What if the light itself had been a lie?

Mount Tenji is the tallest mountain in Ceura. When I was a kid, people used to make pilgrimages up the mountain. It’s been too cold for that for centuries. It’s a volcano, but it hasn’t erupted in more than a hundred years. Some smoke from time to time is all.

I reach the crater on the sixth day of climbing. I’m buried deep in many layers of coats. The wind is blowing snow everywhere.

You’re good for a lot of things, I think at the black ka’kari, but keeping me warm isn’t one of them.

~ You left off part of Oath of Sa’kagé the other day. ~

Noticed, did you?

~ “Until the king returns, I shall not lay my burden down.” ~

I pause. Jorsin Alkestes is dead. He’s not coming back.

~ Gather the ka’kari. Bring them all together. It’s time. ~

Impossible.

~ Impossible? For you? ~

And if I’m successful? I have a fraction of Jorsin Alkestes’ power, and I’m unstoppable. He was my king, but I’m not sure he wasn’t mad at the end.

The ka’kari doesn’t answer. It knows me well enough to know when I have to muddle through things on my own.

There is only one question: Does what you do, every day, have meaning? Acaelus had thought his actions did, once. For centuries, he’d put his faith in Jorsin Alkestes. A long dead king. A madman who’d sworn he would return. Even from death. A madman who’d left madness everywhere in his wake.

Acaelus had given his all. He was tired of giving. He was tired of believing. It was too much. It was finished.

~ He loved you, you know. More than anyone. Do you trust your old friend? ~

I stand on that windblown peak for some time.

“Not to be a god.”

I toss the red ka’kari into the crater.

I strap the schlusses to my feet, and head down the mountain at great speed. Ordinarily, the speed and danger give me a fierce joy. But now I’m a husk. I’m like the great sequoys of Torra’s Bend, leaves still green but the heart rotted out, hollow, waiting, just waiting for the storm to come along that will end it all. A mummery of life. More alone than I’ve ever been.

The volcano won’t destroy the red, I don’t think. But it does put it beyond reach. Either the red will get caught partway down, but not all the way in the magma, and it will be impossible for anyone to live long enough to muddle grab it, or it will make it all the way down, soak up as much power as it can hold—a huge amount—and then release it. Over and over.

I’m halfway down the mountain when the volcano explodes.

Guess it made it to the magma.

I turn my back on the volcano as I’ve turned my back on my king. Fire pursues me, but emptiness can’t be threatened. Emptiness holds nothing dear. Emptiness knows no fear.

The Nameless is working on his new face in Gwinvere’s mirror. It’s important that he do this here, so she can see it and have no doubts that the new him is really him still. But body magic hurts like a motherfucker, and he doesn’t want to show her the pain. He drinks more. He’s drunk, and it takes heroic amounts of alcohol to get him drunk. The black ka’kari negates poisons, for the most part—a fact Yvor Vas probably would have liked to know.

“You’re not as pretty as Gaelan was,” she says, finally, looking at his blond hair, thin blond beard, and pockmarked cheeks. She isn’t pleased with his drunkenness, but at least she doesn’t seem afraid of his abilities.

“This was my first face. My real face, you could say, if such a thing had any meaning for me.” Acaelus Thorne’s face. A whimsical choice, perhaps a dangerous choice, but a shadow should bear some resemblance to the shape that cast it.

“Handsome, before the scars. A bit grim, with them,” she says.

He grunts. What looks like pockmarks actually came from the acid blood spray of a monster in the last battle, where Jorsin Alkestes died, when Trayethell fell. The mages at the time hadn’t been able to heal them. Now, he doesn’t want to erase that last memento of the man who might have been his friend.

From downstairs, he can hear little kids shouting, playing. Street kids, guild rats, the slave-born who have no place to go. Gwinvere takes them in sometimes. They call her Momma K. Right now, the wretches are bickering—not exactly what you hope for when you’re showing kindness, but often all you get when you show kindness to those who can’t return it.

Gwinvere says, “The captain of the city guard has reported you dead, without reporting your name. Anyone who digs will figure out that Gaelan Starfire was killed in a fire in the Warrens. There will be some rumors that Gaelan ran afoul of the previous Shinga. Since deceased. A literal dead end.”

“Very satisfying,” the nameless emptiness says.

“So what’s your new name?” Gwinvere asks.

“Durzo,” he says into his flagon as he raises it for another drink. “Durzo Flint.” He’d often carried surnames that meant something, and it seems to be a tradition among some of the wetboys as well. Flint: sharp, dangerous, brittle. Fair enough.

“Durzo Blint?” she asks, misunderstanding him.

From Flint to Blint. A portmanteau of flint and blunt, perhaps. The sharp and the blunt. A paradox smashed together. Or just smashed. A descent from meaning to meaninglessness. It seems appropriate. He suddenly remembers Polus Merit’s prophecy. Polus had said Blint, too, hadn’t he? “That’s right,” he says. “Durzo Blint.” He drinks. Here’s to you, Polus Merit. You fat pain in the ass.

“Well, Durzo, I’ve got a job for you,” Gwinvere says. “Someone who needs killing.”

Gwinvere Kirena is strength incarnate. Perfection in flesh. Utterly flawless, and somehow thereby utterly sterile, impervious. When he looks at Gwinvere, he doesn’t see a woman who will ever be caught off her guard. She will never be hanged, or strangled, or have her throat cut, or have her brains beaten out. She’s too strong for that, too smart.

Gwinvere doesn’t need him, so he can’t fail her. She is the cold safety of a lean-to in the rain, not the false comfort of a stone castle that will fall on your head and destroy you utterly. She extends a scrap of paper.

Gwinvere likes kids. An odd juxtaposition. A scrap of humanity.

This is what I get. This is what I deserve. Scraps.

He doesn’t look at the paper. He doesn’t take his eyes off of hers, mirroring him. He doesn’t care whose name is on the note. He doesn’t care what they’ve done. “I’ll take it,” he says.