Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 188 of 619

First light came gray and cold. Ajax led the four men down the slope in a loose line. Grayson walked on his left, blade drawn. Chalam carried the salt and flowers cupped against his robe. Marco held ten paces back. Asher climbed to the ridge point with his bow and set his stance. The stone seat sat waiting. Ajax could hear it now without Marco's help. A low scratch, like something dragging a nail across the underside of a lid. "Set," Ajax said. Chalam knelt at the seam and struck a spark to the dried flowers. Smoke lifted pale over the stone. Ajax poured the salt in a clean line across the seam. The scratching stopped. Then the stone split. A gray limb came up first, thin and fast, groping for the grass. Ajax stepped in and drove his father's blade down through the wrist. The limb went slack. A second arm shot up. Grayson took it off at the elbow with one clean cut. "Head," Marco said. "Coming." The skull rose through the seam, pale and eyeless where it should have had eyes, mouth wide. Ajax planted his boot on the stone and drove the blade down through the socket. The thing shuddered once and stopped moving. Chalam threw the last of the flowers on the seam and closed the salt line behind them. Silence. The scratching was gone. "Dead," Chalam said. He touched the stone with two fingers. "Sealed." Ajax pulled the blade free and wiped it on the grass. Six seats. All closed. The debt to the grove was paid. Grayson was already scanning the tree line. "Nothing moving." "Sweep the hollow anyway," Ajax said. Asher came down off the ridge with the bow slung. He pointed past the spring to a low mound of turf against the far slope. "That wasn't there from the trees. Cut sod." Ajax walked to it. A hatch, set flush, covered with grass to hide it from above. He pried it up. Stone steps went down into a small dry cell the keeper had used for storage. He went down with Chalam behind him. A leather sack of coin. Two loose gold bars. A short knife with a bone handle. And on a shelf against the back wall, two items Chalam stopped in front of. "Working on both," Chalam said. He passed his staff over the first, a plain iron cuff. "This shackles a man's magic. Slip it on him, his power sleeps." He moved to the second, a small clay flask stoppered with wax. "Draught. One swallow. Heals any wound short of death. One use." Ajax lifted them off the shelf. He weighed the cuff in his hand. He thought of the Keeper. "Bring the coin," he said. "Bring both of these. We ride south at noon." He climbed out into the light with the cuff in his fist.