Towering blue pines speared skyward through an interlocked canopy of greedy elm and silver maple boughs, fighting for their share of the Waking afternoon sun. A fine layer of composting detritus quietly languished in the false night. In a shallow earthen cleft, a narrow creek stumbled along, swollen from snow melt and seasonal rain, roiling over exposed root and jagged rock and any marginal undergrowth either unlucky or foolish enough to thrive on yesterday's shore. The birds didn't even attempt to compete with the raucous grumbling of the miniature river. They, like the owner of the cabin situated there in the middle of it all, came to this part of the Traagen Wood to be alone.

Nevin sometimes marveled at how much the area had changed in the last decades. Staring out his study window during a lesson on Fen Quarry's near constant rain, Ishen once told him how he'd had to work out a special arrangement with Martha Chandler, Elbin's resident candle smith, to keep him in ample supply during the warmer months. With each passing year, the canopy overhead only grew denser, the trees thicker, and the sunlight increasingly scarce.

“Life is unfathomably covetous, Nevin,” he had said, his eyes unfocused and distant as he gazed out his narrow window into the trees. “It wants things it cannot have, hungers for things not rightfully its own, and above all, yearns for more, more, more. It's never content. Never happy. Never fulfilled. It's why trees can reach such lofty heights, spread their roots through solid rock, and persist the countless eons.

“Life strives for nothing short of everything. It's only man who chooses to settle for 'enough'.”

It had been a small part of a much larger discussion, but that snippet of conversation had stuck with Nevin like a poisonous barb, infecting the few moments of contentment he so rarely experienced with a measure of doubt and self-loathing. More and more, he'd come to wonder if he was truly the victim of unfortunate circumstances, or if he was the victim of his own unwillingness to brave uncertainty to escape the meager pleasures his circumstances occasionally afforded him.

At least here, he was alive. He had Aidux. He had Ishen. He had a roof over his head, food for his belly, relative - though sporadic - safety. What right did he have to want for more?

The world across that terrifying stretch of rope and wood and beyond the Hyret Gorge held no such promises. He'd spent his life submitting to the evil he knew over the possibility of being master to the evil he didn't. And now, as the traumas of the morning piled one on top of the other, he hoped his lack of foresight and complacency hadn't damned him to being crushed beneath the boots of both the evils he'd feared for so long.

Standing frozen on the stoop of Ishen's cabin and pondering the ramifications of the darkened window and partially open front door, Nevin prayed to whomever or whatever might be listening that those evils hadn't now come to damn one of only two people in the world he cared about.

The whole situation felt strange. Dangerous, yes, but odd, in the way that coming home to find out someone had moved your things did, but only just enough that it was possible you had left them there, but hadn't remembered doing so. Nevin's attention flitted about the scene before him, taking it all in before allowing his feet to take the lead.

With its numerous rooms and precise construction, the secluded cabin bore little resemblance to the other structures scattered around the province. Most of Elbin's families made their lives in little more than a one room hovel, sharing a bed, an outbuilding, and generations of clothing, tools, and a lack of personal space. Few had secondary interior rooms, and those that did were often add-on afterthoughts of absolute necessity. Sheds and barns were far more common, with some homesteads presenting like miniature towns themselves.

Simply put, Ishen's cabin broke the mold. Built from interlocking arrow-straight pine logs, Nevin often marveled at the sheer geometry of its construction. Perfect right angles, gapless joints, inset doors, interior walls, a covered porch of all things...Maybe the village carpenter Mikael possessed the skill and knowledge – not to mention the patience - necessary to accomplish those feats...now...twenty years after the fact, but back then? He wasn't so sure.

Nevin carefully slid the pack from his shoulder and lowered it to the leaf-strewn earth. His weak arm shook with the effort of staying quiet, but the moist dirt made no protest as the pack settled at his feet. Everything seemed louder here due to a general lack of noise, but luckily for him, the small creek behind the cabin was working double time.

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He cast a wary eye to the bronze lantern resting at the foot of the porch. A small flame burned weakly within, only moments remaining until the end of its life and usefulness.

Not one of Ishen's. Had someone come calling in the early morning hours, ushering the old scholar from his home and into town? If so, why had they left their lantern behind? The people of Elbin weren't rich, so what meager possessions they had were coveted and treated with care. Had its owner been in a rush, out of urgency or maybe fear?

Or had someone come in the night, someone with dark intention, turning low the flame as they approached so as not to be seen, and traded lantern for blade at the door?

Nevin grit his teeth in frustration. He could stand here all day pondering possibility and stalling, but he knew that having answers didn't equate to solving problems. He already had enough problems to handle. He certainly didn't need more catching up with him while he stood out here, failing to act.

The lantern weighed light in his hands, but a gentle shake revealed a wealth of oil still remained in its reservoir. A quick flick of a small lever on its domed hood widened a series of narrow vents, and the dying flame burst to life.

Resigning himself to whatever answers lie within - good or bad - Nevin extended the lantern before him and stepped inside the cabin.

Normally awash with the glow of scattered candlelight, the shadowed interior felt cold and unwelcoming beneath the harsh glow of the lantern. A sturdy square table rested in the room's center, marred by countless divots and gouges that stood out like bloodless wounds in the light. A brick stove languished in the corner. Along the surrounding walls, rows of clay jars and straw baskets squatted on shallow shelves and crowded the floor, most displaying a dried version of whatever lay within pasted to its front or woven into the straw. Few had written labels. The floral aroma of dried herbs and marinating unguents had always pleasantly tickled his nose, but today he could scarcely detect their presence.

Only rarely had Nevin been allowed to sit in when Ishen treated one of the locals, watching from the corner, perched atop a simple three-legged stool. Most of his visitors would stand, explaining to Ishen some discomfort or chronic malady whilst the older gentleman nodded thoughtfully and paced back-and-forth between the many jars and baskets, plucking one-by-one a series of seemingly unrelated ingredients and gathering them on the table. He'd interrupt with the occasional question, sometimes returning one ingredient in favor of another, sometimes waving off an answer as irrelevant. Nevin would watch in fascination as he muddled the collection together using mortar and pestle, or bound them into a tight bouquet, or steeped them into a murky, fragrant tea. After instructing the visitor in the mixture's use, Ishen would express his desire for some item or service, before quickly ushering them back into the woods.

“And out of our lives,” he'd say with a wink.

Frowning, Nevin set the lantern down on the spacious tabletop. A number of jars and baskets had been moved from wall to desk, their lids removed and their contents all but missing. Pottery shards crunched beneath his boots. They were all over. Dried lemongrass stalks and blue monkshood blossoms mingled together on the floor, their baskets overturned along with a handful of others.

Ransacked? Nevin hoped he was wrong, but he couldn't imagine a circumstance so dire that Ishen would treat his collection with so little care. Had the soldiers already come and gone, and if so, what use would they have had for a collection of dried plants? What were they looking for?

There were two other doors in the room. One led to Ishen's bedroom - the only part of the house Nevin had never seen - and the other to his study. Alarmingly, that second door was flung wide.

Eyeing the study warily, Nevin cracked the bedroom door and appraised the space with a hasty glance. A modest room, it held no decoration and only two pieces of furniture: a pine chest and straw-stuffed mattress draped in a drab woolen blanket. The chest's lid hung open and appeared empty but for a moth-eaten robe, balled up and shoved into the corner. The bed was perfect, the blanket tucked neatly beneath the mattress and smoothed flat with an almost military precision.

Probably always fell asleep in his chair, Nevin hoped. He tried not to think about the alternatives. The cramped room was otherwise empty, leaving him with but one final room to check.

In the stillness, Nevin's heart counted out the seconds in double time. Part of him wanted nothing to do with that final doorway, hanging open despite Ishen's continual insistence that it always remain closed. After all the times the old scholar had admonished him for failing to secure it behind him, Nevin actually felt a pang of guilt for not rushing over to immediately press it closed.

But compared to the fear of what the contents of the study might reveal, that guilt was but a raindrop swallowed up in a sea of worry.

(Continued in part 2)