Kjell's Arc

Chapter 17 of 27

The last of the forty lay still. One coin still burned far ahead, past the heaped dead. Kjell stepped over the bodies and walked toward it. The hall opened into a wide chamber cut deep in the stone. He stopped at the threshold. The chamber was empty. No bier, no wrapped corpse, no rising shape. Just cold air and a floor of dust. The dead master's coin lay somewhere in the dark, still lit, but Kjell saw nothing to strike. "It's here," Kjell said. "It let us come this far. It won't stand and wait." He drew his axe and turned in a slow circle. His four dwarves fanned out behind him. Thorin planted his father's axe and watched the shadows. Thorgar held both blades low, breathing hard. Gunnar set his coal pot down and gripped his hammer. Merlyn pressed his branded hand flat to the wall. His arm glowed. "It moves," he said. "Under us. Around us. It won't show itself first." He knelt and pulled the stone-covered book from his pack. He ran his fingers over the carved pillars on its face, then over the pages inside. "The chamber has an old law," he said. "The dead here can't be seen until they're named. That's the trap. We hunt something that stays blind to our eyes." "Then we make it show," Kjell said. "How." "Fire and its own coin," Merlyn said. "The coin still calls it. If it burns near flame, the master's shape holds. It can't hide in light it fears." He turned his blindfolded face up. "Gunnar. Build it high." Gunnar tipped his coals into a heap and fed them dry splinters from his pack. The fire caught and threw yellow light up the walls. Then Kjell saw it. A shape crouched in the far corner, dry and grey, coin bright on its brow. It had been three feet from him the whole time. It lunged. Thorgar met it with both axes and drove it back toward the fire. A raven dropped from the dark ceiling, black and quick, and raked at Merlyn's face. The master's last eye. Thorin swung and caught the bird against the wall. It fell and did not rise. "Now," Merlyn shouted. He tossed a carved bone from his hand. Kjell snatched it and crushed it into the flames. White light shot from the fire to the coin on the master's brow. The creature froze mid-swing. Its coin flared once, bright as a forge, then cracked black. The dry shape crumpled to ash in the coals. The hall went silent. Kjell stood over the fire. The master was dead. But in the ash he saw the cracked coin, and its mark was not the last mark. A second sign lay stamped beneath it, deep and unbroken. Merlyn touched it and went still. "This one served another," he said. "Deeper. Below us."