Merlyn's Arc

Chapter 12 of 19

Thorgar heaved the last slab aside. Cold water filled the passage below, black and deep. Merlyn knelt at the edge and read the stone with his tattoos. The gold thread of live rock ran under the flood and vanished. There was no ledge, no dry path. The way forward lay through the water, and it ran too far to hold one breath. "That's the only door," Thorgar said. He wiped his hands on his pelt. "Under the water. I felt no other." Merlyn pressed his palm to the flood. His body was still weak from the years the rune had taken. He could barely stand a full watch. Cold water like this would seize his chest and drag him down. "I can't swim it," he said. "Not as I am. My lungs would fail before the far side." Kjell crouched beside him. The teeth in his beard clicked. For years this hunter had trusted Merlyn to read what he could not. Now he watched his old teacher measure a drowning. "Then don't swim," Kjell said. "Carve." Merlyn turned. "Carve what?" "A rune to hold air. You seal stone. Seal a breath into your chest." Thorin planted his father's axe against the wall. Iron rings shook in his gray beard. "Or float," he said. "Seal the flood so it lifts you." He looked at the dark water and said no more. Merlyn opened the stone-bound tome across his knees. He turned the carved pages himself, his sight clear and steady now. He found a rune shaped like a shut mouth, cut into the border of a page. A breath-hold sign. His master had marked it for divers who worked the drowned seals. But it needed a stone to bind it, and the price would drain his blood if he had no live rock to pay. "There," Merlyn said. "But I need the live rock. If I channel from myself, I'm too weak. It could stop my heart in the water." Gunnar set his ear to the wet stone at the edge. He struck it once with his hammer and listened. "Live rock runs right under the flood," he said. "Strong. It'll take the reach." Merlyn set his hand flat on the drenched stone. The warmth answered up through his palm. He raised his hammer. Gunnar gripped his wrist and steadied the swing. Merlyn drove the first half of the shut-mouth sign into the stone. Then the second. The brands on his forearms burned gold. The power ran down into the live rock and rose again. It did not spend his years. His chest filled and held. The air stayed, sealed, as if his lungs were stone. Merlyn breathed once and felt no need to breathe again. "It holds," he said. He rose and stepped into the black water. "I can cross now. Follow the thread of live rock below. It leads on." He went under. The cold gripped him, but his chest did not.