"A cipher is a test. Only someone who thinks like the encoder can decode the message." — Edric Varn, margin note
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The first day after the cottage he had walked until his legs shook. No breakfast — he'd run out of dried meat the day before. The flask was half full. He'd needed to find water. He'd needed to find the road. The journal had said channeling left traces. So did staying in one place too long. So he walked. East, by the slope of the land and the memory of Aldric's hand pointing. *That way is Aldmere.* The forest had changed around him by midday: more birch, less oak, the ground flatter underfoot. As if the deep woods were letting go. He'd eaten the last of the dried meat standing, one hand on a trunk, and then he'd walked again. His shoulders ached. The bag had rubbed raw where the strap sat. Once he'd stopped to drink — the flask was getting light — and the water had tasted of leather and the long walk. He didn't stop long. By dusk he found a clearing where a deadfall had opened a gap in the canopy. Enough to see the sky. Enough to feel less like the trees were closing in.
The second night in the forest was colder than the first. He'd woken at first light, packed, and walked again. His feet were sore. He needed light more than he needed to hide. One night. One small fire. He'd move on at first light. The clearing had been the right choice. From the gap in the canopy he could see the first stars. Not the right stars — they never were — but enough to know east from west. Enough to know he was still on course. The cottage was behind him. The road was ahead. The journal was in his bag and the cipher was waiting. He'd give it one night. Then he'd walk.
He built a small fire. Not for warmth — the journal said channeling could leave a trace; so could smoke — but he needed light. The cipher was work. Work was something he could hold. Three alphabets. A keyphrase. *Mind the edges.* The cold crept in anyway. He ignored it. His fingers were stiff. He flexed them and turned the page. The fire was small on purpose. Visible from the road if anyone was close. But the road was a day's walk away. The forest was deep. He'd weighed it. Light had won. He could work in the dark with the knife and the journal and the stick in the dirt. He'd done it the first night. Tonight he wanted to see the symbols clearly. Wanted to see his father's hand in the margin. Wanted one thing to feel like progress.
He had no dried meat left. He drank from his flask — half empty — and sat with his back against a trunk, the journal open on his knees, the knife beside him. The fire was low. Just enough to read by. His stomach was a hollow. He ignored it. The journal had other margin notes. He'd seen them in the cellar. Short phrases. *Mind the edges.* *Threadwork.* Words that might be keyphrases or warnings or both. He'd try them all eventually. Tonight he had one goal: one passage. One sentence that would tell him his father had left more than instructions. That the cipher was worth the cost of carrying it. The cipher was more important. If he could crack even one passage he'd know something. He'd have a direction. The fire was more important than food. Light was more important than food. He turned the page. The cipher was layered — three separate alphabets rotating on the keyphrase, each one shifting into the next like gears in a clockwork. He'd spent a miserable semester on ciphers, in another life. Count which letters appear most often. Look for repeating patterns. Guess common words and work backwards. It was less about genius and more about patience. The professor had said: *The encoder leaves fingerprints. Habits. The way they spell. The words they choose.* His father had left margin notes in plain text. The cipher was for the rest. He tried *Hollow* and *Athenaeum* and *Vex*. He tried *Aldric*. He tried *device* and *edges* and *son*. Nothing cracked. The journal had said *Mind the edges* — he tried that as keyphrase, letter by letter. The symbols shifted but didn't resolve into words. A test. Only someone who thought like the encoder could decode it. His father had known how to hide things. Had wanted to. The fire spat. He turned the page. Another block of symbols. Another layer. He'd need more time. More light. More patience than he had right now. He turned another page.
He scratched symbol tables in the dirt with a stick. Tried combination after combination. The stick was brittle. It broke once and he found another. The symbols in the dirt looked like the symbols in the journal — same shapes, same spacing — but without the keyphrase they were just marks. The journal gave up nothing easily. He'd known that from the first page. His father hadn't meant for this to be quick. Then he turned a page and found a margin note in his father's hand, the ink faded but legible: *Check the third stone from the left in any Wayfare inn.*
He stared at it. Not part of the cipher. An instruction. A hiding place? A message drop? Who built inns with a *third stone from the left*? Someone who left messages. Someone who expected people like him to look. He had no Wayfare inn yet. He had a road name — Wayfare Road — and a direction. East. He filed it. *Third stone from the left. Wayfare inn.* When he had one, he'd look.
He worked a little longer. The symbols still refused him. The fire crackled. Somewhere in the dark the forest moved — a branch, an animal, the wind. He didn't look up. Looking up meant admitting how alone he was. How far from the cottage. How far from anyone who knew his name. He closed the journal and took out the letter.
*For Vex Arden. The Broken Compass. Aldmere.*
He'd read it once, in the cellar, in the moments after Aldric had given it to him. He hadn't opened it since. The seal was still intact — dark wax, no crest. Just a fold of paper that had sat in his pocket for two days while the cottage burned and the forest closed around him. He wasn't sure why he was hesitating. Maybe because opening it meant there was no going back — the seal was the last thing Aldric had closed. Maybe because once he read it he'd have to act. The fire was low. The clearing was quiet. He broke the seal.
The letter was short. Instructions. Names. *If you can't find Vex, go to Doran Kell. Trade Quarter. Be careful.* Don't tell anyone your real name. The kind of thing you'd write when you knew you wouldn't be there to say it. Vex first. Doran only if he couldn't find the Broken Compass or the man who ran it. He read it again. And then he saw it.
Aldric's handwriting was trembling.
Not everywhere. In places the lines were steady — the hand of a soldier who'd written reports for forty years. But in other places the letters wavered. The *e* in *Vex* had a double stroke, as if the pen had slipped. The *r* in *Doran* had been started twice. Small things. Easy to miss — unless you'd spent three years watching a man's hands shake. He knew what it meant. Control failing. The body betraying the will. Aldric had written this when he was already dying. When every word had cost him something. He'd still written it. Had still sealed it and put it in Kael's hand. Had still said *Run.*
He folded the letter and put it away. The paper was soft from handling. He'd read it three times. The trembling was in the middle of the page — where Aldric had written *Doran Kell* and *Be careful* and the part about not telling anyone his real name. The beginning was steadier. The end was worse. As if he'd been running out of time as he wrote. As if he'd known. He wondered how many letters Aldric had written in his life. Reports. Orders. Maybe letters to people who had never answered. This one had been different. This one had been for him. The fire was low. He didn't add wood. He sat with his back against the trunk and looked up at the gap in the canopy. The stars were wrong. They'd always been wrong. Fourteen years and he still looked for Orion. He never found it. Just shapes that almost matched.
*How long had you known?* he thought. *When you wrote this, how many days did you have left?* He could have asked. In the cellar. In the last days. He could have said, *How bad is it?* He hadn't. Aldric had given him the letter and the journal and the crystal and said *Run.* That had been the answer. The forest didn't answer. He didn't expect it to. He put the journal in his bag and pulled his coat tight. He ran through it again, the way he'd run through the letter. Road. Wayfare. East. Find an inn — a Wayfare inn, if such a thing had a sign — check the third stone from the left. Then Aldmere. The Broken Compass. Vex. One step. Then the next. He couldn't afford to forget a step. He couldn't afford to miss a signal. Aldric had left him a trail. He had to be good enough to follow it.
For now he let the fire die and waited for first light. The road would be there. So would whatever was looking for a boy with a journal and a crystal and his father's name. He'd find out which when he got there.
He didn't sleep much. The cold woke him. The habit of listening woke him. Once he thought he heard the same not-song from the first night — the one that had stopped when he listened. He lay still. It didn't come again. Maybe the wind. Maybe the forest. Maybe something else. He didn't chase it. He waited for the sky to lighten. Then he packed and walked — journal in the bag, letter in his pocket, knife at his belt. The forest was quieter in the early light. The birds were starting. He'd find the road by midday if the slope held. Somewhere east a man named Vex had been waiting fourteen years. He walked.