The Journal of Betrayal

  Hear the lesson of Greenhill, O faithful. The Black Marlin circled high above, its banner casting shadow upon the armies of Chadanea. Beneath its gaze stood the pious host, arrayed in the blue of their sovereign, each man steadfast, each man Aric-fearing. And lo, their king came forth—Petra Simon, robed in silver, astride a dark trotter of sixteen hands, a righteous blade in mortal form. To him was given the burden of justice: to chastise the strayed and set them back upon the path of righteousness. He did not falter. Whatever the cost.

  — Sister Halwen of the Ashen Veil, The Veil and the Sword: Lessons for the Faithful

  The following morning, Aehyl sat by the campfire, a kettle of tea boiling gently over the flames. She stared into the fire, lost in thought. There were no simple answers, only questions that circled endlessly in her mind.

  When she met Portean’s eyes across the camp, she tried to return his small, reassuring smile… but stopped halfway. The mask wouldn’t fit. Not this morning.

  Glumly, she remained by the fire, chewing absently on a cold biscuit as the steam from her kettle began to rise.

  Vectra’s weathered journal sat at her feet, its worn leather cover seeming to glare up at her, accusatory, expectant. It might contain revelations. Maybe even a clue to the traitor behind Vectra’s murder. It was foolish to hope it would also explain the dying of the Mother Tree, but Aehyl couldn't help but wish for it.

  She waited until the water finished boiling, then poured a small tin cup of mint tea and cradled it in her hands. The warmth steadied her enough to lift the journal and slowly crack open its cover.

  With a scholar’s practiced hand, she leafed through the parchment pages. They were crammed with the cramped, efficient handwriting of a druid who had learned to make every inch of space count.

  Parchment was expensive, especially when bound so finely.

  Aehyl understood the impulse. Her own journal bore the same signs: dense, suffocating pages filled with thoughts that had nowhere else to live. Illegible in parts. Margin to margin, desperate not to waste a scrap.

  But Vectra’s handwriting, at least, was neater than hers. The notes remained legible, if just barely, and required only occasional interpretation.

  She didn’t have time to read it all, though a part of her ached to know Vectra better.

  After skimming the opening pages, she turned toward the end, where she suspected the most damning revelations might lie.

  Her thoughts were scattered—muddy and broken—but she pressed on, refusing to let the memory of those red eyes unravel her again. Still, she flinched at mundane things: the snap of a twig in the fire, the hiss of boiling water.

  By this time, Portean was off chasing tracks somewhere. She was quietly relieved he wasn’t around to see her like this.

  With a small huff, she opened to the final intact entry.

  Several pages had clearly been torn from the end, but the last surviving entry still caught her attention, and what remained was damning enough.

  The health of the Great Oak continues to decline.

  This morning, Shali and I attempted to destroy the ghastly beetle colony using a variation of the Faunefire spell. Naturally, we chose Faunefire over conjured flame to avoid harming the Great Oak herself. The results were disastrous. Though we managed to destroy many beetles at first, we gravely underestimated the breadth of the colony.

  Before we knew it, thousands swarmed from every direction. Some of them were as large as my fist. There is something deeply unnatural about them.

  We barely escaped with our lives. Both of us are covered in stings, mine especially concentrated around my face and neck. The venom has left me nauseated and dizzy. I doubt I’ll have much strength for several days, but we can’t afford to wait.

  Shali will leave as soon as possible to seek help from the elders in Vistadora. I’ll stay behind to tend the Great Oak and search for another way to destroy the colony. Nearly four days have passed since the infestation began, and we've made no progress.

  We might have turned to the Council sooner, but Shali is inexplicably unable to travel via the Oakmeld portal. I fear our delay may cost us dearly.

  How I wish I’d been born with a greater arcane gift. I’ve never had the talent to bend space, certainly not enough to carry a passenger like my sister.

  Shali has gone to gather food for her journey while I rest, but… she’s been gone longer than expected. I’m starting to worry.

  I’ll write more tomorrow, if she departs safely for Vistadora.

  She read the entry at least a dozen times. An hour bled into two as she compared what she learned from Vecrta to the information revealed in the scroll Grimus had hidden in her pack.

  Lifting her eyes from the journal, Aehyl shuddered to think what had happened after Vectra penned those final words.

  She’d been so engrossed in the record that she hadn’t even noticed Portean’s return. He was crouched by the fire, preparing a spit with rabbit.

  Though many elves were vegetarians, Portean was not. Having spent time in his company, and often visiting her mentor’s home, Aehyl had long since let go of any reservations about it.

  The scent of the simmering meat reached her nose, and her stomach growled in response. With a sigh, she snapped the journal shut. It was best to eat before continuing. The smell would only distract her otherwise.

  And knowing Portean, if she didn’t eat willingly, he’d probably insist on feeding her himself.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  In the days that followed, Aehyl remained engrossed in both Vectra’s journal and Krodus’s scroll.

  Portean dared not disturb her. Instead, he busied himself restocking their provisions. It took a full morning of hard work to build a rudimentary smoke pit, and by midday, he was preparing venison strips from a freshly killed doe.

  The preserved meat would take several days to properly cure, but the task proved a welcome distraction from the slow, visible decay of the Great Oak at the center of the glade.

  In the meantime, the two elves ate well from the successful hunt.

  In addition to preparing provisions for their return journey, the ranger also tended to both his and Aehyl’s gear.

  By the end of the second day, gloves had been stitched, britches mended, blades sharpened, and his bow properly oiled.

  On the third morning, he was working out a deep nick in the blade of Aehyl’s hunting knife when her sudden shout brought him sprinting back to the campfire.

  “The water, Portean, do you remember the pool in the gorge? The one with the troll?” Aehyl shouted, her voice bright with excitement.

  Portean turned, eyes narrowing as Aehyl held up Vectra’s journal in one hand and Krodus’s scroll in the other.

  “I combed through this scroll in the Tower Tree far too carefully to forget it,” she began, motioning animatedly with the aged parchment. “During our long session, your father and I came across what we first thought to be a mere afterthought of the old elf.”

  “You’re not making any sense, Aehyl,” Portean interrupted. “Calm down. Explain.”

  Shaking her head in agitation, her blonde hair slipped over her green eyes. She blew it away with a quick, irritated breath. “Krodus begins his dissertation neatly, he explains the distances between the trees and discusses what those distances might signify. But later, he starts to ramble in the middle of his treatise. He takes strange measurements, noting that the roots of the Mother Tree must be immense, most likely extending deep underground, feeding upon the very bowels of the river itself.”

  Portean nodded dumbly, waiting for her to continue, but Aehyl only stared at him with a knowing look. Realizing she wasn’t connecting all the dots for him, she blushed and hurried on.

  “I thought it odd that he suddenly stopped his brilliant postulations about what the Mother Tree might exist for, and instead began speculating where and how her root network might be located. So odd, in fact, that I even suggested to your father we skip that section and continue with what seemed more relevant.”

  “How well did that line of thought serve you?” Portean asked, one brow rising.

  “Not well,” Aehyl admitted. “Your father immediately rebuked me. He insisted that if the ancient elf jumped down an obscure rabbit hole, we ought to try jumping ourselves.”

  The ranger snorted, hearing the words in his mind as if his father stood beside him.

  “Anyway, here’s the connection.” Aehyl waved the journal this time, her excitement renewed. “Several weeks before the Great Oak’s infestation, Vectra mentions a strange party of elves camping by the Silverfinn River, near a gorge filled with dark water,” she said, eyes gleaming with intensity.

  “Finally, she and her sister approached them. Since the group had no intention of making pilgrimage to the Great Oak, Shali sent them packing.”

  Her voice quickened. “Vectra says they became belligerent and abusive. Before their leader could regain control, one of the strangers let slip a curse, something about the Order and its demise.”

  Portean’s expression darkened as she continued.

  “Vectra and Shali were obviously alarmed. They retreated to consider their options, especially since they were outnumbered three to one. All the strangers were equipped with heavy ash-wood bows.”

  She flipped a page. “They returned several days later to spy on the camp, but the strangers were gone. And the waters of the gorge… Vectra describes them as being inhabited by a terrible beast. Her words are vague, but it terrified her.”

  Portean immediately began dousing their fire. “I’ve heard of water trolls used by evil men to guard underwater caves,” he said grimly. “But that’s far away, in the eastern kingdoms beyond the Dark Troll Mountains.”

  “Elves have never stooped to such crude and dangerous means. Trolls don’t discriminate between friend or foe. Even the sons and daughters of the Obsidian Empire avoid that kind of recklessness.”

  “Did she describe the men in the encampment?” he asked, his tone suddenly quiet. Too quiet.

  Aehyl hesitated. “That’s the most disturbing part,” she said. “Several pages are missing from the journal after this entry. I don’t know why they left this page intact when they took the others, but... I can only hope it was in haste.”

  Portean scowled and paused mid-motion, his hands still over the open pack. His brow furrowed in thought.

  “I don’t understand,” he muttered. “We found the journal hidden in the cache beneath Vectra’s body. If someone wanted to destroy evidence after killing her, why not burn it? Or toss it into the river?”

  He glanced toward the burial site, eyes narrowing.

  “And why bother reburying it, only after tearing out specific pages?”

  “It is troubling,” Aehyl said darkly. “I can come to only one conclusion. Vectra’s final entry said Shali left camp to gather food for her trip to Vistadora.”

  “She couldn’t use the Oakmeld portal anymore. She planned to seek help from the Council and return with them to heal the Great Oak. But Shali took longer than expected, and Vectra began to worry.”

  Aehyl’s eyes narrowed. “I think Vectra went searching for her sister. At some point, she must have returned to find someone rifling through her journal. It’s only conjecture, but… I believe she managed to rip it from their hands—at least most of it.”

  She ran a finger along the ragged edges of the torn pages. “The tearing isn’t clean. I thought the pages were taken quickly, but now I wonder if they were ripped during a struggle, if Vectra was fighting to keep the journal.”

  She swallowed. “Then she fled. But was shot…”

  “From the other direction,” Portean finished quietly, his voice grim. His mind played through the scene like a ranger following a trail.

  “There was more than one attacker, Aehyl. The person at the camp, trying to destroy the journal, couldn’t have fired that arrow. Not unless Vectra ran backwards.”

  He shook his head. “The shot entered her chest. Clean. Frontal. Unless her pursuer somehow circled ahead at incredible speed, there had to be a second assailant lying in wait.”

  “It appears this strange party is our best lead,” Aehyl said, nodding fiercely.

  “And another thing, Portean.” her face flushed with heat as she held up the small stone they had found in Vectra’s wound. “This is no ordinary pebble. It’s netheron.”

  “Stone of Osred, the Betrayer,” Portean muttered, brooding.

  “Its power may be gone, but the taint lingers,” Aehyl spat.

  “Perhaps Vectra was trying to tell us the evil in the Crystal-Mist is an act of betrayal, by our own people.”

  “We need to reach that gorge. Quickly,” Portean said, his tone firm with resolve.

  Slinging his true-flight across his shoulder and securing his hunting knife to the sheath at his boot, the ranger moved swiftly, gathering their supplies. After checking the thin blades at each side of his belt and adjusting the weight of his pack, he gave a final nod.

  “I’m now willing to bet there’s a hidden cave under those waters. But we’ll have to kill a troll to get to it.”

  Aehyl grimly agreed. She checked the hunting knife, the only weapon she ever bothered to carry, and shouldered her pack.

  “I hope you have a plan.”

  They broke camp at a trot.

  The journey back to the rim of the valley was grueling.

  At the summit, Aehyl and Portean paused, casting one last, worried look across the vast glade where the Great Oak drooped in wilting defeat. Neither knew exactly what they hoped to find at the dark gorge, but both clung to the hope that it might offer answers.

  The trek, which had taken them several hours in the other direction, now took just over one in their haste.

  By the time Portean raised a hand to signal a break, both elves were drenched in sweat and aching.

  Aehyl sank onto a gnarled root protruding from the earth several feet from a massive tree trunk.

  “How much longer?” she panted. White-hot pinpricks of pain lanced her calves. Her chest rose and fell like frantic bellows.

  “Just over that rise,” Portean replied, pointing wearily. He knelt, elbows resting on his knees. His powerful bow was slung awkwardly across one shoulder and behind his neck.

  With a grunt, he stood and removed it, inspecting the draw with care. He was more accustomed to their relentless pace, his breathing was heavy, but not ragged like Aehyl’s.

  “Have you come up with a plan yet?” Aehyl asked quietly, suddenly all too aware of how close they were to the monstrosity.

  As her breathing slowed, she caught the unmistakable roar of the river, the ceaseless thunder of the falls feeding the black waters of the gorge. She grimaced. Troll slaying was not in her repertoire.

  She glanced at Portean, hoping he’d sorted something out during their run.

  He returned her look with a roguish grin and nodded. “I have a plan. Since I’ve no real experience with such creatures, it occurs to me the best way to defeat it... might be through its stomach.”

  Aehyl gave him a flat look. “Not the deepest thought I’ve ever heard, but I’m listening.”

  Feigning indignation, the ranger launched into an explanation. When he finished, they crept to the rim of the gorge to survey its dark waters and the surrounding terrain, checking for any sign of the strange elves from Vectra’s journal.

  Finding no one, and satisfied they were alone, the two slipped into the forest together, hunting for something that might serve as an appetizing invitation.