After a few minutes of paradise, as Gavin tried to fight the urge to gorge himself and mostly failed, Grinwoody said, “It turns out I need someone with your particular gifts, Gavin Guile. Or should I say Dazen?”
The shock of hearing his real name on the lips of one who shouldn’t know it should have worn off by now, but it still tightened Gavin’s chest. Some secrets sink their claws so deep that the shock of their revelation tears those claws out of flesh and leaves scars forever.
“I should like to talk to you someday,” Grinwoody said, “about pretending to be someone you’re not. For years and years, pretending. We are none of us who we pretend to be. But you and I… we took it to an extreme that few people could even imagine, did we not? But the pretense changes you, doesn’t it? I wonder how it changed you, Dazen.”
“Who are you, then?” Gavin asked. Olives. Dear Orholam, he’d nearly forgotten how glorious an olive was. It was impossible to eat and think at the same time.
What in the hells was Grinwoody talking about?
“I come with a deal for you, Gavin Guile—I presume that’s how you’d like me to refer to you. So much easier that way, isn’t it? Unfortunately, if you don’t take the deal, I’ll have to kill you. I would much prefer to give you a real choice, but perhaps death was the road you were going to choose anyway, mm?” He gestured to Gavin’s hand and to the bread hollowed out on the floor.
“Death threats!” Gavin said. “How original.”
“Do you remember this?” Grinwoody asked. Careful not to let it touch his skin, Grinwoody held forth a small jewel of living black luxin, barely visible in the greater and lesser darknesses of the cell. It was attached to straps, somewhat different from the choker band it had sported when Gavin found it.
Another hammer blow of fear.
“That’s the black jewel I recovered from the blue bane, isn’t it?” Gavin said, voice even.
“Put it on.”
Gavin didn’t, of course. “What is this?”
“The White King has learned a little mastery of black luxin, Gavin. And we learned it from him. He says that he can control black luxin everywhere in the world. He may even believe it, but it’s a lie. He learned to will-cast simple commands into the black, and we learned from him. Thus, after you put it on, if you remove it, it will kill you. Or if you say my name or act while willing that I be exposed, or if I say the word, or trigger it in a number of other ways that I won’t bother to tell you, it will kill you. This is my guarantee of your obedience, your compliance with the deal I’m about to offer you.”
“Who are you?” Gavin asked.
“Upon my majority, my people named me Amalu Anazar, the Daring Rebel in Shadows, the Dark Defiant One. More know me as the Old Man of the Desert.”
Gavin almost broke out laughing.
“Not the response I was expecting,” Grinwoody said. “But then, you have been down here a long time, haven’t you?”
He didn’t ask what was funny, which was just as well. Gavin wouldn’t have told him. Both he and his father had unknowingly brought spies as close to themselves as possible—his father an old, withered man, and himself a young, beautiful girl. But both slaves, like a dark and a light mirror, had been spies on the Guile men, father and son. Spies serving in places no one would dare, serving quietly, serving well, and serving traitorously. Both Guiles had been blind to those closest to them.
Perhaps not funny after all. Perhaps not coincidental, either. Like father, like son. Except Gavin had been protected by the White and his mother. They had chosen a good traitor, in both senses of the word.
But that Marissia should be dead while this vile thing lived on was milk curdling in his mouth.
“So, Old Man. What is it you want?”
“I direct assassins, Gavin Guile, what do you think I want?”
“Ha. You. I’m still having a hard time… Who would you want me to kill?” Gavin asked suddenly. Who out there would require a washed-up former Prism to kill them?
“In return for your freedom and your life, you go to White Mist Reef, climb the Tower of Heaven, and kill Orholam.”
Oh, come on, I thought I got to be the crazy one in this room.
“Pardon?” Gavin took a sip of the wine. Orholam only knew when he’d get another chance.
“I know your seventh goal, Dazen. Maybe this will allow that. Unlikely, but possible.”
“Are you mad? It’s impossible. All of it. Legends and idiocy.”
“And yet you’re more irritated that I know your seventh goal.”
Gavin sneered. “I’ve never said it aloud. Never written it once. Barely even thought it.”
“It’s impossible for you not to think it. Great men dream of being the promachos. Great drafters dream of being the Prism. What does the greatest promachos and Prism of all time dream of?”
Gavin said, “Even if it were true, it’s impossible.”
“Improbable. But I believe in taking long-odds wagers, and in following them to their end. I’ve arranged everything to give you this one chance. And, of course, if you choose death, all my work will have been for nothing.”
“And how am I supposed to kill Orholam? With very sharp words? The cutting edge of my disbelief? The poison of a Prism’s hypocrisy?”
“Put this on.” Grinwoody extended the jewel toward Gavin. “Or die. Now.”
The old Gavin would have taken the opportunity to attack while the slave-king had one hand occupied. But Gavin had no strength and one clumsy half hand, and he’d seen the old man move. Though aged, Grinwoody was a martial artist, and Gavin could barely move. Worse, with the rich food in his stomach, he’d probably just throw up.
Gavin took the jewel.
At first glance, he’d assumed the setting had been changed simply so he could wear the jewel lower on his neck than a choker would allow. He’d been wrong. There were too many straps for that, and they were too short. The glittering black jewel was set through the middle of an eye patch. It looked like a veritable eye of darkness.
“I took some liberties from the original design,” Grinwoody said. “It will still kill you if you try to remove it. When you bathe, you can hold it in your hand. Just make sure it never loses contact with your skin.”
Gavin put it on. It snugged against his left eyelid tight enough that it pressed skin into the divot where his pupil lay, lensless. A chill went down Gavin’s spine, and he wasn’t sure it was entirely natural.
Grinwoody’s demonically gleeful look of triumph made Gavin want to punch him in the face.
“It’s a good look on you. Follow me,” the old man said.
He turned his back on Gavin, utterly dismissive of what had once been the most dangerous man in the world.
“Guile,” the dead man said. But now he didn’t speak with Gavin’s voice, but what might have been his own guttural growl. “Take me. I’m the only one who can save you. Touch that black stone in your eye patch to the wall, and I will make you emperor of this world in truth.”
Gavin could swear that in the black-on-black he could make out a pair of hateful gleaming eyes.
He smiled into the darkness. “What kind of a raka do you take me for?”
Expecting claws to dig into his head and pull him back into hell at any moment, Gavin slowly stepped out of the cell.
Another step. Another.
“This way,” Grinwoody said after he swung the door to the black cell shut. “There’s… old superstitions among the Braxians that there’s something terrible below the Chromeria. Like about how you can’t take anything out of there, or something cataclysmic would happen. Andross was always very careful to strip and wash before he came out of here. I also put an emetic in that food. Just in case. Sometimes old traditions and old fears do hide wisdom.”
“What?” Gavin said. But he already could feel the answer to that in his belly. Orholam have mercy, what did the man think, he’d swallowed a stone?