Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 601 of 619

At first light Ajax and his crew rode inland toward the valley the seer had found. Rowan tracked the ground while Chalam walked with his staff dark and silent. By the second day they reached the east ridge. Below them the valley lay green and still. No cattle grazed. No birds crossed the sky. Ajax led his men down toward the stone where captives waited beneath. They found a break in the ridge where the rock split. Rowan crouched at the seam. "Something dragged people through here," he said. "Fresh. The grass is torn." Ajax followed the cut into a chamber lit by a hole above. Bones lay in one corner. In another sat a heap of dead flesh, six-limbed and pale, already rotting. It had died before they came. "A corpse," Ajax said. "The god left this behind." He turned to Chalam. "Is there anything in it worth taking? Or do we need more wizards than the two of us to face what killed it?" Chalam knelt by the dead thing. He touched his staff to its hide. The wood stayed dull. "No binding in it. No power to read." He drew back his hand. "It's meat. It rots like meat." He looked up. "The living god did this. It killed one of its own kind and moved on." Aldric came in behind them and stood over the carcass. He said nothing for a moment. Then he crouched, pulled a knife, and worked a tooth loose from the jaw. He held it to the light. "This is worth silver. Same as the beasts we hunt." His voice was flat and sure. "The hide too, if we strip it before it turns." He wiped the tooth on his sleeve. "But that's all it is. A carcass to sell. It won't tell us where the god went." Ajax weighed it. The corpse held no answers. Only trade goods and a warning. "Then we don't wait for the two of us to do this alone," he said. "This thing killed a god and walked away. Chalam and I can't read a trail that leaves no mark." "No," Chalam said. "My staff finds sealed things. This one was never sealed. I can't point you to it." Ajax stood. "Aldric, strip the tooth and hide. Rowan, follow the drag marks out the far side." He looked at the hole of light above. "We came to hunt a god. We found what it leaves behind. That means it's close, and it hunts too." Aldric cut the belly open with a clean stroke. "There's a passage past the bones," he said. "It runs deeper. The captives your seer saw are below us." He glanced at Ajax. "Whatever holds them is bigger than eight wizards, let alone two." Ajax drew his father's blade. "Then we send for them. But first we open the door beneath."