Merlyn's Arc

Chapter 17 of 19

The pale beast sank behind the slab, and the tunnel went quiet. Merlyn slumped against the wet wall. Nine dead coins lay at his knees. His iron was spent, his worked stone spent, the live rock miles behind. He had a killing done and nothing left to kill again with. Then he heard it. Not water. A slow drag through the dark ahead, older and heavier than the beast. The floor shivered under his palms. "Something's coming," Merlyn said. His tattoos lay dark. "Bigger than the last." Kjell drew a knife. Beside him Thorgar set his feet, an axe in each hand. Thorin planted his father's axe and stared into the black. None of them spoke the plain fact. Steel would not hold whatever moved down there. Gunnar knelt and opened the stone-toned tome on his knees. Pillars of carved gold ran down its covers. Merlyn had read it with his own eyes for weeks now, sight bought with ten years of his life. "You've pulled from rock. From iron. From coins," Gunnar said. His blunt voice did not rise. "What haven't you pulled from?" Merlyn ran his fingers across the page. The border showed a sign he had skipped every time, ugly and forbidden. A blood-sign. It drew power straight from the carver's own body, no rock or iron between. His father had used it near the end. His father's hands had rotted from it. "I know that mark," Merlyn said. "It burns the one who cuts it." "Then don't," Thorin said, short and final. The drag grew louder. A cold, wet reek rolled up the tunnel. Merlyn felt the thing's weight through the stone, vast and patient. He had no other source. He had promised himself he would not die blind and bent like his father. He had not promised how much of the rest he would keep. "Give me the hammer," he told Gunnar. Gunnar looked at him a long moment. Then he pressed the twin-headed iron into Merlyn's grip. "How much will it take?" "Enough," Merlyn said. He dragged the hammer's edge across his own left forearm. Blood welled over the runic brands. He pressed the wet arm to the dead stone and cut the blood-sign with the hammer's point. Pain climbed his arm like fire up a fuse. His tattoos flared gold, brighter than they had all day, fed by his own body. The rune bit deep into the wall. The thing shrieked in the dark and stopped its dragging. The floor stilled. The reek pulled back down the tunnel and faded. Merlyn dropped the hammer. His left hand hung useless. The fingers would not close. He looked at Gunnar with the eyes he had paid so dearly to keep. "It held them off," he said. "But my hand's gone the way my father's went. If the next wall rises, I've only the one hand left to cut with."