Chapter 134
“Is the black powder ready?” Corvan asked. The battle was raging at the barricades all around the Great Fountain. Corvan’s drafters had all burned through their mag torches. The Cwn y Wawr war hounds had each fought like a dozen men, but now every one of them bore wounds and was exhausted, panting, those intelligent eyes seeming to bear full knowledge of their coming deaths. The men Kip had recruited from Daragh the Coward’s forces had fought as if every last one of them wanted to win medals, and every last one of them would’ve earned one, too.
But the end was coming, and they knew it, and those hard men seemed to have no regrets that this was how they would face it.
“Yes, sir, powder’s ready,” his lieutenant, Lorenço, answered. Corvan’s usual attaché, Miriam, had leapt into a razor-wing attack, saving him. Her throat had been cut. She’d been alive when they’d carried her away, but hadn’t looked good. “But . . . sir, can you tell me what you’re planning?”
Something had happened with the mirror array atop the Prism’s Tower—perhaps the Ferrilux had been killed—because the mirrors were doing nothing. Maybe that was the only reason the Great Fountain—and the city—still stood, but it wasn’t enough.
Corvan had been right that the bane had meant to be sources for the Blood Robe wights and drafters all through the night, and losing the mirror array was a setback for them—but not the total catastrophe Corvan would’ve hoped.
The bane themselves, with single mirrors each, couldn’t reach many parts of Big Jasper, and they could only focus their light on one area at a time.
Some were more adept at this than others, clearly, already shining light to one area for ten seconds, then another for ten, then another, then repeating the pattern so that its drafters could go to any of those spots to refill their powers when they needed to.
Corvan had already sent orders to his drafters to attempt taking those new source depots—but his orders weren’t getting through now.
If the Ferrilux had kept the mirror array, the defenders would have been facing limitless magic that could be applied pretty much anywhere, pretty much instantly. As it was, the defenders were merely facing superior numbers of drafters and wights with lots of magic, while they themselves had none.
The dam was straining, and Corvan guessed his forces had only minutes here before they were overwhelmed. Hell, even if they held here, it was surely only minutes until key points elsewhere in the city broke.
If they hadn’t already.
He wondered if any of Kip’s Mighty were still alive.
He wondered if a distraction now—so very long after they’d requested it—could still do them any good.
“You ever try to read your wife’s mind, son?” Corvan asked. The young Ilytian was a newlywed.
“Yessir,” Lorenço said. “Doesn’t usually go well for me.”
“Me, neither,” Corvan said. ‘Titan of the Great Fountain,’ dear? Could you have been slightly less opaque for once? Loudly, he said, “Listen up! If I’m incapable of command, Lorenço will act as high general. He has my full faith. I took command of armies when I was younger than he is now. Got it?!” There was a small chorus of agreement, but many were too tired or too hurt to reply.
“You take these next moments to shore up the barricades. Messengers, get on your marks. No gawking! That’s for the enemy to do.”
He cracked open two red mag torches and began filling himself with power.
Dazen, I wish you could see this. You would’ve loved it.
He sketched out the arcs in his mind. It was actually going to work a lot better in the dark. Half pyroturgy, half luxin imbued with will—and a shit ton of black powder.
Looking one last time at his people, he said, “Pleasure. Honor. All the shit. Keep fighting. And get back farther. This is most likely just gonna blow me up.”
He crouched to jump and then sheathed his entire body in red luxin. He looked over at Lorenço, who was standing by the black powder launch pad with the linstock in his hand.
‘Titan of the Great Fountain’ my ass.
“Lieutenant,” he said. “Now.”
With a loud report, the first of the powder barrels was flung sky-high.
Chapter 135
“I’m . . . not dead?” Dazen said, opening his eyes. “I’m not dead!”
“Yet,” Orholam said.
Dazen glowered at Him. “Well, that’s not a very nice joke after what I just went through.”
“It’s funnier in other realms.”
That didn’t make him feel any better. “When You say ‘yet’ what kind of time frame are You operating on?”
Orholam shook His head.
“I mean, I feel like I’ve been dead for three days,” Dazen said.
Orholam lifted an eyebrow.
“I suppose I have You to thank for this? Being alive, I mean? In the more immediate sense, I mean, not in the sense of ‘I made all this shit and that means you, too, especially the shit part.’ ”
“I want you to remember this, a little later,” Orholam said.
“Which ‘this’? This, the You saving me, or this this, my impertinence?” Dazen asked. “I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”
As the last fog of the black departed from him, Dazen noticed that the tower he was kneeling on was now awash with water, not blood. And the tower’s entire shell of black luxin that the blood had covered over was gone. Dazen now knelt on radiant white luxin like what he’d seen on the other side of the Great Mirror of Waking—an entire massive edifice of the luxin he’d so long believed mythical.
“Are you ready to continue?” Orholam asked.
“Continue?” Dazen turned his hands palms up. “I thought that was my penance. What, that didn’t count?”
“It counted for quite a lot.”
Dazen expelled a breath. “Thank You, by the by,” he said, standing with great effort. He was exhausted.
“You’re welcome.”
“What’s next?” he asked. The waning wick of his life was already smoldering on its last wax. “I can only draft two colors—if you call black and white ‘colors’—Wow, am I scattered after that.”
He looked at Orholam. Then at the tower. Then at Orholam.
“This one is going to be death, isn’t it?”
“No, no. This will be—”
“Oh, good!”
“—a good penance,” Orholam said, nodding. “And life for many.”
Dazen wrinkled his brow. “You say that as if we’re somehow in agreement.”
“Promachos, hurling black luxin across half the breadth of the satrapies was a well-nigh lethal and well-nigh impossible magical test—”
“Yes! It was! Thank You!”
“—that allowed you to do exactly what you wanted.”
Dazen had no answer for that.
“Doing impossible magic to overcome ludicrous odds and smash my enemies?” he said. “That’s what I do!” So maybe he did have an answer.
“Did,” Orholam said quietly. It was the gentlest whipcrack Dazen had ever heard. It had a sound of finality to it.