Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 209 of 619

They rode out at first light. Rowan led on the creek path with the bow across his back and the salt sacks lashed behind his saddle. Chalam followed with the book strapped under his satchel flap. Marco rode beside Ajax. Elara held the rear with a second sack of salt and a flint pouch at her belt. The horses picked through wet leaves. The air smelled clean until it didn't. Half a day north, Rowan raised a hand and stopped. He swung down and knelt by the roots of an oak. Ajax dismounted beside him. "Here," Rowan said. He pushed his fingers into the soil and lifted them. Black grit clung to his skin. "This is the edge." Ajax looked past him. Four trees stood dead in a rough ring. Bark had split at the base. Sap ran dark and thin. "Where's the heart?" Ajax asked. Rowan stood and turned a slow circle. He walked twenty paces in and stopped at a squat oak with a hollow at its base. He put his palm to the trunk, then lowered it to the moss. "Here. Smell changes at the roots. It started in this one." Chalam opened the book against the saddle and turned two pages. "Salt the outer ring first. Unbroken. Then fire at the heart.“ "Elara with me on the ring," Ajax said. "Marco, walk the outside and call any gap. Rowan, get the heart tree ready to burn. Chalam, watch the book." He took a sack and started at Rowan's mark. He poured a finger-thick line of salt along the soil. Elara worked the other way from the same point. They met on the far side an hour later. Marco walked the circle twice. "Closed," Marco said. "No gap." Rowan had cleared moss and duff from the heart tree and packed dry kindling into the hollow. He struck flint. The kindling caught. Flame climbed the inner wood. The ground shifted. Not much. Enough that Ajax felt it in his boots. A low sound came up through the roots, like a throat clearing under stone. The salt line held. The dead trees inside the ring darkened further and began to smoke. "It's dying," Rowan said. He watched the salt, not the fire. "Line holds." They stood the ring until the heart tree burned through and fell inward on its own coals. The smoke turned white. The smell cleared. Chalam closed the book. "Done." Ajax scraped a boot across the salt line and broke it himself. Nothing answered. He looked at Rowan. "The rot has stopped," Ajax said. “Let’s go home.” Rowan nodded and they did so.