The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,356

direction as the arrow hit its chest with a small flash. It dropped flat on its back to the ground.

“Not bad,” Winsen admitted.

He didn’t mean the shot. He meant the Andross-gifted bow and arrows.

“Remind me never to piss you off,” Ben-hadad said.

“Hey, Ben,” Winsen said.

“Not right now, asshole,” Ben said. He was rubbing his knees as if uncomfortable with the new fit and with wearing a brace on both legs.

Kip cursed. He’d gotten frozen with the spectacle and the anticipation and the battle juice pumping in his veins.

“Son!” Corvan said again, louder.

Kip looked.

Corvan said, “This battle’s gonna have surprises for all of us—but that means them, too. You’re doing fine. We’re going to win here. Your friend probably bought us a few hours and a whole lot of confidence.” He gave a wolfish smile. “Now, get the hell out of here. I have a feeling the bane attack is coming soon.”

Chapter 109

The superviolet bane was not much to Aliviana’s liking. It had been largely finished before she arrived at Azuria Bay, of course. The unskilled drafter she’d replaced as the Ferrilux had no imagination, nor sense of aesthetics, nor even the realization that the bane could be shaped as it grew.

So it had grown as it would, many-faceted crystals growing up many-faceted crystals. A floating island of large crystals, growing in spirals upon spirals, the greater echoing the smaller.

A cannon shell exploded fifty-two paces from her bane. Some small amount of shrapnel tore through her left port bow.

Aliviana Ferrilux fixed it, found a drafter who’d been injured, and dumped her out into the water.

Changing the bane, she’d decided, would be too massive an expenditure of her time and effort, so she was stuck with it. Her hatred of it was illogical. She could have made the bane invisible. Even with the vast amount of water the structure displaced, she could have crafted illusions such that the water here looked like the water elsewhere. Instead, this mess of crystals with every possible polarity made the floating island actually somewhat visible, even if one missed the giant bowl of missing water in the waves.

She hated a lot about things that she couldn’t quite figure out these days.

For the two hours before dawn, she’d been picking the superviolet crystals off her face and hands, elbows, knees, neck, groin. You’d think this would be a simple thing: superviolet luxin was so fragile that a vigorous shake ought to do it.

But she’d learned in the last year that what the Chromeria’s drafters did with superviolet exploited only a fraction of its potential. With what Aliviana now did? The body had to learn how to deal with so much magic, and it simply didn’t handle all of it well. Her mortal body failed her immortal will. She would figure out fixes later. Work-arounds. Eternity would be a long time.

For now these crystals grew on her skin like barnacles on the hull of a boat, slowing her down. If she tore them off, they too often tore her delicate human skin—which seemed to be thinning all the time. This was especially bad on her face. The tears left her with scars to which the crystals accreted even more quickly. It was slowly immobilizing her face from showing even the few emotions she now betrayed. But she didn’t want to lose function, not in anything, not because of magic she didn’t control. That reeked of failure.

Another cannon shell exploded, closer. She fixed the damage with an irritated thought. Soon it would be time to rise.

All this power, yet I’m losing control over my own body.

Perhaps this was what it was like for humans to grow old? She would have to think on that.

Beliol had offered to help her with this, of course, groveling as he did, the little spirit. She rejected him this time, as she usually did. And as usual when rejected, Beliol quickly went on his way. He treated his time on this world as if it were precious. Any chance he might have of worming his way further into Liv’s thoughts, he took, but when rejected, he acted as if he had other places to be.

He grew more powerful the more Aliviana depended on him. She’d figured that out almost immediately, though she hadn’t let on, she hoped. Theirs would be a game played over centuries, she thought. He was, likely, malevolent. But he had limitations, too. She would be careful not to put herself under his power. The groveling might stop at the most