Rowan Deeproot's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

The myconid pointed past the oak and made its worried sound. It shook where it stood, thin hands trembling near the bowl. Rowan saw it clearly now. The little witness was not just anxious. It was unwell. Its cap drooped, and pale threads along its stalk had gone gray. Whatever Rowan hoped to learn about the grove, the creature might not last long enough to tell it. Larry noticed too. He set down his cart handle and dug in his pack. "Seen that gray before," he said. "On mushrooms by dead water. It fades, then it's gone." He pulled out a small jar packed with damp moss and a folded root. "Fungi feed on this. Steadies them. Found it under a shining pond, same as the bowl." He held it up. "But I don't give twice for nothing. You'll owe me real this time." Rowan had no coin. Rowan had never carried coin. "I have nothing to trade," Rowan said. "Wait. Let me find something." "Can't wait," Larry said. He was already tightening a strap. "Market's days off and I'm short. I move at dawn." He glanced at the drooping myconid. "Thing won't keep. Neither will I." A new voice came through the ferns. "Then let me pay." A young man stepped into the gold light, blonde, hung with pendants that clinked as he walked. He was a mage Rowan had passed once on the road, always chasing a map only he could read. Aldric Starweaver crouched by the bowl and studied the color rising in the water. His eyes went wide. "I know that shade. My grandmother spoke of mist like this. Red low, gold high, and a color between with no name." "You'd buy the root for a stranger?" Rowan asked. "For that color, plainly, yes." Aldric lifted a pendant from his neck, a warm one that never cooled. He weighed it, then chose a different piece instead, a silver clasp shaped like a star. He set it on Larry's cart. "This is worth your market and more." Larry bit the silver, nodded, and handed over the jar. "Curse comes with it or it doesn't," he said. "Not my worry now." He took his handle and pushed the cart back through the gap, wheels squeaking into the dark. Rowan opened the jar and pressed the damp root against the myconid's stalk. The creature drank. The gray threads darkened. Its cap lifted, and the trembling eased. It touched Rowan's hand, steadier now, then pointed again past the oak, into the deeper dark. This time it did not shake. Rowan had traded nothing and gained a debt to a mage who knew the mist by sight. The witness would live. But it still meant to lead them somewhere it feared to name aloud, and now Aldric would follow, wanting that color for reasons of his own.