The Blinding Knife (lightbringer, #2)

The second installment in Brent Weeks's Lightbringer series continues the story of a world where magic users called drafters transform light into a physical substance called luxin, each color carrying distinct properties. The Chromeria, a governing body headquartered on an island in the Cerulean Sea, rules the Seven Satrapies, the world's seven governing territories, through its Prism, the only drafter who can split light into every color and maintain the magical balance of the world.

Gavin Guile holds the title of Prism, but he is actually Dazen Guile, the younger brother who defeated the real Gavin at the Battle of Sundered Rock sixteen years ago and has impersonated him ever since. The real Gavin remains alive, imprisoned in a luxin cell deep beneath the Chromeria. After losing the Battle of Garriston to a rebel known as the Color Prince, Gavin discovers he can no longer see or draft blue. He confides in his old friend and general, Corvan Danavis, that without blue he will be exposed as a fraud within a year. He plans to research the bane, ancient formations tied to colors spiraling out of control, in the great library at Azûlay.

Before departing, Gavin gives two secret missions to his acknowledged bastard son, Kip Guile. Kip must impress his grandfather Andross Guile, the Red on the ruling Spectrum council, and force Luxlord Klytos Blue, a high-ranking color official, to resign his Spectrum seat. Gavin arranges for Kip to try out for the Blackguard, the Chromeria's elite bodyguard corps. Karris White Oak, a Blackguard and Gavin's former fiancée who suspects his true identity, insists on accompanying Gavin as his guard. Together, they head for Seers Island to settle fifty thousand Tyrean refugees.

On Seers Island, Gavin constructs a massive harbor while the refugees settle under Corvan's governance. The island's prophetic leader, a woman called the Third Eye, reveals she knows Gavin is actually Dazen and that the real Gavin has escaped his blue cell. She warns that a blue bane is forming in the Cerulean Sea and cautions that taking Karris to fight it will increase the chance of success but nearly guarantee Karris's death.

At the Chromeria, Kip faces a gauntlet of challenges. Andross publicly disavows him, stripping him of family protections. In the Blackguard training class, Kip is among the weakest of forty-nine scrubs, or trainees, but shows flashes of raw magical talent. He befriends outcasts including Ben-hadad, a clever boy with mechanical spectacles, and his assigned partner Adrasteia, called Teia. Andross summons Kip for repeated games of Nine Kings, an elaborate card game, using each loss to inflict escalating punishments.

Teia drafts paryl, an almost-mythical color far below the visible spectrum and considered heretical. Her true owner, Lady Aglaia Crassos, hides her ownership behind a fictional identity and forces Teia to spy on Kip. Teia witnesses another paryl drafter assassinate a woman with an invisible needle, but her tutor warns that revealing paryl's lethal potential will reignite persecutions that nearly exterminated paryl drafters centuries ago.

The Color Prince, secretly Koios White Oak, Karris's supposedly dead brother who rebuilt his burned body with luxin, consolidates power across the eastern satrapies. His army liberates thirty thousand slaves and swells with recruits. Liv Danavis, daughter of General Corvan, serves as one of the prince's advisers, progressively losing faith in the Chromeria's teachings. The prince assigns Zymun, a young polychrome (a drafter of multiple colors) who once tried to assassinate Gavin, as Liv's tutor. When Liv receives a letter from her father begging her to return, she drops it in the mud and commits to the prince's cause.

Kip discovers Janus Borig, an elderly artist who identifies herself as a Mirror, a drafter whose work must depict truth. Janus created the original Nine Kings cards, which contain actual historical memories accessible to drafters who touch them. She helps Kip build a deck of banned "black cards" depicting suppressed histories. With this deck, Kip wins a critical match against Andross whose stakes are ownership of Teia, whom Andross has purchased. Kip takes Teia's papers, though they agree to delay her formal freedom until the Blackguard can purchase her contract, benefiting both financially.

Following the Third Eye's prophecy, Gavin locates the blue bane, a floating island of crystalline luxin surrounded by hundreds of blue wights, drafters who have overused their color until they lose their humanity. He kills the nascent blue god, Mot, before it fully awakens, then destroys every surviving wight. As he approaches the Chromeria afterward, he realizes he has lost green as well, accelerating his decline.

At an emergency Spectrum meeting, Gavin outmaneuvers the council, dissolving the satrapy of Tyrea, establishing Seers Island as a new satrapy under Corvan, and pushing through a declaration of war against the Color Prince. He publicly declares Kip his legitimate son. Meanwhile, assassins wearing shimmercloaks, garments that render the wearer nearly invisible, kill Janus Borig. Kip arrives during the attack; one assassin accidentally kills the other, and Kip fatally wounds the survivor with the Blinder's Knife, a jeweled dagger his mother left him. He escapes the burning house with the dying Janus, two shimmercloaks, and a box of original cards.

Through a posthumous letter from Gavin's mother Felia Guile, Karris learns the full truth: The man she has known as Gavin is actually Dazen, who has loved her all along. When Gavin confesses everything, she accepts him, and the White, the Chromeria's senior spiritual leader, performs a quiet wedding. Gavin also descends to the prison beneath the Chromeria, where the real Gavin has escaped the green cell only to fall into a yellow one. After a final confrontation, Gavin shoots and kills his brother.

Kip's Blackguard class faces final testing. A conspiracy among four scrubs manipulates the rankings to block Kip, but he identifies the scheme and goads the ringleader into fighting him. Cruxer, the top-ranked scrub, then permanently cripples the conspirator, opening a slot. Kip is inducted with the name "Breaker," and Gavin reveals that Kip's earlier drafting test was falsified: Kip is a full-spectrum polychrome who can draft all seven colors.

The climactic battle unfolds at the strait near the city of Ru. Gavin and the Blackguards sink pirate king Pash Vecchio's flagship, with Kip instinctively igniting every loaded gun aboard. The Color Prince springs his true trap: The green bane surfaces beneath the fleet, destroying most of the ships. From atop the Great Pyramid of Ru, Liv channels green light into the bane, feeding the nascent god Atirat. On the bane's spire, Atirat manifests and seizes control of all nearby green drafters. Kip breaks free and drives the Blinder's Knife into the god's skull, collapsing the island into the sea.

Aboard the flagship afterward, Kip recognizes from a card memory that Andross has been corresponding with the Color Prince and has broken his red halo, meaning he has overused red luxin to the point of becoming a wight. In the struggle, the Blinder's Knife, now grown into a sword, is driven into Gavin's chest, and he falls overboard. A pirate captain named Gunner, whose vessel has been circling the battle looking for plunder, captures Gavin as a galley slave and throws Kip back into the sea. Kip washes ashore and is found by Zymun, who reveals himself as the biological son of Karris and the real Gavin Guile.

Gavin awakens chained to an oar, completely color-blind, unable to draft. Andross discovers that the Blinder's Knife healed his broken halo rather than killing him. The Color Prince offers Liv a choker with a black jewel, revealing her purpose: With the Prism gone, new bane will rise for every color, and he needs trusted drafters to become gods. The story continues in The Broken Eye.