Merlyn's Arc

Chapter 15 of 19

The new passage ran dry, but the drained wall behind them shook. Merlyn turned. Through the broken gap he had cut, the flood still churned. In it, the pale beast rolled and thrashed. Its long body scraped the stone. The stun was wearing off. Soon it would reach the gap and come through after them. Merlyn's arms hung heavy. The last carving had bled him hollow. He could not raise another sign in time. "It's waking," Kjell said. He drew a throwing knife, though he knew iron meant nothing to the thing. "Merlyn. Can you seal the gap?" "No live rock," Merlyn said. "No iron left. I've got nothing to draw from." His tattoos lay dark on his arms. He had struck the axe cold. There was no forged metal near, no spring, no vein. Thorgar stepped past him toward the gap. He gripped both bearded axes. He had killed a sea beast in a drowned cave, alone. He looked at the pale thing thrashing in the water and named it plainly. "Wrong shape," he said. "Like the one that took my brother's crew." He set his feet at the broken wall. "You can't hold it," Thorin said. He came up beside Thorgar, his father's axe raised. The old dwarf's knees shook, but he planted them like stone. "Not with steel. It doesn't die from steel." Merlyn looked at the tome shut under his arm, then at the broken slab he had dropped to divert the flood. The stone lay wedged half in the gap. He remembered the drain-sign, still fresh in his mind. Iron held the hammer's memory. But so did worked stone, cut and struck by hands. "Gunnar," he said. "This slab. Was it shaped? Worked?" Gunnar knelt and ran a scarred palm across the fallen stone. He tapped it once, listened. "Dressed," he said. "Chisel marks. Old, but true. Someone squared this." "Then it remembers the tool." Merlyn dropped to his knees. He pressed both palms to the dressed stone. Faint gold woke in his tattoos, thin as a thread. Not live rock. Worked rock, holding the ghost of the mason's blows. He raised his hammer and cut a wedge-sign into the slab's face. The stone rang under the iron. Power crept up his arm, weak but enough. He fed it into the gap. The dressed slab groaned and slid. It jammed hard into the broken mouth. The pale beast struck the far side. Stone held. Water hissed through a hairline crack, then stopped. "Sealed," Gunnar said. He struck it once. It rang solid. Merlyn sat back against the dry wall. His hands shook. The gap was shut, the beast walled off in the flood. But the wedge-sign had bled the worked stone gray and dead, same as the iron before it. Every source he touched burned out and left him weaker. He was closer to the sight-rune's end. He was also running out of things to break.