Bram Orvyn's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The seam in the wall breathed cold air over Bram's gold. He held his lamp to the crack and saw only black beyond the dressed stone. Anything down there could crawl through while he slept. Worse, it could find him curled in his true shape, wings folded in the dark. He had spent thirty years hiding what he was. One breach could undo all of it. The wall had to close tonight. Thorak Deepdelver crouched by the gap and pressed his palm to the old stone. The dwarf had dug this vault for coin and asked no questions. Now his sharp eyes narrowed at the tunnel he had broken open. "I know this cut," he said. "My people laid stone like this. You didn't hire me to dig a cellar. You hired me to break into a grave." "Then help me seal it," Bram said. He dropped a fat purse on the floor. It rang against the stone. "Same price. More, if it holds by morning." Thorak weighed the purse, then spat into his palm. "Fill won't hold. Loose rock, and it breathes through. We wall it proper or not at all." He pointed his pick at Bram. "You carry stone. I set it." They worked fast. Thorak split blocks from the vault floor and squared each edge by lamplight. Bram hauled them close, his scorched fingers steady on the cold rock. He did not tire. That alone made the dwarf watch him longer than Bram liked. When Thorak leaned into the gap to measure, his lamp lit something inside. A soft green glow spread across the far tunnel wall. Moss clung there in the dark, shining faint blue and gold, like coals under water. Neither man had brought a light like that. "Living things grow down here," Thorak said quietly. "Air moves. Water. This tunnel goes somewhere." He set the last block and packed the joints with wet clay. "There. Sealed. Nothing crawls through tonight." Bram pressed his hand flat to the new wall. No draft touched his palm. The cold breath was gone. His hoard was hidden again, and his true shape with it. He let out the breath he had held for hours. Up on the workbench, his magpie hopped and dropped a coin. It rolled to the base of the sealed wall and stopped against the fresh clay. Thorak did not reach for his second purse. He stood staring at the wall he had just built, his beard heavy with sweat. "I sealed it," he said slowly. "But I know what's back there now. My people mapped these deep roads before they cast me out." He turned to Bram. "They'd pay a fortune to hear one of their lost tunnels still stands. Enough gold to bury a man." Bram's ember eyes fixed on him. The wall was closed. But the dwarf who closed it now held the one thing worth more than any stone.