The Burning White (109 page)

“Teia?” Kip asked. This was not like her. He’d expected that she would change in the time they’d been apart, but even given that, this wasn’t her.

“The poppy’s wearing off,” Teia said. “I wanted it to, but . . .” Teia repeated curses under her breath for a few moments, then she looked up plaintively. “I just really wanted to see you, Kip. I’m sorry to be like this. I can’t even remember all I wanted to say to you, but I just really wanted to see you one last time.”

One last time? “Teia? What’s going on?”

She looked up at him, and her eyes filled with regret. “Kip, I’m dying.”

Quentin had only two types of clothing now: the disgustingly rich and the obscenely wealthy. Either one would have nauseated the old him. Over the last year, he’d warred with himself every day as he’d slowly grown accustomed to the weight and wear of this garb.

As part of his punishment—being the example of a luxiat led astray by the world’s riches—he was forbidden to wear anything less expensive than his second-best set in public. In his rooms, he’d worn literal sackcloth for several months. Then, realizing that he was taking pride in mortifying his own flesh—O Pride, thou insidious beast!—he’d taken to wearing a fine but simple robe in private.

But today, long before the sun rose, after Kip had awakened him and told him what was required, Quentin put on his finest robes with something akin to a healthy pride: today these robes would help him do what needed to be done. He actually had to ask a servant to help him dress: there were layers to these things! Pearls in their hundreds, real gold twisted in the brocade, a mink collar dyed murex purple. Fawn-skin boots, silk laces, and jeweled rings for every finger.

He looked like everything he had always hated, but today it would all be for Orholam’s glory. That which had been a scourge unto his back was now the armor for his battle. A great and glorious gamble. He would be tested to his limits.

He might not survive it.

From his apartments in the blue tower, he made his way across the Lily’s Stem, greeting a few luxiats on their way to matins prayers. One offered him a coin, and he took it humbly. If the Order came to suspect what Quentin was doing, he’d not get a chance to put it into the hands of the poor who needed it, but this, too, was his personal spiritual discipline: trusting that Orholam would cover his flaws and failures and still get His work done on this world, even if Quentin weren’t here to do it, even if Quentin misused some moiety of the bounty with which Orholam had trusted him.

He arrived at the west docks an hour before sunrise. The docks were crowded with the faithful, still hoping for a parade. But not only the faithful thronged here. Last-minute reinforcements to the fortifications above the docks and to the surrounding walls were being shored up by dozens of workmen. Nearby buildings had been cannibalized for lumber and bricks, beams torn from centuries-old homes while their owners wept.

On the opposite side of that wall, crouched in the bay like a panther outside the door, the Wight King’s navy waited.

Quentin hated being the center of attention, and as he looked at the stairs up to the wall, he felt faint. Several soldiers were looking askance at him. The bored crowd, some huddled with their sleeping children, others simply looking for some entertainment to fill the next hour until sunrise—all stared at him and openly speculated as to why he was here rather than in richer quarters.

Men and women will die today in droves. Orholam hasn’t asked me to pick up a sword for that battle.

He asks not what we are unable to do.

He has asked me to fulfill
this
duty.

Ergo, this duty is a duty that I am able to fulfill.

Of course, Orholam never promised we shan’t soil ourselves in the fulfillment of said duties.

For some reason, that lightened Quentin’s heart.

‘Just pretend to be Gavin Guile, but . . . you know, holy,’ Kip had told him.

It wasn’t quite a ringing endorsement of Kip’s father, but it was good advice.

This’ll be my first sermon, Quentin thought. Most likely my last, too, the not-so-encouraging part of him added.

As far as prophetic sermons go, this really is cheating, isn’t it?

But then, if the prophecy doesn’t come true, I’m going to look like a fool immediately. And fatally.

Oooh boy. His heart hadn’t felt like this since he’d walked out before the crowd to face Orholam’s Glare.

Gavin Guile. Just put on your Gavin Guile.

Taking a deep breath, Quentin walked toward the soldiers stationed at the bottom of the steps.

In the first light of what would be his final Sun Day, Gavin was circling to where his sword and his death lay, when he beheld an impossibility.

Directly opposite where the stair had spilled Gavin out onto the tower’s crown, the sun was rising, but now, the sun in all its brilliance, bearable only in small glances, seemed to
widen
. Blinking, he shaded his own eye against Orholam’s with a hand. His pace slowed.

What the hell is going on? But Gavin wet his lips and kept moving.

The sun in the sky split into twin orbs, as if they were Orholam’s own orisons glaring judgment across the horizon. As if, most times, He gave the world only half His attention, and now Gavin had all of it.

Both of God’s eyes, open, burning white.

Just as Gavin had given up on finding Him, He was
here
—and He was angry.

Fear threw shackles at Gavin’s heavy limbs, but he staggered forward. He would not be a man who cowered—not even before God Himself.

And those few extra steps back toward his sword were all it took. The second eye moved out and out, and then was halved, eclipsed by nothing Gavin could see. Then it disappeared entirely.

Gavin stopped, shaken from his fear by curiosity. He stepped back, and the second celestial eye reappeared. Then he stepped back farther, to where the second eye had split from the first, and in a few steps, they merged once more.

He knew he should get the blade before he investigated any mysteries, but he took a few more steps back to the stairs where he’d entered.

Now there was nothing visible at the crown of the hill.

But it
had
to be there.

The sword, you moron. Arm yourself,
then
investigate mysteries.

Gavin circled the promontory once more, quickly now, keeping his distance.

Orholam’s single eye split again, and again both eyes glowered down at Gavin in judgment.

Gavin gritted his teeth and took a step—up the hill. And then another, climbing the hill at an angle with the sun.

There was something
off
about those burning eyes.

Then all the pressure on his heart released at once, and he blew out a huge breath.

There weren’t two eyes up there at all. It was a mirror!

God
damn
.

A mirror, set atop this hill at just the right angle so that pilgrims coming here at dawn on Sun Day and following the path Gavin had would see exactly what Gavin had seen. It was just a bloody mirror! Up on the hilltop, casting that illusion with every sunrise, the angle worked out precisely: the path, it seemed, even had markings that had to be a calendar, so that the priests could have pilgrims stand at exactly the right spot each day.

It was all religious flimflam, a swindle, chicanery. A con for the desperate and credulous.

But still . . . an impossibly thin, huge, perfectly clean mirror? Clean, after centuries and doubtless thousands of storms? That in itself was well-nigh miraculous.

Granted, it was still a lot more credible than that God Himself was staring at him.

Gavin approached the mirror, the time and angle of the hill making the ‘eyes’ hold steady. He squinted against the brightness to study the fraud.

But as soon as he did, they moved. Not the way they should have, given his own motion.

His steps faltered.

No, surely not. They must’ve only
seemed
to move wrongly.

But Gavin was frozen, his muscles going taut as a bowstring fully drawn.

Heart thudding, mind screaming that he should have grabbed the sword first, Gavin circled farther.

The eyes seemed to move, but now fully independent of Gavin’s steps.

No. No! He’d just puzzled it all out. This was all a Sun Day deception like those Gavin had taken part in so many times himself.

But now as he took another step, it was undeniable. The reflected eye should eclipse from the other side as Gavin circled, leaving the sun alone in the sky.

Instead, the sun tore away to hang in the sky alone in its rightful place.

But twin orbs glided down within the mirror, side by side, like eyes.

Gavin stepped back on his heel toward the sword down the hill behind him, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away.

The orbs settled at the top of the promontory at the height of a man’s face, at his eyes.

The very air distorted at the crown of the hill, and something there—perhaps even a mirror, as Gavin had suspected—seemed to bubble outward, as if something was pushing its way out from the mirror and into the world.

What was happening there was hard to make out, looking up the hill against the monotone brightness of the sky, except for where every downward angle from the figure’s pushing in made the mirror reflect black ground instead of the bright sky.

The face itself was unbearably bright. Gavin held up a hand to block the searing light. Through his spread fingers, Gavin saw a silvery foot slide forth. Then a gleaming arm with muscles etched of marble, then a perfect body with mirror-skin.

The godling took three steps out before he seemed to recall that here he needed to breathe. Gavin could hear the breath, this far away. If this was all an illusion, it was more sophisticated than any Gavin had ever heard of.

The mirror-skin of the being resolved, melting into or morphing into humanlike skin. Humanlike except for its utter perfection. As if in deliberate mockery of Gavin, it, too, wore only a loincloth. Its eyes, now not quite so brilliantly hot as the sun itself, were still unbearably bright, blotting out the man’s features. Gavin couldn’t scan that alien face for whatever deception or malice might lie there.

Gavin’s disbelief managed one more gasp. This was all a magical deceit—sure, maybe an ancient and fiendishly complicated one—but Gavin was no simpleton desperate to buy clever drafting.

The eyes. The eyes were the key!

He looked down to see if his own shadow moved as that bright being moved; no hex-casting, no illusion could cast such light that it actually threw shadows. The lack of shadows would reveal that this was mere will-casting.

The phantasm started circling down the hill, as if giving Gavin room, as if Gavin were a skittish wild beast. But Gavin welcomed each step the thing took away from the mirror—if this were will-casting or hex, the magic would be placed where everyone must look, the mirror itself.

But then he saw that his shadow was splitting, trembling, synchronized with those lantern eyes as they bobbed with the creature’s every step.

Fear shot down Gavin’s spine. It was real.

Worse—what if the godling were circling, not to alleviate Gavin’s fear but . . . it was heading toward the Blinding Knife!

Gavin shot away like an arrow loosed. Up the hill, the godling shot forward, too, rushing in at an angle toward the same prize as if he and Gavin were twinned eyes in a mirror, the light of heaven and the light of earth being called together here at the center of all things.

But the god was better positioned. Gavin didn’t dare look toward him for fear of it slowing him even half a step. He could feel the deity closing.

Then It cut in, not going for the prize but leaping at Gavin instead, as if he himself were the prize.

They went down hard, slamming to the beautiful and utterly unforgiving black stone of the tower’s roof.

And that resolved his last doubt with a thuddingly physical crash: you can’t get tackled by an illusion.

Coughing, gasping, Gavin lashed out immediately. If he’d learned nothing else from his life, it was that he who strikes first often strikes last. But with their legs entangled, his kick glanced off solid muscle.

Gavin lashed out with knees and elbows, kicking to create some distance.

Whatever else this being was, Its flesh wasn’t marble or luxin or pure will; it felt like that of a man.

And It fought like a man, too, grabbing Gavin’s ankle as he tried to pull away to run the last steps to the sword. The godling twisted Gavin’s ankle so hard that he had to flip sideways, or risk his leg being broken.

Gavin rolled, tearing his ankle free, but losing all forward momentum. He tried to stand, losing where his opponent was as he tried to claim a position between the being and the blade.

The godling crashed into Gavin again, blasting him off his feet and landing on top of him, two steps from the blade.

This time Gavin was on the receiving end of the knees and elbow strikes. He blocked, blocked, thrashed ineffectually. He’d never been a great grappler. The Blackguards he’d trained with never much wanted to slam their elbows into the Prism’s head, and in Gavin’s real-world fights, he’d only rarely come within range of a sword, much less fists. Drafting and shooting had always been enough. If anyone had come within grappling range, Gavin had been able to count on a Blackguard dealing with the threat instantly.

It had become one part of his training Gavin let rust into disuse; not even Blackguards could excel at every martial art, and Gavin had needed to be so much more than only a warrior.

The man went for a chokehold, and Gavin barely had the presence of mind to shoot an arm up through the grip before his opponent could choke him from consciousness.

Even as he strove to break free toward that damned blade—it was a hand’s breadth from his straining fingertips!—a chill cut through the heat of flight and fear and the raw vibrancy of battle juice: Gavin couldn’t fight this Opponent with some easy and obvious short-term goal animating his every move.