Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 205 of 619

By midmorning the hall was done. Bran set the last roof board while Cody nailed the shutter. Ajax walked the room. Twelve seats at the long table. A hearth cut into the north wall. A carved leaf marked the lintel where the dryad had sealed the pact. Ajax laid his palm on the wood and felt the grain under it. One building closed. Four to go. He pulled Bran aside at the door. "Bunkhouse next. Start today. Cody and the port men sleep out of the wind before frost." Bran wiped his hands on his shirt. "Same stone as the hall?" "Same. Eight bunks. One hearth. Roof before rain." Bran nodded and went to fetch Cody. Ajax heard them counting stones before he cleared the yard. Elara knelt at the west wall with Rowan's seed pouch open in her lap. She had a line of turned earth already, six paces long, marked with sticks. She looked up when Ajax's shadow crossed her. "Marrowroot at the end," she said. "Feverleaf here. Snowtail sprig against the wall where it catches sun. I planted the roots the dryad sent this morning." "Food strip?" "South of the well house. Oats and turnip. Bran cut me a frame. It'll take." She stood and brushed her knees. "I need one more thing from you." "Name it." "I want to call the emissary tonight. About the rot." Ajax looked at her wrist. The gold band was full. "It fills a little each night. Enough to call. Enough to cast. She may come if I ask." "Ask what?" "What the rot is. Whether Chalam's book will hold the cure. Whether it spreads by root or by air." She met his eyes. "If we treat it wrong we kill the grove ourselves." Ajax weighed it against Tucker on the port road. "Do it at moonrise. I'll stand with you." She waited on the shelf where the cliff dropped to the sea. Ajax stood two paces behind her. Elara lifted the band to the moon and spoke a word he did not catch. The air went cold. A figure formed on the stone in a gown that held starlight in its weave. Blonde hair to her waist. Stones at her wrist that shone like the band. "Hello, Elara," the emissary said. "The grove north of us is rotting in rings," Elara said. "We think it is old. Three hundred years back, west of here." The emissary tilted her head. "I know the sickness. It moves through the roots, not the wind. Salt the ring at its edge before you burn the heart.“ "Is there a cure in a book?" "There was. The drawings are honest. Trust the man who kept it." She looked at Ajax. "Your fire-man rides now. He will not reach you by dusk. "Salt the ring," Ajax said. "Burn the heart. And we ride to the split pine at first light." "Yes." He turned to the hall lit yellow from the doorway. The bunkhouse frame was already stacked in the yard. The garden held its first green.