Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 594 of 619

The next night they went back to the wall. Ajax led Chalam and Elara through the gate at moonrise. Kael and Torren walked behind with iron rods and a spare sack of lodestone dust. Rowan came last, bow strung, watching the dark roofs. The old council man met them at the well with a lamp and a dozen frightened faces at his back. "You said you'd repair it," the old man said. "Not tear it open." "We hold it while we mend it," Ajax said. "Stand back from the stones." Elara knelt at the well mouth. Moonlight sat in her band and did not fade. She pressed two fingers to the seam and closed her eyes. "It's thin," she said. "Thinner than the one down the coast. I have it. Read fast." Chalam ran his staff along the stone. He worked in silence, then spoke low. "Three loops, tied at the center. Old work. If I cut the center it drops the whole thing. I cut the outer loops first." He looked at Ajax. "When I say, you bleed it." Ajax drew his father's blade and cut his palm. He waited. Kael and Torren set the iron rods at the four points Chalam marked with chalk. Rowan stood above them on the well curb, arrow nocked, eyes on the seam. "Now," Chalam said. Ajax pressed his bloody hand to the stone. The seam split with a sound like ice cracking under weight. Something pale showed in the dark below, moving. Elara's light flared and pinned it down. Her jaw tightened. "Hold," she said. "I have it." Chalam poured lodestone dust into the split and spoke the marks. Rowan's arrow struck the pale thing in the throat as it rose. Ajax drove the blade through its mouth. It sank. Chalam sealed the stone shut over it, then pressed the last of the dust across the seam. "Done," he said. "Held for three hundred years, if no one cuts it again." Elara let her light go out and sat back on her heels. She did not sway. The band had taken it, not her. The old council man stared at the whole, quiet stone. His people crept closer to look. "The seal is mended," Ajax told him. "Your water is clean." Back at the boat, Elara stood with him at the rail. She took his hand, the cut one, and turned it over. Then she pressed a small carved token into his palm. "You spent the one call," she said. "This one doesn't burn out. Say my name under the moon and I come. As many times as you need." She met his eyes. "You reach the doors first now. I'll always be behind you." Ajax closed his fist around it. He had a way to call her whenever a seal failed, anywhere the moon rose. The town was safe. The door was open, and the thing below was dead.