The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,366

pond was a trap. The wight’s magic had strengthened the ice—for himself. Gavin would never forget the feeling of the ice holding his hesitant first steps easily, but then flexing under his weight, and suddenly buckling.

His magic had saved him that day.

He had none now. Slapping his hand against the mirror felt exactly the same as the ice had felt that day. Where for Lucidonius the mirror seemed gelatinous, forgiving, for Gavin it was frozen, momentarily stable. His hand stopped, held his weight from an icy plunge as his palm tingled, bits of lightning shooting up his forearm, enervating it.

The mirror cracked under his hand like the sound of a musket shot. Gavin snatched his hand away. The mirror was a death trap. Lucidonius wanted to obliterate him.

The moment itched a memory in him, of a dream where he’d stood on the top of a tower, as a giant approached—but there was no time!

I need more time! he’d shouted in his dream.

He turned now and saw Lucidonius, picking up the sword.

Gavin’s heart dropped. He’d been distracted mere seconds, but it had been seconds too long.

But then he saw something worse than seeing his foe armed: Lucidonius turned. His eyes were coals now, still-hot mirrors of the descending sun, but no longer so blindingly bright that they obscured what his face looked like.

“Fuck you!” Gavin roared at the sight of that face. “You want me to think I’m losing my mind!”

“Again,” the man said quietly.

“Yes, again! You drove me to madness once, Orholam. Your lies. You cost me everything! And now, now you come back?!” Somehow, Gavin slipped from addressing the godling as Lucidonius to Orholam once more.

It wasn’t a perfect facsimile, but the god wore a face that could have been Gavin’s own.

“I’m not your shadow, Dazen,” the god said. “You’re mine. You are a dim reflection of what you could have been.”

“Lies. From you, Orholam. I took such joy in you when I was a child. When I was a boy, I thought I was going to be a luxiat, do you know that? The incense. The ceremony. The hymns. I loved it all. Do you remember? Or did you even notice me then? And then, after I became Prism, when I celebrated the highest and holiest days, they were bitter gall to me. Because I knew! And now you stand, wearing that face like mine, stepping from a mirror? As if I fight myself here? As if I’m mad already? But I see clearly now. I am the Black Prism. I am the dark center of creation. And now the world’s light and life will feed me as it has fed you for four hundred years, Lucidonius. I will be immortal as you are.”

“I’m not Lucidonius.”

“It doesn’t matter who you say you are. You have to die. You have to die or Karris dies.”

“You have it exactly backward . . . brother.”

The final word struck Gavin in the stomach, driving the breath from him, and if the figure had moved then, he could’ve slain Gavin easily.

No, this was a nightmare, the way the giant fist coming down to crush him had been from that earlier dream. Gavin must be feverish. He must be mad.

No! No. He was here. This was real.

So this was all calculated. It was a trap.

“You’re not Orholam,” Gavin said. “And you’re nothing like my brother. Don’t make me laugh.”

“Usually, we mortals don’t get to serve as messengers,” the man said as if Gavin hadn’t spoken. “But He was making an exception for one brother. And we Guiles can be very persuasive.”

“What’d you do, Lucidonius? Try to mold the illusion to look like me as much as you could, and hope the brightness of your eyes would blind me to all its shortcomings?”

“Flaws? Please, brother,” the godling said. “I’m the handsome one.” His eyes twinkled with good humor, and he held the blade casually, but kept enough distance between them that Gavin wasn’t going to be able to take him by surprise.

“Well, that’s a little bit like him, I confess. But it’s still not good enough.”

“Brother. You’ve tried to hold out until nightfall. What do you hope comes with the darkness?”

“Your power is faded already,” Gavin said.

“Indeed. Mine is. Orholam’s is not.”

Gavin sighed. “Orholam. Lucidonius. Me. Now you’re someone else again? It’s so tiresome. Just pick one, huh?”

The god laughed. “Oh, is this Gavin complaining, or Dazen, or He Who Would Be Orholam himself?”

“I . . . I—fair enough.”

Gavin wondered if Karris were already dead.