The Blinding Knife
Page 123

“Forget it,” the dead man said. “You’ve probably got fifteen minutes left with the green. You might make it, if you don’t sit around and talk to yourself.” He laughed again, mocking.
Dazen stumbled down the hall. He was in bad shape. If he didn’t get sleep and real food soon…
No, worry about that later.
The tunnel curved slowly, and Dazen thought he was spiraling slowly upward. It felt like it was taking forever. It felt unbearable, but it couldn’t go on for too long, could it? How deep would Gavin have dug?
“Deeper than you can dig out, of course,” the dead man said. “He was always that little bit smarter than you.”
“Shut up!” Dazen’s leg folded and he fell. He caught himself, but it almost cost him his concentration. He almost lost the green ball.
“You remember how you were father’s favorite? I wonder if Gavin’s his favorite now. You were always afraid father would realize how much smarter Gavin was than you, weren’t you?”
“Shut up,” Dazen said weakly. Orholam, he’d almost lost his only light. He couldn’t imagine being trapped in utter darkness with only the voices in his head.
“Why don’t you go back to that lux torch,” the dead man said from the darkness. “Your green might last that long. Of course, that lux torch might be dead. Been there a long time. They don’t last forever. Not even your brother’s.”
The darkness was getting stronger, closing in around the little wan circle of green light. Green was supposed to make him feel wild, and strong. But even wild animals can have their hearts burst. And the feeling of strength isn’t the same thing as strength.
Dazen hobbled on, because there was nothing else to do. His body was betraying him. Black spots swam before his eyes. He stumbled again, and this time he fell, barely cradling his dwindling green globe to his chest. He stood, shakily, and even the dead man was silent.
Then, salvation.
He saw another lux torch. He moved toward it slowly, carefully.
“It’s trapped, you know that, right?” the dead man said. “I bet the last one wasn’t trapped. He probably is so much smarter than you that he knew you’d go past that one, and then get desperate. He’s got you figured pretty—”
“Shut up! Shut up. Shut up!”
The green ball was smaller than Dazen’s fist now. He had five minutes left, maybe.
Still, he didn’t rush. He examined closely the iron bracket this torch sat in.
“It won’t be a simple lever trap. Come now, Dazen would be more elegant than that, don’t you think? Dazen—”
“I’m Dazen now!” Dazen hissed. But he didn’t even turn. He was right, it couldn’t be a simple lever trap. The bracket was solid. He stepped back and extended one finger and pressed on the bracket, ready to jump backward if anything happened.
Nothing.
He squinted his eyes, trying to see into the superviolet, but he couldn’t tell if he was failing or there was simply no superviolet luxin to see.
He poked the torch. It shifted in the bracket and he jumped back. His leg betrayed him again and he tumbled to the floor, barely able to break his fall by pushing himself against the wall.
But other than a complete loss of his dignity, nothing happened.
“Loss of your dignity?” The dead man chortled. “You’re bloody, and dirty, and naked, you smell like shit, and you talk to yourself. What dignity do you have to lose?”
“I want you to know,” Dazen said, “when I get out of here, you’re gone. I don’t need you anymore.”
“ ‘Need’ is such an interesting word, isn’t it?”
“Go to the evernight.” Dazen stood wearily. “Let’s see what you’ve got, brother,” he said. He grabbed the lux torch.
And. Nothing. Happened.
He expelled a breath. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding it. Orholam damn you, Gavin, I really thought you were that diabolically clever.
Dazen pulled back the little clay tab over one square face of the lux torch and a slow glow began emanating as the air got in through its many tiny holes. The torch was still half full of yellow luxin. With the quality of Gavin’s drafting, that would be plenty.
Hope broke over Dazen’s heart like the sun breaking over the hills as that pure yellow light blossomed. He jostled the lux torch and the light bloomed full. He peeled off another clay face and basked in the glow. There was no trap.
He was really going to make it. He’d dug a fathom below that bastard’s petard.
Drafting from luxin was horridly inefficient. The light being cast was cast because the luxin had been drafted incorrectly, so the only correct yellows you got were those shed through spectral scattering, and even then, your own abilities and efficiency as a drafter dictated what was possible. But Dazen wasn’t trying to draft something useful; he merely wanted to taste yellow.
It leaked into him in a slow swirl, and after sixteen years of its absence, it was glorious. He felt sharper, clearer, able to go on, carefully.
The bare fact that Gavin hadn’t booby-trapped this lux torch didn’t mean that there weren’t traps in the tunnel. Even if he’d never guessed that his brother would get out this way, he might have worried that someone would find it from the other end. Yes, he’d have to be careful.
Thank you, yellow.
Invigorated, Dazen walked on.
Not three minutes more, and he saw the rays of the lux torch illuminate the mouth of a chamber. He slowed.
“This will be where he gets you,” the dead man said.
“Shut up,” he hissed.
He examined everything minutely. The walls of his tunnel before it emerged into the chamber; the floor; the ceiling—anything he could see, in every spectrum. His heart pounded, but there was nothing, no hidden tripwires, no hinges, no inexplicable holes in the wall that would shoot out some kind of gory death. He edged forward slowly. He could take his time. The torch would last.
Of course, his brother could be coming at any moment.
The chamber was perhaps ten paces wide in either direction. There was a small table, small chair, small cot. No food, though. This must have been a room where Gavin rested while he constructed the prison.
Dazen watched where he put every step.
“I’m telling you, this is where he gets you,” the dead man said. “Go ahead, go lie down in that cot. Want to bet you never wake up?”
Dazen didn’t touch the cot. He wasn’t going to sleep anyway, not with the lux torch slowly burning out. He’d discarded the clay caps, hadn’t even thought about keeping them, dammit. Stupid mistake. Not that he had pockets or free hands to carry them in. Still.
Something glimmered on the far wall, directly over the tunnel mouth.
“Oh, by all means, go look at the shiny. Right. That couldn’t possibly be a trap,” the dead man said.
“Why don’t you stay here, and I’ll go on without you?” Dazen said. “Then we’ll both be happy.”
“By all means, I’m not the one talking to myself. You can leave me behind whenever you’re good and ready.”
“Go to hell,” Dazen said. “It’s over by the tunnel. I have to go that way regardless.”
Still, he went carefully. It was easy to get fixated, get tunnel vision.