The Burning White (124 page)

“Damn! Er, sorry. Well then, you really should come visit the Chro-meria. Sit in on a Spectrum meeting. You’d straighten a few things out real quick, I think.”

“Quick? In a committee meeting?”

Dazen laughed aloud. “No, you’re right. I can just imagine you floating in, all glowy, trumpets blaring, ready to orate, and Klytos Blue suddenly interjecting, ‘Point of order! Has the gentleman in the clouds of glory been granted the floor?’ ”

They laughed together.

Madness was more fun than it had any right to be.

Then Gavin said, “Comedy must really suck for you, huh? I mean, you’ve gotta always see the punchline coming, right?”

“It’s all in the delivery,” Orholam said. He gave a sly grin. “Speaking of which . . .”

Dazen swallowed. “I’m not gonna like what you say next, am I?”

“No.” The joviality was abruptly gone. “You’re supposed to deliver a tribute.”

“So you were really serious about the garbage thing? Like, the gun-sword doesn’t count?” Gavin said. “I mean . . .”

“Oh, I’m not above using others’ garbage. I’ll use a stone the builders reject as a cornerstone, but
you
can’t give Me as tribute what’s garbage
to you
. That’s no sacrifice. I’m a healer to healers and a servant to servants, but to kings I’m a king—not a slave.”

The last layer of denial fell away as Dazen saw finally the sense of it.

He wasn’t mad.

Orholam wasn’t one simplistic personality. He was vast. One person could only behold so much of Him. Encountering Him was like trying to see a gem the size of the earth itself, made of every color inside and outside the visible spectrum: the human eye and a mortal’s mind’s eye could only behold so much and so truly. Gavin himself was a wit, funny and kind, but at the end of the day, he was definitely the emperor, and he wouldn’t allow anyone to forget it. So Orholam appeared to him thus, a divine mirror, so that Gavin might have some hope of understanding a part of the truth, a corporeal synecdoche: a part standing in for the whole.

“I’ve got nothing that’s a fitting tribute for You,” Dazen said. “I’m broken-down trash myself.”

“I accept.”

“What?”

“You! I accept! With delight! An excellent tribute. None finer.”

“Me?! You don’t need me. You just said—”

“Does a king need friends?” Orholam asked.

“What? What?” Dazen knew how Gavin would’ve answered, but he also knew it would be wrong.

“Does a father need his children?” Orholam asked. “Does a mother need the babe in her arms?”

“Of course not. But . . . yes? Not
need
need, but that’s totally different. What are You saying?”

Dazen thought of his own father and what it had done to Andross to think he didn’t
need
his children. He thought of his mother, who’d been so broken by her own loss. And he thought of Kip, and what he himself must have done to Kip, thinking the boy didn’t
need
need Dazen to stand in as his father.

Dazen said, “I see what You’re saying, though it’s not exactly an apt meta—”

“Perfectly apt. Will you come be My son?”

What?! Dazen couldn’t wrap his head around that. It didn’t make sense.

But what was perfectly clear was the ruin he’d left everywhere in his wake. He could see in color sharper and more jagged than all his memories. He could remember sliding the dagger home into ribs, over and over, until he was numbed to the deed.

And he’d done it thousands of times. Thousands.

He’d known the Freeing was wrong, and he’d done it anyway.

Gavin knew what he was. Orholam had to know it, too, or he wasn’t Orholam.

A wave of self-loathing crested over him, a tide of blood guilt as unending as the blood river coursing past his knees. Gavin didn’t deserve acceptance, forgiveness, or anything soft and good, certainly not love, certainly not from Orholam Himself.

He sucked in a breath, and it was heavy with the stench of fresh blood. It was time to end this. “You gave me a chance, before. Not one—hundreds. Every voice that cried out and told me what my conscience had already shouted at me was another. You even put me in chains, but I saw myself as an emperor in chains, but never a slave. I could never see myself as a wretch, wretched as I was. ‘I wouldn’t give trash even to a beggar,’ You said. And You’re right. You want me? Fine. I’m yours. But not as a son. I don’t deserve that. That’s not a punishment. Let me pay for all those deaths with all my remaining life. Let me be Your slave.”

“No,” Orholam said. “If I wished to rob humans of their will, would the world be so full of trouble? No. Slavery is what happens when men act on their desire to be gods, and slavery shows what kind of gods you’d be. How about a son who strives to be the best son he can be?”

“Then I swear to honor and obey You with all my strength.”

“Really?”

“I’m Yours. To spend as You will.”

Dazen looked up and saw eyes harder than a hurricane sky. And he was reminded that all the temporal power of even the greatest emperor was but an intimation and premonition of the power and passion he beheld here.

“Accomplish something with me, would You?” Dazen asked.

“Conditions? Already?” Orholam asked, and His voice was soft as stone.

“None except Your nature.” Dazen could only pray it was true, that he wasn’t as wrong about that as he had been about so much else. With a trembling hand, he touched Orholam’s foot.

“First, then,” Orholam said, “you’ve brought something detestable into My presence. You cast away nine boon stones to make the leap here, but you kept one.”

“What?!”

“Give Me the black boon stone.”

Gavin gulped. “Whatever do You mean?”

But he knew what He meant.

Orholam pointed a very pointy finger at Gavin.

No. Not at Gavin. At his
eye
.

Mother Dark herself. The black seed crystal that had become his eye. Orholam wanted
that
for tribute?

“I’m . . . uh, You don’t want that,” Gavin said. He swallowed.

“I want you to give it to Me.”

“Give me some time and I’ll . . . I’ll devise a more fitting gift.” He was a coward.

“No, you won’t.”

“Do You think I’m lying, or that I won’t be able to make a fitting gift? On second thought, don’t answer that,” Gavin said with a weak grin.

But Orholam didn’t smile this time. “Is this what your obedience looks like?”

“I’ll
die
. Don’t You know what You’re asking?! I have nothing left—and You’d demand . . .” But Gavin had fought enough. He was tired.

His hands slumped down into the blood.

Maybe he’d see Sevastian now. Maybe he’d see Karris.

He’d sent Orholam rivers of blood—unasked for, he knew now, as his heart had always known. It was only right that Orholam should demand his own blood in return.

He sighed, and with his breath went out all defensiveness, all hope that he could deceive his way out of this one.

The old Gavin finally, finally breathed his last, and died.

Dazen sank into the stones and bent back his head to stare into eyes that blazed with judgment hotter than the noonday sun.

Orholam was nothing if not fast. He braced Dazen’s forehead with a hand, knotting his hair between His fingers to keep his head in place. Dazen could feel the evil eye twist and buck in his skull of its own accord, as if it were a living thing and it knew what was coming—

Then Orholam’s hand stabbed into his face, and it felt like his hand went into Dazen’s flesh whole, through and into his head.

It clamped down on the eye and wrenched.

Dazen gagged at the pain. Agony shot from eye to brain, down his neck and down his spine, everywhere through his chest and radiating through every limb. As Orholam twisted His clenched fist, as if drawing out a parasitic worm, Dazen’s body bucked of its own accord. Every muscle clenched. He gagged, and his hands flew up to fight off his persecutor—

But he willed them be still. He flung his hands out and willed them stay spread as wide as if he were nailed in place.

Something gave within him, tore.

Orholam’s fist turned over and over, like He was coiling rope around His hand. At the same time, like a wet cloth to a fevered man, Orholam’s other hand was cool on Dazen’s forehead. It was the only comfort in a world of suffering.

And then Orholam ripped the thing out of Dazen’s left eye socket and threw it on the ground.

Dazen gagged and gasped and coughed, breathing fresh air for the first time in eternity. He sank to his haunches, almost fell—but then his one good eye caught sight of the black Thing.

It twisted on the ground like a legged serpent made entirely of thorns. Every surface was a shard of obsidian, curled in hooks and barbs. And it lived.

Shocked from being torn free and flung down to the ground, it twisted its form together now, at once like a lion crouching to pounce and a snake coiling to strike. Baleful eyes, unblinking, blacker than the gathering night, stared primordial nyxian hatred at Dazen. It had been created to kill him if he removed it, and from his knees, gasping still, breathless, frozen with horror, there was no way Dazen could defend himself before it attacked.

The Thing lunged at his face—

And things happened so fast Dazen could scarcely comprehend them. Orholam flashed suddenly colossal. He was the giant from Dazen’s dream, immense beyond belief. And Dazen saw the fury in His sun-bright eyes, and a fist the size of the tower itself came crashing down in judgment.

On his knees, Dazen barely fit between the fingers of the clenched fist as it smote the entire top of the tower.

The tower shook from the concussion. Thunder crashed, but it was thunder beyond mere sound. Every hair stood on end. The air itself shouted with a triumphant yell. Lights fired in every color Dazen remembered and a myriad he didn’t know—for one instant, even his color-blinded eye could see. And a shock wave spread out, as great waves rippling in the ocean give an angle to see momentarily into the ocean’s depths, for an instant, Dazen could see into the Thousand Worlds as if here his realm and the heavenly realms overlapped. He could see figures, bloodied warriors joining a victory shout.

And then . . . all was normal once more. That shock wave disappeared into the distance in every direction, ripples in the pond of time, but Dazen still knelt here. Orholam, masked as the old prophet once more, stood again before him, now looking oddly and entirely mundane.

The black Thing, broken now in a hundred places, writhed yet.

And it twisted, relentlessly, toward Dazen.

Orholam stepped forward and crushed its head under His foot.

It squirmed and snapped in its death throes, snapping at His heel, and died.

But Orholam nonchalantly tore away the dead Thing and tossed it off the tower.

He turned and quirked a grin at Dazen, and though every crease remained on old Orholam’s face, and His teeth were just as crooked and stained as before—though nothing was changed—every seam of the old man’s visage leaked out glory.

Dazen dropped to his face.

The midnight, hungry stone beneath him seemed now merely bright black. The air tasted fresh. The ache in his finger stubs felt somehow clean, a body doing what a body was made to do when it had been injured. His vision, still black and white, somehow seemed crisp.

He was changed, as if he’d been made anew.

“Get up,” Orholam said with a voice that seemed to resound with hidden undertones of power. “We’ve business to finish.”

Dazen glanced up, but it was still old man Orholam. “The giant? Was that . . . ?” he asked. As if that were the most pressing question to ask Orholam Himself.

“The same one from your dream? Of course. You’ve had such a terrible attitude about prophets, so I made you one.” He lifted his eyebrows, and Dazen, remembering he’d been told to get up, stood quickly.

“Obedience,” Dazen said. “Yeah, not my strong suit.”

Orholam looked at him levelly. Right, Orholam knew that.

“What would You have me do, sir?” Dazen asked.

“There’s one matter we must attend to first.”

“Huh?”

“Traditionally, pilgrims who deliver a boon stone may ask Me a boon.”

I get to ask a . . . what? After all that? After what I just saw?

But his mouth was already running away, unmoored from sense. “Seems like a stupid tradition, though, doesn’t it? I mean, ‘Here’s my pride rock, now gimme stuff’?”

Orholam laughed aloud, and Dazen was struck by the sound. He was actually enjoying Himself, as if talking with Dazen was something that could bring Orholam joy. Absurd! And yet, here it was. “Traditions,” Orholam said, “like people, tend to fall short. I work with what I’m given.”

He was serious, and suddenly Dazen was baffled.

What could he ask for? How could he
dare
ask more? He’d seen his brother again. He’d been condemned to death and been given back life.

It wasn’t that there was nothing he wanted. He thought of them all now: His fingers back. His eye to see again. His powers. His position. More than any of those, he wanted his wife and his son.

He thought of asking for them to survive. He thought of framing some request so broad and precisely legalistic that he might get back everything good and nothing bad from his old life.

He would have done that, too. Old Gavin would have, that man of guile, the master of land ways and sea ways, breaking the rules to win the game.

But here, after what he’d seen, it not only seemed witless to try to gull God Himself, but it seemed breathtakingly ungrateful.

Dazen still wanted it all. He wanted everything good for those he loved even more. His mouth opened to ask for Karris and Kip to live, to thrive, to have all that was good in the world.

But then he stopped as he gazed out toward the great seas and the reef that circled this island. “They suffer?”

He didn’t have to clarify. Orholam knew how his mind skipped around and how it focused intently on things others ignored. The One who knew the punchline to every joke knew Dazen spoke of the sea demons, the monsters he could so easily have become, his predecessors in power and in pride and in loss and in striving for what they could not have and what they could not be.