The Poisoned Circle

The Poisoned Circle

They had left the Bordrad Marshes four days behind them, though Kaelen still found black mud in places no swamp had any reasonable means of reaching. Next time , Kaelen thought they would arrive in style, daughter of a chief and her adjunct. Their ship would arrive at a Bordrad port and disembark onto a nice wooden dock and stay in an inn before going on. For now though, living as a mage and guardian under warrant, the walk through mud to the shore would have to do.

Their journey into Ironroot had begun among southern waterways broad enough to lose islands in. For two days they had travelled north by shallow marsh boat, passing reed villages, floating gardens and watch platforms raised above dark water. At the edge of Bordrad, Blena had traded the boat for two broad-backed lowland gulathers and led Kaelen into the open country beyond.

The Drunwood Lowlands had seemed endless after the closeness of the marsh. Long grasses rolled beneath the wind. Rivers divided and rejoined across the plain, carrying Bordrad water towards both the Western and Central Oceans. Karvok lay nowhere near it.

Each day northward, the land rose and the trees grew taller. The wet grasslands became wooded hills, then deep forest broken by streams running down from the Saviour Mountains. On the fourth afternoon, Blena abandoned the travelled road and guided their gulathers onto a narrow path beneath the trees.

“The road continues that way,” Kaelen said, pointing to the very obvious road she had just left.

“That is why we are not using it.”

“Roads are generally built to reach places.”

“So are warrants served by over zealous guardians.”

“I thought you would be immune to Kefar here?”

“I have protectors here but no one is immune to the affliction of Kefar.”

The gulather beneath Kaelen stepped over a fallen branch with four of its six legs, then appeared to reconsider the obstacle while the remaining two were still on the other side. Kaelen pitched forward against its neck.

Blena did not turn around. “Graceful.”

“It changed its decision halfway through.”

“You two have that in common.”

She knew the forest path well enough to ride it in the failing light. Kaelen knew this because she repeatedly told him so. The path however appeared to have grown since she was last on it. Brambles caught their packs. Low limbs forced them against the gulathers’ shoulders, and twice the trail vanished beneath years of fallen leaves.

Blena had spent the journey speaking easily about everything they passed. She had named the flowers growing beside the lowland rivers, explained which hill settlements made the best smoked meat and warned him never to accept yellow tea from a Bordrad ferryman. She had not spoken about what would happen when they reached her father.

As evening gathered beneath the trees, the forest ahead began to glow.

At first Kaelen mistook the lights for stars showing through the canopy. Then the path climbed a final wooded ridge and the lights separated into windows, lantern bridges and suspended walkways woven throughout the immense trees on the other side.

Karvok rose from the forest one light at a time.

Whole buildings rested inside living hollows. Others hung from branches thick enough to carry Thalorian ships, their roofs buried beneath leaves and flowering vines. Great wooden platforms circled the largest trunks. Rope lifts moved between levels, carrying people, goods and supplies for the dwellers who lived far from the forest floor. Nothing in the city seemed to begin at the ground.

Kaelen pulled his mount to a stop. “Which one is the Great Hall?”

Blena pointed into the glowing forest. “The large one.”

“That description would become more useful if only one of them were large.”

“The large one with the hanging lamps and the large double door ..... and the crest.”

“Oh, I see it now..” he said a little embarrassed he did see the large bear head on a crestboard above the 2 meter high doors into the structure.

Kaelen counted at least nine structures with hanging lamps and in an attempt to cover said, “It could have been any of the one with lamps, there are a bunch over there.”

That made her look.

“I know exactly where I am.”

She dismounted beside an old boundary stone almost swallowed by moss. Instead of following the lantern road towards the lower gates, she led her gulather behind the remains of a hunting shelter and pushed through a screen of young firs.

Kaelen stayed in the saddle. “Is there a reason the approach begins with a wall of trees?”

“To hide it.”

“Well now you made me realise I asked a stupid question so I guess I deserve that.. .”

Blena disappeared between the branches.

Kaelen looked down at his gulather. “I assume you know what you’re doing.”

The animal began eating the nearest fir.

“Excellent.”

He dismounted and pulled it after her.

Beyond the trees, a steep footpath descended between boulders towards the back of Karvok’s outer workshops. It had once been reinforced with wooden steps. Several had rotted away, and the remainder leaned at angles that seemed personally hostile to travellers carrying packs or pulling a gulather. Kaelen twice slipped on the mud that was no longer shaped into well formed rectangular prisms. At least no gatekeeper waited to ask their names, inspect their papers or compare their faces with Kefarian warrants.

Blena looked back at him. “Well?”

He lifted both packs after tying the gulathers beneath the shelter of the trees. “I am appreciating the welcome.”

“You wanted quiet and this was quiet.”

“Why is there mud in every city?.”

“In Ironroot we prefer nature to contrived stone and forced angles.”

She took one of the packs and started down. Kaelen followed, placing his boots where she placed hers. They emerged behind a row of storage houses built between the roots of the outer trees. The air smelled of cut wood, cooking smoke and sweet spices. Somewhere above them, a drum sounded three slow beats to signal afternoon 3.0 time. Children began leaving buildings until after about .15 time they were everywhere. Mothers and fathers greeted children in higher elevations holding their hands as they crossed rope and wooden bridges. Some slid down ropes for two floors up to the ground performing somersaults as they landed. It was a hive of activity and Blena couldn’t have timed it better.

Blena stopped. “Walk with me.” She grabbed his hand and walked into the hustle happening above and below.

Kaelen nearly walked into her. Before accepting the ruse and walking in step.

“You pick up the kids and I will head over to the market?”

Some around them saw an Ironroot guardian with her partner from Thalorian Tide. Intercrestrealm partnerships weren’t common but they happened with surprisingly increased frequency. Others were so busy navigating, looking for their children or avoiding the three dimensions of pedestrians that they noticed nothing.

“Oh,... O.K. I’ll pick up Jo... Jorg and Barb.”

Blena whispered..”Oh my Veyl, are you trying to get us noticed. Jorg and Barb. What are they Thalorian names?

He responded in a hushed tone.. “No, you caught me off guard. I made them up. I don’t know many Ironroot names.”

Then Blena said loudly. “Did you pick up the cheese at the market?”

She pulled him quickly towards a path between two grand trees that reached beyond the lower canopy. The path led behind what was much like a main street.

She pointed to a narrow bridge curving around the next tree. “Were going over there.”

“OK, are we still married?.”

“Yes, until we are out of sight.”

“Married people kiss each other.”

She squeezed his hand so tight the pain made him wince and he rethought any more tension relieving joviality.

They continued into the city as a couple, laughing and making sure they looked much like everyone else on an ordinary day. Once out of the center of the city Blena chose side paths, freight stairs and bridges concealed beneath the larger walkways and let go of Kaelen’s hand.

“So it is over?”

She slapped him playfully still in role. Just in case. As things got quieter Blena started to notice things. At every turn she found something changed. A tea seller occupied what had once been an armour repair stall. A storm had split the old meeting tree and the two living halves now supported separate houses. Children practised with wooden shields in a courtyard where Blena said traders used to sell forestine fruit.

She knew every place.

She belonged to none of them quite as easily as she expected.

“Blena?”

The voice came from above.

A woman carrying a basket leaned over a railing. Her mouth fell open. The basket tipped, releasing six red fruits onto the walkway. One rolled over the edge and struck Kaelen on the shoulder.

He caught it before it fell farther.

“Sorry!” the woman called.

Then, louder, “BLENA!”

Heads turned across three levels.

Blena closed her eyes.

“So much for hidden,” Kaelen said. “Should we be married again?”

The woman abandoned her basket and ran down the nearest stair. Before she reached them, two children were shouting Blena’s name from a bridge. A man carrying a coil of rope stopped so suddenly that the people behind him collided. Someone called towards the upper walkways.

“Chief’s daughter is back!”

The news moved through Karvok faster than any blackbird.

Blena was embraced by the woman, then struck twice on the arm for having stayed away. A former neighbour seized her face between both hands and announced that she had become thin. A Guardian she remembered from childhood inspected her armour and disapproved of three repairs. Children asked whether she had killed anyone. An elderly man asked whether she had married Kaelen.

“No,” Blena said.

“Not yet?” the old man concluded.

“Not ever.”

Kaelen handed the fallen fruit back to the basket woman. “Her position on our eternal union seems unambiguous.”

That somehow made everyone laugh.

Blena pushed through them with one hand over her face. “I should have entered through the north wall.”

“Is there a hidden entrance?” Kaelen asked.

“No. That is why it would have worked.”

By the time they reached the Great Hall, half the city seemed to know they had arrived.

“Won’t someone report us to the Guardians?”

“We need to get to my father and do some quick talking or we might be leaving here today.”

Now completely discovered there was no holding of hands and they returned to the centre of town under the precept that their fates lie in local dedication to the chief and not Kefar. The hall occupied the centre of a living tower. Its floor passed directly through the trunk, with open balconies extending into the surrounding branches. No walls separated the council space from the forest. Wind moved through hanging vines and carried the sound of water from somewhere far below.

Chief Panarf stood at a long table beneath the canopy.

He was listening to two mine officials argue over a ledger. Kaelen recognized him immediately from the description Thrankal had once given the Heartwell Council: too large, too informal and much too pleased with himself for a man who governed anything important.

None of that description prepared Kaelen for the way he held the room or the way conversation stopped when he lifted one hand.

Panarf looked towards the entrance.

His raised hand fell.

For several breaths, the Chief of Karvok did not move.

Blena shifted the pack on her shoulder. “Hello, Pater.”

Panarf crossed the hall.

He did not walk with the dignity of a chief receiving a returning Guardian. He knocked one stool aside, sent a stack of mine reports sliding across the table and reached Blena in six enormous strides.

His embrace lifted her completely from the floor.

Blena made a compressed noise somewhere between a laugh and the loss of breath.

“Dad, please people are looking.”

Panarf held her tighter.

“Alright, I give in, all my adult dignity is lost..” She returned a strong squeezed hug and kissed him on the cheek.

He set her down, held both sides of her face and examined her as if counting every injury she had acquired.

“Two years,” he said.

“It wasn’t supposed to be.”

“Two years and three messages.”

“I sent more than three.”

“Three arrived.”

“Then blame the riders.”

“I did. They showed me the warrants.”

The warmth in the hall altered.

Panarf looked past her to Kaelen.

Kaelen had faced Councillors, Veylborn, griffons and monks.. He had never felt so completely evaluated by someone who had not yet spoken to him.

“Kaelen Thorne,” Panarf said.

“Chief Panarf.”

Panarf took his forearm. Kaelen prepared for the formal Ironroot greeting and was still unprepared for the strength of it.

“You kept her alive.”

Blena snorted. “That is generous.”

“She kept me alive considerably more often,” Kaelen admitted.

Panarf looked at his daughter. “That sounds right.”

He released Kaelen before any bones shifted.

“You will eat,” he announced.

“We need to speak with you,” Blena said.

“You will speak while eating .”

“It concerns Thrankal.”

Panarf’s expression tightened. “I am well aware of this blight of a man and his machinations. He is still here in the capital. So when you are finished talking and eating, I will talk.

• • •

Panarf’s family rooms occupied three large connected chambers above the Great Hall though he was quick to point out that they were not his. They belonged to the chief whomever that was at the time. The table had been cut from one piece of dark wood and was already crowded with roasted moonstalker, smoked frog, turnip cakes, pickled vegetables and a pot of the thick Ironroot tea Thrankal had once described as boiled roofing material.

Blena drank it as if she had been deprived of water for two years.

Kaelen managed half a cup.

“Good?” Panarf asked.

Kaelen looked into the brown liquid. Small pieces of bark floated on its surface.

“It has a decisive flavour.”

Blena laughed into her cup.

Panarf tore a turnip cake in half. “Tell me why Kefar wants you arrested.”

Kaelen began with Alfadin.

Blena let him speak until his explanation of crystalline pathways became a lecture on the possible relationship between stellar alignment and the reconstruction of photonic matter. Then she interrupted and reduced several months of discovery to a much shorter account involving towers, earthquakes, angry Guardians and a broken ring beneath a volcano.

Panarf listened while devouring his large portion of food then wiped his hands on a cloth, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, called for a refill of tea and listened more intently.

Kaelen described the images projected at Alderat: Gertina before she became a Veylborn, the ancient gate, the failed transfer and the people trapped somewhere outside ordinary place and time.

“The ring woke again after we left,” Kaelen finished. “Tajan and Anderix remained to study it. Alster went to find his brother. We came here because Thrankal is still the closest thing we have to an official sponsor.”

Panarf’s eyes moved to Blena. “Official sponsors do not place warrants on those doing their work.”

“It feels very much like Thrankal is playing two sides but the second side is not public,” she said.

“Agreed. A leader claiming ignorance of what is done in his name is either lying or unfit to lead. In this case I know he is aware of the warrant as he held it over me as leverage. But to you he is just a spoke in a wheel and his hands are tied.”

“I think we will need to tie them more permanently one day,” Kaelen said.

Panarf looked at him for a moment, then gave a short approving grunt.

Blena reached for another turnip cake. “We need somewhere safe until the others arrive. We also need to know what Thrankal learned at the mines.”

“You want protection from Ironroot.”

“I want help from my father.”

“You are asking both.”

She stopped chewing.

Panarf’s voice remained gentle, which made its meaning harder rather than easier.

“If you sleep beneath my roof, you are my daughter. If Kefar demands that I surrender wanted foreigners sheltered in the Chief’s rooms, then I am Chief of Karvok.”

“You believe the warrants?”

“No.”

“Then what is the problem?”

“The reward on your warrant is so grand that even my own guardians may consider it too great a temptation and for me belief is not the only duty of a chief.”

“That sounds like something Thrankal would say before doing whatever he wanted.”

Panarf’s cup struck the table a little too firmly.

“Do not confuse restraint with cowardice.”

“I didn’t.”

“You nearly did.”

Kaelen became intensely interested in the pickled vegetables.

Panarf leaned back. “Your Year of Service ended last winter.”

“I was occupied.”

“Your service was meant to teach you how the Crestrealms depend upon one another, then bring that learning home.”

“I am trying to keep every one of those Crestrealms alive.”

“From what?”

Blena opened her mouth.

Nothing came out.

Panarf spread one hand. “You have found old towers. Strange trees. Machines beneath mountains. You have heard warnings from people made of light and acquired enemies in half of Aethoria. I do not say these things are unimportant. I ask what you intend to do about them.”

“Find the rest of the system,” she said.

“Then?”

“Repair it.”

“How?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Who granted you authority to operate machines capable of moving mountains?”

“Nobody granted the mountains authority to erupt either, but we still stopped one.”

Panarf almost smiled. It vanished before reaching his eyes.

“The northern watch lost five Guardians this season,” he said. “Crystal seams that supported Karvok for generations are empty. Farms near the Saviours are finding black growth in their wells. Three days ago, a corrupted snowpyma crossed a water trench and killed two children before it was stopped.”

Blena’s expression changed.

“They crossed water?”

“This one did.”

“They fear water.”

“It feared dying more.”

Panarf pulled a folded report from beneath the mine ledgers and placed it in front of her.

“Ironroot needs Guardians who understand what is changing. It needs leaders who have seen beyond our forests. It needs someone who can speak to Kefarians, Thalorians, mages, healers and even a Mechanum without beginning a war over breakfast.”

“I can begin a war much later in the day if that is preferable.”

“Blena.”

She looked down at the report.

Panarf continued. “You keep taking your courage everywhere except home.” Kaelen could see the betrayal Blena's actions showed to her father’s position and her family in those words. Kaelen’s father had offered him a chance to study in Zouken, council protection and a future overlooking the sea. His mother had spoken of meals on the balcony and grandchildren running through the house. He had looked at that life and called leaving necessary because remaining felt too much like surrender.

Perhaps Blena heard the same accusation now.

She pushed the report back across the table. “You want me to stop.”

“I want you to decide whether following Kaelen is the only brave choice available.”

Kaelen looked up. “She does not follow me.”

Both of them turned towards him.

He continued, although every instinct suggested that silence might preserve his health.

“I sometimes choose a direction first. That is not the same as leading. Blena decides whether the rest of us survive it.”

“That is not helping,” she said.

“I am not certain which outcome would help.” Kaelen said as he felt the responsibility of Blena’s current predicament and his own rejection to stay safe at home.

Panarf studied him. “You think she should stay.”

Kaelen thought of Zouken.

“I think wanting her to stay does not make you wrong.”

Blena stared at him.

He felt the argument between them before she spoke.

“Good,” she said. “Then perhaps I can stay here while you explain the ancient network to Thrankal alone.”

“That is not what I said.”

“You agreed with him.”

“I said his argument deserves consideration.”

“Everything deserves consideration to you. Avalanches deserve consideration while falling on us.”

“I never considered leaving you in it.”

Blena stood.

“I need air.”

“We are in a room within a tree, freshest air in Aethoria!” Kaelen pointed out.

She walked out anyway.

Panarf called out to her as she left. “Your mother is returning from a hunt tonight. Make sure you are back in an hour as she will want to see you.” Then he turned to her friend. “You could have lied,” he told him.

“I considered it.

Thy Quest
Panarf argues that Blena’s courage and leadership are needed in Ironroot, while Blena believes continuing the investigation is the best way to protect her home. Explain which character makes the stronger argument. Use two details from the chapter, including one that supports the opposing side.