Fladrif's Arc

Chapter 6 of 9

The last dead ground was awake now, but the stone-beast sat on top of it. Fladrif crossed the wastes with his companions and stopped at the edge. The soil was wet and ready. Fresh roots strained under it, blind and reaching. The beast rested in the center, half-sunk, its stone flanks slow with breath. He could not touch the new ground without waking the thing that lay on it. Bregalad's red eyes fixed on the shape. He had lost a tree to axes once and warned no one in time. He would not be slow now. "It sleeps," he said. "It sleeps. But not deep." Elmwood knelt and pressed his hand to the wet stone. Last winter men cut his sapling while he slept, and he had never stopped tracking them. He would not lose this ground the same way. "The roots want up," he said. "They'll shove it awake. Then it fights." Raewyn came around the beast without a sound. She had guarded one forest for two long lifetimes. "We move it or we lose the soil," she said. "No third way." Kjell walked the beast's flank with his hand on his axe. He had hunted things older than most kingdoms and lived. He struck the stone hide and listened. "It won't die," he said. "But it will follow water." Fladrif looked past the beast. A hollow ash tree stood at the far edge of the ground. Inside its split trunk a ring of pale light glowed, and behind the light lay wet green forest, far off. Water ran toward it in a thin seam under the stone. He pressed his palm flat and felt the pull of it, deep and cold. "There," Fladrif said. "The old tree. Water runs under it and through. If we send the flow past the glowing door, the beast follows and leaves the ground." "It sits on the roots we want," Elmwood said. "Wake them wrong and it crushes them." "Then we wake them soft," Fladrif said. They joined hands, root to root. Fladrif found the pulse below and leaned. He did not shove the roots up. He drew them sideways, toward the ash tree and its light. Bregalad and Elmwood leaned with him. The water turned. It slid under the beast and ran for the glowing trunk. The stone-beast stirred. Its head rose. It smelled the moving water and heaved up out of the soil. Stone ground on stone. It lumbered after the seam, toward the ash tree, and left the ground bare and open. Fladrif dropped to the wet soil. The freed roots rose gentle now, green tips breaking the surface. The last dead ground of Ironholt woke and grew. But the beast reached the ash tree and stopped. It drank at the glowing door, and would not pass through. It settled there, blocking the light, its flank pressed to the last way out.