Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 556 of 619

Rowan knelt at the base of the stone table and ran his fingers over the floor. He worked slow, reading the joints the way he read bark. Then he stopped. "Here." A thin seam ran under the table, sealed with old mortar. "The stone's cut clean. It lifts." Chalam set his staff to the seam and held it there. His jaw tightened. "The binding's under this slab. Older than the six I read for you. Thin now. The maker's blood held it three hundred years. His blood's gone." He looked up. "It's waking on its own." Ajax gripped his father's blade. He had opened six of these before, each with blood and salt and flowers. He had none of that now. Only the blade and four men. "How long before it breaks free?" "A day. Maybe less." Chalam did not soften it. "If we leave, it comes up alone. On an island we can't cross without a pilot." That settled it. Ajax would not sail away and let the thing wake at his back. "We open it now. Kael, Torren, get the slab up. Rowan, bow ready. Chalam, watch the seam and tell me where it rises." Kael and Torren set their torches in cracks and worked their fingers under the stone. They heaved. The slab groaned, shifted, then slid aside. Cold air poured up from the dark below. Something stirred in it, a wet dragging sound, then a limb, pale and long, hooked over the pit's edge. "Six arms," Rowan said, flat. He drew and loosed. His arrow took the thing in the shoulder. It shrieked and heaved up faster. The creature rose. Six limbs, a mouth wide as a shield, eyes blind and white. It swung at Kael. Kael dropped low, knife out, and drove it into the nearest arm. Torren grabbed a fallen torch and jammed the flame into its face. The thing reared back from the fire. "Now, Ajax," Chalam said. "The mouth." Ajax stepped inside its reach. A limb raked his shoulder and tore leather. He set his feet and drove his father's blade up through the open mouth to the hilt. The creature shuddered. Its limbs curled in. It slid back into the pit and lay still. Rowan looked over the edge. "Dead." Chalam knelt and pressed lodestone dust into the seam. He spoke three low words and sealed the slab back down. "It won't rise again. The binding's closed for good." Ajax stood over the sealed floor, breathing hard, blood running down his arm. He picked up the spiral token from the stone table and turned it in his hand. Seven now. His father had marked six. This was one more, hidden across the water where no list named it. "The island's ours," Ajax said. "But my father left more doors than his list showed. Someone else knew this one." He closed his fist on the token. "We find out who."