The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,460

from atop the Prism’s Tower as the sun rose. She’d tended to her wounds throughout the night, pausing when her flesh required it and simply watching as Andross Guile directed astonishing quantities of light with deft control. She was glad, then, that he’d chosen to become an old man rather than a god.

The fall had not only nearly killed her, it had shaken her. More importantly, it had shaken Ferrilux’s hold on her. The immortal was more cunning than she’d given him credit for, and if not for being hurried by this battle, he might have taken her over by degrees.

It was going to be a very long war between them.

She limped to the edge of the tower. Not everyone realized it yet, but the battle had already been decided. The pirate fleet was fresh and had better position, and the Blood Robes’ leadership was in utter disarray, some ships counterattacking and colliding with other ships fleeing, contradictory orders, confusion—it had all the elements of an impending slaughter.

Nor was the fleet the only surprise: that, the hosts and their immortals might have destroyed. The dawn had brought sea demons, and they were devouring the bane from beneath. The fresh seed crystals with which the Blood Robes had planned to renew any bane they lost simply winked out of Liv’s perception, ingested into those great cruciform mouths and digested by their great cetacean gullets.

Interesting. The sea demons were a conundrum she hadn’t studied yet. She would have to, in the coming centuries.

She heard the clank of the mirror-array frame’s metal on metal as it came to a rest. Then Andross Guile began unstrapping himself. He looked weary, and angry.

“What are You playing at?” he demanded. He wasn’t looking at Liv. He was looking skyward. “Orholam! That can’t be it. This was to be my last and greatest game. This was to be everything!”

She studied him, curious. He had summoned magic from the far corners of the empire. He’d empowered thousands of drafters through the entire night, and killed countless of his enemies by his own will. He’d saved the empire. Turned the war.

And it wasn’t enough for him.

Suddenly, to Liv’s left, the old spectral form appeared. “Kill him!”

Ferrilux hissed. “We’ll give you all power. Power such as Koios could only dream of. But kill Andross Guile now!”

With stony eyes, Liv met Ferrilux’s gaze for a moment and then turned her back. Ferrilux hated being ignored more than anything. She smiled.

“How dare you take it from me,” Andross Guile said to the heavens. “This was to be my greatest trial and my greatest achievement. But you had them do all the parts I didn’t know if I could do.”

He climbed out of the mechanism. He looked toward the door into the Prism’s Tower, but no one came out.

Andross Guile, the Lightbringer, was utterly alone.

Gathering the superviolet to her to float her down, Liv stepped to the edge of the tower.

The battle was over now. There would be hours of murderous cleanup, but now it was only a matter of bloody time. Now it was just meat slaughtering meat.

The old man had dropped to his knees. “I don’t understand,” he said. “My whole life. My whole life . . .”

People, Liv thought. So strange.

She floated down from the tower and crossed the bridge. There was nothing for her here now.

It was a mistake. She had barely left the Lily’s Stem when she saw him, being carried in a litter.

Her father.

He shouldn’t have been able to see her, but there was something odd about people’s vision when they were close to death. It was another thing she would have to investigate someday, she thought.

For the moment, she pulled her hood down, hoping this more mundane cloaking would save her the bother of speaking with him. But even surrounded by his soldiers and being hurried to the Chromeria, he saw her. “Stop! Stop!” he commanded them, and they did. He pushed a man out of his way, and stared at her, transfixed. “Aliviana?”

For some reason, she froze. He was dying, she saw. Internally bleeding in half a dozen places, as from a great fall.

His men piled up behind him, unready for the sudden stop.

He sat up, though it was a bad idea in his state, ignoring everything in the world for her. He was like that. A good man, Corvan Danavis.

“Oh, my Aliviana,” he said. “You’re here! You’re alive!”

She looked at him, and she saw instantly what he couldn’t bear to see, and thus, like