to the signalman with the hand mirror high on the side of the orange towers: The bane have made landfall. That signalman was merely passing along a message from another spotter. It would have taken several moments at each station to confirm the message and then pass it along. Kip might have still been standing on the shoreline at the moment the bane landed.
Inconclusive. How annoying.
But, after all, Kip was still only the backup plan. Andross sent a man on ahead to order his supper sent to his stateroom. It was going to be a long day, and he’d need his strength. He’d take a bite to eat and await Kip’s failure before heading up to the mirrors himself.
“I thought You’d beat me,” Andross said aloud, slowly turning a bitter gaze to the heavens. “But perhaps I may yet snatch the victory from Your greedy hands.”
Chapter 117
A thunderous waterfall blasted Dazen off his feet. He tumbled and rolled across bright marble, coming to rest with his head in his arms, bruised and battered and dazed, eyes stinging from the force of the blast.
But he wasn’t wet.
And as far as he could tell, he wasn’t dead, either.
He moved to push himself up off the ground and saw his arms. Both had gone fully invisible, except for those black thorns within them. He sat up to his knees and saw his dream made flesh: the black thorns were everywhere twined through his transparent flesh, everywhere weakening him, wrapped around his heart, infiltrating it in such fine threads it turned the sadly palpitating, pitiful pink organ gray.
He didn’t dare look at the mirror. His whole body was a playground of jagged dark thorns, and he didn’t want to see it, didn’t know if he could handle loathing himself more.
Okay, he thought. Maybe I’m dead after all. This could be hell. A very tricky introduction to it, what with the bloodfall and the bright colors, but—
The colors. They struck him all at once. God damn.
Dazen stood and took in the world. The stone at his feet was white marble, here. So too was everything changed, better. This was like a bright reflection of the real world.
No, that was exactly backward, he thought; this was the real world, and he’d lived in the dim reflection of it for his entire life.
The mirror stood just as tall here as it did atop the tower in his world, but the cataract here poured pure water. It flowed clear and bright and everywhere it brought life. Instead of howling, the wind soughed sweetly.
The tower itself was shaped somewhat differently, but Dazen lost all track of his thoughts as he saw the sunset.
His heart swelled within its black-barbed cage as he beheld the polychromatic miracle of a sunset once again. Here, with the sun just down, every hue wielded the weight of glory.
A long moment passed before he remembered to breathe.
For the first time he could remember since he was a boy, his mind went quiet. He turned from wonder to wonder, to see the winking stars brighten in their realms, to see the million gradations of color from the blackness of the night yielding to ruddy vitality on the horizon. The cosmos stretched luxuriant above him, around him, embracing him.
He could stay here forever, watching wonders unfold like the petals of a flower opening and opening anew. But then he felt his skin tingling. Reluctantly, he looked at himself again. Frowned.
A droplet of the bright water standing suspended on his invisible arm suddenly soaked into the skin, like rain into thirsty soil—and his skin blossomed from invisibility into visibility. Everywhere he’d been immersed—so, everywhere—Dazen saw his skin not so much reappear as seem to grow anew at the touch of the water. He held up his left hand, which was tingling sharply, and saw his pinky and ring fingers grow afresh from the hacked-off stubs the Nuqaba had left him with. He tapped the whole, perfect digits with his thumb, bewildered. There was feeling in them.
He dropped his hand to his side, though, and felt a flash of rage.
This wasn’t real. This could only be some new kind of torture. It was a trap, right?
And now he looked around intently, as he should have from the very first moment, for his Enemy.
But he could see no one else. He circled the tower peak slowly, to see if anyone hid behind the mirror.
The tower itself looked slightly odd, so once Dazen had assured himself that he was alone, he