Merlyn's Arc

Chapter 10 of 19

Thorgar hauled Merlyn down the tunnel by the pelt. The floor sloped, wet and black. Merlyn held the stone-bound tome against his chest. His legs dragged useless behind him. Far below, water moved through rock. He could feel it now with his own eyes, a faint gold thread in the dark. Live rock. Deep. Too deep to touch. "Stop," Merlyn said. Thorgar set him against the wall. Merlyn pressed his palm to the floor. The warmth answered, but it lay under a body of hard stone. "The water's below us. I can't reach it. If I channel from here, I pull it up through the whole shelf. That costs me years I don't have." Gunnar knelt and struck the floor with his hammer. The blow rang dull. He struck again. No split. "Solid," he said. "Old rock. Runs deep." He set his ear to the stone, listened, then shook his head. "Water's there. But it's under a shelf thick as a wall." Kjell crouched by his old teacher. The troll teeth in his beard clicked. For years Merlyn had taught this hunter to read the runes he could not carve himself. Now Kjell looked to him again. "You've got the tome," Kjell said. "And your own eyes to read it. Use them." Merlyn opened the stone-bound book. He turned the pages himself, tracing the carved borders with his finger. His sight was clear now. That was the whole cost of it. He found a rune drawn small in the margin, a channel-sign meant to move power through stone without spending the caster. "A conduit," he said. "I don't pull the water. I make the rock carry it to me. The stone pays the reach, not my blood." "Then carve it," Thorin said. He set his back to the wall, father's axe across his knees. Iron rings shook in his gray beard. "We're not going deeper if you can't walk out." Merlyn raised his hammer. His arms shook. Gunnar gripped his wrist to steady the swing. Merlyn drove the first half of the sign into the dry shelf. Then the second. The brands on his forearms caught and burned gold. The rune pulled. Gold light ran down through the rock, down and down, then rose again. It came back carrying the deep water's warmth. Merlyn drank it in. He did not spend himself. The stone spent for him. Warmth spread through his legs. His knees firmed. He set a hand to the wall and stood. He held. Then he took one step, and another, without falling. "It holds," Merlyn said. He looked at the tome in his hands, then down the black tunnel where the gold thread ran. "I can walk. And I can carve from stone now without paying blood." Gunnar struck the floor once more. This time the rock split. Wet black stone showed beneath, water moving fast under it, and a hard cold air rising up from below.