Chapter 335: What Aldric Left

Tarin took the road watch from the bank near the post, its Lawfire in the water below. From there it could see the paving before it reached the shelf. Riptide checked the channel while Ward held beside the landing with Keep mounted above the waterline. Pell remained in the shallows between the bank and the shelf.

With both approaches watched, Ren told the others to rest in turns. Eira looked at him until he sat down against the post’s footing.

He let his arms rest on his knees for a while before taking out his notes.

— • —

The report described the approach they meant to try: upstream along the running channel above the basin, toward the supply’s head. The land group would inspect the path while the others held the landing. He named both groups and marked the stretch none of them had walked.

Vesper checked the proposed route and added their return limit. Ren read it back before placing the sheet in the box.

He included nothing about the recognition, the trial, or the obligation. No confirmed interruption had triggered his promise to send word.

Back at the footing, he opened the page with the notification step and the terms written beneath it.

If the keeper cannot maintain the supply, send word to the receiving basin before the water falls below its mark there. The keeper’s line supplies the next keeper.

He remembered the incident recorded below the procedure on the wall. A pier had failed during the keeper’s absence. No warning had reached the basin, and another keeper of the line had been summoned to restore the supply.

Aldric had left him different words.

We were not chosen. I was here, and someone had to be, and I was the one who was here.

Ren had heard that as an account of how his ancestor had become trapped with a duty nobody else could take. The procedure gave him another way to consider it. At this supply, absence and failure were expected often enough to have instructions. Someone had written down how the work passed to the next keeper.

Nothing named Aldric or placed him here. He had said he was the one who was present, not that someone had summoned him. Still, Ren could read the procedure now and understand what having to stay might demand beyond enduring it himself. Other people needed the work to continue.

He added a short note beneath his obligation.

Someone had to be. Here, the procedure provided for the next keeper.

He left the two statements together and put down his pencil.

— • —

The last confirmed STRAIN reading was fifteen.

Ren had received nothing newer about Aldric’s seal. He couldn’t call the reading unchanged simply because he hadn’t seen another one. Nor did the increase from the previous reading give him a rate he could use. He had no reliable interval between them and no way to turn the difference into time remaining.

His slate could show him the route and the report deadline. It couldn’t tell him how long Aldric had.

He closed the notes and stayed seated until Vesper’s rest turn ended. By then the stiffness in his hands had eased. He flexed his fingers, stood, and called the group together.

"Tarin commands here," he said. "Keep the road and water watches. Pell runs between the bank and the shelf. Keep the way to the gate clear."

The fixed gate was their approved route home. Ward could hold in deep water beside it; it couldn’t follow them up the shallow channel at the works.

Ren showed Tarin the return time already entered on the report.

"If we’re late, report us overdue. Nobody comes uphill after us."

"Keep’s reports?"

"They’ll carry their age. The deadline stays the same."

He checked the spore inside his coat, where he had put it after Vesper returned it. It would let Keep place the group as they moved, with the delay they had already seen on this ground.

Vesper lifted Mistwhisker, keeping the dressed paw clear of her coat. Eira shouldered her kit. Ren led them onto the road.

— • —

They passed the depot and followed the old cut stone to the deep pocket. Water moved through it without Ward’s bulk beside the bank.

At the shoulder, Ren stopped below the crest.

Someone had appeared above this stretch during his time inside. He watched the skyline and the places where a person could descend toward the ledge. No movement showed. He crossed first, checked the next stretch, and waited while Eira came over. Vesper followed with Mistwhisker.

The firm ground above the maintenance stair was empty.

Ren kept back from the hollow’s edge. From above the stair he could see the basin and the mouth of the running channel on its far side. He traced the water upstream along a shelf of rock until a turn in the slope hid it.

The directions began at the basin, but he could see ground leading around the upper side toward the channel. He examined it from where they stood before moving. The shelf narrowed near the turn; there was room to walk along its inner side without stepping onto the loose outer edge.

They followed him around it, Eira in the middle and Vesper watching behind. Ren tested the slope down to the water, then led them onto the bank above the basin.

He turned downstream. Through the opening beside the rock shelf, he could follow this channel to the mouth he had inspected before. Then he faced upstream and checked their side against the copied directions.

They were on the right bank, facing the head.

"This is it," he said.

— • —

The cut path climbed beside the water.

Some sections remained level and firm. Elsewhere, pieces had fallen away, leaving sloping ground between the surviving cuts. Ren checked each gap before crossing and waited until Eira and Vesper had followed. Vesper shifted Mistwhisker higher against her chest where she needed a hand on the rock.

The bank screened them from the hollow through much of the climb. At the lower stretches, they stayed close to the slope and crossed without lingering. No voices reached them from below, though the running water covered quieter sounds.

Near the top, the path met a dense growth spread across the bank. Roots entered the soil beside the channel, with some exposed where the water had worn it back. Narrow leaves rose from stems no higher than Ren’s knee. Above them, water issued from a cleft in the rock and ran down into the cut channel.

"That’s the plant, Ren."

He kept looking at it so Kaia could see it through him. The leaves had the shape he remembered from the carving. He didn’t ask where she had known them before.

Ren privately asked the System to check the visible growth.

[GROWTH: LIVING. EXPOSED ROOTS: INTACT.]

He crouched beside it and sketched the leaves and the spread of roots next to his copied directions. He marked the cleft above them as the head, then put the notes away. Nothing was cut or collected.

The water continued past their feet. Ren followed the path’s last section up beside the source and onto the ground beyond.

— • —

A broad shelf opened ahead. Farther across it, water lay beneath stone overhangs, with pale vapor rising into the cold air. The old record had placed the sightings on ground like this.

Ren stopped at a cut in the bank.

Several roots had been severed around a mass of soil and living growth. One side had been lifted clear of its bed; the other remained held by roots running into the bank. A haul strap passed beneath the raised side, trapped under its weight.

He crouched without touching it. The exposed tissue was moist, and sap still glistened on the cut ends. Soil had fallen from beneath the lifted mass into the shallow hollow beside it.

"Someone started lifting this," Eira said. She leaned closer to look at the roots still attached. "These would have to come free before it could go anywhere."

Vesper opened her notebook. Beyond the partly lifted growth, vegetation had been crushed into a narrow track. A furrow crossed the damp ground beside it, deeper where something heavy had caught on a stone.

Ren looked from the strap to the overhangs. This extraction had been left unfinished. The cuts looked fresh, but the marks farther on gave him no way to tell what else had already been moved.

He couldn’t yet identify the rooted growth as the lifeform they had come to find. Nothing here identified the people who had tried to take it, either.

Vesper recorded the position while Eira examined the exposed roots from the edge of the cut.

Beyond the abandoned strap, the drag marks continued toward the overhangs.