The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,126

the wisest of all created beasts, for he has a dual nature: neither the blindnesses of the cold-blooded nor the weaknesses of the warm. Thus, we highlanders seek to emulate our ‘dragon.’ We discern when it is time to be a monkey of the tribe, and when it is time to be the cold lone serpent. Or whichsoever animals you will, given a particular circumstance.”

“How do you know when to be which?” I ask. “Does the monkey in you get to decide, or the snake?”

Lord Dariush gives me a long appraisal. “You see the crux of the question. Quickly, too.”

Was there, then, no answer? Or was it a stupid ‘We muddle through as best we can, with our shitty metaphors and backward culture’?

Lord Dariush waits a moment longer, then he says, “Intriguing. You see the crux of the matter, but not the heart of it. You are so very, very fast to see the weakness in a system, but slow to go further to seek a charitable interpretation for it.”

That stings. “Was this a test I’ve just failed?” Bugger your art, old man.

“Yes to the failure. No to the test. Tests are designed. This was inadvertent. Another slippage of your mask, I think.”

“Putting one’s best foot forward is hardly the same—”

Another slippage?

Dariush interrupts. “Hold that thought. I know you won’t forget it. Back to the dragon, if you would, and my silly, backward tales.”

“I never—!” I protest.

“No. You didn’t. I withdraw that last.” Dariush clears his throat. “The part that decides which nature to indulge or to express, the weak faculty that stands at the fulcrum between the dog and the serpent? That faculty is exactly what makes us human. Here in the highlands, we believe we are not zoon politikon. We are zoon kritikon, the animal that judges.”

I . . . actually rather like that.

I wonder why. I’m not sure if it’s because it’s the most accurate way to think of this or merely the most charitable, but I do have ‘cooler’ blood in my own veins than most men do.

By this account, that doesn’t condemn me as ‘reptilian.’ It makes me a bit of a dragon.

Much better. Much.

Lord Dariush goes on, though, musing now. “Sadly, the part of the myth that suggests that the whole of it is unreliable and infected by the old legends from the rest of the satrapies is that one day, they say, naturally, our Dragon, our very own Bringer of Fire will come.”

“Bringer of Fire?” I ask. “Not the Bringer of Light?”

“It’s a very clear distinction in our old tongue. But yes, clearly, that’s the idea it parallels, to the point that it’s become associated and confabulated and subsumed within the Lightbringer myths, like two lines of smoke from adjacent campfires, driven together by the winds of the Seven Satrapies’ shared history.” He sighs. “It’s a very seductive idea, though, isn’t it?”

“What’s that?”

“A Lightbringer coming. Or a Bringer of Fire. A Luíseach. That your people’s ideal man or woman, whether warrior or trickster or hero of whatever stripe you value most, will come and kick everyone else’s asses?” He grinned as if to say, ‘Humans, huh?’

“He comes just in time to save the highlands, I suppose,” I ask, “like the Lightbringer and the Luíseach respectively? The mythoi really are catholic, aren’t they?”

He shakes his head. “No to the ‘saving.’ This is where things get interesting to me, because that’s different here. The Dragon won’t come in time to save us. He’ll be too late. He comes only to adjudge and avenge. So though our prophesied figure could actually be the same man as the Lightbringer, to us it won’t matter. Thus when we highland Atashians toast each other in seasons of danger, we say, ‘Here’s to not living in the time of the Dragon.’ ”

Seeking to counter his earlier impression of my lack of charity, I try some light flattery: “I guess when you know your hero isn’t going to come in time to save you, it does encourage self-reliance.” The highlanders are well-known for their prickly, stupidly independent spirit.

‘ Self-reliance’ is the kindest way I can think of to put it.

“That’s how we like it,” he says. Defensively.

I was trying to be nice.

“A people with calluses, indeed,” I say, expecting him to finish the old truism.

Felia shares her father’s love for translation and history, so from her letters I know it’s ‘a people with calluses.’ There was a famous sloppy old translation (famous among that oh-so-wide circle of Atashian historical translators) that