Maybe.
I sheathed my sword and started tearing at the buckles of my breastplate and other armor. I needed to be light. Any extra weight and this might not work.
My tabard I discarded with its belt, my breastplate followed, pauldrons and gauntlets after that. I’d already been lightly armored, but now I was stripped of all but my leather pants, filmy undertunic, my boots, and my sword. I wasn’t giving up the sword.
Not even if it drags you into the depths?
Not even then.
I toast your courage, and if you fail, I’ll inhabit those you love best and eat their hearts raw.
Lovely. I’d better not fail.
I clambered up to the top of the delicate railing surrounding my platform and my belly lurched at the great distance below. Carefully, I turned so that I was crouched with my back facing outward, peering down at the space between my boots. I felt wildly off-balance.
Because you are, you fool! You won’t make the catch and you’ll fall to your death.
But now the platforms were crossing and I had no choice. There was no way I was leaving Adalbrand alone to face this challenge. What if he woke and found himself drifting with no clue as to what to do or where he was? He might judge me now. Might hate me. But he didn’t deserve that.
I lowered myself so that I was hanging by my hands, tensed the muscles of my lower back tightly to lever my legs backward, and then the moment I saw Adalbrand below, I thrust my legs forward as I let go of the platform and tensed hard to draw my arms forward, too, stabilizing me in the air.
Books whooshed by. My heart was in my throat. I had eyes only for the edge of his platform.
Here it was. I reached for it, caught it —
— and felt the fingers of my right hand slip while my left found purchase. I swung wildly from my left hand, the newly knit bone in that arm screaming with the effort of holding me in place. Frantic, I clawed up with leg and arm.
Your sword! Unbuckle your sword, it’s dragging you down!
It was dragging. I felt the weight of it.
But I didn’t dare let go. If any time was a time for prayer, it was now.
I skipped the niceties.
“Merciful God make me strong and sure. Help me up onto the platform. Your healer needs me.”
I wasn’t entirely sure about that part. But the God must have been. A renewed burst of energy filled me and this time when my right arm grappled for purchase, it held, and I pulled with all the might of my wide shoulders and levered myself up and over the fish-spine edge of the platform to fall in a lump on the other side.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Vagabond Paladin
I lay on my back for a long moment, heaving in gasps of breath, watching the lights above me twinkle from white to purple to white while the smell of old leather and vellum filled my nose and with it the sweet, sweet knowledge that I was alive.
Yes! Sir Branson cheered in my mind, and for once I didn’t mind the dreadful laugh of the demon because I was there to hear it.
With shaking limbs, I turned on my side and saw Sir Adalbrand slumped where they’d laid him. My heart twinged with guilt. It was healing my dog that stole his strength and finding my secret that ruined him.
Well. Good things never did last. And at least I could keep him from becoming a casualty of carelessness or of malice, the way the Inquisitor had been. At least I could guard him while he came back to his senses.
Gently, I eased him into a more comfortable position, untangling his limbs and settling his armor into places where it wouldn’t dig into his flesh — or wouldn’t dig as badly. Should I remove it? He likely wouldn’t thank me for that.
I pulled myself to my feet and tried to assess our situation. Books were scattered on the floor. I rifled through them but they were written in languages I didn’t know. I had knowledge of Deus Grandi, Aurelian, and a few words of Uxanthal. I could read Formal and Ancient Deus Grandi. These books were written in none of those, and some had such an inordinately different script — a flowing kind that looked more like a series of mountain ranges than actual words, and another that looked like pictures of squat little men who wanted to tunnel through my spleen and make a temple there — that I was sure they were all in different languages from each other.
Were I to take any from the shelves, I think it would be safe to say it would be nearly impossible to find a book I could even read, much less one that would be of value to me.
They’re all of value, you foolish child, you delectable innocent. They’re grimoires. I told you. They’re primers in the arcane — or more detailed tomes. They’re manuals for the creation, care, nurturing, and calling of dark souls. Would you like to peer into the depths? Here is your chance. Care to build a jhinn of smoke and despair? Your wish is that creature’s command.
