The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

  Like all battle plans, it didn’t go as planned.

  “Turns out High Luxiat Amazzal went down there himself, with a cane. He was beating men left and right as he reprimanded them. Quite impressive, I’m told.”

  “Good, good,” Kip said.

  Brave fools up and down the length of the seawall stayed at their gun emplacements rather than retreating, as if to erase their early paralysis by staying and firing until the bitter end.

  There was no way to save them. Once the armada touched the seawall itself, wights and drafters tore through the stakes and spikes and fire traps and other passive defenses and mounted the top of the wall with frightening speed.

  They poured down the length of the seawall like oil wicking up a lantern, dyeing it with their own colors and the red of blood as they massacred the gun crews one after another. One crew set off an explosion with the last of the black powder.

  The smoke lasted longer than the obstacles did. The drafters lay great planks of luxin down on the flames and debris, and their men charged right over it.

  Kip saw combined forces of drafters and nondrafting soldiers used in ways that he swore the White King must have learned from him.

  But even as the Blood Robes were wicking toward the killing field waiting for them at that end of the docks, the rest of the armada had pushed deep into the bay itself. Some of the sailors made the same kind of last stand, but mostly their cannons had been arrayed in such a way that they didn’t have the angle to shoot in toward the city, and the men retreated as they were supposed to, if not quite in the good order one might hope. Some were trampled by their panicked fellows, or torn off the plentiful ladders at the walls so that some vicious ally could reach the top a heartbeat earlier.

  They weren’t Kip’s men, and he hadn’t been here long enough to even start instilling discipline in these civilians, but it was still a helluva thing, watching men be killed by their friends.

  And there was nothing to be done about it.

  The big guns on the walls kept pounding the armada, which was all rafted together now. Ships that should have sunk were instead buoyed up by their fellows. It was probably a waste of powder, although it did help bait the trap.

  As more of the armada pressed against land and the docks and the tethered ships that had been the Chromeria’s artillery, more and more men charged out, making a beachhead.

  What struck Kip was that it was almost all men. Not drafters. Not wights.

  The pagans had achieved an almost perfect inversion of the Chromeria’s values: in battle the Chromeria would save its people by spending those who had gone wight and the drafters closest to breaking the halo first, because those were closest to death or insanity. The Blood Robes were saving their wights and drafters by spending their people, because their people were farthest from magic and godhood.

  All the White King’s promises of freedom and of a new order, a utopia where all would be made right, were belied.

  For the Chromeria, the privileges of power were paired with prices. Drafters were expected to stand in the first line of defense, as the promachos did. Human nature being what it is, they didn’t always do so, but that was the deal, the expectation. By contrast, the nine kings would happily rule a wasteland, if they could rule.

  Orholam damn them.

  How many of these invaders about to die just wanted a better life, or hadn’t dared to stand against the White King when his armies had marched through their lands and had pressed them into his armies? They weren’t quite innocent, but they were men, not monsters. They deserved a second chance, and Kip couldn’t afford to offer them one. Not right now.

  “Still not time to go?” Ben-hadad asked. He’d come back, as had others of the Mighty.

  Kip looked around again, though he still didn’t know what he was looking for. “No.”

  They’d pushed in far enough. Thousands of men were clambering over the moored ships and onto the docks, between the boathouses and warehouses.

  “Raise the red,” Kip commanded.

  The men had been waiting for it. They raised a red flag, and immediately, the cannons atop the walls began firing incendiary shot at the Chromeria’s abandoned ships and docks still moored within the bay. Pyrejelly had been drafted into barrels and hidden away yesterday. The last order for all the sailors abandoning their ships was to open those barrels and splatter it about.

  The Blood Robes had surely suspected fire, but they expected nothing as ferocious as the holocaust that swept in upon them.

  The men and women of Big Jasper stood agape, watching a spectacle such as they would never see again if they lived a hundred years. The intensity of the flames was matched only by the intensity of the screams as every dock, every ship, and the whole length of the seawall went up in sudden flames. In a few places, the incendiary luxin hadn’t been set or had failed, but it didn’t matter. The flames jumped gaps and burned everything.

  “Fire crews ready?” Kip asked.

  “Yes, sir. Watching the wind carefully and spread out appropriately. Looks like it’s in our favor.”

  One of the worst things about commanding was that sometimes you see what’s going to happen some minutes hence, and you know how to stop it, and there’s time to stop it, but your people won’t listen to you.

  Such was the commander of the armada’s plight.

  Kip could see him waving his arms and screaming. The drafters had made his situation much worse by connecting the ships. With no incendiaries aboard, the floating-island armada caught fire far more slowly than the docks had, but they were lashed together. They couldn’t push apart from one another to make gaps too large for the fire to pass. The ones at the back were having great difficulty breaking free to retreat.

  After a few minutes, though, he rallied enough drafters and officers, and cut deep, setting a fire line where he gave up fully a quarter of his fleet. At this line, they would break away from the island and abandon all those on the side nearer to Big Jasper.

  It was what Kip had been waiting for.

  “Catapults, go,” Kip said. The crews knew where to aim.

  Catapults. Who used catapults in the age of gunpowder? It was one of Corvan’s discoveries when he did a personal inventory of the Jaspers’ defenses. They’d been kept for decades beyond their obsolescence by Carver Black, who couldn’t bear to sell them off for a pittance for lumber, yet hadn’t been able to replace them all on the meager budget he had to buy cannon.

  The catapults now hurled barrels of red luxin and sub-red charges skyward and onto the armada—behind the lines where all the drafters and officers were working. They exploded in the air, or even in the water, flinging pyrejelly everywhere on the ships and even floating on the waves.

  Suddenly, those people, the only ones on the armada under control and not panicking, had fire before them and fire behind. They were cut off.

  Kip and Corvan had expected to get a quarter to a third of all the attackers—though only half of the armada had attacked this side of Big Jasper. They’d expected a retreat, and then after the fires died down, a second attack later in the day. They’d arranged killing grounds and lines of retreat, choke points and ambushes.

  They weren’t going to be using any of those. Not on this side of the island. With the fires still roaring and men still screaming their despair and pain, Kip sent half his army to the other side of the island, and a messenger to High General Danavis asking for orders.

  Most of the observers didn’t realize it yet, but there would be no fighting on this side of Big Jasper for at least a few hours. They’d already won the first round here. This part of the armada was dead. The poor bastards just had to decide if they went by fire or water.

  The rest of the armada wasn’t going to attack here again, not until the fires had gone out, not until they could reorganize.

  It was a great victory.

  But Kip’s heart was as light as a millstone.

  “What’s he doing?” Ben-hadad asked. He meant Koios.

&
nbsp; Ben understood the heart of the problem. Karris had told them that Koios wanted to burn the whole world down and start over, that he didn’t care how big his losses were, but Kip hadn’t known if he should believe that—calling your enemy’s every failure somehow part of a brilliant larger plan was more likely to be paranoia than anything; after all, Koios’s first attack could well have succeeded.

  But maybe paranoia was the right response. Why hadn’t Koios raised all the bane?

  “If he wins with his first assault, he seems invincible in the field,” Kip said. “But if he loses, and then ultimately wins when he attacks with the bane, he shows his future subjects that nothing can stand against his magic.”

  Ben-hadad wrinkled his nose. “Or he just loused up the incredibly difficult task of a combined amphibious and magical assault because he met a strong defense.”

  Kip shrugged, admitting that was possible, too. All he knew was that his fight wasn’t over; his fight had barely begun. Everything all the Chromeria’s people had accomplished here could be wiped out in a moment if Kip failed.

  Behind Kip, someone cleared his throat.

  “High Lord, I come from Promachos Andross Guile,” a young man reported. “He requires your presence at the Chromeria. You are to join him at the back dock. He said it has to do with the Lightbringer.”

  “Now?” Kip said. “The plan was that I go to the mirrors next.”

  “There have also been… developments with the Prism-elect.”

  Kip swore under his breath. Was Andross actually trying to make good on his bet? Or was it a trap?

  It was surely past time for Kip to take over the mirrors. But the promachos was the ultimate authority in a war. If Kip was going to start disobeying him now, he’d have to do it for some better reason than simple gut instinct.

  “Sir, my apologies,” a young woman interrupted, coming in. “A message from High General Danavis. He says to send half your men to West Bay.”

  “Already done,” Kip said.

  “Also, he says under absolutely no circumstances should you go to the Chromeria. There have been developments with the Prism-elect.”

  “What the hell?” Kip asked.

  “Danavis said no more, sir,” the woman said, but her face was pained.

  “But you know more than that. Tell me,” Kip demanded.

  “The Prism-elect had himself declared Prism, and we’ve heard there was some kind of scuffle or, um, skirmish? between Lightguards loyal to Zymun and Blackguards loyal to the White.”

  Kip surveyed his Mighty: goofy Ferkudi, now grim; Winsen, languorous; Ben-hadad, intense; Big Leo, sinisterly smirking. They would follow him to hell and back. Only Kip couldn’t promise the ‘back’ part, not today.

  “Well, obviously, High General Danavis has the right of it,” Kip said. “It’s madness to go to the Chromeria and charge into some situation we know so little about.”

  He looked around at his men.

  “So we’re going?” Big Leo asked.

  Ferkudi said, “The horses are already saddled.”

  Chapter 113

  “I see what you’re doing,” Gavin growled.

  They held each other, arms locked, heads against each other’s necks, bodies crouching low—though in their exhaustion, not so low as proper wrestling form dictated. Lucidonius grunted, tried to butt his head against Gavin’s cheekbone, but with their closeness, he couldn’t get any force into it.

  “You think I don’t know?” Gavin demanded.

  Lucidonius only drove him in a circle with little steps.

  The sun had swollen fat with the day’s many injuries. It limped now along the last of its lonely path home, hemorrhaging gouts of light, spattering streaky cirrus clouds with arterial glory, seeking some safety, but its horizon-home held only its warm, waiting deathbed.

  Lucidonius said nothing. His eyes were dimming with the dimming of the sun, and though they still burned, Gavin’s gamble was paying off: Lucidonius was weakening.

  He fought with merely a man’s strength now, while Gavin swelled stronger. From beneath the smooth skin of his practiced social proprieties, the day’s battle had made his long-sunken veins of rage jut forth, declaiming his righteous fury at the god who lied.

  “The mirror!” Gavin snarled. They were within a few steps of it. Lucidonius had ever angled them back toward it, over the course of the year’s longest day. “I know what it is.”

  He was a black drafter. Born that way. Born special. To have that ability wasn’t a curse. Nor a blessing, either, for to call it a blessing assumed there is one who gives the blessing. This simply was, an accident of birth or propitious parentage or both. It was simply another way Gavin was different, better than others, yes, he’d not be afraid to say it now. Better, but also isolated from them thereby. He was also unhappier than those blind, those deceived.

  His way was harder. He could see what others couldn’t—that wasn’t fair. But now, through the black gem—which was nothing less than a physical manifestation of all that made Gavin Gavin—he saw that the mirror itself was an elaborate trap for him. The godling had come from the mirror. It was a portal to his home. It was where he had power.

  Gavin said, “It’s not just mockery, is it? It’s much—”

  Lucidonius must have thought Gavin would push into his home. Gavin would invade, to try to find what had given Lucidonius the power of a god and take it. But the god would have all his defenses in there.

  The mirror would be where Gavin could be trapped, slain.

  Gavin took some breaths as Lucidonius shifted his grip on a sweaty shoulder, trying to get some advantage. “It’s even more insidious than that, isn’t it?”

  “You see punishment where there is mercy,” Lucidonius said, as if Gavin were a tremendous disappointment.

  “Mercy? You’ve arranged this! It’s all perfectly designed for me. Even you. Your appearance itself! I’m the Prism! You think I don’t know what an elaborate deception looks like?!”

  “On the contrary.” Lucidonius breathed raggedly into his ear. “You are the very son of deception. And it’s time for that to end.”

  And then he collapsed.

  Gavin staggered into him, and then over him, tripping and tumbling over the man. But Lucidonius grabbed his leg as Gavin fell, and wrenched on it, twisting to slam him into the ground.

  There was a strain and shooting pain as Gavin’s hip almost popped out of its socket, but Lucidonius’s hands slipped. Gavin’s back hit the ground, and Lucidonius was pulled off balance. His grip had now slid down to Gavin’s foot. But he didn’t let go. He was pulled down, losing his balance, aiming a knee—

  Gavin caught him with both feet.

  Then he launched the man off him toward the mirror, kicking both legs as hard as he could.

  Lucidonius slammed into the Great Mirror, and the entire surface wobbled and deformed. His whole body seemed to sink into it a little.

  Instead of leaping for the sword, Gavin leapt forward, trying to press his advantage. He punched Lucidonius in the stomach, but the muscles there were taut, tensed for the impact. Gavin’s left-handed uppercut missed its huge swing at Lucidonius’s chin, and he stumbled forward.

  To avoid even touching the mirror, Gavin slammed his forearm into Lucidonius’s chest in order to regain his balance. But as the mirror rippled once from the force of Lucidonius’s back smacking into it again, rather than trying to break free, the man hugged Gavin’s forearm to his chest.

  He rolled sideways, trying to throw Gavin into the mirror.

  Gavin threw up his right hand to stop himself—

  Once, on a bitterly cold morning in the mountains of Paria when he was first Prism, Gavin had followed the blue wight he was hunting out onto a frozen pond. Ever since a blue had murdered his brother Sevastian, he’d always held a special hatred for them. It had made him foolish that day. The pond was a trap. The wight’s magic had strengthened the ice—for himself. Gavin would never forget the feeling of the ice holding his hesitant
first steps easily, but then flexing under his weight, and suddenly buckling.

  His magic had saved him that day.

  He had none now. Slapping his hand against the mirror felt exactly the same as the ice had felt that day. Where for Lucidonius the mirror seemed gelatinous, forgiving, for Gavin it was frozen, momentarily stable. His hand stopped, held his weight from an icy plunge as his palm tingled, bits of lightning shooting up his forearm, enervating it.

  The mirror cracked under his hand like the sound of a musket shot. Gavin snatched his hand away. The mirror was a death trap. Lucidonius wanted to obliterate him.

  The moment itched a memory in him, of a dream where he’d stood on the top of a tower, as a giant approached—but there was no time!

  I need more time! he’d shouted in his dream.

  He turned now and saw Lucidonius, picking up the sword.

  Gavin’s heart dropped. He’d been distracted mere seconds, but it had been seconds too long.

  But then he saw something worse than seeing his foe armed: Lucidonius turned. His eyes were coals now, still-hot mirrors of the descending sun, but no longer so blindingly bright that they obscured what his face looked like.

  “Fuck you!” Gavin roared at the sight of that face. “You want me to think I’m losing my mind!”

  “Again,” the man said quietly.

  “Yes, again! You drove me to madness once, Orholam. Your lies. You cost me everything! And now, now you come back?!” Somehow, Gavin slipped from addressing the godling as Lucidonius to Orholam once more.

  It wasn’t a perfect facsimile, but the god wore a face that could have been Gavin’s own.

  “I’m not your shadow, Dazen,” the god said. “You’re mine. You are a dim reflection of what you could have been.”

  “Lies. From you, Orholam. I took such joy in you when I was a child. When I was a boy, I thought I was going to be a luxiat, do you know that? The incense. The ceremony. The hymns. I loved it all. Do you remember? Or did you even notice me then? And then, after I became Prism, when I celebrated the highest and holiest days, they were bitter gall to me. Because I knew! And now you stand, wearing that face like mine, stepping from a mirror? As if I fight myself here? As if I’m mad already? But I see clearly now. I am the Black Prism. I am the dark center of creation. And now the world’s light and life will feed me as it has fed you for four hundred years, Lucidonius. I will be immortal as you are.”