Merlyn's Arc

Chapter 19 of 19

The hum grew. It rose through the floor into Merlyn's knees, then his ruined arm, a slow beat like something vast turning in its sleep. He knew that feeling. His power sources were spent—rock, iron, coins, the lindworm scale, all dead behind him. He had one working hand and no fuel to carve a single sign. "It's coming for the sound," he said. "And I have nothing left to stop it." Kjell drew his throwing knives and set them on the stone. He had hunted trolls and draugr for a living, and he did not waste words. "Steel won't kill it," he said. "Not this deep." He looked at his old teacher. Merlyn had taught him to read runes years ago, in silence, for three hunts' worth of silver. Kjell knew what an empty rune-worker was worth in the dark. Nothing. "Then we don't kill it," Merlyn said. "We stop the hum. The sound woke it. Kill the sound, it goes back to sleep." Gunnar knelt with the stone-bound tome on his knees, its carved pillars catching the low light. He turned pages until Merlyn's fingers stopped him. "A silence-sign," Merlyn said. "It doesn't cut. It swallows. But it still needs power." "We have none," Gunnar said. Flat. Final. "We have the hum itself," Merlyn said. "It's power moving through the rock. I can carve a sign that drinks it. Turn the beast's own call against it." Thorin crouched by the wall, gray beard braided with iron, his father's axe across his knees. He pressed his palm to the floor and felt the beat. "Where do you cut," he asked. "The floor. Where the hum runs strongest." Merlyn dragged himself to the spot. His left hand hung useless. He set the hammer's point with his right, but he could not hold the stone steady and strike at once. Thorgar knelt and pinned Merlyn's wrist in one broad fist. "Go," he said. Merlyn struck. The sign bit into rock. The hum poured up through the floor and into the mark, and the mark pulled it in. His brands lit gold along his good arm. The vibration ran off the stone and vanished into the sign like water down a crack. He cut the second stroke, then the third. The hum thinned. Then it stopped. The tunnel fell dead quiet. Far below, the vast turning slowed and settled. Whatever had stirred sank back toward sleep. Merlyn slumped over the finished sign. It glowed faint, still drinking, holding the silence shut. "It's sleeping," he breathed. "The sound's gone." But his fingers found the mark's edge and traced it. The sign fed on the hum to stay lit. When the hum was fully spent, the sign would die—and the silence with it. He had bought quiet, not safety. "How long," Kjell asked. Merlyn pressed his ear to the stone. The faint pull was already weakening. "Not long," he said. "We move now, or we're here when it wakes hungry."