📜Entry: “Fragmented Notes and Musings”

Location: Enroute to Harveston
Recorded: Loose travel notes among the Jilahd papers

The following fragments appear to have been written across several nights of travel, each beneath some form of roof, overhang, cave, or otherwise non-leaking structure. They've been preserved together due to their relevence in Jilahd’s chronology with respect to his increasingly deliberate use of truth as an instrument instead of an impulse.

After the Bandit Camp

The dead were not as silent as expected.

This is not, I confess, a comforting sentence.

Ishnari’s death remains wasteful. His surrender should have preserved him for judgment, questioning, or at least a more orderly end. Instead, he became another body among many, and I was left to ask questions of a corpse whose answers were narrow, bitter, and bounded by the indignity of death.

The usefulness of the information I recovered does not redeem the killing. It merely prevents one consequence becoming a total loss.

We learned of a wizard hidden near the northern edge of the forest and, unsurprisingly, that Goldtooth’s dragon is an illusion. These truths deserve caution. The dead may answer, but they do not become virtuous by dying.

I find myself increasingly troubled by the ease with which violence becomes procedure.

There are no stable authorities upon whom we defer. The Queen is corrupt. Lesser rulers are compromised, frightened, opportunistic, or mad by turns. Roads are unsafe. Mines are threatened. Towns bargain with strangers because strangers are all that remain.

So what, precisely, is justification?

Is it the request of a local ruler? The crimes of the accused? The safety of the many? The absence of any better instrument?

Or is there someone who is simply supposed to care where the line lies? Besides me.

Abulior’s Shack

Abulior Whitegate surviving our arrival was promising. This seems a modest achievement until one considers our recent habits.

We approached a strange dwelling in darkness, accompanied by armed companions, beasts, rumor, accusation, and rain. A less charitable account might describe us as an intrusion that learned manners only after reaching the door.

Still, we knocked. Mostly. I called out plainly that we had come from the tower and sought its return. I also stated, without ornament, our quest to lift the curse from the land. There are times when truth should not be a flood. There are also times when it acts as a bridge laid quickly before fear finishes its work, attracting chaos.

Blessedly, Abulior opened the door.

He proved nervous, brilliant, defensive, and not entirely steady. He cast his own Zone of Truth, for which I was grateful. Not only preserving my spellcraft, it established a pleasing symmetry: we did not force truth from him; he demanded it from us.

That is a better beginning than intimidation.

He denied stealing the Dark Star Parchment, though he did not deny possessing it. He claimed study, not theft. The distinction may prove important, or merely self-flattering. Scholars are not immune to theft. We are merely prone to describe it with better vocabulary. When he learned that we had been to Master Arlen’s tomb and knew of the Ziggurat of the New Moon, excitement overcame nearly every other caution in him. The parchment emerged. So did his desire to accompany us.

Slick was hesistant but I told him I would not prevent it.

This was true. It was also not an endorsement. I am becoming rather proud of such sentences.

Stone Giant Hospitality

The giants gave us shelter we had not earned.

This may be too severe. We had previously aided these same giants against the rat-swarms that infested their caves, and gratitude has its own memory. Still, their welcome felt larger than the balance of service rendered. They placed us under stone, fed us, honored us, and arranged passage downriver toward Harveston.

A roof every night. I do not think the histories will give this sufficient weight. Great chronicles speak of armies, crowns, curses, prophecies, and celestial wars. They rarely pause to note the moral significance of dry bedding. This is an error made by those writing after the fact, indoors.

The rain continues to instruct me otherwise.

Our hosts were reluctant to approach human settlements, which is sensible. Human affairs are presently diseased, and we carry the symptoms with us. Nevertheless, they offered a guide and means of travel. His name, "Fallnutz", I record with uncertainty, as repeated attempts by my companions to pronounce it produced more confidence than accuracy.

The vessel had a roof. I therefore judge it a masterpiece of rivercraft.

On the River

Ted performed the matter of the hound and the torc with admirable absurdity. The purpose, of course, was concealment. Abulior must not know more than necessary concerning the torc already in our possession. The performance itself was nearly theatrical: a magical locator displaced onto a loyal beast, inquiry disguised as habit, truth preserved by misdirection rather than denied.

I note, again, my progress. Once, I might have considered such conduct too near falsehood. Now I begin to see that honesty is not identical with exposure. A thing may be true and still unwisely displayed.

This remains uncomfortable.

Good.

Comfort is a poor measure of wisdom.

We chose Harveston over Gorso, though I confess no small disappointment in the matter. The Gorso thread remains personally and historically significant. Yet Harveston is tied to Ha’aren Blackbone, and Ha’aren carries the adamantine torc. Even if the torc itself is no longer in Harveston, the road of inquiry passes through her name, her people, and whatever loyalties remain behind her. The direct route is not always the truest one.

Entering Harveston

We camp tonight across the river from Harveston.

The town waits beneath the same afflicted sky as all the others. We enter tomorrow seeking a torc that is likely not there, a woman who may already be bound for the Ziggurat, and local truths that may prove more useful than local objects. This distinction is worth preserving. We are not only collecting keys. We are learning the course of corruption by the marks it leaves in those who carried, hid, lost, coveted, or misunderstood them.

I want the Dark Star Parchment. Not for possession. Not exactly. I want it held where it may do the least harm and yield the greatest understanding. At present, that may mean with us. I do not trust Abulior’s judgment. I do not distrust his sincerity. These are different conclusions, and both may be true.

I am not willing to kill him for it.

I record this because the distinction matters, and because I increasingly suspect that distinctions are the first casualties of desperate work. Tomorrow there will be questions. There may also be turmoil. The common casualty of this curse.

I will try to listen before judging. I will try to speak truth without emptying every pocket of it onto the floor. I will try to remember that a kingdom is not saved by knowing everything.

It is saved by learning what must be known in time to act.

Compiler’s Note: These fragments are preserved together because none appears intended as a complete folio entry. Their value lies in accumulation. Across them, Jilahd’s thinking shifts from revulsion at wasted life, to restraint in speech, to an emerging doctrine of selective truth. The recurring concern with roofs, rain, and shelter has been retained without correction.

May clarity walk with me.

— A.J.