Aldric Wandermere's Arc

Chapter 4 of 9

Aldric found Valen on the porch at dusk, still watching the road. He set his splitting axe against the wall and told the truth. Jane wasn't taken. She walked east across the bridge on her own. Valen's smooth hands went still on his knee. He didn't shout. He just said, "I know." Then, quieter, "Bring her home. I'll pay whatever you ask." Aldric saw his chance. A father's coin could fund the guildhall he needed. But first he had to cross into the eastern forest. He couldn't go blind. Mara had warned him something waited past the bridge. So Aldric found her at the treeline the next morning, crouched over a print in the mud. She traced it with two fingers, then looked up. "Cloven," she said. "Too big for elk. Wrong shape." She stood. "You still going in?" "Valen wants his daughter back. I said I'd try." Mara studied him a long moment. "Then you don't go alone." She turned and walked into the trees. Aldric followed. They moved for an hour under thick pines. Mara stopped often, reading tracks Aldric couldn't see. Then she raised a fist. Ahead, through the brush, stood weathered buildings around a fire pit. Rope and crates. Men moved between the shacks with blades on their belts. A bandit camp. "Jane's tracks lead here," Mara whispered. "They pass the camp and keep going east." Aldric watched a woman step from the largest shack. Pink hair. From her skull rose two antlers, curved like a stag's. She scanned the treeline, sharp and slow. One of her men flinched when she passed. "Their leader," Mara breathed. "Cursed. The antlers weren't there last season." Then the forest went cold. A shape drifted between the trees beyond the camp. An elk, but wrong. Vines hung from its back. Blue marks glowed along its ribs. Mushrooms sprouted from its antlers. Its eyes burned red. The heavy prints were its own. This was what Mara couldn't name. The cursed elk turned its head toward them. Aldric didn't breathe. The bandits below scrambled for weapons, shouting. The pink-haired leader drew her sword and faced the spirit, not the woods. Mara grabbed Aldric's arm and pulled him back. They crawled through the brush until the camp fell out of sight. Only then did she speak. "That thing guards the way east," she said. "Jane walked past it. Either she got lucky, or something let her." Aldric sat against a trunk, heart still pounding. He had come to fetch a girl for coin. Now he knew the truth. No man walked through that forest unprepared. Not past bandits and a spirit like that. "I can't face it as I am," he said. "No," Mara agreed. "You can't." She wiped mud from her hands. "But I know who might help. An old woman lives deeper in these woods. She knows curses." Aldric got to his feet. The path to Jane ran through the witch first.