What were you doing, son?
It had something to do with the mirror array, but Kip hadn’t averted the larger mirrors from himself—as any sane man being baked to death on Orholam’s Glare would’ve been trying to do. Why not?
But there were seven fading streaks, like dim arrows of chi and white luxin. And then those, too, were gone.
And now nothing of Kip remained.
Finish what I’ve begun? What have you—
Seven arrows. Seven different directions: if Dazen extended the lines, one pointed to each of the seven satrapies.
The closest one was Blood Forest. In a blink, Dazen followed it like an arrow pointing him the right way, and there found his answer. There was a Great Mirror here, standing afresh in a place where no Great Mirror had been known to be mere months ago.
Dazen’s will jumped to follow the next line, and the next.
Every line of Kip’s magic pointed to a Great Mirror, some buried, most forgotten, and only the ones at Ru and Apple Grove fully operational.
But why?
And regardless, what use were mirrors at night?
And then, as Dazen explored the mirrors, he found the answer for that as well. Each mirror tower held an odd reservoir, like liquid luxin of its own color within or beneath it. Tyrea’s Great Mirror outside Rekton brimmed with sub-red, a shrine outside Idoss stored red, Ru’s Great Mirror stored orange, Blood Forest’s held yellow, Melos—capital of the ancient united kingdom comprising most of Ruthgar and Blood Forest—held green, Paria held blue, and Ilyta superviolet.
But why would Kip look for more light as he was dying from too much?
Because he wasn’t looking for it for himself.
Kip had given his life trying to bring light for his friends, who would need it to fight in the darkness. As night fell, the Chromeria’s drafters had no source—but here was a network of mirrors and light-wells throughout the world, with every color the defenders needed.
One source of color in each of the Seven Satrapies, and Dazen himself stood atop an immeasurable source of white like a wheel’s axle around which all of them turned.
Kip had pointed the way. Kip had discovered the design, so long forgotten, but only Dazen could cast his will so far that he might finish the tapestry Kip had begun.
To raise even one tower holding a Great Mirror from its great hiding place underground would have daunted any drafter in the world. Only Dazen—maybe—had the strength to raise them all.
So he did it.
He cast his will to the easiest first, the mirror in Ru at the pinnacle of the mighty pyramid there, and he lashed its Great Mirror to his will. He felt the mirror turn and then shiver as it came into place, as if it were made for this, as if the mirror was settling into an old groove—and felt it lock, not on him but on the Great Mirror right behind him.
Of course.
Connected once again to its ancient network, under its cascading gardens and beautiful waterfalls, the surface of the Great Pyramid of Ru suddenly flowered with orange runes and ancient designs. Dazen heard cries of fear turn to shouts of delight as the people of Ru came forth to see this wonder. But he had no time to enjoy it with them. He’d already moved on.
The Great Mirror in Blood Forest at Apple Grove had already been raised by Kip—but there were children playing at the base, in the way of the gears. They might be crushed if Dazen moved it without warning.
He shook the Great Mirror, beginning the process. It threw several off their feet.
Then he moved on. He’d come back.
Outside the ruins of Kip’s home village of Rekton, within sight of Sundered Rock, he found a fallen statue, perhaps of the old Tyrean Empire warrior-priest Darjan. It once guarded and marked the mirror’s location. Dazen realized then that at least some of the Great Mirrors were older than Lucidonius, older than the nine kingdoms he’d conquered. They were at least as old as the Tyrean Empire, fifteen hundred to three thousand years old.
Now the crumpled statue seemed to guard nothing more than an orange grove, but still a slow mist of paryl rose from the very soil. It shivered at Dazen’s touch, and a puff of superviolet joined it, allowing his will to thread down and down through seemingly solid earth.
He gathered color after thickening strands of color into his grasp like the fibers of a rope. And taking it full in hand, heaved heavenward.
The earth split, tree roots tore, and in a fountain of dirt, a spire shot into the sky.
Dazen laughed as the magic poured through him.
He glanced in wonder and awe at Orholam beside him and found Him smiling His own delight and encouragement: ‘Go on!’
Dazen sank into it once more. This was his old strength, doubled and redoubled. He felt virile, potent, alive in a way he’d not felt in years. The joy of drafting came back to him. It was like, after being buried alive and breathing as shallowly as possible, he’d suddenly broken free of the prison earth and was taking the deepest breath of his life. He was strong.
No, ‘strong’ didn’t cover it. He had the might of a Titan.
A vast disk shot into the air, and then, with a pulse of magic that had lain dormant waiting for this moment, it vibrated, and all the dirt and detritus of long ages jumped off its surface and it gleamed as sharply clear as the day it had been made. On protected gears and belts undecaying, on luxin and old infusions of will, the mirror swiveled to answer Dazen’s call.
And his will shot away again. To an abandoned temple atop the first soaring butte of the Red Cliffs outside Idoss.
Then to a high valley between green round-shouldered mountains in Ilyta, where the superviolet mirror had been buried beneath the banks of a river. Bandits had set up a camp on this forbidden ground, a camp that had become a village. If he raised this mirror without warning, houses would be destroyed, and perhaps innocents kidnapped for ransom or slavery or even children crushed.
Dazen shook the earth hard, laid a hex foreboding doom, and moved on.
In Paria, near two vast and trunkless legs of stone, the blue mirror lay hidden under the lone and level sands. A brickwork floor opened smoothly on centuries-old hinges, swallowing half a dune effortlessly, and the mirror rose.
In Ruthgar, the green mirror rose from the heart of a butte over the verdant grasslands outside the once-great city of Melos, setting a nearby herd of iron bulls stampeding.
Back to Blood Forest, where for the first time he realized that though the well of white luxin might be limitless, his own endurance was not. He blinked, and wondered how long it had been since he’d blinked last.
The children had scattered. Some still watched from a distance, clinging to a wary young man near Kip’s age as if he were a father to them all. A safe enough distance.
Dazen knew what he was doing now, and he pulled the Great Mirror to its groove. This one was a different design, though, from some other people, some other time, claimed and retrofitted by later conquerors but not made new.
This mirror was connected, communal somehow. It spoke to . . . trees? He felt root speak to root, and his will was drawn from this mirror to others, deeper into the forest, all the way to Dúnbheo and Green Haven and other, smaller mirrors. It wasn’t a luxin-based web, though, so Dazen couldn’t raise all of them directly.
Instead, he turned the first mirror toward them—and they answered! The Great Mirrors of Dúnbheo and Green Haven didn’t even need to be raised; they’d never been hidden in the first place. Some of the smaller mirrors were broken, nodes that lived only in memory, but others had rested shielded within the trunks of great trees. Now coiled roots pushed out, and others, stretched, pulled taut. Working like ligaments and muscles, with no gears anywhere, the tree roots worked together to heave several dozen mirrors across the satrapy into position.