ina graciously accepted my apology, but my situation is more complicated for it. I now know that she confides in Lady Reiling, and that some of that knowledge passes on to Karl, captain of the guard. He seems an intelligent man, and discreet enough to keep our secret close, especially since I know his. But the strangest part is that by meeting him, I feel I have joined a ring of secret-sharers.

Fina confessed to me that a king had indeed visited her, King Theran of the southern realm of Kossaria. But all had not been as it appeared in my dream, at least not according to her telling of the story (and corroborated by Lady Reiling). She was brief, and left out many details, but she stressed that she was not intimate with him. And although I already doubted the vision, one moment captured me. As I stood there, holding her in my arms, drinking in her beauty, wanting everything I had thought I knew to be false, she said:

“Do you love me? Then have faith in me. Trust me, not a vision born of Kean’s poisons.”

My faith in the starscopes was shaken. However, though they may have been wrong (or perhaps just misleading) in this case, there was no reason to discount everything they had shown me. The problem was that so little of the vision made sense to me.

The morning after I had read the starscopes, despite my distress, I had sent a message to Dalbach to arrange a meeting at his first available convenience. Today I met with him to tell him what I had seen, and all that I did not understand. Perhaps he could make sense of it. And if the signs pointed to danger, his steady hand would be ready to guide the duke.

ossvar’s merchant caravan arrived today.

At Kean’s suggestion, I bought myself a staff.

Kean prefers his two canes over a staff.  However, he is not so decrepit that he needs them to walk, although some may incorrectly draw that conclusion.  As his apprentice, I have watched him use those canes for years.  It is no exaggeration for me to say that he is a master of the cane.  I hope to eventually gain a similar mastery over my staff.

He uses the canes as walking aids, but more to prevent aches and pains than to shore up a debilitating injury.  There have been times hiking back up to the castle that I’ve envied him his canes.  

But they are tools as well. I’ve seen him slip a bottle of acid off of a high shelf and catch it in his waiting palm. And if Kean is like an old hawk (as I’ve once heard him described), they are his talons.  A pickpocket once tried to make off with Kean’s money pouch, and Kean knocked some sense into him with one cane, and then scrawled a curse at the miscreant’s feet to truly make him rue the day.  I’ve seen him fend off and beat a hargast to death—a hargast!—so that he could strip its reagent-rich body of feathers, claws, gizzard, and other useful materials (however, this was nine years ago).

I would very much have liked to buy a staff that could measure up to one of Kean’s canes.  One is blackthorn, carved with intricate runes and a small face that can only be seen at close distance.  The other is carved from an unknown wood and is bleached like driftwood.  Its handle splits into a grasping claw, and its base is shaped vaguely like a spade, and I have seen Kean use it as such.  He also uses each in different rituals, some of which he has yet to teach me.

I don’t have much money of my own, and I have already spent over half that I have saved during the past year on this trip. I have had to settle for an oaken staff of simple design.  It stands a finger taller than me, and has a pleasant heft to it.  It has no engravings, but an oak staff can enhance rituals that imbue strength.  I can carve it myself later.

his evening was not good. The four flights of stairs were agony, my chest burning with every breath, my legs threatening to buckle at every step. My injuries are growing stiff, and I wonder if I will be able to walk by morning.

ate in the day, Morgan sauntered into the forge. I was bending a band of iron to fit inside a soldier’s helmet—covered in strips of leather, this would reinforce the helmet against a blow to the side of the head.

“Ho, good smith, thirsty smith!” Morgan called out. “Have a drink, my friend.” He was carrying two large wooden mugs in each hand.

“Thanks,” I said, and put aside my work.

“The Duke hasn’t returned yet,” grumbled the messenger. “Someone apparently sent word to Dalbach who rode in to try to convince me to speak to him instead.” He took a long draught. “Wizards. They make my skin crawl.”