The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,483

but the practice is ours. Means ‘rock of remembrance.’ When a great event happened in our communal life, we would set up a stone there so we’d be reminded every time we saw it. A great event in our own lives might even necessitate replacing our name. My birth name, Harrdun, means ‘gazelle.’ ”

“Let me guess, ‘rhinoceros’ was already taken?” Dazen asked.

“If you’re going be so you, I’m gonna need more poppy.”

“Fresh out,” Dazen said. It wasn’t true, but he needed Ironfist sharp for what they were going to do next. “Please, go on.”

“After . . . a race I did, they called me Izdârasen Winaruz.”

“They gave you a double name for a race? Must have been some race. What’s it mean?”

Ironfist seemed reluctant, but said, “ ‘He Carries His Hope with the Strength of a Lion.’ But, you know, that’s way too long to ask the trainers to shout at a Blackguard scrub—”

“And it was a Parian double name, so everyone would have known you were a big deal. For winning a race.”

“We didn’t win,” Ironfist said. “Anyway, it was a burden, so I welcomed it when they named me Ironfist. Not too flashy, not too original, but solid. I wanted to be hard enough to protect those I loved, because I didn’t believe that Orholam cared about me. I’d accepted early on that I wasn’t important enough to attract the attention of the maker of all things. So I remade myself into one who would be strong, and one who would be important. I took it as Orholam revealing to me who I was. I was become a hand raised in violence, my flesh turned to iron. To save my sister’s life, I’d already sworn myself to the Order, and now to save my brother from our family’s enemies for his murders at Aghbalu, I had proven our worth to the Chromeria. I had to become the best. So I did. But to save them, I lost them. And myself.

“Then that day at Ruic Head, He spoke to me. Orholam Himself. He helped me. Helped me in war. I had turned myself into someone utterly worthy of rejection, but He accepted me. He saw. He reached out his hand to save me, and I took it, and I . . . then didn’t acknowledge it in the days after that battle. I didn’t come clean. Didn’t change my name or my life. I was too embarrassed. I had too much to lose—like the Magisterium in your story, after Vician was dead.

“I knew, at the very least, that confessing would mean I would lose my position as commander. Even self-confessed, an Order traitor as the commander of the Blackguard? Unthinkable. Would Andross Guile be content with less than my head? And then, how would I blunt the Chromeria’s rage with my sister? What about the Order’s? I . . . I had to think it through.

“But I didn’t. Not really. I simply fell back into my old ways, telling myself I’d come clean soon—and then I lost it all anyway. And when my uncle was there, right in front of me, and all he asked for was the black bane . . . Though he is what he is, he was the last family I had left. I obeyed him from sheer habit. And then I left, ashamed. And then my brother died, and I learned he’d been trying to save me for all those years, to stitch back to wholeness a man split down the middle—while himself so wounded and guilt-stricken from Aghbalu. He served, for me. I damned myself by seeking vengeance and to save my sister’s life. I saved her life, but I lost her soul and mine. My brother served humbly instead, and somehow I missed him for all those years. Right beside me, standing faithfully in a blind spot so large I missed the best thing around me. I had my chances to turn around. And with every one I didn’t take, I brought a little more hell to earth. I even killed my best student, a young man like my own son. It’s too late for me, Guile.”

“Maybe Orholam has something to say about that?” Dazen said, gesturing to the sword Ironfist had just fixed.

“I can’t explain that! But look, I can’t make up for what I’ve done. The misery I caused in my arrogance.”

“You’ll never balance the scales,” Dazen agreed. “So what?”

“I . . . I don’t follow.”

“Becoming a good man’s easy.