Bram Möller's Arc

Chapter 20 of 63

The passage narrowed as they went. Bram held the match low. The walls sweated cold water. Every few steps he heard the mountain shift above them, a dull knock passed through stone. The avalanche had settled the slope, but the slope was still moving. He could feel it in his boots. "Faster," he said. Parisa kept the compass flat on her palm. The needle held forward. She stepped over a rib of rock and stopped. "It bends here." He reached past her. The passage split. One fork went down and left, wet and tight. The other climbed slightly to the right, dry, wider. The needle pointed at the right fork. A crack ran along the ceiling above the split. Bram lifted the match. The crack was new. Fresh dust hung in the air below it. He could see grit still falling. "That's going to drop," he said. "We don't stop here." He pushed her into the right fork. Behind them a slab let go and hit the floor with a sound like a struck bell. Cold air punched past them. The match went out. He lit another. His hand shook. Parisa was against the wall, breathing through her teeth. The compass had not moved. "Keep going," she said. They went. The passage widened. The ceiling lifted. Then the match showed something that was not rock. A lantern. Yellow, low, set on a stone shelf. Behind it, a wide chamber. Behind the chamber, a figure. He was huge. White fur, a red coat, dark eyes set deep. He sat on a folded blanket with a deck of cards in one broad hand. He did not stand. He looked at them the way a man looks at weather he has been expecting. "Shut the passage behind you," he said. His voice was low and even. "The whole shelf is coming down within the hour. I've been listening to it." Bram stared. The mechanical owl stirred inside his jacket. "There's a door?" The stranger nodded at a slab of timber braced against the wall. "Drag it across. Wedge the pin." Bram moved. Parisa helped. The timber was heavy, cut to fit. They dropped it into the groove and drove the iron pin home. A minute later the mountain groaned. Dust fell from the ceiling in a sheet. The floor jumped once. Then stillness. Bram set his hand on the timber and felt it hold. The stranger dealt three hands on the blanket without looking up. "Wendell Frost," he said. "Sit. You'll be here a while." Parisa lowered herself onto the stone. She turned the compass face up between them. The needle no longer pointed forward. It pointed at Wendell. Bram looked at the sealed passage. The route was gone. The sky was gone. He was inside the mountain with a stranger and a compass that had found the wrong man. He sat down.