Aldric Wandermere's Arc

Chapter 7 of 9

Agatha set her cup down. "I'll tell you where he hides," she said. "But knowing won't help you." She looked at Aldric. "His tower stands past the elk. You've all seen the elk. None of you can beat the man inside that tower. Not you. Not the ranger. Not the bandit with the antlers." Kendra's jaw tightened. "Then I go alone." "Then you die," Agatha said. She said it the way she'd name a herb. "And you'd die for nothing. Killing him won't lift the curse." Aldric leaned forward. "Why not?" Agatha nodded toward the door, toward the woods. "The elk. You met it. Its body is full of thorns and rot now. That elk is the old guardian of this forest. Its spirit holds the land steady." She spread her hands. "The curse is in it. While the elk stays sick, the curse spreads. Kill the wizard and the sickness still climbs. The antlers still grow." She glanced at Kendra's crown of bone. "You want them gone? Cure the elk first." Mara had stood silent by the wall. Now she spoke, blunt as a dropped stone. "I've tracked those prints for weeks. Cloven. Too heavy. The forest is going wrong." She looked at Agatha. "You can cure it." "I can," Agatha said. "I need three things the woods won't give me easy. Sap from the old lark tree, the one choked with thorns and mushrooms. A blossom that grows only on the elk's own antlers. And moss from the tower's north stone." She counted them on her fingers and stopped. "Bring me those. Then we talk about the wizard." Aldric weighed it. The wizard's name meant nothing without a cure. A cure meant nothing without the ingredients. He thought of the boy who took a bad contract and never came back. He would not walk in blind again. "We get your ingredients," he said. "All three." Agatha studied his face. Something in her softened. "Good. Do that, and you'll have my trust. Not before." The door opened. A young woman stepped in, mud to her knees, a basket of roots on her arm. She had Valen's face, smaller and softer. She stopped when she saw the strangers. Her eyes moved over Kendra's antlers, over Mara, and settled on Aldric. "Who are these," Jane said. Not a question. Flat. Agatha didn't rise. "Help, if they earn it." Jane set the basket down slow. She looked at Aldric a long moment. "My father sent you." She didn't ask. She knew the shape of it. "He did," Aldric said. "I found you alive. That's all I came for." Jane's shoulders stayed stiff. "I'm not going back." "I know," he said. "I'm not here to take you. I'm here to stop the thing killing this forest." She held his eyes. Then she nodded, once, and picked her basket back up. The bargain was made. The path had a name now, and a price. The work started at the lark tree.