“I have nothing to say.”
Very quietly, very gently, Orholam said, “He said you would speak blasphemy. That you would need to lance the boil, and let the poison seep out before all else.”
“If he already knows what I’m going to say, why don’t we just consider it said?” Gavin said. He thought to say it wryly, but it came out worse.
“It’s not that he needs to hear it. It’s that you need to say it.”
Gavin turned away. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Liar.”
Gavin snarled, “How dare you? Don’t you know—”
Orholam looked at the sailors, who’d glanced over at Gavin’s raised voice, but the men looked in no mood to break off from their own conversations unless the pair got into an actual fight. He said, “Don’t I know who you are? Heh. You know, that was part of what I loved about being a prophet. A prophet is a slave of the Most High. A slave, but having such an exalted master gives us the authority to speak in one voice to satrap, soldier, servant, or slave. I thought that made me as important as a satrap. Really, it’s just that we are equally small before him, ants and flies arguing for precedence under the gaze of a giant.”
“Now that’s more the kind of talk I’d expect from a prophet.”
A wounded silence, but then Orholam said, “It is odd to me, o man in ruins, that you who have been the answer to so many prayers should have none of your own, not even now, trapped and awaiting death. I have had fifteen years to grow past my rage at being. You haven’t that luxury.”
“Rage at being? Folly. Folly as much as calling fifteen years as a slave a luxury. I was the Prism. How could a Prism, of all men, complain?”
“Better an honest ingrate than a liar who is still an ingrate, after all.”
“Call me a liar one more time, and you’ll be swallowing teeth.”
“Let me tell you something, o slave Prism. When Orholam asks your submission, you can submit now and find the way easy; or later, and find the way hard; or never, and find yourself crushed.”
“Because he is punitive and cruel.”
“Because he is King. And the longer you walk in the wrong direction, the farther you have to run to get back to where you should have been.”
“He is no king. He doesn’t exist. He’s a comforting tale, a candle held against the darkness of our fears. There is only nothingness. It is as little use to curse him as it is to pray to him. We are a man who, having tripped, blames the stone for grabbing his foot.”
“Why then the fear to talk to him again?”
“First you call me a liar, and now a coward?”
“You need more honest men in your life. Or better ears. Orholam knows that in spite of all the mirrors he gave you, you still couldn’t see yourself, so he took your sight. Perhaps it will sharpen your other senses?”
“Go to hell,” Gavin said. But a part of that breathless, chest-seizing fear rose up in him again. Exposure. How did the old man know he couldn’t see?
Oh, but of course. If Gavin could draft, he wouldn’t be here. That the man knew about Gavin’s loss of the colors, his blindness, was no supernatural insight, it was mere deduction.
Orholam laughed. “No, better than hell waits for me. For I have finally bowed the knee. These, our excellent hosts, have power over my body only. Freedom, for me, is only a matter of time. These shackles cannot hold me. I could ask Orholam to take them off, and they would drop from my wrists.”
“Prove it,” Gavin sneered.
A fleeting irritation passed over the prophet’s face. “It’s only fair, I suppose, that you should tempt me to do what got me here in the first place. No. I shall not abuse the power entrusted me. I’ve been put here for me, but I’ve also been put here for you, Prism.”
“Uh-huh,” Gavin said.
“Orholam doesn’t make mistakes, o man of guile. You became Prism by his will. That wasn’t an accident. There are things only you can do.”
“Not anymore,” Gavin said. A cloud on the horizon lit from within as lightning sparked in it.
Better that he hadn’t been born. Better that he hadn’t been born a Prism. If only he hadn’t started light splitting, if only he hadn’t been a full-spectrum polychrome, if only he hadn’t told Gavin about his polychromacy, hoping to mend the rift that seemed to have sprung from nowhere when Gavin had been taken away and named the Prism-elect, everything would be well. His older brother had taken Dazen’s gift as a betrayal, as Dazen taking away the one thing that made him special.
So the real Gavin had retaliated by betraying his younger brother’s elopement with Karris.