat went dry. He knew what was missing. The consecration required a living offering, blood given freely. No text said so. He had learned it in the temple archive, years ago, from the same records now locked away from him. He should have sent her off with an answer and closed the door. Instead he pulled his cloak from its hook. "The old shrine near the grove," he said. "There's a stair beneath it. It connects to the temple undercroft." He had used it as a boy. "The records I need are down there. If I go with you to the grove, I can reach them." Lunara's ears lifted. "You'd be caught." "I'll be caught anyway, sitting here." He took the moonstone tablet from the table and pressed it into her hands. "Bring this. You'll finish your rite tonight, and I'll find my proof." The phoenix hopped to his shoulder and gripped tight. They walked out into the cold. At the abandoned shrine, Aldric found the stair exactly where his memory kept it, choked with fallen stone. He cleared it and climbed down. The passage opened into the temple undercroft. His hand found the records shelf by feel. He pulled the ledger free and read by the phoenix's faint glow. The charge against him was signed. He saw the name and his stomach turned. Not the keeper. Not the archivist. The name belonged to the one man who had defended him at the trial. Aldric climbed out with the ledger under his arm. He finally had his proof. Now he had to survive the man who wrote it.