The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,243

for a few steps and then leap.

Again and again, he fell short, his body slamming into the wall on the other side, rebounding off the stones and into the abyss. There was no case even where he just barely grabbed the edge and then clambered up. Going from a full sprint to a full stop by colliding with a stone wall didn’t leave a human grabbing much of anything.

Odd that the eye didn’t account for the wind, he thought. Too irregular, perhaps. But it gusted fitfully up and across the gap, sometimes with startling force. It would certainly confound attempts at a wall run: a wrong gust would blast his feet from any step, and any lost step would mean a fall.

“Burn in hell, Orholam,” Gavin said. He tossed the last boon stone aside.

“Why do you cling so tightly?” Orholam asked.

Now he looked again. The cold rationality of the black jewel showed him it was still too far. Just barely too far, but too far.

Tight, ill-fitting, pulling at his legs with every stride, the pilgrim’s clothes had only been good for their pockets. Gavin stripped them off.

“Unique approach,” Orholam said. “It may make for some real discomfort as you shoot down the, um, chute.”

“I don’t intend to fall,” Gavin said.

“No one intends to fall,” Orholam said. “Well. Except me. I intend to fall. So not really fall, I guess. Jump.”

Still too far on all but the luckiest jump.

Gavin tore his pilgrim’s clothes into strips, cutting them with the edge of the Blinding Knife where necessary. He bound the pieces together into a makeshift rope and then tied it around the hilt. He checked and double-checked his knots.

Then, before he went through with his stupid plan, he walked to the edge of the precipice again, set the sword at his feet, and looked at the jump through the cold eye of death.

Sure enough, he could still louse this up. But if he didn’t carry the sword, more than half the time, he would clear the gap.

Those were the best odds he’d faced in years.

“Are you going to try what I think you’re going to try?” Orholam asked.

“If you think it’s a stupid idea, I agree with you,” Gavin said. “So shut up.”

He checked the rope yet again. No way was he going to come this far and then drop the Blinding Knife out into the abyss because he was careless.

The top of the tower was only a single level above him now: one gap and a single corkscrew turn of the stairs. With his hand protruding into empty air, he could spin the sword on the rope like a sling and toss it up onto the roof.

It took him half a dozen tries to get the sword to land above him, on the crown of the tower, and stick . . . up there somewhere. He had no idea what it looked like up there, so he had no idea if this could work.

His plan had been to throw the blade up there, jump the gap, and then run up to the roof to grab it again before Orholam Himself—or the magic nexus, or whatever—noticed.

But the sword stuck, and when he tugged on the rope and it stayed stuck, he couldn’t help but hope that maybe one test in his life would turn out to be easier than he’d guessed. Maybe it was well and truly stuck. Maybe it could hold his weight. Maybe he could use the rope to swing across the gap. Maybe he could just climb the rope to the tower roof instead of risking his life on the jump.

He pulled harder.

The sword pulled free and flipped, speeding straight at his open-mouthed face.

He dodged out of the way at the last instant—and then nearly lost the rope and sword both from his nerveless fingers as the sword continued its fall.

“Throwing a sharp sword into the sky and then tugging it at your face?” Orholam said. “Not the smartest thing I’ve seen you do.”

“Probably not the dumbest either,” Gavin said. He started spinning the sword again.

“Hard to say. Lotta contenders.”

Gavin shook his head. “I’m kind of going to miss you, old man.”

“Only ‘kind of’?”

“Only kind of.”

It took Gavin another ten tries to get the blade to stay up there again. He pulled on it, and it slid easily off, almost striking him as it fell again.

Telling himself that it was better to take a few hours now than to take a year to make the climb again, he threw