Kjell's Arc

Chapter 23 of 27

The dragon led them down. It burned the grey rot from the walls as it went, and the clean rock glowed red behind its throat. Kjell kept close. Merlyn walked at his elbow with the stone-bound book across his forearm. Its carved pillars caught the firelight. Gunnar and Thorin came behind, and Thorgar last, watching the beast's tail with both axes ready. The dark held that low sound from far below, steady as breath. Then the road split. Two tunnels opened where there had been one. The dragon stopped between them. Its three heads turned, uncertain. The throat-fire sank low, and the light with it. Kjell felt the walls close in as the glow died. "It doesn't know either," Kjell said. Merlyn opened the book. His branded hands moved over the carved pages. "The map ended at the middle tunnel. This is deeper than the map." He shut it. "I cannot read this. It was never cut into the stone." The dragon chose. It went left. Kjell went after it. Twenty steps in, the tunnel narrowed and pinched shut against solid rock. A dead end. The beast turned in the tight space, scraping stone, and the last of its fire guttered out. The dark fell whole. Then Kjell heard scales dragging away, back and past them, and the red glow shrank up the other tunnel and was gone. "It left us," Thorin said. "It took the road it wanted," Kjell said. "Not ours." He put a hand on the wall. Cold, blind rock. He could not see his own fingers. Gunnar's voice came from behind. "I have coals." A scrape, a spark, a small flame. It threw weak light on five faces. The right tunnel was empty now. They stood in the wrong one, stone at their backs. Kjell led them out and into the right passage. It ran straight, then turned, then forked again into three. He stopped. Gunnar's little flame showed all three mouths and no mark on any of them. The low breathing sound came up from the center one, louder now. "That one," Kjell said. "It breathes from that one." "The book is done guiding us," Merlyn said. "You choose by ear now." Thorgar came up beside Kjell and looked into the center dark. "Then we go by ear." Kjell took the center tunnel. The floor dropped under his boots, steep, and the air turned colder with every step. Gunnar's flame bent in a draft that came from below. The breathing filled the passage now, so deep Kjell felt it in his ribs. They were not lost anymore. They had found the thing that made the sound. It waited at the bottom of the last tunnel, and the road behind them was sealed by the dragon and the dark. There was only down, and only forward.