The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,244

the sword back up onto the top of the tower dozens of times more. It never stuck fast enough for him to be able to put his own weight on it and simply climb. The roof must have no convenient ledges, and the sword was certainly no grapnel.

This was one test Gavin couldn’t completely break by cheating: he wouldn’t be climbing a rope to the top.

He’d have to jump the gap.

But at least he could do it without trying to hold a sword in his hand.

After one last good throw, where the sword seemed to land deeper and thus more safely than most of his tosses, Gavin said, “If I hand you this rope, will you promise just to hold on to it until I get up there and can take it back?”

“You’re trying to pull a fast one on the Creator Himself,” Orholam said. “You think I’m gonna help you with that?”

“I thought maybe you’d just hold a fucking rope,” Gavin said. He spat at Orholam’s feet.

Gavin spooled out the rope in his hand gingerly so as not to drop even the rope’s own small weight onto the blade balanced above. He released the rope slowly, hand hovering in case it dropped suddenly.

But it stayed.

“What is that sword to you, Guile?” Orholam asked.

“It’s my hope,” Gavin said. “Be a pal and don’t throw it into the abyss, would ya?”

“Guile.” Orholam shook his head, reproving. “You know better. If it falls, it will be from your ineptitude, not my intervention. Orholam lets men choose; how could I do otherwise?”

Gavin took a deep breath. No point in delay. Delay would only give the winds time to nudge the blade toward the edge. Besides, he knew exactly where to place his feet to take the correct number of steps, and which type of jump was most likely to carry him across the chasm.

“Goodbye, old man,” he said. “May we never see each other again.”

“I think that unlikely,” Orholam said. “But go now. Go find your answers, if you dare.”

Gavin wiped the soles of his feet clean, rubbed his hands together, and breathed, breathed. He said, “A lack of daring has never been my problem.”

Then he sprinted toward the gap.

And he leapt.

And he, Gavin Guile, who had fallen so far, only to climb so high; Gavin Guile the indomitable, the dauntless; Gavin Down but Never Defeated; Gavin Guile soared through the air as the winds plucked at him and tried to turn him from his purpose—and he landed safely on the other side, rolling once and then coming to his feet.

He stood and whooped, recklessly baring his teeth at the gate so few had even seen.

It was simple gold, adorned in a spare Ptarsu style, latched but not locked. There were no boon stones here for having made the jump. Perhaps finishing the pilgrimage was supposed to be reward enough. Orholam lay beyond, supposedly.

Gavin pulled the gate open.

A membrane hovered in the air between him and the last stair: the lock to which Grinwoody had claimed only Gavin himself could be the key. The test only Gavin himself could pass.

Without hesitating, Gavin pushed into it. It bubbled and clung and gripped, seeming to catch on the fragments of his dead power like splinters catching on a wool tunic, but he pushed through, and soon stood gasping on the other side.

Then, grinning his fierce broken-toothed grin, victorious, he sprinted up the stairs two at a time to his destiny. Or his doom. Whichever.

Chapter 71

~Andross the Red~

18 years ago. (Age 48.)

Felia says, “The grammar here can be parsed half a dozen ways, as usual with the Scriptivist’s prophecies, and that’s without what was redacted. Worse, I’ve seen translations of it before. ‘Breaking a great rock, the black fires of hell, on earth once more unleashed / did unleash / shall unleash / unleashes the . . .’ ”

“Does it help us?”

“I would have said no, if I’d known what it would cost us for you to get it from that girl . . .” And suddenly, she is blinking back tears. Her jaw is tight and she looks away. But then she is suddenly fierce. “Tell me. You never told me. Three weeks you were on a ship, coming home, and I can’t stop smelling you, as if her scent would linger so long.”

What is this? “You gave me permission. Explicitly.”

“I didn’t know it would feel like this!”

Felia is better than this. Next she’ll be asking for information she doesn’t want to know.

She hits my