The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,176

you might even believe that,” Teia said. “But I don’t.”

And then she killed him.

But something went wrong. Either there was some idiosyncrasy of his spine or Teia’s control wasn’t as fine as she thought. Instead of paralysis, she hit some bundle of nerves that sent his entire body into racking convulsions, bucking and flailing and screaming at a pitch and intensity she’d never have guessed he would reach, or even that he could. His screams shrieked like claws jagged across the slate of your mind and lodged in some animal part that begged you to run away or huddle in a corner, rocking back and forth, face to knees, ears plugged, whimpering.

It shook Teia’s cold calm a bit, to be honest.

But there was worse to come. That old cliché she’d heard? The one she’d always figured men added to their war stories to make themselves sound tough, like they were better than weaker men or that the situation they’d been through was so, so hard? That thing about grown men crying for their mothers as they die? She’d always thought, Whatever, maybe that happens once in a while, maybe. Maybe with child soldiers or boys who can barely shave, but not with a grown man. Not with a warrior. Certainly, she thought, a man tougher than old saddle leather and more bitter than vinegared wine would never stop fighting. A hardened veteran weeping, tears and snot streaming unheeded down his face, gasping, “Mama help, mama help, mama, mama, mama . . .”?

She’d been so sure that never happened.

Huh.

Chapter 49

The dead savaged in the lagoon behind him didn’t matter. The prophet and his logorrhea had no meaning. The world beyond the mist curtain had ceased to exist. Even the city, this nameless city below the black tower, held nothing to pique his curiosity.

This had been a waystation for pilgrims, once. The whole city had been organized around the physical and spiritual preparation of those who planned to attempt the climb. At its heyday, it must have hosted thousands every day.

But Gavin paid none of it any mind.

On the central boulevard, he found great mosaics of legends and saints ancient even to the ancient peoples who had made them. The boulevard had been lined with shops, once. By the remains of their painted pictographic signs, there had been cobblers and tailors and makers of packs and torches and walking sticks and bandages and dried meats and fruits. Doubtless a street or two back had housed the whorehouses and taverns, for all those pilgrims who wished, one last time, to sample the favorite sins they’d come to leave behind. Now empty buildings stared out at him like skulls stripped of flesh and eyes.

But as every secondary tone had darkened to the chromatic blindness in Gavin’s sole remaining eye, so every secondary voice in curiosity’s chorus had fallen quiet in his ears. The soloist rose before him. The answer to all things lay up there. And Karris’s salvation, too—if Gavin were strong enough.

He came out from the shade of two mighty overarching atasifusta trees and saw a great gate, open, flanked by two large statues. All the work of human hands stopped at the gate. Not an outbuilding lay beyond, only the trail and jungle. The statues were warriors in identical scale armor and the spears common to the Tyrean era. But their faces were curious to Gavin: one a typical Tyrean with a prominent nose and brow, perhaps woolier hair than was common in Tyrea now, but the other one had flatter features, dark hair straight as wheat, and small eyes with a monolid like no one Gavin had ever seen.

“Is this some race of the immortals? A people from beyond even the Angari?” Gavin asked. “Or is it some quirk of Tyrean art?”

Orholam shrugged. “Look over here.”

There were ceremonial baths by the road, fed by a lively stream.

They drank and washed and thought of little else for a time. A mosaic wall behind the stone baths depicted men and women feasting and then washing in its waters. There were among them men with such eyes as the statue had, and other races and peoples Gavin had never seen in the Seven Satrapies. Men covered with tattoos and tall women and men half-sized, like Blood Forest’s pygmies, though perhaps that was simply the ancient Tyrean art’s way of depicting children.

All the figures were dressed in simple robes, and looked somber as they washed.

Apparently the old Tyrean Empire had been more cosmopolitan than the