The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,57

onto the earth by one pillar alone, as the Prism alone held up the Chromeria.

In times past, before the swirling storms, before the mist itself, it had been said that the tent of the sky itself was upheld by one tent pole. As they now came to the Chromeria, the faithful from all over the world had once made pilgrimage to climb it. The luxiats said that only after Vician’s Sin had Orholam hidden the tower and the island, raising a reef to bar any entry to such holy ground, and raising the mist itself to hide His own connection to the earth. In grief at their disobedience and rejection of him, He’d covered His face from the world.

So the luxiats said.

Others said an isle of glass lay there, and the reef and the mist had risen after an earthquake had plunged the isle into the sea.

Even as a child, Gavin had wondered how much of either tale was true. He’d longed to come here one day to see for himself.

As a young Prism, he’d wanted to come here to confront Orholam, but he’d always wanted to live more.

He’d always assumed the descriptions he’d read of White Mist Tower must be either fanciful or poetic, describing the feelings evoked by seeing a tragically formerly holy place, rather than literal descriptions of the thing itself. The ancients were an emotional tribe, after all, as much given to hyperbole as were sailors.

White Mist Tower wasn’t literally a tower, but it did look eerily like a tower carved from blocks of white mist. Gavin squinted against the distance. As if imprisoned inside a glass shell, the clouds of the ‘tower’ spiraled in a dense circle, swirling constantly but not in accord with the prevailing wind. The outlines of that ephemeral tower were unmoved by the nautical winds, and sprawled wider than the entire island they obscured. White Mist Tower wasn’t like a tornado or waterspout. Those were diffuse, mutable, and mobile. This tower was of equal thickness from where its foot rested atop the reef itself to where its head was lost in the heavens.

Though it was still at least a day’s travel away, even from here and even on a bright sunlit day like today, the mixture of the natural and unnatural about the form was stomach-twisting. Gavin could only imagine the effect on sailors on more foreboding days, seeing a natural mist suddenly yield to that monstrosity without warning.

“Big lux storm last night,” Gunner said, coming up to Gavin at the railing. “And you, sleeping through all the rough action like my last port-girlie done, trustin’ daddy Gunner to take you safe through the storm.”

Yuck. “Lux storm?” Gavin asked instead.

“Common roun’ here.”

“They are?!” Gavin asked. “I’ve never read anything about that.”

“You Chromeriacs. If it ain’t writ down, it don’t exist for ya,” Gunner said, shaking his head. “Takes a big storm to get this good a view’a the mist tower. Purty, uh? Hope it stays this nice when we trya shoot the gap inna reef.”

But Gavin had suddenly lost interest in the enormous tower of mist far before them, or their navigational choices. “A lux storm? Really?”

“Nornj ’un. Queerest thing ya ever seen. Sheets, orange sheets. You know how folks call lots a rain ‘sheets a rain’?”

“Sure.”

“Not like that. This uz like a ribbon unfurlin’ from the skies to the depths. Gorgeous. Gorgeous, ’cept for the vijuns.”

“Visions?” Gavin asked. Gunner hadn’t woken him for that?

“Some says a man sees what’s in his heart out there.”

“That’s not how orange works.”

“Innit?” Gunner asked sharply. “Lots of experience with lorange ux storms, eh?”

Orange lux storms.

“No,” Gavin admitted.

“Pro’lem of rewardin’ men o’ will, like your Chromeria do. You all impose whatcha think oughta be, ignoring what is when it ain’t convenient.” Gunner twisted a bit of his beard and poked it between his teeth. Then sucked on it. “One little plop as the sheet first dropped, like a hard turd hittin’ a full chamber pot, then nothing except a rush. Solid connection from the seas to the heavens. Afterward, some the men swore they saw a whale.” He shrugged. “Like I said. Vijuns.”

“A whale?”

“Black whale. Immense. O’ course, I’m not sure what other color a whale would look like at night, and no one ever says, ‘Oh, take a looksie at that relatively small whale.’ ” Gunner twisted his lips. “Heard plenty of sailor stories, even when men weren’t in a hallucino-jammy—halloosina—halluxination storm. But a whale? I near whipped a man this mornin’ what wouldn’t