Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 565 of 619

The new wizard rode back to the coast with them, quiet in his saddle. Ajax had bound him with words at the tavern, but words were not a chain. Before the man ate at any table or slept under any roof, Ajax meant to know what he truly was. He sent for Chalam. They met in the yard behind the workhouse, out of sight of the fighters. Chalam came with his staff and his satchel, his blue robe hanging open at the chest. He looked the new wizard over the way a smith looks over iron for cracks. "Stand still," he said. No greeting. He held the staff close to the man's face and watched. The new wizard smiled and let his pull rise. Ajax felt the room warm toward him, the way it had in the tavern. Chalam did not smile back. "That's the charm," he said. "Bound into the skin. Old work. Someone made you a lure and let you walk around thinking it was luck." He said it plain, no scorn, no kindness. Just fact. "It's mine," the wizard said. "It's kept me fed for years." "It's kept you hunted," Chalam said. "A house wants you for it. It marks you like a brand." He set the staff's foot on the stone. "Under the charm there's real gift. I can feel it. You could read binding. You could hold a ward. But not while this pulls at every man who looks at you. It clouds you." Ajax watched the two wizards. "Can you take it off him?" "I can break it," Chalam said. "It'll hurt. He'll still have his face. He'll still be handsome. He just won't reach into men's heads and turn them." He looked at the new wizard. "Choose. The charm and the road, or the gift and my house." The man's smile faded. His pull faded with it. He looked at Ajax's cold chain, then at Chalam's staff, and set his hands flat on the workhouse wall. "Break it," he said. Chalam took chalk and lodestone from his satchel. He drew a line across the man's brow and spoke six words low. The staff hummed. The new wizard's knees buckled and he gasped, gripping the wall. For a breath the yard felt cold and plain, no warmth pulling toward him. Then it was done. Chalam stepped back and wiped the chalk on his robe. "It's gone," Chalam said. "He's clean. The gift's clear now. He can be taught." Ajax lifted a charmed silver chain from his belt, one Chalam had bound to his father's gold. He set it over the wizard's head. "Swear to me and the wall," Ajax said. "You answer to no lord." The wizard swore. The chain lay cold against his chest, tied now to Ajax's line. Another maker, worthy and bound. Ajax had come for a boy and gained a man he could shape.