Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 588 of 619

The seals held now, spread across the land, each one closed by Elara's hand and his blood. Ajax rode home with the north quiet behind him. But quiet was its own kind of trap. He gathered his council in the hall and laid the truth on the table. Elara ran the doors alone. His crew followed to reinforce. And the rest of them sat idle, watching a healer do the work. "We're settled," Ajax said. "Too settled. A house that stops moving starts to rot." Aldric spread a map across the wood. His finger stopped at the far western edge, past the bay, past every mark they had claimed. The land there was blank. "A drover spoke of a coast beyond the reef islands," he said. "No lord. No name on any chart. He saw smoke from the water and turned back." He looked up. "Smoke means people. People mean either trade or a fight." Chalam stood at the hearth, staff in hand. The Verath bone caught the firelight. "The seer scried west while you rode," he said. "She reached farther than I can. There is a binding out there. Old. Older than your father's line." He said it flat, the way he said the hard things. "Someone sealed it before Black Oak was a name." Ajax leaned on the table. A new binding meant a new maker, or an older one. It meant the work his father started did not end at the last door on the coast. Tucker tipped his chair back and let a gold chain catch the light. He had heard the same drover, he said, and bought him three drinks to be sure. "The man swore the smoke came from a walled town," Tucker said. "Empty walls, he thought. But walls don't build themselves." He grinned. "Whoever raised them is either dead or waiting. Both are worth the trip." "Waiting for what?" Aldric asked. Tucker shrugged. "For someone like us. Or someone worse." Ajax weighed it. Elara held the coast now. His crew was rested and dull. And out past the last reef sat a door no one on his side had opened, guarding a thing his father never named. He could sit and let the seals hold. Or he could ride toward the one question that still had teeth. "We sail west," Ajax said. "Past the islands, past the bay. Rowan tracks the shore. Chalam reads the binding. Aldric charts what we find." He looked at Tucker. "You get us the drover. Every word he has." Aldric rolled the map shut. "Uncharted water," he said. "The reef could open the hull like a fish." "Then we find a pilot who knows worse water than that." Ajax straightened. The idle season was over. "We leave when the tide turns. There's a door out there with our name on it, and I mean to be the first hand to touch it."