Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 22 of 619

The hunter's boots hammered up the cliff path and were gone. Ajax stayed on his horse a moment longer, watching the stone at the tide line. Nothing more came from below. Whatever had answered the iron rod had gone quiet again. He swung down and walked to the wet block. He put a palm on it. Cold. Ordinary. But he had heard it ring, and he had felt the answer in his teeth. Grayson brought the others down the slope. Ajax took his chain back and slid it under the fur at his neck. He looked at Chalam, the wizard in the open blue robe, and at Elara beside him with her hand still bright at the knuckles from the bolt she had thrown. "Tell me what is under this stone," Ajax said. "Both of you. No trimming. My father set this seat. I want the shape of what he set it for." Chalam set the butt of his staff against the block. He was quiet a beat. "A binding seat. Old work. Made to hold something with six limbs, as the collars told us. Your father did not put the thing here. He locked the lid." He paused. "When the hunter struck, the thing under it heard its cue. It is waking. Slow. But waking." "Purpose," Ajax said. "To keep it asleep," Chalam said. "Not forever. Until someone came who could end it, or free it." Elara knelt and pressed two fingers to the stone. Her mouth tightened. "The concealment I laid is thinning already. He struck too close to it. Rain will finish it in a day, maybe two." "Then the mark shows again," Ajax said. "Yes." Ajax turned to Grayson. "Take Tucker. Sweep the tree line north to the ridge. He did not ride in alone. Men like him bring a second pair of eyes." Grayson nodded once and moved. Chalam went with them, staff low, reading the ground for any print the hunter's people had left. Ajax stayed by the stone and told Marco and Asher to check the south wall and the cliff path. They went. He watched them until the wall cut them from view. Behind the wall, Marco stopped Asher with a hand on his arm. Asher turned. Marco kissed him, quick, once, hand at his jaw. Neither spoke. Asher's mouth pressed back. Then Marco stepped away and walked on toward the cliff path like nothing had happened. Asher waited a breath, touched the chain at his throat, and followed. Ajax did not see it. He was looking at the stone under his feet and thinking of his father's hands setting it. When Grayson came back and reported the ridge empty, no second man, only one horse trail heading east, Ajax already knew what he had to do next. He had to open the seat himself before the hunter came back with help, and before the thing under it opened it from the other side.