Had this been the work of some empire Dazen had never heard of? Was this the magic of the pygmy peoples?
But there was no time to study the marvel, or even to wonder at it. Dazen felt his body gasping, his own strength stretching him too far.
Back to Ilyta, where some people had scattered, but others had come bearing their muskets and long knives. Bandits, Dazen hoped. But maybe just the sons of bandits, only trying to defend their homes from something that filled others with dread.
Brave men, regardless.
Dazen shook the earth once more. One last wordless warning to people who could die in a war they didn’t even know about.
Some fled, but others stood their ground, shaking their spears as if some monster stomped between their homes. You’ve built your home on the monstrous, you fools. As did we. The cowards who ran would live, while the brave died.
Dazen could wait no longer.
Houses shattered and tore apart, the earth rent, a spire shot into the sky, and then the superviolet mirror slashed through the village. The brave fell and the rubble of their own homes crushed and buried them.
He flashed back to his own body, staggering.
No, not yet. He’d taken seven colors, but there were nine. He sank deep into the mirror to feel for those last two, but found only a single trace: a bane atop Hellmount, far, far to the west, pulsing like the sun, its slopes littered with the burnt bones of the dead who’d tried to approach, to claim it for themselves. But there was no mirror nor lightwell for that great chi bane, nor anywhere else. Nor for paryl. Even the ingenuity of the drafters of old had never subdued those colors.
No wonder the Chromeria had always feared those colors. Light cannot be chained indeed. Not all of it anyway. The mystery always escapes us.
Finished, he came back to his body again.
He felt disconcertingly wonderful, but he knew it was a false strength now. He’d lifted weights with the strength of a thousand men, but his muscles were going to give out on him without warning at any moment.
The whole thing must have taken only a few minutes, because even as he gasped on the sweet night air, he could feel the distant Great Mirrors still finishing turning, still settling their beams onto the Great Mirror behind him.
And then, as more strength came into his hands than perhaps had ever been held by one person, he realized that he was deeply and truly fucked.
The Mirror of Waking began to spin. Suspended on nothing at all that he could see, it began to turn into a blur, on several invisible axes. The air filled with its sound, and wind whipped over him.
Dazen felt the lightwells under each of the seven Great Mirrors in their far-spread satrapies slowly uncorking themselves like shaken bottles of bubbly wine. They would blast perfect, pure light in their respective spectra, pulsing in time with each rotation of the Great Mirror behind Dazen. Thus, basically simultaneously, Dazen could direct light from every arc of the Seven Satrapies to any point and to as many points as he wished.
He had under his will as much power to distribute as he could hope.
But no matter how good it felt, he was damn near dead. Drafting white was like sprinting downhill—deceptively effortless, so long as he kept his feet under him. Giving him this much power was like giving that downhill sprinter a hard shove in the back.
He’d done what no other drafter could have done. No other drafter in the world could’ve handled that much magic. No other drafter could’ve reached so far. Other than Kip, no one could’ve lifted so much as a single one of those towers alone.
He’d raised five.
But now? Even if he could handle the light, somehow feeling the colors needed despite his color-blindness, even if he could survive more than another few seconds of so much power, the Chromeria was far beyond the horizon. The mirrors themselves could settle into their old grooves to find one another, but it would be impossibly fine work to strike at a single foe on the island or to take the mirror array and use it himself.
Dazen couldn’t strike down wights from here. He’d broken the bane’s control of magic, but he couldn’t fight those floating islands from here, couldn’t unwind their magic and drown the wights in their thousands. Not from here.
He couldn’t save the Chromeria.
He was a runner collapsing on the last lap, begging that someone carry him to the finish line.
Without warning, the colors bubbled forth from their long imprisonment. Dazen didn’t know what else to do but throw them toward the Chromeria. First, they effervesced across the sky, but then he wrestled them back to a tight beam. One last act of white will.
In the now tightening spray of colors, he felt a vortex reaching out, giving him a point to aim for. It was an answering Will, some desperate or brilliant drafter who intuited that now, in the middle of the night, after the wash of black luxin had freed the skies, she or he should mount the Prism’s mirror array.
Maybe there was some hope after all—
Dazen felt the colors sucked in, suddenly. One two threefourfi—all of them!
A full-spectrum polychrome.
A man—yes, it felt like a man—of chthonic strength and titanic will.
Across the immensity of the space between them, their wills meshed like the gears that had raised the Great Mirrors, and without words they knew each other.
Father.
Dazen?
Dazen felt a shock of revulsion ripple through his entire body. The gears ground to a halt.
His father—and since when was Andross a full-spectrum polychrome?—his father wanted him to hand over control of the mirror array.
On the one hand, it was the obvious solution. Andross was there. No one else was. Who else could handle the magic? Who else had the will and concentration and pure fortitude?
But at the same time, it was a horror beyond countenancing.
If he gave his father this power, Andross Guile would be seen rescuing everyone. He would be hailed the Lightbringer. If Dazen gave him this, everything Andross had ever done would be excused. Forgiven. No, not even forgiven, lauded.
‘Murdering children? That must have been so hard for him!’
‘Yes, yes, but he was wiser than the rest of us. He knew what was necessary to save the world. He did that for us. He was a man of vision. A great man, willing to do what was necessary for all the rest of us. A hero.’
Everything in Dazen shouted No!
Anyone but him!
Tears of rage poured. Dazen felt a cooling reassurance from the old monster, and a repeated demand that Dazen give him control of the array. Now. Like that was more important than anything.
You murderer! You killed Sevastian! You killed all that was good. We had everything and you killed it all. Don’t you dare say it was for the world. It was for you, your pride! You always had to be the best. You always had to be right. You always had to prove yourself smarter than anyone else! Always, always!
But the distance was vast, and they couldn’t hear each other’s words.
Orholam, please, no! Not this. Not this.
Dazen held all the weight of the empire’s salvation in his hands. He knew to hold on to the magic any longer would kill him, but to give it to that beast was impossible. His fists knotted white.
He felt a presence, and he opened his eyes.
Orholam stood in front of him.
He knew.
As they locked gazes, Orholam’s left eye deepened and morphed, and Dazen saw standing there a throng, silent in their penitents’ garb, but adorned in their Sun Day finest cosmetics and jewels. More than two thousand women and men, each with Dazen’s knife wound over their hearts. His victims from all the Freeings. His peaceful accusers.