Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 616 of 619

At dusk Ajax stood at the mouth of the broken gate. The passage ran black into the rock. Kael and Torren had cut driftwood torches from the reef below, but the tar was wet and the flames sputtered. Ajax struck one and it died. He struck another. It caught, guttered, then went out in the cold air rising from the dark. "The wood is soaked through," Kael said. He tried a third. It hissed and quit. "We go in blind or we wait for it to dry. Waiting means two more days." Ajax would not wait. The seal was broken. Whatever slept below had two days to find the open door, and he meant to reach it first. That was the whole of his work now — not walls, not ships, but doors his father's people left. "Then we go blind," he said. Elara stepped up beside him. She reached to her throat and unclasped a flat silver chain set with small stones. Even in her hand the stones held light. They shone soft and steady, white shot through with pale blue, like moon caught in ice. "I don't need my band for this," she said. "It never dims. It never drains." Ajax looked at the necklace. "Where did it come from?" "A man gave it to me before he died. He said it would light the worst dark I ever walked into." She held it out at arm's length. The glow spread down the passage, catching wet stone and the edge of a stair. "This is the dark he meant." Chalam bent close to the stones. He held his staff near them and read for a moment. "No binding in it," he said. "No god's mark. It is only light. Clean light. It won't fail us the way the torches did." Rowan tested the air. "Cold and still. Nothing moving I can hear. The way is clear as far as the stone lets me see." Ajax took the front. Elara walked at his shoulder with the necklace raised, and the light went ahead of them both. It did not flicker. It did not shrink. Kael and Torren came behind with blades drawn, and Chalam last, staff in hand. The passage bent down and to the left. The stones lit every step. No shadow could hide a thing from that steady glow. Ajax felt the change under his boots — worked stone gave way to older cut, rough and pitted, older than his father's line. The way opened into a wide chamber. The necklace threw its light across the floor. Empty racks lined the walls. At the center stood a stone table, and beneath it, Chalam's staff hummed low. "Something sleeps under there," Chalam said. "Older than the gate." Ajax set his hand on the cold table. The door his father never touched was behind them now. The cave lay open before him, and the light held. "Then we found it," he said. "Now we see what it is."