The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,423

while she did the necessary work of cataloging the wounded, gathering weapons and armor, and coordinating the attack on the yellow bane.

Destroying them all was the only route to victory. Even if she didn’t have much hope of it.

The wall’s defenders had lowered ladders for them, and now she climbed up to start sending the necessary messages, but first, she grabbed an officer’s long-lens to see what she could of the Jaspers situation.

Her Mighty were cleaning up the stunned blue wights and drafters on Cannon Island. Good, as far as it went, but with the blue bane dissolved, her people were marooned out there, useless to her for at least another hour.

She turned the lens toward the green bane, her next target. The officer’s long-lens wasn’t very good, but she thought she saw—yes, another. A green wight fell, seemingly at random. The drafters under his control stared at one another, baffled. Karris couldn’t see why, either; then, when the Blood Robes were looking the other way, she saw a small form pop up out of the vegetation covering the forestlike surface of the green bane.

The archer sprinted forward a few steps, bow in hand, then dove down out of view again. He was running toward the great central tree-thing that dominated the middle of the green bane.

He popped up again, and she saw him loose an arrow, but couldn’t see any target anywhere in bow range of him. Then she saw an enraged giant grizzly burst from a cage the greens had been keeping it in, surely more than three hundred paces away from the figure. It stood on its hind legs and roared as greens scattered. The giant grizzly went berserk, but Karris was already looking for the little archer: Winsen, she saw now. She was sure of it.

Winsen was attacking the green bane—by himself.

Madness. But she was too far away to do anything for him.

She slewed the long-lens to the yellow bane, overshot and saw the Great Fountain.

No, no, no! It was being attacked.

She put the lens down, and turned to shout to her people to move immediately, when a messenger from Corvan came galloping in. Several other messengers were already waiting for Karris, but he practically rode over the top of them.

“High Lady White!” he shouted. “Urgent message from High General Danavis: Good work stopping blue! Forces have breached the walls in three places we know and are assailing the command post at the Great Fountain now. We can hold. Don’t reinforce us. At least one platoon of the White King’s best has been tasked with finding and killing you personally. Don’t go to green next. Go to Orholam’s Glare. Now!”

“What’s at Orholam’s Glare?” Karris asked, hardly able to absorb all the bad news. Then she noticed the Thousand Stars. All of the city’s mirrors were pointed exactly where they would be for an execution.

What?!

“Have you not seen the great wings of fire?” one of the other messengers asked, turning to point.

But just then, an incredible beam of incandescent white light leapt from somewhere on Big Jasper’s north shore up to the Great Mirrors (Orholam’s Glare?) and out to the east. The beam was the width of a man’s spread arms, with a mass, a weight, to it. It was whiter than white, like mother-of-pearl and ivory lit from within.

Karris had seen something like this, just once, at Garriston—and that, drafted by Gavin himself, was but a candle to this inferno. She had no question now what it was: white luxin.

But no one could draft that much.

No one could draft that much—and live.

And then it stopped.

Who could possibly draft so . . . ?

Oh, God.

* * *

“So it’s too late,” Dazen said as the sun set and the darkness gathered. Orholam had just told him of the battle being waged and lost beyond the horizon. Of Kip strapped in, being executed. Of Karris being hunted by her own merciless brother.

Here, in Orholam’s own presence, it was perhaps impossible to feel fully hopeless, but Dazen felt an emptiness vast as the space between him and those he wished he could rush in to save. It’s what he would have done, before.

Now he was a shell of that man. Clean, perhaps now. But broken. Useless. The consequences of his choices lying before his eyes.

“Too late?” Orholam asked. “What do I look like? A broken-down old oar-puller?”

“Please don’t try to cheer me up.”

“You’ll need this later,” Orholam said. He stepped away from the gun-sword He’d been leaning on. Somehow, its