to make a pilgrimage, but the most common is believing a pilgrimage is a shortcut to redemption. It’s also the worst reason to make one. As if one might carry a rock for a while and be finished with pride. Carrying a burden so heavy it hobbles you is a good metaphor for sin, but it’s only a metaphor. Confusing the image of a thing with the thing itself is the root of all sorts of trouble.”
“Let me guess: life itself is the pilgrimage?” Gavin asked.
But the old prophet hardly slowed. “You Guiles are eagles watching a sunset in a still mountain lake. You dive into it instead of soaring as you were made to do, and flap your wings in the water and curse the world because you can’t fly and you find it hard to breathe—and with your splashing you destroy the image of the sky, too.”
“Thanks,” Gavin said. Asshole. “So if I’m not who I think I am, then who am I?” He was trying to be flippant, but he was too exhausted. The day’s long fight had taken it out of him.
“You like to figure things out. Figure it out. Besides, I’ve already told you.”
No, you didn’t. “What does this have to do with that slave Alvaro?”
“Who’s asking?”
Ugh! God! Gavin hated prophets!
Dazen. Dazen hated prophets. Dammit! He still thought of himself as Gavin. Half the time. It was excruciating, holding himself together. “I’m Dazen Guile,” he said. His voice came out firmly. A strong, steady statement of fact. Mostly.
“No, you’re not.”
“Well, shit. A one-in-two chance, and I still blow it. What, then? I’m Gavin indeed?”
“You’re asking me?” the old man said. “And you’re going to listen?”
“Yes!” Gavin said, exasperated. This was surreal, infuriating. He’d stepped into a circus world, a hall of mirrors. Up was down, left was right, and though he could finally remember everything he’d lost to black luxin, he couldn’t even firmly pin down his own name?
Orholam said quietly, “You’re not a trickster. You’re a protector. You’re the one who goes out before his people into battle. Is that enough, or do you need more hints?”
“Promachos?” Gavin asked, but something in him cracked. “That’s what Ironfist called me. I come all the way up here just to get my Blackguard name a second time?”
But he was being defensive, holding the prophet off mentally. Stalling. It had felt good when Ironfist called him that. It had felt real, and strong, and true. And that had been a treasure. He’d held off the name then, too, even as he’d craved it. ‘I’m not the man you think I am,’ he’d told Ironfist. Ironfist had replied, ‘Are you not the man I’ve served these past ten years?’ ‘I am.’ ‘Then perhaps, my lord, you’re not the man you think you are.’
Orholam went on. “Harrdun saw what you did, for decades, and at Garriston you gave him undeniable evidence, no matter his other feelings about you.”
Dazen cocked his head. “At Garriston? What, making Brightwater Wall?”
“No!” Orholam laughed. “That part infuriated him, how seemingly effortlessly you could create such a wonder, and how you so easily turned people’s hearts to you. I mean at the gate.”
“I got his people killed at the gate,” Gavin said. “I should’ve finished it faster.”
“You laid down your life for your friends at that gate, and in so doing, you drafted white luxin. He found a piece of it. He wears it still.”
“White luxin? Me? That’s not—”
“Dazen or Gavin, you have been what you thought you needed to be in order to be Promachos. It’s who you are. And you are at your most powerful when you stand for those who have no one to stand for them.”
The words smote him like a giant’s fist crashing down around him.
But instead of crushing him, he felt his dead heart stir once more, pounding for at least one moment again within its dark and thorny cage—life in him pulsing against the death garrisoned in his body. It was truth, smashing him as painfully as a man pounds a drowned swimmer’s chest, breaking ribs to save his life, making him gasp in pain in order to help him breathe at all.
But he knew this was nothing more than one last skirmish in an old, losing war. It was too late. He’d not drowned in water that might be spat out, leaving his lungs clear. He’d drowned in blood. Rivers and seas of it.
And yet . . .
Tears coursed from his eyes. Promachos.
His mind cast back to