Aldric Wandermere's Arc

Chapter 3 of 9

For a week Aldric split wood at the last cottage on the road. Each dusk Valen sat on the small porch, watching the road, and paid him well. The coin fed the dragon, the hound, and Aldric himself. But the buried word stayed with him. Taken. He wanted the truth, not just wages. A guildhall needed men he could trust, and he couldn't trust a lie. Still, one wrong question and Valen would send him off for good. So Aldric tried a careful path. He asked in the village, not at the cottage. He asked the corn farmer. He asked an old woman drawing water. Most shrugged. Valen kept to himself. His daughter left one night, they said, and never came back. Nobody saw who took her. Nobody saw anything at all. That evening Aldric slid onto a bench at the tavern. Matilda set down a mug and wiped the timeworn table. He asked her plainly about Valen's girl. "I sent you there to work," Matilda said. "Not to dig." She glanced past him. "But if you're set on it, ask her." A woman had just come in from the dark. Leather vest, a knife on her belt, mud to the knee. She dropped a wrapped haunch of meat on the bar and took the far bench. Matilda leaned close. "Mara. Lives in the woods. Brings us meat and news. She's helped Valen too. She's the one who'd know." Aldric carried his mug over and sat across from her. "You've worked for Valen Thorne." Mara didn't look up. She cut a strip of dried meat. "I have." "His daughter. People say she was taken. I don't believe it." Mara chewed. Then she set the knife down flat. "Smart. Nobody took her." She met his eyes. "Jane crossed the bridge on her own two feet. I saw the tracks. One set, walking east. No struggle. No blood." Aldric leaned in. "Then why does he say taken?" "Because it's easier than saying she chose to go." Mara wrapped her meat. "Valen's no woodcutter. He's hiding from someone. She got tired of hiding." She stood. "He pays me to search east. I search. I bring back nothing, because there's nothing he'll like." The truth landed hard. Valen's lie was a father's shame, not a scheme. Aldric had guessed wrong and right at once. "East," Aldric said. "Where the river runs?" "The bridge. Past it, the eastern forest." Mara paused at the door. "I'm tracking prints out there now. Heavy. Wrong for deer. If you go looking for the girl, you'll find worse first." She left. Aldric sat with cold ale and a heavier problem than the lie. He knew the truth now. He couldn't keep taking Valen's coin and stay silent. And beyond the bridge, in the woods where Jane had walked, something waited that even Mara couldn't name.