Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 559 of 619

The hunt for the unknown maker stalled two days later. Aldric had named the marks. Chalam had read the green flask. Both roads led back to the same wall: the maker moved faster than they could. Ajax needed a place to train his own wizards, sworn to his house, before he could match a line of men three centuries deep. He called Chalam to the library at dusk. Chalam came with the island cache open on his belt, robe hanging loose at the chest, staff in hand. He set the satchel down and pulled out a thin book from the store they'd hauled home. "I found a working," he said. "A mirror made into a door. Step through one glass, come out another." He did not smile. "The old maker used it. That is how he reached each site before me." Ajax sat forward. "Then I take it from him." "You can," Chalam said. "I can cut a mirror at the new cliffs. Bind it to a mirror here. A hidden place, warded, seen by no one but us. You train your men there. No ship, no road, no rival counting sails." Aldric looked up from his ledger, candle at his elbow, grey bright in his hair. He had waited a year to be needed for exactly this kind of problem. "A portal you cannot hide is a portal an enemy uses too," he said. "Ward both ends. Blood-lock them to Ajax and Chalam alone." "That is the cost," Chalam said. "The spell drains me two days." Ajax weighed it. Two days of a weak wizard against a training ground no rival could find. "Do it," he said. "Aldric, ride the second ship. Watch the cliff. Chalam, cut the glass." They sailed at first light. At the new cliffs Chalam set a tall mirror against the stone in the storage room. He drew chalk lines, laid lodestone dust, opened the first vial. The glass darkened, then cleared to show the library wall at Black Oak. Aldric reached toward it. "Not yet," Chalam said. He pressed his palm to the frame and spoke six words. The dust burned dark. "Blood-locked. Ajax and me only." Ajax stepped through. Cold, a pull at the chest, then the library floor under his boots. He turned. The cliff mirror stood in the frame across the room. He crossed back, then forward again, testing it twice. "It holds," Chalam said. He sat down hard on the stone, drained, staff across his knees. "Two days I am no use to you." Aldric marked it in the ledger. "A hidden yard. No lord knows it. No rival can reach it." Ajax looked through the glass at the empty cliff. A place to make wizards of his own, sworn to his house. Now he needed men with the gift to fill it.