Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [206]
They had walked for hours now, too many to count, and when Damien raised up his lantern to look at Tarrant’s face, he could see a brief flicker of pain tense across his brow with each step. It did no good to suggest that such pain would only intensify if he refused to pace himself properly. The one or two times that Damien even dared to hint at such a truth, Tarrant glared at him with a venom that would have done his old self proud, as if the suggestion that they take a few minutes to recoup were not only foolish, but deeply offensive.
“Look,” the ex-priest said at last, when they paused once more to eat a portion of his dwindling supplies. “They can’t find this secret place of yours, right? And they’re not going to burn the Forest until they’re safely out of it, which’ll take days at best.” He leaned back against the cold stone wall, his muscles throbbing painfully as he shifted his weight. “So we’ve got a little time to pace ourselves. We can spare a few minutes to rest. Just long enough to get a second wind.” And he added dryly, “Living people do that kind of thing, you know.”
Tarrant stared at him for a long moment, then silently upended the canteen and swallowed one more precious bit of its contents. It was their last such container, Damien noted; somewhere they were going to have to find more water, and soon. Tarrant capped the canteen with meticulous care and hung its strap about his shoulder, for once not assuming that Damien would carry it.
“They intend to blow up the keep,” he said. And he began to walk down the tunnel again with a quick, lop-sided stride.
“Blow up?” For a minute he was too shocked to move. Then he had to run a few steps to catch up to Tarrant, and for a moment that left him no breath for words. “You mean, as in explosives?”
“That is the usual procedure.”
He grabbed Tarrant by the arm, jerking him to a stop. “Are you telling me that while we’re in there sorting through your notebooks the entire keep is going to come crashing down on our heads?”
A faint ghost of a smile flitted across his face. “I do hope our timing will be better than that.”
“These are books we’re going after.” His voice was low but his tone was fierce. “Books, Gerald! I appreciate how important they are, but that doesn’t make them worth dying for. I don’t mind risking my life to save a life—or even to preserve an ideal—but to risk something like that for a pile of books—”
“Those books are a gateway to the future,” he said sharply. “A dictionary of translation between our own species and that of the Iezu’s maker, which will allow us take a step our Terran ancestors never even dreamed of. And if you’re correct about the changes in the fae ... if, in fact, humans will not be able to Work to gain knowledge... then that gateway might never be accessible again. Ever. If we let those books be destroyed now, our descendants will be doomed to centuries of trial-and-error guesswork. And who can tell how much that will net them? The knowledge we sacrifice today may be lost forever—”
“And you’d be willing to risk death for that?” he demanded. “For knowledge?”
“I did once before,” he pointed out. “Perhaps the second time is easier.”
He smoothed the fabric of his sleeve where Damien had crushed it, but bound no fae with the gesture; the wrinkles remained. “Stay here, if you like. The way out will be safe soon enough.” He dropped the canteen strap off his shoulder and let the metal container fall to the floor; in the smooth-walled tunnel the impact echoed like a gunshot. “I’ll go alone.”
“Like hell you will.” Damien reached down to catch up the canteen. Tarrant was moving quickly; he had to jog to catch up with him. “Who’ll get you out of trouble next time if I’m not there?”
The Hunter made no answer.
The tunnel began