The dead man said, “Listen to me. You can escape. This is your chance.”
A moment later, light bloomed. Gavin squinted against the glare, but the light itself didn’t command his attention. First, eyes averted from the lantern his father produced, he saw the black luxin. There was barely any reflection off that eerie black. The light that touched it simply died. He cast no secondary shadow from refracted light, and his primary shadow was barely visible, greater darkness against darkness.
Then, pupils constricting, he turned to his father.
“This was a mistake,” Andross Guile said. “I don’t want to remember you like this, this hideous ghost of what you once were.”
“Too late now, isn’t it? I got my memory from you, after all. You don’t forget, either,” Gavin said.
“I suppose not,” Andross said.
“If you were simply going to put me down like a mad dog, you’d have done it without this much bother,” Gavin said. “You came down to say something.”
Andross smirked, but only for a moment. “I suppose I haven’t dealt with madmen enough. Losing your wits doesn’t mean losing your wit, eh?”
The dead man grew more insistent. “Why aren’t you listening to me? Are you frightened, Gavin? Gavin Guile? Frightened?”
“Frightened only of what I might do,” Gavin said below his breath.
“What’s that?” his father asked.
Louder, as if merely repeating himself, Gavin said, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“How soon did your mother know?” Andross asked. He meant after Sundered Rock.
“Instantly.”
Andross cursed. “Of course she did.”
“Gavin,” the dead man whispered, “you have a way out.”
“When did you figure it out, then?” Gavin asked.
Andross said, “On the seventh year from the real Gavin’s ascension. We had figured out that you—the victor of Sundered Rock—had drafted black luxin, of course. I chalked up all the changes in you to that, and to killing your brother. Would have shaken anyone. But then you never even asked about doing the ceremony again. I didn’t believe that you could have forgotten that.”
“The Prism ceremony?”
Andross waved it away. He wasn’t interested in explaining. “And then, once I could accept that you’d fooled me, it all became obvious. Audacious, though. You played it perhaps as well as it could have been played.”
“Mother coached me.”
“Of course she did.”
“And when you figured it out, there was nothing for you to do but go along with it,” Gavin guessed.
Andross turned his palms up in a small surrender. “Gavin was dead and others believed you were he, so what could be done? I could mourn him. I could make you pay, but what would that accomplish?”
As if you didn’t make me pay.
“We have a way out,” the dead man said.
“I’m sorry, father.”
Andross Guile looked at Gavin as if he were suddenly speaking in some foreign tongue. “We’ll pretend you didn’t say that. I came here for one reason.” He stopped, shook his head. “No, what am I doing here?”
He’s lonely.
The thought tore through Gavin. For some reason, looking at this monster, Gavin felt a sudden unwonted compassion.
He’s lonely. Mother left him. His sons are dead. He’s recovered his health and vitality, but it is nothing to him. His last son insane, and even Kip has fled.
“Let’s play a game,” Gavin said.
“A game?” Andross asked skeptically.
“You always loved games. You and your Nine Kings. You can’t tell me that you haven’t missed matching wits with me. Witless as I may be.” Gavin grinned.
“What kind of game?” Andross asked, suspicious but obviously intrigued.
“Gavin!” the dead man said. “You don’t need to put yourself at his mercy. Andross Guile’s mercy. Andross. Guile’s. Mercy.”
Gavin said, “You tell me about some of the problems facing you, and I try to guess what you’re doing about them. Of course, you have to give me enough relevant information to give me a chance. We’ll call the game, Which Guile Rules the Seven Satrapies Better?”
“There are several weaknesses to this game,” Andross said.
“There are weaknesses to every game,” Gavin countered.
Andross obviously missed sparring. He didn’t think too long before saying, “To clarify: in the game, you’re guessing what I have done, or will do, not what you would do in my place? After all, we have… somewhat different strengths.”
“Exactly,” Gavin said. Anything to keep from going insane. Anything to give himself more chances. Anything to make him valuable to the old man might give him an opening.
Growing more irritated, the dead man said, “You don’t need to do all this.”
“I can play this game,” Andross said. “You know who the White King is?”
“Koios White Oak, unhappily back from the grave.”
“And you know what he is?” Andross asked.
Gavin stared at him blankly, not sure what his father was asking. “A polychrome? A man remade with incarnitive luxins?”
Andross sighed. “Are you playing dumb, or did you cut yourself so deeply?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Gavin said. This was not starting well.
Andross sighed. “I was hoping you might be useful, in this one thing at least.” He waited, apparently to see if he’d called Gavin’s bluff about being ignorant. Then, nonplussed, he said, “You are not the only man alive who can draft black luxin. Merely the only one on the Chromeria’s side.”
“Koios is a black drafter,” Gavin said as it dawned on him. Of course.
“He’s taken your old path to power. Except, of course, he doesn’t glean his powers from already dying drafters and wights.”
My old path to power? “So you think I’m the Black Prism, too?”
“Too?” Andross frowned. “You didn’t tell Karris about this.”
“No. Orholam, no. I didn’t even remember any of it then. I…” It cut him to think about her. It was impossible. Hopeless.
“Then who else calls you that?” Andross asked.
“Never mind that.” Telling his father about the dead men was a sure way to cut this conversation short. His father would think him mad in truth.
Andross looked amused to have this imprisoned wretch tell him what to do, but he let it go. “I more thought of you as a lightsplitting black drafter. If you want a more grandiose title, I suppose the Black Prism fits.”
“Are you sure?” Gavin asked.
“Whatever do you mean?”
“About me. I don’t… I don’t remember any of that. I didn’t seek out people to kill them for their magic. It wasn’t like that. Was it?” Gavin said.
He thought he’d done all that to save people. That he’d put himself in harm’s way for the satrapies. That he’d been at least a little… good.
“You really have forgotten it all, haven’t you?” Andross said. “What’s the alternative? That you’re Lucidonius come again? You’re the Lightbringer?”
“Mother said I was a true Prism…”
“Your mother loved you very, very much. But you were her last child, and you were a blind spot for her.”
There was something odd in how he’d said that. Irony aside, though: Gavin was Felia Guile’s blind spot? Go to hell, father.
“Her last child?” Gavin asked.
A pause. Then Andross said, “Not witless, indeed. There is still some spark of you left in that shell, isn’t there? Well, I had planned to tell you eventually. No time like at your end, I suppose. Do you remember that prophecy? The day the Mirror Janus Borig told you that you would draft black luxin? She told me, ‘Of red cunning, the youngest son, cleaves father and father and father and son.’ You remember?”
“I remember.”
“There was this librarian. She had access to some documents we needed. With your mother’s permission, I seduced her. Naturally, I was careful. She shouldn’t have gotten pregnant. She swore she’d take the tea to abort it if necessary. She lied. Showed up in our camp pregnant and with demands. Your brother didn’t take it well. She fled.”
There were so many things wrong with what he’d just said that Gavin couldn’t even begin to parse them. Andross had cheated on mother? And what pathetic lie was this that she’d approved of it? She would never do that!