Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 560 of 619

The portal held. Now Ajax needed men to fill the yard behind it. He had wizards to find, and no way to know who carried the gift. He called Chalam to the library at dusk. Two days had passed, and the wizard walked steady again, staff in hand, robe loose at the chest. "I can read a man for the gift," Chalam said. "But I have to touch each one with the staff. That takes time. And I cannot ride to every port." Ajax had already thought past that. "Marco and JD read men at the gate. Send word north. Every trader, every keeper, every drover who passes the Crossing gets tested by Marco. If one has the gift, we bring him here." Chalam nodded slow. "Marco reads lies. He can reads thoughts of magic use or ones who are new to it.” "Then he reads their thoughts and finds the ones who fear their own strange dreams. You know the signs." Ajax leaned on the table. Aldric came in with his ledger and set the candle down. Grey caught the light in his hair. He had waited all day to name the flaw, and he named it. "Two readers," he said. "Marco on the road. JD at the bar." Ajax straightened. “If they find one, you test them there.” he said. "Then Chalam takes them through the mirror and trains them." Aldric wrote it down. His pen stopped. "That names the place," he said. "Only Ajax and Chalam pass the glass. You cannot bring a stranger to a blood-locked yard." "Then Chalam blood-locks each one before he trains him," Ajax said. "Same as a keeper's chain. Sworn, marked, bound to my gold." Chalam thought on it, then set his hand flat on the table. "It works. Slow. But it works." Ajax looked through the glass at the empty cliff. He had a place, a means, and now a way to fill it. His father had stood in a line of makers three centuries deep. Ajax would build his own line, one strange boy at a time. Marco and JD begin looking for them.