The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,87

and the four. “No. There’s got to be a way.”

Orholam said,

“Twenty-two there were, of the needed nine,

Who swam, immortal, ’gainst the scythe of time.

Now eight there are, of the needed nine,

Uluch Assan brings the end this time.”

Uluch Assan. That was Gunner’s birth name.

Gunner’s face darkened. “This is not on me! What was I supposed to do? Let her kill us? I was a boy who begged onna the gun crew, not the captain o’ that vessel. It wasn’t my fault we sailed inta these waters!”

“These waters?” Gavin asked. “You mean you’ve been here before? You have! This was where you killed the—”

“Don’t name ’em!” Gunner said. “It’s bad luck.”

“This was where you earned your name?” Gavin asked.

But neither of them answered him.

It suddenly made sense. How else would Gunner have known the sea demons were here, or the shape of the reef? Why else would Grinwoody have chosen Gunner to pilot his ship here, rather than one of his own people?

Orholam said, “The dark ones live on light—”

“What, like plants?” Gavin asked.

“No, the imbalances in it,” he said.

“What are you talking about, ‘the imbalances’?” Gavin said. “Prisms take care of any color imbalances.”

“You’re the first Prism to do that fully since Vician’s Sin,” Orholam said. “Since that time, the . . . the dark ones have been tolerated by the Chromeria for what they do. In subtle ways and explicit when necessary, drafters have been forbidden to harm them.”

“But why? How’s this fit with balancing?”

“It’s really hard—” Orholam coughed unconvincingly. “It’s hard to take a breath tied like this. I’m not sure if I can answer—”

Gunner lifted the burning match cord on the linstock close to the old man’s face and then began moving it toward the fuse. “What if I say please?”

Orholam cleared his throat. “Most of the bane form here, and spin out through the sea. The dark ones devour the bane. Generally when the crystals are small and harmless. The bane only become truly dangerous when wights find them, because the bane can be used to amplify wights’ powers. But when the bane are small, they’re just food for the dark ones, forming constantly—just a consequence of magic in our world. Even a Prism balancing only minimizes how many appear. So in certain ways, this is your fault, too, Guile.”

“Mine?!”

“See! I told you this wasn’t on me!” Gunner said.

Orholam said, “With you balancing in truth, there were fewer bane, so the sea—err, so the dark ones had to go swim far from here to find other food. With them all feeding at the far corners of the seas, their net was spread too thin here to catch the sudden surge of bane that erupted once you so suddenly stopped balancing.”

“So it’s kind of both of our faults?” Gavin asked. “How do you know all this?”

“I’m a prophet. Knowing is what we do. It’s not all about the future. In a world like ours, it’s just as often about the past.”

“Fine, then, no answer is fine,” Gavin said. Maybe Orholam had been some kind of historian before he’d been captured and press-ganged, chained to his oar. Maybe he’d once had access to books Gavin had never known. “What was that about ‘the needed nine’?”

“Can you cut me loose yet?” Orholam asked. “It would be so much easier—”

“No!” Gunner growled.

“Nine of the dark ones survived into our era. Nine were enough to devour all the bane that formed. On the day Uluch Assan killed the ninth, Dazen Guile’s gift awoke.”

“My gift? Drafting black, you mean.”

“I’m not going to be more specific.”

“But you know.”

“Oh yes. I kept misunderstanding what I needed to do and say here until Orholam revealed it all to me. But you don’t deserve the same treatment. You haven’t acted with the same obedience I have. You’ve distanced yourself from the truth, so the distance between you and the truth is your fault, not mine. Regardless, one might say, in a way, everything here—the war, the False Prism’s War, all the death and misery and destruction—was one man’s fault.”

He called it the ‘False Prism’s War’ rather than the Prisms’ War. Fuck you, Orholam. “I’m tired of taking the blame for everything,” Gavin said.

“He warn’t talking ’bout you,” Gunner said. There was a weariness in his voice.

“There was a tenuous, oh so tenuous, balance, but one that had stood for four centuries,” Orholam said. “Others kicked out other legs of the stool, but you, Gunner, you kicked out the leg that made it all fall. That’s why you