Kjell's Arc

Chapter 11 of 27

Smoke still hung in the yard when Kjell stepped through the broken door. The master's hall lay open before him, cold and black. Somewhere in the dark a raven called again. He knew what waited. A draugr, and no bone left to bind it. His last rune-marked tooth was ash. He had spent everything to reach this door. Merlyn came up behind him, tome shut, branded arms dull. "No fresh bone," he said. "No coin. Nothing to carve." "I know," Kjell said. He counted his belt. Silver knives. Iron traps. All useless against the dead. Gunnar knelt at the coals and pushed the last splinters together. The fire held, barely. He looked up. "Fire's ready. You've got nothing to burn." Thorin stood at the threshold, his father's axe low. "Then we go in blind," he said. "No." Kjell caught his arm. He would not lose them to a thing steel could not stop. Thorgar shoved past them into the hall. His axes were up, his torn pelt hanging loose. "Something moves," he said. "Bones on the floor. Old ones." Kjell followed the woad-tattooed dwarf into the dark. Along the far wall lay a low bier. On it rested a body wrapped in rotted cloth. Not risen yet. The master. And beside it, arranged in a row, the bones of older dead. "There," Kjell said. "Bone." But the wrapped body stirred. A hand slid from the cloth. The raven dropped from a rafter and beat at Kjell's face. He swung the flat of a knife and knocked it down. Thorgar's boot came down on the bird. "It wakes," Merlyn said. "Faster than I can carve." Kjell looked at the row of old bones. He grabbed the nearest, a long thigh bone, dry and white. He pressed it into Merlyn's hands. "The master's own dead. Carve the counter to its mark." "I have no mark to read." Merlyn's blind face turned toward the bier. "Not until it shows its brow." The body sat up. The rune burned on its skull, bright and deep. Merlyn's tool was already moving. Chips fell fast. Thorgar and Thorin threw their weight against the risen thing, driving it back onto the bier. "Done," Merlyn said. Kjell took the carved bone and drove it into Gunnar's coals. The rune caught white. He crossed the hall and pressed it to the master's brow. The two marks answered. The body burned from within. It clawed once at Thorgar, then fell still and black. Smoke filled the hall. Kjell stood over the ash. He had spent his last tooth, his last coin, and won with the master's own bones. Then the dead raven's leg band flickered, still warm. On the bier lay a second wrapped shape, larger, its brow already glowing. The master had not sat alone.