Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 85 of 619

They rode until the pines thinned and the ground fell into a shallow draw. Ajax pulled the horses up where a creek cut the stones. He had two captives on the cart the dryad gave him, both wearing iron collars, both asleep from the potion Marco had held on them for a day. The Keeper still did not know Ajax had taken them. He meant to keep it that way. "Off the road," Ajax said. "Now." Grayson led the cart into the pines. Chalam walked beside it with a hand on the wood. Ajax swung down and crossed to where Marco sat with his back against a trunk. Elara stood at Marco's shoulder, a cloth folded in her palm. "They still under?" Ajax asked. Marco nodded once. "Barely. Another hour, maybe." "Then we do it now." Ajax looked at Elara. "You said light can hide what a mind reaches for. Can you cover him while he works?" Elara's green eyes held his. "For a short time. Not both at once." "That's enough." She knelt by the first collared man where Grayson had laid him in the moss. She set her hand above his chest. A pale glow spread across his skin, soft as milk on water. "The Keeper watches through the iron," she said. "This dims what he sees. When it drops, he will see whatever is in front of him." "So make it look like sleep in a ditch," Ajax said. "Marco. Take their memory of us. Their faces. The cart. All of it. Leave them the road they were on before we found them." Marco pushed off the trunk. "You want them alive." "Alive and blank. If the Keeper pulls at them, he pulls at nothing." Marco crouched beside the first man. He put two fingers on the man's brow. His jaw tightened. Elara's light held steady. Ajax watched Marco's hand tremble once and still. A long minute passed. Marco lifted his fingers. "Done. He knows a road south. Wine. A woman's name that isn't ours." "Collar," Ajax said. Tucker was already there with an enchanted iron blade. He set it against the seam at the man's neck and worked it slow. The metal parted with a dry sound. Tucker eased the collar off and dropped it in a sack. They moved to the second man. Elara let the first light fade and raised her hand again. Marco worked. Tucker cut. The second collar joined the first. Ajax carried both men one at a time to a hollow past the creek. He laid them on dry needles, faces to the sky. No ropes. No marks. Two travelers who had fallen asleep off the road. He walked back to the cart. "Ride. The Keeper still thinks he owns them. That gives us a day he doesn't have."