Kjell's Arc

Chapter 18 of 27

The second mark burned in the ash. Merlyn pressed his branded hand flat to the floor. The stone hummed under his palm. "The way down is here," he said. "Below this chamber. But it's sealed." He rose and crossed to the far wall. The others followed the fire's light. There the wall dropped away into a black shaft, wide as a well and cut straight down. No stair. No ledge. No rope would reach its bottom. Kjell knelt at the edge and dropped a chip of bone. He counted. No sound came back. "Too deep," he said. "We climb down there, we die on the stones below." "We don't climb," Merlyn said. "This shaft was never made for feet." He knelt and opened the stone-covered book across his knees. His fingers moved over the carved pillars on its face, then the pages within. "The deep roads have gates," he said. "Not all of them are doors you walk through. Some are hollows. You step in one place and stand in another." Thorgar leaned over the drop. "A trap, more likely." "It's a gate," Merlyn said, flat. "But it's cold. Nothing woke it. It needs the master's coin." Gunnar dug in the ash and lifted the cracked coin. The second mark still glowed beneath the first. "This one," he said. He held it out. Kjell took it. Merlyn found a wall near the shaft. His branded hand traced a ring of old marks cut in the stone, worn shallow with age. "Set the coin here," he said. "At the center. The gate reads the mark. It opens the road that mark serves." He touched Kjell's arm. "Understand. This opens the way down to the deeper power. Not around it. Onto it." Kjell looked at his men. Thorin's face was hard and still. Thorgar shifted his axes. Gunnar's jaw was set. None of them spoke against it. Kjell pressed the coin into the center of the worn ring. The marks caught fire without flame. Light ran cold and blue through the shaft's mouth. The black well filled with it. Kjell saw a shape form deep in the stone — a hollow tree, its trunk split, and inside the split a ring of pale light like water under a night sky. A road, standing on its edge. "It holds," Merlyn said. "But not long. The coin burns through with the crossing." Kjell stood. The gate breathed cold up at him. Somewhere below the light, the deeper power waited — the thing the master had bowed to, still alive, still unnamed. He hefted his axe. "Then we go now," he said. He stepped into the ring of light. The cold took him whole. His men came after, one by one, and the blue closed over them like deep water. Behind them the coin cracked to black and fell dead in the ring. The shaft went dark. The way back was gone. Only the way down remained.