The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  And then, as more strength came into his hands than perhaps had ever been held by one person, he realized that he was deeply and truly fucked.

  The Mirror of Waking began to spin. Suspended on nothing at all that he could see, it began to turn into a blur, on several invisible axes. The air filled with its sound, and wind whipped over him.

  Dazen felt the lightwells under each of the seven Great Mirrors in their far-spread satrapies slowly uncorking themselves like shaken bottles of bubbly wine. They would blast perfect, pure light in their respective spectra, pulsing in time with each rotation of the Great Mirror behind Dazen. Thus, basically simultaneously, Dazen could direct light from every arc of the Seven Satrapies to any point and to as many points as he wished.

  He had under his will as much power to distribute as he could hope.

  But no matter how good it felt, he was damn near dead. Drafting white was like sprinting downhill—deceptively effortless, so long as he kept his feet under him. Giving him this much power was like giving that downhill sprinter a hard shove in the back.

  He’d done what no other drafter could have done. No other drafter in the world could’ve handled that much magic. No other drafter could’ve reached so far. Other than Kip, no one could’ve lifted so much as a single one of those towers alone.

  He’d raised five.

  But now? Even if he could handle the light, somehow feeling the colors needed despite his color-blindness, even if he could survive more than another few seconds of so much power, the Chromeria was far beyond the horizon. The mirrors themselves could settle into their old grooves to find one another, but it would be impossibly fine work to strike at a single foe on the island or to take the mirror array and use it himself.

  Dazen couldn’t strike down wights from here. He’d broken the bane’s control of magic, but he couldn’t fight those floating islands from here, couldn’t unwind their magic and drown the wights in their thousands. Not from here.

  He couldn’t save the Chromeria.

  He was a runner collapsing on the last lap, begging that someone carry him to the finish line.

  Without warning, the colors bubbled forth from their long imprisonment. Dazen didn’t know what else to do but throw them toward the Chromeria. First, they effervesced across the sky, but then he wrestled them back to a tight beam. One last act of white will.

  In the now tightening spray of colors, he felt a vortex reaching out, giving him a point to aim for. It was an answering Will, some desperate or brilliant drafter who intuited that now, in the middle of the night, after the wash of black luxin had freed the skies, she or he should mount the Prism’s mirror array.

  Maybe there was some hope after all—

  Dazen felt the colors sucked in, suddenly. One two threefourfi—all of them!

  A full-spectrum polychrome.

  A man—yes, it felt like a man—of chthonic strength and titanic will.

  Across the immensity of the space between them, their wills meshed like the gears that had raised the Great Mirrors, and without words they knew each other.

  Father.

  Dazen?

  Dazen felt a shock of revulsion ripple through his entire body. The gears ground to a halt.

  His father—and since when was Andross a full-spectrum polychrome?—his father wanted him to hand over control of the mirror array.

  On the one hand, it was the obvious solution. Andross was there. No one else was. Who else could handle the magic? Who else had the will and concentration and pure fortitude?

  But at the same time, it was a horror beyond countenancing.

  If he gave his father this power, Andross Guile would be seen rescuing everyone. He would be hailed the Lightbringer. If Dazen gave him this, everything Andross had ever done would be excused. Forgiven. No, not even forgiven, lauded.

  ‘Murdering children? That must have been so hard for him!’

  ‘Yes, yes, but he was wiser than the rest of us. He knew what was necessary to save the world. He did that for us. He was a man of vision. A great man, willing to do what was necessary for all the rest of us. A hero.’

  Everything in Dazen shouted No!

  Anyone but him!

  Tears of rage poured. Dazen felt a cooling reassurance from the old monster, and a repeated demand that Dazen give him control of the array. Now. Like that was more important than anything.

  You murderer! You killed Sevastian! You killed all that was good. We had everything and you killed it all. Don’t you dare say it was for the world. It was for you, your pride! You always had to be the best. You always had to be right. You always had to prove yourself smarter than anyone else! Always, always!

  But the distance was vast, and they couldn’t hear each other’s words.

  Orholam, please, no! Not this. Not this.

  Dazen held all the weight of the empire’s salvation in his hands. He knew to hold on to the magic any longer would kill him, but to give it to that beast was impossible. His fists knotted white.

  He felt a presence, and he opened his eyes.

  Orholam stood in front of him.

  He knew.

  As they locked gazes, Orholam’s left eye deepened and morphed, and Dazen saw standing there a throng, silent in their penitents’ garb, but adorned in their Sun Day finest cosmetics and jewels. More than two thousand women and men, each with Dazen’s knife wound over their hearts. His victims from all the Freeings. His peaceful accusers.

  Around them stood a vast multitude: the fathers who’d never dreamed their sons would die before them; the husbands so devastated at losing their wives they couldn’t even care for their children; those children, who’d lost their mothers; the orphans who’d had only one parent to begin with; the bereaved spouses hastily and unhappily remarried; the families who held together but always kept an empty seat at every dinner, every feast, and tried to tell themselves that it was all for the best, that this was Orholam’s will, though they could never fully believe it. Because it wasn’t.

  They were his victims all. Dazen’s murders had rippled out into the world in a swamping wave greater than he’d even imagined. Not one corner was untouched.

  He wept.

  He couldn’t look anymore, didn’t dare to keep on seeing the truth of what he’d done—but in tearing his gaze away, he was arrested by another image, this one in Orholam’s right eye. Andross cradling a dying Sevastian, the long blade yet in his hand, blood still leaking from Sevastian’s chest. ‘Did I do well, father? Did I make you proud?’ Sevastian asked.

  He died before the weeping Andross could find the will to speak.

  Then, a mercy: Orholam’s eyes were merely eyes once more. But there was only truth reflected in both His eyes, and none of it was soft.

  Orholam said, “I’ve forgiven your many, many murders. Will you forgive him one?”

  Chapter 138

  Though Gill was one of perhaps half a dozen people who understood what he was seeing, he felt no less awestruck than everyone else he saw turning to the north, their eyes widening, jaws slack.

  In the distance, rising into view from the Great Market, though the market itself was hidden by Ebon’s Hill, was a creature from legend. Outlined in fire, a titan emerged as from the earth itself, stretching skyward. It seemed to pluck a barrel from the ether, took it in its fist, and then hurled the thing, flaming, into the ground somewhere in the Blood Robes’ ranks. The flash of light was followed a moment later by the sound of the explosion.

  When Corvan Danavis had told them what he planned, he’d said, ‘Should be a last stand to remember.’

  And no one watching seemed to notice that the flash also showed the red titan had no body. The outline of fire was all it had—all it was—an outline of burning red luxin stretching high into the darkness of the night, grabbing barrels shot or lofted into the air. The titan moved with astonishing fluidity, and it really did throw the barrels of black powder, but with the benefit of forewarning and distance, Gill could see it for what it was—amazing
drafting.

  To everyone else, it was as if a great djinn had risen from the earth to intervene in the battle.

  But then, just as they emerged into the great avenue running from the Chromeria to the Great Market, getting their clearest view yet, Gill heard the sound of a pistol shot.

  His and Big Leo’s were two of the only faces that turned toward the sound. Near the base of Orholam’s Glare, a body fell dead, practically headless.

  High Lady Karris’s luxiat slave, Quentin, held two smoking pistols over the body, a surprising, powerful gravitas in the usually tremulous young man’s face.

  The Lightguards nearby were flinching back from the pistol shot, some cowering, others lifting their weapons instinctively, as if to block.

  They were holding Tisis Guile as if she were their prisoner.

  Now the Lightguards, shaken, were recovering. Some were pulling their own muskets toward Quentin, who’d dropped the pistols and had thrown his hands up in surrender.

  Someone was going to shoot him.

  “Stop!” Karris shouted beside Gill, and she ran toward the Lightguards. Gill ran beside her with Big Leo only one step behind, and the people crowding the square melted back for her and Gill and the rest of the Blackguards cutting through.

  Deprived of their leader, caught out in the open with everything going wrong for them, the Lightguards panicked. They dropped Lady Tisis. Some dropped their muskets. Half a dozen, including—Gill saw through the gaps in the crowds—that crippled bastard Aram, ran back toward the Chromeria, moving with surprising speed despite his crutch.

  And then they were there. Gill had expected to find some poor bastard dead, but instead he found two.

  The man Quentin had shot was bleeding still, blood somehow still pouring from his shattered braincase onto the paving stones, but slowing, slowing, even as they arrived. Lady Tisis had been punched several times at least, and looked in terrible condition emotionally—but not seriously wounded. Gill didn’t concern himself with her further for now.

  No one else appeared armed.

  Though many looked afraid of the Blackguards, of Karris, of glowering Big Leo with his great chain, no one in the crowd appeared threatening, or guilty, or shifty.

  A flash from behind him made Gill whip his head around. A last flash of red light from the Great Market, the following sound of a distant explosion, and now the titan was gone.

  High General Danavis had said he had a better than even chance of dying if he tried whatever he was planning—and almost no chance of not breaking the halo, which was really the same thing. Gill could only hope that he’d accomplished what he hoped, that he’d made those pagan bastards pay.

  Part of Gill wanted to urge Karris to take them all to the general, to help them in whatever desperate straits they were in. But that wasn’t his role. He was a trainer of the Blackguard, not a general.

  As he turned back to things nearer at hand, Gill realized that the young man whose wreck of a head was still pumping blood on the ground could only be Zymun Guile.

  He sought his ward’s reaction, but the White’s face was a cipher. She was already looking to Tisis, who was moving, pushing people out of her way.

  “Zymun was about to hang Tisis,” Quentin told Karris. “I was too late for… High Lady, I’m so sorry.”

  Tisis reached where she was going, kneeling, pulling a body into her lap, and the crowd melted back to let Karris see.

  To let Karris see Kip.

  Dead.

  Beside Gill, Big Leo dropped to his knees, dropped his big chain with a clatter to the stones.

  But Gill didn’t even look at him. Big Leo wasn’t his ward; Karris was. And if he lived a hundred years, Gill would never forget the expression on her face now.

  It wasn’t denial, for in her face there wasn’t rejection, but instead the note of confirmation of something suspected. He saw in her face her last hope for happiness die. It was as if she’d thought, At least I’ll have one good thing, and though it was less than I wanted, I shall make myself be content with this.

  And now she’d had that last good thing snatched away and smashed before her eyes.

  Gill turned away, telling himself his job was to scan for threats, telling himself that he should give her the dignity of mourning in private, telling himself he was the wrong person to comfort her in this. She should be comforted by a mother, a father, a husband—but she had none of these: they’d all been stolen from her.

  Well, then, surely she needed a friend her own age, not him, not a man who worshipped her, who was ten years younger. It would seem presumptuous to even step forward to try to be a comforter. He wasn’t the one who could be that for her—

  Suddenly, she keened, and her scream was so incoherent that everyone who heard it understood perfectly.

  Eyes turned away, faces filled with shame around the square.

  “NO!”

  She seemed to almost attack Tisis as she pulled Kip’s body into her own arms. She froze, trembling, muttering her denials under her breath as she stabbed fingers into his neck to feel for the pounding of life there.

  Finding none, she stood, Kip’s body sliding limp, gracelessly, out of her lap. She staggered as one drunk.

  Her eyes searched the crowd unseeing, wild.

  Gill felt a surge of shame. He should guard her in this, too. Protect her somehow from this shame. But he didn’t know what to do. When Gav had died, they’d known what to do for him, how to honor him; Karris had stood with him, somehow. But he had nothing.

  She keened again.

  He felt sick.

  She was the Iron White. They shouldn’t see her like this.

  “High Lady…” he said quietly.

  She shook with her weeping or with rage, the red rising in her against this evil day.

  Tisis looked up at her, haunted. “He didn’t try to save himself. Even to the end, he was trying to bring light to us. He was fighting for us. To the very end.”

  “No!” Karris shouted, decorum abandoned, spit flying. “This isn’t right! This isn’t happening!”

  “High Lady, please…”

  “You don’t understand! He’s not dead! He’s not dead. Oh, God…”

  Gill reached a hand out to steady her, but she slapped it away angrily.

  “Karris, please, the people—”

  “No!” she shouted at him. “Don’t you tell me about—YOU! I know you!”

  Suddenly her ire turned on a man in the crowd. An artisan by his dress. He looked familiar, but it took Gill a moment to place him. That was it: the kopi seller from her favorite little stand. Parian by his look, but Ilytian by his accent. Gill couldn’t remember his name or any other connection, though.

  Karris quieted as the little man came forward uncertainly. Speaking to the rest of them, she said, “Send everyone to go aid High General Danavis, if he yet lives. If he doesn’t, he’ll have left someone competent in charge.”

  “High Lady…”

  “That’s an order!” she bellowed. “I have work to do.”

  Gill waved to the others to go.

  Big Leo and his Mighty didn’t move, and Gill didn’t insist.

  “You, Jalal. You saved me,” Karris said quietly to the weathered old artisan. “That day those men beat me. Andross’s men. When they beat me to teach me a lesson. I thought… but it was you. You carried me back to the Chromeria, didn’t you?”

  The old man said, “Who are you, child?”

  “Who am I? Who am I?!”

  Even to Gill, it seemed a strange question. Was the old man blind?

  But Karris. Oh, his beloved High Lady Karris White. His Iron White was edging into hysteria.

  Tears spilled down his cheeks and he dashed them away. This was unseemly.

  “I’ll tell you who I am,” Karris said, cheeks wet, but with hidden heat like a coal burnt to white ash suddenly breathed upon to glow a sullen red. “I’m the fatherless daughter, the bereaved sister, I’m the widow, I’m the impure White, I’m the leade
r who failed—but there’s one thing I won’t be. I’m the slip of a girl who’ll run through brick walls, and I won’t be the mother without a son. Because who I am doesn’t matter.”

  “Oh, but you’re wrong.”

  But she barreled ahead. “You carried me through all this. You were there when I was broken down, beaten up. And you will not leave me now! You promised me that you’d repay me for the years the locusts have eaten. You promised! And I believe. Orea told me, and the Third Eye confirmed it. So you swore it! HE IS MY SON! And you will not let him be dead. You can’t!” she screamed the last. “You can’t, because if he’s dead, then you’re a liar. You can bring him back. I know you can! If you will it, you can give him back to me. And you have to, or your word is good for nothing!”

  She was barely keeping her feet.

  Gill’s heart lurched. War had broken strong men and indomitable women before, but Karris?

  Not his Iron White, please no.

  Did she even know how she sounded?

  “I don’t care!” Karris shouted at everyone around her as they looked away, embarrassed for her, brokenhearted. “I don’t care how you look at me. You think I’m crazy? I don’t matter! He does.” She pointed ferociously at the kopi seller. “You all think they could kill my Kip? You morons! You think they could kill Kip on Orholam’s Glare? Orholam’s Glare? How could Orholam look on my son with anything but favor? And mercy. And mercy. Please…”

  “High Lady, he’s dead. Let him go,” Gill said.

  Tears streamed down her face. “I failed, don’t you see? Don’t you understand?! I reached the end of myself, and I failed—but Orholam cannot. He cannot. It’s what I do now that matters, right? And I believe. I believe.”

  She sank to her knees and took the hand Tisis offered. And together they wept.

  “Please,” Karris begged the old man. “Please, tell them. Tell them who you are.”

  “Who do you say I am?”

  She looked up and through her tears she said, “I say you’re the one who holds the wind in his fists. I say you’re the one who wraps up the oceans in his cloak. I say you’re the one whose every word proves true. I say you’re the Lord of Lights. I say you’re stronger than death, and…” She sank farther, lying prostrate, her face on the very cobblestones, stretching her hands toward the old man as if he were unimaginably far away. “I say I’ll praise you, though you slay me.”