Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 584 of 619

The maker was bound now, his chain linked to Ajax's gold. But the seer had shown Ajax more than one gate. She scried farther than any wizard, and her sight held other doors—old seals, failing, waiting to break. Ajax gathered his crew in the cave before the maker had finished packing his tools. "We don't just watch this gate," Ajax said. "We find the next seal and strengthen it before it fails. My father closed doors his whole life. Now the maker cuts keys for us. We use both." Chalam set his staff on the stone. He drew a line of lodestone dust and read it in silence. "There's a seal two days south," he said. "Old. Weaker than this one. It's bleeding." He did not soften it. "If we leave it, something wakes." Rowan crouched at the cave mouth. He sniffed the wind coming off the coast road. "Same rot smell I found in the quiet groves," he said. "South. It's spreading from that seal." Ajax turned to the maker. "You cut the disc to lock it. Kael watches your hands. Torren logs the work." Kael checked his knife and stood. "Ready." Torren nodded once. "Every cut logged. Same as the treasury floor." They rode south for two days. Rowan led, reading tracks and bent grass. The rot smell grew thicker near a low ridge. Chalam stopped his horse. "Here," he said. "Under the stone." The seal lay beneath a cracked slab. Chalam knelt and pressed lodestone to the seam. His hands shook. "The binding's near gone," he said. "Three rings left. Maybe two." Elara dismounted and knelt beside him. She had ridden quiet the whole way, her band dim. Now she laid her palm flat on the slab. "It's warm," she said. "Something inside is stirring. We have hours, not days." Ajax looked at her. She had not cast since the last hunt drained her. "Can you hold light if it breaks through?" "Once," she said. "No more than once. Make it count." The maker knelt with his tools. He cut a fresh iron disc while Kael stood at his shoulder and Torren watched every stroke. Rowan circled the ridge, bow strung, smelling for anything that moved underground. Chalam took the finished disc. He set it in the seam and spoke the binding words. Ajax cut his own palm and pressed blood to the iron. The slab shuddered. For a breath the rot smell surged, and Elara raised her hand, light gathering at her fingers. Then the stone stilled. The seam sealed. The rot smell faded and thinned to nothing. Chalam sat back, gray-faced. "It holds," he said. "Three centuries more. Maybe longer." Rowan came off the ridge. "Ground's quiet. Whatever was under there sleeps again." Ajax stood and looked at his crew. One seal strengthened. The maker's craft answered to Black Oak now, and it had closed a door instead of opening one. "Chalam," he said. "Where's the next."