Kjell's Arc

Chapter 5 of 27

The scraping grew louder below. Then the mound shook. Dust fell from the ceiling. The stone bench cracked. On the shelves, the old bones jumped and slid. A skull rolled off and shattered. The lord's rising had shaken the whole chamber loose. Merlyn stood with the carved bone in his hands, and Kjell saw the danger. Between Merlyn and the fire lay a widening crack in the floor, and the walls were coming down. "The bone must burn with him," Merlyn said. He did not move toward safety. He turned toward the passage where the draugr lord climbed. "Get me to the fire. Nothing else matters." Thorgar planted himself under a sagging beam of stone. He drove both axes up to catch it. His arms shook. "Go," he said. "I hold this." Gunnar swept the torch across a fallen shelf. Old wood caught. Flame climbed. He piled bone and dry timber into a heap and blew the fire high. "Here," he said. "Bring it here." A slab dropped between Kjell and Merlyn. The old rune-worker stumbled, blind, feeling for the wall. Kjell lunged over the rubble. He caught Merlyn's arm and pulled. Rocks smashed where the man had stood. Kjell felt the carved bone press into his palm as Merlyn shoved it at him. "You carry it," Merlyn said. "My hand cut it. Your hand can burn it." The passage mouth split open. The draugr lord came through, tall and dry, its skin like old leather over bone. In its fist it held a fistful of stamped coins, the same marks Kjell had burned into twenty villagers. The lord raised them, and the coins glowed. Kjell felt the pull in his own trophies, teeth rattling in his beard. He did not stop. He ran the bone straight into Gunnar's fire. The carved runes flared gold. The heap roared up. Kjell held the bone in the flame until his glove smoked. Across the chamber the draugr lord shrieked. The glow died in its coins. They fell from its fist and rang on the stone, dull and dead. "The binding's broken," Merlyn said. "His dead are free of him now." The lord staggered. It was weaker, but it was not dead. Draugr do not die from broken bindings. It fixed its empty eyes on Kjell and stepped forward, and the ceiling groaned above them all. "Out," Thorgar said through his teeth. The beam was slipping. "Now." Gunnar grabbed Merlyn. Kjell snatched a coin from the floor, the one still cool in his hand, and shoved it in his belt. They scrambled up the passage as Thorgar let the beam fall. Stone crashed down behind them. They spilled out onto the slope under a cold sky. Behind them, muffled, the draugr lord clawed at buried rock. It was trapped in its own hall. But it still moved. The seal on its power was broken. Now Kjell had to go back in and burn the lord itself.