Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 558 of 619

The Seraphine reached Black Oak's hidden dock at dawn. Ajax carried the seventh spiral token up through the canal while Chalam followed with the heavy satchel of vials and dust. The creature was dead and the island claimed, but two questions rode home with them. Who had warded that cliff three hundred years back? And what did the seventh token mean, when his father's list held only six? Ajax called Aldric to the library. The scholar came with a candle and his ledgers, grey creeping through his hair, gold thread bright on his green tunic. He had waited a year in this stone room to be needed for exactly this. Ajax set the token on the table. "Read it," he said. "Tell me what my father hid." Aldric turned the token under the candle. He said nothing for a long moment, then set it down. "The mark matches the six. Same hand cut it." He tapped the spiral. "But your father's list stopped at six. This is a seventh he did not write down. Someone else knew of this island before he sealed it." Chalam unwrapped a vial from the island cache and stood it beside his own. "The ward on that cliff was old," he said. "Older than the wizard who cut your father's seats. Three layers. The third bound to its maker's blood. I have broken his work at three sites now." He met Ajax's eyes. "I have never seen his face. He reaches every door before me." Aldric pulled a scroll from his shelf and unrolled it flat. "Then we look at what we hold, not what we chase." He set the token on the parchment and traced a line north. "A cliff ward that bends light. A store of forty vials. A god sealed under a table. This is not one man's work. This is a house. A line of wizards, keeping doors across three centuries." Ajax leaned over the map. "My father was one of them." "Or he fought them," Aldric said. "His seats held creatures. This island's ward hid one too. But the hand that cut the cliff is not his hand." He looked up. "Two makers. Working the same coast. One left doors for you. One left traps." Chalam set the green flask apart on the stone, the binding mark dark on its wax. "The one who left traps still reaches sites before me," he said. "So either he lives, or someone carries his work forward." Ajax straightened. The answer was ugly, but it was an answer. Not one enemy. A whole line of them, older than his father, still moving on his coast. He turned the token once more and closed his fist on it. "Then we stop guessing," he said. "Aldric, name every mark that hand has cut. Chalam, read the flask. We find the maker before he finds the next door." He set the token in the vault. His brotherhood had a name now, and a face to hunt for.