The Burning White

by Brent Weeks

* * *

  It took them a few minutes to make it to the Prism’s and White’s level of the tower. There were no Blackguards anywhere.

  They made quite the pair, walking arm in arm, supporting each other as they staggered down the eerily empty halls: Teia, with Kip’s chain-spear, Sorry, around her waist and one of Felia Guile’s long silk scarves wound several times around her head and tied tight over the dark spectacles she was wearing, layer on layer meant to protect her eyes; and the trembling Promachos Andross Guile, who’d stripped off his puke-encrusted tunic but hadn’t realized he still had stray vomitus in his beard.

  She wasn’t gonna tell him, either.

  Several minutes ago, after assuring her she’d be able to draft a small amount without any problems despite the lacrimae sanguinis, he’d seemed pleasantly surprised when she’d done just that—and hadn’t keeled over dead.

  He hadn’t known. Not for sure.

  As they climbed the stairs to the door leading out to the rooftop, Andross said, “If she becomes aware of your presence, you’re dead, you understand? I can silence the hinges of this door if you can’t, but she may well have set up some additional safeguards, if not traps—”

  Then everything went black.

  Not just dark. Everything went the black of the grave. Teia wondered for a moment if some light source had triggered the lacrimae sanguinis and this was death, this was her brain blowing out and darkness closing over her forever.

  And then light returned. Albeit only the light of paryl cast from Teia’s own hand. She heard her own gasping breaths echoed by Andross’s. He’d been as scared shitless as she was. “What was that?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, “That was black luxin. An incredible amount—it means she’ll be weak. Quick! Go!”

  Teia staggered up the stairs at a half jog. There was no door. It lay in fragments.

  The report of a musket made her drop to the ground, though if it had been on target, it would have been way too late.

  Teia tried to roll, but merely flopped, her body too weak to do what her mind commanded. She struggled to rise.

  The mirror array was empty, but the harness still swung on its hinges. She heard the clang of a dropped musket as she finally stood.

  A moment later, so belatedly she couldn’t believe she was still alive, she finally remembered and went invisible. She must be in worse shape than she thought.

  But it didn’t matter. Aliviana Danavis was staggering around the tower, face and arms encrusted with superviolet, some of it bleeding where it connected with her skin.

  “Gavin Guile!” the woman cried. “He makes the very immortals tremble! What has he done? How could he—? So much… so much black. I’ve never… Ahh!”

  She flung a hundred daggers of superviolet toward the open door, as if the feat were an afterthought. They rattled into the stones behind where Teia had been standing moments before like an iron rain.

  Teia ran toward her.

  She had no weapons. She had no weapons! She hadn’t drawn the chain-spear off her waist. What was she thinking?

  But the Ferrilux seemed to be collecting her wits already. “Yes, yes, you’re right. Of course you’re right. I—What? Who’s coming? No, you mayn’t take control! I know your—”

  And then Teia crashed into her—and shoved hard, launching her off the rooftop.

  Teia stepped to the edge, and as she passed out of sight, Aliviana still seemed to be falling fast—but using only paryl as she was, Teia couldn’t see all the way to the ground.

  Moments later, she heard the crunch of a footstep behind her.

  “Well, color me less than impressed.”

  “Is she dead?” Teia asked. “I can’t see that far.”

  “I can’t see her body from this angle,” Andross said. “And if you think I’m going to lean out really far for you…”

  “I’m not gonna murder you!” Teia said.

  “And I’m not gonna bet on you. Made that mistake once.”

  “Yeah, fuck you. That was me as the bet, not you betting on me.”

  “Fair point. I’ll let the disrespect pass unpunished for that and your… reasonably good service here. The job’s done, or done enough. One hopes, anyway. I never believe an enemy dead when I can’t see the body myself. But you may go. Crawl back in your hole and die, or try to live. You seem like you could be useful. If you live, I’ll have work for you in the days to come.”

  She turned, her heart falling. If she lived, now she was to be Andross Guile’s assassin?

  Was there really no way out?

  “Oh,” Andross interrupted. “Before you go. Help me get strapped in, would you? I have to see if I can figure out what the Ferrilux was trying to do.”

  Chapter 134

  “Is the black powder ready?” Corvan asked. The battle was raging at the barricades all around the Great Fountain. Corvan’s drafters had all burned through their mag torches. The Cwn y Wawr war hounds had each fought like a dozen men, but now every one of them bore wounds and was exhausted, panting, those intelligent eyes seeming to bear full knowledge of their coming deaths. The men Kip had recruited from Daragh the Coward’s forces had fought as if every last one of them wanted to win medals, and every last one of them would’ve earned one, too.

  But the end was coming, and they knew it, and those hard men seemed to have no regrets that this was how they would face it.

  “Yes, sir, powder’s ready,” his lieutenant, Lorenço, answered. Corvan’s usual attaché, Miriam, had leapt into a razor-wing attack, saving him. Her throat had been cut. She’d been alive when they’d carried her away, but hadn’t looked good. “But… sir, can you tell me what you’re planning?”

  Something had happened with the mirror array atop the Prism’s Tower—perhaps the Ferrilux had been killed—because the mirrors were doing nothing. Maybe that was the only reason the Great Fountain—and the city—still stood, but it wasn’t enough.

  Corvan had been right that the bane had meant to be sources for the Blood Robe wights and drafters all through the night, and losing the mirror array was a setback for them—but not the total catastrophe Corvan would’ve hoped.

  The bane themselves, with single mirrors each, couldn’t reach many parts of Big Jasper, and they could only focus their light on one area at a time.

  Some were more adept at this than others, clearly, already shining light to one area for ten seconds, then another for ten, then another, then repeating the pattern so that its drafters could go to any of those spots to refill their powers when they needed to.

  Corvan had already sent orders to his drafters to attempt taking those new source depots—but his orders weren’t getting through now.

  If the Ferrilux had kept the mirror array, the defenders would have been facing limitless magic that could be applied pretty much anywhere, pretty much instantly. As it was, the defenders were merely facing superior numbers of drafters and wights with lots of magic, while they themselves had none.

  The dam was straining, and Corvan guessed his forces had only minutes here before they were overwhelmed. Hell, even if they held here, it was surely only minutes until key points elsewhere in the city broke.

  If they hadn’t already.

  He wondered if any of Kip’s Mighty were still alive.

  He wondered if a distraction now—so very long after they’d requested it—could still do them any good.

  “You ever try to read your wife’s mind, son?” Corvan asked. The young Ilytian was a newlywed.

  “Yessir,” Lorenço said. “Doesn’t usually go well for me.”

  “Me, neither,” Corvan said. ‘Titan of the Great Fountain,’ dear? Could you have been slightly less opaque for once? Loudly, he said, “Listen up! If I’m incapable of command, Lorenço will act as high general. He has my full faith. I took command of armies when I was younger than he is now. Got it?!” There was a small chorus of agreement, but many were too tired or too hurt to reply.

  “You take
these next moments to shore up the barricades. Messengers, get on your marks. No gawking! That’s for the enemy to do.”

  He cracked open two red mag torches and began filling himself with power.

  Dazen, I wish you could see this. You would’ve loved it.

  He sketched out the arcs in his mind. It was actually going to work a lot better in the dark. Half pyroturgy, half luxin imbued with will—and a shit ton of black powder.

  Looking one last time at his people, he said, “Pleasure. Honor. All the shit. Keep fighting. And get back farther. This is most likely just gonna blow me up.”

  He crouched to jump and then sheathed his entire body in red luxin. He looked over at Lorenço, who was standing by the black powder launch pad with the linstock in his hand.

  ‘Titan of the Great Fountain’ my ass.

  “Lieutenant,” he said. “Now.”

  With a loud report, the first of the powder barrels was flung sky-high.

  Chapter 135

  “I’m… not dead?” Dazen said, opening his eyes. “I’m not dead!”

  “Yet,” Orholam said.

  Dazen glowered at Him. “Well, that’s not a very nice joke after what I just went through.”

  “It’s funnier in other realms.”

  That didn’t make him feel any better. “When You say ‘yet’ what kind of time frame are You operating on?”

  Orholam shook His head.

  “I mean, I feel like I’ve been dead for three days,” Dazen said.

  Orholam lifted an eyebrow.

  “I suppose I have You to thank for this? Being alive, I mean? In the more immediate sense, I mean, not in the sense of ‘I made all this shit and that means you, too, especially the shit part.’”

  “I want you to remember this, a little later,” Orholam said.

  “Which ‘this’? This, the You saving me, or this this, my impertinence?” Dazen asked. “I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”

  As the last fog of the black departed from him, Dazen noticed that the tower he was kneeling on was now awash with water, not blood. And the tower’s entire shell of black luxin that the blood had covered over was gone. Dazen now knelt on radiant white luxin like what he’d seen on the other side of the Great Mirror of Waking—an entire massive edifice of the luxin he’d so long believed mythical.

  “Are you ready to continue?” Orholam asked.

  “Continue?” Dazen turned his hands palms up. “I thought that was my penance. What, that didn’t count?”

  “It counted for quite a lot.”

  Dazen expelled a breath. “Thank You, by the by,” he said, standing with great effort. He was exhausted.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “What’s next?” he asked. The waning wick of his life was already smoldering on its last wax. “I can only draft two colors—if you call black and white ‘colors’—Wow, am I scattered after that.”

  He looked at Orholam. Then at the tower. Then at Orholam.

  “This one is going to be death, isn’t it?”

  “No, no. This will be—”

  “Oh, good!”

  “—a good penance,” Orholam said, nodding. “And life for many.”

  Dazen wrinkled his brow. “You say that as if we’re somehow in agreement.”

  “Promachos, hurling black luxin across half the breadth of the satrapies was a well-nigh lethal and well-nigh impossible magical test—”

  “Yes! It was! Thank You!”

  “—that allowed you to do exactly what you wanted.”

  Dazen had no answer for that.

  “Doing impossible magic to overcome ludicrous odds and smash my enemies?” he said. “That’s what I do!” So maybe he did have an answer.

  “Did,” Orholam said quietly. It was the gentlest whipcrack Dazen had ever heard. It had a sound of finality to it.

  Dazen had the sudden and too-slow-arriving insight that Orholam was accustomed to having the last word.

  Orholam continued, “There was never a question of your will or your ability, Dazen, so such a test is hardly a test at all, much less a penance.”

  “So You’re saying this is the one that’s going to be hard for me,” Dazen said.

  “Yes.”

  “As if the first one was so easy,” Dazen groused.

  “The first counted as an answer to your greatest question: ‘Could you ever be the man you were before?’”

  In a tone inappropriate from a son to his father, Dazen snarled, “And what’s this gonna answer?”

  “My question is, ‘Is that the man you want to be?’”

  Dazen’s stomach turned, and fear hit him like cold water chilling his throat, icing his belly, and filling every limb with doubt. What could such a test possibly be? “Just when I was starting to like You,” he said. His bravado was thin, but on a cold night a thin cloak is better than none, and this night was starting to feel cold indeed, in the gale of Orholam’s gaze. “What do You want me to do?”

  “Touch the mirror.”

  I already did that, Dazen thought. But he was smart enough not to say it, barely. He moved over toward the great shining thing, torrents of clear water gushing over its surface and onto his feet, threatening to wash him away as he came close. But he reached through the water and touched the metal.

  The waters ceased.

  And he saw himself.

  Behind him, Orholam said gently, “Behold Dazen Guile, who thought himself the least of his brothers.”

  He saw himself, the image crisp and clear in the starlight. He stood slouching, with two fingers cut off, his dogtooth smashed out, cheeks hollow from privation, back striped through injustice and bowed through travail—and yet still here. He’d been a great beauty before the last few years: muscular, strong-jawed, broad and tall, agile and self-possessed with a winning smile and prismatic eyes. No wonder they’d loved him. They’d seen the flawless bark of the great sequoy, not the rot within, the roots withered, waiting for the next great wind to topple him. He studied himself—with only one eye now, but that one eye was bright and clear.

  He’d been hiding all his life. Now he hid no more.

  Diminished though Dazen was, he was not devoid of all virtues, not even in his body. He was still tall, still broad, and strength was rallying in his every limb.

  He studied what he’d long avoided, and there was now no detail obscured, no truth denied. Here he stood in the cold light of eternity, and by some magic greater than chromaturgy, all that was wretched and self-deprecatory and judgmental and hating fell away like a serpent’s scale from his eye.

  He had seen through Orholam’s mask of being an old prophet, and beheld something ineffably beguiling beneath the old prophet’s age spots and deep wrinkles and snaggle teeth.

  And now he saw something of that same beauty in himself, an image of the divine.

  Here was Dazen Guile through the eyes of charity.

  And as unwilling tears flooded his eyes, he realized that—wonder of wonders!—he was glorious.

  Beneath all he’d despised, there had been someone worthy of love here all along. His eyes had simply been too clouded to be able to see it.

  He looked at Orholam and was able to see more of Him than he had before. “You… You really went to a lot of trouble for me.”

  “More than you know,” Orholam said briskly. “Now, throw your will into the mirror, and take up the work your son has left behind.”

  “‘Work’? You mean some magic? I just threw a volcano of black luxin at the Jaspers. I wiped out everything magical there. Surely I spoiled anything Kip was trying to do.”

  Calmly, Orholam said, “White luxin is not overwhelmed by black.”

  Dazen thought of a thousand reasons why that wasn’t necessarily the case, and then realized who he was talking to. “It is really frustrating to argue with you,” Dazen said.

  “I get that a lot,” Orholam said. “Ditto. Oh, by the by, hurry.”

  Chapter 136

  Quentin had arrived too late. He’
d spent all day serving: first carrying food and water, later attending to the wounded in the poorest parts of the city, comforting the dying when he could. In the first hour, he’d been tempted to shed his ridiculous golden robes, but there was something about seeing a rich luxiat lower himself to service that had not only inspired other luxiats but also scared townsfolk to join him in his labors wherever he went.

  As a lone servant, he would have been invisible, but lifted up, he’d been able to bring light to neighborhoods in need of hope. So he’d served in his uncomfortable clothes in the soot and smoke and blood—neither danger nor magic moving him—until he saw he saw that white beam shooting out to the east.

  He’d run immediately, praying, praying he not be too late.

  He was too late.

  The traitor had already been lowered from Orholam’s Glare, and a blonde-haired noblewoman held his body, weeping.

  The crowd in the square was large, angry, confused, scared. They’d been witness to magic such as they’d never seen—such as no one had ever seen. But the man who’d done it was dead, and the city was still under attack. It seemed like everything should have changed with so much magic, but nothing had.

  Blackness had rushed over the city entire, as if even the light mourned the dead man, and abandoned them with his passing. But then that, too, was gone, and nothing had changed, unless it had changed for the worse: everyone had expected the Blood Robes to withdraw with the coming of night, and they’d redoubled their efforts instead.

  “Are you quite done?” Zymun asked.

  Then Quentin saw the woman as her face lifted in tear-streaked rage, and every bad premonition he’d had was confirmed. She was Tisis Guile. Which meant the body she held was Kip’s.

  Quentin pushed through the crowd, aided by his narrow-shouldered frame and his garb, which made some people step aside for him.

  He lost the next thing Zymun said, but from his intermittent glimpses of the Prism’s gleeful face, he could tell it was cruel. Nor did he stop even as Quentin moved closer and closer, taunting her so much that even some of the Lightguards looked uncomfortable.