Merlyn's Arc

Chapter 2 of 19

Merlyn set the fresh bark down and read the rest of the rune from his master's stone-bound book. His fingers traced the raised lines. The book named the price plain: the sacrifice-rune took a life to seal. Not always the carver's. It fed on whatever stood nearest when the last line closed. A carver who worked alone had no guard against it turning back on him. He needed a witness. Not to help cut, but to hold him steady when the rune reached for a life. Someone who could pull the price away from his own body if it turned. He knew one man who could read the work and would not flinch. The workshop door opened. Merlyn knew the short, heavy step. "You still smell like burnt bone," Kjell said. The dwarf had taught himself to read runes in the mountains, paid an old man three hunts of silver for it. He owed Merlyn nothing but old debt. He set his axe against the wall. "You cut it yet?" "The rune wants a life," Merlyn said. "When the last line closes, it takes whatever is closest. If I stand alone, that is me." Kjell was quiet. "So you need a body between you and it." "I need a witness bound to hold the price off me. You read the work. You can watch the lines and pull it wide." "Bound how?" Merlyn slid a rune-coin across the table. Its stamped face was worn smooth. "Blood on the coin. You hold it. The rune reads you as guard, not offering. If it turns, it burns the coin, not either of us." Kjell picked up the coin. He turned it once. "And if the coin fails?" "Then one of us pays." Outside, something crashed through brush. A dire boar broke from the trees and threw itself at the workshop steps, tusks scraping wood. Kjell had it. He drew a throwing knife and put it through the boar's eye in one throw. The beast dropped on the porch, twitching, then still. Kjell looked at the dead boar. Then at Merlyn. "There's your body between you and the rune," he said. "A live thing, closer than either of us." Merlyn's hands went still. The book had said a living offering. He had thought it meant a person. It meant only a life. They dragged the boar inside. Merlyn pressed his palm to the coin, then to Kjell's hand, and bled a line across both. He set the boar against the stone, close, and put the bark under his hammer. His forearms glowed. He cut the last line. The rune took. The boar's body seized and went cold in a breath. The bark held, whole, the full rune burned into it clean. Kjell's coin was hot but unbroken. Merlyn's hands shook. He had a finished sacrifice-rune now. But it was carved for a boar's life, not the greater price his sight would truly cost.