The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,242

you,” Orholam said. “You’re throwing them aside.”

“The gap’s too wide!” Gavin snarled.

But words changed nothing.

Red. Dagnu’s stone. Gluttony. Kip. Was asking for happiness for Kip somehow Gavin being gluttonous?

It wasn’t. Sure, Gavin wanted everything. Could never ask enough. But wasn’t asking a boon for Kip selfless? How could Orholam oppose that?

I want to give him something so good, he’ll never ask for the truth about his real father, whom I killed.

Gavin looked at the red boon stone. Sorry, Kip. You deserve better.

He tossed the stone aside, closing his eyes.

He bounced on his feet as if unaffected, testing his weight. Still too heavy, too encumbered. Three stones left. He knew what he should toss aside next. He opened sub-red. Anat’s stone, goddess of Wrath. His vengeance. If Orholam made him focus his request, what would he choose? Vengeance on all wights for Sevastian’s murder, as his Great Goal had once been? Vengeance on Koios White Oak for this damned war? Or was he pettier than that, his world even more constricted? Vengeance on his father?

He touched the raw wound that was the sub-red boon stone.

Tossing it away was like tearing away a scab that had an unhealed wound beneath it.

The warmth fled from the world, and it took some of the life from Gavin’s limbs with it.

If I recover my powers, I can take vengeance myself. With my powers, I’m Prism Gavin Guile. With my powers, I can do anything. This time I won’t waste it.

Now he had only two boons left he could ask: First, that Karris would live—that she would triumph! Yes, he would be audacious on her behalf. Second, that he recover all his powers, fully, with the full span of his years left in them, that he could last another twenty-one years as Prism, at least. With only two boons, he’d ask no half measures.

Gavin began limbering up his muscles. He checked the very edge of the precipice for grip, both as he would launch into his jump and where he would land. He would roll on the other side, he thought.

“When you fall, do you wish me to climb with you again, or do you want to come alone?” Orholam asked. “My instructions weren’t clear about if I was supposed to accompany you for more than one attempt.”

Gavin didn’t deign to reply. He walked to the very edge. He examined it as if this were complicated.

It wasn’t. He couldn’t make it across. Certainly not so burdened.

He pulled the last two boon stones out: ‘That Karris Will Live’ and ‘That I Recover My Powers.’

He weighed them in his hands.

If he fell, the next trip would take a year.

He didn’t have a year. Nor did she. She’d be dead.

Fine, God. I can save her myself.

He hesitated before he could toss aside the blue that was her boon, though.

This isn’t me putting my powers above her life. I can’t trust Orholam. I can’t trust anyone but myself.

This is . . . this is me committing myself to using my powers for her. I can’t do anything for her if I’m dead. I gotta look out for myself first. For a little while. So I can serve everyone.

He threw away Karris’s life.

His throat tightened. Without turning, he said, “You tell Orholam, next time you see Him, that this is bullshit. This whole thing. Everything He’s done. All of it.”

“Seems to me you’ll do what you have to in order to be able to go tell Him yourself, Guile.”

“Yeah, I will.”

“It also seems to me that if you tossed the sword aside instead, you might be able to carry a couple of those stones. But what do I know?”

Somehow, Gavin hadn’t even thought of the sword. He’d grown accustomed to the makeshift scabbard banging against him with every step.

“The sword’s like my testicles, friend,” Gavin said.

“Not the genitalia one usually hears a sword compared to.”

“It can get in my way. It’s a weak spot, but not one I’m willing to part with. Losing the sword is not an option.”

So long as he had the sword, perhaps he could compel Orholam to give him a boon. Or kill Him, as Grinwoody demanded. But Gavin would do what it took. Whatever it took.

But he hadn’t turned away from the gap as he spoke. He cracked open his left eye—the crystalline black eye—and he saw his trajectories. A hundred different attempts played out in front of him: he jumped too early; he stumbled on the last step; he tried to run along the wall