Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 580 of 619

Chalam needed two days to think straight again. Ajax used them to ready the ride north. He climbed to the seer's chamber first. She sat by her hearth, the sealed disc's location fixed in her mind. "The gate holds," she said. "No one has touched it." Ajax nodded. He would not wait for the maker to reach it before him. When Chalam's eyes cleared, Ajax called him to the training floor. He set a silver chain on the stone table, its links marked with the lodestone charm bound to his gold. "You've stayed a season," Ajax told the seer, who had followed. "Sworn to nothing. Free to leave. That still holds. But I ride to a door only you can find. I need you bound to my house while we hunt it." The seer looked at the chain a long moment. "You promised me the choice to go." "You keep it," Ajax said. "The chain binds silence, not your feet. Break the oath and I know it. Stay loyal and it stays quiet." He held it out. "Choose." She took the chain and set it around her own neck. Chalam spoke the words that bound the charm to Ajax's gold. The metal warmed once against Ajax's chest, then went still. The oath held. Ajax gathered the ride in the yard below. Rowan came first, bow across his back, dark blonde hair loose to his shoulders. "North past the burned quarter," Ajax said. "A cave, a stone gate. Someone means to open it or already sold the key that would." Rowan said nothing but checked his string. Kael arrived with a knife already in his hand, testing its edge against his thumb. "How many watch the gate now?" "None," Ajax said. "That's why we go." "Then we're the first," Kael said, and sheathed the knife. Elara came last, her gold band bright on her wrist. "You'll want light if something's sealed there," she said. "I can hold it. Not forever." She did not soften it. "I can do twice the casting than I used to with two bracelets to hold power.“ Chalam packed his satchel, the bone staff steady in his grip. "The maker cut the key inside the year," he said. "He may reach the gate while we sail. We won't know until we're there." "Then we move fast," Ajax said. Marcus waited at the dock with the Seraphine. He read the crew boarding and the sealed disc in Ajax's coat without a word about either. "Eight days north," he said. "More if the water turns." "Get us there before it does," Ajax said. Marcus loosed the lines. The seer stood at the rail, her new chain under her shirt, her eyes fixed on the northern water where the gate still waited. Ajax stood beside her. The team was sworn, the ship was loaded, and the door had a place at last.