Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 415 of 619

At dawn Ajax led his riders out the gate and turned north. Chalam carried the new staff. Rowan rode point, reading the ground. Elara rode near the middle, her gold band charged full. They knew the beast that reached the grove had fled something worse. Now they meant to find it. The first day passed under gray sky. By dusk they reached the burned grove. Rowan slid off his horse and crouched in the ash. He touched a print in the soft ground and pressed two fingers into it. "Wide," he said. "Wider than the last. It came through here yesterday. It did not stop." He stood and looked north. "Whatever drove it, that came from up there too." Ajax dismounted beside him. "How far?" "Half a day. Maybe less." Rowan pointed to a line of dead trees. Their bark had split black, and a smell of rot hung over them out of season. "That spread. Fast. Trees don't die like this in one night." Elara came up behind them. She had walked with Ajax since the coast road, a healer who fought with light when she had to. She knelt by a split trunk and laid her palm on it. She drew her hand back quick. "It's dead all the way through," she said. "Something pulled the life out. Not fire. Not frost." She looked at Chalam. "Read it." Chalam set the butt of the staff against the black ground. He spoke three low words. The wood held steady in his grip and did not crack. Light gathered at its tip, then sank into the soil. "There's a binding up north," Chalam said. His voice went clipped. "Older than the root-eater. Older than any I've read. It's breaking. What's under it is coming loose." "How long?" Ajax asked. "Days. Not more." Chalam lifted the staff. "Whatever wakes will drive everything before it south. Beasts. Rot. All of it. Straight at Black Oak." Rowan looked at the dead line of trees. "The groves went quiet all along the north. This is why." Ajax stood in the ash and weighed it. He had built walls and a gate and a house of thirteen sworn men. He had bound tongues and filled a vault. None of it held if a broken god poured out of the north woods. He could ride home and wait behind stone. Or he could find the binding and end what stirred beneath it before it woke. "We don't wait for it," Ajax said. "We go to it." He looked at Chalam. "Can you take us to the binding?" "I can follow the staff." "Then we ride at first light." Ajax swung back onto his horse. The north threat was no longer coming to him. He had reached it, named it, and set his course toward its source.