The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,178

longer be as precious as it was.

But as they stood mere paces away from it now, it could be nothing else—unless there was some kind of hex here, fooling his eye.

Orholam appeared unfazed and was washing himself at a great stone basin off to one side before the gate, again fed with fresh running water off the tower side. Either the ancients had been quite a thirsty lot or they’d been obsessed with ritual cleanliness.

There was nothing ritual, though, about Gavin cleaning the muck from his legs and clothes. Again.

As the sun set, they finally confronted the gate itself, with its own statue of an immortal beyond it. The gate was fully as wide as the trail (though he thought he might be able to climb around the outside of it). The drop here was only thirty feet. The gate was starkly white against all the light-sucking black of the tower, its pearlescence shining in the sunset (probably pink, Gavin guessed). There were three mighty locks on it, side by side. Each labeled.

“My Old Parian vocabulary is limited,” Gavin said. “Any idea?”

Orholam said, “The locks are Confession, Contrition, and Satisfaction.”

“Not much good as locks, are they? The keys are still in them.”

“Perhaps you should be grateful that the guardians who had to abandon this place decided that their own desire to save a relic of the place holiest to them should be suborned to the possible needs of strangers living long after them to make this climb.”

“Fine,” Gavin said, “I’m the asshole.” He turned Confession, and the lock turned as smoothly as Andross Guile pivoting to stab you in the back.

“I’m sorry,” Gavin said.

He turned Contrition.

“I won’t do it again. Happy?”

He turned Satisfaction, and gave his best old Gavin Guile grin—marred somewhat, no doubt, by his missing dogtooth.

Orholam said, “There’s a difference between charming and winsome. You’re more the latter when you’re less the former, Man of Guile. Shoes.”

“Excuse me?”

“Leave your shoes. We walk now on holy ground.”

“Are you serious? I haven’t got time for this.”

“You’ve got all the time you need as long as your feet are touching the holy mountain.”

Gavin sighed. The obsidian of the path was polished, so it wasn’t like he had that as an excuse, and the old man was going to keep harping on this.

He took off his shoes and moved forward onto the path. It was wide enough here for ten abreast, and the overhanging ceiling high enough not to invoke his claustrophobia.

The open gate revealed to the left an array of stones of varying sizes, and to the right, another statue, her paint worn thin by the elements. Her head was bowed, and at her bare feet, dropped from open hands, lay a scepter.

“Behold the spirit of Humility,” Orholam said. “Here, you may expiate your Pride, the foundation of all sins. Here pilgrims select a stone to carry, symbolic of their own pride.”

“Well, one would hate to offend local customs,” Gavin said. He started to reach for the smallest of the stones.

“Hold,” Orholam said. “A word about the pilgrimage, before you make a mistake you’ll regret.”

“There are booby traps?” Gavin asked.

“No!” Orholam said as if it were the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. “Why would luxiats try to kill people who are seeking Orholam? You want to know what your whole problem is, Guile?”

“Not really—”

“You’ve always feared men where you should have feared God.”

“That . . . is at least half true.”

“Shut up!” Orholam said. “Before you begin, do consider if you really wish to undertake this pilgrimage flippantly. Here’s how it works. At each level, you’ll pick a burden to carry representing your sin. At the next gate, you’ll trade in your burden for a small stone, commonly called a boon stone, a mark of how far you made it.”

“Ah, thus the pockets!” Gavin said, pulling at one of the seven funny-shaped pockets on his ancient tunic.

“When you arrive at the top—if you do—you may present them to Orholam, as a tribute that He makes holy. Some say that for each stone you present, Orholam grants a boon. Me, I don’t think Orholam’s favor can be bought.”

Those are two different kinds of favors, Gavin thought. But he said aloud, “So everyone gets seven favors?”

“Few, I think, got the chance to test it.”

This was starting to feel like an old magisters’ examination. But fine, he’d passed plenty of those, often in ways that infuriated the magisters. He could do so again.

“If I pick the wrong rock, do I not get the boon