The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,214

after the bludgeoning I just took with that round. You know what I mean?”

“No.”

“So tell me, O, why aren’t you pilgriming with me? Pilgriming. Pilgrimaging? Huh. I’m the head of the faith and I don’t know how people usually say it. I think I like pilgriming. Feels grim, and it’s a bitter pill, right? No? Not working with me at all here, are you? Fine. Why aren’t you pilgriming? No sins to purge? Too holy already?”

As Orholam sighed, Gavin took the Chastity boon stone and tucked it into a pocket in the pilgrim’s tunic. It was heavy, but it fit perfectly.

When Grinwoody had commissioned Gavin for this task, he’d mentioned magical locks at every level that the fleeing guardians had left to keep out drafters of each associated color. That was why Gavin, unable now to draft, was supposedly the perfect candidate to assassinate Orholam—or the magical nexus called Orholam. So far, though, Gavin had only felt a whisper of resistance as he walked through each gate, and that may have been his imagination or his dread at what the next circle would hold.

They moved farther into the landing. There was one between each circle. Here, silently, they ate salt fish and drank water while Gavin recovered. The steep chute that Gavin had seen below had an opening here, and Gavin wondered how many pilgrims failed not on each level but on the spaces between them like this, where they pondered how terrible the next one would be.

How easy was it to give up and simply escape, too afraid to confront what lay next?

“I’m journeying for you,” Orholam said finally, when Gavin had nearly forgotten his question. “If I did my own pilgrimage, I would take much less time on certain circles than you, leaving you alone. It’s even possible I might take more time on certain circles. Dimly. Wrath, for one, would not be easy on me. But I’m here to walk with you, step for step, no matter how long you take. We’re not meant to take the pilgrimage alone.”

“So no pilgrimage for you at all?” Gavin asked.

“When my business with you is finished, I’ll go back down and start my own climb.”

“I’m really delighted that you are here for me, but I, uh, won’t be joining you for yours. You know that, right?”

Orholam scoffed like yeah, he knew. Then he frowned.

“There’s my old Wrath again, rearing up inside,” Orholam said as if disappointed in himself.

“I piss you off that much, huh?” Gavin asked. And here he’d been being as respectful as he could manage. Wrath was going to be a tough circle for him, too.

“This is your chance to decide whether you want to be that old deceiver Gavin Guile or if you want to be a Dazen Guile made new. I know you want that. You’ve made attempts before. This is an opportunity to change, Guile. And you’ve been offered more of those than most get. Take it.”

The old prophet hunkered down with his own salt fish, turning his back on Gavin. The conversation, clearly, was finished.

Gavin sighed. Some company for his pilgrimage.

He’d mostly given up trying to understand the magic of whoever had created this tower. It had to be a highly advanced will-casting-focused magic, from the way it triggered Gavin’s memories. He’d had multiple flashbacks during every circle: the makers of this thing had weaponized his own mind against him.

This wasn’t a hike up a tower; it was a trek through everything he’d ever done wrong, everything he’d never done right. This was his every failure held up to the light and splintered into its component deadly sins through a black prism.

It was not a magic to be understood, merely one to be endured. He was gaining no new knowledge of magic, but only of himself.

How the tower’s Tyrean makers (if this wasn’t older than even their empire) had understood vice and virtue was different than what the Chro-meria taught. He’d learned, and as the Highest Luxiat, even taught the seven virtues as being the four worldly virtues (prudence, courage, justice, temperance) and the three heavenly ones (charity, hope, and faith).

Believers were to meditate on these virtues, and how they might embody them better, as they made the sign of the four and the three touching hand, heart, and lips. If you counted hands as a collective singular, you would count them as number three, whereas if you counted each hand in turn separately, they would count as three and four—thus symbolizing a paradox,