Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 598 of 619

The Seraphine drove north along the strange coast. Elara stood at the rail beside Ajax, the moon rising over the water. Chalam read the mark from the deck, then set his staff down hard. "It's near," he said. "North of that headland. It's slipping tonight. Not days. Tonight." Ajax looked at the black cliffs ahead. Too far to reach by boat before the tide turned against them. He turned to Elara. "You go first." Elara nodded. She wore the band that let her run to seals ahead of the crew, and she carried Ajax's blood in a stoppered vial. "I hold the seam," she said. "You follow and close it. Don't be slow." She stepped into the moonlight on the deck, raised her hand, and vanished in a wash of pale light. The rail where she had stood was empty. Marcus swung the wheel and drove the boat toward the headland. The pilot called the water, green and safe, shoal after shoal. Rowan crouched at the bow with his bow strung, watching the shore. "Rot's stronger here," he said. "Old blood smell. She's landed near the seam." He said nothing else. They beached the boat below the cliff at first gray light. Ajax climbed with Chalam, Kael, Torren, and Rowan behind him. They found Elara on her knees in a hollow of black stone. Light poured from her hands into a cracked seam in the ground. Her arms shook. The seam glowed white at its edges, straining. "I can't hold much longer," she said. Her voice was steady, but sweat ran down her face. "Open it. Now." Chalam dropped to the stone and worked chalk and lodestone around the seam. "Bleed here," he told Ajax, marking the center. Ajax drew his father's blade across his palm and pressed the cut to the stone. The seam split wide. A pale thing pushed up from the dark, six-limbed and reaching. Kael and Torren stepped in on either side. Rowan's arrow took the creature through the throat. It reared, and Ajax drove the blade up through its open mouth. It shuddered and went slack across the broken stone. "Hold the light one more breath," Chalam said. Elara pushed the last of the band's power into the seam. Chalam poured lodestone dust in a ring and spoke the closing words. The white glow faded. The stone knit shut, dark and quiet again. Elara sank back against the rock. She was pale but alive. "Held," she said. "Barely." Rowan crossed the hollow, knelt, and pressed his hand to the sealed stone. He stood. "Rot's stopped. It won't spread now." He looked north along the coast. "But I count two more marks that way. Both weak. Both slipping." Ajax wiped his blade and looked where Rowan pointed. One door closed. Two more waited up the coast, and the strange land held more than his father had ever mapped. "Then we don't sail home yet," he said.