Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 552 of 619

The gate stood shut at the top of the stair. Ajax pressed his palm to it and felt the same trick in his eyes as on the steps below. The stone bent the light. He could not tell where the seam ran. Someone had built here before him and hidden their work. He would not send men through a door he could not read. "Chalam," Ajax said. "Come up." The wizard climbed the last steps slow, one hand on the cliff, the bone staff bumping the rock. He reached the top and steadied himself. His blue robe hung open at the chest, wet with spray. He looked at the gate and frowned. "Another ward," Chalam said. He laid the staff flat against the stone. It hummed, then went quiet. He held it a long moment. "Same hand as the stair. One wizard cut both." "Whose hand?" Chalam did not answer at once. He drew a square of chalk from his satchel and marked the gate. A line flickered, then a mark under it, then faded. He struck it a second time and held the staff steady until the mark stayed. A symbol showed on the stone. Not a spiral. Not the Keeper's kind. A curl of lines Ajax had never seen. "I know this," Chalam said. His voice went flat. "I read it once at a site far south. A binding older than the god seals. The wizard who cut it reached that place before me. He reached three places before me." He set his hand on the mark. "This is his work. He built here." Ajax watched him. Chalam did not soften it. That was his way. When a thing sat unresolved, his words got shorter. "Is he dead?" Ajax asked. "I don't know. The ward is old but not decayed. He kept it fed, or someone did." Chalam pulled his hand back. "If he lives, he knows this island. If he's dead, someone tends his work." Ajax stood at the gate and weighed it. He had climbed men up a blind stair to claim empty ground. Now he knew the ground was not empty of history. A wizard's mark meant a wizard's traps, and men behind stone he could not see. He would not sink his brotherhood into a place that might not be his to take. "Can you open it?" "Yes. But not blind." Chalam tapped the staff on the mark. "Give me the day. I read the whole ward first. What it hides, what it guards, whether it kills the man who breaks it. Then we open it knowing." Ajax looked at the gate a last time. He had his answer. The mark named another builder, and that changed everything. He would not pour men through until he knew if the maker still breathed. "Do it," Ajax said. "Read it all. We hold here until you name whose house this is." Chalam knelt and set the staff to the stone. The reading began.