The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,428

temporary withdrawal of ocean after an earthquake.

Even the wights seemed suddenly discomfited. Men and wights both paused in their fighting, backing away from their enemies.

“What is it?” Gill asked. “What’s happening?”

Karris was looking out to sea toward her lost love, so she saw it first.

Far out beyond East Bay, the lights of a ship winked out. Then another’s, far to one side. A burning ship’s fires simply disappeared. Then she noticed that the stars on the horizon were gone.

Her breath caught in her throat as she saw it for what it was. Like a sandstorm thundering across the desert, towering into the night, an immense black wave broke over the horizon, wider than the Jaspers themselves, and as high as the clouds.

In the distance, she heard screams at its onslaught.

As if the sea were swelling and devouring all before it in a massive wave, every light on every ship was extinguished in turn, into the bay, and then over the towers, over the walls, and then—in the time it takes to suck in a startled breath—over the Jaspers entire.

All went utterly, utterly black. Blacker than mere night. This was the black of blindness, after a life spent working light. It penetrated everything, soaking everything as water does—then scouring it away with all the strength of an earthquake’s wave.

Eerily, it was silent.

And it was, unmistakably, unquestionably, Gavin.

Then, just as the wails of alarm and despair were rising up from women and men struck blind and dismayed at their sudden loss—the wave was gone.

As light returned to their eyes, Karris could feel the wave dissipating. It had been held together this far, but it wouldn’t last even another league. Gavin had . . .

“promachos,” Gill whispered, awed. “That was him. That was Gavin, wasn’t it? I could feel—How could he draft so much? What did he do?”

A snap and hiss popped next to them, illuminating the merely natural dark of the night with glorious green light. Samite grinned in that wild light.

“The bane,” she said. “Their power’s broken. We can draft!”

Numerous bane-islands were still out there, so at first no one believed her, but then there were slowly the snaps and hisses of glorious colors coming alive from burning mag torches. First a few, then dozens of them drenched the Blackguards and their allies in heady, potent light.

The twenty remaining wights turned and fled.

It was still night. Their position was still precarious. They had only whatever magic they could draft off of their mag torches. But now—now they had a chance!

Gavin had reached from beyond the grave to give them one chance.

He had died to bring them light.

“To the Glare!” Karris shouted.

She would mourn her husband. Later. She was a warrior.

Warriors know how to honor a hero’s sacrifice: first you finish the fucking fight.

Chapter 132

If there was one thing Corvan Danavis excelled at, it was being able to ignore a little personal danger (say, a battle raging around him) in order to focus on more important things. It was part of what made him an excellent commander, and in truth, he’d never understood how other people couldn’t do it.

Which was why right now he was cursing in the face of a shaking messenger, spit flying as he bellowed, “How old is this message?! And don’t tell me you don’t fucking know!”

“Maybe, maybe half an hour, sir? Less?” the messenger said. “I came straight here, but the others—”

“An hour?” Corvan demanded.

“Uh, maybe? Maybe, sir. Yes. There was so much fighting, and I wanted to make sure I got through safely so I didn’ t—”

“Get out of my face!”

Two of Corvan’s bodyguards, one from either side, suddenly threw their shields up in front of him as a fireball the size of a woman’s head arced toward him. It bounced off their shields and rolled into the crowd behind him.

Nope. Not a fireball the size of a woman’s head. A literal flaming woman’s head. Odd.

The messenger blanched. A coward. It was the last trait a messenger could afford—but one didn’t find out which messengers could handle the job until they’d been through a battle or two.

A distraction, Kip said. Kip needed a distraction.

The city was in a bad way. Corvan had just had news that the wall bordering the poor neighborhood of Overhill nearest the red bane was nearly abandoned, most of its defenders lured to the walls elsewhere in the nobles’ neighborhoods, or even worse, lured to guard their houses against the looters they feared during the battle.

If the city survived until tomorrow, Corvan