The Burning White (76 page)

“It’s customary to take a meal as one contemplates this test. Hmm.” Orholam was looking around. “There were benches and tables . . . once. Wood, I guess. No sign of them now after the centuries. Sad. Imagine the dedication of those who carried tables and chairs up through all that we’ve just seen, merely to ease the burdens of others who’d climbed! Come, sit.”

Gavin was looking at the gap. In his prime, healthy, unencumbered, he could’ve cleared it. Probably.

Maybe.

“How strong are you, Guile? You look well—”

“Thank you.”

“—considering your age and what you’ve been through.”

“Let me take that back,” Gavin said.

He had regained much of his strength, even through the climb, oddly. His body felt strong. Against the strop of successive circles, his mind had been honed to a keen edge.

But Orholam wasn’t wrong in adding in that consideration of age: Gavin wasn’t of that strength which in the old days shook the pillars of the earth.

“Are you going to throw the blade across?” Orholam asked, seeing Gavin contemplating its weight, turning it in his hands.

“And risk losing it in this wind? No way.”

“Leave it here?” Orholam asked.

“And trust you with it?”

“You could do worse.”

Jumping across while holding the Blinding Knife—Blinding Sword?—tempted serious injury. And that was if he could clear the gap at all with all the weight he was carrying. If the blade slowed his run up to the edge of the precipice even a little, Gavin wouldn’t make it.

“How the hell would old people make it across this?” Gavin asked. “You said there were wood tables. Was there a plank or something, too? A little walk of faith, huge drop-off to either side, have to step exactly right or you fall?”

“That’s how you see Him?”

“Accurately, you mean?”

Orholam shook his head sadly. “It’s said that the gap adjusts to be a perfect test for each penitent.”

“Adjusts?” Gavin asked. “So for some old lady, it’d be like a big step? You should’ve told me! I’d have brought an old lady with me. Oh wait, I sort of did. How about I make you go first?”

Orholam shrugged. “I’m not crossing. I’ll jump if you try to make me.”

“You’re serious? You can’t be serious. You got all the way here and
now
you’re gonna quit? Half a turn from the top? You don’t want to see if He really is there?”

“This isn’t about me, Guile,” the old rower said.

“It is now. I need you. If you’re not going to help me, I deserve to know why.” Right before I throw your geriatric ass off the no-chute side of the tower.

“That will of yours. No wonder it got you in trouble.” Orholam sighed. “Very well. This is my penance. Many years ago, and for many years, I refused to go where Orholam told me to go. Now He told me to come here. And, as I understand, to go no farther. So here I am, standing at the door and knocking, but I won’t go in uninvited.”

“ ‘As you understand’? Change your understanding!”

“Here I stand. I can do no other.”

“I guess I should’ve expected this much help from
Orholam
in my hour of need.”

“I never claimed to be the Lord of Lights. I merely allowed myself to be used as a stand-in on our ship for enslaved men who couldn’t understand how an invisible god could be present with them in their sufferings. I’m not Orholam Himself. ”

“Oh, but you are. If He allows you to speak in His name, and you lie, then He is weak or a liar or absent. You
are
Orholam here on earth, and in a way, so was I. But one of us is finished with the lies and dodging responsibility.”

“How is it, my friend, that after all this climb, your heart is still hard against one who loves you most?”

“What you want’s impossible. Fuck you,
friend
,” Gavin said. “I’m sorry I ever saved you.”

The old prophet seemed unperturbed. “I’ll be here praying for you. That is, unless you do me some violence that prevents it. That edge over there will see me miss the chute and fall to my death.”

The fires of rage burned only for a few moments more. Without further fuel, they dimmed. The old man wouldn’t fight him.

Did Gavin really want to kill another person who didn’t resist?

“No,” Gavin said. “Killing deluded old men is exactly what I got tired of doing with my life. Plus I’m not going to let you die thinking you’re a martyr.”

He turned away. The gap remained. The gap was impossible.

Whatever happened to ‘Impossible is what I do’?

The penitent’s robes held Gavin’s boon-stone burdens wonderfully, but they were burdens nonetheless. And heavy, no matter how well carried.

“Tell me again. What exactly happens if I fall?” Gavin asked.

“You slide down to the bottom, where you may either give up or climb again.”

“All the way to the bottom? Are there shortcuts on the way back up? Ladders or something you didn’t tell me about the first time? Is it easier the second time? I learned my lessons on my first trip, O wise and great master.”

Orholam shook his head. “Oh! But there is an important bit I may not have told you? Didn’t I tell you that where the celestial realm and ours overlap, time works somewhat differently?”

“Yes.” And I
totally
believed you.

“It’s nearly Sun Day now.”

“What?” Gavin asked. It had certainly seemed a long climb, but long as in days, not weeks.

“If you fall? Your next climb will take a year. The next try takes ten. Some few have left behind all their lives and family to climb for a century, perhaps more.”

“I know. You said that. I just didn’t really believe you. We didn’t see anyone else on our climb.”

“And yet we passed many, and more passed us. You think the creator of the Thousand Worlds has made only one path of pilgrimage?”

Okay, lots of religious obfuscation there, but it was possible that there was some sort of anomaly here on this island that made time seem warped. If so, it made sense that primitive peoples would build a monument in such a place. How perception and reality overlapped with will-casting was something Gavin didn’t understand well. No one did, he thought. He had to take the threat seriously.

Whether it was all lies or all the truth, though, he had to finish this climb.

He had no way of knowing if the chute was intact. A fall could well kill him, even if it wasn’t meant to. Maybe it was true and earlier pilgrims had had multiple chances. That didn’t matter. Gavin had to make it on the first try. Full stop.

He had to get to the top before Sun Day, or Karris would die. Magic had to die, or Karris would.

One try.

“Well, it’s not like I haven’t been here before,” Gavin said, looking off the edge.

“On a real pilgrimage?” Orholam asked.

“How ’bout you pray silently, and not fall to your death?” Gavin suggested.

Orholam shut up. For once.

“
Here
, as in facing the impossible, with no help, certainly not from
you
,” Gavin said.

Seven gates he’d cleared, claiming seven stones he was supposed to be able to redeem to get seven boons. Gavin had planned out what boons he’d asked of Orholam, too, with feebly growing hope in his heart:

1. That Karris will live

2. That I recover my powers

Perhaps this was a cheat, asking too many things, for it would require the restoration of his color vision, and to be able to draft all his colors again, and to split light again. He didn’t know how legalistic Orholam would be with His boons, or how general Gavin could be, or how audacious the boons requested could be. But audacity had served him well in his life.

3. That I get vengeance on those who have wronged me

4. That I will reign again as Prism

5. That Kip will get the father he deserves

Whether that would be Gavin himself (only better than he was now), or if that was some other father figure, Gavin didn’t know. Either, maybe.

6. That I will save the Seven Satrapies

Not just limp along through this war, but really, really make it. Thrive, even.

7. That Karris will forgive me

Maybe that was too much to ask. Maybe the boons couldn’t force people to do what they didn’t want to do. That would be the kind of stricture Orholam would abide, wouldn’t it? Something easier, then:

7. That Marissia will find happiness

Yeah, she deserved that. That she would have an overflowing life somewhere, with someone better to her than he’d been.

That was the order, too. Funny, his priorities. The only one he thought was in an acceptable place was the first: Karris. Even a year ago, he’d not have put that there.

And really, the survival of the Seven Satrapies should be his highest priority.

Only one goal was fully un-self-interested. Nope, wait: No, not even saving the Seven Satrapies was really disinterested, was it? Hard to be the Prism over nothing, wasn’t it?

“What do you call it when you realize you’ve been an asshole your whole life?” Gavin asked.

“A good start?” Orholam offered.

Gavin opened the pocket that held the boon stone for overcoming Lust. A beautiful green stone, Orholam had told him. Beautiful and weighty.

‘That Marissia Will Find Happiness’ lay heavy in his hand as he hefted it.

I didn’t come this far to only come this far.

He tossed the boon stone off the side of the tower. Something shifted in the world, or in him, but he couldn’t tell what it was.

No matter. He couldn’t make the jump while he was still weighed down with so much.

He opened the pocket that held Greed’s boon stone, but it caught in his fingers. He had to think for a long time what boon he would sacrifice here. In the end, he decided to give up ‘That I Will Reign Again as Prism.’ He tossed the orange stone aside and instantly felt lighter.

He shrugged his shoulders, tested how his body felt.

He stared heavenward, and dread filled him.

I feel lighter because I’m giving up my hopes.

“What are you doing?” Orholam asked.

“You know the thing about me?” Gavin asked.

“I know many things about you.”

“The most important one.”

“I think I’m not supposed to say aloud what I think that is,” Orholam said. “I could pray for wisd—”

“I’ll do whatever I must to win.”

“A universal failing of the Guiles.”

Next pocket, opened. Sloth’s stone.

‘That I Will Save the Seven Satrapies’ dropped by the wayside.

It was a death.

“I should have known,” Gavin said, “that any hope You’d give would be short-lived. Deceptive. You are astonishing in Your parsimony. You give and You take away, I suppose? Is that what we humble pilgrims are to learn?”

“It seems to me that He’s taking nothing from you,” Orholam said. “You’re throwing them aside.”

“The gap’s too wide!” Gavin snarled.

But words changed nothing.

Red. Dagnu’s stone. Gluttony. Kip. Was asking for happiness for Kip somehow Gavin being gluttonous?

It wasn’t. Sure, Gavin wanted everything. Could never ask enough. But wasn’t asking a boon for Kip
selfless
? How could Orholam oppose that?

I want to give him something so good, he’ll never ask for the truth about his real father, whom I killed.

Gavin looked at the red boon stone. Sorry, Kip. You deserve better.

He tossed the stone aside, closing his eyes.

He bounced on his feet as if unaffected, testing his weight. Still too heavy, too encumbered. Three stones left. He knew what he
should
toss aside next. He opened sub-red. Anat’s stone, goddess of Wrath. His vengeance. If Orholam made him focus his request, what would he choose? Vengeance on all wights for Sevastian’s murder, as his Great Goal had once been? Vengeance on Koios White Oak for this damned war? Or was he pettier than that, his world even more constricted? Vengeance on his father?

He touched the raw wound that was the sub-red boon stone.

Tossing it away was like tearing away a scab that had an unhealed wound beneath it.

The warmth fled from the world, and it took some of the life from Gavin’s limbs with it.

If I recover my powers, I can take vengeance myself. With my powers, I’m Prism Gavin Guile. With my powers, I can do anything. This time I won’t waste it.

Now he had only two boons left he could ask: First, that Karris would live—that she would triumph! Yes, he would be audacious on her behalf. Second, that he recover all his powers, fully, with the full span of his years left in them, that he could last another twenty-one years as Prism, at least. With only two boons, he’d ask no half measures.

Gavin began limbering up his muscles. He checked the very edge of the precipice for grip, both as he would launch into his jump and where he would land. He would roll on the other side, he thought.

“When you fall, do you wish me to climb with you again, or do you want to come alone?” Orholam asked. “My instructions weren’t clear about if I was supposed to accompany you for more than one attempt.”

Gavin didn’t deign to reply. He walked to the very edge. He examined it as if this were complicated.

It wasn’t. He couldn’t make it across. Certainly not so burdened.

He pulled the last two boon stones out: ‘That Karris Will Live’ and ‘That I Recover My Powers.’

He weighed them in his hands.

If he fell, the next trip would take a year.

He didn’t have a year. Nor did she. She’d be dead.

Fine, God. I can save her myself.

He hesitated before he could toss aside the blue that was her boon, though.

This
isn’t
me putting my powers above her life. I can’t trust Orholam. I can’t trust anyone but myself.

This is . . . this is me committing myself to using my powers
for
her. I can’t do anything for her if I’m dead. I gotta look out for myself first. For a little while. So I can serve everyone.

He threw away Karris’s life.

His throat tightened. Without turning, he said, “You tell Orholam, next time you see Him, that this is bullshit. This whole thing. Everything He’s done. All of it.”

“Seems to me you’ll do what you have to in order to be able to go tell Him yourself, Guile.”