The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,177

Seven Satrapies, or some races of men had simply passed from the earth.

Gavin washed his body. Nothing like having salt water and sand between your butt cheeks as you started a hike that might take weeks.

No, not weeks. They didn’t have that long. Karris needed him to make it before Sun Day.

By the time Gavin was finished bathing, Orholam had washed himself, and had found water skins and clothing covered with odd pockets in airtight chests sealed with luxin. By their first good luck they’d had in a long time, the skins and clothing were actually functional. Four hundred years old and yet functional?

Then again, it was hardly the most astonishing magic here, so Gavin put it out of his mind.

That magic and their luck didn’t extend to finding any edible food, though. Even the food they found likewise sealed away from the damp was, after all this time, little more than dust.

The water and the salt fish would be enough for a week, though. Gavin hoped it would be enough.

It would have to be. He wasn’t going to take the time to fashion weapons, hunt animals, butcher and cure meat. He didn’t know if Karris had that much time. Sun Day was coming.

They ate the fish, drank, filled the water skins, and then started. Old Parian text adorned the ground just under the gate, a line reference of some sort?

Ah, a prayer. For the pilgrimage.

Orholam spoke under his breath—saying the prayer, Gavin guessed, but he wasn’t curious enough to find out if the old man recognized it, or knew Old Parian at all, for that matter. This whole trip had to be like a holy wet dream for the old kook.

The path was straight as an arrow’s flight through the jungle. Some sections had been displaced by roots and new growth, others washed out by mudslides. Elsewhere, entire trees had fallen over the path and melted into soil, from which had bloomed flowers. But the path was impossible to lose.

Gavin kept an eye out for animals, but saw nothing larger than mice.

They climbed the crater’s rim. The ridge here descended to a circular swamp before the queer black stone itself began. The straightness of the road had only aided its own erosion. Water from any rain cascaded fast down what had once been the road and had washed away all its stone.

There was nothing for it but to try to cross the swamp while the sun was still high.

It was muddy, mucky, brutal work, first sliding down the hill trying not to turn an ankle and then crossing the ooze, hoping not to plunge into some sinkhole or quicksand.

Orholam insisted on going first, in thanks for Gavin saving his life. Gavin followed in his footsteps. They didn’t speak.

Nor did they make it across the swamp before evening fell.

Gavin said, “Mosquitoes are proof that God hates us and wants us to be miserable.”

“I always thought of them as a strong hint to go inside and be with friends beside the fire, and be done with the day’s labors.”

“You’re kind of a look-on-the-bright-side guy, aren’t you?” Gavin asked. “I don’t really remember that about you, back on the oar.” He’d always been set apart, but then he’d been quietly pious, and though kind, he’d been morose.

“Life on the oar was its own life. Everything looks bright after that darkness.”

The road was ruined on the other side by erosion, and the climb was misery. It was almost dark when they reached the first white gate, beyond which began the tower path itself.

This was the first of eight such gates, Gavin thought, if there weren’t others on the other side of the tower. He’d been studying the black monstrosity all day. The tower was indeed a cylinder of equal thickness from foot to head, so the long path didn’t curl around the outside of the tower but rather was cut into the tower so pilgrims would have the black stone not only below them and to one side but also overhanging above them as well.

And what black stone it was.

With only one good eye, and the other only good for monochrome, Gavin had held on to a great deal of skepticism about what his initial impression of the black stone was. Surely it couldn’t be obsidian. Not an entire tower of it, glittering dangerously.

Obsidian was precious beyond words. If the whole tower was actually made of it, the pilgrims of old would have made off with all of it, and obsidian would no