The Burning White (46 page)

“Is ‘
a river of blood
’ sacrifices, or a massacre?” I ask.

“The Freeings have been going on a long time without causing a fall of the satrapies, so I’m guessing that the fall of the satrapies begins with this massacre around the Prism or his seat of power.”

“So maybe everyone on the Jaspers will be killed first,” I say.

“And there’s no clue who does it. Maybe the Angari who come in through the Everdark Gates? But I’m getting ahead of myself. ‘
Then will seven towers collapse, and with them, seven satrapies.
’ Obviously the falls of the seven towers and satrapies are figurative—collapse, political dissolution. Sorry, I’m overexplaining, of course you know that.”

“We’re grasping at straws.
Too much
explanation might actually be the perfect amount to trigger some new understanding. Please go on.”

She does: “ ‘
Ye shall know the time is short when bane rise from the seas.
’ I preserved the ‘ye’ instead of ‘you’ because he adopts a high tone here, an almost heraldic alarum. And apparently, this prophet believes the bane to be literal, physical things. He believes the
loci damnata
are real places, real temples of the false gods, the damned. ‘
Atirat will rise off Ruic Head
.’ ‘Off Ruic Head’ is a little tricky. Ruic Head wasn’t called Ruic Head at the time. It was the ‘fist sinister of the Iron Mountains.’ So the left hand of the Red Cliffs. Most agree that means Ruic Head, but it is a bit of an extrapolation. Further, ‘off’ could mean near or even on Ruic Head. It’s more often ‘inside Ruic Head,’ so it might mean ‘on Ruic Bay’? Or maybe ‘buried in the ground beneath Ruic Head itself’? Alternately, if we wanted to take it a metaphorical direction, ‘
inside the left fist
’ could merely mean ‘in the power of’ a political entity near Ruic Head, the city of Ru itself. But I don’t think so.”

“If a bane appears near Ruic Head, I imagine we’ll notice,” I say drily. “So it doesn’t matter. The ambiguity will likely clear itself up in time.”

She continues, “ ‘
and she who births him will become Ferrilux
.’ This could be an actual birth, but I’ve never heard of the gods literally giving birth to other gods, especially of such disparate colors as super-violet and green. And that Atirat rises from nearby doesn’t suggest growing up from infancy; rather it suggests a god in full.”

“So this woman will help Atirat . . . become Atirat?” I ask. We have so little idea how godhood is conferred or perhaps recognized. It is not something lost to the black, I don’t think, though; I think it has always been secret.

Felia says, “And then this woman, this goddess, will at some indeterminate point later become Ferrilux, which is intriguing as Ferrilux is traditionally male. I’ve considered that this may be symbolic if the ‘she’ is a nation or a satrapy, but that would be a strange construction.”

“Not that prophecies are noted for their plain language.”

“Which makes this one all the more striking,” Felia says. “It could be a poetic phrasing, because that seemed appropriate to the subject matter of goddesses?” She spreads her hands, as puzzled as I am.

“As you were,” I say.

“Then ‘
She will open the Gates fully, which have been cracked.
’ The ‘have been cracked’ isn’t the same as our idiom ‘opened a crack.’ It means ‘leaking’ as in ‘slightly broken,’ like a cracked egg. Some believe—and I concur—that at some point during Lucidonius’s or Vician’s time, the Gates were fully closed and let no water at all through, which hasn’t of course been the case for centuries. But this woman will open the gates all the way.”

“Which would make us entirely vulnerable to the Angari.”

“Maybe they aren’t warlike anymore. It’s been centuries,” Felia says. “But then, this prophecy doesn’t exactly strike such a hopeful note.”

“On the other hand,” I say, “if ‘the Everdark Gates’ actually does mean the gates of hell . . . there might be something worse than the Angari waiting to come through.”

Felia purses her lips. “Not a hopeful note at all, huh? ‘
From Tyrea
’ is the last fragment, and then the rest is redacted. She, the new Ferrilux, will come from Tyrea, or something or someone else? There’s not enough context to guess.”

I look at the words again:

The words seem writ in fire to me. I have no doubt they are true. This prophecy alone doesn’t give us the evidence we’d hoped for, but it gives us what’s at stake, and the time frame.

“What do we do?” I ask.

Felia is the only one in the world of whom I would ask such a question.

She studies me with eyes aglow with orange luxin, with love, with intelligence, and with pride. A man cannot long endure a look of total love and acceptance without turning aside or being changed forever.

I hold her gaze.

She puts her hands on my forearms, looking up at me, and when she speaks, her voice is soft but unyielding. “How we direct all the resources of our wealth and our connections and our intelligences and our considerable powers hinges on your answer to one question. My husband, my lord . . .”

Suddenly, I can feel the waters of history streaming past us, the passions of men and the desires of nations, the Chromeria spinning like a great wheel of a water mill driven by the politics of satraps and satrapahs, ambitious Colors riding the wheel up and eventually down, but the mill’s gears disengaged, its teeth whizzing purposelessly, all our power not even touching the great stationary millstone of history. But I stand at the lever. With one word, one decision, I may grind nations into wheat and chaff, I can be destroyer or savior. Both.

And I want to. If only to show that I
can
.

She studies me, and she knows. She translates my every blink and half-formed grin and twitched expression effortlessly, perfectly, my puzzling heart pellucid to her perspicacity. I am a text full open to her translation.

And yet she trusts me.

She speaks the question we have hinted at and dodged and joked about and hungered to know, but have never, never said aloud: she says, “After all we’ve seen and all we’ve learned . . . who are you, Andross Guile?”

“I am . . .” and the next words hang gleaming in the air like a glittering sword, a challenge, a taunt to those who had reached for it before me and been crushed by the unsupported weight of their presumption. “I am . . .” I say, and I leap into the teeth of history, and I break open its jaws with the lever of my audacity and power. “I, Andross Guile, am the Lightbringer.”

Kip and Tisis stood atop Greenwall where Ben-hadad had placed one of the mirrors he’d found in storage. It had fit perfectly in the frame, and with a little grease, it spun easily, just as Ben predicted. Kip had dismissed them all then. There were preparations to make, regardless of what he decided here tonight. Whatever he decided, he was going to get a lot of people killed.

He looked out over his city, his people, and what could be his satrapy.

Partly to avoid what he had to decide, but also partly because he was tired of everything being all about him all the time, he took his wife’s hand and said, “What’d you do today, dear?”

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I sort of figured you were running half the satrapy,” Kip said. He wasn’t really joking. She was far more comfortable with governance than he was.

“Only half?” she asked.

They shared a smile.

Then she said, “Today I was placing and recruiting sources and acquiring a number of diaries from our new recruits’ camp, including Daragh’s, and securing the cooperation of several minstrels who were previously tasked with writing songs about the bandits’ exploits. Then I was arranging interviews with camp girls, washerwomen, and servants from their old haunts. Within the week, we’ll know exactly which of our new recruits is irredeemably villainous. I’ll not only have a very good idea of which men are likely to commit future outrages, but I’ll have sources nearby keeping an eye on them. Your part will be to keep some fluidity in the unit personnel assignments until then. I also took care of all my usual duties.”

Kip cursed under his breath. “Dearest?”

“Yes, my love?”

“What happens when you realize you don’t actually need me?”

“Oh, come now,” she said, but she couldn’t help but beam. “You tell us what we’re going to do. I merely make sure it happens.”

“ ‘Merely,’ ” Kip said, sarcastic, “because that’s the easy part.”

“And your own role is so simple that you’re going to bed early?” she asked.

Which brought him crashing back to the present. And the future.

“You ever think you were destined for something greater?” Kip asked.

“Than what we’re doing?” Tisis asked. “I thought my life would be way less
everything
than this.” Then she asked, “You?”

“Think? No. I tried not to think, because I was sure I’d become like my mother, that I’d go from stuffing my face with food today to stuffing my nostrils with gutwrack tomorrow.” Or haze, or ratweed, or
anything
to obliterate a day.

“Really?” she asked.

Her eyes filled with such empathy that he couldn’t bear it.

“Sorry,” he said, with a quick fake grin.

“But . . .” she said. “Why’d you ask?”

“Oh, a man asked me that question once. Green wight I ran into outside my hometown, just before . . . you know, the king’s army came.” It felt like a lifetime ago.

“Gaspar Elos?” she asked. Oh, right, he’d told her the story. He was probably boring her.

He nodded. “Funny,” Kip said. “Back then, Koios’s side imprisoned this wight and I freed him. How’d we switch sides?”

“You didn’t. They’re deceptive, Kip. Corrupted.”

“Orholam’s gift shouldn’t be corruptible, should it? Shouldn’t lead inevitably to death.”

“Standing daily in the sun is a blessing; standing in the sun from dawn to dusk every day will burn even the darkest skin. Every gift must be received and released with the appropriate measure. Even the gift of life leads to death, Kip.”

“It just feels wrong. Madness at the end of every road for us.”

“What did he say?” Tisis asked.

Kip knew she meant Gaspar. How long had the wight’s words festered under his skin like a jagged splinter? From the beginning, he supposed. Bury and ignore them as he would. Tell himself he couldn’t be bothered by the words of a wight, a liar, an enemy, or simply a man who’d ruined himself and wanted to make sport of a vulnerable boy.

Yet still the splinter lay embedded in his psyche, inflamed.

“ ‘You ever wondered why you’re stuck in such a small life?’ he asked me. Of course I had! What young man doesn’t? ‘Do you know why you feel destined for something greater?’ and for a moment I think I really believed he might be a messenger from Orholam Himself, come to give me meaning for my shitty life. Why had
I
found him? So randomly, out there alone, at that very hour? It was like it was appointed. Like maybe this was my great purpose calling.” Kip trailed off. “What a child I was. So desperate and weak and full of hope that something great would simply happen to me.”

“What did he say, Kip?”

“I don’t know why I even care. I certainly shouldn’t be deciding the fate of an empire on some throwaway insult. It doesn’t matter.”

“Kip.”

Kip licked his lips. “He said the reason I felt destined for something great was because I was an arrogant little shit.” He shook his head and half chuckled. “Actually kind of funny.”

“No. Cruel,” Tisis said. “A sharp wit can puncture a wineskin overfull of ego. But any bully with a club-wit can shatter an empty crystal glass.”

Kip shrugged. The man had said, ‘There’s a prophecy about you. Not Rekton you. You you.’ But it had all been a setup for the taunt, hadn’t it? He said, “Just a stranger. Dead one now.”

She looked skeptical.

He shook it off. “I should get—”

She put a hand on his arm, stopping him. She was biting her bottom lip, intense. Then she took a deep breath. “I believe in you, but that’s not enough, is it? You need to know. For you.”

She didn’t have to say about what.

“Don’t you?” she asked.

“Know?” Kip asked.

“You’re gonna play dumb? You? With me?”

They’d never talked about it directly, even as the Mighty assumed it. It was too precious, too big, too ridiculous for fat little Kip of Rekton to even dream.

He knew Tisis wouldn’t ridicule him. Knew it absolutely. It wasn’t in her.

But what if she did?

He cleared his throat. “I’m not that fat kid from Rekton anymore,” Kip said. He shrugged. He braced himself on the ramparts, the masses of busy people below blending into one unvariegated carpet.

She stepped up beside him and put one hand atop his.

She looked out, and her face filled with pleasure at the people united, purposeful, hopeful—and it made him ache. Her satisfaction brought vigor to her beauty, a feminine strength, not fragile like a bloom that might be crushed underfoot, but adaptive, stubbornly growing toward the sun. Like a sapling in good soil, rushing into her strength, that she might bend before a storm, but grow; or be pressed down today and spring back up tomorrow, having grown taller yet overnight.

Tisis was transforming before his eyes, and he knew he’d played a role in that beautiful mystery, that growing into what she was meant to be. It filled him with humility to be allowed to partake in something so sacred. And it filled him with impossible longing.

Kip looked out on all those thousands of people taking his direction, and though he knew it was there, he didn’t see the glory of a community united, unselfish, moving toward a worthy goal. He saw thousands of people he could fail. Ten thousand ways he could fall short. And yet, how could he solve the paradoxical audacity in his breast?