But today, long before the sun rose, after Kip had awakened him and told him what was required, Quentin put on his finest robes with something akin to a healthy pride: today these robes would help him do what needed to be done. He actually had to ask a servant to help him dress: there were layers to these things! Pearls in their hundreds, real gold twisted in the brocade, a mink collar dyed murex purple. Fawn-skin boots, silk laces, and jeweled rings for every finger.
He looked like everything he had always hated, but today it would all be for Orholam’s glory. That which had been a scourge unto his back was now the armor for his battle. A great and glorious gamble. He would be tested to his limits.
He might not survive it.
From his apartments in the blue tower, he made his way across the Lily’s Stem, greeting a few luxiats on their way to matins prayers. One offered him a coin, and he took it humbly. If the Order came to suspect what Quentin was doing, he’d not get a chance to put it into the hands of the poor who needed it, but this, too, was his personal spiritual discipline: trusting that Orholam would cover his flaws and failures and still get His work done on this world, even if Quentin weren’t here to do it, even if Quentin misused some moiety of the bounty with which Orholam had trusted him.
He arrived at the west docks an hour before sunrise. The docks were crowded with the faithful, still hoping for a parade. But not only the faithful thronged here. Last-minute reinforcements to the fortifications above the docks and to the surrounding walls were being shored up by dozens of workmen. Nearby buildings had been cannibalized for lumber and bricks, beams torn from centuries-old homes while their owners wept.
On the opposite side of that wall, crouched in the bay like a panther outside the door, the Wight King’s navy waited.
Quentin hated being the center of attention, and as he looked at the stairs up to the wall, he felt faint. Several soldiers were looking askance at him. The bored crowd, some huddled with their sleeping children, others simply looking for some entertainment to fill the next hour until sunrise—all stared at him and openly speculated as to why he was here rather than in richer quarters.
Men and women will die today in droves. Orholam hasn’t asked me to pick up a sword for that battle.
He asks not what we are unable to do.
He has asked me to fulfill this duty.
Ergo, this duty is a duty that I am able to fulfill.
Of course, Orholam never promised we shan’t soil ourselves in the fulfillment of said duties.
For some reason, that lightened Quentin’s heart.
‘Just pretend to be Gavin Guile, but . . . you know, holy,’ Kip had told him.
It wasn’t quite a ringing endorsement of Kip’s father, but it was good advice.
This’ll be my first sermon, Quentin thought. Most likely my last, too, the not-so-encouraging part of him added.
As far as prophetic sermons go, this really is cheating, isn’t it?
But then, if the prophecy doesn’t come true, I’m going to look like a fool immediately. And fatally.
Oooh boy. His heart hadn’t felt like this since he’d walked out before the crowd to face Orholam’s Glare.
Gavin Guile. Just put on your Gavin Guile.
Taking a deep breath, Quentin walked toward the soldiers stationed at the bottom of the steps.
Chapter 105
In the first light of what would be his final Sun Day, Gavin was circling to where his sword and his death lay, when he beheld an impossibility.
Directly opposite where the stair had spilled Gavin out onto the tower’s crown, the sun was rising, but now, the sun in all its brilliance, bearable only in small glances, seemed to widen. Blinking, he shaded his own eye against Orholam’s with a hand. His pace slowed.
What the hell is going on? But Gavin wet his lips and kept moving.
The sun in the sky split into twin orbs, as if they were Orholam’s own orisons glaring judgment across the horizon. As if, most times, He gave the world only half His attention, and now Gavin had all of it.
Both of God’s eyes, open, burning white.
Just as Gavin had given up on finding Him, He was here—and He was angry.
Fear threw shackles at Gavin’s heavy limbs, but he staggered forward. He would not be a man who cowered—not even before God Himself.
And those few extra steps back toward his sword were all it took. The second eye moved out and out, and then was halved, eclipsed by nothing Gavin could see. Then it disappeared entirely.
Gavin stopped, shaken from his fear by curiosity. He stepped back, and the second celestial eye reappeared. Then he stepped back farther, to where the second eye had split from the first, and in a few steps, they merged once more.
He knew he should get the blade before he investigated any mysteries, but he took a few more steps back to the stairs where he’d entered.
Now there was nothing visible at the crown of the hill.
But it had to be there.
The sword, you moron. Arm yourself, then investigate mysteries.
Gavin circled the promontory once more, quickly now, keeping his distance.
Orholam’s single eye split again, and again both eyes glowered down at Gavin in judgment.
Gavin gritted his teeth and took a step—up the hill. And then another, climbing the hill at an angle with the sun.
There was something off about those burning eyes.
Then all the pressure on his heart released at once, and he blew out a huge breath.
There weren’t two eyes up there at all. It was a mirror!
God damn.
A mirror, set atop this hill at just the right angle so that pilgrims coming here at dawn on Sun Day and following the path Gavin had would see exactly what Gavin had seen. It was just a bloody mirror! Up on the hilltop, casting that illusion with every sunrise, the angle worked out precisely: the path, it seemed, even had markings that had to be a calendar, so that the priests could have pilgrims stand at exactly the right spot each day.
It was all religious flimflam, a swindle, chicanery. A con for the desperate and credulous.
But still . . . an impossibly thin, huge, perfectly clean mirror? Clean, after centuries and doubtless thousands of storms? That in itself was well-nigh miraculous.
Granted, it was still a lot more credible than that God Himself was staring at him.
Gavin approached the mirror, the time and angle of the hill making the ‘eyes’ hold steady. He squinted against the brightness to study the fraud.
But as soon as he did, they moved. Not the way they should have, given his own motion.
His steps faltered.
No, surely not. They must’ve only seemed to move wrongly.
But Gavin was frozen, his muscles going taut as a bowstring fully drawn.
Heart thudding, mind screaming that he should have grabbed the sword first, Gavin circled farther.
The eyes seemed to move, but now fully independent of Gavin’s steps.
No. No! He’d just puzzled it all out. This was all a Sun Day deception like those Gavin had taken part in so many times himself.
But now as he took another step, it was undeniable. The reflected eye should eclipse from the other side as Gavin circled, leaving the sun alone in the sky.
Instead, the sun tore away to hang in the sky alone in its rightful place.
But twin orbs glided down within the mirror, side by side, like eyes.
Gavin stepped back on his heel toward the sword down the hill behind him, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away.