Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 449 of 619

The Council hall stood sealed and warded, but its walls were bare gray stone. Ajax ran his hand across the rough face and knew it looked like a cellar, not a seat of power. Men remembered rooms. He wanted his brothers to walk in and feel the weight of what they had built. He called for Tarron, his Chief of Flock and Loom, the shepherd who wove the wool that clothed every man on the wall. Tarron came with a bolt of gray cloth under his arm. He set it on the round table and looked at the empty walls. He was tall and thin, his hair gray, his hands quick even at rest. He did not waste words. "You want cloth on these walls," he said. It was not a question. "Tapestries," Ajax said. "The story of Black Oak. The gate. The beasts we killed. The ship north. I want the men to see it when they sit." Tarron studied the stone a long moment. "I can weave the scenes. Wool takes color well." He touched the wall. "But I dye by eye. The greens will fade wrong. I need better thread." Ajax sent for the dryad. She came at dusk with a bouncing air, bark-brown skin and a dress of broad leaves, a bundle of flowers in one hand. The Leafgift Dryad had paid many debts to Black Oak with her gifts. She looked at the bare walls and smiled. "Thread that holds its color three lifetimes," she said. She set down the flowers and pulled green fiber from her sleeve, soft and bright. "For the trees and the grove. And root dye for the rest." She pressed the fiber into Tarron's hands. Then she walked the walls slowly, running her fingers along the seams. Small green shoots followed her touch, curling into the stone at the corners. Tarron worked six days at his loom. Ajax visited the shed each night and watched the panels grow. Wool showed the gate rising, the walls closing cliff to cliff. Bone-white thread marked the beasts they had killed. The dryad's green fiber lit the grove and the trees along the west wall. The last panel showed a ship under sail, dark against pale cloth. On the seventh day Tarron hung them all. Six panels ringed the round hall, floor to beam. The dryad's carved shoots framed each one in living leaf. Ajax stood in the doorway and looked at his story on the walls. "It is done," Tarron said. He gathered his tools and left without another word. Ajax sat in his carved chair beneath the ship panel. The hall no longer looked like a cellar. It looked like a house that would outlast him. But a story on the wall was a claim, and claims drew eyes. He would have to guard this room as fiercely as the vault.