The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  “After that I used black luxin again, on purpose. To wipe out some memories. And I… what I was left with was my hero worship for my big brother. Like remembering that night in the storm. I thought he was the perfect Prism, that I could never measure up to him. I tried to be what I thought he’d been. And in the last couple years… I’ve seen and started to remember all the terrible shit my brother did. His cruelty. His meanness and fear. Some of it excusable because he was a child and scared and… and some of it not, not at all, regardless. And you know, learning about who he really was—seeing the truth about him? It’s been like losing him all over again. My family was shit, and I was shit, but I had a hero, and then I lost him for a second time. He wasn’t ever who I’d thought he was. He did some awful, awful shit I can never forgive him for. But at the same time… he wasn’t all bad. He was still the big brother who gave me his cloak.”

  Gavin had to swallow again.

  “So I guess, you know, I guess I miss my big brother. And I miss Sevastian. And I miss my mother, who never let me in all the way, even though she loved me. I trusted her and she had my back, but she didn’t trust me. Not with the truth. She was ashamed, I guess. And I miss my father, or the man he was before all this… I miss the man he should’ve become. The grandfather he should’ve been to Kip. I miss Kip, and the father I should’ve become for him. I miss all the things I cost me. I miss Karris, and the great years I should’ve had with her. I miss Corvan, who was my best friend, and who I abandoned. I… shit. I miss things that never were and mourn things that ought to have been. Ridiculous, huh? It doesn’t matter now. It’s too late.”

  Gavin tried to shake it off, finally turning to look at the old prophet with a lopsided half grin. “So, should I complain some more about my unhappy decades as the richest, most powerful and admired man in the world? It’s all pretty much the same, though: ‘Ugh, all this rich food doesn’t taste good while I’m feeling so guilty.’ ‘Poor me! All these women want me, but I’m in love with one who I’ve given good reason to hate me.’ The story’s a real tearjerker! But what about you? What were you doing then, Orholam? Oh, you were enslaved and chained to the oar all those years? Beaten daily, nearly drowned a dozen times? Yeah… that does sound almost as bad as I had it. So, you know, maybe I can be done.” He turned up the corners of his mouth and gestured over to the old man. “But really. I’ve gone on enough. What was your family like before the whole call-to-prophecy-and-running-away thing happened? What do you miss?”

  Orholam cocked his head, lips curling in a smile. “Can I tell you a story?”

  “It is your turn,” Gavin said.

  “Not my story.”

  “Meh, it’s still your turn. Maybe a cryptic parable will do me good.” Gavin doubted it, but he owed the old man this much, and he was embarrassed at how he’d gone on.

  Orholam said, “After Dazen Guile killed his brother at Sundered Rock, he built a prison. Not one cell or two, but an eightfold prison.”

  “Uh. Look, I know this story. How ’bout that cryptic parable instead? A prophecy? You can even make it rhyme. I can’t even tell you how ready I am for some awkward rhyming couplets that don’t quite fit a meter.”

  Orholam said nothing, and Gavin felt like an asshole. “I just said I’d listen, and I interrupted first thing, didn’t I?”

  Orholam said nothing.

  Gavin sighed. “I built it because I went mad. I wasted—”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, no?”

  “In your climb through the seven circles to reach this, the roof of the world, you’ve seen that you were worse than you knew. It’s time for you to see that you were also better.”

  “Better?”

  “Dazen built those prisons because he knew what men had wrought. In seeking immortality and power, man had released the infernals into this world. The gods of old, the immortals, could walk here. The Chromeria had obscured the knowledge as well as it could, but such could not be hidden forever. And so Dazen dedicated himself, alone, to fighting those whom the Chromeria denies even exist. He discovered that to wield the greatest power, the infernals have to partner with a human host, a drafter who will share her or his body with them. And so to expiate his sins, Dazen became a hunter. Not a hunter of wights, but rather of the powers who prey upon those dying drafters called wights, all over the world.”

  “This… isn’t…”

  “He couldn’t kill these gods. That took something beyond him, something he didn’t have, the Blinding Knife, which his brother and father had lost. But he, who so often did what others called impossible, did the impossible once more. With the greatest secrecy and cunning, one at a time, he imprisoned eight of the immortals. One for each of the seven Chromeria-recognized colors, and one of the greater elohim in the black prison. Chi and paryl were too rare or too careful for him to find, and white, he was certain, was a myth.”

  “What are you—” But Gavin’s throat was tight. It was hard to breathe. Why was it hard to breathe?

  Orholam said, “So it was that after he had imprisoned these immortals, he came to believe that the only person who might undo his labors was he himself, for he knew himself corruptible and corrupted already. So rather than seek more power, this remarkable hero sought to throw his power away: he brought death and oblivion into his own heart. This true Prism sacrificed what was more precious to him than even his own life—he sacrificed his Guile memory and his own reputation, even in his own mind.”

  “No,” Gavin said. He could barely form words over the encroaching tears, could barely breathe. It was impossible. It was lies. “No. That’s all very flattering, but you don’t know. You don’t know me.”

  But then he remembered the voices from his prisons. They hadn’t known him. They hadn’t spoken quite right. If he’d cast bits of himself into those walls, they’d have spoken to him differently. The infernals cast into those walls hadn’t known what lies the others had told him, so each had tried its own tack against him, bluffing.

  The last one had cursed him, called him That was a tongue Gavin had never known, nor Dazen, either. It was a word not made for human throats. It was the slip that should have given the whole game away.

  Gavin had hunted wights, so he remembered. He’d wanted to eliminate all the blue wights in the world. That much made sense, after Sevastian, but he’d not hunted only blues; he’d hunted every color. Why?

  Had it been simple equanimity? A feeling of duty to all of the Seven Satrapies? But after a while, he’d stopped going so often after certain colors, hadn’t he? He’d let local drafters or the Blackguards handle such things, sometimes, unless it was on his way somewhere else. But then he’d still insisted on going alone to others. Totally alone. Sometimes.

  They’d always been furious. Orea Pullawr had been furious. Why would he endanger himself like that? Why go alone? Why go alone sometimes but not other times?

  Because he had to be alone when he tried to trap an infernal. Because he could protect himself from their malign will, but he couldn’t protect anyone who went with him. Anyone who went with him, he might have to kill himself.

  It was true.

  “No,” he said. “I killed for power. I’m the bad guy. I’ve always been the bad guy.”

  “You’ve lost a lot of yourself. It’s what evil does: it promises an easy way out of one problem at the cost of causing worse ones. But I saw you at the hippodrome.”

  “The hippodrome? When they put out my eye? You were there?”

  “You didn’t draft black. And you wanted to. You knew you could.”

  “Good thing, right? Lucky. It would have killed Karris. And Ironfist. I mean, fuck all the rest of the tens of thousands of people there. Me, I only care about my friends.” He bared his teeth, but couldn’t make it a smile.

  “You did the right thing. And it cost you your eye, but you believed it was going to cost you both your eyes and your life. It did save Karris and Ironfist—but you didn’t know it was going to do that. That
wasn’t why you held back. The world may never know or understand, but that was your greatest moment. Dazen, you laid down your life for people jeering at you and enjoying your torture.”

  “I was broken. I just couldn’t do it again.”

  “And you didn’t use it to kill your father.”

  “A mistake.”

  “You despised the pilgrimage, and yet you tried to take it honestly.”

  “Turns out I’m none too bright,” Gavin said.

  “Did you find your answer?”

  Gavin spluttered a half laugh. “Ha. That would be no. And it would also be plural. Answers. Not just one. A million questions, and no one even here to listen to me whinging.”

  “No. There’s only the one question.”

  “Really? And that would be…?” Gavin asked.

  “Can I show you something?”

  “Uh… is that the question? Because I’m pretty sure that wasn’t my question. Nope. Not just ‘pretty sure.’ Sure. Sure, sure.”

  “Can I show you something?” Orholam repeated, insistent.

  “Only if it looks good in black and white,” Gavin said. “Maybe with some red thrown in for flavor?”

  The old man reached out a gnarled hand, still nearly as callused as it had been when they’d pulled an oar together.

  Gavin hesitated for a moment, then took it. How was the old guy going to—

  Chapter 118

  ~How the Simple Confound~

  (One year ago.)

  “You think you’re special, don’t you?” Overseer Ysabel says.

  “No, Mistress.”

  “Do you know why you think you’re special, Alvaro?”

  I’ve only heard you ask this of half the mirror slaves in the tower. “I don’t think I’m special, Mistress. I only wanted to watch the execution. I’ll stay out of the way, I promise.”

  Of any of us, the overseer is the only one who thinks she’s special. She claims she was taken into slavery illegally, and maybe it’s true. You have to be smart, dextrous, and lucky to get assigned to the big mirrors in the Chromeria’s towers. Ysabel isn’t smart or dextrous, so we’ve all decided she must be very, very lucky. Some say she was really pretty when she first arrived. I can’t see it. Maybe she’s just a good bluffer: Ysabel pretends to be from the lower nobility. She claims her name’s Ysabel Elos, and her big brother Gaspar is going to come save her from this life. Any day now.

  Any day. Right.

  She’s been saying that since before my parents sold me into this life after their brewery burned down and they lost everything. It was arson, but good luck convincing a magistrate of that on Big Jasper. Tyreans don’t win lawsuits against their Ruthgari competitors. Not here. So my parents signed the forged documents saying I’d been taken in war, and took the meager sum. They figured slavery for one of us was better than starvation for all of us.

  I was the smartest and quickest of my siblings, already able to read and good with an abacus. They could get twice as much for me as for any of the others, and I’m the big brother. It’s my job to protect the others. I volunteered.

  We’re all slaves here. Everyone’s got a tale of woe. But even slaves look down on liars like Ysabel ‘Elos.’ She’s a petty tyrant. Our work is good and necessary. We bring light into darkness. But Ysabel is a bloody stain on her office, besmirching what should be pure.

  She sees it on my face: how I despise her.

  She picks up her small cat-o’-nine-tails.

  All the other overseers use only unbraided, uncured leather in their cats. It has been decreed by the master of the Chromeria’s lands and properties High Lord Carver Black himself, that we not be whipped like common slaves. We’re slaves, but we’re precious ones. Privileged. We work alongside our manumitted older brothers and sisters who’ve bought their papers, and came back to work, now paid triple. We’ve all been educated in optics and angles and even enough magic to understand our drafters’ needs and operations. We’re highly trained so as to keep all the mechanisms in perfect repair, from clearing lightwells to greasing the gears, and ordering new ones fit to exacting specifications, inspecting, and then replacing them. Most of all, we’re the keepers of the precious Great Mirrors themselves, which we polish with vinegar and water and special heavy silk cloths up to eight times every day.

  Other lesser slaves are given certain holy days off. They pity us because we take none. They don’t understand. Our duty is holy, and it is most important at the holiest times. With the heat and light these mirrors endure, a dirty mirror could shatter on any day, but the risk is doubled on hot, sunny days, and doubled again during executions, such as today, where all the minor mirrors add their full intensity to the sun’s own.

  Lowly as we are, we direct Orholam’s Eye.

  Slaves we are, but we’re star-keepers. We’re not to be beaten like common field hands.

  A smack with nine loose, soft cords is allowed to rouse anyone whose attention is wandering. But Carver Black gets furious when anyone damages valuable property, and we are surely some of the Chromeria’s most valuable property of all.

  But Overseer Ysabel doesn’t care. She’s boiled her cat-o’-nine-tails hard, and to one of those tails, she’s tied an old piece of broken mirror. You might get hit half a dozen times and never get caught with that shard. Or it might get you every time, slashing or even sticking into your flesh before being torn free.

  “Execution’s starting, Mistress,” one of the older men says quickly. Amadis pretends not to even be aware of me, but I know it’s an attempted rescue.

  The overseer steps toward the edge of the tower, and I’m tempted to charge her back and push her out of the tower. Amadis glances at me and shakes his head.

  He’s right. I’m no Guile, to get away with such things. They’d put me up on Orholam’s Glare myself if I murdered an overseer.

  In fact, I might not be the only one to die. Slave rebellions always meet brutal ends.

  The overseer comes back. “They’re jabbering, like they do. We’ll have to be quick. Tunic.”

  The others go silent. Overseer Ysabel whips a slave’s buttocks when she intends to draw blood and doesn’t want Carver Black to see it on our bodies afterward. The humiliation is merely a bonus for her.

  I do her one better, though. I hitch up my tunic and pull down not just my trousers but also my underclothes. I stick my rear end out at her to let her know my opinion of her.

  Gasps go up.

  I’m a damned fool.

  I know she’s going to beat me terribly. Some brighter part of me is shrieking about the stupidity of presenting one’s naked underside to a savage woman intent on humiliating me. I will my stones to pull up into my body. Orholam have mercy on the stupid and insane.

  “No disrespect, Overseer,” I say. It’s much too late, though. “You said we were in a hurry. Just wanted to make it easier for you to give me the beating I deserve quickly. And I want to keep my underthings from getting shredded. They’re my only pair, and I’m a clumsy hand with stitchery.”

  Even as I lie, I know it’s not very convincing. I can’t put my heart into it.

  My attitude’ll get me killed someday. They’ve all told me that.

  Please not today.

  I don’t dare turn around to see her face, but my heart is straining with hope that she’ll run out of time and that the execution will call her to deal with me later—Maybe I can run away!—when the cat-o’-nine-tails falls.

  It’s never good… but this is not bad. And just the once.

  “Do you know why you think you’re special?” she asks quietly, and I know we’re not even close to finished.

  I should stall, but the words escape before I think of it. “Why, Mistress?”

  “Because you’re an arrogant little shit,” she says. She laughs like hell’s own gatekeeper.

  She whips me harder than I’ve ever been whipped in my life. My breath leaps from my throat, tears to my eyes. Then again. Forehand and backhand she strikes, as hard as she c
an.

  The mirror slaves are dead silent. Under the fires, I feel my skin slice open. Feel hot liquid pouring down my legs.

  “Ow, fuck!” she says. The lashes stop.

  I fall to my knees.

  When I dare to turn, I see her holding her forearm. She’s been hitting me so hard, she hurt herself.

  I can’t even find thoughts, though. Not even to mock her.

  “Mistress, please,” Amadis says. “It’s enough. There’s so much blood. He won’t be able to hide it from High Lord Black if you do any more. He’ll miss shifts as it is!”

  “No, he won’t!” Overseer Ysabel shouts. She slaps my face and I crash to the ground.

  I hear her cursing when I regain my senses. She’s still holding her forearm.

  The stupid cow just hit me with the same arm she’s injured.

  I stay down, weeping. There’s no pride left in me to hold back tears.

  “Get up! Now! Or it’ll be forty more,” she barks at me. “Amadis, you take the ‘cat’! You get to give the rest of the lashes for your attitude.”

  He moves slowly, but she knows that game. Every slave knows that game. She kicks him.

  I stand as quickly as I can. I hate her. I hate living this life. I’ve only made it all worse for myself. She’ll beat me to death and push me down one of the lightwells. It’s happened before.

  “Ten more, now, as hard as you can, or I’ll double it and you’ll get them, too,” the overseer says.

  Amadis hits me. Hard. I almost fall down. Though he’s hit me with the side with no glass so he won’t maim me, he’s much stronger than the overseer.