The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,418

nothing, he could see. He’d insulted the goddess of Pride in the worst way possible: he’d handled her. Humiliated her.

‘You failed,’ she said. ‘I left a door open for you to win here, but you missed it. You lose. I won’t join you in a loss. Can’t. Goodbye, Kip.’

And then she tore away the control of all the mirrors from him, easily.

He threw his will against her, but hers was the will of a goddess now. Superviolet controlled the mirrors, and the superviolet goddess would not let anyone be her master. A Ferrilux does not yield.

Maybe he could have beaten her had he been fresh. Maybe if he’d thought of it instantly. On a good day, his will might be second to no one’s. But today wasn’t a good day.

He knew Aliviana’s will now, felt the sheer scale of it. He couldn’t beat her. She had faded far from the young woman who’d half hoped Kip might rise; she’d changed even since she’d made a plan involving the Great Mirrors and repaired and activated them for him. She’d lost interest in that plan now.

He saw then the outlines of it, barely. Superviolet is orderly, and concerned with divining order where others couldn’t see it. She had hunted down, visited, and repaired the ancient Great Mirrors in every arc of the Seven Satrapies.

They were the answer to a question Kip hadn’t known enough to ask. What were the Great Mirrors for? Communication. Defense. Artillery. Source. But they were also lightwells. Not figuratively, the way the term had come to be used now, meaning ‘where the buildings were kept wide apart so the sun could still reach the ground,’ but literally: vast repositories of light against the night.

‘Give them to me,’ Kip pleaded. ‘It’s not too late.’

‘No,’ she said. Stern. Simple. Like an experienced mother to a child pleading to stay up far too late. Her mind was made up. Kip simply needed to die so she could get on with other things she needed to do. The less he fought, the better it would be for everyone.

His strength was fading fast, and hers was implacable. It was like trying to scale a sheer wall that got taller by the moment.

Kip had promised himself he wouldn’t scream. A turtle-bear might scream plaintively, wheezing in pain like some pathetic, persecuted fatty.

Dragons don’t scream. Dragons don’t beg or grovel. Dragons roar.

“MORE LIGHT!” he shouted. He shouted as if all his soul were carried in the sound.

He could feel their shock, their wonder. All but the soulless one.

“How’s he still alive? Why aren’t these other mirrors on him?” Zymun demanded from somewhere far away, his voice tinny with distance, insignificance.

“High Lord, there was a problem with their filters. You asked for colors only. So we—”

“He’s not burning! You promised he’d burn! Do it! All of them! Now!”

And though she could have stopped them easily, Kip’s onetime friend Liv let them turn the mirrors on him—all of the Jaspers’ mirrors. She did more than let them. She helped them.

White light poured over him, into him. Light he couldn’t split. He was no Prism.

As he roared, Kip gathered his remaining will and threw light back into the mirrors with all his fading strength.

But with the mirrors locked into place by the goddess herself, each reflecting light from Orholam’s Eye straight to Kip, he was only throwing light harmlessly back toward the sun.

It was a ruthlessly closed system, a thousand mirrors each focusing their light to the greatest mirrors, and those focusing those concentrated beams on Kip.

He was burning to death, flames venting out to the sides uncontrollably in great wings. Tears sizzled on his cheeks. He felt the gallium necklace soften and melt on his chest, the chi bane burning another hot point into his skin.

And then something cracked.

Under the heat of Kip’s returned onslaught, a single flawed mirror high in the Prism’s Tower—its surface blackened and half melted from a past execution—suddenly shattered.

A weak beam of light shot through the broken mirror’s empty frame, throwing light out to the east.

It wasn’t enough.

Kip couldn’t wrest control of the mirrors from the goddess. She was too strong. He’d broken his halo in every color; his will had failed.

He’d failed.

I’m so sorry, friends. He looked at them one last time through the blazing glory of the light, and found, oddly, that he could actually see them. The chi bane touching his chest helped his gaze cut through everything. He gathered up the vision of his wife, his friends, the