The Broken Eye(282)
He remembered, strangely, as if cobwebs were being cleared from a hall of memory he’d not trod in decades, Lady Janus Borig visiting when he was a child, treating his mother like no one treated his mother, and telling him, ‘Black luxin is the scourge of history. It is madness in luxin form. It is the soul poison. Once touched, it lives within a drafter forever, slowly eroding her from the inside. In every world, there is that which is haram, that which is forbidden, and in every world, that is the thing most desired, for there is that in us which loves destruction. Here is a test for your wisdom, young Guile. It is the only test that matters. In this world, Orholam has given us such power as even the angels have not. It is the power of evil unfettered. It is the destruction of history itself. It is madness and death and being-not. It is void and darkness. It is the lack of light, the lack of God himself—the lack that men rightly call hell. It is black luxin, and that color—though color it is not—that color, Dazen Guile, is your color.’
And he’d believed her. He’d known then he was the cursed brother, the evil brother. And what she’d said had been true.
And at the end of all things, when every color is gone, darkness remains.
Gavin could see only in shades of gray.
And black.
How did I forget that? How did I, who remember all things, forget that day? Is that a real memory? Was it merely lost among all the myriad others?
But there was no time for that now. Not on this, his last walk.
Drafting black luxin wasn’t something you could test. It was a cocked and loaded pistol. You pulled the trigger, or you didn’t. And if you were able to draft it, and you did …
Hell, hell on earth. The smoking ruins of Sundered Rock. The charnel house, the gore, the rage and madness and slaughter and vileness of poison poured onto the world as from a spigot as big as the sky itself.
Gavin looked around the hippodrome, and in shades of gray and black, he saw not a single friend. They jeered and they hated and they knew him not. They, whom he had saved from a war that would never end, they hated him and wished pain and death upon him. For nothing more than their amusement.
They were, in this moment of bloodlust and casual cruelty, an open window into hell.
Gavin could bring hell to them, and in so doing, save himself.
It was the only way to save himself.
He looked at the mutely roaring masses: the sounds might have been the susurrus of the waves on the shore for all he heard them, and he realized that if they had been threatening him with death, he wouldn’t do it. He would die for these ingrates. Not happily, but willingly.
But to be blinded, to be made useless, to be disgraced, to be mocked, to be impotent, to be pitied? To be shorn of sight and light and power was to be made not–Gavin Guile. It was all he had built for his whole life. It was all his worth.
Or he could draft the black once more, triumph once more, rise once more, a shadow figure caked in the ashes of his enemies’ burnt flesh and dreams.
To be Guile is to have will titanic. It is to move the world according to my pleasure. To be an Unmoved Mover, to be like unto God.
To be Guile is to kill without hesitation those who stand in your way. Even if it be a stadium full. Even if it be your brother.
To be Guile is to be great but not good.
But I’m not only Guile, not anymore. I’m a husband and a father now. I’m more than a conqueror. What if what I’m losing isn’t worth what I’ll lose to keep it?
Karris, will you understand? Kip, will you someday see that this isn’t my moment of weakness?
They seized him, and of all the acts of will in a life famed for them, it was by far the greatest that he resisted them not.
They bound him to a table. It had a lip to hold in several thumbs’ depth of sand. To soak up blood, he supposed. First, they put thick leather straps on his feet and wrists. Then luxin locked even his head in place.
He was on his back, on sand, staring at the sky. Like he was afloat on the ocean, lying in the skimmer, dangling his arms out to each side, looking at the placid heavens. Either this was Orholam’s peace, or Gavin had finally lost his mind.
A man came to stand over Gavin and pushed his eyelid down, making him blink. Then luxin flowed around his eye and opened the eyelid. The luxin gelled, solidified, and held his left eye wide open. Bound to the table as he was, it left him looking directly at the noonday sun.
You can’t stare at the sun. You might go blind.
Gavin burst out laughing.
He was staring eye to eye with Orholam’s Eye, the sun. And he couldn’t look away.
What had that scurvied pirate said? You keep up your lies, and you’ll be stricken blind? What lie was I supposed to not tell? There were so many. Was it only telling the truth to Antonius Malargos? I am a fabric of shadows, Orholam. There is naught else to me.