The Blinding Knife

Chapter 83

Dazen passed the first unlit torch in the tunnel without touching it. A torch could be a trap. He pressed on through the tight confines of the tunnel, breathing deeply to try to keep himself calm. The tunnel wasn’t that tight, and the blackness wasn’t the dark. He could go through worse. He would go through worse, gladly, to get out of here.

No going back. Never.

Perhaps a hundred paces later, he came to another torch, and he paused. The light of his green luxin ball was feeble, and it was consuming his only luxin. He didn’t know how long it was going to have to last him. Hopefully only minutes, but just in case…

He studied the torch like it was a serpent. The tunnel was too tight to comfortably carry a normal torch with the attendant open flames and dripping pitch. To carry a normal torch without burning yourself down here, you’d have to hold it directly in front of you. In his usual profligately drafting way, his brother had made lux torches, made of a mundane shaft of wood. The ends had panels of imperfectly drafted yellow, covered completely by a thin layer of luxin or glass or even waxed leather. Sealed against the air, the yellow luxin lay dormant. When you wanted light, you simply peeled back the sealant and had a perfect, single-spectrum yellow light source. Depending on how much air was allowed through and how well the yellow had been drafted, the lux torch could last from an hour to four hours. Hideously expensive to buy and horribly difficult to craft; his brother had liked to draft them to show off his superchromacy.

This one was his brother’s work, no doubt. Of course, his brother must have done most if not all of the work on this prison himself. The lux torch was set in a simple iron bracket. Dazen squinted at the little piece of iron as if it held the mysteries of the universe. But it was just iron. The fit didn’t look particularly tight. It didn’t look like there was any way it could be some kind of a switch so that when he lifted the torch it would pop up and trigger a trap.

But it felt wrong.

Dazen cursed. And then he cursed some more. He liked hearing the sound of his words echo down the tunnel, disappear into the distance, rather than simply bounce back at him from a few feet away.

“A little dumb to be hollering when you’re trying to escape, don’t you think?” a voice said.

Dazen felt a shock run down his spine. For one long instant he thought it was all over. Then he recognized the voice.

“Dead man,” he said.

“But not as dead as you’ll be soon, I think,” the dead man said.

“I thought you were back in your wall, where I left you. I don’t need you out here.”

The dead man chuckled from the darkness. “Thought you could lose me so easily? You’re an amusing little man, Gavin Guile.”

“No, you’re Gavin. You’re the dead man. I’m done with that. I’m done with losing. Now go away, I’m burning light here.”

“Bet the torch is trapped.”

Dazen snarled. “I know the torch is trapped!”

But he didn’t know the torch was trapped. That was fear, paranoia. But he couldn’t shake it. Cursing quietly, over and over and over, he studied the torch. He couldn’t touch it.

“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.

“Ha! Punning!” the dead man said.

What? Oh. “Bugger off.”

Dazen blinked, rubbed his eyes, studied the floor, tested every step. He couldn’t go at this pace for long or he’d never get out. But it was worth it here. No matter that the dead man was mocking him, he did have a point.

Whatever the shiny was, it was etched into the rock. Perhaps a natural vein of some ore? Gold? Dazen knew nothing about mining, but he was deep under the earth somewhere. The distribution looked random at first, but as he got closer “Trap. I’m telling you. Trap,” the dead man said.

“I’m not touching it, you asshole. Stop distracting me.” Trap it might be, but Dazen wasn’t going to put his head right underneath that thing to step into the tunnel beyond it if it was going to snap down without a moment’s notice.

Keeping his distance, he stood up on tiptoe and held the lux torch high. Whatever it was, it sat deep in grooves, and only fell full under the torch’s light when he lifted it. He heard a little hiss and he froze.

This was the trap. He needed to do something immediately, but he didn’t know what.

In an instant, the luxin-for it was luxin-in the grooves ignited and glowed a dull, infernal red. Dazen remembered the formulation. Gavin’s work, a blend of yellow and red so unstable that even being hit with light would cause it to combust. He felt a stab of fury-and then the whole design bloomed with light, ignited by the light of his lux torch.

It was a single, roughly shaped word, two paces across, drawn with a jaunty, cocky hand. It unfurled in yellow-red fire: Almost.

Dazen’s feet became unstuck and he leapt backward and ran for the tunnel behind him.

The light of his lux torch, which had been directed solely forward as he’d entered the chamber, now cut into deep grooves in the wall back behind him that he hadn’t even seen. These flashed to fire, the fires cut ropes, and the floor dropped out from under him.

He tumbled head over heels into the darkness down a tube, then abruptly dropped straight onto a flat surface. He impaled himself on several tiny spikes, not longer than his first knuckle. It took his breath-and his luxin. Hellstone!

Then that floor swung open and he tumbled down farther, farther. He smashed into a door that swung open and then shut behind him.

Dizzy, back and arms bleeding from tiny stab wounds and disoriented, Dazen nonetheless immediately knew where he was by the light that stabbed through his eyelids, mocking him.

He rolled over, opened his eyes. The room was shaped like a squashed ball, one hole above for food and water, one hole below for his waste. And in the round, curving wall of his new yellow cell sat the dead man.

In a mad falsetto, he said, “Told you so.”