“Of course.”
“And what do you think happens when I pass the impassable reef, climb the tower that’s probably just a trick of the light, climb the footstool of the Lord of Light himself, and stab him with this?”
Grinwoody grinned an arrogant grin. Shook his head. “Are you really as desperate to believe in gods and devils as the rest of them? Knowing what you know? Having done what you’ve done? Orholam is no god. It is merely the nexus of this world’s magic. It’s not sentient. It’s not a person or a godhead. It is the wobbling, unbalanced axle around which all magic rotates. It is the center that cannot hold.
“If you destroy this nexus men call Orholam, you kill magic itself. It will be an end of the tyranny of the Chromeria and an end to the magical storms that have devastated our world for millennia beyond counting. It will end the world putting one man in power while another is his slave—merely because the first can do magic. For that hope, for that hope for justice, I have wagered everything.”
“Regardless of the cost?” Gavin asked.
“The cost to do nothing is greater.”
“You really think the Blinding Knife will blind God himself.”
“This is the problem with erasing your own history, as the Chromeria has done, never trusting its own with dangerous knowledge: sometimes the most dangerous things are exactly what you need to save yourself.”
“What are you talking about?” Gavin asked. Erasing history? Was this some kind of Order conspiracy theory?
“How I would love to sit and talk with you for an afternoon and tell you all the parts of your reign you owe to me, and all the things you misinterpreted through the decades. It would be better if your father were there, too, for he’s been the more substantial foe by far. But we have little time. Dawn comes, and light waits for no man, am I right?” He peeked out the curtain, then dropped it back in place.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. What are your demands?”
“Do you remember this?” Grinwoody asked. He upended a black velvet bag into his hand, and a jewel the color of midnight dropped into his hand. It somehow radiated darkness, or sucked light into itself. It was living black luxin, but it was something more. If the black luxin in Gavin’s eye patch was a child of eternal darkness, this was Mother Night herself.
“The black seed crystal,” Grinwoody said. “You remember now?”
“I have… no memory of that.” Except that he felt an instinctive fear and revulsion at the sight of it. It was too painful to even behold.
“You created this. At Sundered Rock.” Grinwoody pushed back a curtain from a window and looked out at the water. Then he turned again to Gavin. “Or perhaps this is an older one. You see, the Chromeria used to deny that seed crystals exist—even while they hoarded them. The seed crystals call their color of drafters to themselves—which is why, unknowing, drafters have always come here for their teaching. But uncontrolled, unchecked, they create the bane, and the bane call wights much more powerfully.
“The Chromeria likes to believe that there’s only one seed crystal of each color. As if one can wish that there should be only one volcano, or one hurricane, or one earthquake—because one is devastating enough. The truth is, any sufficiently powerful drafter can create one, like you did at Sundered Rock. Or they can spontaneously appear, as they have recently, if there’s too much of their color. Maybe it’s random, maybe it coalesces around a drafter of that color, like the first crystal in a freezing pond—what does it matter? When you create the right conditions, the bane appears. And the conditions now? Without you balancing? It’s like all magic is a pond below freezing, waiting for that first crystal. Only death can follow, Dazen Guile.”
“Oh, good, here I was thinking things looked grim.”
Grinwoody stared at him, unsmiling. “Apparently that irreverence has helped keep you alive and sane. I hope it continues to work for you.”
Gavin swallowed, flippancy gone. “So what does the black do? Does it make a black bane?”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing, but then, they’d have erased that, too, if such didn’t spontaneously erase themselves from men’s memories as your conflagration at Sundered Rock did. No, Dazen, I’m not going to tell you any more. All you need to know is this…”
He balanced the sword on the floor, tip down, and set the black seed crystal on its pommel. It sank into the pommel, melted, and a change rushed over the entire surface of the sword. What had been black and white entwined now shimmered with darkness. As Grinwoody turned the blade, entire sections dulled in the light as if they were a polarized lens.
“… you find the nexus of magic, and you stab the Blinding Knife into it. I don’t care if it’s a thing or a person or God himself. You kill it, and our deal’s complete.”
Simple.
“Why me?” Gavin asked. “You’ve got dozens? Hundreds? of people loyal unto death to you.”
“The Blinding Knife’s powers can only be activated by a Prism. Climbing the tower was once a pilgrimage open to all, but after Vician’s Sin, the priests at White Mist Reef created magical locks on the tower to keep drafters from reaching the top—to protect the nexus, you see? There’s a magical lock at each level, a blue lock to block blue drafters, a red to block reds, and so forth. So only a non-drafter will be able to reach the top of the tower.”
“How do you know this?”
“The Chromeria has always tried but failed to gain a monopoly on old knowledge. We Braxians have protected our own histories.”
“But if there are locks, surely there’s one for black.”
“Not according to the records. Either black resists being formed in such ways, or the priests felt black defiled them to use. That’s why they formed the reef instead—failing to keep out the worst, they decided to keep out everyone.”
“But you don’t know if this will work.”
“Of course not. But I do know that you’re the only person in the world who has a chance,” Grinwoody said. “Only a non-drafter can reach Orholam. Only a Prism can use the Blinding Knife to kill him. Only you are both.”
“I never expected to find you betting on me,” Gavin said.
“One thing I like about you Guiles. People are usually either fighters or survivors. You’re both.”
Gavin looked at the blade and couldn’t even think. It was like staring down an infinite chasm now, where before it had been like staring at the sun. Each was too terrible to behold for long.
It felt hungry.
“So let’s pretend I’m an enthusiastic participant,” he said. “How am I supposed to get through White Mist Reef? You have drafters who can handle a skimmer?”
“I sent a skimmer already. It shattered in the stresses passage through the reef put on it. I’m sending you on a normal ship. Mostly.” Grinwoody checked the window again.
Gavin was incredulous. “And what kind of a lunatic would be willing to attempt to sail through White Mist Reef?”
“The kind that gambles.”
What the fuck does that mean?
Then Grinwoody opened the door. Gavin followed him out onto the Chromeria’s back dock. In the lightening gray of dawn, a magnificent white ship with a glimmering sheen was docked at the quay, but Gavin barely had a moment take it in.
“My friend!” a voice boomed out of Gavin’s past. The human avatar of braggadocio ambled down the quay in an open jacket with no tunic beneath, wild hair, baggy trousers, and a huge, crooked-toothed grin.
“Gunner,” Gavin said. “Of course it’s you.”
“You look worst hand lass time,” Gunner said. Gavin thought it was a crack about his missing fingers at first, but then he translated: ‘Worse than last time.’
But then Gunner stopped suddenly, stricken. His eyes were fixed on Gavin’s eye patch as if it were a serpent that might strike him. “What’s with the evil eye? Is it bad luck?”
“Only for our enemies,” Grinwoody said.
“Indeed?” Gunner asked Gavin, still disconcerted. The man could be childlike in his superstitions.