The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,143

bit of an extrapolation. Further, ‘off’ could mean near or even on Ruic Head. It’s more often ‘inside Ruic Head,’ so it might mean ‘on Ruic Bay’? Or maybe ‘buried in the ground beneath Ruic Head itself’? Alternately, if we wanted to take it a metaphorical direction, ‘inside the left fist’ could merely mean ‘in the power of’ a political entity near Ruic Head, the city of Ru itself. But I don’t think so.”

“If a bane appears near Ruic Head, I imagine we’ll notice,” I say drily. “So it doesn’t matter. The ambiguity will likely clear itself up in time.”

She continues, “ ‘and she who births him will become Ferrilux.’ This could be an actual birth, but I’ve never heard of the gods literally giving birth to other gods, especially of such disparate colors as super-violet and green. And that Atirat rises from nearby doesn’t suggest growing up from infancy; rather it suggests a god in full.”

“So this woman will help Atirat . . . become Atirat?” I ask. We have so little idea how godhood is conferred or perhaps recognized. It is not something lost to the black, I don’t think, though; I think it has always been secret.

Felia says, “And then this woman, this goddess, will at some indeterminate point later become Ferrilux, which is intriguing as Ferrilux is traditionally male. I’ve considered that this may be symbolic if the ‘she’ is a nation or a satrapy, but that would be a strange construction.”

“Not that prophecies are noted for their plain language.”

“Which makes this one all the more striking,” Felia says. “It could be a poetic phrasing, because that seemed appropriate to the subject matter of goddesses?” She spreads her hands, as puzzled as I am.

“As you were,” I say.

“Then ‘She will open the Gates fully, which have been cracked.’ The ‘have been cracked’ isn’t the same as our idiom ‘opened a crack.’ It means ‘leaking’ as in ‘slightly broken,’ like a cracked egg. Some believe—and I concur—that at some point during Lucidonius’s or Vician’s time, the Gates were fully closed and let no water at all through, which hasn’t of course been the case for centuries. But this woman will open the gates all the way.”

“Which would make us entirely vulnerable to the Angari.”

“Maybe they aren’t warlike anymore. It’s been centuries,” Felia says. “But then, this prophecy doesn’t exactly strike such a hopeful note.”

“On the other hand,” I say, “if ‘the Everdark Gates’ actually does mean the gates of hell . . . there might be something worse than the Angari waiting to come through.”

Felia purses her lips. “Not a hopeful note at all, huh? ‘From Tyrea’ is the last fragment, and then the rest is redacted. She, the new Ferrilux, will come from Tyrea, or something or someone else? There’s not enough context to guess.”

I look at the words again:

If upon the day when the Everdark Gates open full and the bane touch the Jaspers, there stands no Lightbringer on the Jaspers’ shore, then shall the Chromeria fall. As a river of blood pours from the Prism’s Tower, then will seven towers collapse, and with them, seven satrapies. Ye shall know the time is short when bane rise from the seas. Atirat will rise off Ruic Head, and she who births him will become Ferrilux. She will open the Gates fully, which have been cracked. From Tyrea—

The words seem writ in fire to me. I have no doubt they are true. This prophecy alone doesn’t give us the evidence we’d hoped for, but it gives us what’s at stake, and the time frame.

“What do we do?” I ask.

Felia is the only one in the world of whom I would ask such a question.

She studies me with eyes aglow with orange luxin, with love, with intelligence, and with pride. A man cannot long endure a look of total love and acceptance without turning aside or being changed forever.

I hold her gaze.

She puts her hands on my forearms, looking up at me, and when she speaks, her voice is soft but unyielding. “How we direct all the resources of our wealth and our connections and our intelligences and our considerable powers hinges on your answer to one question. My husband, my lord . . .”

Suddenly, I can feel the waters of history streaming past us, the passions of men and the desires of nations, the Chromeria spinning like a great wheel of a water mill driven by the politics of satraps and satrapahs, ambitious Colors riding the wheel