Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 563 of 619

The mirror had dimmed and cleared, and now Corin stood in the cliff passage, blinking at the torchlight. The blood-lock held. The boy could come and go through the glass. But swearing him in and training him were two different things, and Ajax meant to settle both today. He led the boy to the training floor, the hearth cold at its center. Chalam followed, staff in hand, his open robe catching the torch glow. The wizard set his satchel down and drew the enchanted silver chain Ajax had brought—the same kind that bound every keeper to his father's gold. "Kneel," Ajax said. Corin knelt. His hands shook, but he held still. "You swear to this house. You swear silence. You never speak of these cliffs, this passage, or what sleeps in stone beneath other floors." Ajax lifted the chain. "Break faith and you never leave here. You understand what that means?" "Yes." The boy's voice did not crack this time. Ajax laid the chain over his neck. Chalam touched it with lodestone dust and spoke three low words. The silver caught, bound now to Ajax's own chain across the sea. Ajax felt nothing from it. That was right. It only woke if a man turned. "Now we see what you are," Ajax said. He nodded to Chalam. Chalam walked the boy to the far wall, where the sealed pit lay beneath the floor. "The binding under Black Oak is dead. This one too. But faint marks remain in the stone. Old ones. Enough to test him." He planted his staff between them. "Feel for it. Slow. When it presses, you hold. You do not fight it." Corin closed his eyes. His breath came short. Then his face went pale, and he swayed. "Steady," Chalam said, flat. He tilted the staff. The wood hummed, and the boy's color returned. "That is the staff, not you. Feel it again. This time keep your feet." Ajax watched. He remembered Chalam's own warning—the gift could burn a man out. He had seen the wizard lose two weeks to a binding too old. A boy this raw could drop and never wake. But Corin did not drop. He gripped the floor with his knees and breathed through it. Sweat ran down his jaw. The staff hummed less each pass. "Better," Chalam said. He lowered the staff a hand's width. The boy held. Ajax stepped closer. "How is he?" "Green. Weak. But he learns fast." Chalam met Ajax's eye. "Give me a season. He will stand near a live binding without my staff. Two, and he can read one." Ajax looked at the boy on the floor—sworn now, chained, and holding. His first wizard. Not the man he had pictured. But a start. "Then teach him," Ajax said. "I want a maker of my own line, sworn to me and no lord. Begin today." Corin opened his eyes and nodded. He did not fall.