Dazen had the sudden and too-slow-arriving insight that Orholam was accustomed to having the last word.
Orholam continued, “There was never a question of your will or your ability, Dazen, so such a test is hardly a test at all, much less a penance.”
“So You’re saying this is the one that’s going to be hard for me,” Dazen said.
“Yes.”
“As if the first one was so easy,” Dazen groused.
“The first counted as an answer to your greatest question: ‘Could you ever be the man you were before?’ ”
In a tone inappropriate from a son to his father, Dazen snarled, “And what’s this gonna answer?”
“My question is, ‘Is that the man you want to be?’ ”
Dazen’s stomach turned, and fear hit him like cold water chilling his throat, icing his belly, and filling every limb with doubt. What could such a test possibly be? “Just when I was starting to like You,” he said. His bravado was thin, but on a cold night a thin cloak is better than none, and this night was starting to feel cold indeed, in the gale of Orholam’s gaze. “What do You want me to do?”
“Touch the mirror.”
I already did that, Dazen thought. But he was smart enough not to say it, barely. He moved over toward the great shining thing, torrents of clear water gushing over its surface and onto his feet, threatening to wash him away as he came close. But he reached through the water and touched the metal.
The waters ceased.
And he saw himself.
Behind him, Orholam said gently, “Behold Dazen Guile, who thought himself the least of his brothers.”
He saw himself, the image crisp and clear in the starlight. He stood slouching, with two fingers cut off, his dogtooth smashed out, cheeks hollow from privation, back striped through injustice and bowed through travail—and yet still here. He’d been a great beauty before the last few years: muscular, strong-jawed, broad and tall, agile and self-possessed with a winning smile and prismatic eyes. No wonder they’d loved him. They’d seen the flawless bark of the great sequoy, not the rot within, the roots withered, waiting for the next great wind to topple him. He studied himself—with only one eye now, but that one eye was bright and clear.
He’d been hiding all his life. Now he hid no more.
Diminished though Dazen was, he was not devoid of all virtues, not even in his body. He was still tall, still broad, and strength was rallying in his every limb.
He studied what he’d long avoided, and there was now no detail obscured, no truth denied. Here he stood in the cold light of eternity, and by some magic greater than chromaturgy, all that was wretched and self-deprecatory and judgmental and hating fell away like a serpent’s scale from his eye.
He had seen through Orholam’s mask of being an old prophet, and beheld something ineffably beguiling beneath the old prophet’s age spots and deep wrinkles and snaggle teeth.
And now he saw something of that same beauty in himself, an image of the divine.
Here was Dazen Guile through the eyes of charity.
And as unwilling tears flooded his eyes, he realized that—wonder of wonders!—he was glorious.
Beneath all he’d despised, there had been someone worthy of love here all along. His eyes had simply been too clouded to be able to see it.
He looked at Orholam and was able to see more of Him than he had before. “You . . . You really went to a lot of trouble for me.”
“More than you know,” Orholam said briskly. “Now, throw your will into the mirror, and take up the work your son has left behind.”
“ ‘Work’? You mean some magic? I just threw a volcano of black luxin at the Jaspers. I wiped out everything magical there. Surely I spoiled anything Kip was trying to do.”
Calmly, Orholam said, “White luxin is not overwhelmed by black.”
Dazen thought of a thousand reasons why that wasn’t necessarily the case, and then realized who he was talking to. “It is really frustrating to argue with you,” Dazen said.
“I get that a lot,” Orholam said. “Ditto. Oh, by the by, hurry.”
Chapter 136
Quentin had arrived too late. He’d spent all day serving: first carrying food and water, later attending to the wounded in the poorest parts of the city, comforting the dying when he could. In the first hour, he’d been tempted to shed his ridiculous golden robes, but there was something about seeing a rich luxiat lower himself to service that had not only inspired other luxiats but also scared townsfolk to join him in his labors wherever he went.
As a lone servant, he would have been invisible, but lifted up, he’d been able to bring light to neighborhoods in need of hope. So he’d served in his uncomfortable clothes in the soot and smoke and blood—neither danger nor magic moving him—until he saw he saw that white beam shooting out to the east.
He’d run immediately, praying, praying he not be too late.
He was too late.
The traitor had already been lowered from Orholam’s Glare, and a blonde-haired noblewoman held his body, weeping.
The crowd in the square was large, angry, confused, scared. They’d been witness to magic such as they’d never seen—such as no one had ever seen. But the man who’d done it was dead, and the city was still under attack. It seemed like everything should have changed with so much magic, but nothing had.
Blackness had rushed over the city entire, as if even the light mourned the dead man, and abandoned them with his passing. But then that, too, was gone, and nothing had changed, unless it had changed for the worse: everyone had expected the Blood Robes to withdraw with the coming of night, and they’d redoubled their efforts instead.
“Are you quite done?” Zymun asked.
Then Quentin saw the woman as her face lifted in tear-streaked rage, and every bad premonition he’d had was confirmed. She was Tisis Guile. Which meant the body she held was Kip’s.
Quentin pushed through the crowd, aided by his narrow-shouldered frame and his garb, which made some people step aside for him.
He lost the next thing Zymun said, but from his intermittent glimpses of the Prism’s gleeful face, he could tell it was cruel. Nor did he stop even as Quentin moved closer and closer, taunting her so much that even some of the Lightguards looked uncomfortable.
“—dear. You know we’ve a tradition in the Guile family of passing around our whores. My own mother rushed from my uncle’s bed to my father’s as soon as she figured out which one was a winner. Some people might call that slatternly or opportunistic. Terrible things to say about a woman in such a vulnerable position, though. She was just making the best of it, wasn’t she? And look! Now she’s the White, and no one even talks about her tawdry early days. Me? I don’t call a woman like her a disloyal whore, I call her practical. Besides, who wants to share a loser’s bed? You ought to consider trying her approach: find out what it’s like to be fucked by a winner, for once. Tonight, maybe? I can promise you won’t remember Kip’s name by dawn. Hell, you might not even remember your own.”
He looked up at his men, and the Lightguards laughed belatedly like the sycophants they were. Some of them chuckled awkwardly instead, like men who suddenly felt like they’d gotten into something much worse than they’d bargained for.