Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 587 of 619

The seal north and east held now. Ajax stood beside Elara at the mended seam, the corruption sealed, and he saw the flaw plain. Elara had beaten them there by two days. His crew arrived tired and late. The moon carried her. Horses carried the rest. "Another door will fail before we reach the next," Ajax said. "You hold it alone. If it breaks while you wait, you break with it." Elara flexed her hand. Light answered, still strong. "I can hold most leaks. But some spread faster than one pair of hands." She met his eyes. "You saw this one. It nearly went through before you came." Rowan knelt at the churned soil past the seam. He read the ground the way other men read a page. "The rot ran three feet past her line before she stopped it," he said, flat. "A day slower and it takes the whole hollow." Kael stood at the ridge with his hand near his knife, watching the treeline. "We can't be everywhere," he said. "One healer. Four horses." Torren spat and wiped his mouth. "Then we're always chasing. Always behind." He said it without complaint, the way he stated any hard fact. Chalam gathered his lodestone dust and stood. His staff was whole, the Verath bone strong. "Elara reaches the door," he said. "But she cannot close it. She holds. We seal. Two jobs, one of them stuck on horseback." Ajax turned that over. The old strategy was dead. Chasing failing seals across days of ground meant they lost the race before it started. He looked at Elara's band, then at Chalam's staff, then at the sealed seam under his boot. "You can travel by moonlight," Ajax said to Elara. "Chalam cannot. Neither can I." He set his jaw. "So we stop trying to arrive together. We split the work." He knelt and drew in the dirt. "You go ahead every time. You hold. But you don't just hold. Chalam teaches you the sealing marks. Lodestone. Blood. The words." He looked up at the wizard. "Can she learn to close a seam herself?" Chalam thought. "The marks, yes. My hands aren't the gift. The gift is hers." He frowned. "But blood from your father's line opens and closes these. Hers won't lock them." Ajax cut his palm. Blood welled. He pressed it into a chalk vial from Chalam's satchel and sealed it. "Then she carries my blood with her," he said. "Enough for one seal. She reaches the door, holds it, closes it. We come after to reinforce." Elara took the vial. Her band pulsed under the moon. "I can do that," she said. "I've held longer than a day. I can learn the marks in a night." "Then it's done," Ajax said. He stood. The chase was over. Now Elara would beat every failing seal to it and close it alone, his blood in her hand. His crew would follow to make it last.