Kael Silvermark's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Kael Silvermark reached the edge of the deep woods before dawn and found the king's guards had nailed the trail shut. A wide wooden gate stood between two posts across the path he had walked since he was a boy. Beside it, a chiseled boulder bore the decree in deep-cut letters: no solo hunters past this line without a warden's seal. A hunter had been mauled here last week. Kael had known the man. He had gone to the man's sister two days ago and told her how her brother died. Kael carried a bow on his back and a double-bladed staff across his shoulders. He was twenty-eight now. His father had told him about the Silver Beard when he was twelve, the secret table where the king seated his best hunters. A seat took three kills big enough to quiet a room. Kael had one. He had dropped a barrow wolf alone at two hundred yards, and Bram had seen it. The other two kills lived past this gate. He walked the fence line until he saw the shack. It was small, stone, thick-walled, built to hold one guard and a ledger. Smoke rose from the pipe. Kael knocked. The warden opened the door in half-buttoned livery and looked at the staff before he looked at Kael's face. "I need a seal," Kael said. "I hunt for the crown. My name is on your ledger." The warden checked. He found the name. Then he shook his head. "Solo hunters, no seals. King's order. Bring a partner and I'll sign you through tomorrow." Kael thought about lying. He thought about the ram the trappers whispered about, the one whose coat took the color of whatever stood behind it. A kill like that would quiet the whole table. He could not take it with a stranger at his elbow. "Who's cleared to ride with me?" he asked. The warden turned the ledger. One name sat on the approved list for the deep woods this season. Bram. Kael read it twice. Bram already held his seat. Bram had nothing to gain from walking Kael to a kill and everything to lose by sharing the story of it. Kael asked the warden to send word to Bram's lodge by the lake, the pine-shingled place with the bay windows where the senior hunters wintered. The warden wrote the note and sealed it. Kael paid the runner from his own purse and walked back down the path he could no longer take alone. The gate stayed shut behind him. To earn the table he had chased since he was twelve, he now had to ask a man already seated at it for a favor.