Gavin didn’t deign to reply. He walked to the very edge. He examined it as if this were complicated.
It wasn’t. He couldn’t make it across. Certainly not so burdened.
He pulled the last two boon stones out: ‘That Karris Will Live’ and ‘That I Recover My Powers.’
He weighed them in his hands.
If he fell, the next trip would take a year.
He didn’t have a year. Nor did she. She’d be dead.
Fine, God. I can save her myself.
He hesitated before he could toss aside the blue that was her boon, though.
This isn’t me putting my powers above her life. I can’t trust Orholam. I can’t trust anyone but myself.
This is . . . this is me committing myself to using my powers for her. I can’t do anything for her if I’m dead. I gotta look out for myself first. For a little while. So I can serve everyone.
He threw away Karris’s life.
His throat tightened. Without turning, he said, “You tell Orholam, next time you see Him, that this is bullshit. This whole thing. Everything He’s done. All of it.”
“Seems to me you’ll do what you have to in order to be able to go tell Him yourself, Guile.”
“Yeah, I will.”
“It also seems to me that if you tossed the sword aside instead, you might be able to carry a couple of those stones. But what do I know?”
Somehow, Gavin hadn’t even thought of the sword. He’d grown accustomed to the makeshift scabbard banging against him with every step.
“The sword’s like my testicles, friend,” Gavin said.
“Not the genitalia one usually hears a sword compared to.”
“It can get in my way. It’s a weak spot, but not one I’m willing to part with. Losing the sword is not an option.”
So long as he had the sword, perhaps he could compel Orholam to give him a boon. Or kill Him, as Grinwoody demanded. But Gavin would do what it took. Whatever it took.
But he hadn’t turned away from the gap as he spoke. He cracked open his left eye—the crystalline black eye—and he saw his trajectories. A hundred different attempts played out in front of him: he jumped too early; he stumbled on the last step; he tried to run along the wall 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 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.