The Blinding Knife(191)

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.