Kjell's Arc

Chapter 12 of 27

The dead raven's leg band still glowed faintly on the floor. Kjell stood over the master's ash and looked at the second wrapped shape. It was larger than the first. On its skull a rune burned, deep and strange, its lines crossed in a way he had never seen. He knew what it meant. Merlyn had to read it, or no counter-seal would hold. And a wrong carving would kill whoever cut it. "Merlyn," Kjell said. "Read the mark. Before it wakes." Merlyn crossed the hall by sound. He was Kjell's old teacher, the blind rune-worker who had taught him signs years ago. His branded arms gave off a dull light as he reached the bier. He laid his fingers on the corpse's brow and traced the burning lines. His hand stopped. "This is not our work," Merlyn said. "Older. The eastern quadrant is cut backward. I cannot read it." "Then carve blind," Thorgar said. He stood near the bier, both axes up, his torn pelt hanging. "Carve blind and the seal answers wrong," Merlyn said. "It burns the carver to the bone." The shape stirred under its cloth. Gunnar knelt at the coals, feeding the last splinters. "Fire's near dead," he said. "Read it or we run." Kjell studied the rune. He had learned to read from an old man in the mountains, in silence, for three hunts' worth of silver. He knew this pattern was wrong for a reason. "It's a trap-mark," he said. "Cut backward on purpose. Like the coin." Merlyn's blind face turned toward him. "You're sure." "I've seen a flawed seal before. Read it as a lie. Then carve the true shape." Merlyn's fingers moved again, slower. This time he read the backward lines as their mirror. He took a bone from the row of older dead and set his tool to it. Chips fell. Thorin threw his weight against the rising shape, driving it flat. "It fights harder than the last," Thorin said. "Hold it," Kjell said. Merlyn's hand did not shake. He cut the true mark, the one the trap had hidden. "Done," he said. "If you're right, it holds. If you're wrong, I burn." Kjell took the carved bone and drove it into Gunnar's coals. The rune caught white. He crossed to the bier and pressed it to the corpse's brow. The two marks met. For a breath nothing moved. Then the body burned from within, black and still. Merlyn's hand was whole. The trap had not answered. Kjell had read the lie right. Smoke filled the hall. Kjell knelt by the ash and found a coin, cold and heavy. He turned it to the dying firelight. The mark on it still glowed. It was not dead. This one had a master too, and the master lived on, somewhere north, under the mountain.