Merlyn's Arc

Chapter 6 of 19

Merlyn held the heart-wood in both hands. The sap still ran warm against his palms. He had the wood. He had the rune cut and ready. But the sight-rune demanded a life to seal it, and no boar walked this cold ring of stones. He would not spend an innocent for his eyes. That thought closed like a door. Thorin stood near the tallest stone, arms folded. He had guided Merlyn here, knowing his own father died blind and bent. Kjell crouched by the ash, watching the keeper. Gunnar and Thorgar spread wide, hands near their steel. "The rune wants blood," Merlyn said. "A life. I will not take one that isn't owed." "Then it stays unsealed," Thorin said. "You go home blind." "No." Merlyn set the wood down and knelt over his master's carved rune. He ran his fingers along its lines the way he read a seal. He felt the cut for a full life. And under it, faint, a second groove he had missed. His master had cut two paths, not one. "There's a lesser channel," Merlyn said. "He hid it. A smaller price. Not a life whole. A part of one." Kjell rose. "What part." Merlyn pressed his thumb to the second groove. The rune answered. It wanted years, not a heart. Years off the one who sealed it. His own years. He would trade them for the sight he had lost. "Mine," he said. "It takes from me. Not enough to kill. Enough to age me." Gunnar's hand left his hammer. "You're sure it's not a trap." "I know his hand." Merlyn traced the corner. "He cheated the fourth quadrant, same as always. The groove is true." Thorin said nothing. He drew a slow breath through his nose. Merlyn fit the heart-wood into the rune's mouth. He struck it once with his hammer. The wood took the cut clean and did not crack. He pressed both palms flat and pulled earth magic up through his arms. His tattoos lit white. The rune drank. It pulled from his chest, from his bones, a cold draining like a wound bleeding inward. His knees hit the grass. His beard-stones clacked as he shook. He did not stop pulling. Then the leather over his eyes grew warm. Light bled through it, gray at first, then sharp. Merlyn tore the blindfold off. He saw the ash-tree black against a pale sky. He saw Kjell's teeth-strung beard, Thorin's iron rings, the keeper watching with orange eyes. His hands were his hands, but the skin had thinned. Gray had crept into his beard where copper had been. "I see," Merlyn said. Kjell knelt beside him. "You're older." "Ten years, maybe." Merlyn stood, unsteady. He looked at the carved rune. It had drained the wood too, and the ash beyond it stood dead-still. The keeper stepped toward the trunk, ears pressed to the bark, and made a low sound. Whatever the rune had taken, it had not stopped at Merlyn.