Rolin
The corrupted ones always move wrong.
It is not something most people would notice — a drag in the hindquarters, a head held too still before a charge, the black-eyed flatness where there should be animal fear.
I have been reading these signs for sixty years and they read the same way every time: something in the forest is breaking down, and the creatures nearest the fracture wear it first.
I track three of them through the deep woods before dawn and find what I expected.
The imbalance near the orchard is not localized anymore.
It has spread along the root network, threading through the sacred ground in lines I can feel through my boots — the bond-light dim and wrong, the barrier between the deity's territory and the settlement thinner than it should be in three separate places.
Months ago this was a manageable problem.
It is no longer manageable in the same way.
The traders are taking too much and taking it too fast. I found another trap site yesterday, close to the shrine territory. Whatever profit they're pulling from these woods they are burning through something that takes generations to replace, and they don't know enough to know that.
I am thinking about how to address it when I come to the forest edge and see Sybil Esquine on her knees in the dirt trying to reset a fence post with a tool that is wrong for the job.
I have been watching her for three days. This is the first time I've allowed myself to get close enough to see her face clearly.
She is angrier than I expected. Not a general anger — a specific, focused anger aimed at the fence post personally, as though the post is the problem and not the rotted socket it sits in, and if she simply forces the issue hard enough the post will reconsider.
She tries it twice, loses her grip, and says something under her breath that I don't need to be close enough to hear.
Her recklessness irritates me. This section of orchard borders the forest directly and she is working alone at dusk with no awareness of what has been moving through the trees behind her all afternoon.
I stay at the tree border and watch. I tell myself I am assessing the state of the barrier at the orchard's edge. This is true and also not the entire truth.
The shadowcat comes from the east, which is the one direction she is not watching.
I have tracked this one for a week — a large female, corrupted three months ago, moving further from the deep territory each night.
She is the one I have been most concerned about.
Fast, silent, and the black-eye corruption gives them a purposefulness that normal predators don't have, a directional wrongness, as if the animal knows it is being used by something that doesn't care whether it survives the use.
Sybil hears nothing until the shadowcat is already moving.
I am through the tree line before the thought completes.
The old tongue comes without effort — Thal'vek, stop, yield, and the word has weight behind it that my voice alone doesn't carry, the bond channeling the deity's authority into a single syllable.
The shadowcat hits the word like a wall.
Her haunches drop. A sound comes out of her that is not a growl and not a cry, the specific confused sound a corrupted animal makes when the wrong frequency driving it gets interrupted.
She shakes her head once. Then she sits, and looks at me with eyes that are more amber than black, the animal underneath the corruption blinking back into focus.
I keep the bond-light steady and wait.
Sybil has not moved. I register this without looking at her — complete stillness, the smart response, and she held it without being told, which means she has better instincts than most people who grew up near these woods.
The shadowcat drops onto her side. I release the command slowly, letting the beast settle into a supervised rest rather than a sharp dismissal. She'll be disoriented for an hour. Long enough.
I turn.
Sybil is on her feet. The tool is still in her hand and she looks at me with an expression that is not gratitude.
It is the expression of one who has just been frightened badly and has decided to be angry about it instead, which I recognize as a coping mechanism even as it makes me want to take three steps back.
"What is that," she says. Not a question.
"A shadowcat. She's been ranging closer to the settlement for—"
"I mean what you just did to it."
"Old tongue. The deity's language. It gives commands the bond can enforce." I look at her steadily. "You're welcome."
"I didn't thank you."
"I know."
She stares at me. "Everyone in town says you're controlling them. The animals. That you send them."
"I know what they say."
"Is it true?"
"The corrupted ones are drawn to the instability in the forest. I manage the damage.
There's a difference." I look past her at the fence line, at the orchard in the failing light.
"The orchard sits on land tied to old magic.
The imbalance has been worsening for months.
You need to stay away from the deeper woods. "
"I need to fix my fence."
"Fix it during daylight. Not at dusk alone." My eyes on her. "The shadowcat is not the worst thing currently ranging this boundary."
Something shifts in her expression — the anger recalibrating around the information, which is the sign of someone who is actually listening underneath the confrontation. She looks at the shadowcat lying motionless in the grass. Then back at me.
"Who are you?" she says.
"Rolin." I hold her gaze. "I live in the forest."
"I know who you are. That's not what I asked."
I don't have a clean answer for that — not one that fits in a sentence — so I say nothing, which is what I do when a clean answer isn't available. She watches me not answering with the specific patience of someone filing the non-answer away for later.
"The deeper woods," she says finally. "How far?"
"Past the second oak row. Anything beyond that, don't go alone." I pause. "Don't go at all, until the balance improves."
She absorbs this. "Will it? Improve?"
I stare at the bond-light dimming in the forest behind me — the wrong color, the wrong frequency, the symptom of a problem that has been building since before she left this town. "That depends on choices being made by people who don't understand the consequences."
I don't mean her. She may understand that or she may not. I leave her to determine it and turn back toward the trees.
I don't look back at the orchard.
But I linger at the outskirts of the deep wood for longer than necessary, longer than I've stood still anywhere in recent memory, listening until I hear the farmhouse door close behind her.
Then, and only then, I go back to work.