Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 55 of 619

Ajax woke before the others and walked to the ridge edge. The valley below was still gray. He could see a bare patch of stone near the creek that matched the shape on his map. He heard steps behind him and turned. Chalam stood there with his staff. "Call her," Ajax said. "Before the camp wakes." Chalam pulled the flute from his satchel and blew a low note. It carried down the slope and back. He blew a second. They waited. She came out of the pines without sound. Bark skin, a dress of broad green leaves, a bundle of flowers in one hand. Ajax had met her before at the coast, and again at the creek where she gave him the poison. She looked at him now like she had expected him to come this far. "You are early," she said. "We camp above it," Ajax said. "I want to know what is down there before I take my men down." She stepped closer and set the flowers on a flat stone. "The seat below is older than the one at your coast. The stone drinks water from the creek. If you cut it dry, the seat wakes on its own within a day." "Then we do not cut the creek." "No." She looked at Chalam. "There is a keeper. A woman who lives at the far end of the valley in a hut of stacked stone. She feeds the seat with milk each dawn to hold it quiet. She does not know what she feeds. She has done it since her mother did." Grayson had come up behind them. He listened without speaking. "How many men guard her," Ajax said. "None. She is only a woman with a bowl. But if you kill her the seat wakes by the next dawn. If you take her from the valley the seat wakes by the third." "Then she keeps feeding it," Grayson said, "until we are ready." The dryad nodded. "I will speak with her. She will listen to me. She will keep the bowl full for as long as you need." She lifted the flowers. "Burn these at the seam when you open it. The same as before. And bring your father's blade." Ajax took the bundle. "Why help us again." "Whoever holds these seats has been cutting our groves for a hundred years. You are closing them. That is enough." Elara had come up now with Chalam's satchel. She looked at the dryad and gave a short nod. The dryad returned it. "Go down at noon," the dryad said. "I will have her waiting inside." She stepped back into the pines and was gone. Ajax held the flowers against his chest, above the chain. He had wanted the ground before he took it. He had it now. A keeper. A weakness. A window of three days if it went wrong. "Break camp," he said. "We ride down at noon."