The wight was moving, trying to circle Kip.
Kip got behind the crest of the hill and ran to the side, flanking the entire hill. That much light cast upward? That meant the red wight was keeping a flame smaller than his palm—and probably in his palm. Kip’s studies had told him exactly how much sizzling and popping a flame of that size would make, and thus how loud it would be. Over this distance, in this jungle that he knew so intimately? Kip could guess exactly how much noise his own passage through the undergrowth could make without the wight’s hearing him.
Within half a minute, he’d flanked the wight, who was now moving stealthily toward where Kip had been. Baoth had further banked the flame he carried, making his right hand an inverted bowl like a hooded lantern.
How was he drafting so much with this light, though?
And then Kip saw how, and he was baffled that no one had ever explained it. The wight was drafting off himself. That must be at least part of why wights transformed themselves. This wight had copious amounts of imperfect red luxin encasing his entire body, so he could flash it back into red light that he could then draft. It was inefficient to draft from broken luxin, but this meant a wight could never be trapped powerless in darkness. Effectively, it carried its own mag torches in its body. And, come daylight, it could easily replenish itself.
The Mighty, like all the Chromeria, had discounted the accounts they’d heard of nighttime attacks. Drafters would never attack at night, they thought. They’d thought wrong, and it could have been a disastrous mistake.
But too much thinking, again.
Kip had lost the blue in all his running and loss of concentration. The fletching of his arrows had been fouled with mud from his roll on the ground. How accurate would they be?
He swapped through the spectacles on his left hip, drafting some superviolet—he didn’t need much—and then some red, each color sending a new glimmer of light into the Turtle-Bear tattoo. In sub-red, Kip looked for any forest creatures. All I need is just one squirrel, dammit.
But there were none.
Have to do this the old-fashioned way.
With his left hand, he pushed a veritable ice carpet of superviolet webbing forward through the undergrowth. Superviolet was so light and weak that any particular strand of it could break easily, so he took the Gavin Guile approach: more is better. He needed only one continuous section to project his will through the luxin. With his right hand, he picked up a rock and threw it deep into the woods off to one side. It was unlike his usual Kipliness that this time, he didn’t hit the first branch and spoil the whole effect.
The whisper of the falling rock in the undergrowth froze the wight, who looked first for an attack, and then for prey.
The pause was long enough. Kip’s web of superviolet spread as far as the red wight’s feet, up its ankles, and to the inevitable seams between the solid luxin plates of its feet and its calves.
A man wasn’t made to have an exoskeleton. Skin moved and flexed in ways that solid plates didn’t allow. The solutions most wights came up with were taken directly from armorers: painstakingly articulated joints, or chain-mail meshes, or bulky straps and prayer. This wight was floating an entire layer of open red luxin underneath his armor so that he could use it for fuel, and so his skin could move.
With his left hand seeking the open red luxin, Kip reached his will through the superviolet, while his right hand sent a tiny bolus of a firecrystal through the superviolet toward his target.
Every plate of the wight’s armor would have knots—places where the magic had been sealed. Naturally, they would be on the protected inside. Kip was planning to unknot all the plates at once, but before he could reach them, the wight started to move.
Kip threw his will hard into the wight’s open red luxin. He pulled it all toward the wight’s chest, twisting hard. Its chest plate cracked with a snap at the same moment the firecrystal reached the wight’s feet. Kip popped the firecrystal up, and, exposed to the air, the crystal flared and sparked.
Covered completely in a mess of open red luxin, the wight went up in flames.
But that wasn’t enough. Kip ran forward, nocking an arrow.
The wight reacted first as a man would, slapping at the flames, terrified. So it wasn’t so far gone yet, or so smart. He could have drafted off his own flames and covered himself in more and more red luxin until it made a crust—it was difficult to burn a red drafter to death, if he was thinking.
Kip couldn’t give Baoth time to think. He loosed the first arrow a mere ten paces away. Drew another, loosed it. Drew another, loosed.
The wight screamed, a pillar of fire in the dark woods. He flung out a hand, and Kip leapt aside.
A gout of flaming oily red luxin went out from the wight, splattering and burning trees and bushes in a wide arc. It passed over Kip’s head. Then, weakening, the wight threw one more burst of liquid death upward.
By the time the flaming goo dropped to the ground, the wight was dead. It had become a charred pillar of blackened luxin, still-burning patches of red luxin, and steaming bits of seared human flesh and white bone peeking out like gore candles.
Within minutes, drawn by Kip’s oh-so-subtle signal fire, the Mighty arrived, along with Conn Arthur and a few trackers.
“So,” the conn said, looking around the forest punctuated with burning clumps of red luxin around this epicenter of destruction, “I’m guessing you didn’t get the scrolls he was carrying.”
“Ah shit,” Kip said.
Chapter 45
For a long while, Gavin lay bleeding on the floor of the yellow cell without even the courage to open his eyes. But he was a Guile, and to him ‘a long while’ without doing something wasn’t long.
He’d already catalogued his own injuries. It was the curse of his family: he couldn’t stop thinking or planning any more than he could stop breathing. He sat up.
The injuries weren’t bad. Well, ignoring for the moment the lost dogtooth, two stubs where fingers should be, and the gaping hole where an eye belonged. His cuts from falling were shallow, the bruises painful but not incapacitating, his jaw unbroken despite his father’s punches. The weakness from the hunger was extreme, though.
The first thing he saw was his own reflection.
“You were a beautiful man once,” it said.
Of course the dead man in yellow would be the perfect balance of logic and emotion, devastating him with each. Gavin ignored him for the moment, and cast his eyes down.
There was no corpse.
Oh, thank Orholam, there was no corpse.
“You don’t look well,” the dead man said.
“Does that make your work harder or easier?” Gavin asked him.
“Tell me, O man of Guile, what’s worse? Madness unknowing, or madness recognized?”
“So… harder, huh?” Gavin said.
What was this talk of madness? Maybe the yellow dead man thought Gavin was more gone than he was. Gavin tried to remember if hunger caused hallucinations. Perhaps it did. Perhaps that was why saints and ascetics starved themselves—they were seeking a path to enlightenment through the signals for help a body released when it was being destroyed.
Gavin wasn’t mad yet. He was too focused for that.
His father had pulled the rug out from under him. Very well, point to Andross Guile. His father had humiliated him by pummeling him with his fists. Fine.
Gavin was more than a match for the old spider. He would escape, and he would rise. He was unstoppable, unmatchable, superlative.
“Ah, Gavin Guile, surrounded with mirrors, and yet you refuse to see the simplest truths,” the dead man said.
“Dazen,” Gavin said. “I’m Dazen Guile.”
“Indeed. And what happened to Gavin?”
“Go to hell.”
“You seem not to have noticed,” the dead man said. He gestured to the cell. “Here am I.”
Orholam, I sure was a dick when I will-cast these walls with dead men.