Roran Vottier's Arc

Chapter 1 of 10

Roran Vottier found the fifth dead patch at dawn, and it was closer to his cabin than the last. The blight had eaten a circle of moss overnight. The ground beneath it was gray and dry, like ash pressed flat. He knelt and touched the edge. It crumbled under his thumb. Behind him, on the far side of the woods, he had cleared this same rot two days ago. Now it spread here, where his back had been turned. He was one man with two eyes, and the woods had a hundred edges. He had lived alone in this hollow for years. The trees were his. He knew every root and stream. But the shadow blight did not fight him openly. It waited for him to walk away, then it crept in behind. He could burn one patch and lose three others while he worked. He needed eyes that never closed. He needed a watcher for the edges he could not reach. That night he did not sleep. He sat against the trunk of the great tree at the center of the hollow, the one with leaves of gold and silver that caught the moonlight. Its glow lit the clearing better than any fire. He watched the dark treeline and waited for the rot to move. Something moved first. A wolf stepped from the shadows into the silver light. Its fur was black, its eyes bright silver, like two coins. It did not growl. It stood and watched him the way he watched the woods. Roran stayed still. The wolf's nose worked the air. Then it turned toward the eastern edge, where he had not yet checked, and stared. Roran rose and followed its gaze. A new gray patch had begun to spread there, small as his hand. The wolf had found it before him. He crushed it under his boot heel and ground it out. When he looked back, the wolf had not run. It sat and waited, ears forward. He understood then. The animal hunted the same thing he did. It smelled the rot before his eyes could find it. He tore a strip of dried meat from his belt pouch and set it on the ground between them. He stepped back. The wolf came forward, took the meat, and did not leave. For three nights Roran fed it and walked the edges with it. The wolf learned to circle the hollow while he slept. It woke him with a single low bark whenever the gray crept in. Its nose reached the far edges his eyes never could. On the fourth morning, he found no new dead patches at all. Roran was no longer one man watching a hundred edges. He had a second set of eyes now, and a nose keener than his own. But the wolf led him farther out each night, past ground he had never cleared, toward a place where the rot ran deeper. It wanted him to follow it there.