Lucidonius said nothing. His eyes were dimming with the dimming of the sun, and though they still burned, Gavin’s gamble was paying off: Lucidonius was weakening.
He fought with merely a man’s strength now, while Gavin swelled stronger. From beneath the smooth skin of his practiced social proprieties, the day’s battle had made his long-sunken veins of rage jut forth, declaiming his righteous fury at the god who lied.
“The mirror!” Gavin snarled. They were within a few steps of it. Lucidonius had ever angled them back toward it, over the course of the year’s longest day. “I know what it is.”
He was a black drafter. Born that way. Born special. To have that ability wasn’t a curse. Nor a blessing, either, for to call it a blessing assumed there is one who gives the blessing. This simply was, an accident of birth or propitious parentage or both. It was simply another way Gavin was different, better than others, yes, he’d not be afraid to say it now. Better, but also isolated from them thereby. He was also unhappier than those blind, those deceived.
His way was harder. He could see what others couldn’ t—that wasn’t fair. But now, through the black gem—which was nothing less than a physical manifestation of all that made Gavin Gavin—he saw that the mirror itself was an elaborate trap for him. The godling had come from the mirror. It was a portal to his home. It was where he had power.
Gavin said, “It’s not just mockery, is it? It’s much—”
Lucidonius must have thought Gavin would push into his home. Gavin would invade, to try to find what had given Lucidonius the power of a god and take it. But the god would have all his defenses in there.
The mirror would be where Gavin could be trapped, slain.
Gavin took some breaths as Lucidonius shifted his grip on a sweaty shoulder, trying to get some advantage. “It’s even more insidious than that, isn’t it?”
“You see punishment where there is mercy,” Lucidonius said, as if Gavin were a tremendous disappointment.
“Mercy? You’ve arranged this! It’s all perfectly designed for me. Even you. Your appearance itself! I’m the Prism! You think I don’t know what an elaborate deception looks like?!”
“On the contrary.” Lucidonius breathed raggedly into his ear. “You are the very son of deception. And it’s time for that to end.”
And then he collapsed.
Gavin staggered into him, and then over him, tripping and tumbling over the man. But Lucidonius grabbed his leg as Gavin fell, and wrenched on it, twisting to slam him into the ground.
There was a strain and shooting pain as Gavin’s hip almost popped out of its socket, but Lucidonius’s hands slipped. Gavin’s back hit the ground, and Lucidonius was pulled off balance. His grip had now slid down to Gavin’s foot. But he didn’t let go. He was pulled down, losing his balance, aiming a knee—
Gavin caught him with both feet.
Then he launched the man off him toward the mirror, kicking both legs as hard as he could.
Lucidonius slammed into the Great Mirror, and the entire surface wobbled and deformed. His whole body seemed to sink into it a little.
Instead of leaping for the sword, Gavin leapt forward, trying to press his advantage. He punched Lucidonius in the stomach, but the muscles there were taut, tensed for the impact. Gavin’s left-handed uppercut missed its huge swing at Lucidonius’s chin, and he stumbled forward.
To avoid even touching the mirror, Gavin slammed his forearm into Lucidonius’s chest in order to regain his balance. But as the mirror rippled once from the force of Lucidonius’s back smacking into it again, rather than trying to break free, the man hugged Gavin’s forearm to his chest.
He rolled sideways, trying to throw Gavin into the mirror.
Gavin threw up his right hand to stop himself—
Once, on a bitterly cold morning in the mountains of Paria when he was first Prism, Gavin had followed the blue wight he was hunting out onto a frozen pond. Ever since a blue had murdered his brother Sevastian, he’d always held a special hatred for them. It had made him foolish that day. The pond was a trap. The wight’s magic had strengthened the ice—for himself. Gavin would never forget the feeling of the ice holding his hesitant first steps easily, but then flexing under his weight, and suddenly buckling.
His magic had saved him that day.
He had none now. Slapping his hand against the mirror felt exactly the same as the ice had felt that day. Where for Lucidonius the mirror seemed gelatinous, forgiving, for Gavin it was frozen, momentarily stable. His hand stopped, held his weight from an icy plunge as his palm tingled, bits of lightning shooting up his forearm, enervating it.
The mirror cracked under his hand like the sound of a musket shot. Gavin snatched his hand away. The mirror was a death trap. Lucidonius wanted to obliterate him.
The moment itched a memory in him, of a dream where he’d stood on the top of a tower, as a giant approached—but there was no time!
I need more time! he’d shouted in his dream.
He turned now and saw Lucidonius, picking up the sword.
Gavin’s heart dropped. He’d been distracted mere seconds, but it had been seconds too long.
But then he saw something worse than seeing his foe armed: Lucidonius turned. His eyes were coals now, still-hot mirrors of the descending sun, but no longer so blindingly bright that they obscured what his face looked like.
“Fuck you!” Gavin roared at the sight of that face. “You want me to think I’m losing my mind!”
“Again,” the man said quietly.
“Yes, again! You drove me to madness once, Orholam. Your lies. You cost me everything! And now, now you come back?!” Somehow, Gavin slipped from addressing the godling as Lucidonius to Orholam once more.
It wasn’t a perfect facsimile, but the god wore a face that could have been Gavin’s own.
“I’m not your shadow, Dazen,” the god said. “You’re mine. You are a dim reflection of what you could have been.”
“Lies. From you, Orholam. I took such joy in you when I was a child. When I was a boy, I thought I was going to be a luxiat, do you know that? The incense. The ceremony. The hymns. I loved it all. Do you remember? Or did you even notice me then? And then, after I became Prism, when I celebrated the highest and holiest days, they were bitter gall to me. Because I knew! And now you stand, wearing that face like mine, stepping from a mirror? As if I fight myself here? As if I’m mad already? But I see clearly now. I am the Black Prism. I am the dark center of creation. And now the world’s light and life will feed me as it has fed you for four hundred years, Lucidonius. I will be immortal as you are.”
“I’m not Lucidonius.”
“It doesn’t matter who you say you are. You have to die. You have to die or Karris dies.”
“You have it exactly backward . . . brother.”
The final word struck Gavin in the stomach, driving the breath from him, and if the figure had moved then, he could’ve slain Gavin easily.
No, this was a nightmare, the way the giant fist coming down to crush him had been from that earlier dream. Gavin must be feverish. He must be mad.
No! No. He was here. This was real.
So this was all calculated. It was a trap.
“You’re not Orholam,” Gavin said. “And you’re nothing like my brother. Don’t make me laugh.”