Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 561 of 619

The portal was set, the yard behind the glass ready. But an empty yard trained no one. Ajax needed the cliffs themselves fit for work. He walked the top of the island at dawn with Chalam a step behind, staff tapping the stone. The passage from the sealed gate ran deep, but it was bare rock. No rooms. No beds. No place to store a wizard's chalk or lodestone. A boy brought here to learn would sleep on cold stone and eat nothing. "We cut chambers into the passage," Ajax said. "Rooms for sleeping. A store for your supplies. An open floor wide enough to work a binding without cracking a wall." Chalam pressed his palm to the passage wall. He was quiet a long moment. When he spoke, his words came short and flat. "The rock holds. But I cut it, or Bran cuts it. Bran cannot pass the reef or the ward. Only you and I stand here." Ajax had thought past that on the climb. "Then you cut it. Same as the vault. Same as the harbor.” "How much can you cut in a day?" Chalam measured the wall with his eyes. "One room. Clean. Then I rest." Ajax counted it out. Four rooms. A store. An open chamber. Six days of cutting, and rest between. He did not have Bran, and he did not have masons who could reach the island. He had one tired wizard and a blade. It would have to serve. "We start today," Ajax said. "You cut the store first. Your supplies go in before anything." Chalam set his staff against the first seam. The Verath-bone core held steady in his grip, no crack, no split. He drew a line of powdered lodestone along the wall and spoke low. The rock groaned. A slab peeled back and fell, and dust rose gray in the torchlight. Behind it stood a dry chamber, square and true. Ajax hauled the broken stone clear while Chalam sat against the passage wall, sweat on his bare chest, staff loose across his knees. "One," the wizard said. "Five more." Over six days it went the same. Chalam cut, then rested. Ajax cleared the rubble and hauled water up the invisible stairs. By the sixth night the passage held five chambers and one wide floor with a hearth cut into the rock. Chalam sat hollow-eyed but whole, his staff unbroken. Ajax walked the finished rooms with a torch. Beds could be brought now. Chalk and lodestone would fill the store. A boy with the gift could sleep here, eat here, and learn to break a ward. "It holds," Chalam said from the doorway. "Then bring me the first one," Ajax said. The cliffs were ready. Now he needed a wizard to fill them.