The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,275

. because I was willing to lose him.”

Kip folded his cards, conceding. “So Zymun and I are your little ships?” he asked.

Andross sipped his whiskey. “It’s a game, not a metaphor, and you’re the one who chose these decks. Not that I’m opposed to learning lessons from mere games or other unlikely places. Speaking of which, there’s the matter of our first wager. I believe you have a story to tell me about what happened to Janus Borig’s cards.”

Chapter 79

Even as Gavin ran up the steps to the Tower of Heaven’s roof, he noticed a change from the hewn conformity of all the stairs he’d climbed in the entire hike up until now.

The steps became irregular, a more natural shape, with uncut stone, albeit worn by the passage of many thousands of feet over untold years. Coming out on the top of White Mist Tower felt not like reaching the top of one of the Chromeria’s seven towers but instead like summiting the stone crown of a mountain. The top wasn’t carved flat, but gently curved.

It reminded him, quite suddenly, of the crest of Sundered Rock before he and his brother had shattered it.

So long lost in darkness, that memory surfaced as sharply as did the black stone beneath his feet. For the entire climb, the black stone of the tower had been an oddity. Was it meant to evoke the black humility of a luxiat’s robes? The imagery had never gelled for Gavin. Luxiats showed they had no light of their own, but surely this pilgrimage should be toward light. Maybe a tower black at the base, but lighter as one climbed? That could make sense.

Instead, White Mist Tower was unrelieved black.

A part of Gavin knew he should move fast. He should grab the blade before anything else. He’d circled halfway around the tower with the last stair, which put the sword at the far side. But running before he knew what was here might be rushing heedless into danger—rather than running to safety. And a sight here struck him like Orholam’s own raised fist.

Here, finally, at its topmost height, the Tower of Heaven poked its head above the wall of white mists that had obscured the rest of it for ages. Only here, at its crown, was Gavin high enough to see out beyond the mantle of cloud cloaking both tower and island.

The rising sun, dimmed for all the timeless days he’d been here, shone brilliant, awakening the horizon with fire. White fire, to Gavin’s color-blind eyes, but the sun was beautiful yet, even stripped of its colors by a cruel god.

The thought brought him back to himself. Brought him back to threats and death and killing. He couldn’t see the sword on the opposite side of the tower’s top, hidden as it was by the rise of the stone hill that was the tower’s center—but he didn’t see anything else, either.

The summit was empty.

The pilgrimage ended in nothing.

I crossed half the world to come to God’s own house, and He’s not at home.

Probably never was.

But maybe this was an illusion, another will-casting, another test.

Gavin covered his color-blind eye and stared through the black jewel. It revealed only bleak nothingness rendered in starker tones than his natural orb saw. Brittle stone, a tower not of heaven but of lies. This temple was all façade. Men had labored for a thousand years to build this tower to the heavens, and when they reached it, they found themselves punished only with the death of their delusions and a loneliness plunging as deep as this tower was tall.

In piling up a tower to heaven, they only burrowed down exactly that deeply into hell. In the light of this open air, they’d found a darkness as great as the black cell under the Chromeria.

On the day they’d finished, there had surely been some festival, some celebration with serious prayers from serious luxiats. Together, those gathered had surely shouted to heaven, ‘We built You a house! Come and live among us, Orholam! Fulfill the promise of the ages!’

What had they done when there had been no answer?

How long had it been before scandalized luxiats, seeing their own power dissolve with other men’s beliefs, concocted some excuse for Orholam’s absence?

They’d lied then as they did now, because all their power rested on it.

It was what Gavin had always suspected, but it was like suspecting your wife had cheated, dread growing in your heart as you became more certain, but the relationship not dying until