Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 582 of 619

The traveler came on the second morning of the watch. Kael held the cave mouth. Rowan lay flat in the rocks above the beach, bow ready. Ajax waited inside with Chalam and Elara. The young man walked up from the shore alone, a satchel on his hip and a staff of pale wood in his hand. He did not know he had walked into a trap. Rowan slid down from the rocks without a sound and cut off the beach behind him. "One man," Rowan said, low. "No others. His hands smell of chalk and iron." The maker turned at the voice, saw Rowan's bow, saw Kael step from the cave with a knife already in his hand. He stopped. He did not run. He looked at the cave and the men blocking it and set his jaw. "You reached the gate first," the maker said. His voice shook, but he held it. "Then you know what it holds." Ajax stepped out into the light. "I know a man cut a key and a gate and meant to open both himself. Tell me why." Chalam came behind him, staff level, watching the pale wood in the maker's grip. "To close it," the maker said. "Not open. The seal is old. It fails on its own. I make the key to work the lock, then reset the binding stronger. Your father did this. So did his father." He looked at Ajax's gold chain. "You wear his chain. You are the line too." Chalam's staff shivered. "He speaks true," the wizard said. "His mark and my line share a root. He is no enemy. He is another hand doing the same work." Ajax weighed it. The maker had come alone, with tools to seal, not soldiers to break. Kael kept the knife up. Rowan kept the bow drawn. "Lower them," Ajax said. They did. Elara stepped forward and touched the maker's arm where the satchel had bruised it. "He's spent," she said. "He's been cutting these locks for a season. His hands are past shaking into steady." She looked at Ajax. "He works like I did. Too hard, too long. It costs him." Ajax faced the maker. "Then we don't fight over this gate. We hold it together and reset the seal. After, you come south. There are more doors than either of us can reach alone. I have wizards, a wall, a house. You have the hand that cuts the key." The maker looked at the seven of them, at the chain, at the open cave. He nodded once. "I need three days at the stone. And your wizard's lodestone." "He has it," Ajax said. The hunt was over. Ajax had come to take an enemy and found kin instead. The line his father served ran wider than one man, and now it answered to Black Oak.