The Broken Eye
Page 41

“Because you’re kind and kind of useless,” Gavin said, grinning.
But Orholam wasn’t grinning.
“Please, no blasphemy, young Guile. Not with me. Not tonight.” He paused. “I was a prophet of Elely?n in a little village on the Parian coast between the Everdark Gates. We were isolated there, of course. No ships in or out, all our trade having to wend through the mountain passes, even our names for Orholam odd to other Parians’ ears.
“In my youth, my village was raided by an Angari ship that had somehow made it through the east Gate. The village was burned, my mother killed in front of my eyes, my father killed in disgrace that doesn’t bear repeating, my young brothers and sisters either taken for slaves or killed, I knew not which. I escaped. I lived through the winter night inside the corpse of one of our oxen they had slaughtered for fun. They didn’t even carry the meat back with them. Young men, laughing. I had been serving as a prophet under Demistocles. You’re not familiar? Then I will be brief. Orholam began to speak to me even as a child. Under Demistocles’s tutelage, I learned to discern when it was the Most High’s voice, and when it was my own desires. I grew arrogant. I called down miracles, and they happened. You think your chromaturgy is a wonder? It is mere science. Men moving bricks. But my power? Orholam’s power, unleashed from the heavens themselves? Like lightning compared to candle. But—and this I will grant you—the latitude you drafters are given is much wider. You do so much yourselves. But to us all, drafter and prophet alike, Orholam giveth and Orholam taketh away. We call him the Lord of Light, but we forget that he is lord.”
A sermon. From a man they called Orholam. Just what Gavin needed. At least it was different, and a good wine kick in the head can make even religion bearable.
“One day, a year to the day after I’d lost all those I loved, the Most High told me to heal an Angari widow. Leprous. In the hardness of my heart and the stiffness of my neck, I turned away instead.
“The next morning, Elely?n told me to go prophesy to the Angari. I fled instead. Not because I was afraid I would die shooting the Everdark Gates, but because I knew I wouldn’t. I knew he is merciful. I was afraid that if I told them to repent, they would, and I wanted nothing of mercy for them. I wanted them to burn. Men, women, children, eunuchs and servants and slaves, foreigners visiting their shores, rabble and king, soldier and merchant. I wished fire for them all.” His aspect took on a fierceness Gavin had seen before, though not on this man’s kind face. It was a visage etched by the acid thirst for vengeance.
Then it was followed by sorrow deeper than words. “I wished the very name of the Angari to burn and be known no more. I ran as far as I could get the other way, and ended up seized by river pirates at the head of the Great River. I was sold and sold again until I was marched overland and eventually sold to the Angari. As if it could be anyone else. I have served for fifteen years, and for ten of it, I lived in hatred. I have been ever a slow learner, but Orholam is patient.
“Elely?n hasn’t spoken to me in many years, but the day we fished you out of the waters, he did. And again last night telling me that now you are ready. Not to hear. Not yet. But to speak.”
“To speak?” Gavin asked. “What an odd prophet you are, to go around listening.” He looked at the canopy of stars overhead. Beauty in black and white.
They had to be somewhere outside Melos, if Gavin remembered the star charts correctly, and of course, he did. To remember was his curse.
“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.”