Kjell's Arc

Chapter 14 of 27

The tunnel dropped for an hour before Kjell stopped. He held the coin low. Its rune still glowed, steady as ever. But the glow bothered him now. The dead lord's coin had gone dark when it died. This one lived. And a live coin was a live eye. Whatever waited under the peak watched him come through it. "It sees us," Kjell said. "This coin is the master's eye. Every step, it knows." Merlyn stopped. The brands on his arms threw dull light on the wet stone. "Then it waits ready," he said. "No surprise left." Gunnar set down the clay pot of coals. "Kill the eye," he said. "Break the coin." "It's the only thing that points north," Thorin said. His voice came thin from the dark behind them. "Blind the eye and we blind ourselves." Kjell weighed both truths in his fist. The coin led him. The coin betrayed him. He could not keep it and hide. He could not drop it and find the gate. He knelt and opened his pack. From the lining he drew the old book, its stone covers cold, its carved pillars cracked. He set it on his knee. "You can read a road from this," Kjell said to Merlyn. "You already did. Read it again. Mark the gate. Then we don't need the coin to point." Merlyn crouched. Gunnar tipped a coal near the page. Merlyn dragged his fingers across the carved marks, slow, then slower. "The deep road forks ahead," he said. "Left climbs. Left ends at the gate." He shut the book. "Now you know the turn. The coin is spent to you." Kjell held the coin to the coals. "If I burn it, does it die like the lord's?" "No," Merlyn said. "That coin's master lives. Fire won't unmake the eye. Only silence it." Thorgar put out one broad hand. He said nothing, only waited. Kjell dropped the coin into his palm. Thorgar closed his fingers. He set the coin on the stone floor, laid the flat of one axe over it, and drove his weight down. Steel bit gold. The rune split. The glow guttered and died in the crack. "Blind now," Thorgar said. He picked up the broken halves and handed them back. Kjell held two dead pieces of metal. The pull north was gone. No thread guided him. But no eye watched him either. He looked to Merlyn. "Left at the fork." "Left," Merlyn said. They moved again. The air turned colder still. Somewhere ahead the master waited, and it no longer saw them coming. But it had watched long enough to know their number and their road. Kjell reached the fork and took the left branch, climbing into the dark toward a gate he could no longer feel, only find.