The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,451

margin of error he used to have in everything.

But Orholam Himself threw me. It’s gotta be a perfect throw, right?

However, it quickly became apparent that he wasn’t going to land on Big Jasper at all. He was headed for the darkness of the ocean.

Surely there’s going to be a crosswind coming soon?

Any time now.

There was no crosswind.

But what he did see as he fell was a bane—orange? maybe red—and a flotilla of ships all lashed together, and then a battle of some sort. A circle of Blackguards and some others were holding off many, many more enemies.

All right, all right, maybe this is the right place after all. Good throw, old man.

He pulled out the Blinding Sword and pulled open the breech. There was no powder. Dazen started checking his pack to see if he had a powder horn somewhere.

Surely he had a powder horn somewhere.

The Blackguards were all in a circle around a narrow tower of some sort—and they all had their backs to it, making a last stand—and there she was atop the tower, his Karris, confronting a polychromatic wight.

And she was on her knees.

But Dazen was coming right down behind that big rainbow bastard. Dazen found the powder horn and tugged it clear of the canopystraps.

Cutting this close, Orholam old boy.

He uncapped the powder horn with his teeth—

And then something invisible caromed off him, sending him spinning up and sideways, tangling the cords of his canopy and throwing him wildly off course. The powder horn went flying, and he nearly lost the sword, too.

He saw a flash of light that illuminated two winged figures fighting, tumbling through the air away from him, locked in combat.

Spinning and swinging wildly off course, Dazen gripped the sword with white knuckles, trying to get his bearings. He was fast approaching the luxin tower—but not the part where he wanted to land.

He was too far away. Now he was going to land behind Karris, at the very, very edge of the tower. He might not be able to stay on it at all.

He had only moments to make a decision.

Without black powder, he couldn’t shoot the gun-sword, but he could throw it like a spear. That worked, once in a while, throwing your sword. Once in a long while.

Almost never.

And throwing a sword like a spear while spinning and swinging . . . ?

But Dazen was the Promachos. That was who he was! He was the hero who arrived on the wings of the dawn and saved everyone at the last second. He could make the throw! He had to!

Or . . . he could give up all that.

* * *

“Hey! Hey!” someone shouted in the air above them. The voice was familiar.

Locked in place by the green seed crystal’s influence over the green luxin in her body, Karris couldn’t move, but she saw Koios look up quickly, alarmed, blinking against the glare of Orholam’s rising eye.

A black blade landed across her open hands. It cut her palm as it slid through her grip, and the black luxin sucked greedily at the green luxin in her blood.

And suddenly, as the green luxin immobilizing her was devoured, she was freed.

But then Koios saw her moving, and saw the blade in her hands.

He lunged at her, blade extending.

Karris was nothing if not fast—it was the reason she’d made it into the Blackguard—so she lunged faster, batting Koios’s blade aside with a forearm and ramming the black sword home, all the way home into the Wight King’s chest.

For a moment, it was as if nothing had happened. No blood poured from around the blade. Then, abruptly, it was as if he were collapsing in on himself. She realized what was happening: the blade was sucking every bit of luxin out of him in turn: sub-red, then red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and superviolet—

—until Koios was, quite suddenly, merely a burned man with rage and disbelief in his wide eyes, wearing a necklace with colored and black jewels on it. She ripped the necklace off him and threw it off the tower.

Then she ripped the sword out of his chest. There was no blood, still, which stunned both of them.

He threw a hand at her to lash out with magic, and she moved the sword desperately to parry the attack—but no luxin missile flew from him.

Koios looked down in horror at his mortal flesh.

His head shook, no, no. He threw his hand forward again, again, as if trying other colors in turn and finding none of