Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 578 of 619

Corin brought the wrapped bag through the Crossing at dawn. Ajax met him and the tall wizard at the Crossing gate, and the pull of the thing hit him before Corin unwrapped it. Even at arm's length, it hummed against Ajax's gold chain. He knew that feel. It was the same hum the marked stones gave off under the cliff. "You did right," Ajax told Corin. The young wizard stood taller now, the strength draught still new on his frame. "It came through your post. You caught it. Now leave it with me." Corin's face was gray from holding the sense so long. "I can't ride near it another day. It pushes at my eyes." "You won't have to." Ajax set a hand on the wizard's shoulder. "Hold the gate. That's your work. The stone is mine." He left the tall wizard and Corin at the Crossing and rode for the cliffs alone, the bag lashed away from his skin. The hum rode with him the whole way. By the time he reached the hidden steps and climbed the invisible stairs, his teeth ached from it. Chalam was waiting at the training floor. He took one look at the wrapped bag and his face went still. He set down his new bone staff and opened his satchel. "Show me," Chalam said. Ajax unwrapped it on the stone table. A flat disc of old iron, cut with a spiral, older than the tokens his father had left. Chalam passed his staff over it without touching. The staff shivered in his hand. "A key," Chalam said. He did not soften it. "Made to open a sealed binding. Not close it. Open." He pulled back his hand. "Older than the ones we've broken. Older than your father's line." "The merchant said a woman sold it. Said the north was done with such things." Ajax watched the wizard's face. "Who makes a key like this?" "The maker who reaches every site before me." Chalam's voice went clipped. "The one with the mirror. He didn't just seal doors. He cut keys to open them again." He looked up. "Someone is selling them off. Which means someone knows they're worth selling." Ajax pressed his palm flat on the table, away from the disc. The hum crawled up his arm. "Then we hold it. It doesn't leave this cliff." "Agreed." Chalam ground pressed chalk and lodestone into a paste. He packed the disc in it and sealed it in a stone niche. The hum dropped to nothing. Ajax drew his first clean breath in a day. "It came to our gate by chance," Ajax said. "A merchant bought it to calm his horses." "Chance twice," Chalam said. "The token cut by a stranger's hand. Now a key sold off in the west." He shut the niche. "He's still out there. And now we hold something he wants back."