The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,395

end of the day, he was definitely the emperor, and he wouldn’t allow anyone to forget it. So Orholam appeared to him thus, a divine mirror, so that Gavin might have some hope of understanding a part of the truth, a corporeal synecdoche: a part standing in for the whole.

“I’ve got nothing that’s a fitting tribute for You,” Dazen said. “I’m broken-down trash myself.”

“I accept.”

“What?”

“You! I accept! With delight! An excellent tribute. None finer.”

“Me?! You don’t need me. You just said—”

“Does a king need friends?” Orholam asked.

“What? What?” Dazen knew how Gavin would’ve answered, but he also knew it would be wrong.

“Does a father need his children?” Orholam asked. “Does a mother need the babe in her arms?”

“Of course not. But . . . yes? Not need need, but that’s totally different. What are You saying?”

Dazen thought of his own father and what it had done to Andross to think he didn’t need his children. He thought of his mother, who’d been so broken by her own loss. And he thought of Kip, and what he himself must have done to Kip, thinking the boy didn’t need need Dazen to stand in as his father.

Dazen said, “I see what You’re saying, though it’s not exactly an apt meta—”

“Perfectly apt. Will you come be My son?”

What?! Dazen couldn’t wrap his head around that. It didn’t make sense.

But what was perfectly clear was the ruin he’d left everywhere in his wake. He could see in color sharper and more jagged than all his memories. He could remember sliding the dagger home into ribs, over and over, until he was numbed to the deed.

And he’d done it thousands of times. Thousands.

He’d known the Freeing was wrong, and he’d done it anyway.

Gavin knew what he was. Orholam had to know it, too, or he wasn’t Orholam.

A wave of self-loathing crested over him, a tide of blood guilt as unending as the blood river coursing past his knees. Gavin didn’t deserve acceptance, forgiveness, or anything soft and good, certainly not love, certainly not from Orholam Himself.

He sucked in a breath, and it was heavy with the stench of fresh blood. It was time to end this. “You gave me a chance, before. Not one—hundreds. Every voice that cried out and told me what my conscience had already shouted at me was another. You even put me in chains, but I saw myself as an emperor in chains, but never a slave. I could never see myself as a wretch, wretched as I was. ‘I wouldn’t give trash even to a beggar,’ You said. And You’re right. You want me? Fine. I’m yours. But not as a son. I don’t deserve that. That’s not a punishment. Let me pay for all those deaths with all my remaining life. Let me be Your slave.”

“No,” Orholam said. “If I wished to rob humans of their will, would the world be so full of trouble? No. Slavery is what happens when men act on their desire to be gods, and slavery shows what kind of gods you’d be. How about a son who strives to be the best son he can be?”

“Then I swear to honor and obey You with all my strength.”

“Really?”

“I’m Yours. To spend as You will.”

Dazen looked up and saw eyes harder than a hurricane sky. And he was reminded that all the temporal power of even the greatest emperor was but an intimation and premonition of the power and passion he beheld here.

“Accomplish something with me, would You?” Dazen asked.

“Conditions? Already?” Orholam asked, and His voice was soft as stone.

“None except Your nature.” Dazen could only pray it was true, that he wasn’t as wrong about that as he had been about so much else. With a trembling hand, he touched Orholam’s foot.

“First, then,” Orholam said, “you’ve brought something detestable into My presence. You cast away nine boon stones to make the leap here, but you kept one.”

“What?!”

“Give Me the black boon stone.”

Gavin gulped. “Whatever do You mean?”

But he knew what He meant.

Orholam pointed a very pointy finger at Gavin.

No. Not at Gavin. At his eye.

Mother Dark herself. The black seed crystal that had become his eye. Orholam wanted that for tribute?

“I’m . . . uh, You don’t want that,” Gavin said. He swallowed.

“I want you to give it to Me.”

“Give me some time and I’ll . . . I’ll devise a more fitting gift.” He was a coward.

“No, you won’t.”

“Do You think I’m lying, or that I won’t be able to make a fitting