Kjell's Arc

Chapter 20 of 27

The tunnel narrowed as they went down. Kjell's boot slid on something soft. He stopped and lifted the small flame from Gunnar's hand. Grey lichen coated the walls, thick as moss. It pulsed where the light touched it. Then he smelled it—hot iron and rot. A trap on his belt hissed. The lichen had crept over the iron and was eating it. The metal sagged and dropped in flakes. "Off the walls," Kjell said. He pulled his men to the center of the passage. Too late. The stuff had found his left shoulder plate. It gnawed the leather straps and chewed a bright pit into the iron. He tore the plate free and threw it down. It kept eating where it landed. Thorgar swept a wall with one axe. The blade came back pitted and dull. "It eats steel too," he said. "Slower. But it eats." Gunnar knelt by the fallen plate. He touched the lichen with a bare finger, then pulled back. "Feeds on cold metal," he said. "Cold iron. Cold leather." He looked at his flame. "Heat, maybe not." Merlyn pressed his branded hand near the growth and did not touch it. "No rune in it," he said. "This is living. Not bound. Fire will answer it." "We have one flame," Thorin said. "It won't last the tunnel." Kjell looked at the dead trap, the ruined plate, the walls closing green ahead. Every step down would strip their iron bare. Then a low heat touched his back. Warm air rolled up the passage from below. He turned. Deep in the dark, three points of red light opened. Then a fourth. They were eyes. The thing filled the tunnel's throat. Black scales edged in red. Three heads on three long necks, each one crowned with a horn of bone. It breathed, and the heat pushed the lichen flat against the stone. Where its breath rolled, the grey growth curled black and died. "Down," Thorgar said. He raised both axes. "That's what the master served." Kjell did not raise his axe. He watched the lichen die in the dragon's heat and saw the road open behind it. The tunnel walls behind the beast were clean stone, scoured bare. "It burns the lichen," he said. "It clears its own den." The center head swung toward them and drew breath. Kjell shoved his men against the wall and dropped flat. Fire poured over their heads. It scoured the passage. Lichen sizzled and fell in ash. Heat scorched Kjell's beard. Then the flame stopped. He rose. The walls around them were black and bare. No lichen. No pit. The way down lay open, burned clean by the thing that guarded it. The dragon settled back on its haunches and watched them with six red eyes. It had not charged. It had cleared the road. "It didn't kill us," Gunnar said. "No," Kjell said. He gripped his axe. "It's waiting for us to come to it."