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compensation.” Raboniel hummed to Derision. Venli panicked, and nearly lost her will—but Timbre, always watching, pulsed to Conceit. A rhythm of Odium, but the best counterpart to Resolve. The rhythm Venli needed to continue to express now. She did so, humming it, as she didn’t trust herself to speak. “Very well,” Raboniel said, picking up her papers to begin reading again. “Your Passion does you credit. He is yours. Be certain he doesn’t cause problems, for I will lay them at your charge.” Venli hummed to Tribute, then quickly retreated. Inside, Timbre pulsed to one of the normal rhythms. She seemed in pain, as if using one of the wrong rhythms had been hard for her. But they’d done it. Like she’d freed the Windrunner’s family. Timbre pulsed. Freedom. That was to be her next oath, Venli realized. To free those who had been taken unjustly. She almost said a new oath out loud, right there, but Timbre pulsed in warning. So she returned to her rooms before going to Rlain. She shut the door to her quarters, then whispered the words. “I will seek freedom for those in bondage,” she said, then waited. Nothing happened. Had it worked? A distant sensation struck her, a femalen voice, so very far away—but thrumming with the pure rhythm of Roshar. These words, it said, are not accepted. Not accepted? Venli sank down into a chair. Timbre pulsed to the Rhythm of Confusion. But in her gemheart, Venli realized she knew the reason. She’d just watched a child trapped in a cage be hauled off by Raboniel’s servants. It seemed obvious, now that she considered. She couldn’t honestly speak those words. Not when she was concerned with freeing Rlain primarily because she wanted another listener to confide in. Not when she was willing to ignore the need of a child locked in a cage. If she wanted to honestly progress as a Radiant, she’d need to do as Rlain had said and start thinking about someone other than herself. And it was beyond time for her to begin treating her powers with the respect they deserved. In other circumstances, I would be fascinated by this sand to the point of abandoning all other rational pursuits. What is it? Where did it come from? —From Rhythm of War, page 13 Finally, at long last, Navani heard Kaladin’s voice. I’m sorry, Brightness, he said, his voice transmitted via the Sibling to Navani. I collapsed when I got back last night, and fell asleep. I didn’t intentionally keep you waiting. Upon arriving at the chamber of scholars in the morning, Navani had discovered—via the Sibling—that she had slept through what had nearly been the end of their resistance. She had then waited several interminable hours to hear from the Windrunner. “Don’t apologize,” Navani whispered, standing in her now customary place, her hands behind her, touching the line of crystal on the wall as she surveyed her working scholars. Guards stood at the door, and the strange insane Fused sat in her place by the far wall, but no
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one interfered directly with Navani. “You did what you had to—and you did well.” I failed, Kaladin said. “No,” Navani said softly, but firmly. “Highmarshal, your job is not to save the tower. Your job is to buy me time enough to reverse what has been done. You didn’t fail. You accomplished something incredible, and because of it we can still fight.” His reply was long in coming. Thank you, he said, his voice bolstered. I needed to hear those words. “They are true,” Navani said. “Given enough time, I’m confident I can flush the tower of the enemy’s Light, then instead prime it with the proper kind.” It came down to the nature of Stormlight, Voidlight, and the way the Sibling worked. Navani needed to take a crash course in Light, and figure out exactly what had gone wrong. Breaking the node seems to have made things worse, Kaladin said. Healing takes longer now. A Fused hit me with a knife, and it took a good ten minutes before my Stormlight fully healed the wound. “I doubt that was due to the breaking of the node,” Navani said. “Raboniel was able to corrupt the Sibling further before you stopped her.” Understood. I do feel bad I couldn’t protect the node, but Brightness, I think doing so would be impossible. If the others get discovered, we’ll have to destroy them too. “I agree,” she said. “Do what you have to in order to give me more time. Anything else to report?” Oh, right! Kaladin said. I couldn’t get to the Oathgates in time. I thought I’d be able to easily climb down to the ground floor, but it was a longer process than I imagined. “You didn’t fly?” Those Lashings don’t work, Brightness. I need to use Adhesion to make handholds. I’ll need to practice more—or find another way up and down—if you want me to try to reach the Oathgates. Regardless, I did snatch some spanreeds for you. Full sets, it turns out, twelve of them. Syl has been inspecting them, and she thinks she knows the reason they work. Brightness, the spren inside have been corrupted, like Renarin’s spren. The rubies work on Voidlight now, as you suspected, and these spren must be the reason. Navani let out a long breath. This had been one of her guesses; she hadn’t wanted it proven. If she needed to acquire corrupted spren, she was unlikely to be able to get any fabrials working without Raboniel knowing. “Rest,” she told Kaladin, “and keep your strength up. I will figure out a path to reverse what is happening here.” We need to warn Dalinar, Kaladin said. Maybe we could get half of one of these spanreeds to him. “I don’t know how we’d accomplish that,” Navani said. Well, I guess it depends on how far down the tower’s defenses go. It’s possible I could leap off a ledge, fall far enough to get outside the suppression, then activate my Lashings. But that would leave you without access to a Radiant. Honestly, I’m loath to
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suggest it. I don’t know if I could leave, considering how things are. “Agreed,” Navani said. “For now, it’s more important that I have you here with me. Keep watch for Lift; the Sibling has lost track of her, but she was awake like you are.” Understood, he said. “Are you otherwise well? Do you have food?” Yeah. I have another of my men helping me. He’s not a Radiant, but he’s a good man. “The mute?” Navani guessed. You know Dabbid? “We’ve met. Give him my best.” Will do, Brightness. Really though, I don’t think I can rest. I need to practice climbing the outside of the tower—but even with practice, I’m worried I won’t be fast enough. What if a node is discovered on the fortieth floor? It would take me hours to climb that high. “A valid worry,” she said. “I’ll see if I can find a solution. Let’s talk tomorrow around this time.” Understood. She pushed off the wall and strolled through the room. She didn’t want to be seen talking to herself; surely the singers knew to watch for signs that someone was Radiant. She conversed softly with Rushu, explaining her plans for the next phase of time-wasting. Rushu approved, but Navani felt annoyed as she moved on. I need to do more than waste time, Navani thought. I need to work toward our freedom. She’d been formulating her plan. Step one was to continue making certain they didn’t lose ground, and Kaladin would have to handle that. Step two was getting word to Dalinar. Now that she had spanreeds, perhaps she could find a way. It was the third step that currently concerned her. In talking to the Sibling, Navani had confirmed a number of things she’d previously suspected. The tower regulated pressure and heat for those living inside—and it had once done a far better job of this, along with performing a host of other vital functions. Most of that, including the tower’s protections against Fused, had ended around the Recreance. The time when the Radiants had abandoned their oaths—and the time when the ancient singers had been transformed into parshmen, their songs and forms stolen. The actions of those ancient Radiants had somehow broken the tower—and Raboniel, by filling the tower with Voidlight, was starting to repair it in a twisted way. Navani felt smothered by it all. She needed to fix a problem using mechanisms she didn’t understand—and indeed had learned about only days ago. She paced, massaging her temples. She needed a smaller problem she could work on first, to give her brain some time away from the bigger problem. What was a smaller problem she could fix? Helping Kaladin move faster up and down through the tower? Was there a hidden lift that she could … Wait. A way for one person to quickly get up and down, she thought. Storms. She turned on her heel and walked to the other side of the room, suppressing—as best she could—visible signs of her excitement. The junior engineer Tomor had survived the initial
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assault. Navani had him recalculating the math on certain schematics. She leaned down beside the young ardent and pointed at his current project, but whispered something else. “That glove you made,” she said. “The one that you wanted to use as a single-person lift. Where is it?” “Brightness?” he asked, surprised. “In the boxes out in the hallway.” “I need you to sneak it out,” she whispered, “when you leave today.” The singers let her lesser scholars move more freely than Navani. What else could they do? Force three dozen people to sleep in this room, without facilities? A few of the key scholars—Navani, Rushu, Falilar—were always escorted, but the subordinates weren’t paid as much attention. “Brightness?” Tomor said. “What if I get caught?” “You might be killed,” she whispered. “But it is a risk we must take. A Radiant still fights, Tomor, and he needs your device to climb between floors.” Tomor’s eyes lit up. “My device … Stormblessed needs it?” “You know he’s the one?” “Everyone’s talking about him,” Tomor said. “I thought it was a fanciful rumor.” “Bring such rumors to me, fanciful or not,” Navani said. “For now, I need you to sneak that glove out and leave it hidden somewhere it won’t be discovered, but where Kaladin can reasonably retrieve it.” “I’ll try, Brightness,” Tomor said, nervous. “But fabrials don’t work anymore.” “Leave that to me,” she said. “Include a quick sketch of a map to the location of the weights on the twentieth floor, as he’ll need to visit those too.” With the conjoined rubies Kaladin had stolen in those spanreeds, they could hopefully make the device function. She’d have to coach Kaladin through installing it all. And the rubies would be smaller than the ones Tomor had built into the device; would they be able to handle the weight? She’d need to do some calculations, but assuming Tomor had used the newer cages that didn’t stress the rubies as much, it should work. She rose to go speak to some of the others in the same manner and posture, to hide the importance of her conversation with Tomor. During the second such conference, however, she noticed someone at the doorway. Raboniel. Navani took a deep breath, composing herself and smothering her spike of anxiety. Raboniel would likely be unhappy about what had happened last night. Hopefully she didn’t suspect Navani’s part in it. Unfortunately, a guard soon walked into the room, then made straight for Navani. Raboniel didn’t fetch an inferior personally. Navani couldn’t banish the anxietyspren that trailed her as she joined the Fused at the doorway. Raboniel wore a gown today, though of no cut Navani recognized. Loose and formless, it felt like what an Alethi woman would wear to bed. Though the Fused wore it well with her tall figure, it was strangely off-putting to see her in something that seemed more regal than martial. The Fused didn’t speak as Navani arrived. Instead she turned and walked out of the chamber with a relaxed gait. Navani followed, and they entered the hallway
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with the murals. Down to the left, the shield surrounding the crystal pillar glowed a soft blue. “Your scholars,” Raboniel finally noted, “do not seem to be making much progress. They were to deliver up to my people fabrials to test.” “My scholars are frightened and unnerved, Ancient One,” Navani said. “It might take weeks before they feel up to true studies again.” “Yes, and longer, if you continue having them repeat work in an effort to not make progress.” She figured that out faster than I anticipated, Navani thought as the two strolled along the hallway toward the shield. Here a common singer soldier in warform was working under the direction of several Fused. With a Shardblade. They’d known the singers had claimed some Blades from the humans they’d fought—but Navani recognized this one. It had belonged to her son. Elhokar’s Blade, Sunraiser. Navani kept her face impassive only with great effort, though the anxietyspren faded and an agonyspren arrived instead: an upside-down face carved from stone pressing out from the wall nearby. It betrayed her true emotions. That loss ran deep. Raboniel glanced at it, but said nothing. Navani kept her eyes forward. Watching that horrible Blade in that awful creature’s hand. The warform held the weapon at the ready. It held no gemstone at its pommel; it seemed that the warform didn’t have it bonded. Or perhaps the summoning mechanism didn’t work in the tower, with the protections in place. The warform attacked the shield—and contrary to Navani’s expectation, the Blade bit into the blue light. The warform carved off a chunk, which evaporated to nothing before it hit the floor—and the shield restored itself just as quickly. The warform tried again, attempting to dig faster. After a few minutes of watching, Navani could tell the effort was futile. The bubble regrew too quickly. “Fascinating behavior, wouldn’t you say?” Raboniel asked Navani. Navani turned toward Raboniel, steeling herself against the memories brought forth by the sight of the sword. She could cry for her child again tonight, as she had done many nights in the past. For now, she would not show these creatures her pain. “I’ve never seen anything like that shield, Lady of Wishes,” she said. “I couldn’t begin to understand how it was created.” “We could unravel its secrets, if we tried together,” Raboniel said, “instead of wasting our time watching one another for hidden motives.” “This is true, Ancient One,” Navani said. “But if you want my cooperation and goodwill, perhaps you shouldn’t flaunt in front of me the Blade taken from the corpse of my son.” Raboniel stiffened. She glanced at the warform with the weapon. “I did not know.” Didn’t she? Or was this another game? Raboniel turned, nodding for Navani to follow as they walked away from the shield. “If I might ask, Ancient One,” Navani said, “why do you give the Blades you capture to common soldiers, and not keep them yourselves?” Raboniel hummed to one of her rhythms, but Navani could never tell them apart. Singers seemed to be able
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to distinguish one rhythm from another after hearing a short word or a couple of seconds of humming. “Some Fused do keep the Blades we capture,” Raboniel said. “The ones who enjoy the pain. Now, I fear I must make some changes in how you and your scholars operate. You are distracted, naturally, by preventing them from giving me too much information. I have unconsciously put you in a position where your obvious talents are wasted by foolish politicking. “These are the new arrangements: You will work by yourself at my desk in a separate room from the other scholars. Twice a day, you may give them written directions, which I will personally vet. That should give you more time for worthwhile pursuits, and less for deceit.” Navani drew her lips to a line. “I think that is unwise, Ancient One,” she said. “I am accustomed to working directly with my scholars. They are far more efficient when I am personally directing their efforts.” “I find it difficult to imagine them being less efficient than they are currently, Navani,” Raboniel said. “We will work this way from now on. It is not a matter I care to debate.” Raboniel had a long stride, and used it purposely to force Navani to hurry to match her. Upon reaching the scholars’ chambers, Raboniel turned left instead of right—entering the room Navani’s scholars had been using as a library. Raboniel’s desk in this chamber had once belonged to Navani. The Fused gestured, and Navani sat as instructed. This was going to be inconvenient—but that was Raboniel’s intent. The Fused went down on one knee, then picked through a box on the floor here. She set something on the desk. A glass globe? Yes, like the one that had been near the first node Navani had activated. “When we discovered the node operating the field, this was connected to it,” Raboniel said. “Look closely. What do you see?” Navani hesitantly picked up the globe, which was heavier than it appeared. Though it was made of solid glass, she spotted an unusual construction inside. Something she hadn’t noticed, or understood, the first time she’d seen one of these. The globe had a pillar rising through the center.… “It’s a reproduction of the crystal pillar room,” Navani said, her eyes widening. “You don’t suppose…” “That’s how the field is created,” Raboniel said, tapping the globe with an orange carapace fingernail. “It’s a type of Soulcasting. The fabrial is persuading the air in a sphere around the pillar to think it is solid glass. That’s why cutting off a piece accomplishes nothing.” “That’s incredible,” Navani said. “An application of the Surge I never anticipated. It’s not a full transformation, but a half state somehow. Kept in perpetual stasis, using this globe as a model to mimic…” “There must be similar globes at the other nodes.” “Clearly,” Navani said. “After this one was detached, did it make the shield seem weaker than before?” “Not that we can tell,” Raboniel said. “One node must be enough to perpetuate the transformation.” “Fascinating…”
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Don’t get taken in, Navani. She wants you to think like a scholar, not like a queen. She wants you working for her, not against her. That focus was even more difficult to maintain as Raboniel set something else on the table. A small diamond the size of Navani’s thumb, full of Stormlight. But … was the hue faintly off? Navani held it up, frowning, turning it over in her fingers. She couldn’t tell without a Stormlight sphere to compare it to, but it did seem this color was faintly teal. “It’s not Stormlight, is it?” she asked. “Nor Voidlight?” Raboniel hummed a rhythm. Then, realizing Navani wouldn’t understand, said, “No.” “The third Light. I knew it. The moment I learned about Voidlight, I wondered. Three gods. Three types of Light.” “Ah,” Raboniel said, “but this isn’t the third Light. We call that Lifelight. Cultivation’s power, distilled. This is something different. Something unique. It is the reason I came to this tower. It is a mixing of two. Stormlight and Lifelight. Like…” “Like the Sibling is a child of both Honor and Cultivation,” Navani said. Storms. That was what the Sibling had meant by their Light no longer working. They hadn’t been able to make the tower function any longer because something had happened to the tower’s Light. “It came out in barely a trickle,” Raboniel said. “Something is wrong with the tower, preventing it from flowing.” Her rhythm grew more energetic. “But this is proof. I have long suspected that there must be a way to mix and change the various forms of Light. These three energies are the means by which all Surges work, and yet we know so little about them. “What could we do with this power if we truly understood it? This Towerlight is proof that Stormlight and Lifelight can mix and create something new. Can the same be done with Stormlight and Voidlight? Or will that prove impossible, since the two are opposites?” “Are they, though?” Navani asked. “Yes. Like night and day or oil and water. But perhaps we can find a way to put them together. If so, it could be a … model, perhaps, of our peoples. A way toward unity instead of strife. Proof that we, although opposites, can coexist.” Navani stared at the Towerlight sphere, and she felt compelled to correct one thing. “Oil and water aren’t opposites.” “Of course they are,” Raboniel said. “This is a central tenet of philosophy. They cannot mix, but must remain ever separated.” “Just because something doesn’t mix doesn’t make them opposites,” Navani said. “Sand and water don’t mix either, and you wouldn’t call them opposites. That’s beside the point. Oil and water can mix, if you have an emulsifier.” “I do not know this word.” “It’s a kind of binding agent, Ancient One,” Navani said, standing. If her things were still in here … yes, over at the side of the room, she found a crate holding simple materials for experiments. She made up a vial with some oil and water, adding some stumpweight
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sap extract as a simple emulsifier. She shook the resulting solution and handed it to Raboniel. The Fused took it and held it up, waiting for the oil and water to separate. But of course they didn’t. “Oil and water mix in nature all the time,” Navani said. “Sow’s milk has fat suspended in it, for example.” “I … have accepted ancient philosophy as fact for too long, I see,” Raboniel said. “I call myself a scholar, but today I feel a fool.” “Everyone has holes in their knowledge. There is no shame in ignorance. In any case, oil and water aren’t opposites. I’m not certain what the opposite of water would be, if the word even has meaning when applied to an element.” “The various forms of Light do have opposites,” Raboniel said. “I am certain of it. Yet I must think on what you’ve shown me.” She reached over and tapped the sphere full of Towerlight. “For now, experiment with this Light. To keep you focused, I must insist you remain in this room until finished each day, except when accompanied to use the chamber.” “Very well,” Navani said. “Though if you want my scholars to actually develop something for you, this idea of them drawing plans and you testing them is foolish. It won’t work, at least not well. Instead, Ancient One, I suggest you deliver to us gemstones that can power fabrials that work in the tower.” Raboniel hummed for a moment, regarding the emulsion. “I will send such gems to your people as proof of my willingness to work together.” She turned to go. “If you intend to use ciphers to give hidden instructions to your scholars, kindly make them difficult ones. The spren I will use to unravel your true messages do like a challenge. It gives them more variety in existence.” Raboniel set a guard at the door, but didn’t restrict Navani’s access within the room. It was otherwise unoccupied: it held only bookshelves, crates, and the occasional sphere lantern. There were no other exits, but near the rear of the room Navani found a vein of crystal hidden among the strata. “Are you there?” she asked, touching it. Yes, the Sibling replied. I am closer to death than ever. Surrounded by evils on all sides. Men and singers alike seeking to abuse me. “Don’t create a false equivalency,” Navani said. “My kind might not understand the harm we’ve done to spren, but the enemy certainly knows the harm they cause in corrupting them.” Regardless. I will soon die. Only two nodes remain, and the previous one was discovered so rapidly. “More proof that you should be helping us, not them,” Navani whispered, peeking through the stacks to see that she hadn’t aroused the guard’s attention. “I need to understand more about how these various forms of Light work.” I don’t think I can explain much, the Sibling said. For me, it all simply worked. Like a human child can breathe, so I used to make and use Light. And then … the tones went
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away … and the Light left me. “All right,” Navani said. “We can talk on that more later. For now, you need to tell me where the other nodes are.” No. Defend them once they are found. “Sibling,” Navani said, “if Kaladin Stormblessed can’t protect a node, no one can. Our goal should be to distract and mislead, to prevent the Fused from ever finding them. To do this, I’ll need to know where the nodes are.” You talk so well, the Sibling said. So frustratingly well. You humans always sound so reasonable. It’s only later, after the pain, that the truth comes out. “Hide it if you wish,” Navani said. “But you have to know, after watching Kaladin fight for you, that we are severely outmatched. Our sole hope is to prevent the nodes from being located. If I knew where at least one of them was, I could come up with plots to deflect the enemy’s attention.” Come up with those plots first, the Sibling said. Then talk to me again. “Fine,” Navani said. She slipped a few books off the shelf to hide what she’d been doing, then walked to her seat. There, she began writing down everything she knew about light. Eshonai turned the topaz over in her fingers and attuned Tension. A topaz should glow with a calm, deep brown—but this one gave off a wicked orange light, like the bright color along the back of a sigs cremling warning that it was poisonous. Looking closely, Eshonai thought she could make out the spren trapped in it. A painspren, frantically moving around. Though … perhaps she imagined the frantic part. The spren was mostly formless when inside the gemstone, having reverted to the misty Stormlight that created all of their kind. Still, it couldn’t be happy in there. How would she feel if she were locked into a room, unable to explore? “You learned this from the humans?” Eshonai said. “Yes,” Venli said. She sat comfortably between two of the elders in the small council room, which was furnished with woven mats and painted banners. Venli wasn’t one of the Five—the head elders—but she seemed to think she belonged among them. Something had happened to her these last few months. Where she’d once been self-indulgent, she now radiated egotism and confidence. She hummed to Victory as Eshonai passed the gemstone to one of the elders. “Why did you not bring this to us earlier, Venli?” Klade asked. The reserved elder took the gemstone next. “The humans have been gone for months now.” “I thought I might be wrong,” Venli said to Confidence. “I decided to see if I could trap a spren on my own. Surely you wouldn’t have wanted to be bothered by my fancies, should I have been wrong.” “I hadn’t heard of this thing they can do,” Klade said to Reconciliation. “Do you think you could trap a lifespren? If so, we could better choose when we adopt mateform. That would be convenient.” “Try this stone,” Venli said, taking it, then handing it to
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Varnali next. “I think it might be the secret to warform.” “A dangerous form,” Varnali said. “But useful.” “It is not a form of power,” Klade said. “It is within our rights to claim it.” “The humans make overtures,” Gangnah—foremost among them—said to Annoyance, a rhythm used to elicit sympathy for a frustrating situation. “They act as if we are a nation united, not a group of squabbling families. I wish we could present to them a stronger face. They have accomplished so much during our centuries apart, while we remember so little.” “Pardon, elders,” Eshonai said to Reconciliation. “But they have advantages we do not. A much larger population, ancient devices to create metals, a land more sheltered from the storms.” She’d recently returned from her latest exploration efforts—which the elders now fully supported. She’d sought to circumvent the human trading post, then find their home. She’d attuned Disappointment more than once; every place she thought she’d find the humans had been empty. They’d found packs of wild chulls, and even spotted a distant and rare group of Ryshadium. No humans. Not until she’d returned to their trading post, which had been transformed into a small fort—built from stone and staffed by soldiers and two scribes. The humans had a message for her there. The human king wished to “formalize relations” with her people, whom they referred to as “Parshendi.” She’d returned with the message to find this: Venli sitting among the elders. Venli, so sure of herself. Venli replicating human techniques that Eshonai—despite spending the most time with them—hadn’t heard them discuss. “Thank you, Eshonai,” Gangnah said to Appreciation. “You have done well on your expedition.” Workform had carapace only along the backs of the hands in small ridges, and Gangnah’s was beginning to whiten at the edges. A sign of her age. She turned to the others and continued. “We will need to respond to this offer. The humans expect us to be a nation. Should we form a government like they have?” “The other families would never follow us,” Klade said. “They already resent how the humans paid more attention to us.” “I find the idea of a king distasteful,” added Husal, to Anxiety. “We should not follow them in this.” Eshonai hummed to Pleading, indicating she wished to speak again. “Elders,” she said, “I think I should visit the other families and show them my maps.” “What would that accomplish?” Venli asked to Skepticism. “If I show them how much there is to the world, they will understand that we are smaller as a people than we thought. They will want to unite.” Venli hummed to Amusement. “You think they’d simply join with us? Because they saw maps? Eshonai, you are a delight.” “We will consider your proposal,” Gangnah said, then hummed to Appreciation—as a dismissal. Eshonai retreated out into the sunlight as the elders asked Venli additional questions about creating gemstones with trapped spren. Eshonai attuned Annoyance. Then, by force, she changed her rhythm to Peace instead. She always felt anxious after an extended trip. She
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wasn’t annoyed with her sister, just the general situation. She let herself rove outward to the cracked wall that surrounded the city. She liked this place; it was old, and old things seemed … thoughtful to her. She walked along the base of the once-wall, passing listeners tending chulls, carrying in grain from the fields, hauling water. Many raised a hand or called to a rhythm when they saw her. She was famous now, unfortunately. She had to stop and chat with several listeners who wanted to ask about her expedition. She suffered the attention with patience. Eshonai had spent years trying to inspire this kind of interest about the outside world. She wouldn’t throw away this goodwill now. She managed to extract herself, and climbed up a watchpost along the wall. From it, she could see listeners from other families moving about on the Plains, or driving their hogs past the perimeter of the city. There are more of them about than usual, she thought. One of the other families might be preparing an assault on the city. Would they be so bold? So soon after the humans had come and changed the world? Yes, they would be. Eshonai’s own family had been that bold, after all. The others might assume Eshonai’s people were getting secrets, or special trade goods, from the humans. They would want to put themselves into a position to receive the humans’ blessings instead. Eshonai needed to go to them and explain. Why fight, when there was so much more out there to experience? Why squabble over these old, broken-down cities? They could be building new ones as the humans did. She attuned Determination. Then she attuned right back to Anxiety as she saw a figure walking distractedly along the base of the wall. Eshonai’s mother wore a loose brown robe, dull against the femalen’s gorgeous red and black skin patterns. Eshonai climbed down and ran over. “Mother?” “Ah,” her mother said to Anxiety. “I know you. Can you perhaps help me? I seem to find myself in an odd situation.” Eshonai took her mother by the arm. “Mother.” “Yes. Yes, I’m your mother. You are Eshonai.” The femalen looked around, then she leaned in. “Can you tell me how I arrived here, Eshonai? I don’t seem to remember.” “You were going to wait for me to get home,” Eshonai said. “With food.” “I was? Why didn’t I do that, then?” “You must have lost track of time,” Eshonai said, to Consolation. “Let’s get you home.” Jaxlim hummed to Determination and refused to be budged, seeming to become more conscious, more herself by the second. “Eshonai,” she said, “we have to confront this. This is not simply me feeling tired. This is something worse.” “Maybe not, Mother,” Eshonai said. “Maybe it…” Her mother hummed to the Rhythm of the Lost. Eshonai trailed off. “I must make certain your sister knows the songs,” Jaxlim said. “We may have reached the riddens of my life, Eshonai.” “Please, come and rest,” Eshonai said to Peace. “Rest is for those with
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time to spare, dear,” her mother said, but let herself be led in the direction of their home. She pulled her robe tight. “I can face this. Our ancestors took weakness upon themselves to bring our people into existence. They faced frailty of body and mind. I can face this with grace. I must.” Eshonai settled her at home with something to eat. Then, Eshonai considered getting out her new maps to show her mother, but hesitated. Jaxlim never did like hearing about Eshonai’s travels. It was best not to upset her. Why did it have to happen like this? Eshonai finally got what she wanted out of life. But progress, change, couldn’t happen without the passing of storms and the movement of years. Each day forward meant another day of regression for her mother. Time. It was a sadistic master. It made adults of children—then gleefully, relentlessly, stole away everything it had given. They were still eating when Venli returned. She always had a hidden smile these days, as if attuning Amusement in secret. She set her gemstone—the one with the spren—on the table. “They’re going to try it,” Venli said. “They are taking volunteers now. I’m to provide a handful of these gemstones.” “How did you learn to cut them as humans do?” Eshonai asked. “It wasn’t hard,” Venli said. “It merely took a little practice.” Their mother stared at the gemstone. She wiped her hands with a cloth, then picked it up. “Venli. I need you to return to practice. I don’t know how much longer I will be suited to being our keeper of songs.” “Because your mind is giving out,” Venli said. “Mother, why do you think I’ve been working so hard to find these new forms? This can help.” Eshonai attuned Surprise, glancing at their mother. “Help?” Jaxlim said. “Each form has a different way of thinking,” Venli said. “That is preserved in the songs. And some were stronger, more resilient to diseases, both physical and mental. So if you were to change to this new form…” Her mother attuned Consideration. “I … hadn’t realized this,” Eshonai said. “Mother, you must volunteer! This could be our answer!” “I’ve been trying to get the elders to see,” Venli said. “They want young listeners to try the change first.” “They will listen to me,” Jaxlim said to Determination. “It is, after all, my job to speak for them to hear. I will try this form, Venli. And if you have truly accomplished this goal of yours … well, I once thought that being our new keeper of songs would be your highest calling. I hadn’t considered that you might invent a calling with even more honor. Keeper of forms.” Eshonai settled back, listening to her sister humming to Joy. Only … the beat was off somehow. Faster. More violent? You’re imagining things, she told herself. Don’t let jealousy consume you, Eshonai. It could easily destroy your family. I am told that it is not the sand itself, but something that grows upon it, that exhibits the strange properties.
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One can make more, with proper materials and a seed of the original. —From Rhythm of War, page 13 undertext Kaladin thrashed, sweating and trembling, his mind filled with visions of his friends dying. Of Rock frozen in the Peaks, of Lopen slain on a distant battlefield, of Teft dying alone, shriveled to bones, his eyes glazed over from repeated use of firemoss. “No,” Kaladin screamed. “No!” “Kaladin!” Syl said. She zipped around his head, filling his eyes with streaks of blue-white light. “You’re awake. You’re all right. Kaladin?” He breathed in and out, taking deep lungfuls. The nightmares felt so real, and they lingered. Like the scent of blood on your clothing after a battle. He forced himself to his feet, and was surprised to find a small bag of glowing gemstones on the room’s stone ledge. “From Dabbid,” Syl said. “He left them a little earlier, along with some broth, then grabbed the jug to go get water.” “How did he…” Maybe he’d gotten them from the ardent at the monastery? Or maybe he’d quietly taken them from somewhere else. Dabbid could move around the tower in ways that Kaladin couldn’t—people always looked at Kaladin, remembered him. It was the height, he guessed. Or maybe it was the way he held himself. He’d never learned to keep his head down properly, even when he’d been a slave. Kaladin shook his head, then did his morning routine: stretches, exercises, then washing as best he could with a cloth and some water. After that he saw to Teft, washing him, then shifting the way the man was lying to help prevent bedsores. That all done, Kaladin knelt beside Teft’s bench with the syringe and broth, trying to find solace from his own mind through the calming act of feeding his friend. Syl settled onto the stone bench beside Teft as Kaladin worked, wearing her girlish dress, sitting with her knees pulled up against her chest and her arms wrapped around them. Neither of them spoke for a long while as Kaladin worked. “I wish he were awake,” Syl finally whispered. “There’s something happy about the way Teft is angry.” Kaladin nodded. “I went to Dalinar,” she said, “before he left. I asked him if he could make me feel like humans do. Sad sometimes.” “What?” Kaladin asked. “Why in the Almighty’s tenth name would you do something like that?” “I wanted to feel what you feel,” she said. “Nobody should have to feel like I do.” “I’m my own person, Kaladin. I can make decisions for myself.” She stared sightlessly past Teft and Kaladin. “It was in talking to him that I started remembering my old knight, like I told you. I think Dalinar did something. I wanted him to Connect me to you. He refused. But I think he somehow Connected me to who I was. Made me able to remember, and hurt again…” Kaladin felt helpless. He had never been able to struggle through his own feelings of darkness. How did he help someone else? Tien could do it, he
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thought. Tien would know what to say. Storms, he missed his brother. Even after all these years. “I think,” Syl said, “that we spren have a problem. We think we don’t change. You’ll hear us say it sometimes. ‘Men change. Singers change. Spren don’t.’ We think that because pieces of us are eternal, we are as well. But pieces of humans are eternal too. “If we can choose, we can change. If we can’t change, then choice means nothing. I’m glad I feel this way, to remind me that I haven’t always felt the same. Been the same. It means that in coming here to find another Knight Radiant, I was deciding. Not simply doing what I was made to, but doing what I wanted to.” Kaladin cocked his head, the syringe full of broth halfway to Teft’s lips. “When I’m at my worst, I feel like I can’t change. Like I’ve never changed. That I’ve always felt this way, and always will.” “When you get like that,” Syl said, “let me know, all right? Maybe it will help to talk to me about it.” “Yeah. All right.” “And Kal?” she said. “Do the same for me.” He nodded, and the two of them fell silent. Kaladin wanted to say more. He should have said more. But he felt so tired. Exhaustionspren swirled in the room, though he’d slept half the day. He could see the signs. Or rather, he couldn’t ignore them anymore. He was deeply within the grip of battle shock, and the tower being under occupation didn’t magically fix that. It made things worse. More fighting. More time alone. More people depending on him. Killing, loneliness, and stress. An unholy triumvirate, working together with spears and knives to corner him. Then they just. Kept. Stabbing. “Kaladin?” Syl said. He realized he’d been sitting there, not moving, for … how long? Storms. He quickly refilled the syringe and lifted it to Teft’s lips. The man was stirring again, muttering, and Kaladin could almost make out what he was saying. Something about his parents? Soon the door opened and Dabbid entered. He gave Kaladin a quick salute, then hurried over to the bench near Teft and put something down on the stone. He gestured urgently. “What’s this?” Kaladin asked, then unwrapped the cloth to reveal some kind of fabrial. It looked like a leather bracer, the type Dalinar and Navani wore to tell the time. Only the construction was different. It had long leather straps on it, and a metal portion—like a handle—that came up and went across the palm. Turning it over, Kaladin found ten rubies in the bracer portion, though they were dun. “What on Roshar?” Kaladin asked. Dabbid shrugged. “The Sibling led you to this, I assume?” Dabbid nodded. “Navani must have sent it,” Kaladin said. “Syl, what time is it?” “About a half hour before your meeting with the queen,” she said, looking upward toward the sky, occluded behind many feet of stone. “Next highstorm?” Kaladin asked. “Not sure, a few days at least. Why?” “We’ll want
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to restore the dun gemstones I used in that fight with the Pursuer. Thanks for the new ones, by the way, Dabbid. We’ll need to find a way to hide the others outside to recharge though.” Dabbid patted his chest. He’d do it. “You seem to be doing better these days,” Kaladin said, settling down to finish feeding Teft. Dabbid shrugged. “Want to share your secret?” Kaladin asked. Dabbid sat on the floor and put his hands in his lap. So Kaladin went back to his work. It proved surprisingly tiring—as he had to forcibly keep his attention from wandering to his nightmares. He was glad when, upon finishing, Syl told him the time had arrived for his check-in with Navani. He walked to the side of the room, pressed his hand against the crystal vein, and waited for her to speak in his mind. Highmarshal? she said a few minutes later. “Here,” he replied. “But, since I was on my way to becoming a full-time surgeon, I’m not sure I still have that rank.” I’m reinstating you. I managed to have one of my engineers sneak out a fabrial you might find useful. The Sibling should be able to guide you to it. “I’ve got it already,” Kaladin said. “Though I have no idea what it’s supposed to do.” It’s a personal lift, meant to levitate you up and down long distances. To help you travel the height of the tower. “Interesting,” he said, glancing at the device laid out on the stone bench. “Though, I’m not one for technology, Brightness. Pardon, but I barely know how to turn on a heating fabrial.” You’ll need to learn quickly then, Navani said. As you’ll need to replace the rubies in the fabrial with the Voidspren ones from the spanreeds you stole. We’ll need all twelve pairs. Do you see a map in with the device? “Just a moment,” he said, digging in the sack and pulling out a small folded map. It led to a place on the twentieth floor, judging by the glyphs. “I’ve got it. I should be able to reach this place. The enemy isn’t guarding the upper floors.” Excellent. There are weights in a shaft up there where you’ll need to install the other halves of those rubies. A mechanism on the fabrial bracer will drop one of those weights, and that force will transfer through the bracer. You’ll be pulled in whatever direction you’ve pointed the device. “By my arm?” Kaladin asked. “That doesn’t sound comfortable.” It isn’t. My engineer has been trying to fix that. There is a strap that winds around your arm and braces against your shoulder, which he thinks might help. “All right…” he said. It was something to do, at least. But fabrials? He’d always considered them toys for rich people. Though he supposed that was becoming less and less the case. Breeding projects were creating livestock with larger and larger ruby gemhearts, and fabrial creation methods were spreading. It seemed every third room had a heating fabrial these days, and spanreeds
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were cheap enough that even the enlisted men could afford to pay to send messages via one. Navani coached him through replacing the rubies. Fortunately, the case of spanreeds he’d stolen included a few small tools for undoing casings. It wasn’t any more difficult than replacing the buckles on a leather jerkin. Once it was done, he and Syl ventured out, sneaking up nine floors. He didn’t use any Stormlight; he didn’t have enough to waste. Besides, it felt good to work his body. On the twentieth floor, the garnet light led him to the location the map had described. Inside he found the weights and the shaft, and Navani walked him through installing the matching rubies. He began to grasp how the device worked. The big weights were more than heavy enough to lift a man. Five of the rubies in his fabrial were connected to these weights, binding them together. The other seven rubies were used to activate and control the weights. The intricate system of pulleys and mechanisms was far more complex than he could understand, but essentially it allowed him to switch to a different weight when one had dropped all the way. He could also slow the weight’s fall or stop it completely, modulating how quickly he was being pulled. Each weight should be able to pull you hundreds of feet before running out, Navani said via a garnet vein on the wall. These shafts plunge all the way down to the aquifers at the base of the mountain. That means you should be able to soar all the way up from the ground floor to the top of the tower using one weight. The bad news is that once all five weights have fallen, the device will be useless until you rewind them. There is a winch in the corner; it’s an arduous process, I’m afraid. “That’s annoying,” Kaladin said. Yes, it is mildly inconvenient that we have to wind a crank to experience the wonder of making a human being safely levitate hundreds of feet in the air. “Pardon, Brightness, but I can usually do it with far less trouble.” Which is meaningless right now, isn’t it? “I suppose it is,” he said. He looked at the fabrial, now attached to his left arm, with the straps winding around all the way to his shoulder. It was a little constrictive, but otherwise fit quite well. “So, I point it where I want to go, activate it, and I’ll get pulled that way?” Yes. But we made the device so that it won’t move if you let go—it was too dangerous otherwise. See the pressure spring across your palm? Ease off that, and the brake on the line will activate. Do you see? “Yes,” Kaladin said, making a fist around the bar. It had a separate metal portion wrapped around it on one side, with a spring underneath. So the harder he squeezed, the faster the device would pull him. If he let go completely, he’d stop in place. There are two steps to the fabrial’s
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use. First, you have to turn the device on—conjoining the rubies. The switch you can move with your thumb? That’s for this purpose. Once you flip it, your arm will be locked into its current orientation, and won’t be able to move the bracer in any direction except forward. The second step is to start dropping a weight. If a weight falls all the way, swap to the next one using the dial on the back of your wrist. You see it? “I do,” he said. Once you stop, you’ll remain hanging until you disengage the device. But so long as you have another weight that hasn’t run out, you can turn the dial to that one, then continue moving upward. Or if you’re bold enough, you can disengage the device and fall for a second while you point it another direction, then engage it again and set it to pull you that way instead. “That sounds dangerous,” Kaladin said. “If I’m up high in the air, and need to get over to a balcony or something, I have to drop into free fall for a bit to reset the direction of the device so it can pull me laterally instead of up and down?” Yes, unfortunately. The engineer who created this has grand and lofty ideas—but not much practical sense. But it’s better than nothing, Highmarshal. And it’s the best I can do for you right now. Kaladin took a deep breath. “Understood. I’m sorry if I sounded ungrateful, Brightness. It’s been a rough few days. I’m glad for the help. I’ll familiarize myself with it.” Excellent. You shouldn’t have to worry about the Voidlight in the gemstones running out through practice—conjoined rubies don’t use much energy to maintain their connection. But they will run out naturally, over time. We’ll have to figure out what to do about that when it happens. For now, I’m hoping the Sibling will soon trust me enough to tell me where to find the remaining nodes. Once I have that information, I can devise a plan to protect them, perhaps by distracting the enemy’s search toward a different region of the tower. It’s vital that you keep that shield in place as long as possible, to give me time to figure out what is wrong with the Light in the tower and its defenses. “Any movement there?” Kaladin asked. No, but I’m currently focused on filling holes in my understanding. Once I have the proper fundamentals on Stormlight and Voidlight, I hope I’ll make more rapid progress. “Understood,” Kaladin said. “I’ll contact you again in a few hours, if you can make time, to discuss my experience with this device.” Thank you. He stepped away from the wall. Syl stood in the air beside him, inspecting the fabrial. “So?” Kaladin asked her. “What do you think?” “I think you’re going to look extremely silly using it. I can’t wait.” He walked out to a nearby hallway. Up here on the twentieth floor, he should be safe practicing in the open—assuming he stayed away from the
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atrium. He walked the length of the hallway, setting out amethysts to light the way. Then he stood at one end, looking down the line of lights. The fabrial left his fingers free, but that bar in the center of his hand would interfere with fighting. He’d have to one-hand his spear, as if he were fighting with a shield. “We’re going to try it here?” Syl asked, darting over to him. “Isn’t it for getting up and down?” “Brightness Navani told me it pulls you in whatever direction you point it,” he said. “New Windrunners always want to go up with their Lashings—but the more experience you have, the more you realize you can accomplish far more if you think in three dimensions.” He pointed his left hand down the hallway and opened his palm. Then, thinking it wise, he took in a little Stormlight. Finally, he used his thumb to flip the little lever and engage the mechanism. Nothing happened. So far so good, he thought, trying to move his hand right or left. It resisted, held in place. Good. He eased his hand into a fist, squeezing the bar across his palm, and was immediately pulled through the corridor. He skidded on his heels, and wasn’t able to slow himself at all. Those weights really were heavy. Kaladin opened his hand, stopping in place. Because the device was still active, when he lifted his feet off the ground, he stayed in the air. However, this also put an incredible amount of stress on his arm, especially the elbow. Yes, the device in its current state might be too dangerous for anyone without Stormlight to use. He put his feet back down and tapped the toggle with his thumb to disengage the device, and his arm immediately dropped free. The weight—when he went to check on it—was hanging a little further down into the shaft. As soon as he’d disengaged the device, the brakes had locked, holding the weight in place. He went out into the hallway, engaged the device, and gripped the bar firmly. That sent him soaring forward. He tucked up his feet, straining—with effort—to keep himself otherwise upright. In that moment, difficult though the exercise was, he felt something come alive in him again. The wind in his hair. His body soaring, claiming the sky, albeit in an imperfect way. He found the experience familiar. Even intuitive. That lasted right up until the moment when he noticed the quickly approaching far wall. He reacted a little too slowly, first trying to Lash himself backward by instinct. He slammed into the wall hand-first and felt his knuckles crunch. The device continued trying to go forward, crushing his mangled hand further, forcing it to keep the bar compressed. The device held him affixed to the wall until he managed to reach over with his other hand and flip the thumb switch, releasing the mechanism and setting him free. He gasped in pain, sucking the Stormlight from a nearby amethyst on the floor. The healing happened slowly, as it had
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the other day. The pain was acute; he gritted his teeth while he waited—and split skin, broken by bones, made him bleed on the device, staining its leather. Syl scowled at the painspren crawling around the floor. “Um, I was wrong. That wasn’t particularly funny.” “Sorry,” Kaladin said, eyes watering from the pain. “What happened?” “Bad instincts,” he said. “Not the device’s fault. I just forgot what I was doing.” He sat to wait, and he heard the joints popping and the bones grinding as the Stormlight reknit him. He’d come to rely on his near-instantaneous healing; this was agony. It was a good five minutes before he shook out his healed hand and stretched it, good as new, other than some lingering phantom pain. “Right,” he said. “I’ll want to be more careful. I’m playing with some incredible forces in those weights.” “At least you didn’t break the fabrial,” Syl said. “Strange as it is to say, it’s a lot easier to get you a new hand than a new device.” “True,” he said, standing. He launched himself down the hallway back the way he had come, this time maintaining a careful speed, and slowed himself as he neared the other end. Over the next half hour or so he crashed a few more times, though never as spectacularly as that first one. He needed to be very careful to point his hand straight down the center of the hallway, or else he’d drift to the side and end up scraping across the wall. He also had to be acutely aware of the device, as it was remarkably easy to flip the activation switch accidentally by brushing his hand against something. He kept practicing, and was able to go back and forth for quite a while before the device stopped working. He lurched to a halt midflight, hanging in the center of the hallway. He rested his feet on the ground and deactivated the device. The weight he’d been using had hit the bottom. That had lasted him quite a long time—though much of that time had been resetting and moving around. In actual free fall, he probably wouldn’t have longer than a few minutes of flight. But if he controlled the weight, using it in short bursts, he could make good use of those minutes. He wouldn’t be soaring about fighting Heavenly Ones in swooping battles with this. But he could get an extra burst of speed in a fight, and maybe move in an unexpected direction. Navani intended him to use it as a lift. It would work for that, certainly. And he intended to practice going up and down outside once it was dark. But Kaladin also saw martial applications. And all in all, the device worked better than he’d expected. So he walked to the end of the hallway to set up again. “More?” Syl asked. “You have an appointment or something?” Kaladin asked. “Just a little bored.” “I could crash into another wall, if you like.” “Only if you promise to be amusing when you do
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it.” “What? You want me to break more fingers?” “No.” She zipped around him as a ribbon of light. “Breaking your hands isn’t very funny. Try a different body part. A funny one.” “I’m going to stop trying to imagine how to manage that,” he said, “and get back to work.” “And how long are we going to be doing this decidedly unfunny crashing?” “Until we don’t crash, obviously,” Kaladin said. “I had months to train with my Lashings, and longer to prepare for my first fight as a spearman. Judging by how quickly the Fused found the first node, I suspect I’ll have only a few days to train on this device before I need to use it.” When the time came—assuming Navani or the Sibling could give him warning—he wanted to be ready. He knew of at least one way to quiet the nightmares, the mounting pressure, and the mental exhaustion. He couldn’t do much about his situation, or the cracks that were ever widening inside him. But he could stay busy, and in so doing, not let those cracks define him. The two metals of primary significance are zinc and brass, which allow you to control expression strength. Zinc wires touching the gemstone will cause the spren inside to more strongly manifest, while brass will cause the spren to withdraw and its power to dim. Remember that a gemstone must be properly infused following the spren’s capture. Drilled holes in the gemstone are ideal for proper use of the cage wires, so long as you don’t crack the structure and risk releasing the spren. —Lecture on fabrial mechanics presented by Navani Kholin to the coalition of monarchs, Urithiru, Jesevan, 1175 Veil stepped up to Ialai Sadeas. She’d heard of this woman’s craftiness, her competence. Veil was therefore surprised to find the woman looking so … weathered. Ialai Sadeas was a woman of moderate height. While she’d never been renowned as a great beauty, she seemed to have withered since Shallan had last seen her. Though she wore a dress of the sharpest and most recent fashion—embroidered along the sides—it seemed to hang on her like a cloak on a tavern’s wall peg. Her cheeks were sunken and hollow, and she held an empty wine cup in her hand. “So, you’ve finally come for me,” she said. Veil hesitated. What did that mean? Strike now, Veil thought. Summon the Blade; burn those self-satisfied eyes out of her skull. But she wouldn’t act on her will alone. They had a balance, an important one. The Three never did what only one of them wanted, not in regard to a decision this important. And so, she held back. Radiant didn’t want to kill Ialai. She was too honorable. But what of Shallan? Not yet, Shallan thought. Talk to her first. Find out what she knows. Therefore, Veil bowed—staying in character. “My queen.” Ialai snapped her fingers, and the guard retreated with the last of the cultists, closing the door behind him. She wasn’t the frightened type, Ialai Sadeas—though Veil did notice a
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door on the far wall of the room, behind Ialai, as a potential exit. Ialai sat back in her chair, letting Veil hold the bow. “I do not intend to be queen,” she eventually said. “That is a lie that some of my more … overeager followers perpetuate.” “Who then do you support for the throne? Surely not the usurper Dalinar, or the niece he has appointed unlawfully.” Ialai watched Veil, who slowly stood from the bow. “In the past,” Ialai said, “I have supported the heir—Elhokar’s son, Gavilar’s grandson, the rightful king.” “He is only a boy, not yet six.” “Then urgent action must be taken,” Ialai said, “to rescue him from the clutches of his aunt and great-uncle, the rats who have deposed him. To support me is not to upset the lineage, but to work for a better, stable, and correct Alethi union.” Clever. Under such a guise, Ialai could pretend to be a humble patriot. But … why did she look so haunted? A wreckage of her former self? She’d been hit hard by Sadeas’s death and the traitorous turn of Amaram’s army. Had those events encouraged a downward spiral? Most importantly, who was the spy this woman had close to Dalinar? Ialai stood up, letting her wine cup roll off the table and shatter on the floor. She walked past Veil to the nearby hutch and rolled up the front, revealing a dozen or more carafes of wine, each a different color. While Ialai was surveying these, Veil held her hand to the side and began summoning her Shardblade. Not to strike, but because Pattern was with Adolin. The act of summoning should give Pattern an indication of her direction. She stopped almost immediately, preventing the sword from coalescing. Adolin would want to come find her. Unfortunately, striking against Ialai’s fortress would be more dangerous than jumping a group of conspirators in the chasm. Dalinar had no authority here, and though the Lightweaving Shallan had stuck to Adolin would keep him from being recognized, Veil wasn’t certain he could risk moving in the open. “Do you favor wines?” Ialai asked her. “I’m not particularly thirsty, Brightness,” Veil said. “Join me anyway.” Veil stepped up beside her, looking at the array of wines. “This is quite a collection.” “Yes,” Ialai said, selecting one, a clear—probably a grain alcohol. Left uninfused, the color gave no indication of flavoring or potency. “I requisition samples of the vintages that pass through the warcamps. It is one of the few luxuries these Heralds-forsaken stormlands can offer.” She poured a small cup, and Veil could immediately tell she’d been wrong. It didn’t have the sharp, immediately overpowering sensation of something like a Horneater vintage. Instead there was a fruity scent mixed with the faint stench of alcohol. Curious. Ialai offered it to Veil first, who accepted the cup and took a drink. It tasted sharply sweet, like a dessert wine. How had they made it clear? Most fruit wines had natural coloring. “No fear of poison?” Ialai asked. “Why should I fear poison,
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Brightness?” “This was prepared for me, and there are many who would see me dead. Remaining in my proximity can be dangerous.” “Like the attack in the chasm earlier?” “It is not the first such strike,” she said, though Veil knew of no others that Dalinar had ordered. “Strange, how easily my enemies strike at me in quiet, dark chasms. Yet it has taken them so long to attack me in my chambers.” She looked right at Veil. Damnation. She knew what Veil had come here to do. Ialai drank deeply. “What do you think of the wine?” “It was nice.” “That’s all?” Ialai held up her cup, inspecting the last few drops. “It’s sweet, fermented from a fruit, not a grain. It reminds me of visits to Gavilar’s wineries. I would guess it an Alethi vintage, rescued before the kingdom fell, made from simberries. The flesh of the fruit is clear, and they took great care to remove the rinds. Revealing what was truly inside.” Yes, she did suspect. After a moment of decision, Shallan emerged. If it was to be wordplay, then she should be the one in control. Ialai selected another carafe, this time a pale orange. “How is it,” she said, “that you have access to such important documents as Navani’s schematics? She can be extremely secretive with her projects—not because she fears someone stealing them, but because she relishes a dramatic reveal.” “I cannot give away my sources,” Shallan said. “Surely you understand the importance of protecting the identities of those who serve you.” She pretended to think. “Though I can perhaps share a name, if I were to get one in return—someone you have close to the king. A way for both of us to have further access to the Kholin inner circle.” A little clumsy, Veil noted. You sure you want control right now? Ialai smiled, then handed Shallan a small cup of the orange. She took it—and found it bland and flavorless. “Well?” Ialai asked, sipping her own cup. “It is weak,” Shallan said. “Powerless. Yet I taste a hint of something wrong. A touch of sourness. An … annoyance that should be exterminated from the vintage.” “And yet,” Ialai said, “it looks so good. A proper orange, to be enjoyed by children—and those who act like them. Perfect for people who want to maintain appearances before others. Then the sourness. That’s what this vintage truly is, isn’t it? Awful, no matter how it may appear.” “To what end?” Shallan asked. “What good does it do to package an inferior wine with such a fine label?” “It might fool some, for a time,” Ialai said. “Allow the winemaker to gain quick and easy ground over his competition. But he’ll eventually be revealed as a fraud, and his creation will be discarded in favor of a truly strong or noble vintage.” “You make bold claims,” Shallan said. “One hopes the winemaker doesn’t hear. He might be irate.” “Let him be. We both know what he is.” As Ialai moved to serve a third cup, Shallan
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began to summon her Shardblade again—giving Pattern another hint to indicate her direction. Bring it all the way, Veil thought. Strike. Is this who we want to be with our powers? Radiant thought. If we start down this path, where will it lead us? Could they really serve Dalinar Kholin by acting against his explicit orders? He didn’t want this. He probably should, but he didn’t. “Ah, here,” Ialai said. “Perfect.” She held up a deep blue. This time she didn’t offer it to Shallan first, but took a sip. “A wonderful vintage, but the last of its kind. Every other bottle destroyed in a fire. After today, even this bit will be gone.” “You seem so resigned,” Shallan said. “The Ialai Sadeas I’ve heard about would scour entire kingdoms looking for another bottle of the vintage she so loves. Never surrendering.” “That Ialai wasn’t nearly so tired,” she said, her hand drooping—as if the weight of the cup of wine was somehow too great. “I’ve fought so long. And now I’m alone … sometimes it seems the very shadows work against me.” Ialai selected a carafe of Horneater white—Shallan could smell it as soon as the top was off—and held it out. “I believe this is yours. Invisible. Deadly.” Shallan didn’t take the drink. “Get on with it,” Ialai said. “You killed Thanadal when he tried to deal. So I can’t try that. You hunted Vamah and murdered him after he fled, and there’s little chance of me surviving the same. I thought I might be safe if I hunkered down for a time. Yet here you are.” Invisible. Deadly. Sweet wisdom of Battah … Shallan had been engaging in this entire conversation assuming that Ialai knew her for an operative of Dalinar. That wasn’t the case at all. Ialai saw her as an operative of Mraize, of the Ghostbloods. “You killed Thanadal,” Shallan said. Ialai laughed. “He told you that, did he? So they lie to their own?” Mraize hadn’t specifically told her Ialai had killed Thanadal. But he’d clearly implied it. Veil gritted her teeth, frustrated. She’d come here of her own volition. Yes, Mraize was always hinting to her what he and the Ghostbloods wanted. But Veil did not serve him. She had undertaken this mission for … the good of Alethkar. And Adolin. And … “Go on,” Ialai said. “Do it.” Veil thrust her hand to the side, summoning her Shardblade. Ialai dropped the carafe of Horneater white, jumping despite herself. Though fearspren boiled up from the ground, Ialai merely closed her eyes. Oh! a perky voice said in Veil’s mind. We were almost here anyway, Veil! What are we doing? “Did they at least tell you why they decided we need to die?” Ialai asked. “Why they hated Gavilar? Amaram? Me and Thanadal, once we knew the secrets? What it is about the Sons of Honor that frightens them?” Veil hesitated. You found her! Pattern said in her mind. Do you have evidence, like Dalinar wanted? “They’ll send you after Restares next,” Ialai said. “But they’ll
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watch you. In case you rise high enough, learn enough to threaten them. Have you asked yourself what they want? What they expect to get out of the end of the world?” “Power,” Veil said. “Ah, nebulous ‘power.’ No, it is more specific than that. Most of the Sons of Honor simply wanted their gods back, but Gavilar saw more. He saw entire worlds.…” “Tell me more,” Veil said. Shouts sounded outside the room. Veil glanced at the door in time to see a brilliant Shardblade slice through the lock. Adolin, wearing the false face she’d given him, kicked open the door a moment later. People flooded in around him—soldiers and five of Shallan’s Lightweaver agents. “Once I’m dead,” Ialai hissed, “don’t let them search my rooms before you do. Look for the rarest vintage. It is … exotic.” “Don’t give me riddles,” the Three said. “Give me answers. What are the Ghostbloods trying to do?” Ialai closed her eyes. “Do it.” Instead, the Three dismissed her Blade. I vote against killing her, Veil thought. Killing her would mean she had been manipulated by Mraize. She hated that idea. “You’re not dying today,” the Three said. “I have more questions for you.” Ialai kept her eyes closed. “I won’t get to answer. They won’t let me.” Shallan emerged, calming her nerves as several soldiers rushed up to surround Ialai. Veil and Radiant settled back, both pleased at this outcome. They were their own person. They did not belong to Mraize. She shook her head and trotted over to Adolin, then dismissed his illusory face with a touch. She needed to see him as himself. “Which one are you?” he asked quietly, giving her a pouch of infused spheres. “Shallan,” she said, putting the pouch into her satchel, which a soldier had fetched for her from beside the wall. She glanced over her shoulder as the soldiers bound Ialai, and again Shallan was struck by how deflated the woman looked. Adolin pulled Shallan close. “Did she confess to you?” “She danced around it,” Shallan said, “but I think I can make a case to Dalinar that what she said constitutes treason. She wants to depose Jasnah and put Elhokar’s son on the throne.” “Gavinor is way too young.” “And she’d be guiding him,” Shallan said. “Which is why she’s a traitor—she wants the power.” But … Ialai had spoken like that plan was in the past, as if she were now fighting only for survival. Had the Ghostbloods truly killed Highprinces Thanadal and Vamah? “Well,” Adolin said, “with her in custody, perhaps we can get her armies to stand down. We can’t afford a war with our own right now.” “Ishnah,” Shallan called, drawing the attention of one of her agents. The short Alethi woman hastened over. She’d been with Shallan for over a year now, and—along with Vathah, leader of the deserters that Shallan had recruited—was one of those she trusted most. “Yeah, Brightness?” Ishnah asked. “Take Vathah and Beryl. Go with those soldiers and make certain they don’t let Ialai speak
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to anyone. Gag her if you have to. She has a way of getting inside people’s heads.” “Consider it done,” Ishnah said. “You want to put the illusion on her first?” The contingency plan for extraction was simple: They’d use Lightweaving to make themselves into House Sadeas guards, and Ialai into someone lowborn. They’d march her out the gates with ease, capturing the highprincess right out from underneath the watchful eyes of her guards. “Yes,” Shallan said, waving the soldiers to bring the woman over. Ialai walked with her eyes closed, still maintaining her fatalistic air. Shallan took Ialai by the arm, then breathed out and let the Lightweaving surround her, changing the woman to look like one of the sketches Shallan had done recently—a kitchen woman with rosy cheeks and a wide smile. Ialai didn’t deserve such a kindly face, nor did she deserve such a light treatment. Shallan felt an unexpected spike of disgust at touching Ialai; this creature and her husband had plotted and executed a terrible plan to betray Dalinar. Even after the move to Urithiru, Ialai had worked to undermine him at every opportunity. If this woman had gotten her way, Adolin would have died before Shallan met him. And now they were just going to take her in to play more games? Shallan let go, hand going to her satchel. Radiant was the one who emerged, however. She grabbed Ialai by her arm and towed her over to Adolin’s soldiers, handing her off. “Take her out with the others,” Adolin said. “You got the rest of the conspirators?” Shallan asked, walking back to him. “They tried to escape out the side door as we burst in, but I think we managed to round them all up.” Ishnah and the soldiers—Adolin’s men, hand-picked from among his finest—led the disguised and bound Ialai out the door. The highprincess sagged in their grip. Adolin watched her go, a frown on his lips. “You’re thinking,” Shallan said, “that we shouldn’t have ever let her leave Urithiru. That it’d be easier if we’d ended her, and the threat she represented, before it went this far.” “I’m thinking,” Adolin said, “that maybe we don’t want to travel that road.” “Maybe we started already. Back when you…” Adolin drew his lips to a line. “I don’t have any answers right now,” he eventually said. “I don’t know if I ever did. But we should ransack this place quickly. Father might want more proof than your word, and it would be awfully helpful if we could present him with incriminating journals or letters.” Shallan nodded, waving over Gaz and Red. She would have them search the place. And what of what Ialai had said? Look for the rarest vintage.… Shallan eyed the wines set out on the counter of the hutch. Why speak in riddles? Adolin and the others were coming in, Shallan thought. She didn’t want them to understand. Storms, the woman had grown paranoid. But why trust Shallan? I won’t get to answer. They won’t let me.… “Adolin,” she said. “Something is
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wrong with this. With Ialai, with me being here, with—” She cut herself off as shouts sounded in the antechamber. Shallan scrambled out, feeling a sense of dread. She found Ialai Sadeas lying on the floor, foam coming from the mouth of her fake face. The soldiers watched with horror. The highprincess stared up with lifeless eyes. Dead. * * * Kaladin flew through the smoke billowing up over the manor. He soared down toward where the townspeople were being threatened by the strange Fused and his soldiers. That was Waber, the manor’s gardener, being held against the ground with a boot to his face. This is obviously a trap, Syl said in Kaladin’s mind. That Fused knows exactly what to do in order to draw the attention of a Windrunner: attack innocents. She was right. Kaladin forced himself to drop carefully a short distance away. The Fused had torn a hole in the wall around a side entrance of the manor. Though flames licked the upper floors of the structure, the room beyond the hole was dark, not yet afire. At least not completely. As soon as Kaladin landed, the singers released Waber and the others, then retreated through the broken hole in the stone wall. Five soldiers, Kaladin noted. Three with swords, two with spears. The Fused carried one captive as he strode into the building; thin, with a gaunt face, the captive was bleeding from a slash along his stomach. Godeke the Edgedancer. His Stormlight had apparently run out. Storms send he was still alive. The Fused wanted to use him as bait, so the chances seemed good. Kaladin strode toward the broken wall. “You want to fight me, Fused? Come on. Let’s have at it.” The creature, shadowed inside the building, growled something in his own rhythmic language. One of the soldiers translated. “I will fight you inside where you cannot fly away, little Windrunner. Come, face me.” I don’t like this, Syl said. “Agreed,” Kaladin whispered. “Be ready to go get help.” He Lashed himself upward slightly, enough to make him lighter on his feet, then inched into the burning building. This large room had once been the dining chamber, where Kaladin’s father had eaten with Roshone and talked of thieves and compromises. The ceiling was burned in patches, the fire consuming it from above. Flamespren danced along the wood with a frantic delight. The hulking Fused stood directly ahead, two soldiers at each side. They moved forward to flank Kaladin. Where was the fifth soldier? There, near an overturned table, fiddling with something that glowed a deep violet-black. Voidlight? Wait … was that a fabrial? The light dimmed suddenly. Kaladin’s powers vanished. He felt it as a strange smothering sensation, as if something heavy had been placed on top of his mind. His full weight came upon him again, his Lashing canceled. Syl gasped and her spear puffed away as she became a spren—and when Kaladin tried to resummon his Blade, nothing happened. Immediately, Kaladin stepped backward to try to escape the range of the strange
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fabrial. But the soldiers quickly rushed to surround him, cutting off his retreat. Kaladin’s assumption that he could beat them easily had relied on his Shardspear and his powers. Storms! Kaladin strained to create a Lashing. Stormlight still raged inside him, and kept him from needing to breathe the acrid smoke, but something was suppressing his other abilities. The Fused laughed and spoke in Alethi. “Radiants! You rely too much on your powers. Without them, what are you? A peasant child with no real training in the art of warfare or—” Kaladin slammed himself against the soldier to his right. The sudden motion caused the singer to cry out and fall backward. Kaladin yanked the spear from the man’s hand, then—in a fluid motion—whipped it into a two-handed lunge, impaling a second soldier. The two soldiers on his left recovered and leaped for him. Kaladin felt the wind encircle him as he spun between the two of them, catching one sword—aimed low—with the butt of his spear as he caught the second one—aimed high—right behind the spear’s head. Metal met wood with a familiar thunk, and Kaladin finished his spin, throwing off both weapons. He gutted one man, then tripped him—sending him stumbling to the ground in front of his ally. These soldiers were trained well, but hadn’t seen much actual combat yet—as evidenced by how the remaining singer froze when he saw his friends dying. Kaladin kept moving, almost without thought, spearing the fourth soldier in the neck. There, Kaladin thought as the expected ribbon of red light came darting toward him. He will go for my back again. Kaladin dropped his spear, pulled a throwing knife off his belt, and turned. He rammed the knife into the air right before the Fused appeared—slamming the small blade into the creature’s neck, angled between two pieces of carapace. The Fused let out an urk of shock and pain, his eyes wide. Fire made wood snap overhead, and burning cinders dropped down as the enormous Fused toppled forward like a felled tree, the floorboards shaking with the impact. Blessedly, no red ribbon of light rose from him this time. “That’s a relief,” Syl said, landing on Kaladin’s shoulder. “I guess if you catch him before he teleports, you really can kill him.” “At least until the Everstorm rebirths him,” Kaladin said, checking the singers he’d killed. Other than the one dying slowly from the gut wound, he’d left only two alive—the one he’d shoved, and the fifth one, across the room, who had activated the fabrial. The former had scrambled out the gaping hole in the wall to escape. The latter had left the fabrial and was inching to the side, his sword out, eyes wide. The man was trying to reach Godeke—perhaps to use him as a hostage. In the fray, the wounded Edgedancer had fallen to the ground beside the husk after the Fused had teleported to Kaladin. Godeke was now moving—but not under his own power. A small, gangly figure had the Edgedancer by one leg and was slowly dragging
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him away from the fight. Kaladin hadn’t seen Lift sneak into the room—but then again, she often showed up where one did not expect her. “Take him out the hole, Lift,” Kaladin said, stepping toward the last singer. “Are your powers suppressed too?” “Yeah,” she said. “What’d they do to us?” “I’m extremely curious about this too,” Syl said, zipping over to the device on the floor, a gemstone covered in metal pieces and resting on tripod legs. “That is a very strange fabrial.” Kaladin pointed his spear at the last singer, who—hesitantly—dropped his sword and raised his hands. He had a jagged skin pattern of red and black. “What is that fabrial?” Kaladin asked. “I … I…” The soldier swallowed. “I don’t know. I was told to twist the gemstone at the base to activate it.” “That’s Voidlight powering it,” Syl said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Kaladin glanced at the smoke pooling on the ceiling. “Lift?” he said. “On it,” she said, scrambling over to the device while Kaladin kept the soldier guarded. A moment later, Kaladin’s powers returned. He sighed in relief, though that made Stormlight puff before him. Nearby, Godeke gasped, unconsciously breathing in Stormlight, and his wound started to heal. Strengthened by the Light, Kaladin grabbed the soldier and lifted him up, infusing him enough to make him hang in the air. “I told you to leave the city,” Kaladin growled softly. “I’m memorizing your face, your pattern, your stench. If I see you again, ever, I will send you hurtling upward with so much Stormlight that you will have a long, long time to think during the fall back down. Understood?” The singer nodded, humming a conciliatory sound. Kaladin shoved him, recovering his Stormlight and making the man fall to the ground. He scrambled away out the hole. “There was another human in here,” Lift said. “An old lighteyed man in beggar’s clothing. I was watching from outside the building, and saw the man come in here with Godeke. A short time later, that Fused broke through the wall, carrying Godeke—but I didn’t spot the other man.” Roshone. The former citylord had told Dalinar he was going to search the manor’s stormcellar to free imprisoned townspeople. Though he wasn’t proud of it, Kaladin hesitated—but when Syl looked at him, he gritted his teeth and nodded. So long as it is right … he thought. “I’ll find him,” Kaladin said. “Make sure Godeke recovers, then get that fabrial to Brightness Navani. She’s going to find it very interesting.” * * * Shallan removed the illusion, revealing Ialai’s face, spittle dripping from her lips. One of Adolin’s men checked her pulse, confirming it. She was dead. “Damnation!” Adolin said, standing helpless above the body. “What happened?” We didn’t do this, Veil thought. We decided not to kill her, right? I … Shallan’s mind began to fuzz, everything feeling blurry. Had she done this? She’d wanted to. But she hadn’t, had she? She was … was more in control than that. I didn’t do it, Shallan thought. She
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was reasonably certain. So what happened? Radiant asked. “She must have taken poison,” said Vathah, leaning down. “Blackbane.” Even after many months as Shallan’s squire and then agent, the former deserter didn’t look like he belonged with Adolin’s soldiers. Vathah was too rough. Not sloppy, but unlike Adolin’s men, he didn’t care much for the spit and polish. He showed his disdain by leaving his jacket undone, his hair messy. “I’ve seen someone die like that before, Brightness,” he explained. “Back in Sadeas’s army, an officer was smuggling and selling supplies. When he finally got found out, he poisoned himself rather than be taken.” “I didn’t see her do it,” Ishnah said, sheepish. “I’m sorry.” “Nale’s nuts,” muttered one of Adolin’s soldiers. “This is going to look bad, isn’t it? This is exactly what the Blackthorn didn’t want. Another Sadeas corpse on our hands.” Adolin drew in a long deep breath. “We have enough evidence to have seen her hanged; my father will simply have to accept that. We’ll bring troops to the warcamps to make certain her soldiers don’t get rowdy. Storms. This mess should have been cleaned up months ago.” He pointed at several soldiers. “Check the other conspirators for poison, and gag them all. Shallan will disguise the body like a rug or something so we can get it out. Gen and Natem, search Ialai’s things in the next room to see if you can find any useful evidence.” “No!” Shallan said. Adolin froze, glancing at her. “I’ll search through Ialai’s things in the next room. I know what to watch for, and your soldiers don’t. You handle the captives and search the rest of the building.” “Good idea,” Adolin said. He rubbed his brow, but then—perhaps seeing the little anxietyspren that appeared near her, like a twisting black cross—smiled. “Don’t worry. Every mission has a few hitches.” She nodded, more to put him at ease than to indicate her real feelings. As the soldiers moved to follow his orders, she knelt by Ialai’s body. Ishnah joined her. “Brightness? Do you need something?” “She didn’t eat poison, did she?” Shallan asked softly. “Can’t be certain,” Ishnah said. “I know a little about blackbane though.…” She blushed. “Well, I know a lot. My gang would use it on rivals. It’s tough to make, because you need to dry the leaves out, then make a gum out of them to get it to full potency. Anyway, eating it isn’t the best. If you can get it into the blood though, it kills quickly.…” She trailed off, frowning—perhaps realizing as Shallan had that Ialai had died very quickly. Shallan knew of blackbane herself. She’d studied up on poisons recently. Would I be able to spot a pinprick? Shallan thought, kneeling beside the corpse. Either way, she suspected Ialai had been right: The Ghostbloods hadn’t trusted Shallan to kill her, and they’d sent a second knife to see the job done. That would mean they had an operative among Adolin’s guards or Shallan’s own agents. The idea made Shallan’s stomach twist. And this
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person was separate from the spy Ialai supposedly had among Dalinar’s elite? Storms. It was tying Shallan’s mind in knots. “Look the body over,” Shallan whispered to Ishnah. “See if you can find evidence if this was self-inflicted, or if someone else killed her.” “Yes, Brightness.” Shallan quickly walked back into the room with the wine hutch. Gaz and Red were already working to gather Ialai’s things. Storms, could she trust these two? In any case, Ialai’s prediction had proven correct. And it was possible that this room held secrets Mraize didn’t want Shallan to find. The sand originated offworld. It is only one of such amazing wonders that come from other lands—I have recently obtained a chain from the lands of the dead, said to be able to anchor a person through Cognitive anomalies. I fail to see what use it could be to me, as I am unable to leave the Rosharan system. But it is a priceless object nonetheless. —From Rhythm of War, page 13 undertext Jasnah had never gone to war. Oh, she’d been near to war. She’d stayed behind in mobile warcamps. She’d walked battlefields. She’d fought and killed, and had been part of the Battle of Thaylen Field. But she’d never gone to war. The other monarchs were baffled. Even the soldiers seemed confused as they parted, letting her stride forward among them in her Shardplate. Dalinar, though, had understood. Until you stand in those lines, holding your sword and facing down the enemy force, you’ll never understand. No book could prepare you, Jasnah. So yes, I think you should go. A thousand quotes from noted scholars leaped to her mind. Accounts of what it was like to be in war. She’d read hundreds; some so detailed, she’d been able to smell the blood in the air. Yet they all fled like shadows before sunlight as she reached the front of the coalition armies and looked out at the enemy. Their numbers seemed endless. A fungus on the land ahead, black and white and red, weapons glistening in the sun. Reports said there were about forty thousand singers here. That was a number she could comprehend, could analyze. But her eyes didn’t see forty thousand, they saw endless ranks. Numbers on a page became meaningless. She hadn’t come to fight forty thousand. She’d come to fight a tide. On paper, this place was the Drunmu Basin in Emul. It was a vast ocean of shivering grass and towering pile-vines. In meetings, the Mink had insisted that a battle here favored the coalition side. If they let the enemy retreat to cities and forts, they could hunker down and make for tough shells to crack. Instead he’d pushed them to a place where they’d feel confident standing in a full battle, as they had a slight advantage in high ground and the sun to their backs. Here they would stand, and the Mink could leverage the coalition’s greater numbers and skill to victory. So logically she understood that this was a battle that her forces wanted. In
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person, she felt overwhelmed by the distance to the enemy—distance she, with the others, would have to cross under a barrage of enemy arrows and spears. It was hard not to feel small, even in her Plate. The horns sounded, ordering the advance, and she noted two Edgedancers keeping close to her—likely at her uncle’s request. Though she’d always imagined battles beginning with a grand charge, her force moved mechanically. Shields up, in formation, at a solid march that the veteran troops maintained as arrows started falling. Running would break the lines, not to mention leave the soldiers winded when they arrived. She winced as the first arrows struck. They fell with an arrhythmic series of snaps, metal on wood, like hail. One bounced off her shoulder and another skimmed her helm. Fortunately, the arrows were soon interrupted as Azish light cavalry executed a raid on the enemy archers. She heard the hooves, saw the Windrunners soaring overhead, guarding the horsemen from the air. The enemy kept misjudging cavalry, which hadn’t been available in significant numbers thousands of years ago. Through it all, the Alethi troops kept marching forward, shields up. It took an excruciatingly long time, but since Jasnah’s side was the aggressor, the enemy had no impetus to meet them. They maintained their position atop their shallow incline. She could see why the enemy would think it wise to stand here, as Jasnah’s forces had to make their assault up this hillside. The enemy resolved into a block of figures in carapace and steel armor, holding large shields and sprouting with pikes several lines deep. These singers did not fight like the Parshendi on the Shattered Plains; these were drilled troops, and the Fused had adapted quickly to modern warfare. They had a slight myopia when it came to cavalry, true, but they knew far better how to most effectively employ their Surgebinders. By the time Jasnah’s block of troops was in position, she felt exhausted from staying at a heightened level of alert during the march. She stopped with the others, grass retreating in a wave before her—as if it could sense the coming fight like it sensed a storm. She had ordered her Plate to intentionally dull its light, so it looked like that of an ordinary Shardbearer. The enemy would still single her out, but not recognize her as the queen. She would be safer this way. The horns rang out. Jasnah started up the last part of the incline at not quite a run. It was too shallow to be called a hill, and if she’d been out on a walk, she wouldn’t have remarked much on the slope. But now she felt it with each step. Her Plate urged her to move, as did the Stormlight she breathed in, but if she ran too far ahead of her block of troops she could be surrounded. The enemy would have Fused and Regals hiding among their ranks, waiting to ambush her. Other than the Heavenly Ones, few Fused chose to meet Shardbearers in direct combat. Jasnah
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summoned Ivory as a Blade, the weapon falling into her waiting gauntlets. Ready? she asked. Yes. She charged the last few feet to the pike block and swept with Ivory. Her job was to break their lines; a full Shardbearer could cause entire formations to crumble around her. To their credit, this singer formation did not break. It buckled backward, pikes scraping her armor as she tried to get in close and attack, but it held. Her honor guard—along with those two Edgedancers—came in behind to keep her from being surrounded. Nearby, another block of five thousand soldiers hit the enemy. Grunts and crunches sounded in the air. Holding her Blade in a two-handed grip, Jasnah swept back and forth, cutting free pike heads and trying to strike inward at the enemy. They moved with unexpected flexibility, singers dancing away, staying out of the range of her sword. This is less effective, Ivory said to her. Our other powers are. Use them? No. I want to know the real feeling of war, Jasnah thought. Or as close to it as I can allow myself, in Plate with Blade. Ever the scholar, Ivory said with a long-suffering tone as Jasnah shouldered past some pikes—which were practically useless against her—and managed to ram her Blade into the chest of a singer. The singer’s eyes burned as she fell, and Jasnah ripped the sword around, causing others to curse and shy back. It wasn’t only academics that drove her. If she was going to order soldiers into battle, she needed more than descriptions from books. She needed to feel what they felt. And yes, she could use her powers. Soulcasting had proven useful to her in fights before, but without Dalinar, she had limited Stormlight and wanted to conserve it. She would escape to Shadesmar if things went poorly. She wasn’t foolish. Yet this knowledge nagged at her as she swept through the formation, keeping the enemy busy. She couldn’t ever truly feel what it was like to be an unfortunate spearman on the front lines. She could hear them shouting as the two forces crashed together. The formations seemed so deliberate, and on the grand scale they were careful things. Positioned with a kind of terrible momentum that forced the men at the front to fight. So while the block remained firm, the front lines ground against one another, screaming like steel being bent. That was a feeling Jasnah would never experience. The weight of a block of soldiers on each side crushing you between them—with no possible escape. Still, she wanted to know what she could. She swept around, forcing more singers back—but others began prodding her with pikes and spears, shoving her to the side, threatening to trip her. She’d underestimated the effectiveness of those pikes; yes, they were useless for breaking her armor, but they could maneuver her like a chull being prodded with poles. She stumbled and felt her first true spike of fear. Control it. Instead of trying to right herself, she turned her shoulder toward the enemy, turning
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her off-balance stumble into a rush, crashing out of the enemy ranks near her soldiers. She hadn’t killed many of the enemy, but she didn’t need to. Their ranks rippled and bowed from her efforts, and her soldiers exploited this. On either side of her, they matched pikes and spears with the enemy—the front row of her soldiers rotating to the back line of the block every ten minutes under the careful orders of the rank commander. Engulfed by the sounds of war, Jasnah turned toward the enemy, and her honor guard formed up behind her. Then—sweat trickling down her brow—she charged in again. This time when the enemy parted around her, they revealed a hulking creature hidden in their ranks. A Fused with carapace that grew into large axelike protrusions around his hands: one of the Magnified Ones. Fused with the Surge of Progression, which let them grow carapace with extreme precision and speed. The regular soldiers on both sides kept their distance, forming a pocket of space around the two. Jasnah resisted using her powers. With her Shards, she should be evenly matched against this creature—and her powers would quickly reveal who she was, as there were no other Surgebinders in the coalition army who had their own Plate. There is another reason you fight, Ivory said, challenging her. Yes, there was. Instead of confronting that, Jasnah threw herself into the duel, Stormlight raging in her veins. She sheared free one of the Fused’s axe-hands, but the other slammed into her and sent her sprawling. She shook her head, resummoning her Blade and sweeping upward as the Fused rammed its hand down. She cut off the axe, but the trunk of the creature’s arm slammed against her chest. Carapace grew over her like the roots of a tree, pinning her to the ground. The Fused stepped away, snapping the carapace free at its elbow, leaving her immobilized. Then he turned as her honor guard distracted him. Ah, we’re getting so much wonderful experience, Ivory said to her. Delightful. Other soldiers came in at Jasnah and began ramming thin pikes through her faceplate. One pierced her eye, making her scream. Stormlight healed her though, and her helm sealed the slit to prevent further attacks. With Stormlight, she didn’t need it to breathe anyway. But this, like her quick summoning of her Blade, was a concession. It risked revealing what she was. She ripped her hand free of the constricting carapace, then used Ivory as a dagger to cut her way out. She rolled free, tripping singers and kicking at their legs to send them sprawling. But as she came out of her roll, that storming Fused lunged in, slamming two axe-hands at her head, cracking the Plate. The helm howled in pain and annoyance, then lapped up her Stormlight to repair itself. Such fun is, Ivory said. But of course, Jasnah mustn’t use her powers. She wants to play soldier. Jasnah growled, going to one knee and punching her fist at the Fused’s knee—but it overgrew with carapace right before she
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connected. Her punch didn’t even move the creature. Ivory became a short sword in her hand as she slashed at the Fused—but this exposed her to another hit in the helm, which laid her flat. She groaned, putting one hand against the rock. Steady stone, a part of her mind thought. Happy and pleased with its life on the plains. No, it would resist her requests to change. Ivory formed as a shield on her arm as the enemy began smashing. Blood on her cheek mixed with sweat; though her eye had healed, the regular soldiers were trying to get at her again, her honor guard doing their best to hold them back. Fine. She reached out to the air, which was stagnant and morose today. Draining Stormlight from the gemstones at her waist, she gave it a single command. Change. No begging, as she’d tried when younger. Only firmness. The bored air accepted, and formed into oil all around them. It rained from the sky in a splash, and even appeared in the mouths of fighting soldiers. Her honor guard knew to withdraw at that sign, coughing and stumbling as they stepped back from the fight around her in a ten-yard circle. The enemy soldiers remained in place, cursing and coughing. Jasnah slammed her fists together—one affixed with steel, the other with flint. Sparks erupted in front of her, and the entire section of the battlefield came alight. The Magnified One stumbled in shock, and Jasnah leaped at him, forming Ivory into a needle-like Blade that she rammed directly into his chest. Her lunge was on target, and pierced the enemy’s gemheart. The Fused toppled backward, eyes burning like the fires around her. She finished off as many of the enemy soldiers as she could find in the flames. Her helm—transparent as glass from the inside—started to get covered in soot, and soon she had to retreat out of the fire. Her vision was clear enough to see the horror of the nearby singers as they witnessed a burning Shardbearer explode from the fires, as if from the center of Damnation itself. That fear stunned them as she hit their line like a boulder, working death upon the collapsing ranks. Their corpses fell among the gleeful spren that writhed on the battlefield, exulting in the powerful emotions. Fearspren, painspren, anticipationspren. She fought like a butcher. Hacking. Kicking. Throwing bodies into the lines to panic the others. Making waves that her soldiers exploited. At one point, something slammed into her from behind, and she assumed she’d have to face another Fused—but it was a dead Windrunner, dropped from the skies above by a passing Heavenly One. She left the dead man on the bloody ground and returned to the battle. She didn’t think of strategy. Strategy was for stuffy tents and calm conversations over wine. She simply killed. Striking until her arms were sluggish despite both armor and Stormlight. Though her troops rotated, she didn’t give herself that luxury. How could she? They were struggling and bleeding in a foreign land, for
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stakes she promised them were important. If she rested, more of them died. After what seemed like an eternity, she found herself gasping, wiping blood from her helm to see. The helm opened vents on the side, bringing in cool fresh air, and she stumbled, standing alone on the battlefield. Wondering why she’d started breathing again. Running out of Stormlight, she thought, numb. She looked down at her gauntleted palm, which was stained with orange singer blood. How had she gotten so much on her? She vaguely remembered fighting another Fused, and some Regals, and … And her block of troops was marching up toward the center of the battle, on trumpeted orders that echoed in her head. Horn blasts that meant … that meant … Jasnah, Ivory said. To the side, see what is. One of the Edgedancers moved among the fallen, searching for those they could heal. The second stepped up to Jasnah and pressed a large topaz into her hand. He then gestured toward the rear lines. “I need to do more,” Jasnah said. “Continue in this state,” the Edgedancer said, “and you will do more harm than good. More soldiers will die to protect you than you will cost the enemy. Do you want that, Your Majesty?” That cut through the numbness, and she turned to where he pointed. Reserves formed up there, among standards proclaiming battle commanders and field medic stations. “You need to rest,” the Edgedancer said. “Go.” She nodded, accepting the wisdom and stumbling away from the battlefield. Her honor guard—reduced to half its former size—followed her in an exhausted clot. Shoulders slumped. Faces ashen. How long had it been? She checked the sun. That can’t be, she thought. Not even two hours? The battle had moved away from this region, leaving corpses like fallen branches behind a storm. As she approached, a figure in black broke off from the reserves and hastened through the mess to meet her. What was Wit doing here? He was trailed by a small group of servants. As they reached her, he snapped his fingers, and the servants rushed forward to towel down Jasnah’s armor. She dismissed her helm, opening her face to the air—which felt cold, despite Emul’s heat. She left the rest of her armor in place. She didn’t dare remove it, in case enemies came hunting her. Wit proffered a bowl of fruit. “What is this?” she asked. “Valet service.” “On the battlefield?” “A place without much Wit, I agree. Or, I should say, a place that only exists when Wit has failed. Still, I should think I would be welcome. To offer a little perspective.” She sighed, but didn’t object further. Most Shardbearers had crews to help keep them fighting. She did need a drink and some more Stormlight. She found herself staring, however. At … well, all of it. Wit remained quiet. He was expert at knowing when to do that, though admittedly he rarely employed the knowledge. “I’ve read about it, you know,” she eventually said. “The feeling you get out there. The
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focus that you need to adopt to cope with it, to keep moving. Simply doing your job. I don’t have their training, Wit. I kept getting distracted, or frightened, or confused.” He tapped her hand. The closed left gauntlet, where she held the Edgedancer’s topaz. She stared at it, then drew in the Light. That made her feel better, but not all of her fatigue was physical. “I’m not the unstoppable force I imagined myself to be,” she said. “They know how to deal with Shardbearers; I couldn’t bring down a Fused in a fair fight.” “There are no fair fights, Jasnah,” Wit said. “There’s never been such a thing. The term is a lie used to impose imaginary order on something chaotic. Two men of the same height, age, and weapon will not fight one another fairly, for one will always have the advantage in training, talent, or simple luck.” She grunted. Dalinar wouldn’t think much of that statement. “I know you feel you need to show the soldiers you can fight,” Wit said softly. “Prove to them, maybe to yourself, that you are as capable on a battlefield as Dalinar is becoming with a book. This is good, it breaks down barriers—and there will be those wrongheaded men who would not follow you otherwise. “But take care, Jasnah. Talented or not, you cannot conjure for yourself a lifetime of experienced butchery through force of will. There is no shame in using the powers you have developed. It is not unfair—or rather, it is no more unfair when the most skilled swordsman on the battlefield falls to a stray arrow. Use what you have.” He was right. She sighed, then took a piece of fruit—gripping it delicately between two gauntleted fingers—and took a bite. The cool sweetness shocked her. It belonged to another world. It washed away the taste of ash, renewing her mouth and awakening her hunger. She’d grown that numb after just two hours of fighting? Her uncle had, on campaign, fought for hours on end—day after day. And he bore those scars, she supposed. “How goes the battle?” she asked. “Not sure,” Wit said. “But the generals were right; the enemy is determined to stand here. They must think they can win, and so let us perpetuate this pitched battle, rather than forcing us into temperamental skirmishes.” “So why do you sneer?” “It’s not a sneer,” he said. “Merely my natural charisma coming through.” He nodded to the side, to where a distant hill—small but steep-sided—flashed with light. Thunder cracked the air despite the open sky. Men tried to rush the position, and died by the dozens. “I think we’re coming to the end of traditional battlefield formations,” Wit said. “They served us well today.” “And perhaps will for a time yet,” Wit said. “But not forever. Once upon a time, military tactics could depend on breaking enemy positions with enough work. Enough lives. But what do you do when no rush—no number of brave charges—will claim the position you need?” “I don’t know,” she said. “But the
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infantry block has been a stable part of warfare for millennia, Wit. It has adapted with each advance in technology. I don’t see it becoming obsolete any time soon.” “We will see. You think your powers are unfair because you slay dozens, and they cannot resist? What happens when a single individual can kill tens of thousands in moments—assuming the enemy will kindly bunch up in a neat little pike block. Things will change rapidly when such powers become common.” “They’re hardly common.” “I didn’t say they were,” he said. “Yet.” She took a drink, and finally thought to order her honor guard to rest. Their captain would send in fresh men. Wit offered to massage her sword hand, but she shook her head. She instead ate another piece of fruit, then some ration sticks he gave her to balance the meal. She accepted a few pouches of spheres as well. But as soon as her fresh honor guard arrived, she marched out in search of a field commander who would know where to best position her. * * * Seven hours later, Jasnah tromped across a quiet battlefield, searching for Wit. He’d visited her several times during the fighting, but it had been hours since their last encounter. She hiked through the remnants of the battle, feeling an odd solitude. As darkness smothered the land, she could almost pretend the scattered lumps were rockbuds, not bodies. The scents, unfortunately, did not go away with the light. And they remained a signal, defiant as any banner, of what had happened here. Blood. The stench of burning bodies. In the end, loss and victory smelled the same. They sounded different though. Cheers drifted on the wind. Human voices, with an edge to them. These weren’t cheers of joy, more cheers of relief. She made for a particular beacon of light, the tent with an illuminated set of coalition flags flying at the same height, one for each kingdom. Inside, she’d be welcomed as a hero. When she arrived, however, she didn’t feel like entering. So she settled down on a stone outside within sight of the guards, who were wise enough not to run and fetch anyone. She sat for some time and stared out at the battlefield, figuring Wit would locate her eventually. “Daunting, isn’t it?” a voice asked from the darkness. She narrowed her eyes, and searched around until she found the source: a small man sitting nearby, throwing sparks from his Herdazian sparkflicker in the night. Each burst of light illuminated the Mink’s fingers and face. “Yes,” Jasnah said. “‘Daunting’ is the right word. More so than I’d anticipated.” “You made a wise choice, going out there,” the Mink said. “Regardless of what the others said. It’s too easy to forget the cost. Not only to the boys who die, but to the ones who live. Every commander should be reminded periodically.” “How did we do?” “We broke the core of their strength,” he said. “Which is what we wanted—though it wasn’t a rout. We’ll need another battle or two
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on nearly this scale before I can tell you if we’ve really won or not. But today was a step forward. Do that often enough, and you’ll inevitably cross the finish line.” “Casualties?” “Never take casualty reports on the night of the battle, Brightness,” he said. “Give yourself a little time to enjoy the meal before you look at the bill.” “You don’t seem to be enjoying yourself.” “Ah, but I am,” he said. “I am staring at the open sky, and wearing no chains.” He stood up, a shadow against the darkness. “I’ll tell the others I’ve seen you, and that you are well, if you’d rather retreat to your tent. Your Wit is there, and unless I misunderstand, something has disturbed him.” She gave the Mink her thanks and stood. Wit was disturbed? The implications of that harried her as she marched through the frontline warcamp to her tent. Inside, Wit sat at her travel table, scribbling furiously. So far, she’d caught him writing in what she thought were five different alien scripts, though he didn’t often answer questions about where they had originated. Today, he snapped his notebook closed and plastered a smile on his face. She trusted him, mostly. And he her, mostly. Other aspects of their relationship were more complicated. “What is it, Wit?” she said. “My dear, you should rest before—” “Wit.” He sighed, then leaned back in his seat. He was immaculate, as always, with his perfectly styled hair and sharp black suit. For all his talk of frivolity, he knew exactly how to present himself. It was something they’d bonded over. “I have failed you,” he said. “I thought I’d taken all necessary precautions, but I found a pen in my writing case that did not work.” “So … what? Is this a trick, Wit?” “One played on me, I’m afraid,” he said. “The pen was not a pen, but a creature designed to appear like a pen. A cremling, you’d call it, cleverly grown to the shape of something innocent.” She grew cold, and stepped forward, her Plate clinking. “One of the Sleepless?” He nodded. “How much do you think it heard?” “I’m uncertain. I don’t know when it replaced my real pen, and I’m baffled how my protections—which are supposed to warn me of entities like this—were circumvented.” “Then we have to assume they know everything,” Jasnah said. “All of our secrets.” “Unfortunately,” Wit said. He sighed, then pushed his notebook toward her. “I’m writing warnings to those I communicated with. The bright side is that I don’t think any of the Sleepless are working with Odium.” Jasnah had only recently learned that the Sleepless were anything other than a myth. It had taken meeting a friendly one—seeing with her own eyes that an entity could somehow be made up of thousands of cremlings working in concert—for her to accept their existence. “If it’s not working for the enemy, then who?” she asked. “Well, I’ve written to my contacts among them, to ask if it is one of theirs keeping a friendly
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eye on amiable allies. But … Jasnah, I know at least one of them has thrown their lot in with the Ghostbloods.” “Damnation.” “I believe it is time,” Wit said, “that I told you about Thaidakar.” “I know of him,” Jasnah said. “Oh, you think you do,” he said. “But I’ve met him, several times. On other planets, Jasnah. The Ghostbloods are not a Rosharan organization, and I don’t think you appreciate the danger they present.…” As we dig further into this project, I am left questioning the very nature of God. How can a God exist in all things, yet have a substance that can be destroyed? —From Rhythm of War, page 21 Light was far more interesting than Navani had realized. It constantly surrounded them, flooding in through windows and beaming from gemstones. A second ocean, white and pure, so omnipresent it became invisible. Navani was able to order texts brought from Kholinar, ones she’d presumed lost to the conquest. She was able to get others from around the tower, and there were even a few with relevant chapters already here in the library room. All were collected at Raboniel’s order and delivered, without question, to Navani for study. She consumed the words. Locked away as she was, she couldn’t do much else. Each day she wrote mundane instructions to her scholars—and hid ciphered messages within them that equated to nonsense. Rushu would know what she was doing from context, but the Fused? Well, let them waste their time trying to figure out a reason to the figgldygrak she wrote. Their confusion might help her slip through important messages later. That didn’t take much time, and she spent the rest of her days studying light. Surely there could be no harm in her learning, as Raboniel wanted. And the topic was so fascinating. What was light? Not just Stormlight, but all light. Some of the ancient scholars claimed you could measure it. They said it had a weight to it. Others disagreed, saying instead that it was the force by which light moved that one could measure. Both ideas fascinated her. She’d never thought of light as a thing. It simply … was. Excited, she performed an old experiment from her books: splitting apart light into a rainbow of colors. All you had to do was put a candle in a box, use a hole to focus the light, then direct it through a prism. Then, curious, she extrapolated and—after several attempts—was able to use another prism to recombine the component colors into a beam of pure white light. Next, she used a diamond infused with Stormlight instead of a candle. It worked the same, splitting into components of light, but with a larger band of blue. Voidlight did the same, though the band of violet was enormous, and the other colors mere blips. That was strange, as her research indicated different colors of light should only make bands brighter or weaker, not increase their size. The most interesting result happened when she tried the experiment on the Towerlight Raboniel
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had collected. It wasn’t Stormlight or Lifelight, but a combination of the two. When she tried the prism experiment with this light, two separate rainbows of colors—distinct from one another—split out of the prism. She couldn’t recombine them. When she tried sending the colors through another prism, she ended up with one beam of white-blue light and a separate beam of white-green light, overlapping but not combined as Towerlight was. She sat at the table, staring at the two dots of light on the white paper. That green one. Could it be Lifelight? She likely couldn’t have told the difference between it and Stormlight, without the two to compare—it was only next to one another that Stormlight looked faintly blue, and Lifelight faintly green. She stood up and dug through the trunk of personal articles she’d had Raboniel’s people fetch for her, looking for her journals. The day of Gavilar’s death was still painful to remember, fraught with a dozen different conflicting emotions. She’d recorded her impressions of that day’s events six separate times, in differing emotional states. Sometimes she missed him. At least the man he had once been, when they’d all schemed together as youths, planning to conquer the world. That was the face he’d continued to show most everyone else after he’d started to change. And so, for the good of the kingdom, Navani had played along. She’d created a grand charade after his death, writing about Gavilar the king, the unifier, the mighty—but just—man. The ideal monarch. She’d given him exactly what he’d wanted, exactly what she’d threatened to withhold. She’d given him a legacy. Navani closed the journal around her finger to hold her place, then took a few deep breaths. She couldn’t afford to become distracted by that tangled mess of emotions. She reopened the journal and turned to the account she’d made of her encounter with Gavilar in her study on the day of his death. He had spheres on the table, she had written. Some twenty or thirty of them. He’d been showing them to his uncommon visitors—most of whom have vanished, never to be seen again. There was something off about those spheres. My eyes were drawn to several distinctive ones: spheres that glowed with a distinctly alien light, almost negative. Both violet and black, somehow shining, yet feeling like they should extinguish illumination instead of promote it. Navani reread the passages, then inspected the pale green light she had split out of the Towerlight. Lifelight, the Light of Cultivation. Could Gavilar have had this Light too? Could she have mistaken Lifelight diamonds for emeralds? Or, would Lifelight in a gemstone appear identical to a Stormlight one at a casual glance? “Why wouldn’t you talk to me, Gavilar?” she whispered. “Why wasn’t I worth trusting.…” She braced herself, then read further in her account—right up to the point where Gavilar plunged the knife in the deepest. You aren’t worthy. That’s why, she read. You claim to be a scholar, but where are your discoveries? You study light, but you are its opposite. A
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thing that destroys light. You spend your time wallowing in the muck of the kitchens and obsessing about whether or not some lighteyes recognizes the correct lines on a map. Storms. That was so painful. She forced herself to linger on his words. You are its opposite. A thing that destroys light … Gavilar had spoken of the same concept as Raboniel, of light and its opposite. Coincidence? Did it have to do with that sphere that bent the air? The guard at her door began humming, then stepped to the side. Navani could guess what that meant. Indeed, Raboniel soon entered, followed by that other Fused who was so often nearby. The femalen with a similar topknot and skin pattern, but a blank stare. Raboniel seemed to like to keep her near, though Navani wasn’t certain if it was for protection or for some other reason. The second Fused was one of the more … unhinged that Navani had seen. Perhaps the more sane ones purposely kept an eye on specific insane ones, to prevent them from hurting themselves or others. The insane Fused walked over to the wall and stared at it. Raboniel walked toward the desk, so Navani rose and bowed to her. “Ancient One. Is something wrong?” “Merely checking on your progress,” Raboniel said. Navani made room so Raboniel could bend down, the orange-red hair of her topknot brushing the table as she inspected Navani’s experiment: a box letting out the illumination from a Towerlight gemstone, which was split through a prism, then recombined through another into two separate streams of light. “Incredible,” Raboniel said. “This is what you do when you experiment, instead of fighting against me? Look, Stormlight and Lifelight. As I said.” “Yes, Ancient One,” Navani said. “I’ve been reading about light. The illumination that comes from the sun or candles cannot be stored in gemstones, but Stormlight can. So what is Stormlight? It is not simply illumination, as it gives off illumination. “It’s as if Stormlight is at times a liquid. It behaves like one when you draw it from a full gemstone into an empty one, mimicking osmosis. While captured, the illumination given off by Stormlight behaves like sunlight: it can be split by a prism, and diffuses the farther it gets from its source. But the Stormlight must be different from the illumination it radiates. Otherwise, how could we hold it in a gemstone?” “Can you combine them?” Raboniel asked. “Stormlight and Voidlight, can they be mixed?” “To prove that humans and singers can be unified,” Navani said. “Yes, of course. For that reason.” She’s lying, Navani thought. She couldn’t be certain, as singers often acted in strange ways, but Navani suspected more here. The strange insane Fused began saying something in their language. She stared up at the wall, then said it louder. Raboniel glanced at her, hummed softly, then looked at Navani. “Have you discovered anything more?” “That’s about it,” Navani said. “I couldn’t get Lifelight and Stormlight to recombine, but I don’t know if this counts as truly splitting
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them apart—as I’ve only split their radiation, not the pooled Light itself.” “I’ve thought about your mixing of oil and water, and I am intrigued. We need to know. Can Stormlight and Voidlight be mixed? What would happen if they were combined?” “You are quite focused on that idea, Ancient One,” Navani said, thoughtfully leaning back. “Why?” “It’s why I came here,” Raboniel said. “Not to conquer? You talk of peace between us. What would that alliance be like, to you, if we could achieve it?” Raboniel hummed a rhythm and opened Navani’s box, taking out the sphere of Towerlight. “The war has stretched so long, I’ve seen this kind of tactic play out dozens of times. We have never held the tower before, true, but we’ve seized Oathgates, taken command posts, and held the capital of Alethela a couple of times. All part of an eternal, endless slog of a war. I want to end it. I need to find the tools to truly end it, for all of our … sanity.” “End how?” Navani pressed. “If we work together like you want, what happens to my people?” Raboniel turned the Towerlight sphere over in her fingers, ignoring the question. “We’ve known about this new Light ever since the tower was created—but I am the one who theorized it was Stormlight and Lifelight combined. You have confirmed this. This is proof. Proof that what I want to do is possible.” “Have you ever heard of spheres that warp the air around them?” Navani asked. “Like they were extremely hot?” Raboniel’s rhythm cut off. She turned toward Navani. “Where did you hear of such a thing?” “I remembered a conversation about it,” Navani lied, “from long ago—with someone who claimed to have seen one.” “There are theories,” Raboniel said. “Matter has its opposite: negative axi that destroy positive axi when combined. This is known, and confirmed by the Shards Odium and Honor. So some have thought … is there a negative to light? An anti-light? I had discarded this idea. After all, I assumed that if there was an opposite to Stormlight, it would be Voidlight.” “Except,” Navani said, “we have no reason to believe that Stormlight and Voidlight are opposites. Tell me, what would happen if this theoretical negative light were to combine with its positive?” “Destruction,” Raboniel said. “Instantaneous annihilation.” Navani felt cold. She’d told her scholars—the ones to whom she’d entrusted Szeth’s strange sphere—to experiment with the air-warping light. To move it to different gemstones, to try using it in fabrials. Could it be that … they’d somehow mixed that sphere’s contents with ordinary Voidlight? “Continue your experiments,” Raboniel said, putting down the sphere. “Anything you need for your science shall be yours. If you can combine Voidlight and Stormlight without destroying them—therefore proving they are not opposites … well, I should like to know this. It will require me to discard years upon years of theories.” “I have no idea where to begin,” Navani protested. “If you let me have my team back…” “Write them instructions and put
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them to work,” Raboniel said. “You have them still.” “Fine,” Navani said, “but I have no idea what I’m doing. If I were trying to do this with liquids, I’d use an emulsifier—but what kind of emulsifier does one use on light? It defies reason.” “Try anyway,” Raboniel said. “Do this, and I’ll free your tower. I’ll take my troops and walk away. This knowledge is worth more than any one location, no matter how strategic.” I’m sure, Navani thought. She didn’t believe for a single heartbeat that Raboniel would do so—but at the same time, this knowledge would obviously give Navani an edge. Why did Raboniel want to prove, or disprove, that the two Lights were opposites? What was her game here? She wants a weapon, perhaps? That explosion I inadvertently caused? Is that what Raboniel is hunting? The Fused by the wall started talking again, louder this time. Again Raboniel hummed and glanced over. “What does she say?” Navani asked. “She … asks if anyone has seen her mother. She’s trying to get the wall to talk.” “Her mother?” Navani thought, cocking her head. She hadn’t thought that the Fused would have parents—but of course they did. The creatures had been born mortal, thousands of years ago. “What happened to her mother?” “She’s right here,” Raboniel said softly, gesturing to herself. “That was another hypothesis of mine that was disproven. Long ago. The thought that a mother and daughter, serving together, might help one another retain their sanity.” Raboniel walked to her daughter and turned her to steer her out the door. And while singers tended not to show emotion on their faces, Navani thought for sure she could read pain in Raboniel’s expression—a wince—as the daughter continued to ask for her mother. All the while staring unseeingly past her. I am not convinced any of the gods can be destroyed, so perhaps I misspoke. They can change state however, like a spren—or like the various Lights. This is what we seek. —From Rhythm of War, page 21 undertext Dalinar touched his finger to the young soldier’s forehead, then closed his eyes and concentrated. He could see something extending from the soldier, radiating into the darkness. Pure white lines, thin as a hair. Some moved, though one end remained affixed to the central point: the place where Dalinar’s finger touched the soldier’s skin. “I see them,” he whispered. “Finally.” The Stormfather rumbled in the back of his mind. I was not certain it could be done, he said. The power of Bondsmiths was tempered by Honor, for the good of all. Ever since the destruction of Ashyn. “How did you know about this ability?” Dalinar said, eyes still closed. I heard it described before I fully lived. Melishi saw these lines. “The last Bondsmith,” Dalinar said. “Before the Recreance.” The same. Honor was dying, possibly mad. “What can I do with these?” Dalinar asked. I don’t know. You see the Connections all people have: to others, to spren, to time and reality itself. Everything is Connected, Dalinar, by a vast
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web of interactions, passions, thoughts, fates. The more Dalinar watched the quivering white lines, the more details he could pick out. Some were brighter than others, for example. He reached out and tried to touch one, but his fingers went through it. Spren have these too, the Stormfather said. And the bond that makes Radiants is similar, but far stronger. I don’t think these little ones are particularly useful. “Surely these mean something,” Dalinar said. Yes, the Stormfather said. But that doesn’t mean they can be exploited. I heard Melishi say something once. Imagine you had two pieces of cloth, one red, one yellow. Before you and your brother parted, you each reached into a bag and selected one—but kept it hidden, putting it away in a box, unseen. You parted, traveling to distant quarters of the land. Then, by agreement, let us say that on the same day at the same time you each opened your box and took out your cloth. Upon finding the red one, you’d instantly know your brother had found the yellow one. You shared something, that bond of knowledge—the Connection exists, but isn’t something that can necessarily be exploited. At least not by most people. A Bondsmith though … Dalinar removed his finger and opened his eyes, then thanked the young soldier—who seemed nervous as he returned to his place near the front of the building, joining the still-disguised Szeth. Dalinar checked his arm fabrial. Jasnah and the others should be returning from the front lines soon. The battle won, the celebrations completed. All without Dalinar. It felt so strange. Here he was, worried about Navani and the tower—but unable to do anything until he had more information. Worried about Adolin off in Shadesmar—separated from him, like the two brothers in the Stormfather’s story. Shared destinies, shared fates, yet Dalinar felt powerless to help either his son or his wife. You do have a part in this, he told himself firmly. A duty. Master these powers. Best Odium. Think on a scale bigger than one battle, or even one war. It was difficult, with how slowly his skills seemed to be progressing. So much time wasted. Was this what Jasnah had experienced all those years, chasing secrets when nobody else had believed her? He had another duty today, in addition to his practice. He’d been putting it off, but he knew he should delay no longer. So, he collected Szeth and walked through the camp, turning his path toward the prison. He needed to talk to Taravangian in person. The building that housed the former king was not a true prison. They hadn’t planned for one of those in the temporary warcamp here in Emul. A stockade, yes. But military discipline was by necessity quick. Anything demanding more than a week or two in confinement usually resulted in a discharge or—for more serious infractions—an execution. Taravangian required something more permanent and more delicate. So they’d blocked off the windows on a sturdy home, reinforced the door, and set guards from among Dalinar’s best soldiers. As Dalinar
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approached, he noted how the upper-floor windows were now filled with stark crem bricks, mortared into place. It had felt wrong to give Taravangian a home instead of a cell—but seeing those windows, it also felt wrong to leave him without sunlight. Dalinar nodded to the salutes at the door, then waited for the guards to undo the locks and pull the door open for him. Nobody worried about his safety or made a comment about his single guard. They all thought the precautions were to prevent Taravangian from being rescued, and would never have wondered whether the Blackthorn could handle himself against an elderly statesman. They didn’t have any inkling, even now, how dangerous Taravangian was. He sat on a stool near the far wall of the main room. He’d put a ruby into the corner and was staring at it. He turned when Dalinar entered, and actually smiled. Storming man. Dalinar waved for Szeth to remain right inside the door as the guards closed and locked it behind them. Then Dalinar approached the corner, wary. He’d charged into many a battle with less trepidation than he now felt. “I had wondered if you would come,” Taravangian said. “It has been nearly two weeks since my betrayal.” “I wanted to be certain I wasn’t somehow being manipulated,” Dalinar said, honestly. “So I waited until certain tasks were accomplished before coming to you, and risking letting you influence me.” Though, deep down, Dalinar admitted that was mostly an excuse. Seeing this man was painful. Perhaps he should have let Jasnah interrogate Taravangian, as she’d suggested. But that seemed the coward’s route. “Ah, certain tasks are accomplished, then?” the old man asked. “By now you’ve surely recovered from the betrayal of the Veden armies. You’ve clashed with Odium’s forces in Emul? I warned Odium that we should have moved earlier, but he was adamant, you see. This was the way he wanted it to happen.” The frankness of it felt like a boot directly to Dalinar’s gut. He steeled himself. “That stool is too uncomfortable for a man of your years. You should be given a chair. I thought they’d left the building furnished. Do you have a bed? And surely they gave you more than a single sphere for light.” “Dalinar, Dalinar,” Taravangian whispered. “If you wish me to have comfort, don’t ask after the chair or the light. Answer my questions and talk to me. I need that more than—” “Why?” Dalinar interrupted. He held Taravangian’s gaze, and was shocked at how much asking the question hurt. He’d known the betrayal was coming. He’d known what this man was. Nevertheless, the words were agonizing as they slipped from his lips again. “Why? Why did you do it?” “Because, Dalinar, you’re going to lose. I’m sorry, my friend. It is unavoidable.” “You can’t know that.” “Yet I do.” He sagged in his seat, turning toward the corner and the glowing sphere. “Such a poor imitation of our comfortable sitting room in Urithiru. Even that was a poor imitation of a real hearth,
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crackling with true flames, alive and beautiful. An imitation of an imitation. “That’s what we are, Dalinar. A painting made from another painting of something great. Perhaps the ancient Radiants could have won this fight, when Honor lived. They didn’t. They barely survived. Now we face a god. Alone. There is no victory awaiting us.” Dalinar felt … cold. Not shocked. Not surprised. He supposed he could have figured out Taravangian’s reasoning; they’d talked often about what it meant to be a king. The discussions had grown more intense, more meaningful, once Dalinar had realized what Taravangian had done to acquire the throne of Jah Keved. Once he’d known that—instead of chatting with a kindly old man with strange ideals—he had been talking to another murderer. A man like Dalinar himself. Now he felt disappointed. Because in the end, Taravangian had let that side of him rule. No longer on the edge. His friend—yes, they were friends—had stepped off the cliff. “We can defeat him, Taravangian,” Dalinar said. “You are not nearly so smart as you think.” “I agree. I was once, though.” He clarified, perhaps noticing Dalinar’s confusion. “I visited the Old Magic, Dalinar. I saw her. Not just the Nightwatcher, I suspect, but the other one. The one you saw.” “Cultivation,” he said. “There is one who can face Odium. There were three gods.” “She won’t fight him,” Taravangian said. “She knows. How do you think I found out we’d lose?” “She told you that?” Dalinar strode forward, squatting down beside Taravangian, coming to eye level with the aged man. “She said Odium would win?” “I asked her for the capacity to stop what was coming,” Taravangian said. “And she made me brilliant, Dalinar. Transcendently brilliant, but just once. For a day. I vary, you know. Some days I’m smart, but my emotions seem stunted—I don’t feel anything but annoyance. Other days I’m stupid, but the tiniest bit of sentimentality sends me into tears. Most days I’m like I am today. Some shade of average. “Only one day of brilliance. One single day. I’ve often wished I’d get another, but I guess that was all that Cultivation wanted me to have. She wanted me to see for myself. There was no way to save Roshar.” “You saw no possible out?” Dalinar said. “Tell me honestly. Was there absolutely no way to win?” Taravangian fell silent. “Nobody can see the future perfectly,” Dalinar said. “Not even Odium. I find it impossible to believe that you, no matter how smart, could have been absolutely certain there was no path to victory.” “Let’s say you were in my place,” Taravangian said. “You saw a shadow of the future, the best anyone has ever seen it. Better, in fact, than any mortal could achieve. And you saw a path to saving Alethkar—everyone you love, everything you know. You saw a very plausible, very reasonable opportunity to accomplish this goal. “But you also saw that to do more—to save the world itself—you would have to rely on such wild bets as to be ludicrous. And
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if you failed at those very, very, very long odds, you’d lose everything. Tell me honestly, Dalinar. Would you not consider doing what I did, taking the rational choice of saving the few?” Taravangian’s eyes glistened. “Isn’t that the way of the soldier? Accept your losses, and do what you can?” “So you sold us out? You helped hasten our destruction?” “For a price, Dalinar,” Taravangian said, staring again at the ruby that was the room’s hearth. “I did preserve Kharbranth. I tried, I promise you, to protect more. But it is as the Radiants say. Life before death. I saved the lives of as many as I could—” “Don’t use that phrase,” Dalinar said. “Don’t sully it, Taravangian, with your crass justifications.” “Still standing on your high tower, Dalinar?” Taravangian asked. “Proud of how far you can see, when you won’t look past your own feet? Yes, you’re very noble. How wonderful you are, fighting until the end, dragging every human to death with you. They can all die knowing you never compromised.” “I made an oath,” Dalinar said, “to protect the people of Alethkar. It was my oath as a highprince. After that, a greater oath—the oath of a Radiant.” “And is that how you protected the Alethi years ago, Dalinar? When you burned them alive in their cities?” Dalinar drew in a sharp breath, but refused to rise to that barb. “I’m not that man any longer. I changed. I take the next step, Taravangian.” “I suppose that is true, and my statement was a useless gibe. I wish you were that man who would burn one city to preserve the kingdom. I could work with that man, Dalinar. Make him see.” “See that I should turn traitor?” “Yes. As you live now, protecting people isn’t your true ideal. If that were the case, you’d surrender. No, your true ideal is never giving up. No matter the cost. You realize the pride in that sentiment?” “I refuse to accept that we’ve lost,” Dalinar said. “That’s the problem with your worldview, Taravangian. You gave up before the battle started. You think you’re smart enough to know the future, but I repeat: Nobody knows for certain what will happen.” Strangely, the older man nodded. “Yes, yes perhaps. I could be wrong. That would be wonderful, wouldn’t it, Dalinar? I’d die happy, knowing I was wrong.” “Would you?” Dalinar said. Taravangian considered. Then he turned abruptly—a motion that caused Szeth to jump, stepping forward, hand on his sword. Taravangian, however, was just turning to point at a nearby stool for Dalinar to sit. Taravangian glanced at Szeth briefly and hesitated. Dalinar thought he caught a narrowing of the man’s eyes. Damnation. He’d figured it out. The moment was over in a second. “That stool,” Taravangian said, pointing again. “I carried it down from upstairs. In case you visited. Would you join me here, sitting as we once did? For old times’ sake?” Dalinar frowned. He didn’t want to take the seat out of principle, but that was prideful. He would sit with
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this man one last time. Taravangian was one of the few people who truly understood what it felt like to make the choices that Dalinar had. Dalinar pulled over the stool and settled down. “I would die happily,” Taravangian said, “if I could see that I was wrong. If you won.” “I don’t think you would. I don’t think you could stand not being the one who saved us.” “How little you know me, despite it all.” “You didn’t come to me, or any of us,” Dalinar said. “You say you were extremely smart? You figured out what was going to happen? What was your response? It wasn’t to form a coalition; it wasn’t to refound the Radiants. It was to send out an assassin, then seize the throne of Jah Keved.” “So I would be in a position to negotiate with Odium.” “That argument is crem, Taravangian. You didn’t need to murder people—you didn’t need to be king of Jah Keved—to accomplish any of this. You wanted to be an emperor. You made a play for Alethkar too. You sent Szeth to kill me, instead of talking to me.” “Pardon, Blackthorn, but please remember the man you were when I began this. He would not have listened to me.” “You’re so smart you can predict who will win a war before it begins, but you couldn’t see that I was changing? You couldn’t see that I’d be more valuable as an ally than as a corpse?” “I thought you would fall, Dalinar. I predicted you would join Odium, if left alive. Either that or you would fight my every step. Odium thought the same.” “And you were both wrong,” Dalinar said. “So your grand plan, your masterful ‘vision’ of the future was simply wrong.” “I … I…” Taravangian rubbed his brow. “I don’t have the intelligence right now to explain it to you. Odium will arrange things so that no matter what choice you make, he will win. Knowing that, I made the difficult decision to save at least one city.” “I think you saw a chance to be an emperor, and you took it,” Dalinar said. “You wanted power, Taravangian—so you could give it up. You wanted to be the glorious king who sacrificed himself to protect everyone else. You have always seen yourself as the man who must bear the burden of leading.” “Because it’s true.” “Because you like it.” “If so, why did I let go? Why am I captured here?” “Because you want to be known as the one who saved us.” “No,” Taravangian said. “It’s because I knew my friends and family could escape if I let you take me. I knew that your wrath would come upon me, not Kharbranth. And as I’m sure you’ve discovered, those who knew what I was doing are no longer involved in the city’s government. If you were to attack Kharbranth, you would attack innocents.” “I’d never do that.” “Because you have me. Admit it.” Storm him, it was true—and it made Dalinar angry enough to draw a single
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boiling angerspren at his feet. He had no interest in retribution against Kharbranth. They, like the Vedens—like Dalinar himself—had all been pawns in Taravangian’s schemes. “I know it is difficult to accept,” Taravangian said. “But my goal has never been power. It has always only been about saving whomever I could save.” “I can’t debate that, as I don’t know your heart, Taravangian,” Dalinar said. “So instead I’ll tell you something I know for certain. It could have gone differently. You could have truly joined with us. Storms … I can imagine a world where you said the oaths. I imagine you as a better leader than I ever could have been. I feel like you were so close.” “No, my friend,” Taravangian said. “A monarch cannot make such oaths and expect to be able to keep them. He must realize that a greater need might arise at any time.” “If so, it’s impossible for a king to be a moral man.” “Or perhaps you can be moral and still break oaths.” “No,” Dalinar said. “No, oaths are part of what define morality, Taravangian. A good man must strive to accomplish the things he’s committed to do.” “Spoken like a true son of Tanavast,” Taravangian said, clasping his hands. “And I believe you, Dalinar. I believe you think exactly what you say. You are a man of Honor, raised to it through a life of his religion—which you might be upending, but it retains its grip on your mind. “I wish I could commend that. Perhaps there was another way out of this. Perhaps there was another solution. But it wouldn’t be found in your oaths, my friend. And it would not involve a coalition of noble leaders. It would involve the sort of business with which you were once so familiar.” “No,” Dalinar said. “There is a just way to victory. The methods must match the ideal to be obtained.” Taravangian nodded, as if this were the inevitable response. Dalinar sat back on his seat, and they sat in silence together for a time, watching the tiny ruby. He hated how this had gone, how the argument forced him into the most dogmatic version of his beliefs. He knew there was nuance in every position, yet … Aligning his methods and his goals was at the very soul of what he’d learned. What he was trying to become. He had to believe there was a way to lead while still being moral. He stared at that ruby, that glimmer of red light, reminiscent of an Everstorm’s lightning. Dalinar had come here expecting a fight, but was surprised to realize he felt more sorrow than he did anger. He felt Taravangian’s pain, his regret for what had occurred. What they had both lost. Dalinar finally stood up. “You always said that to be a king was to accept pain.” “To accept that you must do what others cannot,” Taravangian agreed. “To bear the agonies of the decisions you had to make, so that others may live pure lives. You should know that
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I have said my goodbyes and intentionally made myself worthless to Odium and my former compatriots. You will not be able to use my life to bargain with anyone.” “Why tell me this?” Dalinar said. “You would make it worthless to keep you prisoner. Do you want to be executed?” “I simply want to be clear with you,” Taravangian said. “There is no further reason for me to try to manipulate you, Dalinar. I have achieved what I wanted. You may kill me.” “No, Taravangian,” Dalinar said. “You have lived your convictions, however misguided they may be. Now I’m going to live mine. And at the end, when I face Odium and win, you will be there. I’ll give you this gift.” “The pain of knowing I was wrong?” “You told me earlier that you wished to be proven wrong. If you’re sincere—and this was never about being right or about gaining power—then on that day we can embrace, knowing it is all over. Old friend.” Taravangian looked at him, and there were tears in his eyes. “To that day, then,” he whispered. “And to that embrace.” Dalinar nodded and withdrew, collecting Szeth at the door. He paused briefly to tell the guards to bring Taravangian some more light and a comfortable chair. As they walked away, Szeth spoke from behind him. “Do not trust his lies. He pretends to be done plotting, but there is more to him. There is always more to that one.” Dalinar glanced at the stoic bodyguard. Szeth so rarely offered opinions. “I don’t trust him,” Dalinar said. “I can’t walk away from any conversation with that man, no matter how innocent, without going over and over what he said. That’s part of why I was so hesitant to go in there.” “You are wise,” Szeth said, and seemed to consider the conversation finished. Do not mourn for what has happened. This notebook was a dream we shared, which is itself a beautiful thing. Proof of the truth of my intent, even if the project was ultimately doomed. —From Rhythm of War, page 27 Venli scrambled through the hallways of Urithiru. She shoved past a group of humans who were too slow to get out of the way, then pulled to a halt, breathing heavily as she looked out onto the balcony. That song … That song reminded her of her mother’s voice. But it wasn’t her, of course. The femalen who sat by the balcony—weaving a mat and singing to Peace—was not Jaxlim. Her red skin pattern was wrong, her hairstrands too short. Venli leaned against the stone doorway as others on the balcony noticed her, and the femalen’s voice cut off. She glanced toward Venli and began to hum to Anxiety. Venli turned and walked away, attuning Disappointment. Hopefully she hadn’t frightened the people. A Regal looking so wild must have given them a scare. Timbre pulsed inside her. “I keep hearing her songs,” Venli said. “In the voices of people I pass. I keep remembering those days when I sang with her. I miss
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those days, Timbre. Life was so simple then.” Timbre pulsed to the Lost. “She didn’t have much sense left when my betrayal came,” Venli explained to the spren’s question. “Part of me thinks that a mercy, as she never knew. About me … Anyway it was the storms that eventually killed her. She was with the group that escaped, but they fled into the chasms. And then … we did what we did. The flood that came upon the Plains that day … Timbre, she drowned down there. Dead by my hand as surely as if I’d stabbed her.” The little spren pulsed again, consoling. She felt Venli couldn’t completely be blamed for what she’d done, as the forms had influenced her mind. But Venli had chosen those forms. She often thought back to those early days, after releasing Ulim. Yes, her emotions had changed. She’d pursued her ambition more and more. But at the same time, she hadn’t responded like Eshonai, who had seemed to become a different person entirely when adopting a form of power. Venli seemed more resistant somehow. More herself, regardless of form. That should have made her attune Joy, for she could only guess this had helped her escape Odium’s grip. But it also made her responsible for what she’d done. She couldn’t blame it on spren or forms. She’d been there, giving those orders. Timbre pulsed. I helped. And … yes, she had. When she’d first appeared, Venli had grown stronger, more able to resist. “Thank you,” Venli said. “For that, and for what you continue to do. I’m not worthy of your faith. But thank you.” Timbre pulsed. Today was the day. Raboniel was spending all her time with Navani, and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the difficulty of manipulating the former queen. That left Venli free. She’d secured a small sack of gemstones, some with Voidlight, some with Stormlight. Today she was going to see what it really meant to be on this path of Radiance. She’d already selected an area in which to practice. During morning reports, Venli had learned the Pursuer’s scouts were carefully combing the fifteenth floor. The majority of Raboniel’s soldiers were busy watching the humans, and didn’t often venture to the higher floors. So Venli had chosen a place on the eighth floor—a place that the Pursuer had already searched, but that was far from population centers. The tower up here was silent, and oddly reminded her of the chasms in the Shattered Plains. Those stone pits had also been a place where the sun was difficult to remember—and also a place resplendent with beautiful stone. She ran her fingers across a wall, expecting to feel bumps from the vibrant strata lines, but it was smooth. Like the walls of the chasms, actually. Her mother had died in those pits. Likely terrified, unable to understand what was happening as the water rushed in and … Venli attuned the Lost and put down her small sack of spheres. She took out a Stormlight one first, then glimpsed into Shadesmar. She
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hadn’t again seen the Voidspren she’d spotted near Rlain’s cell, though she’d watched carefully these last few days. She’d eventually put Rlain together with the surgeon and his wife, and delivered all three of them to help care for the fallen Radiants. Shadesmar revealed no Voidspren hiding in cremlings, so she hesitantly returned her vision to the Physical Realm and drew in a breath of Stormlight. That she could do, as she’d practiced it together with Timbre over the months. Stormlight didn’t work like Voidlight did. Rather than going into her gemheart, it infused her entire body. She could feel it raging—an odd feeling more than an unpleasant one. She pressed her hand to the stone wall. “Do you remember how we did this last time?” she asked Timbre. The little spren pulsed uncertainly. That had been many months ago, and had drawn the attention of secretspren, so they had stopped quickly. It seemed, though, that all Venli had needed to do was press her hand against the wall, and her powers had started activating. Timbre pulsed. She wasn’t convinced it would work with Stormlight, not with the tower’s defenses in place. Indeed, as Venli tried to do … well, anything with the Stormlight, she felt as if there were some invisible wall blocking her. She couldn’t push the Stormlight into her gemheart to store it there—not with the Voidspren trapped inside. So Venli let the Light burn off on its own, breathing out to hasten the process. Then she took out a Voidlight sphere. She could get these without too much trouble—but she didn’t dare sing the Song of Prayer to create them herself. She worried about drawing Odium’s attention; he seemed to be ignoring her these days, and she’d rather it remain that way. Timbre pulsed encouragingly. “You sure?” Venli said. “It doesn’t seem right, for some reason, to use his power to fuel our abilities.” Timbre’s pulsed reply was pragmatic. Indeed, they used Voidlight every day—a little of it, stored in their gemheart—to power Venli’s translation abilities. She wasn’t certain if her ability to use Voidlight for Radiant powers came from the fact that she was Regal, or if any singer who managed a bond would be able to do the same. Today, she drew the Voidlight in like Stormlight, and it infused her gemheart fully. The Voidlight didn’t push her to move or act, like the Stormlight had. Instead it enflamed her emotions, in this case making her more paranoid, so she checked Shadesmar again. Still nothing there to be alarmed about. She pressed her hand to the wall again, and tried to feel the stone. Not with her fingers. With her soul. The stone responded. It seemed to stir like a person awaking from a deep slumber. Hello, it said, though the sounds were drawn out. She didn’t hear the word so much as feel it. You are … familiar. “I am Venli,” she said. “Of the listeners.” The stones trembled. They spoke with one voice, but she felt as if it was also many voices overlapping.
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Not the voice of the tower, but the voices of the many different sections of stones around her. The walls, the ceiling, the floor. Radiant, the stones said. We have … missed your touch, Radiant. But what is this? What is that sound, that tone? “Voidlight,” Venli admitted. That sound is familiar, the stones said. A child of the ancient ones. Our friend, you have returned to sing our song again? “What song?” Venli asked. The stone near her hand began to undulate, like ripples on the surface of a pond. A tone surged through her, then it began to pulse with the song of a rhythm she’d never heard, but somehow always known. A profound, sonorous rhythm, ancient as the core of Roshar. The entire wall followed suit, then the ceiling and the floor, surrounding her with a beautiful rhythm set to a pure tone. Timbre, with glee, joined in—and so Venli’s body aligned with the rhythm, and she felt it humming through her, vibrating her from carapace to bones. She gasped, then pressed her other hand to the rock, aching to feel the song against her skin. There was a rightness about this, a perfection. Oh, storms, she thought. Oh, rhythms ancient and new. I belong here. She belonged here. So far, everything she’d done with Timbre had been accidental. There had been a momentum to it. She’d made choices along the way, but it had never felt like something she deserved. Rather, it was a path she had fallen into, and then taken because it was better than her other options. But here … she belonged here. Remember, the stones said. The ground in front of her stopped rippling and formed shapes. Little homes made of stone, with figures standing beside them. Shaping them. She heard them humming. She saw them. Ancient people, the Dawnsingers, working the stone. Creating cities, tools. They didn’t need Soulcasting or forges. They’d dip lengths of wood into the stone, and come out with axes. They’d shape bowls with their fingers. All the while, the stone would sing to them. Feel me, shaper. Create from me. We are one. The stone shapes your life as you shape the stone. Welcome home, child of the ancients. “How?” Venli asked. “Radiants didn’t exist then. Spren didn’t bond us … did they?” Things are new, the stones hummed, but new things are made from old things, and old peoples give birth to new ones. Old stones remember. The vibrations quieted, falling from powerful thrummings, to tiny ripples, to stillness. The homes and the people melted back to ordinary stone floor, though the strata of this place had changed. As if to echo the former vibrations. Venli knelt. After several minutes, breathing in gasps, she realized she was completely out of Voidlight. She searched her sack, and found all of her spheres drained save for a single mark. She’d gone through those spheres with frightening speed. But that moment of song, that moment of connection, had certainly been worth the cost. She drew in this mark, then hesitantly
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placed her hand to the wall again. She felt the stone, willing and pliable, encouraging her and calling her “shaper.” She drew out the Voidlight and it infused her hand, making it glow violet-on-black. When she pressed her thumb into the stone, the rock molded beneath her touch, as if it had become crem clay. Venli pressed her entire hand into the stone, making a print there and feeling the soft—but still present—rhythm. Then she pulled off a piece of the rock and molded it in her fingers. She rolled it into a ball, and the viscosity seemed to match what she needed—for when she held her hand forward and imagined it doing so, the stone ball melted into a puddle. She dropped it then, and it clicked when it hit the ground—hard, but imprinted by her fingers. She picked it up and pressed it back into the wall, where it melded with the stone there as if it had never been removed. Once she was done, she considered. “I want this, Timbre,” she whispered, wiping her eyes. “I need this.” Timbre thrummed excitedly. “What do you mean, ‘them’?” Venli asked. She looked up, noticing lights in the hallway. She attuned Anxiety, but then the lights drew closer. The three little spren were like Timbre: in the shape of comets with rings of light pulsing around them. “This is dangerous,” Venli hissed to Reprimand. “They shouldn’t be here. If they’re seen, the Voidspren will destroy them.” Timbre pulsed that spren couldn’t be destroyed. Cut them with a Shardblade, and they’d re-form. Venli, however, wasn’t so confident. Surely the Fused could do something. Trap them in a jar? Lock them away? Timbre insisted they’d simply fade into Shadesmar in that case, and be free. Well, it was risky, no matter what she said. These spren seemed more … awake than she’d expected though. They hovered around her, curious. “Didn’t you say spren like you need a bond to be aware in the Physical Realm? An anchor?” Timbre’s explanation was slightly ashamed. These were eager to bond Venli’s friends, her squires. That had given these spren access to thoughts and stability in the Physical Realm. Venli was the anchor. She nodded. “Tell them to get out of the tower for now. If my friends start suddenly manifesting Radiant powers—and the stone starts singing in a place others could see—we could find ourselves in serious trouble.” Timbre pulsed, defiant. How long? “Until I find a way out of this mess,” Venli said. She pressed her hand to the wall, listening to the soft, contented hum of the stones. “I’m like a baby taking her first steps. But this might be the answer we need. If I can sculpt us an exit through the collapsed tunnels below, I should be able to sneak us out. Maybe we can even make it seem like we died in a further cave-in, covering our escape.” Timbre pulsed encouragingly. “You’re correct,” Venli said. “We can do this. But we need to take it slowly, carefully. I rushed to find new
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forms, and that proved a disaster. This time we’ll do things the right way.” Eshonai accompanied her mother into the storm. Together they struck out into the electric darkness, Eshonai carrying a large wooden shield to buffer the wind for her mother, who cradled the bright orange glowing gemstone. Powerful gusts tried to rip the shield out of Eshonai’s hand, and windspren soared past, giggling. Eshonai and her mother passed others, notable for the similar gemstones they carried. Little bursts of light in the tempest. Like the souls of the dead said to wander the storms, searching for gemhearts to inhabit. Eshonai attuned the Rhythm of the Terrors: sharp, each beat puncturing her mind. She wasn’t afraid for herself, but her mother had been so frail lately. Though many of the others stood out in the open, Eshonai led her mother to the hollow she’d picked out earlier. Even here, the pelting rain felt like it was trying to burrow through her skin. Rainspren along the top of the ridge seemed to dance as they waved along with the furious tempest. Eshonai huddled down beside her mother, unable to hear the rhythm the femalen was humming. The light of the gemstone, however, revealed a grin on Jaxlim’s face. A grin? “Reminds me of when your father and I came out together!” Jaxlim shouted at Eshonai over the stormwinds. “We’d decided not to leave it to fate, where one of us might be taken and the other not! I still remember the strange feelings of passion when I first changed. You’re too afraid of that, Eshonai! I do want grandchildren, you realize.” “Do we have to talk about this now?” Eshonai asked. “Hold that stone. Adopt the new form! Think about it, not mateform.” Wouldn’t that be an embarrassment. “The lifespren aren’t interested in someone my age,” her mother said. “It simply feels nice to be out here again! I’d been beginning to think I would waste away!” Together they huddled against the rock, Eshonai using her shield as an improvised roof to block the rain. She wasn’t certain how long it would take the transformation to begin. Eshonai herself had only adopted a new form once, as a child—when her father had helped her adopt workform, since the time of changes had come to her. Children needed no form, and were vibrant without one—but if they didn’t adopt a form upon puberty in their seventh or eighth year, they would be trapped in dullform instead. That form was, essentially, an inferior version of mateform. Today, the storm stretched long, and Eshonai’s arm began to ache from holding the shield in place. “Anything?” she asked of her mother. “Not yet! I don’t know the proper mindset.” “Attune a bold rhythm!” Eshonai said. That was what Venli had told them. “Confidence or Excitement!” “I’m trying! I—” Whatever else her mother said was lost in the sound of thunder washing across them, vibrating the very stones, making Eshonai’s teeth chatter. Or perhaps that was the cold. Normally chill weather didn’t bother her—workform was well suited
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to it—but the icy rainwater had leaked through her oiled coat, sneaking down along her spine. She attuned Resolve, keeping the shield in place. She would protect her mother. Jaxlim often complained that Eshonai was unreliable, prone to fancy, but that wasn’t true. Her exploration was difficult work. It was valuable work. She wasn’t unreliable or lazy. Let her mother see this. Eshonai holding her shield in defiance of the rain—in defiance of the Rider of Storms himself. Holding her mother close, warming her. Not weak. Solid. Dependable. Determined. The gemstone in her mother’s hands began to glow brighter. Finally, Eshonai thought, shifting to give her mother more space to enact the transformation, the recasting of her soul, the ultimate connection between listener and Roshar itself. Eshonai shouldn’t have been surprised when the light burst from the gemstone and was absorbed—like water rushing to fill an empty vessel—into her own gemheart. Yet she was. Eshonai gasped, the rhythms disrupting and vanishing—all but one, an overwhelming sound she’d never heard before. A stately, steady tone. Not a rhythm. A pure note. Proud, louder than the thunder. The sound became everything to her as her previous spren—a tiny gravitationspren—was ejected from her gemheart. The pure tone of Honor pounding in her ears, she dropped the shield—which flew away into the dark sky. She wasn’t supposed to have been taken, but in the moment she didn’t care. This transformation was wonderful. In it, a vital piece of the listeners returned to her. They needed more than they had. They needed this. This … this was right. She embraced the change. While it happened, it seemed to her that all of Roshar paused to sing Honor’s long-lost note. * * * Eshonai came to, lying in a puddle of rainwater cloudy with crem. A single rainspren undulated beside her, its form rippling and its eye staring straight upward toward the clouds, little feet curling and uncurling. She sat up and surveyed her tattered clothing. Her mother had left Eshonai at some point during the storm, shouting that she needed to get under cover. Eshonai had been too absorbed by the tone and the new transformation to go with her. She held up her hand and found the fingers thick, meaty, with carapace as grand as human armor along the back of the hand and up the arm. It covered her entire body, from her feet up to her head. No hairstrands. Simply a solid piece of carapace. The change had shredded her shirt and coat, leaving only her skirt—and that had snapped at the waist, so it barely hung on her body. She stood up, and even that simple act felt different than it had before. She was propelled to her feet by unexpected strength. She stumbled, then gasped, attuning Awe. “Eshonai!” an unfamiliar voice said. She frowned as a monstrous figure in reddish-orange carapace stepped over some rubble from the highstorm. He had tied his wrap on awkwardly, plainly having suffered a similar disrobing. She attuned Amusement, though it didn’t look silly. It seemed impossible
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that such a dynamic, muscular figure could ever look silly. She wished there were a rhythm more majestic than Awe. Was that what she looked like too? “Eshonai,” the malen said with his deep voice. “Can you believe this? I feel like I could leap up and touch the clouds!” She didn’t recognize the voice … but that pattern of marbled skin was familiar. And the features, though now covered by a carapace skullcap, were reminiscent of … “Thude?” she said, then gasped again. “My voice!” “I know,” he said. “If you’ve ever wished to sing the low tones, Eshonai, it seems we’ve found the perfect form for it!” She searched around to see several other listeners in powerful armor standing and attuning Awe. There were a good dozen of them. Though Venli had provided around two dozen gemstones, it seemed not all of the volunteers had taken to the new form. Unsurprising. It would take them time and practice to determine the proper mindset. “Were you overwhelmed too?” Dianil said, striding over. Her voice was as deep as Eshonai’s now, but that curl of black marbling along her brow was distinctive. “I felt an overpowering need to stand in the storm basking in the tone.” “There are songs of those who first adopted workform,” Eshonai said. “I believe they mention a similar experience: an outpouring of power, an amazing tone that belonged purely to Cultivation.” “The tones of Roshar,” Thude said, “welcoming us home.” The twelve of them gathered, and though she knew some better than others, there seemed to be an instant … connection between them. A comradery. They took turns jumping, seeing who could get the highest, singing to Joy, as silly as a bunch of children with a new toy. Eshonai hefted a rock and hurled it, then watched it soar an incredible distance. She even drew a gloryspren—with flowing tails and long wings. As the others selected their own rocks to try beating her throw, she heard an incongruous sound. The drums? Yes, those were the battle drums. A raid was happening at the city. The others gathered around her, humming to Confusion. An attack by one of the other families? Now? Eshonai wanted to laugh. “Are they insane?” Thude asked. “They don’t know what we’ve done,” Eshonai said, looking around at the flat expanse of rock outside the city where they’d engaged the highstorm. Many listeners were only now making their way out of the sheltered cracks in the ground. Their best warriors, however, would have stayed at the city in the small, strong structures built there. More than one family had claimed a city right after a storm. It was one of the best times to attack, assuming you could muster your numbers quickly enough. “This is going to be fun,” Melu said to Excitement. “I don’t know if that’s the correct way to think of it,” Eshonai said, though she felt the same eagerness. A desire to charge in. “Though … if we can arrive before the boasts are done…” The others began attuning
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Amusement or Excitement, grinning. Eshonai led the way, ignoring the calls of those leaving the stormshelter. There was a more urgent matter to attend to. As they approached the city, she could see the rival family mustered outside the gateway, lifting spears and making challenges and taunts. They wore white, of course. It was how one knew an attack was happening, rather than a request for trade or other interaction. As long as the boasts were continuing, the actual battle hadn’t yet begun. She’d participated in several fights for cities during her family’s years trying to claim one, and they’d always been nasty affairs—the worst one leaving over a dozen people dead on each side. Well, today they’d see about … She stopped, holding up her hand to make the others pause. They did so—though a part of Eshonai wondered why she had decided to take charge. It simply felt natural. They’d been approaching a fissure in the wall surrounding the city. That wall might once have been grand, but mere hints of its former majesty remained. Most of it had worn low, split by large gaps. Here, a figure moved in the shadows. It looked ominous, dangerous—but then Venli emerged into the light, waving them forward. How had she gotten to the city so quickly? Eshonai approached, and Venli looked her up and down with a slow, deliberate gaze. The drums beat in the background, urging Eshonai forward. Yet that look in her sister’s eyes … “So it worked,” Venli said. “Praise the ancient storms for that. You look good, sister. All bulked up and ready to serve.” “This isn’t who I am,” Eshonai said, gesturing to the form. “But there is a certain … thrill to holding it.” “Go visit Sharefel,” Venli said. “He’s waiting for you.” “The drums…” Eshonai said. “The enemy will continue howling insults for a little while yet,” Venli said. “Visit Sharefel.” Sharefel. The family’s Shardbearer. Upon obtaining this city, by tradition the defeated family had given up the city’s Shards for her family to protect and keep. “Venli,” Eshonai said. “We do not use Shards upon other listeners. Those are for hunts alone.” “Oh, sister,” Venli said to Amusement, walking around her, then inspecting Thude and the others. “If we’re going to ever stand a hope of resisting the humans—when they inevitably turn against us—we must be ready to bear the weapons with which we were blessed.” Eshonai wanted to attune Reprimand at the suggestion, but she remembered the things Dalinar Kholin had said to her. If the listeners weren’t unified, they would be easy pickings. “I want to get to the fight,” Melu said to Excitement, an anticipationspren—like a long streamer connected to a round sphere below—bouncing around behind her. “I think it’s worth trying not to kill anyone,” Thude said to Consideration. “With this form … I feel it would be unfair.” “Bear the Shards,” Venli urged. “Show them the dangers of approaching us to demand battle.” Eshonai pushed past her sister, and the others followed. Venli trailed along behind as well. Eshonai
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didn’t intend to use the Shards against her people, but perhaps there was a purpose to visiting Sharefel. She wound through the city, passing crem-filled puddles and vines stretching out from rockbuds to lap up the moisture. The Shardbearer’s hut was by the front wall, near the drums. It was one of the strongest structures in the city, one they always kept well-maintained. Today the door was open, welcoming. Eshonai stepped into the doorway. “Ah…” a soft voice said to the Rhythm of the Lost. “So it is true. We have warriors once more.” Eshonai stepped forward, finding the elderly listener sitting in his seat, light from the doorway illuminating his pattern of mostly black skin. Feeling it appropriate, even if she didn’t quite know why, she knelt before him. “I have long sung the old songs,” Sharefel said, “dreaming of this day. I always thought I would be the one to find it. How? What spren?” “Painspren,” Eshonai said. “They flee during storms.” “We captured them,” Eshonai said as a couple of others entered the chamber, striking dangerous silhouettes. “Using a human method.” “Ahh…” he said. “I shall try it myself then, at the next storm. But this is a new era, and deserves a new Shardbearer. Which of you will take my Shards? Which of you can bear this burden, and this glory?” The group became still. Not all families had Shardbearers; there were only eight sets among all the listeners. Those who held the proper eight cities were blessed with them, to be wielded only in hunts against greatshells. Those were rare events, where many families would band together to harvest a gemheart for growing crops, then feast upon the slain beast. That … did not seem the future of their Shards anymore. If the humans discover we have these, Eshonai thought, it will be war. “Give the Shards to me,” Melu said to Excitement. She stepped forward, though Thude put his hand upon her breastplate as if to restrain her. She hummed to Betrayal, and he hummed to Irritation. A challenge from both. This could get ugly very quickly. “No!” Eshonai said. “No, none of us will take them. None of us are ready.” She looked to the elderly Shardbearer. “You keep them. With Plate, you are as firm as any warrior, Sharefel. I merely ask that you stand with us today.” The drums stopped sounding. “I will not lift the Blade against other listeners,” Sharefel said to Skepticism. “You will not need to,” Eshonai said. “Our goal today will not be to win a battle, but to promise a new beginning.” * * * A short time later, they stepped out of the city. Once, gates had likely stood in this opening, but the listeners could not create wooden marvels on that scale. Not yet. The battle had already started, though it hadn’t moved to close combat yet. Her family’s warriors would step forward and throw their spears, and the other family would dodge. Then the attacking family would return spears. If someone was hit, one side
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might withdraw and give up the battle. If not, eventually one side might rush the other. Spren of all varieties had been drawn to the event, and spun or hovered around the perimeters. Eshonai’s family’s archers hung back, their numbers a show of strength, though they wouldn’t use their weapons here. Bows were too deadly—and too accurate—to be used in harming others. There … had been times, unfortunately, when in the heat of fighting, traditions had been broken. Normal battles had become horrific massacres. Eshonai had never been part of one of those, but she’d seen the aftereffects during her childhood, when passing a failed assault on another city. Today, both sides stopped as the warforms emerged—accompanied by a full Shardbearer in glistening Plate. Eshonai’s family parted, humming to Awe or Excitement. Eshonai picked up a spear, as did several of the others. They came to a halt in the center of the field. The opposing family scrambled back, their warriors brandishing spears. Their postures—and the few sounds of humming Eshonai could make out—were terrified. “We have found warform,” Eshonai shouted to Joy. An inviting rhythm, not an angry one. “Come, join us. Enter our city, live with us. We will share our knowledge with you.” The others shied away further. One of them shouted, to Reprimand, “You’ll consume us! Make us slaves. We won’t be our own family any longer.” “We are all one family!” Eshonai said. “You fear being made slaves? Did you see the poor slaveforms the humans had? Did you see the armor of the humans, their weapons? Did you see the fineness of their clothing, the wagons they created? “You cannot fight that. I cannot fight that. But together, we could fight that. There are tens of thousands of listeners around the Plains. When the humans return, let us show them a united nation, not a bunch of squabbling tribes.” She gestured to the other warforms, then let her gaze linger on Sharefel in his Shardplate. “We won’t fight you today,” Eshonai said, turning back to the enemy family. “None of this family will fight you today. But if any of you persist, you will personally discover the true might of this form. We are going to approach the Living-Songs family next. You may choose to be the first to join with our new nation, and be recognized for your wisdom for generations. Or you can be left until the end, to come groveling for membership, once our union is nearly complete.” She hefted her spear and threw it—shocking herself with the power behind that throw. It soared over the enemy family and disappeared far into the distance. She heard more than one of them humming to the Rhythm of the Terrors. She nodded to the others, and they joined her, marching into the city. A few seemed annoyed. They wanted a battle to test their abilities. She’d never known listeners to be bloodthirsty, and she didn’t feel this form had changed her that much—but she did admit she felt a certain eagerness. “We should train,” she
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said to the others. “Work out some of our aggression.” “That sounds wonderful,” Thude said. “As long as we can do it in front of everyone else,” Melu said to Irritation. “I’d like them to understand how easily I could have cracked their skulls.” She looked to Eshonai. “But … that was well done. I guess I’m glad I didn’t have to rip anyone apart.” “How did you learn to give speeches?” one of the others asked from behind. “Did you learn that talking to those trees, out in the wilderness?” “I’m not a hermit, Dolimid,” she said to Irritation. “I just like the idea of being free. Of not being locked into one location. As long as we don’t know what is out there, we’re likely to be surprised. Tell me, would we be scrambling now to get our people in order if we’d simply explored our surroundings? We could have been preparing to face the humans for generations, if we hadn’t been so afraid.” The others hummed to Consolation, understanding. Why had Eshonai had so much trouble persuading people before? Was her present ease because of the connection she felt with these listeners, the first warforms? There was so much to learn from this form, so much to experiment with. She felt a spring in her step. Perhaps this would be a better form for exploration—she could leap obstacles, run faster. There was so much possibility. They entered the city, her family’s warriors—those who had been throwing their spears outside—trotting in with them, immediately accepting the authority of the warforms. As they passed Sharefel’s hut, she saw Venli again, lurking in the shadows. This was her victory, after a fashion. Eshonai probably should have gone to congratulate her, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. Venli didn’t need more songs praising her. She already had a big enough ego. Instead, Eshonai led the group to the stormshelter, where the rest of their family was emerging. Each and every one deserved to see the new form up close. I leave you now to your own company. —From Rhythm of War, page 27 Navani hit the tuning fork and touched it to a glowing diamond. When she pulled it away from the gemstone, a tiny line of Stormlight followed behind it—and when she touched the fork to an empty diamond, the Stormlight flowed into it. The transfer would continue as long as the fork made the second diamond vibrate. Sometimes I think of it like a gas, she thought, taking notes on the speed of the flow. And sometimes a liquid. I keep wavering between the two, trying to define it, but it must be neither one. Stormlight is something else, with some of the properties of both a liquid and a gas. After completing this control experiment—and timing how quickly the Stormlight flowed—she set up the real experiment. She did this inside a large steel box her scholars had created for dangerous experiments, Soulcast into shape with a thick glass window at one end. She’d forced the enemy to drag it
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in from the hallway outside, then place it on top of her desk. She wasn’t certain if this would save her from a potential explosion, but since the box didn’t have a top, the force of the destruction should go upward—and as long as she stayed low and watched through the window, it should shield her. It was the best she could do in these difficult circumstances. She told the singers she was taking normal precautions, and tried not to indicate to them that she expected an explosion. And indeed she didn’t—the sphere that had killed her scholars had not been Voidlight, but something else. Something Navani didn’t yet understand. She was convinced that mixing Voidlight and Stormlight wouldn’t create an explosion, but a new kind of Light. Like Towerlight. She began this next experiment the same way as the previous one, drawing out Stormlight and sending it toward another diamond. Then she reached into the box with tongs and placed a Voidlight diamond in the center of the flow, between the Stormlight diamond and the tuning fork. The Stormlight didn’t react to the Voidlight diamond at all. It simply streamed around the dark gemstone and continued to the vessel diamond. As the tuning fork’s tone quieted, the stream weakened. When the fork fell silent, the Stormlight hanging in the air between the two diamonds puffed away and vanished. Well, she hadn’t expected that to do anything. Now for a better test. She’d spent several days working under a singular hypothesis: that if Stormlight reacted to a tone, Voidlight and Towerlight would as well. She’d needed to take a crash course in music theory to properly test the idea. The Alethi traditionally used a ten-note scale—though it was more accurately two five-note quintaves. This was right and orderly, and the greatest and most famous compositions were all in this scale. However, it wasn’t the only scale in use around the world. There were dozens. The Thaylens, for example, preferred a twelve-note scale. A strange number, but the twelve steps were mathematically pleasing. In researching the tone the tuning fork created, she’d discovered something incredible. Anciently, people had used a three-note scale, and a few of the compositions remained. The tone that drew Stormlight was the first of the three notes from this ancient scale. With some effort—it had required sending Fused to Kholinar through the Oathgate to raid the royal music conservatory—she’d obtained tuning forks for the other two notes in this scale. To her delight, Voidlight responded to the third of the three notes. She hadn’t been able to find any indication in her reading that people had once known these three notes correlated to the three ancient gods. No Alethi scholars seemed to know that one of these tones could prompt a reaction in Stormlight, though Raboniel had—upon questioning—said she’d known. Indeed, she’d been surprised to learn that Navani had only recently discovered the “pure tones of Roshar,” as she called them. Navani had tried singing the proper tones, but hadn’t been able to make the light respond. Perhaps she
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couldn’t match the pitch well enough, because Raboniel had been able to do it—singing and touching one gemstone, then moving her finger to another while holding the note. The Stormlight had followed her finger just as it did a tuning fork. Today Raboniel was off tending to other tasks, but Navani could use the tuning forks to replicate her singing ability. Three tones: a note for Honor, a note for Odium, and a note for Cultivation. Yet Vorinism only worshipped the Almighty. Honor. Theology would have to wait for another time. For now, she set up her next experiment. She created streams of Stormlight and Voidlight—drawing each out from a diamond in a corner of her box—and crossed the streams at the center. The two lights pushed upon one another and swirled as they met, but then separated and streamed to their separate forks. “All right,” Navani said, writing in her notebook. “What about this?” She picked up the partially empty Voidlight diamond and then brought out a fresh Stormlight diamond, fully infused. In fabrial science, you captured a spren by creating a gemstone with a kind of vacuum in it—you drew out the Stormlight, leaving a sphere with a void or suction inside. It would then pull in a nearby spren, which was made of Light. It was like any pressure differential. She hoped to be able to refill the Voidlight sphere with Stormlight, now that a portion of the Voidlight had been removed. She hit the tuning fork, started the Stormlight streaming out of its diamond, then tried to get it to go into the Voidlight diamond by making it vibrate to the fork’s tone. Unfortunately, when she touched the tuning fork to the Voidlight diamond, it immediately stopped vibrating and the tone died. Extinguished like a candle doused with water. She was able to get the Stormlight to bunch up against the Voidlight diamond, by putting the fork next to it, but when she got the Voidlight to stream out toward the side of the table—theoretically creating an active pressure differential in that diamond—she couldn’t get it to suck Stormlight in. Only once all of the Voidlight was out could she infuse the diamond with Stormlight. “Like oil and water indeed,” she said, making notes. Yet the way the streams didn’t repel one another when touching felt like proof they weren’t opposites. She rose and—after noting the results of this experiment—went to talk to the Sibling. Navani could easily fool the guards into thinking she was simply strolling among the bookshelves to read a passage or two, as she often did this. Today, she began picking through the books on the back shelf while resting her hand on the Sibling’s vein in the wall. “Are we being watched?” Navani asked. I’ve told you, the Sibling said. Voidspren can’t be invisible in the tower. That protection is different from the one suppressing enemy Surgebinders, and Raboniel hasn’t corrupted it yet. “You also told me you could sense if a Voidspren was near.” Yes. “So … are any near?” No, the
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Sibling said. You do not trust my word? “Let’s just call it a healthy paranoia on my part,” Navani said. “Tell me again of—” You continue to experiment with fabrials, the Sibling interrupted. We need to talk more about that. I do not like what you’ve been doing. “I haven’t captured any more spren,” Navani whispered. “I’ve been working with Stormlight and Voidlight.” Dangerous work. The man who forges weapons can claim he’s never killed, but he still prepares for the slaughter. “If we’re going to restore your abilities, I need to understand how Light works. So unless you have a better idea for me to do this, I’m going to have to continue to use gemstones and—yes—fabrials.” The Sibling fell silent. “Tell me again about Towerlight,” Navani said. This is growing tedious. “Do you want to be saved, or not?” … Fine. Towerlight is my Light, the Light I could create. “Did you need a Bondsmith to make it?” No. I could make it on my own. And my Bondsmith could create it, through their bond with me. “And that Light, in turn, powered the tower’s defenses.” Not only the defenses. Everything. “Why does it no longer work?” I already explained that! “This is a common investigative method,” Navani said calmly, flipping through her book with her left hand. “My goal is to make you restate facts in different ways, leading you to explain things differently—or to remember details you forgot.” I haven’t forgotten anything. The defenses no longer work because I don’t have the Light for them. I lost most of my strength when I lost the ability to hear the two pure tones of Roshar. I can make only a tiny amount of Light, enough to power a few of the tower’s basic fabrials. “Two tones of Roshar?” Navani said. “There are three.” No, there are two. One from my mother, one from my father. The tone of Odium is an interloper. False. “Could part of the reason you lost your abilities relate to that tone becoming a pure tone of Roshar? Odium truly becoming one of the three gods?” I … don’t know, the Sibling admitted. Navani noted this hypothesis. We need to find a way to restore my Towerlight, the Sibling said, and remove the Voidlight from my system. “And that,” Navani said, “is exactly what I’m working on.” If she could figure out how to combine two Lights, then it would be the first step toward creating Towerlight. She clearly needed an emulsifier, a facilitator. What kind of emulsifier could “stick” to Stormlight and make it mix with Voidlight? She shook her head, taking her hand off the vein on the wall. She’d been here too long, so she took a book and strolled to the front of the room, lost in thought. However, as she reached her desk, she found a small box waiting for her. She glanced at the guard by the door, who nodded. Raboniel had sent it. Navani opened the box, breathless, and found a brightly glowing diamond. At first glance, it
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seemed to be another Stormlight sphere. But as she held it up and placed it next to a true one, she could see the green tinge to the one Raboniel had sent. Lifelight. She’d promised to get some for Navani. “Did she say how she acquired this?” Navani asked. The guard shook his head. Navani had a guess. The Sibling had lost sight of Lift, but had explained something was odd about that girl. Something Navani held as a hope that might get them out of this. Hands steady—though anticipationspren shot up around her—Navani used the middle tuning fork on this new diamond. And it worked: she was able to draw Lifelight out and send it streaming into a gemstone. Towerlight was Lifelight and Stormlight combined. So perhaps Lifelight—the Light of Cultivation—had some property that allowed it to mix with other Lights. Holding her breath, Navani repeated her earlier experiments, except with Lifelight instead of Voidlight. She failed. She couldn’t get Stormlight and Lifelight to mix. No use of tuning forks, no touching of the streams or clever use of gemstone differentials, worked. She tried mixing Voidlight and Lifelight. She tried mixing all three. She tried every experiment she’d listed in her brainstorming sessions earlier. Then she did them all again, until—because each experiment allowed a little Lifelight to vanish into the air—she’d used it all up. Shooing away exhaustionspren, she stood, frustrated. Another dead end. This was as bad as the morning’s experiments, when she’d tried everything she could think of—including using two tuning forks at once—to make Towerlight move from its gemstone. She’d failed at that as well. She gathered all the used diamonds and deposited them by the door guard to be picked up and reinfused—there was a highstorm coming today. After that, she paced, frustrated. She knew she shouldn’t let the lack of results bother her. Real scientists understood that experiments like this weren’t failures; they were necessary steps on the way to discovery. In fact, it would have been remarkable—and completely unconventional—to find a good result so early in the process. The problem was, scientists didn’t have to work under such terrible deadlines or pressures. She was isolated, each moment ticking them closer to disaster. The only lead she had was in trying to mix the Lights, in the hope that she could eventually create more Towerlight to help the Sibling. She wandered the room, pretending to inspect the spines of books on the shelves. If I make my discovery, Raboniel will know, since a guard is always watching. She’ll force the answer out of me, and so even in these attempts to escape, I’m furthering her goals—whatever those are. Navani was on the cusp of something important. The revelations she’d been given about Stormlight fundamentally changed their understanding of it and the world at large. Three types of power. The possibility they could be blended. And … possibly something else, judging by that strange sphere that warped the air around it. Her instincts said that this knowledge would come out eventually. And the ones who controlled
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it, exploited it, would be the ones who won the war. I need another plan, she decided. If she did discover how to make Towerlight, and if the shield did fall, Navani needed a way to isolate the crystal pillar for a short time. To defend it, perhaps to work on it. Navani gripped her notebook in her safehand, to appear as if she were writing down the titles of books. Instead she quickly took notes on an idea. She’d been told she could have anything she needed, so long as it was relevant to her experiments. They also let her store equipment out in the hallway. So, what if she created some fabrial weapons, then stored them in the hallway? Innocent-looking fabrials that, once activated, could be used to immobilize guards or Fused coming to stop her from working on the pillar? She sketched out some ideas: traps she could create using seemingly innocent fabrial parts. Painrials to administer agony and cause the muscles to lock up. Heating fabrials to burn and scald. Yes … she could create a series of defenses in the form of failed experiments, then store them “haphazardly” in crates along the hallway. She could even arm them by using Voidspren gems, as she could demand those for use in her experiments. These plans soothed her; this was something meaningful she could do. However, the experiments, and their potential, still itched at her. What was Raboniel’s true goal? Was it to make a weapon herself—like the one that had destroyed the room and Navani’s two scientists? A few hours had passed, so it wouldn’t look strange if she went to the back of the stacks again. She picked up a book and settled down in a chair she’d placed nearby. Although she wasn’t directly visible to the guard, she pretended to read as she reached her hand to the wall and touched the vein. “Any spren nearby?” Navani asked. I cannot feel any, the Sibling said with a resigned tone. “Good. Tell me, do you know anything of the explosion that happened on the day of the invasion? It involved two of my scientists in a room on the fifth floor.” I felt it. But I do not know what caused it. “Have you ever heard of a sphere, or a Light, that warps the air around it? One that appears to be Voidlight unless you look at it long enough to notice the warping effect?” No, the Sibling said. I’ve never heard or seen anything like that—though it sounds dangerous. Navani considered, tapping her finger against the wall. “I haven’t been able to get any of the Lights to mix. Do you know of any potential binding agent that could make them stick together? Do you know how Towerlight is mixed from Stormlight and Lifelight?” They don’t mix, the Sibling said. They come together, as one. Like I am a product of my mother and father, so Towerlight is a product of me. And stop asking me the same questions. I don’t care about your “investigative
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methods.” I’ve told you what I know. Stop making me repeat myself. Navani took a deep breath, calming herself with effort. “Fine. Have you been able to eavesdrop on Raboniel at all?” Not much. I can only hear things near a few people that are relevant. I can see the Windrunner. I think the Edgedancer has been surrounded by ralkalest, which is why she’s invisible. Also, I can see one particular Regal. “Any ideas on why that is?” No. Regals weren’t often in the tower in the past, and never this variety. She can speak all languages; perhaps this is why I can see near her. Though she vanishes sometimes, so I cannot see all she does. I can also see near the crystal pillar, but with the field set up, I hear mere echoes of what is happening outside. “Tell me those, then.” It’s nothing relevant. Raboniel is trying her own experiments with the Light—and she hasn’t gotten as far as you have. This seems to frustrate her. Curious. That did a little for Navani’s self-esteem. “She really wants this hybrid Light. I wonder … maybe fabrials made with a hybrid Stormlight-Voidlight would work in the tower, even if the protections were turned against her again. Maybe that is why she wants it.” You are foolish to presume to know what one of the Fused wants. She is thousands of years old. You can’t outthink her. “You’d better hope that I can.” Navani flipped a few pages in her notebook. “I’ve been thinking of other ways out of this. What if we found you someone to bond, to make them Radiant? We could—” No. Never again. “Hear me out,” Navani said. “You’ve said you’ll never bond a human again, because of the things we do to spren. But what about a singer? Could you theoretically bond one of them?” We are talking of resisting them, and now you suggest I bond one? That seems insane. “Maybe not,” Navani said. “There’s a Parshendi in Bridge Four. I’ve met him, and Kaladin has vouched for him. He claims that his people rejected the Fused long ago. What about him? Not a human. Not someone who has ever created a fabrial—someone who knows the rhythms of Roshar.” The Sibling was silent, and Navani wondered if the conversation was over. “Sibling?” she asked. I had not considered this, they said. A singer who does not serve Odium? I will need to think. It would certainly surprise Raboniel, who thinks that I am dead or sleeping. In any case, I cannot form a bond now, with the protections up. I would need him to touch my pillar. “What if I had him here?” Navani said. “Ready to try when the shield falls? And with some distractions in place to give you time to talk to him.” I cannot form a bond with just anyone, the Sibling said. In the past I spent years evaluating Bondsmith squires to select one who fit me exactly. Even they eventually betrayed me, though not as badly as other humans. “Can
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we really afford pickiness right now?” It’s not pickiness. It is the nature of spren and the bond. The person must be willing to swear the correct oaths, to unite instead of divide. They must mean it, and the oaths must be accepted. It is not simply a matter of throwing the first person you find at me. Beyond that, since I cannot create Towerlight, they will not be able to either. A bond would do nothing unless we solve the problems with my powers. It would be better if you focused on that problem instead. “Fine,” Navani said, sensing an opening. “But I need time to research all of this. It is difficult to work while feeling I have a knife to my neck. If I knew the nodes were being defended, that would take the pressure off me. Tell me where one of them is. I have a list here of plans to protect it. I can read them off to you.” The Sibling was silent, so Navani continued. “We can have Kaladin start searching—loudly and obviously—on a different level, leading the enemy on a chase in the wrong direction. In the meantime, while they’re distracted, we could sneak up to the node and reinforce its defenses. “We have some crem that hasn’t hardened yet, kept wet in the tower stores. We could seal up the node location entirely. Maybe run the crem through with some training sheaths for Shardblades, so it would be extra difficult to cut. That could earn us hours to get troops in to defend it, if it does get discovered. “Or, if I knew where one of the nodes was, I might be able to have Kaladin begin infusing it with more Stormlight. That might counteract the Voidlight that Raboniel has used on you. If she can corrupt you through a node, could we not perhaps cleanse you through one? I think it’s worth trying, because my efforts to create Towerlight are stalled.” She waited, gripping her pad tightly. Her other ideas were sketchier than those. She wouldn’t use them unless these arguments didn’t work. So good with words. Humans are like persuasionspren. I can’t speak with one of you without being changed. Navani continued to wait. Silence was best now. Fine, the Sibling said. One of the two remaining nodes is in the well at the center of the place you call the Breakaway market. It is near other fabrials there. One hidden among many. “On the first floor?” Navani asked. “That’s such a populated area!” All of the nodes are down low. There was talk of installing others farther away, but my Bondsmith did not have the resources—my falling-out with the humans was driving them away. The project wasn’t completed. Only the four on the first few floors were completed. Navani frowned—though the well was a clever place to hide a fabrial. Many of the workings of the tower remained mysterious to modern scholars, so a cluster of gemstones working as pumps might indeed camouflage another fabrial. In fact, Navani had studied drawings
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of those pumps herself. Had this mechanism been there, unnoticed, all along? This is a good node for your agent to visit, the Sibling said. Because it can be reached from the back ways. Have your Windrunner visit it through the aquifers, and we will see if—by infusing it with Stormlight—he can counteract the corruption. It might not work, as I am not simply of Honor or of Cultivation. But … it could help. “And the final node?” Navani asked. Is mine alone, the Sibling replied. Show me that your work on this one helps, human, and then we can speak further. “A fair compromise,” Navani said. “I am willing to listen, Sibling.” She left the wall and grabbed some books to read, to cover what she’d been doing. And she did need to study more, after all. She’d have loved to have more books on music theory, but this archive didn’t have anything more specific on the topic. She did have Kalami’s notes about the gemstones they’d discovered that used certain buzzing vibrations as substitutes for letters. Perhaps those would help. She was browsing through those notes, walking idly among the stacks, when she saw the Sibling’s light flashing. She hurried over, nervous about how bright the light was. She glanced at the guard, hoping he hadn’t seen, and put her hand to the wall. “You need to—” They’ve found the node in the well. We’re too late. “What? Already?” I am as good as dead. “Contact Kaladin.” They already have the node, and he’s too far away. We— “Contact Kaladin,” Navani said. “Now. I’ll find a way to distract Raboniel.” Opposites. Opposites of sounds. Sound has no opposite. It’s merely overlapped vibration, the same sound, but sound has meaning. This sound does, at least. These sounds. The voices of gods. —From Rhythm of War, final page Kaladin awoke to something dark attacking him. He screamed, struggling against the clinging shadows. They’d been assaulting him for an eternity, wrapping around him, constricting him. Voices that never relented, fingers of shadow that drilled into his brain. He was in a dark place full of red light, and the shadows laughed and danced around him. They tormented him, flayed him, stabbed him again and again and wouldn’t let him die. He fought back the hands that gripped, then he crawled across the floor, pulling up against the wall and breathing shallowly. The rushing sounds of his own blood in his ears drowned out the laughter. One shadow continued watching him. One terrible shadow. It stared at him, then turned and took something from beside the wall before vanishing. Vanishing … out the door. Kaladin blinked, and the shadows melted from his mind. The terrible laughter, the phantom pain, the whispers. His mind always interpreted those as Moash’s voice. A nightmare. Another nightmare. “Kaladin?” Syl asked. She sat on the floor in front of him. He blinked, glancing sharply one way, then the other. The room seemed to settle into place. Teft sleeping on the stone bench. A few chips set out for light.
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Fearspren, like globs of goo, undulating in the corners. “I…” He swallowed, his mouth dry. “I had a nightmare.” “I know.” He carefully relaxed his posture, embarrassed at how he must appear huddled up by the wall. Like a child frightened of the dark. He couldn’t afford to be a child. Too much depended on him. He stood up, his clothing sweaty. “What time is it?” “Midday,” she said. “My schedule is completely off.” He tried to pull himself together as he stepped over to get a drink, but he stumbled and caught himself on the ledge. He had to grip it tightly as the nightmare threatened to resurface. Stormfather. This was the most oppressive one yet. “Kaladin…” Syl said. He took a long drink, then froze. His spear was gone from beside the door. “What happened?” he demanded, slamming the tin cup down harder than he’d intended. “Where is my spear!” “The Sibling contacted us,” she said, still sitting on the floor. “That’s why Dabbid tried to wake you. Another node has been found—inside the well in the market. The enemy is there already.” “Storms!” Kaladin said. “We need to go.” He reached for Navani’s fabrial and his pouch of gems. He found the latter, but the fabrial was gone. “Dabbid?” Kaladin demanded. “You were huddled there muttering,” Syl said, finally lifting into the air. “And you didn’t seem to be able to see me. The Sibling is terrified. I could hear them while sitting on Dabbid’s shoulder. And so…” Kaladin grabbed the bag of gems and dashed out of the room, Syl following as a ribbon of light. He caught up with Dabbid at the first stairwell—just two hallways over. The shorter bridgeman stood with the spear and fabrial held close to his chest, staring down with a panicked expression. He jumped as he saw Kaladin, then let out a loud relieved sigh. Kaladin took the fabrial. “You were going to go try to stop the Fused,” Kaladin said. “Because I didn’t get up.” Dabbid nodded. “Dabbid, you barely know how to use a spear,” Kaladin said, quickly strapping on the fabrial. He’d had only four days of practice with the device. It would have to be enough. Dabbid didn’t respond, of course. He helped Kaladin strap the fabrial on, then held out the spear. Kaladin took it, then gave the Bridge Four salute. Dabbid returned it. Then, remarkably, said something, in a voice soft and gravelly. “Life. Before. Death.” Storms. Those were the first words Kaladin had ever heard from the man. He grinned, gripping Dabbid by the shoulder. “Life before death, Dabbid.” Dabbid nodded. There wasn’t time for more; Kaladin turned away from the stairwell and began running again. Screams from the nightmare echoed in his head, but he didn’t have time for weakness. He had to stop the corruption of that gemstone—and barring that, he had to destroy the node. That was the only way to buy Navani the time she needed. He had to get there quickly, which meant he couldn’t use the stairs. He’d have
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to go straight down through the atrium. * * * “I need to see the Lady of Wishes immediately!” Navani proclaimed to the guard. “I’ve made a discovery of incalculable value! It cannot wait for—” The guard—a Regal stormform—simply started walking and gestured for her to follow. He didn’t even need the full explanation. “Excellent,” Navani said, joining him in the hallway. “I’m glad you see the urgency.” The guard walked her to the large stairwell that led up to the ground floor. A Deepest One stood here, her fingers laced before her. “What is it?” she asked in heavily accented Alethi. “A sudden illness?” “No,” Navani said, taken aback. “A discovery. I think I’ve found what the Lady of Wishes was searching for.” “But of course you can’t share it with anyone but Raboniel herself,” the Fused said, a faintly amused rhythm to her voice. “Well, I mean…” Navani trailed off. “I’ll see if I can reach her via spanreed,” the Fused said. “I’ll tell her it is most urgent.” Storms. They were expecting an attempted distraction from Navani. That thought was reinforced as the Fused glided to a cabinet that had been set up by the wall. She carefully, but slowly, selected a spanreed from the collection stored there. It was a reverse distraction. They’d known Navani would attempt something like this. But how had they known that she would know that … She stepped back, her eyes widening as the terrible implications struck her. Kaladin was in serious danger. * * * Barefoot and armed with a spear, Kaladin burst out onto the walkway around the atrium, then hurled himself out into the open space eleven stories in the air. Full of Stormlight—hoping it would save him in case this didn’t work—he pointed his hand directly beneath him and engaged Navani’s fabrial. As soon as it was activated, he lurched to a halt in the air, hovering—his muscles straining as he was basically doing a handstand with one hand. But as long as the counterweight in the distant shaft was held motionless, Kaladin would be as well. He gripped the bar across his left hand and began to fall downward, almost as if he were Lashed. In fact, he was counting on it seeming like nothing was wrong with his powers—that he was a full Windrunner ready for battle. He wouldn’t be able to keep up such a facade for long, but perhaps it would gain him an advantage. His descent—at a speed a notch below insane—gave him a view out the enormous atrium window, running all the way up the wall to his right. Strangely, it was dark outside, though Syl had said it was midday. He didn’t have to ask for clarification, as a flash of lightning bespoke the truth. A highstorm. He still found it incredible that he could be so deep within a tower that one could be going on without him realizing it. Even in the best stormshelters, you usually felt the rumbles of thunder or the anger of the wind. His fall certainly
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drew attention. Heavenly Ones dressed in long robes turned from their midair meditations. Shouts rose from Regals or singers along the various levels. He wasn’t certain if Leshwi was among them or not, as he passed too quickly. Using the fabrial, he slowed himself before he hit the ground, then deactivated the device entirely and fell the last five feet or so. Stormlight absorbed that drop, and he startled dozens of people—many of them human—who hadn’t heard the disturbance above. Commerce was now allowed and encouraged by the Fused, and the atrium floor had become a secondary market—though a more transient one than the Breakaway a short distance off. That was where he would find the well. Kaladin’s luminescence would be starkly visible against the dark window, lit in flashes. The shouts of alarm above were swallowed in the voluminous atrium as Kaladin oriented himself, then ran for a stack of crates. He took a few steps up them to launch into the air some ten feet high, then he pointed his left hand and engaged Navani’s device. He flew like a Windrunner, his body upright, left arm held at chest height, elbow bent. It might look like he was using Lashings. Though Windrunners sometimes dove and flew headfirst like they were swimming, just as often they would fly “standing” up straight—like he did now. He did tuck his legs up as he went soaring over the heads of the people, who ducked. Syl zipped along beside him, imitating a stormcloud. People cried out, surprised—but also excited—and Kaladin worried about what he was showing them. He didn’t want to inspire a revolt that would get hundreds killed. The best he could hope for was to get in, destroy the fabrial, and get out alive. That goal whispered of a much larger problem. Navani had said there were four nodes. Today, he’d try to destroy the third. At this rate, the last one would fall in a few days, and then what? He pushed that thought out of his mind as he flew along the top of a corridor, inches from the textured stone ceiling. He didn’t have time for second-guessing, or for dwelling on the crippling darkness and anxiety that continued to scratch at his mind. He had to ignore that, then deal with the effects later. Exactly as he’d been doing far too long now. “Watch for an ambush,” he told Syl as they burst from the corridor and into the Breakaway market. This large room, truly cavernous, was four stories high and packed with shops along the ground. Many were along roadways that Navani—reluctantly adapting to the will of the people—had laid out in the way they wanted. Other parts were snarls of tents and semipermanent wooden structures. Central to the layout was the enormous well. Kaladin wasn’t high enough to see over the buildings and make it out, but he knew the location. The Edgedancer clinic was nearby, though it was now staffed by ordinary surgeons. He hoped his parents and little brother had made it safely there, where
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the other surgeons would hide them. They’d checked a few days back and found his father’s clinic empty. Storms. If he lost his family … “The Pursuer!” Syl said. “He was waiting by the other entrance.” Kaladin reacted just in time, deactivating the fabrial and dropping to the ground, where he tucked and rolled. The relentless Fused appeared from his ribbon of light and dropped to the ground too, but Kaladin rolled to his feet out of the creature’s reach. “Your death,” the creature growled, crouched among terrified marketgoers, “is growing tedious, Windrunner. How is it you recovered all of your Lashings?” Kaladin launched himself into the air, activating the device and shooting upward. It jerked his arm painfully, but he’d grown used to that—and Stormlight worked to heal the soreness. He’d also practiced his old one-handed spear grips. Hopefully that training would serve him today. He wasn’t nearly as maneuverable with this device as he was with Lashings. Indeed, as the Pursuer gave chase as a ribbon, Kaladin’s only real recourse was to cut the device and drop past him. Near the ground, Kaladin pointed his hand to the side and reengaged the device, then went shooting out across the crowd in the general direction of the well. Maybe— He lurched to a stop as the first of the device’s weights bottomed out. A heartbeat later the Pursuer slammed into him, grabbing him around the neck and hanging on. “Kaladin!” Syl shouted. “Heavenly Ones! Over a dozen of them! They’re streaming in through the tunnels.” “Good,” Kaladin said with a grunt, dropping his spear and grappling against the Pursuer with the hand he could move. “Good?” she asked. He couldn’t both grapple and twist the dial on his fabrial—the one that would activate the second weight. But he could deactivate the device using one hand, so he did that, dropping them ten feet to the ground. The Pursuer hit first with a grunt. He hung on though, rolling Kaladin to try to pin him. “Turn … the dial,” Kaladin said to Syl, using both hands to struggle with the Pursuer. “When you die,” the creature said in his ear, “I will find the next Radiant your spren bonds and kill them too. As payment for the trouble you have given me.” Syl zipped down to his left wrist and took the shape of an eel, pushing against the raised section at the center of the dial. She could turn a page, lift a leaf. Would she be strong enough to— Click. Kaladin twisted in the Pursuer’s grip, barely managing to press his left hand to the creature’s armored chest. Activating the device sent them both moving upward—but slowly. Storms, Kaladin hadn’t thought this through. He’d only be able to lift as much as the counterweight. Apparently he and the Pursuer together were about that heavy. Fortunately, rather than taking advantage of the slow movement, the Pursuer paused and glanced at Kaladin’s hand, trying to figure out what was happening. So, as they inched upward, Kaladin was able to rip his right
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hand free. He reached for the scalpel he’d affixed in a makeshift sheath at his belt, then brought it up and rammed it into the Pursuer’s wrist, slicing the tendons there. The creature immediately let go, vanishing, leaving a husk behind. Once that dropped off of Kaladin, he immediately went darting up into the sky, pulled by his hand in an awkward motion that nearly ripped his arm from its socket. “This … isn’t that effective, is it?” Syl asked. “No,” Kaladin said, slowing himself by relaxing his grip. He went to draw in more Stormlight, but realized he still had plenty raging in his veins. That was one advantage of the fabrial; he didn’t use up Light nearly as quickly. The Heavenly Ones circled him in the air, but kept their distance. Kaladin searched for the Pursuer—the creature had used two bodies. He had a third one to waste before the fight became dangerous for him, so he wouldn’t retreat yet. There, Kaladin thought, noting the red ribbon weaving between Heavenly Ones. The motions looked timid, uncommitted, and Kaladin took a moment to figure out why. The Pursuer was trying to delay Kaladin; each moment wasted was another one that might lead to the Sibling being corrupted. Below, the market streets were quickly emptying of people. Kaladin’s fears about them revolting weren’t being realized, fortunately—but he couldn’t spend forever in a standoff with the Pursuer. So he disengaged the device and started falling. This finally made the Pursuer dart for him, and Kaladin quickly reengaged the device—lurching to a halt. He twisted—though he couldn’t move his left arm—and prepared his knife. This sudden motion made the Pursuer back off, however. Could the creature … be afraid? That seemed implausible. Kaladin didn’t have time to reflect, as he needed to engage the Pursuer a third time for his plan to work. So he turned away, inviting the attack—and receiving it as the Pursuer committed, darting in and forming a body that grabbed for Kaladin. Despite trying to speed away, Kaladin wasn’t quite able to evade the creature’s grip. Kaladin was forced to let the Pursuer grab him around the neck as he stabbed the creature in the arm between two plates of carapace, trying to sever the tendons. The monster grunted, his arm around Kaladin’s throat. They continued to soar about thirty feet off the ground. Kaladin ignored the tight grip and maneuvered the scalpel. Perhaps if he could force the Pursuer to waste Voidlight healing … Yes. Cut enough times to be worried, the Pursuer let go and flew away, seeking a place to recover. Panting, Kaladin used the device to drop to the ground. He landed on an empty street between two tents. People huddled inside both, crowding them. Kaladin forced himself to jog to where he’d dropped his spear. Heavenly Ones circled above, preparing to attack. Syl moved up beside him, watching them. Two dozen now. Kaladin searched them, hoping … There. He raised his spear toward Leshwi, who hovered apart from the others, wearing clothing too long for
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practical battle—even in the air. This event had caught her unaware. Please, he thought. Accept the fight. That was his best hope. He couldn’t fight them all at once; he could barely face the Pursuer. If he wanted any chance of getting to the node, he’d need to fight a single opponent—one who wasn’t as relentless as the Pursuer. He worried he’d already wasted too much time. But if he could get Leshwi to agree to a duel … She raised her spear toward him. “Syl,” he said, “go to the well and find the fabrial of the node. It’s probably a sapphire, and should have a glass sphere nearby like the one we saw before.” “Right,” she said. “It will probably be underwater. That’s what the Sibling said. Near the pump mechanisms. Can … can you swim?” “Won’t need to, with Stormlight to sustain me and the fabrial to move me,” Kaladin said, lifting his hand and rising into the air above the market. “But the well is likely under heavy guard. Our best chance to destroy the fabrial will be for me to break from this fight and fly straight down to it, then hit the device in one blow before anyone realizes what I’m doing. I’ll need you to guide me.” “Sounds good.” She hesitated, looking toward him. “I’ll be all right,” he promised. She flew off to do as he requested. He might be too late already. He could feel something changing. A greater oppression, a heaviness, was settling upon him. He could only assume it was the result of the Fused corrupting the Sibling. Well, he couldn’t move in that direction until Syl had the way prepared for him, so this would have to do. He leveled out in the air opposite Leshwi, his hand still held upward above him. The pose made him look overly dramatic, but he tried to appear confident anyway. Leshwi wore the same body as last time, muscular, tall, wrapped in flowing black and white clothing. Her lance was shorter than normal, perhaps intended for indoor fighting. Right. Well, he hoped to give a good showing in this fight, long enough to give Syl time to scout for him. So he cut the fabrial and dropped in the air, spinning and giving himself a few seconds of free fall. He felt almost like a real Windrunner—which was dangerous, as he almost tried to sculpt his fall with his hands in the wind. Fortunately, he remembered to engage the device as he neared the rooftops. He lurched to a stop with a painful jolt, his arm bent, his elbow held close to his side. He had the most stability this way, his muscles keeping him as if he were standing upright with his left arm tucked in to keep his center of gravity close and tight. He gripped the device’s bar and his left hand tugged him forward, zooming over the roofs of the shops. It made for a pitiful approximation of a true Windrunner maneuver, but Leshwi dove after him anyway, echoing
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their previous contests. Eyes watering from the pain in his arm, Kaladin dropped to a rooftop and spun to raise his spear toward Leshwi, gripping it firmly in his right hand—a classic formation grip, with the spear up beside his head. Heal! he thought at his arm as Leshwi slowed above, holding her lance in one hand and hovering. She was plainly cautious, so Kaladin infused a patch of the rooftop with a Reverse Lashing, picturing it pulling on tassels of clothing. Leshwi’s robes rippled and were pulled toward Kaladin, but she took a knife from her belt and cut them, dropping her train and much of the excess clothing to flutter down to affix itself to the rooftop. Kaladin raised himself into the air again, wincing at the pain in his shoulder. “What is wrong, Windrunner?” Leshwi asked in heavily accented Alethi, coming closer. “Your powers fail you.” “Fight me anyway,” Kaladin called up at her. As he did, he caught a glimpse of the Pursuer’s bloodred ribbon weaving out of a building below. Leshwi followed his gaze and seemed to understand, for she raised her lance toward him in an attack posture. Kaladin took a deep breath and returned his spear to the overhand grip, weapon up by his head, his elbow cocked. He’d been trained in this grip for shield and spear combat. It was best with a group of friends each with shields up—but what combat wasn’t? He waited for her to get close, then stabbed at her, causing her to dodge away. The Pursuer’s ribbon fluttered around nearby, weaving between watching Heavenly Ones. Leshwi made a few more token attempts to engage him, and for a moment the fight seemed almost fair. Then Leshwi rose into the air and passed overhead, while Kaladin was left to twist—then disengage his device and drop a few feet before lurching into a hanging position, facing her. She cocked her head, then flew to the side and attacked him from that direction. He tried to deflect, but he was too immobile. Her spear bit him in the left arm, causing him to grunt in pain. Blood spread from the wound, and—as before—it didn’t heal immediately. In fact, his Stormlight seemed to be responding slower than it had earlier in this fight. Storms, this had been a mistake. He couldn’t duel Leshwi like this. He’d be better off on the ground; he’d be outmatched against opponents with the high ground, but at least he wouldn’t be frozen in place. If Navani ever wanted these devices to be useful in aerial combat, she had a lot of work to do. So he fled, engaging the device and sending himself flying between a couple of Heavenly Ones who moved dutifully to the sides to let Leshwi follow. Even the Pursuer seemed to respect the duel, as his ribbon stopped following and vanished below. At least that part of Kaladin’s plan had worked. Unfortunately, Leshwi had clearly put together that he couldn’t veer to either side—and that his acceleration was limited to a single Lashing,
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the maximum from one falling weight. So while he crossed the vast room in seconds, the moment he slowed to prevent himself from hitting the wall, she slammed into him from behind. The force of the hit made him grip the speed-control bar by accident, and he was rammed into the wall by his own fist, Leshwi pressing him from behind. She put a knife to his neck. “This is a sham, Stormblessed,” she said in his ear. “This is no contest.” He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting off the pain of the hit and the cut to his arm—though that finally appeared to be healing. Slowly, but at least it was happening. “We could drop to the ground,” he said through gritted teeth. “Fight a duel without Surges.” “Would you actually do that?” Leshwi said. “I think you cannot spare the time. You’re here to interfere with whatever the Lady of Wishes is doing.” Kaladin grunted his reply, not wanting to waste Stormlight by speaking. Leshwi, however, pulled away in the air, leaving him to turn around awkwardly as he’d done before, with a dropping lurch. She drifted down to eye level with him. Past her, he spotted Syl rising into the air and coming toward him. She made a quick glyph in the air. Ready. As Leshwi started talking, he fixed his attention on her so she wouldn’t think anything was amiss. “Surrender,” she said. “If you give your weapon to me now, I might be able to get the Lady of Wishes to turn aside the Pursuer. Together we could start to work toward a true government and peace for Roshar.” “A true government and peace?” Kaladin demanded. “Your people are in the middle of conquering mine!” “And did your leader not conquer his way to the throne?” she asked, sounding genuinely confused. “This is the way of your people as well as mine. Besides, you must admit my people govern better. The humans under our control have not been treated unfairly. Certainly they live better than the singers fared under your domination.” “And your god?” Kaladin asked. “You can promise me that once humankind has been subdued, he won’t have us exterminated?” Leshwi didn’t respond, though she hummed to a rhythm he couldn’t distinguish. “I know the kind of men who follow Odium,” Kaladin said softly. “I’ve known them all my life. I bear their brands on my forehead, Leshwi. I could almost trust you for the honor you’ve shown me—if it didn’t mean trusting him as well.” She nodded, and seemed to accept this as a valid argument. She began lowering, perhaps to engage in that fight he’d suggested, without powers. “Leshwi,” he called after she had lowered partway. “I feel the need to point out that I didn’t agree to fight you below. I simply noted it was an option.” “What is the distinction?” she called up. “I’d rather you not see this as a broken oath,” he said, then disengaged the fabrial and pointed it right at Syl before launching himself that direction—straight over Leshwi’s
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head. He didn’t wait to see if she gave chase. Syl streaked ahead of him, leading him straight across the room toward the blue pool of water at the center. Guards were there, pushing people into buildings, but the way was open. The other Heavenly Ones kept their distance from him, assuming he was still dueling with Leshwi. He cut the fabrial right as he passed over the well, then pointed his hand down and engaged it. His aim was true, and he sucked in more Stormlight as he splashed into the water. It hurt to hit, far more than he’d expected from something soft like water. His arm kept pulling him downward though, despite the resistance. It quickly grew dark, and a part of him panicked at never having been this far beneath water before. His ears reacted oddly, painfully. Fortunately, his Stormlight sustained him in the chill depth. It also gave him light to see a figure below, swimming beside a group of glowing gemstones on the wall, secured here deep beneath the surface. The figure turned toward him, her topknot swirling in the water—lit from the side by a variety of gemstone hues. It was her, the one who had been so fascinated with him last time. This time she seemed surprised, drawing a dagger from her belt and swinging it at him. However, Kaladin found that Navani’s fabrial worked far better in this environment. He could easily disengage it and swing it in another direction without dropping or lurching—and the added pull meant he easily outmaneuvered this Fused. He spun around her and moved lower in the water. The well’s shaft was only about ten feet wide, so when she pushed off a wall, she could reach him—but behind her, Syl highlighted the correct gemstone. He engaged his own fabrial, which towed him past the Fused, letting her get a clean cut across his chest with her dagger. Blood clouded the water, but Kaladin connected his fist against the sapphire, knocking it free. He spun his spear in the water and jabbed it at the wires of the fabrial cage, then pried loose the glass sphere. That should do it. Now to get out. He looked upward through the red water, and began to feel dizzy. Healing was coming so slowly. Syl soared ahead of him as he used the fabrial to rise up, leaving the annoyed Fused behind. Syl’s light was encouraging, as it seemed to be getting darker in here. My Stormlight is running out. Storms. How was he going to get away? Dozens of Fused awaited him above. He … he might have to surrender, as Leshwi had insisted. Would they let him, now? What was that rumbling? He saw light shimmering above, but it was shrinking. Syl made it out, but she didn’t seem to have realized he was lagging behind her. And the light was vanishing. A lid, he realized with panic. They’re putting a lid over the top of the well. As he neared, in the last sliver of light he saw
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the hulking form of the Pursuer. Smiling. The lid thumped in place right before Kaladin arrived. He burst into the small section of air between the top of the well’s water level and the lid, gasping for breath. But he was trapped. He slammed against the wood, trying to use the power of Navani’s device to lift it—but he heard thumping as weights, likely stones, were set on top of it. More and more of them. The Pursuer had been ready for this. He knew that even if Kaladin’s gravitational Lashings worked, enough weight would keep the lid in place. In fact, it felt like the weights were alive. People, dozens of them, climbing on top of the lid. Of course. Why use stone when humans were heavy enough and far easier to move? Kaladin pounded on the wood as he felt Syl panicking, unable to reach him. His Stormlight was fading, and it seemed the walls and the lid were closing in on him. He’d die in here, and it wouldn’t take long. All the Pursuer had to do was wait. They could seal it above, denying him fresh air.… In that moment of pure terror, Kaladin was in one of his nightmares again. Blackness. Encircled by hateful shadows. Trapped. Anxiety mounted inside him, and he began to thrash in the water, screaming, letting out the rest of his Stormlight. In that moment of panic, he didn’t care. But as he fell hoarse from shouting, he heard—strangely enough—Hav’s voice. Kaladin’s old sergeant, from his days as a recruit. Panic on the battlefield kills more men than enemy spears. Never run. Always retreat. This water came from somewhere. There was another way out. Kaladin took a deep breath and dove beneath the black water, feeling it surround him. His panic returned. He didn’t know which way was up and which was down. How could you forget which way the sky was? But all was blackness. He fished in his pouch, finally managing to think clearly. He got out a glowing gemstone, but it slipped from his fingers. And sank. That way. He pointed his fist toward the falling light and engaged Navani’s device. He was in no state for delicacy, so he squeezed as tight as he could and lurched, towed by his arm farther into the darkness. He plunged past the fabrials and the Fused—she was swimming upward, and didn’t seem concerned with him. His ears screamed with a strange pain the deeper he went. He started to breathe in more Stormlight, but stopped himself. Underwater, he risked getting a lungful of liquid. But … he had no idea how to get Light when submerged. How had they never thought about this? It was good that the device kept pulling him, because he might not have had the presence of mind to keep moving on his own. That was proven as he reached the gemstone he’d dropped, a garnet, and found it sitting on the bottom of the tube. A bright sapphire glowed here too, the one he’d knocked free. He
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grabbed it and disengaged the gauntlet fabrial, but it took him precious seconds to think and search around. The tunnel turned level here. He moved in that direction, engaging the device, letting it pull him. His lungs started to burn. He was still surviving on the breath he’d taken above, and didn’t know how to get more Stormlight. He was still trailing blood as well. Was that light ahead, or was his vision getting so bad that he was seeing stars? He chose to believe it was light. When he reached it—more fabrial pumps—he shut off his fabrial, pointed his hand upward, and engaged the device again. Nightmares chased him, manifestations of his anxiety, and it was as if the world were crushing him. Everything became blackness once more. The only thing he felt was Syl, so distant now, terrified. He thought that would be his last sensation. Then he broke out of the water into the air. He gasped—a raw and primal action. A physiological response rather than conscious choice. Indeed, he must have blacked out anyway, for when he blinked and his senses returned, he found himself hanging by his aching arm from the ceiling in a reservoir beneath the tower. He shook his head, and looked at his hand. He’d dropped the sapphire, and when he tried to breathe in Stormlight, nothing came. His pouch was empty of it. He must have fed off it while drifting in and out of consciousness. He was tempted to let himself sleep again.… No! They’ll be coming for you! He forced his eyes open. If the enemy had explored the tower enough to know about this reservoir, they would come looking to be certain he was dead. He disengaged the fabrial and dropped into the water. The cold shocked him awake, and he was able to use the fabrial to tug himself to the side of the reservoir. He crawled out onto dry stone. Amusingly, he was enough a surgeon to worry about how he’d contaminated this drinking water. Of all the things to think about right now … He wanted to sleep, but could see blood dripping from his chest and arm, the wounds there not fully healed. So he stumbled to the side of the chamber and sucked the Stormlight from the two lamps there. Yes, the enemy knew about this place. If he hadn’t been so addled, he’d have put together earlier that the light meant someone was changing the gemstones. He stumbled, sodden and exhausted, down the hallway. There would be an exit. He vaguely remembered news of Navani’s scouts finding this reservoir. They’d only known about it by having Thaylen free divers inspect the fabrials in the well. Keep thinking. Keep walking. Don’t drift off. Where was Syl? How far was he from her now? He’d traveled quite a way in the darkness of that water. He reached steps, but couldn’t force himself to climb them. He just stood, numb, staring at them. So he used the fabrial. Slow, easy climbs with it tugging him up at
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one angle, then another. Back and forth. Again and again. He knew he was close when he heard rumbling. The highstorm. It was still blowing, so he hadn’t been in that blackness for an eternity. He let it call to him as he continued half-flying, half-trudging upward. Finally he staggered out of a room on the ground floor of the tower. He emerged right into the middle of a group of singer troops shouting for people to go to their quarters. The storm rumbled in the near distance. Several of the soldiers turned toward him. Kaladin had a moment of profound disconnect, as if he couldn’t believe he was still alive. As if he’d thought that trudge up the stairwell had been his climb to the Tranquiline Halls. Then one of the guards leveled a spear at him, and Kaladin’s body knew what to do. Exhausted, wounded, nerves worn all the way to Damnation, Kaladin grabbed that spear and twisted it out of the man’s hands, then swept the legs of the next soldier. A few Regals not far off shouted, and he caught sight of a Heavenly One—not Leshwi—rising into the air and pointing a lance at him. They weren’t through with him yet. He turned and ran, holding that stolen spear, drawing in Stormlight from lanterns—but feeling it do nothing at all to heal him. Even the slow healing from before had apparently stopped working. Either he’d further undermined his powers somehow by destroying the fabrial, or—more likely—the Sibling was too far gone toward corruption. Chased by dozens of soldiers, Kaladin ran for the storm. Though it was dangerous outside, at least the enemy would have difficulty finding him in the tempest. He couldn’t fight them—the only way to escape was to do something truly desperate. He reached the front entryway of the tower, where winds coursed in through a portal that might once have held a wooden gate. They’d never taken the time to put in a new one. Why would they? The storms rarely reached this high. Today they had. Today, Kaladin reached the winds. And like everything else today, they tried their best to kill him. Voice of Lights. Voice for Lights. If I speak for the Lights, then I must express their desires. If Light is Investiture, and all Investiture is deity, and deity has Intent, then Light must have Intent. —From Rhythm of War, final page Dalinar no longer feared highstorms. It had been some time now since he’d worried that he was mad. Yet—as a poorly treated horse learned to flinch at the mere sound of a whip—something had persisted inside of Dalinar. A learned response that a storm meant losing control. So it was with a deep and satisfying sense of relief that today, Dalinar realized he didn’t fear the storm. Indeed, when Elthebar listed the time of today’s storm, Dalinar felt a little surge of excitement. He realized he felt more awake on highstorm days. More capable. Is that you? he asked of the Stormfather. It is us, the Stormfather replied. Me
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and you. I enjoy passing over the continent, as it gives me much to see—but it also tires me as it energizes you. Dalinar stepped away from the table and dismissed his attendants and scribes, who had finished briefing him on the latest intelligence regarding Urithiru. He could barely control his mounting concern about Navani and the tower. Something was wrong. He could feel it in his bones. So he’d begun looking for options. The current plan was for him to lead an expedition into Shadesmar, sail to the tower, then open up a perpendicularity to let spies in. Unfortunately, they didn’t know if it would work. Would he even be able to activate a perpendicularity in the area? He had to try something. The latest letters from Navani, although they did contain her passcodes, felt unlike her. Too many delays, too many assurances she was fine. He’d ordered a team of workers to begin clearing the rubble that prevented his scouts from entering through the basement. That would reportedly take weeks, and Shardblades couldn’t be summoned in the region, being suppressed like fabrials and Radiant powers. He pressed his palm flat against the table, gritting his teeth. He ignored the stack of reports from the front lines. Jasnah and the others were handling the war, and he could see their victory approaching. It wasn’t inevitable, but it was highly likely. He should be focusing on his Bondsmith training. But how could he? He wanted to find a set of Plate, borrow a Blade, and go march to the battlefront and find someone to attack. The idea was so tempting, he had to acknowledge how much he’d come to depend on emotional support from the Thrill of battle. Storms, sometimes he longed so powerfully for the way he’d felt alive when killing. Such emotions were remarkably similar to what he’d felt upon giving up the drink. A quiet, anxious yearning that struck at unexpected moments—seeking the pleasure, the reward. He couldn’t blame everything he’d done on the Thrill. That had been Dalinar in those boots, holding that weapon and glorying in destruction. That had been Dalinar lusting to kill. If he let himself go out and fight again, he knew he’d realize a part of him still loved it. And so, he had to remain here. Find other ways of solving his problems. He stepped out of his personal dwelling, another small stone hut in Laqqi, their command city. He took a deep breath, hoping the fresh air would clear his mind. The village was now fully fortified against both storms and attacks, with high-flying scout posts watching the land all around and Windrunners darting in to deliver reports. I must get better with my powers, Dalinar thought. If I had access to the map I could make with Shallan, we might be able to see exactly what is happening at Urithiru. It would not help, the Stormfather said in his mind, a sound like distant thunder. I cannot see the tower. Whatever weakens the Windrunners when they draw close weakens me
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too, so the map would not reveal the location. However, I could show it to you. Perhaps you can see better than I. “Show me?” Dalinar asked, causing Szeth—his omnipresent shadow—to glance at him. “How?” You can ride the storm with me, the Stormfather said. I have given others this privilege on occasion. “Ride the storm with you?” Dalinar said. It is like the visions that Honor instructed me to grant, only it is now. Come. See. “Martra,” Dalinar said, looking to the scribe who had been assigned to him today. “I might act odd for a short time. Nothing is wrong, but if I am not myself when my next appointment begins, please make them wait.” “Um … yes, Brightlord,” she said, hugging her ledger, eyes wide. “Should I, um, get you a chair?” “That would be a good idea,” Dalinar said. He didn’t feel like being closed up inside. He liked the scent of the air, even if it was too muggy here, and the sight of the open sky. Martra returned with a chair and Dalinar settled himself, facing eastward. Toward the Origin, toward the storms—though his view was blocked by the large stone stormbreak. “Stormfather,” he said. “I’m—” He became the storm. Dalinar soared along the front of the stormwall, like a piece of debris. No … like a gust of wind blowing with the advent of the storm. He could see—comprehend—far more than when he’d flown under Windrunner power. It was a great deal to take in. He surged across rolling hills with plants growing in the valleys between them. From up high it looked like a network of brown islands surrounded by greenery—each and every lowland portion filled to the brim with a snarl of underbrush. He’d never seen anything quite like it, the plants unfamiliar to him, though their density did faintly remind him of the Valley where he had met Cultivation. He didn’t have a body, but he turned and saw that he towed a long shadow. The storm itself. When the Windrunner flew on my winds, he zipped about, the Stormfather said, and Dalinar felt the sounds all around him. You simply think. You complain about meetings, but you are well suited to them. “I grow,” Dalinar said. “I change. It is the mark of humanity, Stormfather, to change. A prime tenet of our religion. When I was Kaladin’s age, I suspect I would have acted as he.” We approach the mountains, the Stormfather said. Urithiru will come soon. Be ready to watch. A mountain range started to grow up to Dalinar’s right, and he realized where they must be—blowing through Triax or Tu Fallia, countries with which he had little experience. These weren’t the mountains where he’d find Urithiru, not yet. So he experimented with motion, soaring closer to the overgrown valleys. Yes … this landscape was alien to him, the way the underbrush snarled together so green. Full of grass, broad leaves, and other stalks, all woven together with vines and bobbing with lifespren. The vines were a netting tying it
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all together, tight against storms. He saw curious animals with long tentacles for arms and leathery skin instead of chitin. Malleable, they easily squeezed through holes in the underbrush and found tight pockets in which to hide as the stormwall hit. Strange that everything would be so different when it wasn’t that far from Alethkar. Only a little trip across the Tarat Sea. He tried to hang back to inspect one of the animals. No, the Stormfather said. Forward. Ever forward. Dalinar let himself be encouraged onward, sweeping across the hills until he reached a place where the underbrush had been hollowed out to build homes. These valleys weren’t so narrow or deep that flooding would be a danger, and the buildings were built on stilts a few feet high anyway. They were grown over by the same vine netting, the edges of the buildings melding with the underbrush to borrow its strength. Once, this village had likely been in an enviable location—protected by the surrounding plants. Unfortunately, as he blew past, he noted multiple burned-out buildings, the rest of the village in shambles. The Everstorm. Dalinar’s people had adapted to it; large cities already had walls on all sides, and small villages had been able to rely upon their government’s stockpiles to help them survive this change in climate. But small, isolated villages like this had taken the brunt of the new storm with nobody to help. How many such places existed on Roshar, hovering on the edge of extinction? Dalinar was past the place in a few heartbeats, but the memory lingered. Over the last two years, what cities and towns hadn’t been broken by the sudden departure of the parshmen had been relentlessly attacked by storm or battle. If they won—when they won—the war, they would have a great deal of work to do in rebuilding the world. As he continued his flight, he saw something else discouraging: a pair of foragers trapped while making their way back toward their home. The ragged men huddled together in a too-shallow ravine. They wore clothing of thick woven fibers that looked like the rug material that came out of Marat, and their spears weren’t even metal. “Take mercy upon them,” Dalinar said. “Temper your fury, Stormfather.” It is not fury. It is me. “Then protect them,” Dalinar said as the stormwall hit, plunging the ill-fated men into darkness. Should I protect all who venture out into me? “Yes.” Then do I stop being a storm, stop being me? “You can be a storm with mercy.” That defies the definition and soul of a storm, the Stormfather said. I must blow. I make this land exist. I carry seeds; I birth plants; I make the landscape permanent with crem. I provide Light. Without me, Roshar withers. “I’m not asking you to abandon Roshar, but to protect those men. Right here. Right now.” I … the Stormfather rumbled. It is too late. They did not survive the stormwall. A large boulder crushed them soon after we began speaking. Dalinar cursed, an action that
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translated as crackling lightning in the nearby air. “How can a being so close to divinity be so utterly lacking in honor?” I am a storm. I cannot— You are not merely a storm! Dalinar bellowed, his voice changing to rumbles of thunder. You are capable of choice! You hide from that, and in so doing, you are a COWARD! The Stormfather did not respond. Dalinar felt him there, subdued—like a petulant child scolded for their foolishness. Good. Both Dalinar and the Stormfather were different from what they once had been. They had to be better. The world demanded that they be better. Dalinar soared up higher, no longer wanting to see specifics—in case he was to witness more of the Stormfather’s unthinking brutality. Eventually they reached snow-dusted mountains, and Dalinar soared to the very top of the storm. Lately the storms had been creeping higher and higher in the sky—something people wouldn’t normally notice, but which was quite obvious in Urithiru. It is natural, the Stormfather said. A cycle. I will go higher and higher until I am taller than the tower, then the next few storms will lower. The highstorm did this before the tower existed. There seemed to be a timidity to the words, uncharacteristic of the Stormfather. Perhaps Dalinar had rattled him. Soon he saw the tower approaching. You can see it? the Stormfather said. The details? “Yes,” Dalinar said. Look quickly. We will pass rapidly. Dalinar steered himself as a gust of wind, fixating upon Urithiru. Nothing seemed overtly wrong with it. There wasn’t anyone up on the Cloudwalk level, but with the storms growing higher, that wouldn’t be advisable anyway. “Can we go inside?” Dalinar asked as they approached. You may, the Stormfather said. I cannot go inside, just as I cannot infuse spheres indoors. When a piece splits off, it is no longer me. You will need to quickly rejoin, or the vision will end. Dalinar picked the lowest accessible balcony in the tower’s east-jutting lobes, up on the fourth tier, and lowered himself until he was right on target. As the storm passed, he soared in through the open balcony into the quiet hallway beyond. It was over too swiftly. A rush through a dark hallway until he found the southern diagonal corridor, where he tried to reach the ground floor, but Dalinar was suddenly pulled out another balcony without having seen any signs of life. The stormwall passed by to crest the mountains and continue on toward Azir and his body. “No,” Dalinar said. “We need to look again.” You must continue forward. Momentum, Dalinar. “Momentum kept me doing terrible things, Stormfather. Momentum alone is not a virtue.” We cannot do what you ask. “Stop making excuses and try for once!” Dalinar said, provoking lightning around him. He resisted the push to continue at the front and—though it caused the Stormfather to groan with fits of thunder—Dalinar moved into the inner portions of the storm. The black chaos behind the stormwall. He was wind blowing against wind, a man swimming against a tide,
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but he pushed all the way back to Urithiru. The Stormfather grumbled, but Dalinar didn’t sense pain from the spren. Just … surprise. As if the Stormfather were genuinely curious about what Dalinar had managed to do. It was difficult to stay in place, but he hovered outside the first tier, searching for anything alarming. The fury of the wind tugged at him. The Stormfather rumbled, and lightning flashed. There. Dalinar felt something. A … faint Connection, like when he learned someone’s language. His Surgebinding, his powers, drew him through the wind around the outside base of the tower—until he found something remarkable. A single figure, almost invisible in the darkness, clinging to the outside of the tower on the eighth level. Kaladin Stormblessed. Dalinar could not fathom what had brought the Windrunner to expose himself like this in a storm, but here he was. Holding on tightly to a ledge. His clothing was ragged, and he was wounded—bleeding from numerous cuts. “Blood of my fathers,” Dalinar whispered. “Stormfather, do you see him?” I … feel him, the Stormfather said. Through you. He seems to be waiting for the center of the storm, where his spheres and Stormlight will renew. Dalinar drew close to the young man, who had buried his head into his shoulder for protection. He was soaked through, a piece of his shirt slapping against the stone over and over. “Kaladin?” Dalinar shouted. “Kaladin, what has happened?” The young man didn’t move. Dalinar calmed himself, resisting the furious winds, and drew power from the soul of the storm. KALADIN, he said. Kaladin shifted, turning his head. His skin had gone pale, his hair matted and whipped into rain-drenched knots. Storms … he looked like a dead man. WHAT HAS HAPPENED? Dalinar demanded as the storm. “Singer invasion,” Kaladin whispered into the wind. “Navani captured. The tower on lockdown. Other Radiants are all unconscious.” I WILL FIND HELP. “Radiant powers don’t work. Except mine. Maybe those of a Bondsmith. I’m fighting. I’m … trying.” LIFE BEFORE DEATH. “Life…” Kaladin whispered. “Life … before…” The man’s eyes fluttered closed. He sagged, going limp, and dropped off the wall, unconscious. NO. Dalinar gathered the winds, and with a surge of strength, used them to hurl Kaladin up and over the ledge of the balcony, onto the eighth floor of the tower. That strained his abilities, and at last the tide grabbed Dalinar and forced him toward the front of the storm. As it happened, he was ejected from the vision and found himself in Emul, sitting in his chair. An honor guard of soldiers had arrived, forming a circle around him so people couldn’t gawk. Though it had been a long time since Dalinar had been taken involuntarily in a vision, he appreciated the gesture. He shook himself, rising to stand. Nearby, Martra held up her notebook. “I wrote down everything you said and did! Like Brightness Navani used to. Did I do it right?” “Thank you,” Dalinar said, scanning what she’d written. It seemed he had spoken out loud, like when
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in one of the old visions. Only, Martra hadn’t heard the parts where he’d spoken as the storm. One of the guards coughed, and Dalinar noticed one of the others gawking at him. The youth turned away immediately, blushing. Because I was reading, Dalinar thought, handing back the notebook. He looked at the sky, expecting to see stormclouds—though here the highstorm would still be hours away from this region. Stormfather, he thought. The tower was invaded. Our worst fears are confirmed. The enemy controls Urithiru. Storms, that felt painful to acknowledge. First Alethkar, then the tower? And Navani captured? Now he knew why the enemy had thrown away Taravangian. Maybe even the entire army here in Emul. They’d been sacrificed to keep Dalinar occupied. “Go to Teshav,” Dalinar said to Martra. “Have her gather the monarchs and my highlords. I need to call an emergency meeting. Cancel everything else I was to do today.” The young woman yelped, perhaps at being given such an important task. She ran on his orders immediately. The soldiers parted at Dalinar’s request, and he looked toward the sky again. Stormfather, did you hear me? You have hurt me, Dalinar. This is the second time you have done so. You push against our bond, forcing me to do things that are not right. I push you to stretch, Dalinar said. That is always painful. Did you hear what Stormblessed told me? Yes, he said. But he is wrong. Your powers will not work at Urithiru. It seems … they have turned the tower’s protections against us. If that is true, you would need to be orders of magnitude stronger, more experienced than you are, to open a perpendicularity there. You’d have to be strong enough to overwhelm the Sibling. I need to say more oaths, Dalinar said. I need to better understand what I can do. My training goes too slowly. We need to find a way to speed it up. I cannot help you. Honor is dead. He was the only one who knew what you could do, in full. He was the only one that could have trained you. Dalinar growled in frustration. He began to pace the unworked stone in front of his warcamp house. Kaladin, Shallan, Jasnah, Lift … all of them picked up on their powers naturally, Dalinar said. But here I am, many months after our Bonding, and I have barely progressed. You are something different from them, the Stormfather replied. Something greater, more dangerous. But also more complicated. There has never been another like you. Distant thunder. Drawing closer. Except … the Stormfather said. Dalinar looked up as a thought struck him. Likely the same one that had occurred to the Stormfather. There was another Bondsmith. * * * A short time later, an out-of-breath Dalinar arrived at a small building in the far northern part of the camp. People raced about, preparing for the imminent storm, but he ignored them. Instead he burst into the small building, surprising a woman tending to a hulking man seated on the floor,
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bent forward, muttering to himself. The woman leaped to her feet, reaching for the sword she wore at her side. She was of a difficult race to distinguish—maybe Azish, with that dark skin tone. But her eyes were wrong—like a Shin person. These two were beings trapped outside of time. Creatures almost as ancient as Roshar. The Heralds Shalash and Talenelat. Dalinar ignored the woman’s threatening pose and strode forward, seizing her by the shoulders. “There were ten of you. Ten Heralds. All were members of an order of Knights Radiant.” “No,” Shalash said. “We were before the Radiants. They were modeled upon us, but we were not in their ranks. Except for Nale.” “But there was one of you who was a Bondsmith,” Dalinar said. “Ishi, Herald of Luck, Herald of Mysteries, Binder of Gods.” “Creator of the Oathpact,” Shalash said, forcing herself out of Dalinar’s grip. “Yes, yes. We all have names like that. Useless names. You should stop talking about us. Stop worshipping us. Stop painting us.” “He’s still alive,” Dalinar said. “He was unchained by the oaths. He would understand what I can learn to do.” “I’m sure,” Shalash said. “If any—except me—are still sane, it would be him.” “He’s near here,” Dalinar said, in awe. “In Tukar. Not more than a short flight southeast of this very town.” “Isn’t there an army in the way?” Shalash said. “Isn’t pushing the enemy back—crushing them into Ishar’s army—our main goal right now?” “That’s what Jasnah and our army are doing,” Dalinar said. “But I have another task. I need to find a way to speak to the god-priest, then convince him to help me rescue Urithiru.” Intent matters. Intent is king. You cannot do what I attempt by accident. You must mean it. This seems a much greater law than we’ve ever before understood. —From Rhythm of War, endnotes Navani sat quietly in her cell of a library room, waiting. Hours passed. She requested food and was given it, but neither the guard nor the Deepest One watching her answered when she asked questions. So she waited. Too nervous to study. Too sick to her stomach to dare try speaking to the Sibling. After all her assurances and promises, Navani had proven untrustworthy after all. Raboniel finally arrived, wearing a simple outfit of trousers, a blouse, and a Thaylen vest. She’d previously said she found their designs fascinating. She’d chosen traditionally male clothing, but likely didn’t mind the distinction. The Lady of Wishes observed Navani from the doorway, then shooed the guards away. Navani gritted her teeth, then stood up and bowed. She’d been hurt, outmatched, and defeated. But she couldn’t let anger and humiliation rule. She needed information. “You didn’t persist in trying to contact me,” Raboniel said. “I assume you realized what had happened.” “How long were you listening in on my conversations with the Sibling, Ancient One?” Navani said. “Always,” Raboniel said. “When I could not be listening in, I had another Fused doing it.” Navani closed her eyes. I gave them the secret to the
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third node. I pried it out of the Sibling, walking directly into the enemy’s plan. “You shouldn’t be too hard on yourself,” Raboniel said. “The Sibling is truly to blame—they always have been so innocent. And unaware of their own naiveness. When I touched the pillar, I knew the Sibling was awake—but pretending to be dead. So I let the ruse continue, and I listened. I couldn’t know that decision would bear fruit, but that is why you nurture nine seeds and watch for the one that begins growing.” “The Sibling told me…” Navani said. “They said we couldn’t outthink you.” “Yes, I heard that,” Raboniel said. “It made me worry that you’d spotted my surveillance. It seemed too obvious a line said to distract me.” “How?” Navani asked, opening her eyes. “How did you do it, Ancient One? Surely the Sibling would have known if their communication could be compromised.” Raboniel hummed a rhythm, then walked over and tapped Navani’s stacks of notes. “Study. Find us answers about Light, Navani. Stop trying to fight me; help me end this war instead. That was always your purpose here.” Navani felt nausea stirring her insides. She’d thrown up once already from the sick feeling of what she’d done. What she’d cost the Sibling. She forced it down this time, and as Raboniel left, she managed to ask one more question. “Kaladin,” she said. “The Windrunner. Did you kill him, Ancient One?” “I didn’t,” she said. “Though I did land a fine cut on him. You have likely realized that he succeeded in destroying the node, as the shield is still up. However, when the Windrunner was spotted fleeing the tower a good half hour after, his wound hadn’t healed—so I think the Sibling’s transformation is almost complete. This makes your Windrunner’s powers quite unreliable. I find it unlikely he survived after running out into the storm.” “Into the storm?” Navani asked. “Yes. A pity. Perhaps the Sibling can tell you if he is dead or not—if so, I should very much like to study his corpse.” Raboniel left. Navani pushed through her sickness to write, then burn, a prayer of protection for Kaladin. It was all she could do. Then she rested her head on the table to think about the profound scope of her failure. THE END OF Part Three Szeth-son-Honor tried to slouch. Dalinar said that slouching a little would help him imitate an ordinary soldier on a boring guard duty. Dalinar said Szeth prowled when he walked, and was too intense when standing at watch. Like a fire burning high when it should be smoldering. How did one stop being intense? Szeth tried to understand this as he forced himself to lean against a tree, folding his arms as Dalinar had suggested. In front of him, the Blackthorn played with his grandnephew, the child of Elhokar. Szeth carefully checked the perimeter of the small clearing. Watching for shadows. Or for people suspiciously lingering in the nearby camp—visible through the trees. He saw nothing, which troubled him. But he tried to
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relax anyway. The cloudy sky and muggy weather today were reminiscent of the coast of Shinovar, where Szeth’s father had worked as a shepherd in his youth. With this thick grass, Szeth could almost imagine he was home. Near the beautiful white cliffs, listening to lambs bleat as he carried water. He heard his father’s gentle words. The best and truest duty of a person is to add to the world. To create, and not destroy. But no. Szeth was not home. He was standing on profane stone in a forest clearing outside a small town in Emul. Dalinar knelt down, showing Gavinor—a child not yet five—how to hold his practice sword. It had been a few minutes, so Szeth left the tree and made a circuit of the clearing, inspecting a few suspicious bundles of vines. “Do you see anything dangerous, sword-nimi?” he asked softly. Nope, the sword said. I think you should draw me. I can see better when I’m drawn. “When you are drawn, sword-nimi, you attempt to drain my life.” Nonsense. I like you. I wouldn’t try to kill you. The weapon projected its pleasant voice into Szeth’s mind. Dalinar didn’t like the sensation, so the sword now spoke only to Szeth. “I see nothing dangerous,” Szeth said, returning to his place beside the tree, then tried to at least appear relaxed. It was difficult, requiring vigilance and dedication, but he did not want to be chastised by Dalinar again. That’s good, right? Nothing dangerous? “No, sword-nimi,” Szeth said. “It is not good. It is concerning. Dalinar has so many enemies; they will be sending assassins, spies. If I do not see them, perhaps I am too lax or too unskilled.” Or maybe they aren’t here to find, the sword said. Vasher was always paranoid too. And he could sense if people were near. I told him to stop worrying so much. Like you. Worry, worry, worry. “I have been given a duty,” Szeth said. “I will do it well.” Dalinar laughed as the young boy held his toy sword high and proclaimed himself a Windrunner. The child had been through a horrifying experience back in Kholinar, and he was quiet much of the time. Haunted. He’d been tortured by Voidspren, manipulated by the Unmade, neglected by his mother. Though Szeth’s sufferings had been different, he couldn’t help but feel a kinship with the child. Dalinar clearly enjoyed seeing the child become more expressive and enthusiastic as they played. Szeth was reminded again of his own childhood spent playing with the sheep. A simple time, before his family had been given to the Honorblades. Before his gentle father had been taught to kill. To subtract. His father was still alive, in Shinovar. Bearer of a different sword, a different burden. Szeth’s entire family was there. His sister, his mother. It had been long since he’d considered them. He let himself do so now because he’d decided he wasn’t Truthless. Before, he hadn’t wanted to sully their images with his mind. Time to make another round of the clearing.
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The child’s laughter grew louder, but Szeth found it painful to hear. He winced as the boy jumped up on a rock, then leaped for his granduncle to catch him. And Szeth … if Szeth moved too quickly, he could catch sight of his own frail soul, attached incorrectly to his body, trailing his motions like a glowing afterimage. Why do you hurt? the sword asked. “I am afraid for the child,” Szeth whispered. “He begins to laugh happily. That will eventually be stolen from him again.” I like to try to understand laughter, the sword said. I think I can feel it. Happy. Ha! HA! Vivenna always liked my jokes. Even the bad ones. “The boy’s laughter frightens me,” Szeth said. “Because I am near. And I am … not well.” He should not guard this child, but he could not bring himself to tell Dalinar, for fear the Blackthorn would send him away. Szeth had found purpose here in following an Ideal. In trusting Dalinar Kholin. He could not afford to have that Ideal shaken. He could not. Except … Dalinar spoke uncertainly sometimes. Concerned that he wasn’t doing the right thing. Szeth wished he didn’t hear Dalinar’s weakness, his worries. The Blackthorn needed to be a moral rock, unshakable, always certain. Dalinar was better than most. He was confident. Most of the time. Szeth had only ever met one man more confident than Dalinar in his own morality. Taravangian. The tyrant. The destroyer. The man who had followed Szeth here to this remote part of the world. Szeth was certain that, when he’d been visiting Taravangian with Dalinar the other day, the old man had seen through his illusory disguise. The man would not let go. Szeth could feel him … feel him … plotting. When Szeth returned to his tree, the air split, showing a blackness speckled faintly with stars beyond. Szeth immediately set down his sword by the trunk of the tree. “Watch,” he said, “and shout for me if danger comes.” Oh! All right! the sword said. I can do that. Yes, I can. You might want to leave me drawn though. You know, so that if someone bad comes along, I can really get ’em. Szeth walked around the rear of the tree, following the rift in the air. It was as if someone had pried back the fabric of reality, like splitting skin to look at the flesh underneath. He knelt before the highspren. “You do well, my acolyte,” the spren said, its tone formal. “You are vigilant and dedicated.” “I am,” Szeth said. “We need to discuss your crusade. You are a year into your current oath, and I am pleased and impressed with your dedication. You are among the most vigilant and worthy of men. I would have you earn your Plate. You still wish to cleanse your homeland?” Szeth nodded. Behind, Dalinar laughed. He didn’t seem to have noticed Szeth’s momentary departure. “Tell me more of this proposed crusade,” the highspren said. It had not blessed Szeth with its name, though
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Szeth was its bonded Radiant. “Long ago, my people rejected my warnings,” Szeth said. “They did not believe me when I said the enemy would soon return. They cast me out, deemed me Truthless.” “I find inconsistencies to the stories you tell of those days, Szeth,” the highspren said. “I fear that your memory, like those of many mortals, is incomplete or corrupted by the passage of time. I will accompany you on your crusade to judge the truth.” “Thank you,” Szeth said softly. “You may need to fight and destroy those who have broken their own laws. Can you do this?” “I … would need to ask Dalinar. He is my Ideal.” “If you progress as a Skybreaker,” the highspren said, “you will need to become the law. To reach your ultimate potential, you must know the truth yourself, rather than relying on the crutch presented by the Third Ideal. Be aware of this.” “I will.” “Continue your duty for now. But remember, the time will soon come when you must abandon it for something greater.” Szeth stood as the spren made itself invisible again. It was always nearby, watching and judging his worthiness. He entered the clearing and found Dalinar chatting quietly with a woman in a messenger uniform. Immediately Szeth came alert, seizing the sword and striding over to stand behind Dalinar, prepared to protect him. I hope it’s all right that I didn’t call for you! the sword said. I could sense her, although I couldn’t see her, and she seemed to be not evil. Even if she didn’t come over to pick me up. Isn’t that rude? But rude people can be not evil, right? Szeth watched the woman carefully. If someone wanted to kill Dalinar, they’d surely send an assassin who seemed innocent. “I’m not sure about some of the things on this list,” she was saying. “A pen and paper? For a man?” “Taravangian has long since abandoned the pretense of being unable to read,” Dalinar said. “Then paper will let him plot against us.” “Perhaps,” Dalinar said. “It could also simply be a mercy, giving him the companionship of words. Fulfill that request. What else?” “He wishes to be given fresh food more often,” she said. “And more light.” “I asked for the light already,” Dalinar said. “Why hasn’t the order been fulfilled?” Szeth watched keenly. Taravangian was making demands? They should give him nothing. He was dangerous. He … Szeth froze as the little boy, Gavinor, stepped up to him. He raised a wooden sword hilt-first toward Szeth. The boy should fear him, yet instead he smiled and waggled the sword. Szeth took it, hesitant. “The stone is the oddest request,” the messenger woman said. “Why would he have need of a perfectly round, smooth stone? And why would he specify one with a vein of quartz?” Szeth’s heart nearly stopped. A round stone. With quartz inclusions? “An odd request indeed,” Dalinar said, thoughtful. “Ask him why he wants this before fulfilling the request.” A round stone. With quartz inclusions. An Oathstone. For
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years, Szeth had obeyed the law of the Oathstone. The centuries-old tradition among his people dictated the way to treat someone who was Truthless. An object, no longer a man. Something to own. Taravangian wanted an Oathstone. Why? WHY? As the messenger trotted away, Dalinar asked if Szeth would like to join sword practice, but he could barely mumble an excuse. Szeth returned to his spot by the tree, clutching the little wooden sword. He had to know what Taravangian was planning. He had to stop the man. Before he killed Dalinar. A bronze cage can create a warning fabrial, alerting one to objects or entities nearby. Heliodors are being used for this currently, and there is some good reasoning for this—but other gemstones should be viable. —Lecture on fabrial mechanics presented by Navani Kholin to the coalition of monarchs, Urithiru, Jesevan, 1175 Kaladin crossed the burning room, haunted by that moment when he’d suddenly lost his powers. The experience left him rattled. The truth was, he had come to rely upon his abilities. Like you relied on a good spear, battle-tested and sharp. There was little worse than having your weapon fail you in battle. “We’re going to have to watch for those fabrials,” Kaladin said. “I don’t like the idea of our powers being subject to removal by the enemy.” He glanced at Syl, who sat on his shoulder. “Have you experienced anything like that before?” She shook her head. “Not that I remember. It made me feel … faded. As if I wasn’t quite here.” He shied away from rooms consumed by the blaze, full of primal shadows and lights, bright orange and red, deep and angry colors. If the citylords had been content with a normal house, this could never have happened. But no, they needed to be set apart, own a home full of delicate wood instead of sturdy stone. The hungry flames seemed excited as they played with the dying manor. There was a glee to the sounds of the fire: its roars and hisses. Flamespren ran up the wall alongside him, leaving tracks of black on the wood. Ahead, the kitchen was fully engulfed. He didn’t mind the heat so far—his Stormlight healed burns before they had a chance to more than itch. As long as he stayed away from the heart of the fire, he should be all right. Unfortunately, that might prove impossible. “Where’s the cellar?” Syl asked from his shoulder. Kaladin pointed through the kitchen inferno toward a doorway—barely visible as a shadow. “Great,” Syl said. “You going to run for it?” Kaladin nodded, not daring to lose his Stormlight by speaking. He braced himself, then dashed into the room, flames and smoke curling around him. A forlorn groaning sound from above indicated that the ceiling was close to giving in. A quick Lashing upward let Kaladin leap the burning kitchen counter. He landed on the other side and slammed his shoulder into the charred door to the cellar, breaking through with a loud crash, bits of flame and soot spraying before
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him. He entered a dark tunnel sloping downward, cut directly into the rock of the hillside. As he moved away from the inferno behind, Syl giggled. “What?” he asked. “Your backside’s on fire,” she said. Damnation. He batted at the back of his coat. Well, after getting stabbed by Leshwi, this uniform was ruined anyway. He was going to have to listen to Leyten complain about how often Kaladin went through them. The Windrunner quartermaster seemed convinced that Kaladin let himself get hit solely to make it difficult to keep uniforms in supply. He started through the dark stone tunnel, counting on his Stormlight to provide illumination. Soon after entering, he crossed a metal grate covering a deep pit: the watercatch, to divert rainwater that flooded the tunnel. A stormcellar like this was where lighteyed families retreated during highstorms. He’d have dismissed potential flooding as another problem with living in a wooden home, but even stone houses occasionally got damaged during storms. He didn’t blame anyone for wanting to put several feet of rock between them and the raging winds. He had played down here with Laral as a child, and it seemed smaller to him now. He remembered a deep, endless tunnel. But soon after he passed the watercatch, he saw the lit cellar room ahead. As Kaladin stepped into the underground room, he found two prisoners manacled to the far wall, slumped in place, their heads bowed. He didn’t recognize one of them—perhaps he was a refugee—but the other was Jeber, father to a couple of the boys Kaladin had known as a youth. “Jeber,” Kaladin said, hurrying forward. “Have you seen Roshone? He…” Kaladin trailed off as he noticed that neither person was moving. He knelt, feeling a growing dread as he got a better glimpse of Jeber’s lean face. It was perfectly normal, save for the pale cast—and the two burned-out pits, like charcoal, in place of the eyes. He’d been killed with a Shardblade. “Kaladin!” Syl said. “Behind you!” He spun, thrusting out his hand and summoning his Blade. The rough-hewn room sloped back to the left of the doorway, making a small alcove that Kaladin hadn’t been able to see when first entering. There, standing quietly, was a tall man with a hawkish face, brown hair flecked with black. Moash wore a sharp black uniform cut after the Alethi style, and held Brightlord Roshone in front of him with a knife to the man’s neck. The former citylord was crying silently, Moash’s other hand covering his mouth, fearspren undulating on the ground. Moash jerked the knife in a quick, efficient slice, opening Roshone’s throat and spilling his lifeblood across the front of his ragged clothing. Roshone fell to the stone. Kaladin shouted, scrambling to help, but the surgeon within him shook his head. A slit throat? That wasn’t the kind of wound a surgeon could heal. Move on to someone you can help, his father seemed to say. This one is dead. Storms! Was it too late to fetch Lift or Godeke? They could … They
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could … Roshone thrashed weakly on the ground before a helpless Kaladin. Then the man who had terrorized Kaladin’s family—the man who had consigned Tien to death—simply … faded away in a pool of his own blood. Kaladin glared up at Moash, who silently returned his knife to its belt sheath. “You came to save him, didn’t you, Kal?” Moash asked. “One of your worst enemies? Instead of finding vengeance and peace, you run to rescue him.” Kaladin roared, leaping to his feet. Roshone’s death sent Kaladin back to that moment in the palace at Kholinar. A spear through Elhokar’s chest. And Moash … giving a Bridge Four salute as if he in any way deserved to claim that privilege. Kaladin raised his Sylspear toward Moash, but the tall man merely looked at him—his eyes now a dark brown, but lacking any emotion or life whatsoever. Moash didn’t summon his Shardblade. “Fight me!” Kaladin shouted at him. “Let’s do this!” “No,” Moash said, holding his hands up to the sides. “I surrender.” * * * Shallan forced herself to stare through the doorway at Ialai’s body as Ishnah inspected it. Shallan’s eyes wanted to glide off the body, look anywhere else, think anything else. Confronting difficult things was a problem for her, but part of finding her balance—three personas, each of them distinctly useful—had come when she’d accepted her pain. Even if she didn’t deserve it. The balance was working. She was functioning. But are we getting better? Veil asked. Or merely hovering in place? I’ll accept not getting worse, Shallan thought. For how long? Veil asked. A year now of standing in the wind, not sliding backward, but not progressing. You need to start remembering eventually. The difficult things … No. Not that. Not yet. She had work to do. She turned away from the body, focusing on the problems at hand. Did the Ghostbloods have spies among Shallan’s inner circle? She found the idea not only plausible, but likely. Adolin might be willing to call today’s mission a success, and Shallan could accept that successfully infiltrating the Sons of Honor had at least proven that she could plan and execute a mission. But she couldn’t help feeling she’d been played by Mraize, despite Veil’s best efforts. “Nothing in here except some empty wine bottles,” Red said, opening drawers and cabinets on the hutch. “Wait! I think I found Gaz’s sense of humor.” He held up something small between two fingers. “Nope. Just a withered old piece of fruit.” Gaz had found a small bedchamber at the rear of the room, through the door that Veil had noticed. “If you do find my sense of humor, kill it,” he called from inside. “That will be more merciful than forcing it to deal with your jokes, Red.” “Brightness Shallan thinks they’re funny. Right?” “Anything that annoys Gaz is funny, Red,” she said. “Well, I annoy myself!” Gaz called. He stuck out his head, fully bearded, now with two working eyes—having regrown the missing one after he’d finally learned to draw in Stormlight
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a few months ago. “So I must be the most hilarious storming man on the planet. What are we searching for, Shallan?” “Papers, documents, notebooks,” she said. “Letters. Any kind of writing.” The two continued their inspection. They would find anything obvious, but Ialai had indicated there was something unusual to be discovered, something hidden. Something that Mraize wouldn’t want Shallan to have. She stepped through the room, then whirled a little on one heel and looked up. How had Veil missed the fine scrollwork paint near the ceiling, ringing the room? And the rug in the center might have been monochrome, but it was thick and well maintained. She kicked off her shoes and stockings and walked across it, feeling the luxurious threads under her toes. The room was understated, yes, but not bleak. Secrets. Where were the secrets? Pattern hummed on her skirt as she stepped over to the hutch and inspected the wines. Ialai had mentioned a rare vintage. These wines were the clue. Nothing to do but try them. Shallan had suffered far worse tests in the course of her duties. Red gave her a cocked eyebrow as she began pouring and tasting a little of each. Despite Ialai’s lengthy rumination on the wines, most of them tasted distinctly ordinary to Shallan. She wasn’t an expert though; she favored anything that tasted good and got her drunk. Thinking of that, she took in a little Stormlight and burned away the effects of the alcohol. Now wasn’t the time for a muddy head. Though most of the wines were ordinary, she did land on one she couldn’t place. It was a sweet wine, deep red, bloody in color. It didn’t taste like anything she’d had before. Fruity, yet robust, and perhaps a little bit … heavy. Was that the right word? “I’ve got some letters here,” Gaz said from the bedroom. “There are also some books that seem like she handwrote them.” “Gather it all,” Shallan said. “We’ll sort it out later. I need to go ask Adolin something.” She carried the carafe out to him. Several guards watched the door, and it didn’t seem anyone in the warcamp had noticed the attack. At least, no one had come knocking. Shallan pointedly ignored—then forced herself to look at—the body again. Adolin stepped over to meet her, speaking softly. “We should get going. A couple of the guards escaped. We might want to write for some Windrunners to meet us for quicker extraction. And … what happened to your shoes?” Shallan glanced at her bare feet, which poked out from under her dress. “They were impeding my ability to think.” “Your…” Adolin ran a hand through his delightfully messy hair, blond speckled with black. “Love, you’re deliciously weird sometimes.” “The rest of the time, I’m just tastelessly weird.” She held up the carafe. “Drink. It’s for science.” He frowned, but tried a sip, then grimaced. “What is it?” she asked. “Shin ‘wine.’ They have no idea how to ferment a proper alcohol. They make it all out of the same
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strange little berry.” “Exotic indeed…” Shallan said. “We can’t leave quite yet. Pattern and I have a secret to tease out.” “Mmm…” Pattern said from her skirt. “I wish I had shoes to take off so my brain would work right.” He paused. “Actually, I don’t think I have a brain.” “We’ll be back in a second,” she said, returning to the room with the wine hutch. Red had joined Gaz in the extremely tiny bedchamber. There were no windows, with barely enough room to stand. It held a mattress with no frame and a trunk that apparently stored the notes and letters Gaz had gathered. Ialai would expect those to be found. There might be secrets in them, but not what Shallan hunted. Ialai moved here after her palace burned down. She slept in a closet and refused to leave this fortress. And still Mraize got not one, but two people in to kill her. Shin wine. Was that the clue? Something about the hutch? She glanced it over, then got out her sketchpad. “Pattern,” she said, “search the room for patterns.” Pattern hummed and moved off her skirt—rippling the floor as he moved across it, as if he were somehow inside the stone, making the surface bulge. As he began searching, she did a sketch of the hutch. There was something about committing an object to memory, then freezing it into a drawing, that let her see better. She could judge the spaces between the drawers, the thickness of the wood—and she soon knew there was no room in the hutch for hidden compartments. She shooed away a couple of creationspren, then stood. Patterns, patterns, patterns. She scanned the carpet, then the painted designs on the upper trim of the room. Shinovar. Was the Shin wine truly important, or had she mistaken the clue? “Shallan,” Pattern said from across the room. “A pattern.” Shallan hurried to where he dimpled the rock of the wall, near the far northwest corner. Kneeling, she found that the stones did have a faint pattern to them. Carvings that—worn by time—she could barely feel beneath her fingers. “This building,” she said, “it’s not new. At least part of it was already standing when the Alethi arrived at the warcamps. They built the structure on an already-set foundation. What are the markings? I can barely make them out.” “Mmm. Ten items in a pattern, repeating,” he said. This one feels a little like a glyph.… she thought. These warcamps dated back to the shadowdays, when the Epoch Kingdoms had stood. Ten kingdoms of humankind. Ten glyphs? She wasn’t certain she could interpret ancient glyphs—even Jasnah might have had trouble with that—but maybe she didn’t have to. “These stones run around the base of the wall,” Shallan said. “Let’s see if any of the other carvings are easier to make out.” A few of the stones were indeed better preserved. They each bore a glyph—and what appeared to be a small map in the shape of one of the old kingdoms. Most were indistinct blobs, but the
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crescent shape of Shinovar’s mountains stood out. Shin wine. A map with the Shinovar mountains. “Find every block with this shape on it,” she told Pattern. He did so, every tenth block. She moved along to each one until, on the third try, the stone wiggled. “Here,” she said. “In the corner. I think this is right.” “Mmm…” he said. “A few degrees off, so technically acute.” She carefully slid the stone out. Inside, like the mythical gemstone cache from a bedtime tale, she found a small notebook. She glanced up and checked whether Gaz and Red were still in the other room. They were. Damnation, she has me distrusting my own agents, Shallan thought, slipping the notebook into her safepouch and replacing the stone. Maybe Ialai’s only plan had been to sow chaos, distrust. But … Shallan couldn’t entirely accept that theory, not with how haunted Ialai had seemed. It wasn’t hard to believe the Ghostbloods had been hunting her; Mraize had infiltrated Amaram and Ialai’s inner circle a year ago, but hadn’t gone with them when they’d fled Urithiru. Though Shallan itched to peek through the notebook, Gaz and Red emerged with a pillowcase full of notes and letters. “If there’s anything more in there,” Gaz said, thumbing over his shoulder, “we can’t find it.” “It will have to do,” Shallan said as Adolin waved her to join him. “Let’s get out of here.” * * * Kaladin hesitated, spear held toward Moash’s throat. He could end the man. Should end the man. Why did he hesitate? Moash … had been his friend. They’d spent hours by the fire, talking about their lives. Kaladin had opened his heart to this man, in ways he hadn’t to most of the others. He’d told Moash, like Teft and Rock, of Tien. Of Roshone. Of his fears. Moash wasn’t just a friend though. He was beyond that a member of Bridge Four. Kaladin had sworn to the storms and the heavens above—if anyone was there watching—that he’d protect those men. Kaladin had failed Moash. As soundly as he’d failed Dunny, Mart, and Jaks. And of them all, losing Moash hurt the most. Because in those callous eyes, Kaladin saw himself. “You bastard,” Kaladin hissed. “You deny that I was justified?” Moash kicked at Roshone’s body. “You know what he did. You know what he cost me.” “You killed Elhokar for that crime!” “Because he deserved it, like this one did.” Moash shook his head. “I did this for you too, Kal. You would let your brother’s soul cry into the storms, unavenged?” “Don’t you dare speak of Tien!” Kaladin shouted. He felt himself slipping, losing control. It happened whenever he thought of Moash, of King Elhokar dying, of failing the people of Kholinar and the men of the Wall Guard. “You claim justice?” Kaladin demanded, waving toward the corpses chained to the wall. “What about Jeber and that other man. You killed them for justice?” “For mercy,” Moash said. “Better a quick death than to leave them to die, forgotten.” “You could have
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set them free!” Kaladin’s hands were sweaty on his weapon, and his mind … his mind wouldn’t think straight. His Stormlight was running low, almost out. Kaladin, Syl said. Let’s leave. “We have to deal with him,” Kaladin whispered. “I have to … have to…” What? Kill Moash while he stood defenseless? This was a man Kaladin was supposed to protect. To save … “They’re going to die, you know,” Moash said softly. “Shut up.” “Everyone you love, everyone you think you can protect. They’re all going to die anyway. There’s nothing you can do about it.” “I said shut up!” Kaladin shouted. Moash stepped toward the spear, dropping his hands to his sides as he took a second step. Kaladin, strangely, felt himself shying away. He’d been so tired lately, and while he tried to ignore it—tried to keep going—his fatigue seemed a sudden weight. Kaladin had used a lot of his Stormlight fighting, then getting through the fire. It ran out right then, and he deflated. The numbness he’d been shoving down this entire battle flooded into him. The exhaustion. Beyond Moash, the distant fire crackled and snapped. Far off, a loud crashing crunch echoed through the tunnel: the kitchen ceiling finally collapsing. Bits of burning wood tumbled down the tunnel, the embers fading to darkness. “Do you remember the chasm, Kal?” Moash whispered. “In the rain that night? Standing there, looking down into the darkness, and knowing it was your sole release? You knew it then. You try to pretend you’ve forgotten. But you know. As sure as the storms will come. As sure as every lighteyes will lie. There is only one answer. One path. One result.” “No…” Kaladin whispered. “I’ve found the better way,” Moash said. “I feel no guilt. I’ve given it away, and in so doing became the person I could always have become—if I hadn’t been restrained.” “You’ve become a monster.” “I can take away the pain, Kal. Isn’t that what you want? An end to your suffering?” Kaladin felt like he was in a trance. Frozen, as he’d been when he watched … watched Elhokar die. A disconnect that had festered inside him ever since. No, it had been growing for longer. A seed that made him incapable of fighting, of deciding—paralyzing him while his friends died. His spear slipped from his fingers. Syl was talking, but … but he couldn’t hear her. Her voice was a distant breeze.… “There’s a simple path to freedom,” Moash said, reaching out and putting his hand on Kaladin’s shoulder. A comforting, familiar gesture. “You are my dearest friend, Kal. I want you to stop hurting. I want you to be free.” “No…” “The answer is to stop existing, Kal. You’ve always known it, haven’t you?” Kaladin blinked away tears, and the deepest part of him—the little boy who hated the rain and the darkness—withdrew into his soul and curled up. Because … he did want to stop hurting. He wanted it so badly. “I need one thing from you,” Moash said. “I need you to admit
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that I’m right. I need you to see. As they keep dying, remember. As you fail them, and the pain consumes you, remember there is a way out. Step back up to that cliff and jump into the darkness.” Syl was screaming, but it was only wind. A distant wind … “But I won’t fight you, Kal,” Moash whispered. “There is no fight to be won. We lost the moment we were born into this cursed life of suffering. The sole victory left to us is to choose to end it. I found my way. There is one open to you.” Oh, Stormfather, Kaladin thought. Oh, Almighty. I just … I just want to stop failing the people I love.… Light exploded into the room. Clean and white, like the light of the brightest diamond. The light of the sun. A brilliant, concentrated purity. Moash growled, spinning around, shading his eyes against the source of the light—which came from the doorway. The figure behind it wasn’t visible as anything more than a shadow. Moash shied away from the light—but a version of him, transparent and filmy, broke off and stepped toward the light instead. Like an afterimage. In it, Kaladin saw the same Moash—but somehow standing taller, wearing a brilliant blue uniform. This one raised a hand, confident, and although Kaladin couldn’t see them, he knew people gathered behind this Moash. Protected. Safe. The image of Moash burst alight as a Shardspear formed in his hands. “No!” the real Moash screamed. “No! Take it! Take my pain!” He stumbled away to the side of the room, furious, a Shardblade—the Blade of the Assassin in White—forming in his hands. He swung at the empty air. Finally he lowered his head—shadowing his face with his elbow—and shoved past the figure in the light and rushed back up the tunnel. Kaladin knelt, bathed in that warm light. Yes, warmth. Kaladin felt warm. Surely … if there truly was a deity … it watched him from within that light. The light faded, and a spindly young man with black and blond hair rushed forward to grab Kaladin. “Sir!” Renarin asked. “Kaladin, sir? Are you all right? Are you out of Stormlight?” “I…” Kaladin shook his head. “What…” “Come on,” Renarin said, getting under his arm to help lift him. “The Fused have retreated. The ship is ready to leave!” Kaladin nodded, numb, and let Renarin help him stand. Chiri-Chiri tried to hide in her grass. Unfortunately, she was growing too big. She wasn’t like a regular cremling, those that scuttled around, tiny and insignificant. She was something grander. She could think. She could grow. And she could fly. None of that helped as she tumbled out of the grass of the pot onto the desktop. She rolled over and clicked in annoyance, then looked toward Rysn, who sat making noises with another soft one. Chiri-Chiri did not always understand the mouth noises of the soft ones. They did not click, and there was no rhythm to them. So the sounds were sometimes just noises. Sometimes they
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