Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 593 of 619

Back at the boat, Ajax laid out what he'd promised the town. He would return with tools and open the well's failing seal. Chalam sat on the thwart, staff across his knees, and did not look up when Ajax finished. "I cannot do it," Chalam said. "Not safe. This binding is older than any I have read. Older than your father's line." He turned the staff in his hands. "I open it wrong, the well falls in. Or the thing beneath comes up faster than we can seal it again. I have no working strong enough to hold that." Ajax had heard the wizard admit failure before. He never dressed it up. That was why Ajax trusted him. But an honest man saying he couldn't do the job left Ajax with a promise he could not keep. "Then we need someone who can reach it and hold it," Ajax said. He pulled a small token from his pocket. Elara had given it to him before they sailed west. One use, by moonlight, in a matter of life or death. "She can travel under the moon between sealed places. She's held failing seals alone." Chalam considered it. "She reaches the seal first. I follow with the marks and the iron. If she holds it while I read it, I learn its shape before I break it." He nodded slow. "That could work. It is the only thing that could." Ajax waited for the moon to rise, then pressed the token in his palm and spoke her name. She came in a wash of pale light on the deck, blonde hair loose, green eyes already searching the dark for the trouble. Elara did not startle. She looked at the black wall of the town, then at Ajax. "You only had the one call," she said. "So it's bad." "A seal under a town well," Ajax said. "Older than his father's work. Chalam can't open it alone without burying the town." Elara crouched beside the wizard and set two fingers near his staff without touching it. She had healed him before, kept him upright through workings that should have killed him. "How thin is it?" "I don't know yet," Chalam said. "That's the trouble. I need it read before I cut, and I need my hands free to cut." "Then I hold the seam while you read." She stood. "I've done it. My band takes the strain now, not my life. You mark it. Ajax bleeds it open when you say. I keep the thing down while you seal." Ajax looked at the two of them. The healer who ran ahead. The wizard who followed to reinforce. He had built this exact split for the doors down the coast. It worked because each did the one thing they could. "Then it's settled," Ajax said. "We go back to the wall at moonrise tomorrow. They watch. We open it clean." Chalam finally looked up. "Now we have the means. We did not, an hour ago." Ajax had his answer for the town. He had the way in.