The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,56

we popped mag torches, and then we came at him. And you want to know what this lightsplitter does next?”

“What?”

“He absorbs everything we throw at him. Luxin missiles and streams of fire. Darts. Spears. Blades and waves. Projectiles and pure heat. Everything.”

“What?! That’s not how lightsplitting works—” Liv started.

“Black luxin. As if he didn’t have enough tricks. He soaked up everything we threw at him, and he threw it all back at us. Killed us all. Only I made it to the courtyard fountain. Others of our household tried to take refuge with me there from the smoke and heat and flames, but I fought them off lest we all die. The water heated, unbearably. I burned, boiling like a crab in a kettle. And only that night’s breeze kept the smoke from killing me as it did so many others. Some mercy. The pain is with me daily, still.”

“I’m sorry,” Liv said. It didn’t seem at all adequate, but what could be?

“It’s no matter. Dazen Guile destroyed the old Koios White Oak that I had been that night, but he showed me the key to what I could become. He showed me that black luxin is possible. And soon, I learned to draft it. I’m no lightsplitter, but with black luxin, I can do everything I need in order to destroy the Guiles. All of them.”

“Even your sister?” Liv asked.

His eyes flashed. “She’s a White Oak in my eyes, unless she chooses to be a Guile. I wouldn’t choose Rodin’s fate for her, but if she chooses to stand with the Guiles . . . ?”

“She’ll deserve it,” Liv said. She guessed then, from the hardness in his eyes, that it had been Koios himself who’d killed his brother that day. Koios had seen the vulnerability Rodin opened. The rest of the White Oak brothers would be reluctant to attack for fear of harming Rodin, and Koios couldn’t let that stand.

He’d killed his own brother, and blamed Dazen.

He was crazy, but only in the implacable I-don’t-care-what-my-victory-costs-you sense. And he’d been that way before the fire.

He said, “So now, tell me, Aliviana Danavis, my new Ferrilux, do you think that I—of all people—will underestimate a Guile?”

“I see that you have very good reasons not to.”

“But you have no faith in me? You really do have the arrogance of Ferrilux, don’t you?”

That didn’t merit a response.

“Kip is easily handled,” he said. “Kip is like his father, not his grandfather. He reacts to the needs in front of him. He sees people, not numbers, not cards to play. To him, no one is disposable. He is brilliant, else I would have destroyed him already—and you’re right, I’ve tried. But the way to beat Kip remains simple: I’ll beat him with present needs and battles and victories far away from where they might matter. In terms of that game his grandfather likes so much, it doesn’t matter what card Kip pulls. He’s playing at the wrong table. And I’ll keep him there until the real game is decided.”

She hesitated, but again, she was getting worse about not speaking her mind. “That . . . eases my mind a great deal, but you’ve only established that if he stays in Dúnbheo a few more days, he can’t get here with his full army.”

“Do you want to know how delicious I find this?” the king said.

“What?” Was he even listening to her?

“We are the old gods reborn, Aliviana. We are the nightmare that has kept luxiats and magisters awake at night for a thousand years. Do you not see the irony? I tried to kill Dazen Guile—and I couldn’t! Orholam sent the Chromeria the only man who could possibly save them from me. And I couldn’t kill him, but they did.”

“Your Highness,” Liv said, “what if Kip comes at speed, with only his elite drafters?”

The White King’s eyes lit with the cold blue of crackling luxin. “Oh, I hope he does. Come, my dear—” He stopped, seeming to note her fury at being called his ‘dear.’ “Pardon,” the White King said. “I meant, come with me, my fierce young partner. Let me show you the real reason our temples were known as the ‘bane.’ ”

Chapter 16

So that’s where we’re gonna die.

For the entire trip, a vast, swirling bank of clouds on the horizon had cloaked White Mist Reef like an anonymous assassin, but today Gavin’s doom stood stripped of outer garments.

In ages past, it had been said that the heavens were held from falling down