Merlyn's Arc

Chapter 9 of 19

The group carried Merlyn deeper into the stone. Thorgar hauled him by the pelt through a low tunnel, the tome heavy in Merlyn's arms. His legs still would not hold. Behind them, root and leaf scraped rock. The leaf-haired keeper had followed them off the dead ground and into the dark. It wanted them dead for killing its ash tree, and Merlyn's last channeling had drained him to the bone. "It's still coming," Merlyn said. He pressed a palm to the tunnel floor. A thin warmth answered, deep and far off. "There's live rock below. But I'm too spent to reach it. If I pull now, it takes years I don't have left." Kjell crouched by his old teacher. The troll teeth on his beard clicked against the stone. For years Merlyn had taught this hunter to read the signs he could not carve himself. Now Kjell looked to him for the answer. "You don't reach it," Kjell said. "You seal the tunnel behind us. Trap it out." Merlyn shook his head. "A wall won't hold. It grows through stone." Then he stopped. His fingers found a seam in the floor where old rock met older. "Unless the wall drinks it." He looked up. "I carve a rune that pulls the tree-life out of it. The keeper is made of the wood I killed. Cut its source, and it falls." "Then carve," Thorin said. He set his back to the tunnel and lifted his father's axe. Iron rings shook in his gray beard. "I'll hold it while you work." Gunnar knelt and struck the floor with his hammer. The blow rang. He struck again and the stone split, showing wet black rock beneath. "Live rock," he said. "Water still moves. Draw from here, not from you." Merlyn pressed both hands to the wet crack. His brands caught and burned gold. He raised his hammer and drove a rune into the split stone. The keeper reached the tunnel mouth. Thorin met it. His axe bit into vine and it recoiled, orange eyes fixed on Merlyn. Merlyn cut the second half of the rune. The sign pulled. Green light bled from the keeper's limbs and ran along the floor into the stone. The creature's leaves browned. Its vines went slack. It sank to the rock, curled small, and stopped moving. Thorin lowered his axe. The tunnel went quiet but for water. Merlyn slumped over the crack. His hands still gripped the hammer. "It's dead," he said. "Drank the last of the wood out of it. The forest won't send another. I broke its keeper." Thorgar lifted him upright. Merlyn stood one breath, then his knees folded. He caught the wall. "Killed the thing chasing us," Thorgar said. "Still can't walk." Merlyn looked at the tome in his arms, then down the dark tunnel. His sight was his own now. His strength was not. "Then we go down," he said, "to the live rock, before my legs cost us more than years."