The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,441

the immensity of the space between them, their wills meshed like the gears that had raised the Great Mirrors, and without words they knew each other.

Father.

Dazen?

Dazen felt a shock of revulsion ripple through his entire body. The gears ground to a halt.

His father—and since when was Andross a full-spectrum polychrome?—his father wanted him to hand over control of the mirror array.

On the one hand, it was the obvious solution. Andross was there. No one else was. Who else could handle the magic? Who else had the will and concentration and pure fortitude?

But at the same time, it was a horror beyond countenancing.

If he gave his father this power, Andross Guile would be seen rescuing everyone. He would be hailed the Lightbringer. If Dazen gave him this, everything Andross had ever done would be excused. Forgiven. No, not even forgiven, lauded.

‘Murdering children? That must have been so hard for him!’

‘Yes, yes, but he was wiser than the rest of us. He knew what was necessary to save the world. He did that for us. He was a man of vision. A great man, willing to do what was necessary for all the rest of us. A hero.’

Everything in Dazen shouted No!

Anyone but him!

Tears of rage poured. Dazen felt a cooling reassurance from the old monster, and a repeated demand that Dazen give him control of the array. Now. Like that was more important than anything.

You murderer! You killed Sevastian! You killed all that was good. We had everything and you killed it all. Don’t you dare say it was for the world. It was for you, your pride! You always had to be the best. You always had to be right. You always had to prove yourself smarter than anyone else! Always, always!

But the distance was vast, and they couldn’t hear each other’s words.

Orholam, please, no! Not this. Not this.

Dazen held all the weight of the empire’s salvation in his hands. He knew to hold on to the magic any longer would kill him, but to give it to that beast was impossible. His fists knotted white.

He felt a presence, and he opened his eyes.

Orholam stood in front of him.

He knew.

As they locked gazes, Orholam’s left eye deepened and morphed, and Dazen saw standing there a throng, silent in their penitents’ garb, but adorned in their Sun Day finest cosmetics and jewels. More than two thousand women and men, each with Dazen’s knife wound over their hearts. His victims from all the Freeings. His peaceful accusers.

Around them stood a vast multitude: the fathers who’d never dreamed their sons would die before them; the husbands so devastated at losing their wives they couldn’t even care for their children; those children, who’d lost their mothers; the orphans who’d had only one parent to begin with; the bereaved spouses hastily and unhappily remarried; the families who held together but always kept an empty seat at every dinner, every feast, and tried to tell themselves that it was all for the best, that this was Orholam’s will, though they could never fully believe it. Because it wasn’t.

They were his victims all. Dazen’s murders had rippled out into the world in a swamping wave greater than he’d even imagined. Not one corner was untouched.

He wept.

He couldn’t look anymore, didn’t dare to keep on seeing the truth of what he’d done—but in tearing his gaze away, he was arrested by another image, this one in Orholam’s right eye. Andross cradling a dying Sevastian, the long blade yet in his hand, blood still leaking from Sevastian’s chest. ‘Did I do well, father? Did I make you proud?’ Sevastian asked.

He died before the weeping Andross could find the will to speak.

Then, a mercy: Orholam’s eyes were merely eyes once more. But there was only truth reflected in both His eyes, and none of it was soft.

Orholam said, “I’ve forgiven your many, many murders. Will you forgive him one?”

Chapter 138

Though Gill was one of perhaps half a dozen people who understood what he was seeing, he felt no less awestruck than everyone else he saw turning to the north, their eyes widening, jaws slack.

In the distance, rising into view from the Great Market, though the market itself was hidden by Ebon’s Hill, was a creature from legend. Outlined in fire, a titan emerged as from the earth itself, stretching skyward. It seemed to pluck a barrel from the ether, took it in its fist, and then hurled the thing, flaming, into the ground somewhere in the Blood Robes’ ranks. The