Merlyn's Arc

Chapter 14 of 19

The water climbed the ledge behind them. Merlyn pressed his palm to the wet stone and felt for live rock. There was none. The tunnel forward narrowed to a low mouth, and water already ran into it. In minutes the way would drown. He had crossed one flood only to meet another, and this one would seal them in before he could cut a single sign. Gunnar struck the wall with his hammer and listened. "Dead rock," he said. "All of it. No spring, no water-vein I can use." He tried three more spots. Each rang flat. Merlyn opened the stone-bound tome across his knees. Its cracked gray covers were slick with spray. He read fast, hunting a sign that did not need live rock. The pillar-carved margins held old marks his master had copied long ago. One caught him. A sign that pulled power from a struck edge, not from the earth beneath. "I need iron," Merlyn said. "Something forged, something struck ten thousand times. It holds the memory of the hammer. I can draw from that." Kjell unwound the leather from his torn hand. He looked at the flooded mouth, then at his old teacher. "You mean my axe." "Rune-carved. Worked by a smith for years. It will answer." Thorin gripped his father's axe closer. "Not that one," he said. Then he glanced at the rising water and said nothing more. Kjell drew his rune-carved axe from his belt. He had carried it through trolls and draugr, and Merlyn knew what it cost him to hold it out flat. "Cut fast," Kjell said. He set the axe-head against the tunnel floor and pinned it there with his boot. "It'll wake soon." He meant the pale beast, still stunned in the flood behind them. Merlyn laid his hand on the cold iron. His arm tattoos lit gold. He raised his twin-headed hammer and struck the axe-head three times, cutting the drain-sign into its flat. The iron rang. Power poured up his arm, sharp as a coal. He turned to the tunnel mouth. Water sheeted across it now. He pressed both palms to the stone above the flood and carved the second sign into dead rock, feeding it the axe's stolen strength. The wall lit. Stone cracked and heaved. A slab fell inward and the water poured off sideways, draining into the broken gap. The low mouth opened wide and dry above the pull of the flood. "Through," Gunnar shouted. "Now." They climbed through the broken wall one by one. Behind them the pale beast rolled in the deep and woke. Kjell went last, his axe left dead and dark on the ledge, its runes burned clean. He did not look back at it. Merlyn stood in the new passage, the tome shut under his arm. His sight held. But the drain-sign had bled the iron cold, and he knew now that dead rock alone would never carry him to the sight-rune's end.