Oathbringer

88. Voices

Gavilar was starting to look worn.

Dalinar stood at the back of the king’s den, listening with half an ear. The king spoke with the heirs of the highprinces, staying to safe topics, like Gavilar’s plans for various civic projects in Kholinar.

He’s looking so old, Dalinar thought. Grey before his time. He needs something to revitalize him. A hunt, maybe?

Dalinar didn’t need to participate in the meeting; his job was to loom. Occasionally, one of the younger men would glance toward the perimeter of the room, and see the Blackthorn there in shadow. Watching.

He saw fires reflected in their eyes, and heard the weeping of children in the back of his mind.

Don’t be weak, Dalinar thought. It’s been almost three years.

Three years, living with what he’d done. Three years, wasting away in Kholinar. He’d assumed it would get better.

It was only getting worse.

Sadeas had carefully spun news of the Rift’s destruction to the king’s advantage. He’d called it regrettable that the Rifters had forced Kholin action by killing Dalinar’s wife, and named it unfortunate that the city had caught fire during the fighting. Gavilar had publicly censured Dalinar and Sadeas for “losing the city to flames,” but his denunciation of the Rifters had been far more biting.

The implication was clear. Gavilar didn’t want to unleash the Blackthorn. Even he couldn’t predict what kind of destruction Dalinar would bring. Obviously, such measures were a last resort—and these days, everyone was careful to give him plenty of other options.

So efficient. All it had cost was one city. And possibly Dalinar’s sanity.

Gavilar suggested to the gathered lighteyes that they light a fire in the hearth, for warmth. Well, that was the signal that he could leave. Dalinar could not stand fire. The scent of smoke smelled like burning skin, and the crackling of flames reminded him only of her.

Dalinar slipped out the back door, stepping into a hallway on the third floor, heading toward his own rooms. He had moved himself and his sons into the royal palace. His own keep reminded him too much of her.

Storms. Standing in that room—looking at the fear in the eyes of Gavilar’s guests—had made the pain and memories particularly acute today. He was better on some days. Others … felt like today. He needed a stiff drink from his wine cabinet.

Unfortunately, as he rounded through the curved corridor, he smelled incense in the air. Coming from his rooms? Renarin was burning it again.

Dalinar pulled up, as if he’d run up against something solid, then turned on his heel and walked away. It was too late, unfortunately. That scent … that was her scent.

He strode down to the second floor, passing bloodred carpets, pillared hallways. Where to get something to drink? He couldn’t go out into the city, where people acted so terrified of him. The kitchens? No, he wouldn’t go begging to one of the palace chefs—who would in turn tiptoe to the king and whisper that the Blackthorn had been at the violets again. Gavilar complained at how much Dalinar drank, but what else did soldiers do when not at war? Didn’t he deserve a little relaxation, after all he’d done for this kingdom?

He turned toward the king’s throne room, which—as the king was using his den instead—would be empty today. He went in through the servants’ entrance and stepped into a small staging room, where food was prepared before being delivered to the king. Using a sapphire sphere for light, Dalinar knelt and rummaged in one of the cupboards. Usually they kept some rare vintages here for impressing visitors.

The cupboards were empty. Damnation. He found nothing but pans, trays, and cups. A few bags of Herdazian spices. He fumed, tapping the counter. Had Gavilar discovered that Dalinar was coming here, and moved the wine? The king thought him a drunkard, but Dalinar indulged only on occasion. On bad days. Drink quieted the sounds of people crying in the back of his mind.

Weeping. Children burning. Begging their fathers to save them from the flames. And Evi’s voice, accompanying them all …

When was he going to escape this? He was becoming a coward! Nightmares when he tried to sleep. Weeping in his mind whenever he saw fire. Storms take Evi for doing this to him! If she’d acted like an adult instead of a child—if she’d been able to face duty or just reality for once—she wouldn’t have gotten herself killed.

He stomped into the corridor and strode right into a group of young soldiers. They scrambled to the sides of the hallway and saluted. Dalinar tipped his head toward their salutes, trying to keep the thunder from his expression.

The consummate general. That was who he was.

“Father?”

Dalinar pulled up sharply. He’d completely missed that Adolin was among the soldiers. At fifteen, the youth was growing tall and handsome. He got the former from Dalinar. Today, Adolin wore a fashionable suit with far too much embroidery, and boots that were topped by silver.

“That’s not a standard-issue uniform, soldier,” Dalinar said to him.

“I know!” Adolin said. “I had it specially tailored!”

Storms … His son was becoming a fop.

“Father,” Adolin said, stepping up and making an eager fist. “Did you get my message? I’ve got a bout set up with Tenathar. Father, he’s ranked. It’s a step toward winning my Blade!” He beamed at Dalinar.

Emotions warred inside of Dalinar. Memories of good years spent with his son in Jah Keved, riding or teaching him the sword.

Memories of her. The woman from whom Adolin had inherited that blond hair and that smile. So genuine. Dalinar wouldn’t trade Adolin’s sincerity for a hundred soldiers in proper uniforms.

But he also couldn’t face it right now.

“Father?” Adolin said.

“You’re in uniform, soldier. Your tone is too familiar. Is this how I taught you to act?”

Adolin blushed, then put on a stronger face. He didn’t wilt beneath the stern words. When censured, Adolin only tried harder.

“Sir!” the young man said. “I’d be proud if you’d watch my bout this week. I think you’ll be pleased with my performance.”

Storming child. Who could deny him? “I’ll be there, soldier. And will watch with pride.”

Adolin grinned, saluted, then dashed back to join the others. Dalinar walked off as quickly as he could, to get away from that hair, that wonderful—haunting—smile.

Well, he needed a drink now more than ever. But he would not go begging to the cooks. He had another option, one that he was certain even his brother—sly though Gavilar was—wouldn’t have considered. He went down another set of steps and reached the eastern gallery of the palace, now passing ardents with shaved heads. It was a sign of his desperation that he came all the way out here, facing their condemning eyes.

He slipped down the stairwell into the depths of the building, entering halls that led toward the kitchens in one direction, the catacombs in the other. A few twists and turns led him out onto the Beggars’ Porch: a small patio between the compost heaps and the gardens. Here, a group of miserable people waited for the offerings Gavilar gave after dinner.

Some begged of Dalinar, but a glare made the rag-clothed wretches pull back and cower. At the back of the porch, he found Ahu huddled in the shadows between two large religious statues, their backs facing the beggars, their hands spread toward the gardens.

Ahu was an odd one, even for a crazy beggar. With black, matted hair and a scraggly beard, his skin was dark for an Alethi. His clothing was mere scraps, and he smelled worse than the compost.

Somehow he always had a bottle with him.

Ahu giggled at Dalinar. “Have you seen me?”

“Unfortunately.” Dalinar settled on the ground. “I have smelled you too. What are you drinking today? It had better not be water this time, Ahu.”

Ahu wagged a stout, dark bottle. “Dunno what it is, little child. Tastes good.”

Dalinar tried a sip and hissed. A burning wine, no sweetness to it at all. A white, though he didn’t recognize the vintage. Storms … it smelled intoxicating.

Dalinar took a chug, then handed the bottle back to Ahu. “How are the voices?”

“Soft, today. They chant about ripping me apart. Eating my flesh. Drinking my blood.”

“Pleasant.”

“Hee hee.” Ahu snuggled back against the branches of the hedge-wall, as if they were soft silk. “Nice. Not bad at all, little child. What of your noises?”

In reply, Dalinar reached out his hand. Ahu gave him the bottle. Dalinar drank, welcoming the fuzzing of mind that would quiet the weeping.

“Aven begah,” Ahu said. “It’s a fine night for my torment, and no telling the skies to be still. Where is my soul, and who is this in my face?”

“You’re a strange little man, Ahu.”

Ahu cackled his response and waved for the wine. After a drink, he returned it to Dalinar, who wiped off the beggar’s spittle with his shirt. Storm Gavilar for pushing him to this.

“I like you,” Ahu said to Dalinar. “I like the pain in your eyes. Friendly pain. Companionable pain.”

“Thanks.”

“Which one got to you, little child?” Ahu asked. “The Black Fisher? The Spawning Mother, the Faceless? Moelach is close. I can hear his wheezing, his scratching, his scraping at time like a rat breaking through walls.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Madness,” Ahu said, then giggled. “I used to think it wasn’t my fault. But you know, we can’t escape what we did? We let them in. We attracted them, befriended them, took them out to dance and courted them. It is our fault. You open yourself to it, and you pay the price. They ripped my brain out and made it dance! I watched.”

Dalinar paused, the bottle halfway to his lips. Then he held it out to Ahu. “Drink this. You need it.”

Ahu obliged.

Sometime later, Dalinar stumbled back to his rooms, feeling downright serene—thoroughly smashed and without a crying child to be heard. At the door, he stopped and looked back down the corridor. Where … He couldn’t remember the trip back up from the Beggars’ Porch.

He looked down at his unbuttoned jacket, his white shirt stained with dirt and drink. Um …

A voice drifted through the closed door. Was that Adolin inside? Dalinar started, then focused. Storms, he’d come to the wrong door.

Another voice. Was that Gavilar? Dalinar leaned in.

“I’m worried about him, Uncle,” Adolin’s voice said.

“Your father never adjusted to being alone, Adolin,” the king replied. “He misses your mother.”

Idiots, Dalinar thought. He didn’t miss Evi. He wanted to be rid of her.

Though … he did ache now that she was gone. Was that why she wept for him so often?

“He’s down with the beggars again,” another voice said from inside. Elhokar? That little boy? Why did he sound like a man? He was only … how old? “He tried the serving room again first. Seems he forgot he drank that all last time. Honestly, if there’s a bottle hidden in this palace anywhere, that drunken fool will find it.”

“My father is not a fool!” Adolin said. “He’s a great man, and you owe him your—”

“Peace, Adolin,” Gavilar said. “Both of you, hold your tongues. Dalinar is a soldier. He’ll fight through this. Perhaps if we go on a trip we can distract him from his loss. Maybe Azir?”

Their voices … He had just rid himself of Evi’s weeping, but hearing this dragged her back. Dalinar gritted his teeth and stumbled to the proper door. Inside, he found the nearest couch and collapsed.

A Portion of the Sea of Lost Lights

89. Damnation

Adolin had never bothered imagining what Damnation might look like.

Theology was for women and scribes. Adolin figured he’d try to follow his Calling, becoming the best swordsman he could. The ardents told him that was enough, that he didn’t need to worry about things like Damnation.

Yet here he was, kneeling on a white marble platform with a black sky overhead, a cold sun—if it could even be called that—hanging at the end of a roadway of clouds. An ocean of shifting glass beads, clattering against one another. Tens of thousands of flames, like the tips of oil lamps, hovering above that ocean.

And the spren. Terrible, awful spren swarmed in the ocean of beads, bearing a multitude of nightmare forms. They twisted and writhed, howling with inhuman voices. He didn’t recognize any of the varieties.

“I’m dead,” Adolin whispered. “We’re dead, and this is Damnation.”

But what of the pretty, blue-white spren girl? The creature with the stiff robe and a mesmerizing, impossible symbol instead of a head? What of the woman with the scratched-out eyes? And those two enormous spren standing overhead, with spears and—

Light exploded to Adolin’s left. Kaladin Stormblessed, pulling in power, floated into the air. Beads rattled, and every monster in the writhing throng turned—as if one—to fixate upon Kaladin.

“Kaladin!” the spren girl shouted. “Kaladin, they feed on Stormlight! You’ll draw their attention. Everything’s attention.”

“Drehy and Skar…” Kaladin said. “Our soldiers. Where are they?”

“They’re still on the other side,” Shallan said, standing up beside Adolin. The creature with the twisted head took her arm, steadying her. “Storms, they might be safer than we are. We’re in Shadesmar.”

Some of the lights nearby vanished. Candles’ flames being snuffed out.

Many spren swam toward the platform, joining an increasingly large group that churned around it, causing a ruckus in the beads. The majority of them were long eel-like things, with ridges along their backs and purple antennae that squirmed like tongues and seemed to be made of thick liquid.

Beneath them, deep in the beads, something enormous shifted, causing beads to roll off one another in piles.

“Kaladin!” the blue girl shouted. “Please!”

He looked at her, and seemed to see her for the first time. The Light vanished from him, and he dropped—hard—to the platform.

Azure held her thin Shardblade, gaze fixed on the things swimming through the beads around their platform. The only one who didn’t seem frightened was the strange spren woman with the scratched-out eyes and the skin made of rough cloth. Her eyes … they weren’t empty sockets. Instead she was like a portrait where the eyes had been scraped off.

Adolin shivered. “So…” he said. “Any idea what is happening?”

“We’re not dead,” Azure growled. “They call this place Shadesmar. It’s the realm of thought.”

“I peek into this place when I Soulcast,” Shallan said. “Shadesmar overlaps the real world, but many things are inverted here.”

“I passed through it when I first came to your land about a year ago,” Azure added. “I had guides then, and I tried to avoid looking at too much crazy stuff.”

“Smart,” Adolin said. He put his hand to the side to summon his own Shardblade.

The woman with the scratched eyes stretched her head toward him in an unnatural way, then screeched with a loud, piercing howl.

Adolin stumbled away, nearly colliding with Shallan and her … her spren? Was that Pattern?

“That is your sword,” Pattern said in a perky voice. He had no mouth that Adolin could see. “Hmmm. She is quite dead. I don’t think you can summon her here.” He cocked his bizarre head, looking at Azure’s Blade. “Yours is different. Very curious.”

The thing deep beneath their platform shifted again.

“That is probably bad,” Pattern noted. “Hmmm … yes. Those spren above us are the souls of the Oathgate, and that one deep beneath us is likely one of the Unmade. It must be very large on this side.”

“So what do we do?” Shallan asked.

Pattern looked in one direction, then the other. “No boat. Hmmm. Yes, that is a problem, isn’t it?”

Adolin spun around. Some of the eel-like spren climbed onto the platform, using stumpy legs that Adolin had missed earlier. Those long purple antennae stretched toward him, wiggling.…

Fearspren, he realized. Fearspren were little globs of purple goo that looked exactly like the tips of those antennae.

“We need to get off this platform,” Shallan said. “Everything else is secondary. Kaladin…” She trailed off as she glanced toward him.

The bridgeman knelt on the stone, head bowed, shoulders slumped. Storms … Adolin had been forced to carry him away from the battle, numb and broken. Looked like that emotion had caught up to him again.

Kaladin’s spren—Adolin could only guess that was the identity of the pretty girl in blue—stood beside him, one hand resting protectively on his back. “Kaladin’s not well,” she said.

“I have to be well,” Kaladin said, his voice hoarse as he climbed back to his feet. His long hair fell across his face, obscuring his eyes. Storms. Even surrounded by monsters, the bridgeman could look intimidating. “How do we get to safety? I can’t fly us without attracting attention.”

“This place is the inverse of your world,” Azure said. She stepped back from a long antenna exploring in her direction. “Where there are larger bodies of water on Roshar, we will have land here, correct?”

“Mmm,” Pattern said, nodding.

“The river?” Adolin asked. He tried to orient himself, looking past the thousands of floating lights. “There.” He pointed at a lump he could barely spot in the distance. Like a long island.

Kaladin stared at it, frowning. “Can we swim in these beads?”

“No,” Adolin said, remembering what it had felt like to fall into this ocean. “I…”

The beads rattled and clacked against one another as the large thing surged beneath. In the near distance, a single spire of rock broke the surface, tall and black. It emerged like a mountain peak slowly lifting from the sea, beads rattling in waves around it. As it grew to the height of a building, a joint appeared. Storms. It wasn’t a spire or a mountain … it was a claw.

More emerged in other directions. An enormous hand was reaching slowly upward through the glass beads. Deep beneath them a heartbeat began sounding, rattling the beads.

Adolin stumbled back, horrified, and nearly slipped into the bead ocean. He kept his balance, barely, and found himself face-to-face with the woman with scratches for eyes. She stared at him, completely emotionless, as if waiting for him to try to summon his Shardblade so she could scream again.

Damnation. No matter what Azure said, he was certainly in Damnation.

“What do I do?” Shallan whispered. She knelt on the white stone of the platform, searching among the beads. Each gave her an impression of an object in the Physical Realm. A dropped shield. A vase from the palace. A scarf.

Nearby, hundreds of little spren—like little orange or green people, only a few inches tall—were climbing among the spheres. She ignored those, searching for the soul of something that would help.

“Shallan,” Pattern said, kneeling. “I don’t think … I don’t think Soulcasting will accomplish anything? It will change an object in the other realm, but not here.”

“What can I do here?” Those spines or claws or whatever rose around them, inevitable, deadly.

Pattern hummed, hands clasped before him. His fingers were too smooth, as if they were chiseled of obsidian. His head shifted and changed, going through its sequence—the spherical mass was never the same, yet somehow still always felt like him.

“My memory…” he said. “I don’t remember.”

Stormlight, Shallan thought. Jasnah had told her to never enter Shadesmar without Stormlight. Shallan pulled a sphere from her pocket—she still wore Veil’s outfit. The beads nearby reacted, trembling and rolling toward her.

“Mmmm…” Pattern said. “Dangerous.”

“I doubt staying here will be better,” Shallan said. She sucked in a little Stormlight, only one mark’s worth. As before, the spren didn’t seem to notice her use of Stormlight as much as they had Kaladin’s. She rested her freehand against the surface of the ocean. Beads stopped rolling and instead clicked together beneath her hand. When she pushed down, they resisted.

Good first step, she thought, drawing in more Stormlight. The beads pressed around her hand, gathering, rolling onto one another. She cursed, worried that she’d soon just have a big pile of beads.

“Shallan,” Pattern said, poking at one of the beads. “Perhaps this?”

It was the soul of the shield she’d felt earlier. She moved the sphere to her gloved safehand, then pressed her other hand to the ocean. She used that bead’s soul as a guide—much like she used a Memory as a guide for doing a sketch—and the other beads obediently rolled together and locked into place, forming an imitation of the shield.

Pattern stepped out onto it, then jumped up and down happily. Her shield held him without sinking, though he seemed as heavy as an ordinary person. Good enough. Now she just needed something big enough to hold them all. Preferably, as she considered, two somethings.

“You, sword lady!” Shallan said, pointing at Azure. “Help me over here. Adolin, you too. Kaladin, see if you can brood this place into submission.”

Azure and Adolin hurried over.

Kaladin turned, frowning. “What?”

Don’t think about that haunted look in his eyes, Shallan thought. Don’t think about what you’ve done in bringing us here, or how it happened. Don’t think, Shallan.

Her mind went blank, like it did in preparation for drawing, then locked on to her task.

Find a way out.

“Everybody,” she said, “those flames are the souls of people, while these spheres represent the souls of objects. Yes, there are huge philosophical implications in that. Let’s try to ignore them, shall we? When you touch a bead, you should be able to sense what it represents.”

Azure sheathed her Shardblade and knelt, feeling at the spheres. “I can … Yes, there’s an impression to each one.”

“We need the soul of something long and flat.” Shallan plunged her hands into the spheres, eyes closed, letting the impressions wash over her.

“I can’t sense anything,” Adolin said. “What am I doing wrong?” He sounded overwhelmed, but don’t think about that.

Look. Fine clothing that hadn’t been taken out of its trunk in a long, long time. So old that it saw the dust as part of itself.

Withering fruit that understood its purpose: decompose and stick its seeds to the rock, where they could hopefully weather storms long enough to sprout and gain purchase.

Swords, recently swung and glorying in their purpose fulfilled. Other weapons belonged to dead men, blades that had the faintest inkling that they’d failed somehow.

Living souls bobbed around, a swarm of them entering the Oathgate control chamber. One brushed Shallan. Drehy the bridgeman. For a brief moment she felt what it was like to be him. Worried for Kaladin. Panicked that nobody was in charge, that he would have to take command. He wasn’t a commander. You couldn’t be a rebel if you were in charge. He liked being told what to do—that way he could find a method to do it with style.

Drehy’s worries caused her own to bubble up. The bridgemen’s powers will fade without Kaladin, she thought. What of Vathah, Red, and Ishnah? I didn’t—

Focus. Something reached out from the back of her mind, grabbed those thoughts and feelings, and yanked them into the darkness. Gone.

She brushed a bead with her fingers. A large door, like a keep’s gate. She grabbed the sphere and shifted it to her safehand. Unfortunately, the next bead she touched was the palace itself. Momentarily stunned by the majesty of it, Shallan gaped. She held the entire palace in her hand.

Too large. She dropped it and kept searching.

Trash that still saw itself as a child’s toy.

A goblet that had been made from melted-down nails, taken from an old building.

There. She seized hold of a sphere and pressed Stormlight into it. A building rose before her, made entirely out of beads: a copy of the Oathgate control building. She managed to make its top rise only a few feet above the surface, most of the building sinking into the depths. The rooftop was within reach.

“On top of it!” she shouted.

She held the replica in place as Pattern scrambled onto the roof. Adolin followed, trailed by that ghostly spren and Azure. Finally, Kaladin picked up his pack and walked with his spren onto the rooftop.

Shallan joined them with the aid of a hand from Adolin. She clutched the sphere that was the soul of the building, and tried to make the bead structure move through the sea like a raft.

It resisted, sitting there motionless. Well, she had another plan. She scurried to the other side of the roof and stretched down, held by Pattern, to touch the sea again. She used the soul of the large door to make another standing platform. Pattern jumped down, followed by Adolin and Azure.

Once they’d all piled precariously on the door, Shallan let go of the building. It crashed down behind them, beads falling in a tumult, frightening some of the little green spren crawling among the beads nearby.

Shallan reconstructed the building on the other side of the door, with only the rooftop showing. They filed across.

They progressed like that—following building with door and door with building—inching toward that distant land. Each iteration took Stormlight, though she could reclaim some from each creation before it collapsed. Some of the eel-like spren with the long antennae followed them, curious, but the rest of the varieties—and there were dozens—let them pass without much notice.

“Mmm…” Pattern said. “Much emotion on the other side. Yes, this is good. It distracts them.”

The work was tiring and tedious, but step by step, Shallan moved them away from the frothing mess of the city of Kholinar. They passed the frightened lights of souls, the hungry spren who feasted on the emotions from the other side.

“Mmm…” Pattern whispered to her. “Look, Shallan. The lights of souls are no longer disappearing. People must be surrendering in Kholinar. I know you do not like the destruction of your own.”

That was good, but not unexpected. The parshmen had never massacred civilians, though she couldn’t say for certain what happened to Azure’s soldiers. She hoped fervently they were able to either escape or surrender.

Shallan had to edge her group frighteningly close to two of the spines that had emerged from the depths. Those gave no sign of having noticed them. Beyond, they reached a calmer space out among the beads. A place where the only sound came from the clacking of glass.

“She corrupted them,” Kaladin’s spren whispered.

Shallan took a break, wiping her brow with a handkerchief from her satchel. They were distant enough that the lights of souls in Kholinar were just a general haze of light.

“What was that, spren?” Azure asked. “Corrupted?”

“That’s why we’re here. The Oathgate—do you remember those two spren in the sky? Those two are the gateway’s soul, but the red coloring … They must be His now. That’s why we ended up here, instead of going to Urithiru.”

Sja-anat, Shallan thought, said she was supposed to kill us. But that she’d try not to.

Shallan wiped her brow again, then got back to work.

Adolin felt useless.

All his life, he had understood. He’d taken easily to dueling. People naturally seemed to like him. Even in his darkest moment—standing on the battlefield and watching Sadeas’s armies retreat, abandoning him and his father—he’d understood what was happening to him.

Not today. Today he was just a confused little boy standing in Damnation.

Today, Adolin Kholin was nothing.

He stepped onto another copy of the door. They had to huddle together while Shallan dismissed the rooftop behind, sending it crashing down, then squeezed past everyone to raise another copy of the building.

Adolin felt small. So very small. He started toward the rooftop. Kaladin, however, remained standing on the door, staring sightlessly. Syl, his spren, tugged his hand.

“Kaladin?” Adolin asked.

Kaladin finally shook himself and gave in to Syl’s prodding. He walked onto the rooftop. Adolin followed, then took Kaladin’s pack—deliberately but firmly—and swung it over his own shoulder. Kaladin let him. Behind, the doorway shattered back into the ocean of beads.

“Hey,” Adolin said. “It will be all right.”

“I survived Bridge Four,” Kaladin growled. “I’m strong enough to survive this.”

“I’m pretty sure you could survive anything. Storms, bridgeboy, the Almighty used some of the same stuff he put into Shardblades when he made you.”

Kaladin shrugged. But as they walked onto the next platform, his expression grew distant again. He stood while the rest of them moved on. Almost like he was waiting for their bridge to dissolve and dump him into the sea.

“I couldn’t make them see,” Kaladin whispered. “I couldn’t … couldn’t protect them. I’m supposed to be able to protect people, aren’t I?”

“Hey,” Adolin said. “You really think that strange spren with the weird eyes is my sword?”

Kaladin started and focused on him, then scowled. “Yes, Adolin. I thought that was clear.”

“I was just wondering.” Adolin glanced over his shoulder and shivered. “What do you think about this place? Have you ever heard of anything like it?”

“Do you have to talk right now, Adolin?”

“I’m frightened. I talk when I’m frightened.”

Kaladin glared at him as if suspecting what Adolin was doing. “I know little of this place,” he finally answered. “But I think it’s where spren are born.…”

Adolin kept him talking. As Shallan created each new platform, Adolin would lightly touch Kaladin on the elbow or shoulder and the bridgeman would step forward. Kaladin’s spren hovered nearby, but she let Adolin guide the conversation.

Slowly they approached the strip of land, which turned out to be made of a deep, glassy black stone. Kind of like obsidian. Adolin got Kaladin across onto the land, then settled him with his spren. Azure followed, her shoulders sagging. In fact, her … her hair was fading. It was the strangest thing; Adolin watched it dim from Alethi jet-black to a faint grey as she sat down. Must be another effect of this strange place.

How much did she know of Shadesmar? He’d been so focused on Kaladin, he hadn’t thought to interrogate her. Unfortunately, he was so tired right now, he was having trouble thinking straight.

Adolin stepped back onto the platform as Pattern stepped off. Shallan looked as if she was about to collapse. She stumbled, and the platform ruptured. He managed to grab her, and fortunately they only fell to waist-deep in the beads before their feet touched ground. The little balls of glass seemed to slide and move too easily, not supporting their weight.

Adolin had to practically haul Shallan through the tide of beads up onto the bank. There, she toppled backward, groaning and closing her eyes.

“Shallan?” he asked, kneeling beside her.

“I’m fine. It just took … concentration. Visualization.”

“We need to find another way back to our world,” Kaladin said, seated nearby. “We can’t rest. They’re fighting. We need to help them.”

Adolin surveyed his companions. Shallan lay on the ground; her spren had joined her, lying in a similar posture and looking up at the sky. Azure slumped forward, her small Shardblade across her lap. Kaladin continued to stare at nothing with haunted eyes, his spren hovering behind him, worried.

“Azure,” Adolin said, “is it safe here, on this land?”

“As safe as anywhere in Shadesmar,” she said tiredly. “The place can be dangerous if you attract the wrong spren, but there isn’t anything we can do about that.”

“Then we camp here.”

“But—” Kaladin said.

“We camp,” Adolin said. Gentle, but firm. “We can barely stand up straight, bridgeman.”

Kaladin didn’t argue further. Adolin scouted up the bank, though each step felt like it was weighted with stone. He found a small depression in the glassy stone and—with some urging—got the rest of them to move to it.

As they made improvised beds from their coats and packs, Adolin looked one last time at the city, standing witness to the fall of his birthplace.

Storms, he thought. Elhokar … Elhokar is dead.

Little Gav had been taken, and Dalinar was planning to abdicate. Third in line was … Adolin himself.

King.

90. Reborn

Szeth-son-son …

Szeth-son …

Szeth, Truthless …

Szeth. Just Szeth.

Szeth of Shinovar, once called the Assassin in White, had been reborn. Mostly.

The Skybreakers whispered of it. Nin, Herald of Justice, had restored him following his defeat in the storm. Like most things, death had not been Szeth’s to claim. The Herald had used a type of fabrial to heal his body before his spirit departed.

It had almost taken too long, however. His spirit hadn’t properly reattached to his body.

Szeth walked with the others out onto the stone field before their small fortress, which overlooked the Purelake. The air was humid, almost like that of his homeland, though it didn’t smell earthy or alive. It smelled of seaweed and wet stone.

There were five other hopefuls, all of them younger than Szeth. He was shortest among them, and the only one who kept his head bald. He couldn’t grow a full head of hair, even if he didn’t shave it.

The other five kept their distance from him. Perhaps it was because of the way he left a glowing afterimage when he moved: a sign of his soul’s improper reattachment. Not all could see it, but these could. They were close enough to the Surges.

Or maybe they feared him because of the black sword in a silver sheath that he wore strapped to his back.

Oh, it’s the lake! the sword said in his mind. It had an eager voice that didn’t sound distinctly feminine or masculine. You should draw me, Szeth! I would love to see the lake. Vasher says there are magic fish here. Isn’t that interesting?

“I have been warned, sword-nimi,” Szeth reminded the weapon, “not to draw you except in the case of extreme emergency. And only if I carry much Stormlight, lest you feed upon my soul.”

Well, I wouldn’t do that, the sword said. It made a huffing sound. I don’t think you’re evil at all, and I only destroy things that are evil.

The sword was an interesting test, given him by Nin the Herald—called Nale, Nalan, or Nakku by most stonewalkers. Even after weeks of carrying this black sword, Szeth did not understand what the experience was to teach him.

The Skybreakers arranged themselves to watch the hopefuls. There were some fifty here, and that didn’t count the dozens who were supposedly out on missions. So many. An entire order of Knights Radiant had survived the Recreance and had been watching for the Desolation for two thousand years, constantly replenishing their numbers as others died of old age.

Szeth would join them. He would accept their training, as Nin had promised him he would receive, then travel to his homeland of Shinovar. There, he would bring justice to the ones who had falsely exiled him.

Do I dare bring them judgment? a part of him wondered. Dare I trust myself with the sword of justice?

The sword replied. You? Szeth, I think you’re super trustworthy. And I’m a good judge of people.

“I was not speaking to you, sword-nimi.”

I know. But you were wrong, and so I had to tell you. Hey, the voices seem quiet today. That’s nice, isn’t it?

Mentioning it brought the whispers to Szeth’s attention. Nin had not healed Szeth’s madness. He’d called it an effect of Szeth’s connection to the powers, and said that he was hearing trembles from the Spiritual Realm. Memories of the dead he’d killed.

He no longer feared them. He had died and been forced to return. He had failed to join the voices, and now they … they had no power over him, right?

Why, then, did he still weep in the night, terrified?

One of the Skybreakers stepped forward. Ki was a golden-haired woman, tall and imposing. Skybreakers clothed themselves in the garb of local lawkeepers—so here, in Marabethia, they wore a patterned shoulder cloak and a colorful skirtlike wrap. Ki wore no shirt, merely a simple cloth tied around her chest.

“Hopefuls,” she said in Azish, “you have been brought here because a full Skybreaker has vouched for your dedication and solemnity.”

She’s boring, the sword said. Where did Nale go?

“You said he was boring too, sword-nimi,” Szeth whispered.

That’s true, but interesting things happen around him. We need to tell him that you should draw me more often.

“Your first training has already been completed,” Ki said. “You traveled with the Skybreakers and joined them in one of their missions. You have been evaluated and deemed worthy of the First Ideal. Speak it. You know the Words.”

Vasher always drew me, the sword said, sounding resentful.

“Life before death,” Szeth said, closing his eyes. “Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.”

The other five belted it out. Szeth whispered it to the voices that called to him from the darkness. Let them see. He would bring justice to those who had caused this.

He’d hoped that the first oath would restore his ability to draw upon Stormlight—something he had lost along with his previous weapon. However, when he removed a sphere from his pocket, he was unable to access the Light.

“In speaking this ideal,” Ki said, “you are officially pardoned for any past misdeeds or sins. We have paperwork signed by proper authorities for this region.

“To progress further among our ranks, and to learn the Lashings, you will need a master to take you as their squire. Then may you speak the Second Ideal. From there, you will need to impress a highspren and form a bond—becoming a full Skybreaker. Today you will take the first of many tests. Though we will evaluate you, remember that the final measure of your success or failure belongs to the highspren. Do you have any questions?”

None of the other hopefuls said anything, so Szeth cleared his throat. “There are five Ideals,” he said. “Nin told me of this. You have spoken them all?”

“It’s been centuries since anyone mastered the Fifth Ideal,” Ki said. “One becomes a full Skybreaker by speaking the Third Ideal, the Ideal of Dedication.”

“We can … know what the Ideals are?” Szeth asked. For some reason, he’d thought they would be hidden from him.

“Of course,” Ki said. “You will find no games here, Szeth-son-Neturo. The First Ideal is the Ideal of Radiance. You have spoken it. The second is the Ideal of Justice, an oath to seek and administer justice.

“The Third Ideal, the Ideal of Dedication, requires you to have first bonded a highspren. Once you have, you swear to dedicate yourself to a greater truth—a code to follow. Upon achieving this, you will be taught Division, the second—and more dangerous—of the Surges we practice.”

“Someday,” another Skybreaker noted, “you may achieve the Fourth Ideal: the Ideal of Crusade. In this, you choose a personal quest and complete it to the satisfaction of your highspren. Once successful, you become a master like ourselves.”

Cleanse Shinovar, Szeth thought. That would be his quest. “What is the Fifth Ideal?” he asked.

“The Ideal of Law,” Ki said. “It is difficult. You must become law, become truth. As I said, it has been centuries since that was achieved.”

“Nin told me we were to follow the law—something external, as men are changeable and unreliable. How can we become the law?”

“Law must come from somewhere,” another of the Skybreaker masters said. “This is not an oath you will swear, so don’t fixate upon it. The first three will do for most Skybreakers. I was of the Third Ideal for two decades before achieving the Fourth.”

When nobody else asked further questions, experienced Skybreakers began Lashing the hopefuls into the air.

“What is happening?” Szeth asked.

“We will carry you to the place of the test,” Ki said, “as you cannot move with your own Stormlight until you swear the Second Ideal.”

“Do I belong with these youths?” Szeth said. “Nin treated me as something different.” The Herald had taken him on a mission to Tashikk, hunting Surgebinders from other orders. A heartless act that Nin had explained would prevent the coming of the Desolation.

Except that it had not. The Everstorm’s return had convinced Nin he was wrong, and he’d abandoned Szeth in Tashikk. Weeks had passed there until Nin had returned to collect him. The Herald had dropped Szeth here at the fortress, then had vanished into the sky again, this time off to “seek guidance.”

“The Herald,” Ki said, “originally thought that you might skip to the Third Ideal because of your past. He is no longer here, however, and we cannot judge. You’ll have to follow the same path as everyone else.”

Szeth nodded. Very well.

“No further complaints?” Ki asked.

“It is orderly,” Szeth said, “and you have explained it well. Why would I complain?”

The others seemed to like this response, and Ki herself Lashed him into the sky. For a moment he felt the freedom of flight—reminding him of his first days, holding an Honorblade long ago. Before he’d become Truthless.

No. You were never Truthless. Remember that.

Besides, this flight was not truly his. He continued falling upward until another Skybreaker caught him and Lashed him downward, counteracting the first effect and leaving him hovering.

A pair of Skybreakers took him, one under each arm, and the entire group soared through the air. He couldn’t imagine they’d done this sort of thing in the past, as they’d remained hidden for so many years. But they didn’t seem to care about secrecy anymore.

I like it up here, the sword said. You can see everything.

“Can you actually see things, sword-nimi?”

Not like a man. You see all kinds of things, Szeth. Except, unfortunately, how useful I am.

91. Why He Froze

Kaladin remembered cleaning crem off the bunker floor while in Amaram’s army.

That sound of chisel on stone reminded Kal of his mother. He knelt on kneepads and scraped at the crem, which had seeped in under doors or had been tracked in on the boots of soldiers, creating an uneven patina on the otherwise smooth floor. He wouldn’t have thought that soldiers would care that the ground wasn’t level. Shouldn’t he be sharpening his spear, or … or oiling something?

Well, in his experience, soldiers spent little time doing soldier things. They instead spent ages walking places, waiting around, or—in his case—getting yelled at for walking around or waiting in the wrong places. He sighed as he worked, using smooth even strokes, like his mother had taught him. Get underneath the crem and push. You could lift it up in flat sections an inch or more wide. Much easier than chipping at it from above.

A shadow darkened the door, and Kal glanced over his shoulder, then hunkered down farther. Great.

Sergeant Tukks walked to one of the bunks and settled down, the wood groaning under his weight. Younger than the other sergeants, he had features that were … off somehow. Perhaps it was his short stature, or his sunken cheeks.

“You do that well,” Tukks said.

Kal continued to work, saying nothing.

“Don’t feel so bad, Kal. It’s not unusual for a new recruit to pull back. Storms. It’s not so uncommon to freeze in battle, let alone on the practice field.”

“If it’s so common,” Kal muttered, “why am I being punished?”

“What, this? A little cleaning duty? Kid, this isn’t punishment. This is to help you fit in.”

Kal frowned, leaning back and looking up. “Sergeant?”

“Trust me. Everyone was waiting for you to get a dressing-down. The longer you went without one, the longer you were going to feel like the odd man out.”

“I’m scraping floors because I didn’t deserve to be punished?”

“That, and for talking back to an officer.”

“He wasn’t an officer! He was just a lighteyes with—”

“Better to stop that kind of behavior now. Before you do it to someone who matters. Oh, don’t glower, Kal. You’ll understand eventually.”

Kal attacked a particularly stubborn knob of crem near the leg of a bunk.

“I found your brother,” Tukks noted.

Kaladin’s breath caught.

“He’s in the Seventh,” Tukks said.

“I need to go to him. Can I be transferred? We weren’t supposed to be split apart.”

“Maybe I can get him moved here, to train with you.”

“He’s a messenger! He’s not supposed to train with the spear.”

“Everyone trains, even the messenger boys,” Tukks said.

Kal gripped his chisel tightly, fighting down the urge to stand up and go looking for Tien. Didn’t they understand? Tien couldn’t hurt cremlings. He’d catch the things and usher them outside, talking to them like pets. The image of him holding a spear was ludicrous.

Tukks took out some fathom bark and started chewing. He leaned back on the bunk and put his feet up on the footboard. “Make sure you get that spot to your left.”

Kaladin sighed, then moved to the indicated place.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Tukks asked. “The moment when you froze during practice?”

Stupid crem. Why did the Almighty make it?

“Don’t be ashamed,” Tukks continued. “We practice so you can freeze now, instead of when it will get you killed. You face down a squad, knowing they want to kill you even though they’ve never met you. And you hesitate, thinking it can’t possibly be true. You can’t possibly be here, preparing to fight, to bleed. Everyone feels that fear.”

“I wasn’t afraid of getting hurt,” Kal said softly.

“You won’t get far if you can’t admit to a little fear. Emotion is good. It’s what defines us, makes us—”

“I wasn’t afraid of getting hurt.” Kaladin took a deep breath. “I was afraid of making someone hurt.”

Tukks twisted the bark in his mouth, then nodded. “I see. Well, that’s another problem. Not unusual either, but a different matter indeed.”

For a time, the only sound in the large barrack was that of chisel on stone. “How do you do it?” Kal finally asked, not looking up. “How can you hurt people, Tukks? They’re just poor darkeyed slobs like us.”

“I think about my mates,” Tukks said. “I can’t let the lads down. My squad is my family now.”

“So you kill someone else’s family?”

“Eventually, we’ll be killing shellheads. But I know what you mean, Kal. It’s hard. You’d be surprised how many men look in the face of an enemy and find that they’re simply not capable of hurting another person.”

Kal closed his eyes, letting the chisel slip from his fingers.

“It’s good you aren’t so eager,” Tukks said. “Means you’re sane. I’ll take ten unskilled men with earnest hearts over one callous idiot who thinks this is all a game.”

The world doesn’t make sense, Kal thought. His father, the consummate surgeon, told him to avoid getting too wrapped up in his patients’ emotions. And here was a career killer, telling him to care?

Boots scraped on stone as Tukks stood up. He walked over and rested one hand on Kal’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about the war, or even the battle. Focus on your squadmates, Kal. Keep them alive. Be the man they need.” He grinned. “And get the rest of this floor scraped. I think when you come to dinner, you’ll find the rest of the squad more friendly. Just a hunch.”

That night, Kaladin discovered that Tukks was right. The rest of the men did seem more welcoming, now that he’d been disciplined. So Kal held his tongue, smiled, and enjoyed the companionship.

He never told Tukks the truth. When Kal had frozen on the practice field, it hadn’t been out of fear. He’d been very sure he could hurt someone. In fact, he’d realized that he could kill, if needed.

And that was what had terrified him.

Kaladin sat on a chunk of stone that looked like melted obsidian. It grew right out of the ground in Shadesmar, this place that didn’t seem real.

The distant sun hadn’t shifted in the sky since they’d arrived. Nearby, one of the strange fearspren crawled along the banks of the sea of glass beads. As big as an axehound, but longer and thinner, it looked vaguely like an eel with stumpy legs. The purple feelers on its head wiggled and shifted, flowing in his direction. When it didn’t sense anything in him that it wanted, it continued along the bank.

Syl didn’t make any noise as she approached, but he caught sight of her shadow coming up from behind—like other shadows here, it pointed toward the sun. She sat down on the lump of glass next to him, then thumped her head sideways, resting it on his arm, her hands in her lap.

“Others still asleep?” Kaladin asked.

“Yup. Pattern’s watching over them.” She wrinkled her nose. “Strange.”

“He’s nice, Syl.”

“That’s the strange part.”

She swung her legs out in front of her, barefoot as usual. It seemed odder here on this side where she was human size. A small flock of spren flew above them, with bulbous bodies, long wings, and flowing tails. Instead of a head, each one had a golden ball floating right in front of the body. That seemed familiar.…

Gloryspren, he thought. It was like the fearspren, whose antennae manifested in the real world. Only part of the actual spren showed there.

“So…” Syl said. “Not going to sleep?”

Kaladin shook his head.

“Now, I might not be an expert on humans,” she said. “For example, I still haven’t figured out why only a handful of your cultures seem to worship me. But I do think I heard somewhere that you have to sleep. Like, every night.”

He didn’t respond.

“Kaladin…”

“What about you?” he said, looking away, along the isthmus of land that marked where the river was in the real world. “Don’t you sleep?”

“Have I ever needed sleep?”

“Isn’t this your land? Where you come from? I figured you’d … I don’t know … be more mortal here.”

“I’m still a spren,” she said. “I’m a little piece of God. Did you miss the part about worshipping me?”

When he didn’t reply, she poked him in the side. “You were supposed to say something sarcastic there.”

“Sorry.”

“We don’t sleep; we don’t eat. I think we might feed off humans, actually. Your emotions. Or you thinking about us, maybe. It all seems very complicated. In Shadesmar, we can think on our own, but if we go to your realm, we need a human bond. Otherwise, we’re practically as mindless as those gloryspren.”

“But how did you make the transition?”

“I…” She adopted a distant expression. “You called for me. Or, no, I knew that you would someday call for me. So I transferred to the Physical Realm, trusting that the honor of men lived, unlike what my father always said.”

Her father. The Stormfather.

It was so strange to be able to feel her head on his arm. He was accustomed to her having very little substance.

“Could you transfer again?” Kaladin asked. “To carry word to Dalinar that something might be wrong with the Oathgates?”

“I don’t think so. You’re here, and my bond is to you.” She poked him again. “But this is all a distraction from the real problem.”

“You’re right. I need a weapon. And we’ll need to find food somehow.”

“Kaladin…”

“Are there trees on this side? This obsidian might make a good spearhead.”

She lifted her head from his arm and looked at him with wide, worried eyes.

“I’m fine, Syl,” he said. “I just lost my focus.”

“You were basically catatonic.”

“I won’t let it happen again.”

“I’m not complaining.” She wrapped her arms around his right arm, like a child clinging to a favored toy. Worried. Frightened. “Something’s wrong inside you. But I don’t know what.”

I’ve never locked up in real combat, he thought. Not since that day in training, when Tukks had to come talk to me. “I … was just surprised to find Sah there,” he said. “Not to mention Moash.”

How do you do it? How can you hurt people, Tukks.…

She closed her eyes and leaned against him without letting go of his arm.

Eventually he heard the others stirring, so he extricated himself from Syl’s grasp and went to join them.

92. Water Warm as Blood

The Skybreaker test was to take place in a modest-sized town on the north border of the Purelake. Some people lived in the lake, of course, but sane society avoided that.

Szeth landed—well, was landed—near the center of the town square, along with the other hopefuls. The main bulk of the Skybreakers either remained in the air or settled onto the cliffs around the town.

Three masters landed near Szeth, as did a handful of younger men and women who could Lash themselves. The group being tested today would include hopefuls like Szeth—who needed to find a master and swear the Second Ideal—and squires who had achieved that step already, but now needed to attract a spren and speak the Third Ideal.

It was a varied group; the Skybreakers didn’t seem to care for ethnicity or eye color. Szeth was the only Shin among them, but the others included Makabaki, Reshi, Vorins, Iriali, and even one Thaylen.

A tall, strong man in a Marabethian wrap and an Azish coat hefted himself from his seat on a porch. “It took you long enough!” he said in Azish, striding toward them. “I sent for you hours ago! The convicts have escaped into the lake; who knows how far they’ve gotten by now! They will kill again if not stopped. Find and deal with them—you’ll know them by the tattoos on their foreheads.”

The masters turned to the squires and hopefuls; some of the more eager among them immediately went running toward the water. Several that could Lash took to the sky.

Szeth lingered, along with four of the others. He stepped up to Ki, in her shoulder cloak of a high judge of Marabethia.

“How did this man know to send for us?” Szeth asked.

“We have been expanding our influence, following the advent of the new storm,” she replied. “The local monarchs have accepted us as a unifying martial force, and have given us legal authority. The city’s high minister wrote to us via spanreed, pleading for help.”

“And these convicts?” a squire asked. “What do we know of them, and our duty here?”

“This group of convicts escaped the prison there along the cliffs. The report says they are dangerous murderers. Your task is to find the guilty and execute them. We have writs ordering their deaths.”

“All of those who escaped are guilty?”

“They are.”

At that, several of the other squires left, hurrying to prove themselves. Still, Szeth lingered. Something about the situation bothered him. “If these men are murderers, why were they not executed before?”

“This area is populated by Reshi idealists, Szeth-son-Neturo,” Ki said. “They have a strange, nonviolent attitude, even toward criminals. This town is charged with holding prisoners from all across the region, and Minister Kwati is paid tribute to maintain these facilities. Now that the murderers have escaped, mercy is withdrawn. They are to be executed.”

That was enough for the last two squires, who took to the sky to begin their search. And Szeth supposed it was enough for him as well.

These are Skybreakers, he thought. They wouldn’t knowingly send us after innocents. He could have taken their implied approval at the start. Yet … something bothered him. This was a test, but of what? Was it merely about the speed with which they could dispatch the guilty?

He started toward the waters.

“Szeth-son-Neturo,” Ki called to him.

“Yes?”

“You walk on stone. Why is this? Each Shin I have known calls stone holy, and refuses to set foot on it.”

“It cannot be holy. If it truly were, Master Ki, it would have burned me away long ago.” He nodded to her, then stepped into the Purelake.

The water was warmer than he’d remembered. It wasn’t deep at all—reportedly, even in the very center of the lake the water wouldn’t reach higher than a man’s thighs, save for the occasional sinkhole.

You are far behind those others, the sword said. You’re never going to catch anyone at this rate.

“I knew a voice like yours once, sword-nimi.”

The whispers?

“No. A single one, in my mind, when I was young.” Szeth shaded his eyes, looking across the glistening lake. “I hope things go better this time.”

The flying squires would catch anyone in the open, so Szeth would need to search for less obvious criminals. He only needed one …

One? the sword said. You’re not being ambitious enough.

“Perhaps. Sword-nimi, do you know why you were given to me?”

Because you needed help. I’m good at helping.

“But why me?” Szeth continued trudging through the water. “Nin said I was never to let you leave my presence.”

It seemed like more of a burden than an aid. Yes, the sword was a Shardblade—but one he’d been cautioned about drawing.

The Purelake seemed to extend forever, wide as an ocean. Szeth’s steps startled schools of fish, which would follow behind him for a bit, occasionally nipping at his boots. Gnarled trees poked from the shallows, gorging themselves on the water while their roots grasped the many holes and furrows in the lake bed. Rock outcrops broke the lake near the coast, but inward the Purelake grew placid, more empty.

Szeth turned parallel to the shore.

You’re not going the same way as the others.

That was true.

Honestly, Szeth, I have to be frank. You aren’t good at slaying evil. We haven’t killed anyone while you’ve held me.

“I wonder, sword-nimi. Did Nin-son-God give you to me so I could practice resisting your encouragements, or because he saw me as equally bloodthirsty? He did call us a good match.”

I’m not bloodthirsty, the sword said immediately. I just want to be useful.

“And not bored?”

Well, that too. The sword made some soft hums, imitating a human deep in thought. You say you killed many people before we met. But the whispers … you didn’t take pleasure in destroying those who needed to be destroyed?

“I am not convinced that they needed to be destroyed.”

You killed them.

“I was sworn to obey.”

By a magic rock.

He had explained his past to the sword several times now. For some reason, it had difficulty understanding—or remembering—certain things. “The Oathstone had no magic. I obeyed because of honor, and I sometimes obeyed evil or petty men. Now I seek a higher ideal.”

But what if you pick the wrong thing to follow? Couldn’t you end up in the same place again? Can’t you just find evil, then destroy it?

“And what is evil, sword-nimi?”

I’m sure you can spot it. You seem smart. If increasingly kind of boring.

Would that he could continue in such monotony.

Nearby, a large twisted tree rose from the bank. Several of the leaves along one branch were pulled in, seeking refuge inside the bark; someone had disturbed them. Szeth didn’t give overt indication that he’d noticed, but angled his walk so that he stepped beneath the tree. Part of him hoped the man hiding in the tree had the sense to stay hidden.

He did not. The man leaped for Szeth, perhaps tempted by the prospect of obtaining a fine weapon.

Szeth sidestepped, but without Lashings he felt slow, awkward. He escaped the slashes of the convict’s improvised dagger, but was forced back toward the water.

Finally! the sword said. All right, here’s what you have to do. Fight him and win, Szeth.

The criminal rushed him. Szeth caught the hand with the dagger, twisting to use the man’s own momentum to send him stumbling into the lake.

Recovering, the man turned toward Szeth, who was trying to read what he could from the man’s ragged, sorry appearance. Matted, shaggy hair. Reshi skin bearing many lesions. The poor fellow was so filthy, beggars and street urchins would find him distasteful company.

The convict passed his knife from one hand to the other, wary. Then he rushed Szeth again.

Szeth caught the man by the wrist once more and spun him around, the water splashing. Predictably, the man dropped his knife, which Szeth plucked from the water. He dodged the man’s grapple, and in a moment had one arm around the convict’s neck. Szeth raised the knife and—before he formed conscious thought—pressed the blade against the man’s chest, drawing blood.

He managed to pull back, preventing himself from killing the convict. Fool! He needed to question the man. Had his time as Truthless made him such an eager killer? Szeth lowered the knife, but that gave the man an opening to twist and pull them both down into the Purelake.

Szeth splashed into water warm as blood. The criminal landed on top and forced Szeth under the surface, slamming his hand against the stony bottom and making him drop the knife. The world became a distorted blur.

This isn’t winning, the sword said.

How ironic it would be to survive the murder of kings and Shardbearers only to die at the hands of a man with a crude knife. Szeth almost let it happen, but he knew fate was not finished with him yet.

He threw off the criminal, who was weak and scrawny. The man tried to grab the knife—which was clearly visible beneath the surface—while Szeth rolled the other direction to gain some distance. Unfortunately, the sword on his back got caught between the stones of the lake bottom, and that caused him to jerk back to the water. Szeth growled and—with a heave—ripped himself free, breaking the sword’s harness strap.

The weapon sank into the water. Szeth splashed to his feet, turning to face the winded, dirty convict.

The man glanced at the submerged, silver sword. His eyes glazed, then he grinned wickedly, dropped his knife, and dove for the sword.

Curious. Szeth stepped back as the convict came up looking gleeful, holding the weapon.

Szeth punched him across the face, his arm leaving a faint afterimage. He grabbed the sheathed sword, ripping it from the weaker man’s hands. Though the weapon often seemed too heavy for its size, it now felt light in his fingers. He stepped to the side and swung it—sheath and all—at his enemy.

The weapon struck the convict’s back with a sickening crunch. The poor man splashed down into the lake and fell still.

I suppose that will do, the sword said. Really, you should have just used me in the first place.

Szeth shook himself. Had he killed the fellow after all? Szeth knelt and pulled him up by his matted hair. The convict gasped, but his body didn’t move. Not dead, but paralyzed.

“Did someone work with you in your escape?” Szeth asked. “One of the local nobility, perhaps?”

“What?” the man sputtered. “Oh, Vun Makak. What have you done to me? I can’t feel my arms, my legs…”

“Did anyone from the outside help you?”

“No. Why … why would you ask?” The man sputtered. “Wait. Yes. Who do you want me to name? I’ll do whatever you say. Please.”

Szeth considered. Not working with the guards then, or the minister of the town. “How did you get out?”

“Oh, Nu Ralik…” the man said, crying. “We shouldn’t have killed the guard. I just wanted … wanted to see the sun again.…”

Szeth dropped the man back into the water. He stepped onto the shore and sat down on a rock, breathing deeply. Not long ago, he had danced with a Windrunner at the front of a storm. Today, he fought in shallow water against a half-starved man.

Oh, how he missed the sky.

That was cruel, the sword said. Leaving him to drown.

“Better than feeding him to a greatshell,” Szeth said. “That happens to criminals in this kingdom.”

Both are cruel, the sword said.

“You know of cruelty, sword-nimi?”

Vivenna used to tell me that cruelty is only for men, as is mercy. Only we can choose one or the other, and beasts cannot.

“You count yourself as a man?”

No. But sometimes she talked like she did. And after Shashara made me, she argued with Vasher, saying I could be a poet or a scholar. Like a man, right?

Shashara? That sounded like Shalash, the Eastern name for the Herald Shush-daughter-God. So perhaps this sword’s origin was with the Heralds.

Szeth rose and walked up the coast, back toward the town.

Aren’t you going to search for other criminals?

“I needed only one, sword-nimi, to test what has been told to me and to learn a few important facts.”

Like how smelly convicts are?

“That is indeed part of the secret.”

He passed the small town where the master Skybreakers waited, then hiked up the hillside to the prison. The dark block of a structure overlooked the Purelake, but the beautiful vantage was wasted; the place had barely any windows.

Inside, the smell was so foul, he had to breathe through his mouth. The body of a single guard had been left in a pool of blood between cells. Szeth almost tripped over it—there was no light in the place, save for a few sphere lamps in the guard post.

I see, he thought, kneeling beside the fallen man. Yes. This test was indeed a curious one.

Outside, he noted some of the squires returning to the town with corpses in tow, though none of the other hopefuls seemed to have found anyone. Szeth picked his way carefully down the rocky slope to the town, careful not to drag the sword. Whatever Nin’s reasons for entrusting him with the weapon, it was a holy object.

At the town, he approached the beefy nobleman, who was trying to make small talk with Master Ki—failing spectacularly. Nearby, other members of the town were debating the ethics of simply executing murderers, or holding them and risking this. Szeth inspected the dead convicts, and found them as dirty as the one he had fought, though two weren’t nearly as emaciated.

There was a prison economy, Szeth thought. Food went to those in power while others were starved.

“You,” Szeth said to the nobleman. “I found only one body above. Did you really have a single guard posted to watch all these prisoners?”

The nobleman sneered at him. “A Shin stonewalker? Who are you to question me? Go back to your stupid grass and dead trees, little man.”

“The prisoners were free to create their own hierarchy,” Szeth continued. “And nobody watched to see they didn’t make weapons, as I faced one with a knife. These men were mistreated, locked in darkness, not given enough food.”

“They were criminals. Murderers.”

“And what happened to the money you were sent to administrate this facility? It certainly didn’t go toward proper security.”

“I don’t have to listen to this!”

Szeth turned from him to Ki. “Do you have a writ of execution for this man?”

“It is the first we obtained.”

“What?” the nobleman said. Fearspren boiled up around him.

Szeth undid the clasp on the sword and drew it.

A rushing sound, like a thousand screams.

A wave of power, like the beating of a terrible, stunning wind.

Colors changed around him. They deepened, growing darker and more vibrant. The city nobleman’s cloak became a stunning array of deep oranges and blood reds.

The hair on Szeth’s arms stood on end and his skin spiked with a sudden incredible pain.

DESTROY!

Liquid darkness flowed from the Blade, then melted to smoke as it fell. Szeth screamed at the pain in his arm even as he slammed the weapon through the chest of the blubbering nobleman.

Flesh and blood puffed instantly into black smoke. Ordinary Shardblades burned only the eyes, but this sword somehow consumed the entire body. It seemed to sear away even the man’s soul.

EVIL!

Veins of black liquid crept up Szeth’s hand and arm. He gaped at them, then gasped and rammed the sword back into its silvery sheath.

He fell to his knees, dropping the sword and raising his hand, fingers bent and tendons taut. Slowly, the blackness evaporated from his flesh, the awful pain easing. The skin of his hand, which had already been pale, had been bleached to grey-white.

The sword’s voice sank to a deep muttering in his mind, its words slurring. It struck him as sounding like the voice of a beast falling into a stupor after having gorged itself. Szeth breathed deeply. Fumbling at his pouch, he saw that several spheres inside were completely drained. I will need far more Stormlight if I’m to ever try that again.

The surrounding townspeople, squires, and even master Skybreakers regarded him with uniform horror. Szeth picked up the sword and struggled to his feet, before fastening the sword’s clasp. Holding the sheathed weapon in both hands, he bowed to Ki. “I have dealt,” he said, “with the worst of the criminals.”

“You have done well,” she said slowly, glancing at where the nobleman had stood. There wasn’t even a stain on the stones. “We will wait and make certain the other criminals have been killed or captured.”

“Wise,” Szeth said. “Could I … beg something to drink? I suddenly find myself very thirsty.”

By the time all the escapees had been accounted for, the sword was stirring again. It had never fallen asleep, if a sword could do such a thing. Rather, it had mumbled in his mind until it slowly became lucid.

Hey! the sword said as Szeth sat on a low wall alongside the city. Hey, did you draw me?

“I did, sword-nimi.”

Great job! Did we … did we destroy lots of evil?

“A great and corrupt evil.”

Wow! I’m impressed. You know, Vivenna never drew me even once? She carried me for a long time too. Maybe a couple of days even?

“And how long have I been carrying you?”

At least an hour, the sword said, satisfied. One, or two, or ten thousand. Something like that.

Ki approached, and he returned her water canteen. “Thank you, Master Ki.”

“I have decided to take you as my squire, Szeth-son-Neturo,” she said. “In all honesty, there was an argument among us over who would have the privilege.”

He bowed his head. “I may swear the Second Ideal?”

“You may. Justice will serve you until you attract a spren and swear to a more specific code. During my prayers last night, Winnow proclaimed the highspren are watching you. I won’t be surprised if it takes mere months before you achieve the Third Ideal.”

Months. No, he would not take months. But he did not swear quite yet. Instead, he nodded toward the prison. “Pardon, master, a question. You knew this breakout would happen, didn’t you?”

“We suspected. One of our teams investigated this man and discovered how he was using his funds. When the call came, we were not surprised. It provided a perfect testing opportunity.”

“Why not deal with him earlier?”

“You must understand our purpose and our place, a fine point difficult for many squires to grasp. That man had not yet broken a law. His duty was to imprison the convicts, which he had done. He was allowed to judge if his methods were satisfactory or not. Only once he failed, and his charges had escaped, could we mete out justice.”

Szeth nodded. “I swear to seek justice, to let it guide me, until I find a more perfect Ideal.”

“These Words are accepted,” Ki said. She removed a glowing emerald sphere from her pouch. “Take your place above, squire.”

Szeth regarded the sphere, then—trembling—breathed in the Stormlight. It returned to him in a rush.

The skies were his once again.

93. Kata

When Adolin woke up, he was still in the nightmare.

The dark sky, glass ground, the strange creatures. He had a crick in his neck and a pain in his back; he’d never mastered the “sleep anywhere” skill the grunts bragged about.

Father could have slept on the ground, a part of him thought. Dalinar is a true soldier.

Adolin thought again of the jolt he’d felt when ramming his dagger through Sadeas’s eye and into his brain. Satisfaction and shame. Strip away Adolin’s nobility, and what was left? A duelist when a world needed generals? A hothead who couldn’t even take an insult?

A murderer?

He threw off his coat and sat up, then jumped and gasped as he found the woman with the scratched-out eyes looming over him. “Ishar’s soul!” Adolin cursed. “Do you have to stay so close?”

She didn’t move. Adolin sighed, then changed the dressing on his shallow shoulder cut, using bandages from his pocket. Nearby, Shallan and Azure catalogued their meager supplies. Kaladin trudged over to join them. Had the bridgeboy slept?

Adolin stretched, then—accompanied by his ghostly spren—walked down the short slope to the ocean of glass beads. A few lifespren floated nearby; on this side, their glowing green motes had tufts of white hair that rippled as they danced and bobbed. Perhaps they were circling plants by the riverbank in the Physical Realm? Those small dots of light swimming above the rock might be the souls of fish. How did that work? In the real world, they’d be in the water, so shouldn’t they be inside the stone?

He knew so little, and felt so overwhelmed. So insignificant.

A fearspren crawled up out of the ocean of beads, purple antenna pointing at him. It scuttled closer until Adolin picked up some beads and threw one at the spren, which scuttled back into the ocean and lurked there, watching him.

“What do you think of all this?” Adolin asked the woman with the scratched-out eyes. She didn’t respond, but he often talked to his sword without it responding.

He tossed up one of the beads and caught it. Shallan could tell what each represented, but all he got was a dull impression of … something red?

“I’m being childish, aren’t I?” Adolin asked. “So, forces moving in the world now make me look insignificant. That’s no different from a child growing up and realizing his little life isn’t the center of the universe. Right?”

Problem was, his little life had been the center of the universe, growing up. Welcome to being the son of Dalinar storming Blackthorn. He hurled the sphere into the sea, where it skittered against its fellows.

Adolin sighed, then started a morning kata. Without a sword, he fell back on the first kata he’d ever learned—an extended sequence of stretches, hand-to-hand moves, and stances to help loosen his muscles.

The forms calmed him. The world was turning on its head, but familiar things were still familiar. Strange, that he should have to come to that revelation.

About halfway through, he noticed Azure standing on the bank. She walked down the slope and fell into line beside him, doing the same kata. She must have known it already, for she kept pace with him exactly.

They stepped back and forth along the rocks, sparring with their own shadows, until Kaladin approached and joined them. He wasn’t as practiced, and cursed under his breath as he got a sequence wrong—but he’d obviously done it before too.

He must have learned it from Zahel, Adolin realized.

The three moved together, their breathing controlled, scraping boots on the glass. The sea of beads rolling against itself began to sound soothing. Even rhythmic.

The world is the same as it’s always been, Adolin thought. These things we’re finding—monsters and Radiants—aren’t new. They were only hidden. The world has always been like this, even if I didn’t know it.

And Adolin … he was still himself. He had all the same things to be proud of, didn’t he? Same strengths? Same accomplishments?

Same flaws too.

“Are you three dancing?” a voice suddenly piped up.

Adolin immediately spun around. Shallan had settled on the slope above them, still wearing her white uniform, hat, and single glove. He found himself grinning stupidly. “It’s a warm-up kata,” he explained. “You—”

“I know what it is. You tried to teach it to me, remember? I just thought it odd to see you all down here like that.” She shook her head. “Weren’t we going to plan how to get out of here?”

Together, they started up the slope, and Azure fell into step beside Adolin. “Where did you learn that kata?”

“From my swordmaster. You?”

“Likewise.”

As they approached their camp in the small nestlike depression in the obsidian ground, something felt off to Adolin. Where was his sword, the woman with the scratched-out eyes?

He stepped back and spotted her standing on the coast, looking at her feet.

“All right,” Shallan said, drawing him back. “I made a list of our supplies.” She gestured with a pencil toward the items—which were arrayed on the ground—as she spoke. “One bag of gemstones from the emerald reserve. I used roughly half of our Stormlight in our transfer to Shadesmar and crossing the sea of beads. We have my satchel, with charcoal, reed pens, brushes, ink, lacquer, some solvents, three sketchpads, my sharpening knife, and one jar of jam I’d stowed inside for an emergency snack.”

“Wonderful,” Kaladin said. “I’m sure a pile of brushes will be useful in fighting off Voidspren.”

“Better than your tongue, which is notably dull lately. Adolin has his side knife, but our only real weapon is Azure’s Shardblade. Kaladin brought the bag of gemstones inside his pack, which fortunately also contained his travel rations: three meals of flatbread and jerked pork. We also have a water jug and three canteens.”

“Mine is half empty,” Adolin noted.

“Mine too,” Azure said. “Which means we have maybe one day’s worth of water and three meals for four people. Last time I crossed Shadesmar, it took four weeks.”

“Obviously,” Kaladin said, “we have to get back through the Oathgate into the city.”

Pattern hummed, standing behind Shallan. He seemed like a statue; he didn’t shift his weight or move in small ways like a human would. Kaladin’s spren was different. She always seemed to be moving, slipping this way or that, girlish dress rippling as she walked, her hair swaying.

“Bad,” Pattern said. “The spren of the Oathgate are bad now.”

“Do we have any other options?” Kaladin said.

“I remember … some,” Syl said. “Much more than I used to. Our land, every land, is three realms. The highest is the Spiritual, where gods live—there, all things, times, and spaces are made into one.

“We’re now in the Cognitive Realm. Shadesmar, where spren live. You are from the Physical Realm. The only way I know of to transfer there is to be pulled by human emotions. That won’t help you, as you’re not spren.”

“There’s another way to transfer between realms,” Azure said. “I’ve used it.”

Her hair had recovered its dark coloring, and it seemed to Adolin that her scars had faded. Something about her was downright strange. She seemed almost like a spren herself.

She bore his scrutiny, looking from him to Kaladin, to Shallan. Finally she sighed deeply. “Story time?”

“Yes, please,” Adolin replied. “You’ve traveled in this place before?”

“I’m from a far land, and I came to Roshar by crossing this place, Shadesmar.”

“All right,” Adolin said. “But why?”

“I came chasing someone.”

“A friend?”

“A criminal,” she said softly.

“You’re a soldier though,” Kaladin said.

“Not really. In Kholinar, I merely stepped up to do a job nobody else was doing. I thought perhaps the Wall Guard would have information on the man I’m hunting. Everything went wrong, and I got stuck.”

“When you arrived in our land,” Shallan said, “you used an Oathgate to get from Shadesmar to the Physical Realm?”

“No.” Azure laughed, shaking her head. “I didn’t know of those until Kal told me about them. I used a portal between realms. Cultivation’s Perpendicularity, they call it. On your side, it’s in the Horneater Peaks.”

“That’s hundreds of miles from here,” Adolin said.

“There’s supposedly another perpendicularity,” Azure said. “It’s unpredictable and dangerous, and appears randomly in different places. My guides warned against trying to hunt it.”

“Guides?” Kaladin said. “Who were these guides?”

“Why, spren of course.”

Adolin glanced toward the distant city they’d left, where there had been fearspren and painspren aplenty.

“Not like those,” Azure said, laughing. “People spren, like these two.”

“Which raises a question,” Adolin said, pointing as the spren with the strange eyes rejoined them. “That’s the soul of my Shardblade. Syl is Kaladin’s, and Pattern Shallan’s. So…” He pointed at the weapon at her belt. “Tell us honestly, Azure. Are you a Knight Radiant?”

“No.”

Adolin swallowed. Say it. “You’re a Herald then.”

She laughed. “No. What? A Herald? Those are basically gods, right? I’m no figure from mythology, thank you very much. I’m just a woman who has been constantly out of her league since adolescence. Trust me.”

Adolin glanced at Kaladin. He didn’t seem convinced either.

“Really,” Azure said. “There’s no spren here for my Blade because it’s flawed. I can’t summon or dismiss it, like you can yours. She’s a handy weapon, but a pale copy of what you carry.” She patted it. “Anyway, when I last crossed this place, I hired a ship to convey me.”

“A ship?” Kaladin said. “Sailed by whom?”

“Spren. I hired it at one of their cities.”

“Cities?” Kaladin looked toward Syl. “You have cities?”

“Where did you think we lived?” Syl said, amused.

“Lightspren are usually guides,” Azure continued. “They like to travel, to see new places. They sail all across Roshar’s Shadesmar, peddling goods, trading with other spren. Um … you’re supposed to watch out for Cryptics.”

Pattern hummed happily. “Yes. We are very famous.”

“What about using Soulcasting?” Adolin looked to Shallan. “Could you make us supplies?”

“I don’t think it would work,” Shallan replied. “When I Soulcast, I change an object’s soul here in this realm, and it reflects in the other world. If I changed one of these beads, it might become something new in the Physical Realm—but it would still be a bead to us.”

“Food and water aren’t impossible to find here,” Azure said, “if you can make it to a port city. The spren don’t need these things, but humans living on this side—and there are some—need a constant supply. With that Stormlight of yours, we can trade. Maybe buy passage to the Horneater Peaks.”

“That would take a long time,” Kaladin said. “Alethkar is falling right now, and the Blackthorn needs us. It—”

He was interrupted by a haunting screech. It was reminiscent of sheets of steel grinding against one another. It was met by others, echoing in unison. Adolin spun toward the sounds, shocked by their intensity. Syl put her hands to her lips, and Pattern cocked his strange head.

“What was that?” Kaladin demanded.

Azure hurriedly began shoving their supplies into Kaladin’s pack. “You remember before we slept, how I said we’d be fine unless we attracted the wrong spren?”

“… Yes?”

“We should get moving. Now.”

Rosharan Wines

94. A Small Bottle

Dalinar stumbled as he swept everything from the dresser, upending a bowl of hot soup. He didn’t want soup. He yanked out drawers, dumping clothing to the ground, steam curling from the spilled broth.

They’d done it again! They’d taken his bottles. How dare they! Couldn’t they hear the weeping? He roared, then grabbed his trunk, overturning it. A flask rolled out along with the clothing. Finally! Something they hadn’t found.

He slurped down the dregs it contained, and groaned. The weeping echoed around him. Children dying. Evi begging for her life.

He needed more.

But … wait, did he need to be presentable? The hunt? Was that today?

Stupid man, he thought. The last of the hunts had been weeks ago. He’d convinced Gavilar to come with him out into the wilderness, and the trip had gone well. Dalinar had been presentable—sober, commanding even. A figure right from the storming songs. They’d discovered those parshmen. They’d been so interesting.

For a time, away from civilization, Dalinar had felt like himself. His old self.

He hated that person.

Growling, he dug in his large wardrobe. This fort on the eastern rim of Alethkar was the first mark of civilization on their trip home. It had given Dalinar access, again, to the necessities of life. Like wine.

He barely heard the rap on his door as he flung coats out of the wardrobe. When he looked over, he saw two youths standing there. His sons. Angerspren boiled around him. Her hair. Her judgmental eyes. How many lies about him had she stuffed into their heads?

“What?” Dalinar roared.

Adolin stood his ground. Almost seventeen now, fully a man. The other one, the invalid, cringed down. He looked younger than his … what … twelve years? Thirteen?

“We heard the commotion, sir,” Adolin said, jutting out his chin. “We thought you might need help.”

“I need nothing! Out! GET OUT!”

They scrambled away.

Dalinar’s heart raced. He slammed the wardrobe and pounded his fists on the bedside table, toppling the sphere lamp. Puffing, groaning, he fell to his knees.

Storms. They were only a few days’ march from the ruins of Rathalas. Was that why the screaming was louder today?

A hand fell on his shoulder. “Father?”

“Adolin, so help me—” Still kneeling, Dalinar turned, then cut off. It wasn’t Adolin, but the other one. Renarin had returned, timid as always, his spectacled eyes wide and his hand trembling. He held something out.

A small bottle. “I…” Renarin swallowed. “I got you one, with the spheres the king gave me. Because you always go through what you buy so quickly.”

Dalinar stared at that bottle of wine for an endless moment. “Gavilar hides the wine from me,” he mumbled. “That’s why none is left. I … couldn’t possibly … have drunk it all.…”

Renarin stepped in and hugged him. Dalinar flinched, bracing as if for a punch. The boy clung to him, not letting go.

“They talk about you,” Renarin said, “but they’re wrong. You just need to rest, after all the fighting you did. I know. And I miss her too.”

Dalinar licked his lips. “What did she tell you?” he said, voice ragged. “What did your mother say about me?”

“The only honest officer in the army,” Renarin said, “the honorable soldier. Noble, like the Heralds themselves. Our father. The greatest man in Alethkar.”

What stupid words. Yet Dalinar found himself weeping. Renarin let go, but Dalinar grabbed him, pulling him close.

Oh, Almighty. Oh God. Oh God, please … I’ve started to hate my sons. Why hadn’t the boys learned to hate him back? They should hate him. He deserved to be hated.

Please. Anything. I don’t know how to get free of this. Help me. Help me …

Dalinar wept and clung to that youth, that child, as if he were the only real thing left in a world of shadows.

95. Inescapable Void

Kaladin marched at speed through Shadesmar, trying—with difficulty—to control the simmering dissatisfaction inside of him.

“Mmmm…” Pattern said as another screech sounded behind them. “Humans, you must stop your emotions. They are very inconvenient here.”

The group hiked southward, along the narrow line of land that overlaid the river in the real world. Shallan was the slowest of them, and had difficulty keeping up, so they’d agreed she should hold a little Stormlight. It was either that, or let the screeching spren reach them.

“What are they like?” Adolin said to Azure, puffing as they marched. “You said those sounds were from angerspren? Boiling pools of blood?”

“That’s the part you see in the Physical Realm,” Azure said. “Here … that’s merely their saliva, pooling as they drool. They’re nasty.”

“And dangerous,” Syl said. She scampered along the obsidian ground, and didn’t seem to get tired. “Even to spren. But how did we draw them? Nobody was angry, right?”

Kaladin tried again to smother his frustration.

“I wasn’t feeling anything other than tired,” Shallan said.

“I felt overwhelmed,” Adolin said. “Still do. But not angry.”

“Kaladin?” Syl said.

He looked at the others, then down at his feet. “It just feels like … like we’re abandoning Kholinar. And only I care. You were talking about how to get food, find a way to the Horneater Peaks, this perpendicularity or whatever. But we’re abandoning people to the Voidbringers.”

“I care too!” Adolin said. “Bridgeboy, that was my home. It—”

“I know,” Kaladin snapped. He took a breath, forcing himself to calm. “I know, Adolin. I know it’s not rational to try to get back through the Oathgate. We don’t know how to work it from this side, and besides, it’s obviously been corrupted. My emotions are irrational. I’ll try to contain them. I promise.”

They fell silent.

You’re not angry at Adolin, Kaladin thought forcefully. You’re not actually angry at anyone. You’re just looking for something to latch on to. Something to feel.

Because the darkness was coming.

It fed off the pain of defeat, the agony of losing men he’d tried to protect. But it could feed off anything. Life going well? The darkness would whisper that he was only setting himself up for a bigger fall. Shallan glances at Adolin? They must be whispering about him. Dalinar sends him to protect Elhokar? The highprince must want to get rid of Kaladin.

He’d failed at that, regardless. When Dalinar heard that Kholinar had fallen …

Get out, Kaladin thought, squeezing his eyes shut. Get out, get out, get out!

It would continue until numbness seemed preferable. Then that numbness would claim him and make it hard to do anything at all. It would become a sinking, inescapable void from within which everything looked washed out. Dead.

Within that dark place, he’d wanted to betray his oaths. Within that dark place, he’d given the king up to assassins and murderers.

Eventually, the screeches faded into the distance. Syl guessed that the angerspren had been drawn into the beads, off toward Kholinar and the powerful emotions there. The group continued their hike. There was only one way to go: south, along the narrow peninsula of obsidian running through the bead ocean.

“When I traveled here last time,” Azure said, “we passed numbers of peninsulas like this one. They always had lighthouses at the ends. We stopped at them sometimes for supplies.”

“Yes…” Syl said, nodding. “I remember those. It’s useful for ships to note where land juts into the beads. There should be one at the end of this one … though it looks loooong. We’ll have to hike it for several days.”

“At least it’s a goal,” Adolin said. “We travel south, get to the lighthouse, and hope to catch a ship there.”

There was an insufferable spring to his step, like he was actually excited by this terrible place. Idiot Adolin, who probably didn’t even understand the consequences of—

Stop it. STOP IT. He helped you.

Storms. Kaladin hated himself when he got like this. When he tried to empty his mind, he drifted toward the void of darkness. But when he instead let himself think, he started remembering what had happened in Kholinar. Men he loved, killing each other. Awful, terrifying perspective.

He could see too many sides. Parshmen angry at being enslaved for years, attempting to overthrow a corrupt government. Alethi protecting their homes from invading monsters. Elhokar trying to save his son. The palace guards trying to keep their oaths.

Too many eyes to see through. Too many emotions. Were these his only two options? Pain or oblivion?

Fight it.

Their hike continued, and he tried to turn his attention to his surroundings instead of his thoughts. The thin peninsula wasn’t barren, as he’d first assumed. Growing along its edges were small, brittle plants that looked like ferns. When he asked, Syl told him they grew exactly like plants in the Physical Realm.

Most were black, but occasionally they had vibrant colors, blended together like stained glass. None grew higher than his knees, and most only reached his ankles. He felt terrible whenever he brushed one and it crumpled.

The sun didn’t seem to change position in the sky, no matter how long they walked. Through spaces between the clouds, he saw only blackness. No stars, no moons. Eternal, endless darkness.

They camped for what should have been the night, then hiked all the next day. Kholinar vanished into the distance behind, but still they kept going: Azure at the front, then Pattern, Syl, and Kaladin, with Shallan and Adolin at the back, Adolin’s spren trailing them. Kaladin would have preferred to take the rearguard, but if he tried, Adolin positioned himself to the back again. What did the princeling think? That Kaladin would lag behind, if not minded?

Syl walked beside him, mostly quiet. Being back on this side troubled her. She’d look at things, like the occasional colorful plant, and cock her head as if trying to remember. “It’s like a dream from the time when I was dead,” she’d said when he prompted her.

They camped another “night,” then started walking again. Kaladin skipped breakfast—their rations were basically gone. Besides, he welcomed the grumbling stomach. It reminded him that he was alive. Gave him something to think about, other than the men he’d lost …

“Where did you live?” he asked Syl, still carrying his pack, hiking along the seemingly infinite peninsula. “When you were young, on this side?”

“It was far to the west,” she said. “A grand city, ruled by honorspren! I didn’t like it though. I wanted to travel, but Father kept me in the city, especially after … you know…”

“I’m not actually sure that I do.”

“I bonded a Knight Radiant. Haven’t I told you of him? I remember…” She closed her eyes as she walked, chin up, as if basking in a wind he could not feel. “I bonded him soon after I was born. He was an elderly man, kindly, but he did fight. In one battle. And he died.…”

She blinked open her eyes. “That was a long time ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I wasn’t ready though for the bond. Spren normally weather the death of their Radiant, but I … I lost myself when I lost him. It all turned out to be morbidly fortuitous, because soon after, the Recreance happened. Men forsook their oaths, which killed my siblings. I survived, for I didn’t have a bond then.”

“And the Stormfather locked you away?”

“Father assumed I’d been killed with the others. He found me, asleep, after what must have been … wow, a thousand years on your side. He woke me and took me home.” She shrugged. “After that, he wouldn’t let me leave the city.” She took Kaladin by the arm. “He was foolish, as were the other honorspren born after the Recreance. They knew something bad was coming, but wouldn’t do anything. And I heard you calling, even from so far away.…”

“The Stormfather let you out?” Kaladin said, stunned by the confessions. This was more than he’d found out about her since … since forever.

“I snuck away,” she said with a grin. “I gave up my mind and joined your world, hiding among the windspren. We can barely see them on this side. Did you know that? Some spren live mostly in your realm. I suppose the wind is always there somewhere, so they don’t fade like passions do.” She shook her head. “Oh!”

“Oh?” Kaladin asked. “Did you remember something?”

“No! Oh!” She pointed, hopping up and down. “Look!”

In the distance, a bright yellow light glowed like a spark in the otherwise dim landscape.

A lighthouse.

96. Pieces of a Fabrial

On the day of the first meeting of monarchs at Urithiru, Navani made each person—no matter how important—carry their own chair. The old Alethi tradition symbolized each chief bringing important wisdom to a gathering.

Navani and Dalinar arrived first, stepping off the lift and walking toward the meeting room near the top of Urithiru. Her chair was sensible but comfortable, made of Soulcast wood with a padded seat. Dalinar had tried to bring a stool, but she’d insisted that he do better. This wasn’t a battlefield strategy tent, and forced austerity wouldn’t impress the monarchs. He’d eventually selected a sturdy wooden chair of thick stumpweight, with wide armrests but no padding.

He’d quietly spent the trip up watching floors pass. When Dalinar was troubled, he went silent. His brow would scrunch up in thought, and to everyone else, it looked like he was scowling.

“They got out, Dalinar,” Navani said to him. “I’m sure they did. Elhokar and Adolin are safe, somewhere.”

He nodded. But even if they had survived, Kholinar had fallen. Was that why he seemed so haunted?

No, it was something else. Ever since he’d collapsed after visiting Azir, it seemed that something in Dalinar had snapped. This morning, he had quietly asked her to lead the meeting. She worried, deeply, for what was happening to him. And for Elhokar. And for Kholinar …

But storms, they had worked so hard to forge this coalition. She would not let it collapse now. She’d already grieved for a daughter, but then that daughter had returned to her. She had to hope the same for Elhokar—at the very least, so she could keep functioning while Dalinar mourned.

They settled their chairs in the large meeting room, which had a clear view out flat glass windows overlooking mountains. Servants had already set out refreshment along the curved side wall of the half-circle room. The tiled floor was inlaid with the image of the Double Eye of the Almighty, complete with Surges and Essences.

Bridge Four piled into the room after them. Many had brought simple seats, but the Herdazian had stumbled onto the lift with a chair so grand—inlaid with embroidered blue cloth and silver—it was almost a throne.

They settled their chairs behind hers with a fair bit of squabbling, and then attacked the food without waiting for permission. For a group that was essentially one step from being lighteyed Shardbearers, they were an unruly and raucous bunch.

Bridge Four had, characteristically, taken the news of their leader’s potential fall with laughter. Kaladin is tougher than a wind-tossed boulder, Brightness, Teft had told her. He survived Bridge Four, he survived the chasms, and he’ll survive this.

She had to admit their optimism was heartening. But if the team had survived, why hadn’t they returned during the latest highstorm?

Steady, Navani thought to herself, regarding the bridgemen, who were surrounded by laughterspren. One of those men currently carried Jezerezeh’s Honorblade. She couldn’t tell which; the Blade could be dismissed like an ordinary Shardblade, and they swapped it among themselves in order to be unpredictable.

Soon, the others began arriving on different lifts, and Navani watched carefully. The chair-carrying tradition was, in part, a symbol of equality—but Navani figured she might be able to learn something about the monarchs from their choices. Being a human was about making sense of chaos, finding meaning among the random elements of the world.

First to arrive was the young Azish Prime. His tailor had done a wonderful job making his regal costume fit; it would have been easy for the youth to look like a child swimming in those stately robes and that headdress. He carried a very ornate throne, covered in loud Azish patterns, and each of his closest advisors helped by holding it with one hand.

The large contingent settled in, and others flooded in behind, including three representatives of kingdoms subject to Azir: the prime of Emul, the princess of Yezier, and the ambassador from Tashikk. All brought chairs that were faintly inferior to that of the Azish Prime.

A balancing act went on here. Each of the three monarchies gave just enough respect to the Prime so as not to embarrass him. They were his subjects in name only. Still, Navani should be able to focus her diplomacy efforts on the Prime. Tashikk, Emul, and Yezier would fall in line. Two were historically closest with the Azish throne, and the third—Emul—was in no position to stand on its own after the war with Tukar and the Voidbringer assault had basically broken the princedom into pieces.

The Alethi contingent arrived next. Renarin, who seemed terrified that something had happened to his brother, brought a simple chair. Jasnah had outdone him by actually bringing a padded stool—she and Dalinar could be painfully similar. Navani noticed with annoyance that Sebarial and Palona weren’t with the other highprinces. Well, at least they hadn’t shown up bearing massage tables.

Notably, Ialai Sadeas ignored the requirement that she carry her own chair. A scarred guardsman placed a sleek, lacquered chair down for her—stained so dark a maroon, it might as well have been black. She met Navani’s eyes as she sat, cold and confident. Amaram was technically highprince, but he was still in Thaylenah, working alongside his soldiers to rebuild the city. Navani doubted Ialai would have let him represent them at this meeting anyway.

It seemed so long ago when Ialai and Navani had huddled together at dinners, conspiring on how to stabilize the kingdom their husbands were conquering. Now, Navani wanted to seize the woman and shake her. Can’t you stop being petty for one storming minute?

Well, as had been happening for so long now, the other highprinces would defer either to Kholin or to Sadeas. Letting Ialai participate was a calculated risk. Forbid her, and the woman would find a way to sabotage the proceedings. Let her in, and hopefully she’d start to see the importance of this work.

At least Queen Fen and her consort seemed committed to the coalition. They set their chairs by the glass window, backs to the storms, as the Thaylens often joked. Their wooden chairs were high-backed, painted blue, and upholstered a pale nautical white. Taravangian—bearing a nondescript chair of wood with no padding—asked to join them. The old man had insisted on carrying his own chair, though Navani had specifically excused him, Ashno of Sages, and others with a frail bearing.

Adrotagia sat with him, as did his Surgebinder. She didn’t go join Bridge Four … and, curiously, Navani realized she still thought of the woman as his Surgebinder.

The only other person of note was Au-nak, the Natan ambassador. He represented a dead kingdom that had been reduced to a single city-state on the eastern coast of Roshar with a few other cities as protectorates.

For a moment, it all seemed too much for Navani. The Azish Empire, with all its intricacies. The countermovement among the Alethi highprinces. Taravangian, who was somehow king of Jah Keved—the second-largest kingdom on Roshar. Queen Fen and her obligation to the guilds in her city. The Radiants—like the little Reshi who was currently outeating the huge Horneater bridgeman, almost as if it were a contest.

So much to think about. Now was when Dalinar stepped back?

Calm, Navani thought at herself, taking a deep breath. Order from chaos. Find the structure here and start building upon it.

Everyone had naturally arranged themselves into a circle, with monarchs at the front and highprinces, viziers, interpreters, and scribes radiating out from them. Navani stood up and strode into the center. Just as everyone was quieting, Sebarial and his mistress finally sauntered in. They made right for the food, and had apparently forgotten chairs entirely.

“I,” she said as the room hushed again, “know of no other conference like this in the history of Roshar. Perhaps they were common in the days of the Knights Radiant, but certainly nothing like it has occurred since the Recreance. I would like to both welcome and thank you, our noble guests. Today we make history.”

“It only took a Desolation to cause it,” Sebarial said from the food table. “The world should end more often. It makes everyone so much more accommodating.”

The various interpreters whispered translations to their charges. Navani found herself wondering if it was too late to have him tossed off the tower. You could do it—the sheer side of Urithiru, facing the Origin, was straight all the way down. She could watch Sebarial fall practically to the bottom of the mountains, if she wanted.

“We,” Navani said sharply, “are here to discuss the future of Roshar. We must have a unified vision and goal.”

She glanced around the room as people considered. He’s going to talk first, she thought, noticing the prime of Emul shifting in his seat. His name was Vexil the Wise, but people often referred to the Makabaki princes and primes by their country, much as Alethi highprinces were often referred to by their house name.

“The course is obvious, isn’t it?” Emul said through an interpreter, though Navani understood his Azish. He bowed in his seat to the Azish child emperor, then continued. “We must reclaim my nation from the hands of the traitor parshmen; then we must conquer Tukar. It is completely unreasonable to allow this insane man, who claims to be a god, to continue bereaving the glorious Azish Empire.”

This is going to get difficult, Navani thought as a half dozen other people started to speak at once. She raised her freehand. “I will do my best to moderate fairly, Your Majesties, but do realize that I am only one person. I depend upon you all to facilitate the discussion, rather than trying to talk over one another.”

She nodded at the Azish Prime, hoping he’d take the floor. A translator whispered her words into the Prime’s left ear; then Noura the vizier leaned forward and spoke quietly into the other, undoubtedly giving instructions.

They’ll want to see how this plays out, Navani decided. One of the others will speak next. They’ll want to contrast the Emuli position, to assert themselves.

“The throne recognizes the prime of Emul,” the little emperor finally said. “And, er, we are aware of his desires.” He paused and looked around. “Um, anyone else have a comment?”

“My brother the prince wishes to address you,” said the tall, refined representative from Tashikk, who wore a flowery suit of yellow and gold rather than his people’s traditional wrap. A scribe whispered to him as a spanreed scratched out the message Tashikk’s prince wanted conveyed to the gathering.

He’ll contradict Emul, Navani thought. Point us in another direction. Toward Iri maybe?

“We of Tashikk,” the ambassador said, “are more interested in the discovery of these glorious portals. The Alethi have invited us here and told us we’re part of a grand coalition. We would respectfully inquire how often we will have use of these gates, and how to negotiate tariffs.”

Immediately, the room exploded with conversation.

“Our gate,” Au-nak said, “in our historical homeland is being used without our permission. And while we thank the Alethi for securing it for us—”

“If there is to be war,” Fen said, “then it’s a bad time to be discussing tariffs. We should just agree to free trade.”

“Which would help your merchants, Fen,” Sebarial called. “How about asking them to help the rest of us out with some free wartime supplies?”

“Emul—” the Emuli Prime began.

“Wait,” the Yezier princess said. “Shouldn’t we be concerned about Iri and Rira, who seem to have completely fallen in with the enemy?”

“Please,” Navani said, interrupting the mess of conversations. “Please. Let’s do this in an orderly way. Perhaps before deciding where to fight, we could discuss how to best equip ourselves against the enemy threat?” She looked to Taravangian. “Your Majesty, can you tell us more about the shields your scholars in Jah Keved are creating?”

“Yes. They … they are strong.”

“… How strong?” Navani prompted.

“Very strong. Er, yes. Strong enough.” He scratched his head and looked at her helplessly. “How … how strong do you need them to be?”

She drew in a deep breath. He wasn’t having a good day. Her mother had been like that, lucid on some days, barely cognizant on others.

“The half-shards,” Navani said, addressing the room, “will give us an edge against the enemy. We have given the plans to the Azish scholars; I’m looking forward to pooling our resources and studying the process.”

“Could it lead to Shardplate?” Queen Fen asked.

“Possibly,” Navani said. “But the more I study what we’ve discovered here in Urithiru, the more I’ve come to realize that our image of the ancients having fantastic technology was deeply flawed. An exaggeration at best, perhaps a fancy.”

“But Shards…” Fen said.

“Manifestations of spren,” Jasnah explained. “Not fabrial technology. Even the gemstones we discovered, containing words of ancient Radiants during the days when they left Urithiru, were crude—if used in a way we hadn’t yet explored. All this time we’ve been assuming that we lost great technology in the Desolations, but it seems we are far, far more advanced than the ancients ever were. It is the process of bonding spren that we lost.”

“Not lost,” the Azish Prime said. “Abandoned.”

He looked toward Dalinar, who sat in a relaxed posture. Not slumped, but not stiff either—a posture that somehow read as, “I’m in control here. Don’t pretend otherwise.” Dalinar loomed over a room even when trying to be unobtrusive. That furrowed brow darkened his blue eyes, and the way he rubbed his chin evoked the image of a man contemplating whom to execute first.

The attendees had arranged their seats roughly in a circle, but most of them faced Dalinar, who sat by Navani’s chair. After everything that had happened, they didn’t trust him.

“The ancient oaths are spoken once more,” Dalinar said. “We are again Radiant. This time, we will not abandon you. I vow it.”

Noura the vizier whispered in the Azish Prime’s ear, and he nodded before speaking. “We are still very concerned about the powers in which you dabble. These abilities … who is to say that the Lost Radiants were wrong in abandoning them? They were frightened of something, and they locked these portals for a reason.”

“It is too late to turn back from this now, Your Majesty,” Dalinar said. “I have bonded the Stormfather himself. We must either use these abilities, or crumple beneath the invasion.”

The Prime sat back, and his attendants seemed … concerned. They whispered among themselves.

Bring order from the chaos, Navani thought. She gestured toward the bridgemen and Lift. “I understand your concern, but surely you have read our reports of the oaths these Radiants follow. Protection. Remembering the fallen. Those oaths are proof that our cause is just, our Radiants trustworthy. The powers are in safe hands, Your Majesty.”

“I think,” Ialai declared, “we should stop dancing around and patting ourselves on the back.”

Navani spun to face Ialai. Don’t sabotage this, she thought, meeting the woman’s eyes. Don’t you dare.

“We are here,” Ialai continued, “to focus our attention. We should be discussing where to invade to gain the best position for an extended war. Obviously, there is only one answer. Shinovar is a bounteous land. Their orchards grow without end; the land is so mild that even the grass has grown relaxed and fat. We should seize that land to supply our armies.”

The others in the room nodded as if this were a perfectly acceptable line of conversation. With one targeted arrow, Ialai Sadeas proved what everyone whispered—that the Alethi were building a coalition to conquer the world, not just protect it.

“The Shin mountains present a historical problem,” said the Tashikki ambassador. “Attacking across or through them is basically impossible.”

“We have the Oathgates now,” Fen said. “Not to bring up that particular problem again, but has anyone investigated whether the Shin one can be opened? Having Shinovar as a redoubt, difficult to invade conventionally, would help secure our position.”

Navani cursed Ialai softly. This would only reinforce the Azish worry that the gates were dangerous. She tried to rein the discussion in, but it slipped away from her again.

“We need to know what the Oathgates do!” Tashikk was saying. “Could the Alethi not share with us everything they’ve discovered regarding them?”

“What about your people?” Aladar shot back. “They are the great traders in information. Could you share with us your secrets?”

“All Tashikki information is freely available.”

“At a huge price.”

“We need—”

“But Emul—”

“This whole thing is going to be a mess,” Fen said. “I can see it already. We need to be able to trade freely, and Alethi greed could destroy this.”

“Alethi greed?” Ialai demanded. “Are you trying to see how far you can push us? Because I assure you Dalinar Kholin will not be intimidated by a bunch of merchants and bankers.”

“Please,” Navani said into the growing uproar. “Quiet.”

Nobody seemed to notice. Navani breathed out, then cleared her mind.

Order from chaos. How could she bring order to this chaos? She stopped fretting, and tried to listen to them. She studied the chairs they’d brought, the tone of their voices. Their fears, hidden behind what they demanded or requested.

The shape of it started to make sense to her. Right now, this room was full of building materials. Pieces of a fabrial. Each monarch, each kingdom, was one piece. Dalinar had gathered them, but he hadn’t formed them.

Navani stepped up to the Azish Prime. People quieted as, shockingly, she bowed to him.

“Your Excellency,” she said, upon rising. “What would you say is the Azish people’s greatest strength?”

He glanced at his advisors as her words were translated, but they gave him no answer. Rather, they seemed curious to know what he’d say.

“Our laws,” he finally replied.

“Your famed bureaucracy,” Navani said. “Your clerks and scribes—and by extension, the great information centers of Tashikk, the timekeepers and stormwardens of Yezier, the Azish legions. You are the greatest organizers on Roshar. I’ve long envied your orderly approach to the world.”

“Perhaps this is why your essay was so well received, Brightness Kholin,” the emperor said, sounding completely sincere.

“In light of your skill, I wonder. Would anyone in this room complain if a specific task were assigned to your scribes? We need procedures. A code of how our kingdoms are to interact, and how we’re to share resources. Would you of Azir be willing to create this?”

The viziers looked shocked, then immediately began talking to one another in hushed, excited tones. The looks of delight on their faces were enough proof that yes indeed, they’d be willing.

“Now, wait,” Fen interjected. “Are you talking of laws? That we all have to follow?” Au-nak nodded eagerly in agreement.

“More and less than laws,” Navani said. “We need codes to guide our interactions—as proven by today. We must have procedures on how we hold meetings, how to give each person a turn. How we share information.”

“I don’t know if Thaylenah can agree to even that.”

“Well, surely you’d want to see what the codes contained first, Queen Fen,” Navani said, strolling toward her. “After all, we are going to need to administrate trade through the Oathgates. I wonder, who has excellent expertise in shipping, caravans, and trade in general…?”

“You’d give that to us?” Fen asked, completely taken aback.

“It seems logical.”

Sebarial choked softly on the snacks he’d been eating, and Palona pounded him on the back. He’d wanted that job. That will teach you to show up late to my meeting and make only wisecracks, Navani noted.

She glanced at Dalinar, who seemed worried. Well, he always seemed worried lately.

“I’m not giving you the Oathgates,” Navani said to Fen. “But someone has to oversee trade and supplies. It would be a natural match for the Thaylen merchants—so long as a fair agreement can be reached.”

“Huh,” Fen said, settling back. She glanced at her consort, who shrugged.

“And the Alethi?” the petite Yezier princess asked. “What of you?”

“Well, we do excel at one thing,” Navani said. She looked to Emul. “Would you accept help from our generals and armies to help you secure what is left of your kingdom?”

“By every Kadasix that has ever been holy!” Emul said. “Yes, of course! Please.”

“I have several scribes who are experts in fortification,” Aladar suggested from his seat behind Dalinar and Jasnah. “They could survey your remaining territory and give you advice on securing it.”

“And recovering what we’ve lost?” Emul asked.

Ialai opened her mouth to speak, perhaps to extol the virtues of Alethi warmongering again.

Jasnah cut her off, speaking decisively. “I propose we entrench ourselves first. Tukar, Iri, Shinovar … each of these looks tempting to attack, but what good will that do if we stretch ourselves too far? We should focus on securing our lands as they now stand.”

“Yes,” Dalinar said. “We shouldn’t be asking ourselves, ‘Where should we strike?’ but instead, ‘Where will our enemy strike next?’ ”

“They’ve secured three positions,” Highprince Aladar said. “Iri, Marat … and Alethkar.”

“But you sent an expedition,” Fen said. “To reclaim Alethkar.”

Navani caught her breath, glancing at Dalinar. He nodded slowly.

“Alethkar has fallen,” Navani said. “The expedition failed. Our homeland is overrun.”

Navani had expected this to prompt another burst of conversation, but instead it was greeted only by stunned silence.

Jasnah continued for her. “The last of our armies have retreated into Herdaz or Jah Keved, harried and confused by enemies who can fly—or by the sudden attacks of shock troops of parshmen. Our only holdouts are on the southern border, by the sea. Kholinar has fallen completely; the Oathgate is lost to us. We’ve locked it on our side, so that it cannot be used to reach Urithiru.”

“I’m sorry,” Fen said.

“My daughter is correct,” Navani said, trying to project strength while admitting that they had become a nation of refugees. “We should apply our efforts first toward making sure no more nations fall.”

“My homeland—” the prime of Emul began.

“No,” Noura said in thickly accented Alethi. “I’m sorry, but no. If the Voidbringers had wanted your last nibble of land, Vexil, they’d have taken it. The Alethi can help you secure what you have, and it seems generous of them to do so. The enemy brushed past you to gather in Marat, conquering only what was necessary on the way. Their eyes are turned elsewhere.”

“Oh my!” Taravangian said. “Could they … be coming for me?”

“It does seem a reasonable assumption,” Au-nak said. “The Veden civil war left the country in ruin, and the border between Alethkar and Jah Keved is porous.”

“Maybe,” Dalinar said. “I’ve fought on that border. It’s not as easy a battlefield as it would seem.”

“We must defend Jah Keved,” Taravangian said. “When the king gave me the throne, I promised I’d care for his people. If the Voidbringers attack us…”

The worry in his voice gave Navani an opportunity. She stepped back into the center of the room. “We won’t allow that to happen, will we?”

“I will send troops to your aid, Taravangian,” Dalinar said. “But one army can be construed as an invading force, and I am not intending to invade my allies, even in appearance. Can we not mortar this alliance with a show of solidarity? Will anyone else help?”

The Azish Prime regarded Dalinar. Behind him, the viziers and scions conducted a private conversation by writing on pads of paper. When they finished, Vizier Noura leaned forward and whispered to the emperor, who nodded.

“We will send five battalions to Jah Keved,” he said. “This will prove an important test of mobility through the Oathgates. King Taravangian, you will have the support of Azir.”

Navani released a long breath in relief.

She gave leave for the meeting to take a pause, so that people could enjoy refreshment—though most would probably spend it strategizing or relaying events to their various allies. The highprinces became a flurry of motion, breaking into individual houses to converse.

Navani settled down in her seat beside Dalinar.

“You’ve promised away a great deal,” he noted. “Giving Fen control of trade and supply?”

“Administration is different from control,” Navani said. “But either way, did you think you were going to make this coalition work without giving something up?”

“No. Of course not.” He stared outward. That haunted expression made her shiver. What did you remember, Dalinar? And what did the Nightwatcher do to you?

They needed the Blackthorn. She needed the Blackthorn. His strength to quiet the sick worry inside of her, his will to forge this coalition. She took his hand in hers, but he stiffened, then stood up. He did that whenever he felt he was growing too relaxed. It was as if he was looking for danger to face.

She stood up beside him. “We need to get you out of the tower,” she decided. “To get a new perspective. Visit someplace new.”

“That,” Dalinar said, voice hoarse, “would be good.”

“Taravangian was speaking of having you tour Vedenar personally. If we’re going to send Kholin troops into the kingdom, it would make sense for you to get a feel for the situation there.”

“Very well.”

The Azish called for her, asking for clarification on what direction she wanted them to take with their coalition bylaws. She left Dalinar, but couldn’t leave off worrying about him. She’d have to burn a glyphward today. A dozen of them, for Elhokar and the others. Except … part of the problem was that Dalinar claimed nobody was watching the prayers as they burned, sending twisting smoke to the Tranquiline Halls. Did she believe that? Truly?

Today, she’d taken a huge step toward unifying Roshar. Yet she felt more powerless than ever.

97. Riino

Kaladin remembered holding a dying woman’s hand.

It had been during his days as a slave. He remembered crouching in the darkness, thick forest underbrush scratching his skin, the night around him too quiet. The animals had fled; they knew something was wrong.

The other slaves didn’t whisper, shift, or cough in their hiding places. He’d taught them well.

We have to go. Have to move.

He tugged on Nalma’s hand. He’d promised to help the older woman find her husband, who had been sold to another household. That wasn’t supposed to be legal, but you could get away with doing all kinds of things to slaves with the right brands, especially if they were foreign.

She resisted his tug, and he could understand her hesitance. The underbrush was safe, for the moment. It was also too obvious. The brightlords had chased them in circles for days, getting closer and closer. Stay here, and the slaves would be captured.

He tugged again, and she passed the signal to the next slave, all the way down the line. Then she clung to his hand as he led them—as quietly as he could—toward where he remembered a game trail.

Get away.

Find freedom. Find honor again.

It had to be out there somewhere.

The snapping sound of the trap closing sent a jolt through Kaladin. A year later, he’d still wonder how he missed stepping in it himself.

It got Nalma instead. She yanked her hand from his as she screamed.

Hunters’ horns moaned in the night. Light burst from newly unshielded lanterns, showing men in uniforms among the trees. The other slaves broke, bursting out of the underbrush like game for sport. Next to Kaladin, Nalma’s leg was caught in a fierce steel trap—a thing of springs and jaws that they wouldn’t even use on a beast, for fear of ruining the sport. Her tibia jutted through her skin.

“Oh, Stormfather,” Kaladin whispered as painspren writhed around them. “Stormfather!” He tried to stanch the blood, but it spurted between his fingers. “Stormfather, no. Stormfather!”

“Kaladin,” she said through clenched teeth. “Kaladin, run…”

Arrows cut down several of the fleeing slaves. Traps caught two others. In the distance, a voice called, “Wait! That’s my property you’re cutting down.”

“A necessity, Brightlord,” a stronger voice said. The local highlord. “Unless you want to encourage more of this behavior.”

So much blood. Kaladin uselessly made a bandage as Nalma tried to push him away, to make him run. He took her hand and held it instead, weeping as she died.

After killing the others, the brightlords found him still kneeling there. Against reason, they spared him. They said it was because he hadn’t run with the others, but in truth they’d needed someone to bear warning to the other slaves.

Regardless of the reason, Kaladin had lived.

He always did.

There was no underbrush here in Shadesmar, but those old instincts served Kaladin well as he crept toward the lighthouse. He’d suggested that he scout ahead, as he didn’t trust this dark land. The others had agreed. With Lashings, he could get away most easily in an emergency—and neither Adolin nor Azure had experience scouting. Kaladin didn’t mention that most of his practice sneaking had come as a runaway slave.

He focused on staying low to the ground, trying to use rifts in the black stone to hide his approach. Fortunately, stepping silently wasn’t difficult on this glassy ground.

The lighthouse was a large stone tower topped by an enormous bonfire. It threw a flagrant orange glow over the point of the peninsula. Where did they get the fuel for that thing?

He drew closer, accidentally startling a burst of lifespren, which shot up from some crystalline plants, then floated back down. He froze, but heard no sounds from the lighthouse.

Once he got a little closer, he settled down to watch for a while, to see if he could spot anything suspicious. He sorely missed the diaphanous form Syl had in the Physical Realm; she could have reported back to the others what he’d seen, or even scouted into the building herself, invisible to all but the right eyes.

After a short time, something crawled out of the beads of the ocean near him: a round lurglike creature with a fat, bulbous body and squat legs. About the size of a toddler, it hopped close to him, then tipped the entire top half of its head backward. A long tongue shot up in the air from the gaping mouth; it began to flap and wave.

Storms. An anticipationspren? They looked like streamers on his side, but those … those were waving tongues? What other simple, stable parts of his life were complete lies?

Two more anticipationspren joined the first, clustering near him and deploying their long, wagging tongues. He kicked at them. “Shoo.” Deceptively solid, they refused to budge, so he tried calming himself, hoping it would banish them. Finally, he just continued forward, his three bothersome attendants hopping behind. That sorely undermined the stealth of his approach, making him more nervous—which in turn made the anticipationspren even more eager to stick with him.

He managed to reach the wall of the tower, where he might have expected the heat of the enormous fire to be oppressive. Instead, he could barely feel it. Notably, the flames caused his shadow to behave normally, extending behind him instead of pointing toward the sun.

He took a breath, then glanced up through the open-shuttered window, into the ground floor of the lighthouse.

Inside, he saw an old Shin man—with furrowed, wrinkled skin and a completely bald head—sitting in a chair, reading by spherelight. A human? Kaladin couldn’t decide if that was a good sign or not. The old man began to turn a page in his book, then froze, looking up.

Kaladin ducked down, heart thumping. Those stupid anticipationspren continued to crowd nearby, but their tongues shouldn’t be visible through the window—

“Hello?” an accented voice called from inside the lighthouse. “Who’s out there? Show yourself!”

Kaladin sighed, then stood up. So much for his promise to do some stealthy reconnaissance.

Shallan waited with the others in the shadow of a strange rock growth. It looked something like a mushroom made from obsidian, the height of a tree; she thought she’d seen its like before, during one of her glimpses into Shadesmar. Pattern said it was alive, but “very, very slow.”

The group waited, pensive, as Kaladin scouted. She hated sending him alone, but Shallan knew nothing about that sort of work. Veil did. But Veil … still felt broken, from what had happened in Kholinar. That was dangerous. Where would Shallan hide now? As Radiant?

Find the balance, Wit had said. Accept the pain, but don’t accept that you deserved it.…

She sighed, then got out her sketchbook and started drawing some of the spren they’d seen.

“So,” Syl said, sitting on a rock nearby and swinging her legs. “I’ve always wondered. Does the world look weird to you, or normal?”

“Weird,” Pattern said. “Mmm. Same as for everyone.”

“I guess neither of us technically have eyes,” Syl said, leaning back and looking up at the glassy canopy of their tree-mushroom shelter. “We’re each a bit of power made manifest. We honorspren mimic Honor himself. You Cryptics mimic … weird stuff?”

“The fundamental underlying mathematics by which natural phenomena occur. Mmm. Truths that explain the fabric of existence.”

“Yeah. Weird stuff.”

Shallan lowered her pencil, looking with dissatisfaction at the attempt she’d made at drawing a fearspren. It looked like a child’s scribble.

Veil was seeping out.

That has always been you, Shallan. You just have to admit it. Allow it.

“I’m trying, Wit,” she whispered.

“You all right?” Adolin asked, kneeling beside her, putting his hand on her back, then rubbing her shoulders. Storms, that felt good. They’d walked entirely too far these last few days.

He glanced at her sketchpad. “More … what did you call it? Abstractionalism?”

She snapped the sketchpad closed. “What is taking that bridgeman so long?” She glanced over her shoulder, which interrupted Adolin. “Don’t stop,” she added, “or I will murder you.”

He chuckled and continued working at her shoulders. “He’ll be fine.”

“You were worried about him yesterday.”

“He’s got battle fatigue, but an objective will help with that. We have to watch him when he’s sitting around doing nothing, not when he’s got a specific mission.”

“If you say so.” She nodded toward Azure, who stood by the coast, staring across the ocean of beads. “What do you make of her?”

“That uniform is well tailored,” Adolin said, “but the blue doesn’t work with her skin. She needs a lighter shade. The breastplate is overly much, like she’s trying to prove something. I do like the cape though. I’ve always wanted to justify wearing one. Father gets away with it, but I never could.”

“I wasn’t asking for a wardrobe assessment, Adolin.”

“Clothing says a lot about people.”

“Yeah? What happened to the fancy suit you got in Kholinar?”

He looked down—which stopped the massaging of shoulders for an unacceptable count of three, so she growled at him.

“It didn’t fit me anymore,” he said, resuming the massage. “But you do raise an important problem. Yes, we need to find food and drink. But if I have to wear the same uniform this entire trip, you won’t have to murder me. I’ll commit suicide.”

Shallan had almost forgotten that she was hungry. How odd. She sighed, closing her eyes and trying not to melt too much into the feeling of his touch.

“Huh,” Adolin said a short time later. “Shallan, what do you suppose that is?”

She followed his nod and spotted an odd little spren floating through the air. Bone-white and brown, it had wings extending to the sides and long tresses for a tail. In front of its body hovered a cube.

“Looks like those gloryspren we saw earlier,” she noted. “Only the wrong color. And the shape of the head is…”

“Corrupted!” Syl said. “That’s one of Odium’s!”

As he stepped inside the lighthouse, Kaladin’s instincts drove him to check to either side of the doorway for anyone waiting in ambush. The room seemed empty save for furniture, the Shin man, and some strange pictures on the walls. The place smelled of incense and spices.

The Shin man snapped his book closed. “Cutting it close, aren’t you? Well, let us begin! We haven’t much time.” He stood up, proving himself to be rather short. His odd clothing had puffed out portions on the arms, the trousers very tight. He walked to a door at the side of the chamber.

“I should fetch my companions,” Kaladin said.

“Ah, but the very best readings happen at the beginning of the highstorm!” The man checked a small device that he took from his pocket. “Only two minutes off.”

A highstorm? Azure had said they didn’t need to worry about those in Shadesmar.

“Wait,” Kaladin said, stepping after the little man—who had entered a room built up against the base of the lighthouse. It had large windows, but its main feature was a small table at the center. That held something lumpish covered by a black cloth.

Kaladin found himself … curious. That was good, after the darkness of the last few days. He stepped in, glancing to the sides again. One wall contained a picture of people kneeling before a bright white mirror. Another was a cityscape at dusk, with a group of low houses clustered before an enormous wall that had light glowing beyond it.

“Well, let’s begin!” the man said. “You have come to witness the extraordinary, and I shall provide it. The price is a mere two marks of Stormlight. You shall be greatly rewarded in kind—both in dreams and luster!”

“I should really get my friends.…” Kaladin said.

The man whipped the cloth off the table, revealing a large crystalline globe. It glowed with a powerful light, bathing the room in luminescence. Kaladin blinked against it. Was that Stormlight?

“Are you balking at the price?” the man said. “What is the money to you? Potential? If you never spend it, you gain nothing by having it. And the witness of what is to come will far recompense you for small means expended!”

“I…” Kaladin said, raising his hand against the light. “Storms, man. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The Shin man frowned, face lit from below like the globe. “You came here for a fortune, didn’t you? To the Rii Oracle? You wish me to see the unwalked paths—during the highstorm, when realms blend.”

“A fortune? You mean foretelling the future?” Kaladin felt a bitter taste in his mouth. “The future is forbidden.”

The old man cocked his head. “But … isn’t this why you came to see me?”

“Storms, no. I’m looking for passage. We heard that ships come by here.”

The old man rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Passage? Why didn’t you say so? And I was really enjoying the speech. Ah well. A ship? Let me check my calendars. I think supplies are coming soon.…”

He bustled past Kaladin, muttering to himself.

Outside, the sky rippled with light. The clouds shimmered, gaining a strange, ethereal luminescence. Kaladin gaped, then glanced back at the little man, who had fetched a ledger from a side table.

“That…” Kaladin said. “Is that what a highstorm looks like on this side?”

“Hmmm? Oh, new, are you? How have you gotten into Shadesmar, but not seen a storm pass? Did you come directly from the perpendicularity?” The old man frowned. “Not a lot of people coming through there anymore.”

That light. The bright sphere on the table—as large as a man’s head, and glowing with a milky light—shifted colors, matching the pearlescent ripples above. There was no gemstone inside that globe. And the light seemed different. Transfixing.

“Here now,” the man said as Kaladin stepped forward, “don’t touch that. It’s only for properly trained fo—”

Kaladin rested his hand on the sphere.

And felt himself get carried away by the storm.

Shallan and the others dodged for cover, but too slowly. The strange spren flitted right under their small canopy.

Overhead, the clouds started to ripple with a vibrant set of colors.

The corrupted gloryspren landed on Shallan’s arm. Odium suspects that you survived, a voice said in her mind. That … that was the voice of the Unmade from the mirror. Sja-anat. He thinks something strange happened to the Oathgate because of our influence—we’ve never managed to Enlighten such powerful spren before. It’s believable that something odd might happen. I lied, and said I think you were sent far, far from the point of transfer.

He has minions in this realm, and they will be told to hunt you. So take care. Fortunately, he doesn’t know that you’re a Lightweaver—he thinks you are an Elsecaller for some reason.

I will do what I can, but I’m not sure he trusts me any longer.

The spren fluttered away.

“Wait!” Shallan said. “Wait, I have questions!”

Syl tried to snatch it, but it dodged and was soon out over the ocean.

Kaladin rode the storm.

He’d done this before, in dreams. He’d even spoken to the Stormfather.

This felt different. He rode in a shimmering, rippling surge of colors. Around him, the clouds streamed past at incredible speed, coming alight with those colors. Pulsing with them, as if to a beat.

He couldn’t feel the Stormfather. He couldn’t see a landscape beneath him. Just shimmering colors, and clouds that faded into … light.

Then a figure. Dalinar Kholin, kneeling someplace dark, surrounded by nine shadows. A flash of glowing red eyes.

The enemy’s champion was coming. Kaladin knew in that moment—an overpowering sensation thrumming through him—that Dalinar was in terrible, terrible danger. Without help, the Blackthorn was doomed.

“Where!” Kaladin screamed to the light as it began to fade. “When! How do I reach him!”

The colors diminished.

“Please!”

He saw a flash of a vaguely familiar city. Tall, built along the stones, it had a distinctive pattern of buildings at the center. A wall and an ocean beyond.

Kaladin dropped to his knees in the fortuneteller’s room. The little Shin man batted Kaladin’s hand from the glowing sphere. “—rtune seers like myself. You’ll ruin it, or…” He trailed off, then took Kaladin’s head, turning it toward him. “You saw something!”

Kaladin nodded weakly.

“How? Impossible. Unless … you’re Invested. What Heightening are you?” He squinted at Kaladin. “No. Something else. Merciful Domi … A Surgebinder? It has begun again?”

Kaladin stumbled to his feet. He glanced at the large globe of light, which the lighthouse keeper covered up again with the black cloth, then put his hand to his forehead, which had begun thumping with pain. What had that been? His heart still raced with anxiety.

“I … I need to go get my friends,” he said.

Kaladin sat in the main room of the lighthouse, in the chair Riino—the Shin lighthouse keeper—had occupied earlier. Shallan and Adolin negotiated with him on the other side of the room, Pattern looming over Shallan’s shoulder and making the fortuneteller nervous. Riino had food and supplies for trade, though it would cost them infused spheres. Apparently, Stormlight was the only commodity that mattered on this side.

“Charlatans like him aren’t uncommon, where I come from,” Azure said, resting with her back against the wall near Kaladin. “People who claim to be able to see the future, living off people’s hopes. Your society was right to forbid them. The spren do likewise, so his kind have to live off in places like this, hoping people will be desperate enough to come to them. Probably gets some business with each ship that comes through.”

“I saw something, Azure,” Kaladin said, still trembling. “It was real.” His limbs felt drained, like the aftereffect of lifting weights for a long period.

“Maybe,” Azure said. “Those types use dusts and powders that grant euphoria, making you think you’ve seen something. Even the gods of my land catch only glimpses of the Spiritual Realm—and in all my life, I’ve only met one human I believe truly understood it. And he might actually be a god. I’m not sure.”

“Wit,” Kaladin said. “The man that brought you the metal that protected your Soulcaster.”

She nodded.

Well, Kaladin had seen something. Dalinar …

Adolin walked over and handed Kaladin a squat metal cylinder. He used a device—provided by the Shin man—to break open the top. There were some fish rations inside. Kaladin poked at the chunks with his finger, then inspected the container.

“Canned food,” Azure noted. “It’s extremely convenient.”

Kaladin’s stomach rumbled, so he dug into the fish with the spoon Adolin provided. The meat tasted salty, but was good—far better than something Soulcast. Shallan joined them, trailed by Pattern, while the lighthouse keeper bustled off to fetch some supplies they’d traded for. The man glanced at the doorway, where the spren of Adolin’s Blade stood, silent like a statue.

Out through the room’s window, Kaladin could see Syl standing on the coast, watching out over the sea of beads. Her hair doesn’t ripple here, he thought. In the Physical Realm it often waved as if being brushed by an unseen breeze. Here, it acted like the hair of a human.

She hadn’t wanted to enter the lighthouse for some reason. What was that about?

“The lighthouse keeper says a ship will be arriving any time now,” Adolin said. “We should be able to buy passage.”

“Mmm,” Pattern said. “The ship is going to Celebrant. Mmm. A city on the island.”

“Island?”

“It’s a lake on our side,” Adolin said. “Called the Sea of Spears, in the southeast of Alethkar. By the ruins … of Rathalas.” He drew his lips to a line and glanced away.

“What?” Kaladin asked.

“Rathalas was where my mother was killed,” Adolin said. “Assassinated by rebels. Her death drove my father into a fury. We almost lost him to the despair.” He shook his head, and Shallan rested her hand on his arm. “It’s … not a pleasant event to think about. Sadeas burned the city to the ground in retribution. My father gets a strange, distant expression whenever someone mentions Rathalas. I think he blames himself for not stopping Sadeas, even though he was mad with grief at the time, wounded and incoherent from an attempt on his own life.”

“Well, there’s still a spren city on this side,” Azure said. “But it’s in the wrong direction. We need to be heading west—toward the Horneater Peaks—not south.”

“Mmm,” Pattern said. “Celebrant is a prominent city. In it, we could find passage wherever we wish to go. And the lighthouse keeper doesn’t know when a ship going the right way might pass here.”

Kaladin put his fish down, then gestured at Shallan. “Can I have some paper?”

She let him have a sheet from her sketchpad. With an unpracticed hand, he drew out the buildings he’d seen in his momentary … whatever it had been. I’ve seen this pattern before. From above.

“That’s Thaylen City,” Shallan said. “Isn’t it?”

That’s right, Kaladin thought. He’d only visited once, opening the city’s Oathgate. “I saw this, in the vision I explained to you.” He glanced at Azure, who seemed skeptical.

Kaladin could still feel his emotion from the vision, that thrumming sense of anxiety. The sure knowledge that Dalinar was in grave danger. Nine shadows. A champion who would lead the enemy forces …

“The Oathgate in Thaylen City is open and working,” Kaladin said. “Shallan and I saw to that. And since the Oathgate in Kholinar brought us to Shadesmar, theoretically another—one that isn’t corrupted by the Unmade—could get us back.”

“Assuming I can figure out how to work it on this side,” Shallan said. “That’s a pretty daunting assumption.”

“We should try to reach the perpendicularity in the Peaks,” Azure said. “It’s the only sure way back.”

“The lighthouse keeper says he thinks something strange is happening there,” Shallan said. “Ships from that direction have never ended up arriving.”

Kaladin rested his fingers on the sketch he’d done. He needed to get to Thaylen City. It didn’t matter how. The darkness inside him seemed to retreat.

He had a purpose. A goal. Something to focus on other than the people he’d lost in Kholinar.

Protect Dalinar.

Kaladin returned to eating his fish, and the group settled in to wait for the ship. It took a few hours, during which the clouds steadily faded in color, before growing plain white again. On the other side, the highstorm had completed its passing.

Eventually, Kaladin saw something out on the horizon, beyond where Syl sat on the rocks. Yes, that was a ship, sailing in from the west. Except … it didn’t have a sail. Had he even felt wind in Shadesmar? He didn’t think so.

The ship crashed through the ocean of beads, surging toward the lighthouse. It employed no sail, no mast, and no oars. Instead, it was pulled from the front by an elaborate rigging attached to a group of incredible spren. Long and sinuous, they had triangular heads and floated on multiple sets of rippling wings.

Storms … they pulled the ship like chulls. Flying, majestic chulls with undulating bodies. He’d never seen anything like it.

Adolin grunted from where he stood by the window. “Well, at least we’ll be traveling in style.”

98. Loopholes

Szeth of Shinovar left the Skybreaker fortress with the twenty other squires. The sun approached the clouded horizon to the west, gilding the Purelake red and gold. Those calm waters, strangely, now sprouted dozens of long wooden poles.

Of various heights ranging from five to thirty feet, these poles appeared to have been jammed into fissures in the lake bottom. Each had an odd knobby shape at the top.

“This is a test of martial competence,” Master Warren said. The Azish man looked strange in the garb of a Marabethian lawkeeper, chest bare and shoulders draped with the short, patterned cloak. The Azish were normally so proper, overly encumbered with robes and hats. “We must train to fight, if the Desolation truly has begun.”

Without Nin’s guidance to confirm, they spoke of the Desolation in “if”s and “might”s.

“Each pole is topped with a group of bags bearing powders of a different color,” Warren continued. “Fight by throwing those—you cannot use other weapons, and you cannot leave the contest area marked by the poles.

“I will call time over when the sun sets. We will tally the number of times each squire’s uniform was marked by one of the bags of powder. You lose four points for each different color on your uniform, and an additional point for each repeated hit from a color. The winner is the one who has lost the fewest points. Begin.”

Szeth drew in Stormlight and Lashed himself into the air with the others. Though he didn’t care if he won arbitrary tests of competence, the chance to dance the Lashings—for once without needing to cause death and destruction—called to him. This would be like those days in his youth, spent training with the Honorblades.

He soared upward about thirty feet, then used a half Lashing to hover. Yes, the tops of the poles each bore a collection of small pouches tied on by strings. He Lashed himself past one, snatching a pouch, which let out a puff of pink dust as it came off in his hand. He now saw why the squires had been told to wear a white shirt and trousers today.

“Excellent,” Szeth said as the other squires scattered, grabbing pouches.

What? the sword asked. Szeth carried it on his back, tied securely in place, at an angle from which he could not draw the weapon. I don’t understand. Where is the evil?

“No evil today, sword-nimi. Just a challenge.”

He hurled the pouch at one of the other squires, hitting her square in the shoulder, and the resulting dust colored her shirt in that spot. Notably, the master had said that only color on the uniform would be counted, so holding the pouches and dusting one’s own fingers was fine. Similarly, hitting each other in the face gained no advantage.

The others took quickly to the game; soon pouches were being flung in all directions. Each pole bore only a single color, encouraging competitors to move about to hit others with as many colors as possible. Joret tried hovering in one spot anyway, dominating one pole to prevent others from hitting him with its color. Sitting still made him a target, however, and his uniform was quickly covered in spots.

Szeth dove, then pulled himself up with an expert Lashing so that he swooped, skimming the surface of the Purelake. He grabbed a pole as he passed, bending it out of Cali’s reach as she went by above.

I’m down too low, Szeth realized as bags of dust fell toward him. Too easy a target.

He twisted back and forth, executing a complex maneuver that manipulated both Lashings and the wind of his passing. Pouches smacked the water near him.

He pulled upward. Lashing wasn’t like the flight of a swallow—instead, it was like tying oneself to strings, a puppet to be yanked about. It was easy to lose control, as evidenced by the awkward motions of the newer squires.

As Szeth gained height, Zedzil fell in behind him, holding a pouch in each hand. Szeth added a second Lashing upward, then a third. His Stormlight lasted so much longer than it had before—he could only assume that Radiants were more efficient than those who used Honorblades for the powers.

He shot upward like an arrow, windspren joining and twisting around him. Zedzil followed, but when he tried to throw a pouch at Szeth, the wind was too great. The pouch fell backward immediately, striking Zedzil on his own shoulder.

Szeth dropped into a dive, and Zedzil followed until Szeth snatched a green bag from a pole and tossed it over his shoulder, hitting Zedzil again. The younger man cursed, then shot away to find easier prey.

Still, this combat proved to be a surprising challenge. Szeth had rarely fought in the air itself, and this contest felt similar to when he’d battled the Windrunner in the skies. He twisted among the poles, dodging pouches—even snatching one from the air before it hit him—and found he was enjoying himself.

The screams from the shadows seemed dim, less pressing. He wove between thrown pouches, dancing above a lake painted by the hues of a setting sun, and smiled.

Then immediately felt guilty. He had left tears, blood, and terror in his wake like a personal seal. He had destroyed monarchies, families—innocent and guilty alike. He could not be happy. He was only a tool of retribution. Not redemption, for he dared not believe in such.

If he was to be forced to keep living, it should not be a life that anyone would ever envy.

You think like Vasher, the sword said in his head. Do you know Vasher? He teaches swords to people now, which is funny because VaraTreledees always says Vasher isn’t any good with the sword.

Szeth rededicated himself to the fight, not for joy but for practicality. Unfortunately, his momentary distraction earned him his first hit. A dark blue pouch struck, its circle stark on his white shirt.

He growled, soaring upward with a pouch in each hand. He flung them with precision, hitting one squire in the back, then another in the leg. Nearby, four of the older squires flew in formation. They would chase an isolated squire, swarming him or her with a flurry of eight pouches, often scoring six or seven hits while rarely getting hit themselves.

As Szeth zoomed past, they fixated on him, perhaps because his uniform was nearly pristine. He immediately Lashed himself upward—canceling his lateral Lashing—to try to get above the pack. These were well practiced with their powers, however, and not so easily put off.

If he continued straight upward, they’d merely chase him until he ran out of Stormlight. Already his reserves were low, as each squire had only been given enough to last through the contest. If he double- or triple-Lashed himself too often, he’d run out early.

The sun was slipping inch by inch out of sight. Not much time left; he simply needed to last.

Szeth dove to the side, moving quickly and erratically. Only one of the pack chasing him chanced a throw; the others knew to wait for a better shot. Szeth’s swoop took him straight toward a pole, but it held no pouches. Fari looked like he had gathered them all up to hoard the color.

So Szeth grabbed the pole itself.

He pushed it to the side, bending it until it snapped, leaving him with a pole some ten feet long. He lightened it with a partial Lashing upward, then tucked it under his arm.

A quick glance over the shoulder showed that the four teammates were still tailing him. The one who had thrown earlier had grabbed two new pouches and was catching up to the others with a double Lashing.

Make a stand, the sword suggested. You can take them.

For once, Szeth agreed. He zoomed down until he was near the water, his passing causing a trail of ripples on the surface. Younger squires dodged out of his way, flinging dust bags, but missing because of his speed.

He deliberately Lashed himself to the side in a smooth, predictable turn. It was exactly the opportunity the pack had been waiting for, and they started throwing at him. But he was no frightened child, to be intimidated and overwhelmed by superior numbers. He was the Assassin in White. And this was but a game.

Szeth spun and began batting the pouches away with his staff. He even managed to hit the last one back into the face of the leader of the group, a man named Ty.

It wouldn’t count as a mark, but the dust got in Ty’s eyes, causing him to blink and slow. The group expended most of their pouches, which let Szeth—Lashed now directly toward them—get close.

And nobody should ever let him get too close.

He dropped his staff and grabbed a squire by her shirt, using her as a shield from an opportunist outside the group, who was throwing crimson bags. Szeth spun with her, then kicked her toward a companion. They slammed together, trailing streaks of red dust. He grabbed another squire from the pack, trying to Lash him away.

The man’s body resisted the Lashing, however. People bearing Stormlight were more difficult to Lash—something Szeth was only now coming to understand. He could, however, Lash himself backward, hauling the man with him. When he let go, the squire had trouble adjusting to the change in momentum, and jolted in the air, letting himself get hit by a half dozen bags from outsiders.

Szeth zipped away, running dangerously low on Stormlight. Only another few minutes …

Beneath him, Ty called to the others, pointing up at Szeth. The obvious current winner. Only one strategy made sense at this point.

“Get him!” Ty shouted.

Oh, good! the sword said.

Szeth Lashed himself downward—which proved wise, as many of the squires shot up past him, assuming he’d try to stay high. No, his best defense while outnumbered was confusion. He got among them, a storm of pouches targeting him. Szeth did what he could to avoid them, zipping one way, then the other—but there were too many attacks. The poorly aimed ones were the most dangerous, as moving out of the way of a well-placed attack almost always took him into the path of an errant one.

One pouch struck his back, followed by a second. A third hit his side. Dust flew all around as the squires hit each other too. That was his hope: that even as he took hits, they would take more.

He soared up, then dove again, causing the others to dodge like sparrows before a hawk. He flew along the water, scattering fish in the waning light, then shot upward to—

His Stormlight ran out.

His glow vanished. The tempest within died. Before the sun could set, the cold took him. Szeth arced in the air, and was pummeled with a dozen different pouches. He dropped through the cloud of multicolored dust, leaving an afterimage from his loosely fastened spirit.

He splashed into the Purelake.

Fortunately, he hadn’t been too high, so the landing was only mildly painful. He hit the bottom of the shallow lake; then when he stood up, the others hit him with another round of pouches. No mercy from this group.

The last sliver of the sun vanished, and Master Warren shouted an end to the test. The others streaked away, their Stormlight conspicuous in the dimming light.

Szeth stood waist-deep in water.

Wow, the sword said. I kind of feel bad for you.

“Thank you, sword-nimi. I…”

What were those two spren floating nearby, shaped as small slits in the air? They separated the sky, like wounds in skin, exposing a black field full of stars. When they moved, the substance of reality bent around them.

Szeth bowed his head. He no longer ascribed to spren any particular religious significance, but he could still be in awe of these. He might have lost this contest, but he seemed to have impressed the highspren.

Or had he lost? What exactly had the rules been?

Thoughtful, he ducked under the water, swimming in the shallow lake back toward the bank. He climbed out, water streaming from his clothing as he walked up to the others. The masters had brought out bright sphere lanterns, along with food and refreshment. A Tashikki squire was recording the points while two masters adjudicated what counted as a “hit” and what did not.

Szeth suddenly felt frustrated by their games. Nin had promised him the opportunity to cleanse Shinovar. What time was there for games? The moment had come for him to ascend to a rank beyond all of this.

He walked up to the masters. “I am sorry to have won this contest, as I did the one with the prison.”

“You?” Ty said, incredulous. Ty had five spots on him. Not bad. “You got hit at least two dozen times.”

“I believe,” Szeth replied, “that the rules stated the winner was the one with the fewest marks on his uniform.” He held his hands to the side, showing his white clothing, washed clean during his swim.

Warren and Ki shared a look. She nodded with a hint of a smile.

“There is always one,” Warren said, “who notices that. Remember that while loopholes are to be exploited, Szeth-son-Neturo, they are dangerous to rely upon. Still, you have done well. Both in your performance, and in seeing this hole in the rules.” He glanced into the night, squinting at the two highspren, who seemed to have made themselves visible to Warren as well. “Others agree.”

“He used a weapon,” one of the older squires said, pointing. “He broke the rules!”

“I used a pole to block pouches,” Szeth said. “But I did not attack anyone with it.”

“You attacked me!” said the woman he’d thrown at someone else.

“Physical contact was not forbidden, and I cannot help it if you are unable to control your Lashings when I release you.”

The masters didn’t object. Indeed, Ki leaned in to Warren. “He is beyond the skill of these. I hadn’t realized…”

Warren looked back to him. “You shall soon have your spren, gauging by this performance.”

“Not soon,” Szeth said. “Right now. I shall say the Third Ideal this night, choosing to follow the law. I—”

“No,” a voice interrupted.

A figure stood up on the low wall surrounding the order’s stone courtyard. Skybreakers gasped, holding up lanterns, illuminating a man with dark Makabaki skin highlighted by a white crescent birthmark on his right cheek. Unlike the others, he wore a striking uniform of silver and black.

Nin-son-God, Nale, Nakku, Nalan—this man had a hundred different names and was revered across all Roshar. The Illuminator. The Judge. A founder of humankind, defender against the Desolations, a man ascended to divinity.

The Herald of Justice had returned.

“Before you swear, Szeth-son-Neturo,” Nin said, “there are things you need to understand.” He looked across the Skybreakers. “Things you all must understand. Squires, masters, gather our gemstone reserves and mobile packs. We will leave most of the squires. They leak Stormlight too much, and we have a long way to go.”

“Tonight, Just One?” Ki asked.

“Tonight. It is time for you to learn the two greatest secrets that I know.”

Shallan’s Sketchbook: Mandras

99. Reachers

When Kaladin awoke on the ship in Shadesmar, the others were already up. He sat, bleary-eyed on his bunk, listening to beads crash outside the hull. There almost seemed … a pattern or rhythm to them? Or was he imagining things?

He shook his head, standing and stretching. He had slept fitfully, slumber interrupted by thoughts of his men dying, of Elhokar and Moash, of worries for Drehy and Skar. The darkness blanketed his feelings, making him lethargic. He hated that he was the last to rise. That was always a bad sign.

He used the facilities, then forced himself to climb up the steps. The vessel had three levels. The bottom was the hold. The next level, the lower deck, was for the cabins, where the humans had been given a spot for them all to share.

The uppermost deck was open to the sky, and was populated by spren. Syl said they were lightspren, but the common name was Reachers. They looked like humans with strange bronze skin—metallic, as if they were living statues. Both men and women wore rugged jackets and trousers. Actual human clothing, not merely imitations of it like Syl wore.

They didn’t carry weapons other than knives, but the ship had wicked harpoons clipped in racks at the sides of the deck. Seeing those made Kaladin infinitely more comfortable; he knew exactly where to go for a weapon.

Syl stood near the bow, watching out over the sea of beads again. He almost missed spotting her at first because her dress was red, instead of its normal white-blue. Her hair had changed to black, and … and her skin was flesh colored—tan, like Kaladin’s. What on Roshar?

He crossed the deck toward her, stumbling as the ship crashed through a swell in the beads. Storms, and Shallan said this was more smooth than some boats she’d been on? Several Reachers passed, calmly managing the large riggings and harnesses that attached to the spren who pulled the craft.

“Ah, human,” one of the Reachers said as Kaladin passed. That was the captain, wasn’t it? Captain Ico? He resembled a Shin man, with large, childlike eyes made of metal. He was shorter than the Alethi, but sturdy. He wore the same tan clothing as the others, sporting a multitude of buttoned pockets.

“Come with me,” Ico told Kaladin, then crossed the deck without waiting for a response. They didn’t speak much, these Reachers.

Kaladin sighed, then followed the captain back to the stairwell. A line of copper plating ran down the inside wall of the stairwell—and Kaladin had seen a similar ornamentation on the deck. He’d assumed it was decorative, but as the captain walked, he rested his fingers on the metal in an odd way.

Touching a plate with the tips of his fingers, Kaladin felt a distinct vibration. They passed the quarters of the ordinary spren sailors. They didn’t sleep, but they did seem to enjoy their breaks from work, swinging quietly in hammocks, often reading.

It didn’t bother him to see male Reachers with books—spren were obviously similar to ardents, who were outside of common understandings of male and female. At the same time … spren, reading? How odd.

When they reached the hold, the captain turned on a small oil lamp—so far as Kaladin could tell, he didn’t use a flaming brand to create the fire. How did it work? It seemed foolhardy to use fire for light with so much wood and cloth around.

“Why not use spheres for light?” Kaladin asked him.

“We have none,” Ico said. “Stormlight fades too quickly on this side.”

That was true. Kaladin’s team carried several larger unset gemstones, which would hold Stormlight for weeks—but the smaller spheres would run out after a week or so without seeing a storm. They’d been able to trade the chips and marks to the lighthouse keeper in exchange for barter supplies—mostly cloth—to buy passage on this ship.

“The lighthouse keeper wanted the Stormlight,” Kaladin said. “He kept it in some kind of globe.”

Captain Ico grunted. “Foreign technology,” he said. “Dangerous. Draws the wrong spren.” He shook his head. “At Celebrant, the moneychangers have perfect gemstones that can hold the light indefinitely. Similar.”

“Perfect gemstones? Like, the Stone of Ten Dawns?”

“I don’t know of this thing. Light in a perfect stone doesn’t run out, so you can give Stormlight to the moneychangers. They use devices to transfer it from smaller gemstones to their perfect ones. Then they give you credit to spend in the city.”

The hold was closely packed with barrels and boxes that were lashed to the walls and floor. Kaladin could barely squeeze through. Ico selected a rope-handled box from a stack, then asked Kaladin to pull it out as Ico resettled the boxes that had been atop it, then relashed them.

Kaladin spent the time thinking about perfect gemstones. Did such a thing exist on his side? If there really were flawless stones that could hold Stormlight without ever running out, that seemed important to know. It could mean the difference between life and death for Radiants during the Weeping.

Once Ico was done resettling the cargo, he gestured for Kaladin to help him pick up the box they’d removed. They maneuvered it out of the hold and up onto the top deck. Here, the captain knelt and opened the box, which revealed a strange device that looked a little like a coatrack—although only about three feet tall. Made entirely of steel, it had dozens of small metal prongs extending from it, like the branches of a tree—only it had a metal basin at the very bottom.

Ico fished in a pocket and took out a small box, from which he removed a handful of glass beads like those that made up the ocean. He placed one of them into a hole in the center of the device, then waved toward Kaladin. “Stormlight.”

“For what?”

“For you to live.”

“Are you threatening me, Captain?”

Ico sighed and regarded him with a suffering expression. Very human in its nature. It seemed the look of a man talking to a child. The spren captain waved his hand, insistent, so Kaladin took a diamond mark from his pocket.

Cradling the sphere in one hand, Ico touched the glass bead he’d put in the fabrial. “This is a soul,” he said. “Soul of water, but very cold.”

“Ice?”

“Ice from a high, high place,” he said. “Ice that has never melted. Ice that has never known warmth.” The light in Kaladin’s sphere dimmed as Ico concentrated. “You know how to manifest souls?”

“No,” Kaladin said.

“Some of your kind do,” he said. “It is rare. Rare among us too. The gardeners among the cultivationspren are best at it. I am unpracticed.”

The ocean bead expanded and grew cloudy, looking like ice. Kaladin got a distinct sense of coldness from it.

Ico handed back the diamond mark, now partially drained, then dusted off his hands and stood up, pleased.

“What does it do?” Kaladin asked.

Ico nudged the device with his foot. “It gets cold now.”

“Why?”

“Cold makes water,” he said. “Water collects in that basin. You drink, and don’t die.”

Cold makes water? It didn’t seem to be making any water that Kaladin could see. Ico hiked off to survey the spren steering the ship, so Kaladin knelt beside the device, trying to understand. Eventually, he spotted drops of water collecting on the “branches” of the device. They ran down the metal and gathered in the basin.

Huh. When the captain had said—during their initial negotiations—that he could provide water for human passengers, Kaladin had assumed the ship would have some barrels in the hold.

The device took about a half hour to make a small cup of water, which Kaladin drank as a test—the basin had a spigot and a detachable tin cup. The water was cool but flavorless, unlike rainwater. How did coldness make water though? Was this melting ice in the Physical Realm somehow, and bringing it here?

As he was sipping the water, Syl walked over—her skin, hair, and dress still colored like those of a human. She stopped next to him, placed her hands on her hips, and went into full pout.

“What?” Kaladin asked.

“They won’t let me ride one of the flying spren.”

“Smart.”

“Insufferable.”

“Why on Roshar would you look at one of those things and think, ‘You know what, I need to get on its back’?”

Syl looked at him as if he were crazy. “Because they can fly.”

“So can you. Actually, so can I.”

“You don’t fly, you fall the wrong way.” She unfolded her arms so that she could fold them immediately again and huff loudly. “You’re telling me you’re not even curious what it’s like to climb on one of those things?”

“Horses are bad enough. I’m not about to get onto something that doesn’t even have legs.”

“Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“I dragged it out back and clubbed it senseless for getting me into the army. What have you done to your skin and hair, by the way?”

“It’s a Lightweaving,” she said. “I asked Shallan, because I didn’t want rumors of an honorspren spreading from the ship’s crew.”

“We can’t waste Stormlight on something like that, Syl.”

“We used a mark that was running out anyway!” she said. “So it was worthless to us; it would have been depleted by the time we arrived. So it’s wasting nothing.”

“What if there’s an emergency?”

She stuck her tongue out at him, then at the sailors at the front of the ship. Kaladin returned the little tin cup to its place on the side of the device, then settled with his back to the ship railing. Shallan sat across the deck near the flying spren, doing sketches.

“You should go talk to her,” Syl said, sitting next to him.

“About wasting Stormlight?” Kaladin said. “Yes, perhaps I should. She does seem inclined to be frivolous with who she expends it for.”

Syl rolled her eyes.

“What?”

“Don’t go lecture her, silly. Chat with her. About life. About fun things.” Syl nudged him with her foot. “I know you want to. I can feel that you do. Be glad I’m the wrong kind of spren, or I would probably be licking your forehead or something to get at your emotions.”

The ship surged against a wave of beads. The souls of things in the physical world.

“Shallan is betrothed to Adolin,” Kaladin said.

“Which isn’t an oath,” Syl said. “It’s a promise to maybe make an oath sometime.”

“It’s still not the sort of thing you play around with.”

Syl rested her hand on his knee. “Kaladin. I’m your spren. It’s my duty to make sure that you’re not alone.”

“Is that so? Who decided?”

“I did. And don’t give me excuses about not being lonely, or about ‘only needing your brothers in arms.’ You can’t lie to me. You feel dark, sad. You need something, someone, and she makes you feel better.”

Storms. It felt like Syl and his emotions were double-teaming him. One smiled with encouragement, while the other whispered terrible things. That he’d always be alone. That Tarah had been right to leave him.

He filled another cup with as much water as he could get from the basin, then carried it toward Shallan. The pitching of the ship almost made him dump the cup overboard.

Shallan glanced up as he eased down beside her, his back resting against the deck’s railing. He handed her the cup. “It makes water,” he said, thumbing at the device. “By getting cold.”

“Condensation? How fast does it go? Navani would be interested in that.” She sipped the water, holding it in her gloved safehand—which was strange to see on her. Even when they’d traveled the bottoms of the chasms together, she’d worn a very formal havah.

“You walk like they do,” she said absently, finishing her sketch of one of the flying beasts.

“They?”

“The sailors. You keep your balance well. You’d have been at home as a sailor yourself, I suspect. Unlike some others.” She nodded toward Azure, who stood across the deck, holding on to the railing for dear life and occasionally shooting distrusting glares at the Reachers. Either she did not like being on a ship, or she did not trust the spren. Perhaps both.

“May I?” Kaladin asked, nodding toward Shallan’s sketch. She shrugged, so he took the sketchpad and studied her pictures of the flying beasts. As always, they were excellent. “What does the text say?”

“Just some theorizing,” she said, flipping back a page in her notebook. “I lost my original of this picture, so this is kind of crude. But have you ever seen something like these arrowhead spren here?”

“Yeah…” Kaladin said, studying her drawing of a skyeel flying with arrowhead spren moving around it. “I’ve seen them near greatshells.”

“Chasmfiends, skyeels, anything else that should be heavier than it actually is. Sailors call them luckspren on our side.” She gestured with the cup toward the front of the ship, where sailors managed the flying beasts. “They call these ‘mandras,’ but the arrowhead shapes on their heads are the same shape as luckspren. These are bigger, but I think they—or something like them—help skyeels fly.”

“Chasmfiends don’t fly.”

“They kind of do, mathematically. Bavamar did the calculations on Reshi greatshells, and found they should be crushed by their own weight.”

“Huh,” Kaladin said.

She started to get excited. “There’s more. Those mandras, they vanish sometimes. Their keepers call it ‘dropping.’ I think they must be getting pulled into the Physical Realm. It means you can never use only one mandra to pull a ship, no matter how small that ship. And you can’t take them—or most other spren—too far from human population centers on our side. They waste away and die for reasons people here don’t understand.”

“Huh. So what do they eat?”

“I’m not sure,” Shallan said. “Syl and Pattern talk about feeding off emotions, but there’s something else that…” She trailed off as Kaladin flipped to the next page in her notebook. It seemed like an attempt at drawing Captain Ico, but was incredibly juvenile. Basically just a stick figure.

“Did Adolin get hold of your sketchbook?” he asked.

She snatched the book from him and closed it. “I was just trying out a different style. Thanks for the water.”

“Yes, I had to walk all the way from over there. At least seven steps.”

“Easily ten,” Shallan said. “And on this precarious deck. Very dangerous.”

“Practically as bad as fighting the Fused.”

“Could have stubbed your toe. Or gotten a splinter. Or pitched over the side and been lost to the depths, buried by a thousand thousand beads and the weight of the souls of an infinite number of forgotten objects.”

“Or … that.”

“Highly unlikely,” Shallan agreed. “They keep this deck well maintained, so there really aren’t any splinters.”

“With my luck, I’d find one anyway.”

“I had a splinter once,” Shallan noted. “It eventually got out of hand.”

“You … you did not just say that.”

“Yes, you obviously imagined it. What a sick, sick mind you have, Kaladin.”

Kaladin sighed, then nodded to the sailors. “They do walk about barefoot. Have you noticed that? Something about the copper lines set into the deck.”

“The copper vibrates,” Shallan said. “And they keep touching it. I think they might be using it to communicate somehow.”

“That would explain why they don’t talk much,” Kaladin said. “I’d have expected them to watch us a little more than they do. They don’t seem that curious about us.”

“Which is odd, considering how interesting Azure is.”

“Wait. Just Azure?”

“Yes. In that polished breastplate and striking figure, with her talk of chasing bounties and traveling worlds. She’s deeply mysterious.”

“I’m mysterious,” Kaladin said.

“I used to think you were. Then I found out you don’t like good puns—it’s truly possible to know too much about somebody.”

He grunted. “I’ll try to be more mysterious. Take up bounty hunting.” His stomach growled. “Starting with a bounty on lunch, maybe.”

They’d been promised two meals a day, but considering how long it had taken Ico to remember they needed water, perhaps he should ask.

“I’ve been trying to track our speed,” Shallan said, flipping through her notebook. She went quickly through the pages, and he could see that—oddly—they alternated between expert renditions and comically bad ones.

She landed on a map she’d made of this region in Shadesmar. Alethi rivers were now peninsulas, and the Sea of Spears was an island, with the city named Celebrant on the western side. The river peninsulas meant that in order to get to the city, the ship had to swing to the west. Shallan had marked their path with a line.

“It’s hard to gauge our progress, but I’d guess that we’re moving faster than the average ship in our world. We can go directly where we want without worrying about the winds, for one thing.”

“So … two more days?” Kaladin asked, guessing based on her marks.

“More or less. Quick progress.”

He moved his fingers down, toward the bottom of her map. “Thaylen City?” he asked, tapping one point she’d marked.

“Yes. On this side, it will be on the edge of a lake of beads. We can guess the Oathgate will reflect there as a platform, like the one we left in Kholinar. But how to activate it…”

“I want to try. Dalinar is in danger. We need to get to him, Shallan. In Thaylen City.”

She glanced at Azure, who maintained that was the wrong direction to go. “Kaladin … I don’t know if we can trust what you saw. It’s dangerous to presume you know the future—”

“I didn’t see the future,” Kaladin said quickly. “It wasn’t like that. It was like soaring the sky with the Stormfather. I just know … I know I have to get to Dalinar.”

She still seemed skeptical. Perhaps he’d told them too much of the lighthouse keeper’s theatrics.

“We’ll see, once we get to Celebrant.” Shallan closed her map, then squirmed, glancing back at the railing they’d been leaning against. “Do you suppose they have chairs anywhere? These railings aren’t very comfortable for sitting against.”

“Probably not.”

“What do you even call these things?” Shallan said, tapping the railing. “A deck wall?”

“No doubt they’ve made up some obscure nautical word,” Kaladin said. “Everything on a ship has odd names. Port and starboard instead of left and right. Galley instead of kitchen. Nuisance instead of Shallan.”

“There was a name … railing? Deck guard? No, wale. It’s called a wale.” She grinned. “I don’t really like how it feels to sit against this wale, but I’m sure I’ll eventually get over it.”

He groaned softly. “Really?”

“Vengeance for calling me names.”

“Name. One name. And it was more a declaration of fact than an attack.”

She punched him lightly in the arm. “It’s good to see you smiling.”

“That was smiling?”

“It was the Kaladin equivalent. That scowl was almost jovial.” She smiled at him.

Something felt warm within him at being near her. Something felt right. It wasn’t like with Laral, his boyhood crush. Or even like with Tarah, his first real romance. It was something different, and he couldn’t define it. He only knew he didn’t want it to stop. It pushed back the darkness.

“Down in the chasms,” he said, “when we were trapped together, you talked about your life. About … your father.”

“I remember,” she said softly. “In the darkness of the storm.”

“How do you do it, Shallan? How do you keep smiling and laughing? How do you keep from fixating on the terrible things that have happened?”

“I cover them up. I have this uncanny ability to hide away anything I don’t want to think about. It … it’s getting harder, but for most things I can just…” She trailed off, staring straight ahead. “There. Gone.”

“Wow.”

“I know,” she whispered. “I’m crazy.”

“No. No, Shallan! I wish I could do the same.”

She looked at him, brow wrinkling. “You’re crazy.”

“How nice would it be, if I could simply shove it all away? Storms.” He tried to imagine it. Not spending his life worrying about the mistakes he’d made. Not hearing the constant whispers that he wasn’t good enough, or that he’d failed his men.

“This way, I’ll never face it,” Shallan said.

“It’s better than being unable to function.”

“That’s what I tell myself.” She shook her head. “Jasnah said that power is an illusion of perception. Act like you have authority, and you often will. But pretending fragments me. I’m too good at pretending.”

“Well, whatever you’re doing, it’s obviously working. If I could smother these emotions, I’d do so eagerly.”

She nodded, but fell silent, then resisted all further attempts to draw her into conversation.

100. An Old Friend

Dalinar remembered almost everything now. Though he still hadn’t recovered the details of his meeting with the Nightwatcher, the rest was as fresh as a new wound, dripping blood down his face.

There had been so many more holes in his mind than he’d realized. The Nightwatcher had ripped apart his memories like the fabric of an old blanket, then sewn a new quilt out of it. In the intervening years he’d thought himself mostly whole, but now all those scars had been ripped free and he could see the truth.

He tried to put all of that out of his mind as he toured Vedenar, one of the great cities of the world, known for its amazing gardens and lush atmosphere. Unfortunately, the city had been devastated by the Veden civil war, then the subsequent arrival of the Everstorm. Even along the sanitized path he walked for the tour, they passed scorched buildings, piles of rubble.

He couldn’t help but think of what he’d done to Rathalas. And so, Evi’s tears accompanied him. The cries of dying children.

Hypocrite, they said. Murderer. Destroyer.

The air smelled of salt and was filled with the sounds of waves smashing on cliffs outside the city. How did they live with that constant roaring? Did they never know peace? Dalinar tried to listen politely as Taravangian’s people led him into a garden, full of low walls overgrown with vines and shrubs. One of few that hadn’t been destroyed in the civil war.

The Vedens loved ostentatious greenery. Not a subtle people, all brimming with passion and vice.

The wife of one of the new Veden highprinces eventually led Navani off to inspect some paintings. Dalinar was instead led to a small garden square, where some Veden lighteyes were chatting and drinking wine. A low wall on the eastern side here allowed for the growth of all kinds of rare plants in a jumble, which was the current horticultural fashion. Lifespren bobbed among them.

More small talk? “Excuse me,” Dalinar said, nodding toward a raised gazebo. “I’m going to take a moment to survey the city.”

One of the lighteyes raised his hand. “I can show—”

“No thank you,” Dalinar said, then started up the steps to the gazebo. Perhaps that had been too abrupt. Well, at least it fit his reputation. His guards had the sense to remain below, at the foot of the steps.

He reached the top, trying to relax. The gazebo gave him a nice view of the cliffs and the sea beyond. Unfortunately, it let him see the rest of the city—and storms, it was not in good shape. The walls were broken in places, the palace nothing more than rubble. Huge swaths of the city had burned, including many of the platelike terraces that had been Veden showpieces.

Out beyond—on the fields north of the city—black scars on the rock still showed where heaps of bodies had been burned following the war. He tried to turn away from all that and look out at the peaceful ocean. But he could smell smoke. That wasn’t good. In the years following Evi’s death, smoke had often sent him descending into one of his worse days.

Storms. I’m stronger than this. He could fight it. He wasn’t the man he’d been all those years ago. He forced his attention toward the stated purpose of visiting the city: surveying the Veden martial capabilities.

Many of the living Veden troops were barracked in storm bunkers right inside the city walls. From reports he’d heard earlier, the civil war had brought incredible losses. Even baffling ones. Many armies would break after suffering ten percent casualties, but here—reportedly—the Vedens had continued fighting after losing more than half their numbers.

Perhaps they’d been driven mad by the persistent crashing of those waves. And … what else did he hear?

More phantom weeping. Taln’s palms! Dalinar drew a deep breath, but smelled only smoke.

Why must I have these memories? he thought, angry. Why did they suddenly return?

Mixing with those emotions was a growing fear for Adolin and Elhokar. Why hadn’t they sent word? If they’d escaped, wouldn’t they have flown to safety—or at the very least, found a spanreed? It seemed ridiculous to assume multiple Radiants and Shardbearers were trapped in the city, unable to flee. But the alternative was to worry that they hadn’t survived. That he’d sent them to die.

Dalinar tried to stand, straight-backed and at attention, beneath the weight of it all. Unfortunately, he knew too well that if you locked your knees and stood too straight, you risked fainting. Why was it that trying to stand tall should make you so much more likely to fall?

His guards at the base of the stone hill parted to let Taravangian—in his characteristic orange robes—shuffle through. The old man carried an enormous diamond-shaped kite shield, large enough to cover his entire left side. He climbed up to the gazebo, then sat down on one of the benches, panting.

“Did you want to see one of these, Dalinar?” he asked after a moment, holding out the shield.

Glad for the distraction, Dalinar took the shield, hefting it. “Half-shard?” he said, noting a steel box—with a gemstone inside—fastened to the inner surface.

“Indeed,” Taravangian said. “Crude devices. There are legends of metal that can block a Shardblade. A metal that falls from the sky. Silver, but somehow lighter. I should like to see that, but for now we can use these.”

Dalinar grunted.

“You know how they make fabrials, don’t you?” Taravangian asked. “Enslaved spren?”

“Spren can’t be ‘enslaved’ any more than a chull can.”

The Stormfather rumbled distantly in his mind.

“That gemstone,” Taravangian said, “imprisons the kind of spren that gives things substance, the kind that holds the world together. We have entrapped in that shield something that, at another time, might have blessed a Knight Radiant.”

Storms. He couldn’t deal with a philosophical problem like this today. He tried to change the topic. “You seem to be feeling better.”

“It’s a good day for me. I feel better than I have recently, but that can be dangerous. I’m prone to thinking about mistakes I’ve made.” Taravangian smiled in his kindly way. “I try to tell myself that at the very least, I made the best choice I could, with the information I had.”

“Unfortunately, I’m certain I didn’t make the best choices I could,” Dalinar said.

“But you wouldn’t change them. If you did, you’d be a different person.”

I did change them, Dalinar thought. I erased them. And I did become a different person. Dalinar set the shield beside the old man.

“Tell me, Dalinar,” Taravangian said. “You’ve spoken of your disregard for your ancestor, the Sunmaker. You called him a tyrant.”

Like me.

“Let us say,” Taravangian continued, “you could snap your fingers and change history. Would you make it so that the Sunmaker lived longer and accomplished his desire, uniting all of Roshar under a single banner?”

“Turn him into more of a despot?” Dalinar said. “That would have meant him slaughtering his way all across Azir and into Iri. Of course I wouldn’t wish that.”

“But what if it left you, today, in command of a completely unified people? What if his slaughter let you save Roshar from the Voidbringer invasion?”

“I … You’d be asking me to consign millions of innocents to the pyre!”

“Those people are long dead,” Taravangian whispered. “What are they to you? Numbers in a scribe’s footnote. Yes, the Sunmaker was a monster. However, the current trade routes between Herdaz, Jah Keved, and Azir were forged by his tyranny. He brought culture and science back to Alethkar. Your modern Alethi cultural eruption can be traced directly back to what he did. Morality and law are built upon the bodies of the slain.”

“I can’t do anything about that.”

“No, no. Of course you can’t.” Taravangian tapped the half-shard shield. “Do you know how we capture spren for fabrials, Dalinar? From spanreeds to heatrials, it’s all the same. You lure the spren with something it loves. You give it something familiar to draw it in, something it knows deeply. In that moment, it becomes your slave.”

I … I really can’t think about this right now. “Excuse me,” Dalinar said, “I need to go check on Navani.”

He strode from the gazebo and down the steps, bustling past Rial and his other guards. They followed, towed in his wake like leaves after a strong gust of wind. He entered the city, but didn’t go looking for Navani. Perhaps he could visit the troops.

He walked back along the street, trying to ignore the destruction. Even without it though, this city felt off to him. The architecture was very like Alethi architecture, nothing like the flowery designs of Kharbranth or Thaylenah—but many buildings had plants draping and dangling from every window. It was strange to walk along streets full of people who looked Alethi but spoke a foreign tongue.

Eventually Dalinar reached the large stormshelters right inside the city walls. Soldiers had set up tent cities next to them, temporary bivouacs they could tear down and carry into one of the loaflike bunkers for storms. Dalinar found himself growing calmer as he walked among them. This was familiar; this was the peace of soldiers at work.

The officers here welcomed him, and generals took him on tours of the bunkers. They were impressed by his ability to speak their language—something he’d gained early in his visit to the city, using his Bondsmith abilities.

All Dalinar did was nod and ask the occasional question, but somehow he felt like he was accomplishing something. At the end, he entered a breezy tent near the city gates, where he met with a group of wounded soldiers. Each had survived when his entire platoon had fallen. Heroes, but not the conventional type. It took being a soldier to understand the heroism of simply being willing to continue after all your friends had died.

The last in line was an elderly veteran who wore a clean uniform and a patch for a defunct platoon. His right arm was missing, his jacket sleeve tied off, and a younger soldier led him up to Dalinar. “Look, Geved. The Blackthorn himself! Didn’t you always say you wanted to meet him?”

The older man had one of those stares that made him seem like he could see right through you. “Brightlord,” he said, and saluted. “I fought your army at Slickrock, sir. Brightlord Nalanar’s second infantry. Storming fine battle that was, sir.”

“Storming fine indeed,” Dalinar said, saluting him back. “I figured your forces had us at three different points.”

“Those were good times, Brightlord. Good times. Before everything went wrong…” His eyes glazed over.

“What was it like?” Dalinar asked softly. “The civil war, the battle here, at Vedenar?”

“It was a nightmare, sir.”

“Geved,” the younger man said. “Let’s go. They have food—”

“Didn’t you hear him?” Geved said, pulling his remaining arm out of the boy’s grip. “He asked. Everyone dances around me, ignoring it. Storms, sir. The civil war was a nightmare.”

“Fighting other Veden families,” Dalinar said, nodding.

“It wasn’t that,” Geved said. “Storms! We squabble as much as you do, sir. Pardon that. But I ain’t ever felt bad fighting my own. It’s what the Almighty wants, right? But that battle…” He shuddered. “Nobody would stop, Brightlord. Even when it should have been done. They just kept right on fighting. Killing because they felt like killing.”

“It burned in us,” another wounded man said from by the food table. The man wore an eye patch and looked like he hadn’t shaved since the battle. “You know it, Brightlord, don’t you? That river inside of you, pulling your blood all up into your head and making you love each swing. Making it so that you can’t stop, no matter how tired you are.”

The Thrill.

It started to glow inside Dalinar. So familiar, so warm, and so terrible. Dalinar felt it stir, like … like a favorite axehound, surprised to hear its master’s voice after so long.

He hadn’t felt it in what seemed like an eternity. Even back on the Shattered Plains, when he’d last felt it, it had seemed to be weakening. Suddenly that made sense. It wasn’t that he’d been learning to overcome the Thrill. Instead, it had left him.

To come here.

“Did others of you feel this?” Dalinar asked.

“We all did,” another of the men said, and Geved nodded. “The officers … they rode about with teeth clenched in rictus grins. Men shouted to keep the fight, maintain the momentum.”

It’s all about momentum.

Others agreed, talking about the remarkable haze that had covered the day.

Losing any sense of peace he’d gained from the inspections, Dalinar excused himself. His guards raced to keep up as he fled—moving even faster as a newly arrived messenger called to him, saying he was needed back at the gardens.

He wasn’t ready. He didn’t want to face Taravangian, or Navani, or especially Renarin. Instead, he climbed the city wall. Inspect … inspect the fortifications. That was why he’d come.

From the top, he could again see those large sections of the city, burned and broken in the war.

The Thrill called to him, distant and thin. No. No. Dalinar marched along the wall, passing soldiers. To his right, waves crashed against the rocks. Shadows moved in the shallows, beasts two or three times as big as a chull, their shells peeking from the depths between waves.

It seemed that Dalinar had been four people in his life. The bloodlusty warrior, who killed wherever he was pointed, and the consequences could go to Damnation.

The general, who had feigned distinguished civility—when secretly, he’d longed to get back on the battlefield so he could shed more blood.

Third, the broken man. The one who paid for the actions of the youth.

Then finally, the fourth man: most false of them all. The man who had given up his memories so he could pretend to be something better.

Dalinar stopped, resting one hand on the stones. His guards assembled behind him. A Veden soldier approached from the other direction along the wall, calling out in anger. “Who are you? What are you doing up here?”

Dalinar squeezed his eyes shut.

“You! Alethi. Answer me. Who let you scale this fortification?”

The Thrill stirred, and the animal inside him wanted to lash out. A fight. He needed a fight.

No. He fled again, hurrying down a tight, constricting stone stairwell. His breathing echoed against the walls, and he nearly stumbled and tripped down the last flight.

He burst out onto the street, sweating, surprising a group of women carrying water. His guards piled out after him. “Sir?” Rial asked. “Sir, are you … Is everything…?”

Dalinar sucked in Stormlight, hoping it would drive away the Thrill. It didn’t. It seemed to complement the sensation, driving him to act.

“Sir?” Rial said, holding out a canteen that smelled of something strong. “I know you said I shouldn’t carry this, but I did. And … and you might need it.”

Dalinar stared at that canteen. A pungent scent rose to envelop him. If he drank that, he could forget the whispers. Forget the burned city, and what he’d done to Rathalas. And to Evi.

So easy …

Blood of my fathers. Please. No.

He spun away from Rial. He needed rest. That was all, just rest. He tried to keep his head up and slow his pace as he marched back toward the Oathgate.

The Thrill nipped at him from behind.

If you become that first man again, it will stop hurting. In your youth, you did what needed to be done. You were stronger then.

He growled, spinning and flinging his cloak to the side, looking for the voice that had spoken those words. His guards shied back, gripping their spears tightly. The beleaguered inhabitants of Vedenar scurried away from him.

Is this leadership? To cry each night? To shake and tremble? Those are the actions of a child, not a man.

“Leave me alone!”

Give me your pain.

Dalinar looked toward the sky and let out a raw bellow. He charged through the streets, no longer caring what people thought when they saw him. He needed to be away from this city.

There. The steps up to the Oathgate. The people of this city had once made a garden out of its platform, but that had been cleared away. Ignoring the long ramp, Dalinar took the steps two at a time, Stormlight lending him endurance.

At the top, he found a cluster of guards in Kholin blue standing with Navani and a smattering of scribes. She immediately strode over. “Dalinar, I tried to ward him off, but he was insistent. I don’t know what he wants.”

“He?” Dalinar asked, puffing from his near run.

Navani gestured toward the scribes. For the first time, Dalinar noticed that several among them wore the short beards of ardents. But those blue robes? What were those?

Curates, he thought, from the Holy Enclave in Valath. Technically, Dalinar himself was a head of the Vorin religion—but in practice, the curates guided church doctrine. The staves they bore were wound with gemstones, more ornate than he’d expected. Hadn’t most of that pomp been done away with at the fall of the Hierocracy?

“Dalinar Kholin!” one said, stepping forward. He was young for an ardentia leader, perhaps in his early forties. His square beard was streaked with a few lines of grey.

“I am he,” Dalinar said, shrugging off Navani’s touch to his shoulder. “If you would speak with me, let us retire to a place more private—”

“Dalinar Kholin,” the ardent said, louder. “The council of curates declares you a heretic. We cannot tolerate your insistence that the Almighty is not God. You are hereby proclaimed excommunicate and anathema.”

“You have no right—”

“We have every right! The ardents must watch the lighteyes so that you steer your subjects well. That is still our duty, as outlined in the Covenants of Theocracy, witnessed for centuries! Did you really think we would ignore what you’ve been preaching?”

Dalinar gritted his teeth as the stupid ardent began outlining Dalinar’s heresies one by one, demanding that he deny them. The man stepped forward, close enough now that Dalinar could smell his breath.

The Thrill stirred, sensing a fight. Sensing blood.

I’m going to kill him, a part of Dalinar thought. I have to run now, or I will kill this man. It was as clear to him as the sun’s light.

So he ran.

He dashed to the Oathgate control building, frantic with the need to escape. He scrambled up to the keyhole, and only then remembered that he didn’t have a Shardblade that could operate this device.

Dalinar, the Stormfather rumbled. Something is wrong. Something I cannot see, something hidden to me. What are you sensing?

“I have to get away.”

I will not be a sword to you. We spoke of this.

Dalinar growled. He felt something he could touch, something beyond places. The power that bound worlds together. His power.

Wait, the Stormfather said. This is not right!

Dalinar ignored him, reaching beyond and pulling power through. Something bright white manifested in his hand, and he rammed it into the keyhole.

The Stormfather groaned, a sound like thunder.

The power made the Oathgate work, regardless. As his guards called his name outside, Dalinar flipped the dial that would make only the small building transport—not the entire plateau—then pushed the keyhole around the outside of the room, using the power as a handhold.

A ring of light flashed around the structure, and cold wind poured in through the doorways. He stumbled out onto a platform before Urithiru. The Stormfather pulled back from him, not breaking the bond, but withdrawing his favor.

The Thrill flooded in to replace it. Even this far away. Storms! Dalinar couldn’t escape it.

You can’t escape yourself, Dalinar, Evi’s voice said in his mind. This is who you are. Accept it.

He couldn’t run. Storms … he couldn’t run.

Blood of my fathers. Please. Please, help me.

But … to whom was he praying?

He staggered down from the platform in a daze, ignoring questions from soldiers and scribes alike. He made his way to his room, increasingly desperate to find a way—any way—to hide from Evi’s condemning voice.

In his rooms, he pulled a book off the shelf. Bound in hogshide, with thick paper. He held The Way of Kings as if it were a talisman that would drive back the pain.

It did nothing. Once this book had saved him, but now it seemed useless. He couldn’t even read its words.

Dropping the book, he stumbled out of the room. No conscious thought led him to Adolin’s chambers or drove him to ransack the younger man’s room. But he found what he’d hoped, a bottle of wine kept for a special occasion. Violet, prepared in its strength.

This represented that third man he’d been. Shame, frustration, and days spent in a haze. Terrible times. Times he’d given up part of his soul in order to forget.

But storms, it was either this or start killing again. He raised the bottle to his lips.

101. Deadeye

Adolin tugged at the jacket, standing in Captain Ico’s cabin. The spren had lent the room to him for a few hours.

The jacket was too short, but was the biggest the spren had. Adolin had cut off the trousers right below the knees, then tucked the bottoms into his long socks and tall boots. He rolled the sleeves of the jacket up to match, approximating an old style from Thaylenah. The jacket still looked too baggy.

Leave it unbuttoned, he decided. The rolled sleeves look intentional that way. He tucked his shirt in, pulled the belt tight. Good by contrast? He studied it in the captain’s mirror. It needed a waistcoat. Those, fortunately, weren’t too hard to fake. Ico had provided a burgundy coat that was too small for him. He removed the collar and sleeves, stitched the rough edges under, then slit it up the back.

He was just finishing it up with some laces on the back when Ico checked in on him. Adolin buttoned on the improvised waistcoat, threw on the jacket, then presented himself with hands at his sides.

“Very nice,” Ico said. “You look like an honorspren going to a Feast of Light.”

“Thanks,” Adolin said, inspecting himself in the small mirror. “The jacket needs to be longer, but I don’t trust myself to let down the hems.”

Ico studied him with metal eyes—bronze, with holes for the pupils, like Adolin had seen done for some statues. Even the spren’s hair appeared sculpted in place. Ico could almost have been a Soulcast king from an age long past.

“You were a ruler among your kind, weren’t you?” Ico asked. “Why did you leave? The humans we get here are refugees, merchants, or explorers. Not kings.”

King. Was Adolin a king? Surely his father would decide not to continue with the abdication, now that Elhokar had passed.

“No answer?” Ico said. “That is fine. But you were a ruler among them. I can read it in you. Highborn status is important to humans.”

“Maybe a little too important, eh?” Adolin said, adjusting the neck scarf he’d made from his handkerchief.

“That is true,” Ico said. “You are all human—and so none of you, regardless of birth, can be trusted with oaths. A contract to travel, this is fine. But humans will betray trust if it is given to them.” The spren frowned, then seemed to grow embarrassed, glancing away. “That was rude.”

“Rudeness doesn’t necessarily imply untruth though.”

“I did not mean an insult, regardless. You are not to be blamed. Betraying oaths is simply your nature, as a human.”

“You don’t know my father,” Adolin said. Still, the conversation left him uncomfortable. Not because of Ico’s words—spren tended to say odd things, and Adolin didn’t take offense.

More, he felt his own growing worry that he might actually have to take the throne. He’d grown up knowing it could happen, but he’d also grown up wishing—desperately—that it never would. In his quiet moments, he’d assumed this hesitance was because a king couldn’t apply himself to things like dueling and … well … enjoying life.

What if it went deeper? What if he’d always known inconsistency lurked within him? He couldn’t keep pretending he was the man his father wanted him to be.

Well, it was moot anyway—Alethkar, as a nation, had fallen. He accompanied Ico back out of the captain’s cabin onto the deck, walking over to Shallan, Kaladin, and Azure, who stood by the starboard wale. Each wore a shirt, trousers, and jacket they’d bought off the Reachers with dun spheres. Dun gemstones weren’t worth nearly as much on this side, but apparently trade with the other side did happen, so they had some value.

Kaladin gaped at Adolin, looking down at his boots, then up at the neck scarf, then focusing on the waistcoat. That befuddled expression alone made the work worthwhile.

“How?” Kaladin demanded. “Did you sew that?”

Adolin grinned. Kaladin looked like a man trying to wear his childhood suit; he’d never button that coat across his broad chest. Shallan fit her shirt and jacket better from a pure measurements standpoint, but the cut wasn’t flattering. Azure looked far more … normal without her dramatic breastplate and cloak.

“I’d practically kill for a skirt,” Shallan noted.

“You’re kidding,” Azure said.

“No. I’m getting tired of the way trousers rub my legs. Adolin, could you sew me a dress? Maybe stitch the legs of these trousers together?”

He rubbed his chin, which had begun to sprout a blond beard. “It doesn’t work that way—I can’t magic more cloth out of nothing. It…”

He trailed off as, overhead, the clouds suddenly rippled, glowing with a strange mother-of-pearl iridescence. Another highstorm, their second since arriving in Shadesmar. The group stopped and stared up at the dramatic light show. Nearby, the Reachers seemed to stand up more straight, move about their sailing duties more vigorously.

“See,” Azure said. “I told you. They must feed off it, somehow.”

Shallan narrowed her eyes, then grabbed her sketchbook and stalked over to begin interviewing some of the spren. Kaladin trailed away to join his spren at the prow of the ship, where she liked to stand. Adolin often noticed him looking southward, as if anxiously wishing the ship to move more quickly.

He lingered by the side of the ship, watching the beads crash away below. When he looked up, he found Azure studying him. “Did you really sew that?” she asked.

“There wasn’t much sewing involved,” Adolin said. “The scarf and jacket hide most of the damage I did to the waistcoat—which used to be a smaller jacket.”

“Still,” she said. “An unusual skill for a royal.”

“And how many royals have you known?”

“More than some might assume.”

Adolin nodded. “I see. And are you enigmatic on purpose, or is it kind of an accidental thing?”

Azure leaned against the ship’s wale, breeze blowing her short hair. She looked more youthful when not wearing the breastplate and cloak. Mid-thirties, maybe. “A little of both. I discovered when I was younger that being too open with strangers … went poorly for me. But in answer to your question, I have known royals. Including one woman who left it behind. Throne, family, responsibilities…”

“She abandoned her duty?” That was practically inconceivable.

“The throne was better served by someone who enjoyed sitting on it.”

“Duty isn’t about what you enjoy. It’s about doing what is demanded of you, in serving the greater good. You can’t just abandon responsibility because you feel like it.”

Azure glanced at Adolin, and he felt himself blush. “Sorry,” he said, looking away. “My father and my uncle might have … instilled me with a little passion on the topic.”

“It’s all right,” Azure said. “Maybe you’re right, and maybe there’s something in me that knows it. I always find myself in situations like in Kholinar, leading the Wall Guard. I get too involved … then abandon everyone.…”

“You didn’t abandon the Wall Guard, Azure,” Adolin said. “You couldn’t have prevented what happened.”

“Perhaps. I can’t help feeling that this is merely one in a long string of duties abdicated, of burdens set down, perhaps to disastrous results.” For some reason, she put her hand on the pommel of her Shardblade when she said that. Then she looked up at Adolin. “But of all the things I’ve walked away from, the one I don’t regret is allowing someone else to rule. Sometimes, the best way to do your duty is to let someone else—someone more capable—try carrying it.”

Such a foreign idea. Sometimes you took up a duty that wasn’t yours, but abandoning one? Just … giving it to someone else?

He found himself musing on that. He nodded his thanks to Azure as she excused herself to get something to drink. He was still standing there when Shallan returned from interviewing—well, interrogating—the Reachers. She took his arm, and together they watched the shimmering clouds for a while.

“I look terrible, don’t I?” she finally asked, nudging him in the side. “No makeup, with hair that hasn’t been washed in days, and now wearing a dumpy set of worker’s clothing.”

“I don’t think you’re capable of looking terrible,” he said, pulling her closer. “In all their color, even those clouds can’t compete.”

They passed through a sea of floating candle flames, which represented a village on the human side. The flames were huddled together in patches. Hiding from the storm.

Eventually the clouds faded—but they were supposedly near the city now, so Shallan got excited, watching for it. Finally, she pointed to land on the horizon.

Celebrant nestled not far down its coast. As they drew closer, they spotted other ships entering or leaving the port, each pulled by at least two mandras.

Captain Ico walked over. “We’ll soon arrive. Let’s go get your deadeye.”

Adolin nodded, patting Shallan on the back, and followed Ico down to the brig, a small room far aft in the cargo hold. Ico used keys to unlock the door, revealing the spren of Adolin’s sword sitting on a bench inside. She looked at him with those haunting scratched-out eyes, her string face void of emotion.

“I wish you hadn’t locked her in here,” Adolin said, stooping down to peer through the squat doorway.

“Can’t have them on deck,” Ico said. “They don’t watch where they’re walking and fall off. I’m not going to spend days trying to fish out a lost deadeye.”

She moved to join Adolin, then Ico reached over to shut the cell.

“Wait!” Adolin said. “Ico, I saw something moving back there.”

Ico locked the door and hung the keys on his belt. “My father.”

“Your father?” Adolin said. “You keep your father locked up?”

“Can’t stand the thought of him wandering around somewhere,” Ico said, eyes forward. “Have to keep him locked away though. He’ll go searching for the human carrying his corpse, otherwise. Walk right off the deck.”

“Your father was a Radiant spren?”

Ico started toward the steps up to the deck. “It is rude to ask about such ones.”

“Rudeness doesn’t imply untruth though, right?”

Ico turned and regarded him, then smiled wanly and nodded toward Adolin’s spren. “What is she to you?”

“A friend.”

“A tool. You use her corpse on the other side, don’t you? Well, I won’t blame you. I’ve heard stories of what they can do, and I am a pragmatic person. Just … don’t pretend she is your friend.”

By the time they reached the deck, the ship was approaching the docks. Ico started calling orders, though his crew clearly knew what to do already.

The Celebrant docks were wide and large, longer than the city. Ships pulled in along stone piers, though Adolin couldn’t figure out how they got back out again. Hook the mandras to the stern and pull them out that way?

The shore was marked by long warehouses set in rows, which marred the view of the city proper, in Adolin’s opinion. The ship drew up at a berth on a specific pier, guided by a Reacher with semaphore. Ico’s sailors unlatched a piece of the hull, which unfolded to steps, and a sailor hiked down immediately to greet another group of Reachers. These began unlatching the mandras with long hooks, leading them away.

As each flying spren was released from the rigging, the ship sank a little farther into the bead ocean. Eventually, it seemed to settle onto some braces and steady there.

Pattern came over, humming to himself and meeting the rest of them as they gathered on the deck. Ico stepped up, gesturing. “A deal fulfilled, and a bond kept.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Adolin said, shaking Ico’s hand. Ico returned the gesture awkwardly. He obviously knew what to do, but was unpracticed at it. “You’re sure you won’t take us the rest of the way to the portal between realms?”

“I’m certain,” Ico said firmly. “The region around Cultivation’s Perpendicularity has gained a poor reputation of late. Too many ships vanishing.”

“What about Thaylen City?” Kaladin asked. “Could you take us there?”

“No. I unload goods here, and then head east. Away from trouble. And if you’ll accept a little advice, stay in Shadesmar. The Physical Realm is not a welcoming place these days.”

“We’ll take that under advisement,” Adolin said. “Is there anything we should know about the city?”

“Don’t stray too far outside; with human cities nearby, there will be angerspren in the area. Try not to draw too many lesser spren, and maybe see if you can find a place to tie up that deadeye of yours.” He pointed. “The dock registrar is that building ahead of us, with the blue paint. There you’ll find a list of ships willing to take on passengers—but you’ll have to go to each one individually and make sure they are equipped to take humans, and haven’t already booked all their cabins.

“The building next to that is a moneychanger, where you can trade Stormlight for notes of exchange.” He shook his head. “My daughter used to work there, before she ran off chasing stupid dreams.”

He bade them farewell, and the group of travelers walked down the gangway onto the docks. Curiously, Syl still wore an illusion, making her face an Alethi tan, her hair black, her clothing red. Was being an honorspren really that big a deal?

“So,” Adolin said as they reached the pier, “how are we going to do this? In the city, I mean.”

“I’ve counted out our marks,” Shallan said, holding up a bag of spheres. “It’s been long enough since they were renewed, they’ll almost certainly lose their Stormlight in the next few days. A few have already gone out. We might as well trade for supplies—we can keep the broams and the larger gemstones for Surgebinding.”

“First stop is the moneychanger, then,” Adolin said.

“After that, we should see if we can buy more rations,” Kaladin said, “just in case. And we need to look for passage.”

“But to where?” Azure said. “The perpendicularity, or Thaylen City?”

“Let’s see what our options are,” Adolin decided. “Maybe there will be a ship to one destination, but not the other. Let’s send one group to inquire with ships, and another to get supplies. Shallan, do you have a preference which you’d rather do?”

“I’ll look for passage,” she said. “I have experience with it—I made a lot of trips when chasing down Jasnah.”

“Sounds good,” Adolin said. “We should put one Radiant in each group, so bridgeboy and Syl, you’ll go with me. Pattern and Azure will go with Shallan.”

“Maybe I should help Shallan—” Syl began.

“We’ll need a spren with us,” Adolin said. “To explain culture here. Let’s go trade in those spheres first, though.”

102. Celebrant

Kaladin hiked through the city with Adolin and Syl. The moneychanging had gone quickly, and they’d left the spren of Adolin’s sword with the others. After Shallan had taken the deadeye’s hand, she had remained behind.

Reaching this city marked a welcome step forward, toward finally getting out of this place and reaching Dalinar. Unfortunately, a brand-new city full of unknown threats didn’t encourage him to relax.

The city wasn’t as densely populated as most human ones, but the variety of spren was stunning. Reachers like Ico and his sailors were common, but there were also spren that looked much like Adolin’s sword—at least before she’d been killed. They were made entirely of vines, though they had crystal hands and wore human clothing. Equally common were spren with inky black skin that shone with a variety of colors when light hit them right. Their clothing seemed part of them, like that of the Cryptics and honorspren.

A small group of Cryptics passed nearby, huddling close together as they walked. Each had a head with a slightly different pattern. There were other spren with skin like cracked stone, molten light shining from within. Still others had skin the color of old white ashes—and when Kaladin saw one of these point toward something, the skin stretching at the joint of his arm disintegrated and blew away, revealing the joint and knobs of the humerus. The skin quickly regrew.

The variety reminded Kaladin of the costumes of the Cult of Moments—though he didn’t spot a single honorspren. And it didn’t seem like the other spren mixed much. Humans were rare enough that the three of them—including Syl, imitating an Alethi—turned heads.

Buildings were constructed using bricks in a variety of colors or blocks of many different types of stone. Each building was a hodgepodge of materials with no pattern Kaladin could determine.

“How do they get building materials?” Kaladin asked as they followed the moneychanger’s instructions toward the nearby market. “Are there quarries on this side?”

Syl frowned. “I…” She cocked her head. “You know, I’m not sure. I think maybe we make it appear on this side, somehow, from yours? Like Ico did with the ice?”

“They seem to wear whatever,” Adolin said, pointing. “That’s an Alethi officer’s coat over an Azish scribe’s vest. Tashikki wrap worn with trousers, and there’s almost a full Thaylen tlmko, but they’re missing the boots.”

“No children,” Kaladin noticed.

“There have been a few,” Syl said. “They just don’t look little, like human children.”

“How does that even work?” Adolin said.

“Well, it’s certainly less messy than your method!” She scrunched her face up. “We’re made of power, bits of gods. There are places where that power coalesces, and parts start to be aware. You go, and then come back with a child? I think?”

Adolin chuckled.

“What?” Kaladin asked.

“That’s actually not that different from what my nanny told me when I asked her where children come from. A nonsense story about parents baking a new child out of crem clay.”

“It doesn’t happen often,” Syl said as they passed a group of the ash-colored spren sitting around a table and watching the crowds. They eyed the humans with overt hostility, and one flicked fingers toward Kaladin. Those fingers exploded to bits of dust, leaving bones that grew back the flesh.

“Raising children doesn’t happen often?” Adolin asked.

Syl nodded. “It’s rare. Most spren will go hundreds of years without doing it.”

Hundreds of years. “Storms,” Kaladin whispered, considering it. “Most of these spren are that old?”

“Or older,” Syl said. “But aging isn’t the same with spren. Like time isn’t. We don’t learn as fast, or change much, without a bond.”

Towers in the city’s center showed the time by way of fires burning in a set of vertical holes—so they could judge how to meet back with the others in an hour, as agreed. The market turned out to be mostly roofless stalls open to the air, with goods piled on tables. Even in comparison to the improvised market of Urithiru, this seemed … ephemeral to Kaladin. But there were no stormwinds to worry about here, so it probably made sense.

They passed a clothing stall, and of course Adolin insisted on stopping. The oily spren who managed the place had an odd, very terse way of talking, with a strange use of words. But it did speak Alethi, unlike most of Ico’s crew.

Kaladin waited for the prince to finish, until Syl stepped up and presented herself in an oversized poncho tied with a belt. On her head she wore a large, floppy hat.

“What’s that?” Kaladin asked.

“Clothes!”

“Why do you need clothes? Yours are built in.”

“Those are boring.”

“Can’t you change them?”

“Takes Stormlight, on this side,” she said. “Plus, the dress is part of my essence, so I’m actually walking around naked all the time.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Easy for you to say. We bought you clothing. You have three sets!”

“Three?” he said, looking down at his clothing. “I have my uniform, and this one Ico gave me.”

“Plus the one you’re wearing underneath that one.”

“Underwear?” Kaladin said.

“Yeah. That means you have three sets of clothing, while I have none.”

“We need two sets so one can be washed while we wear the other.”

“Just so you won’t be stinky.” She rolled her eyes in an exaggerated way. “Look, you can give these to Shallan when I get bored with them. You know she likes hats.”

That was true. He sighed, and when Adolin returned with another set of underclothing for each of them—along with a skirt for Shallan—Kaladin had him haggle for the clothing Syl was wearing too. The prices were shockingly cheap, using a tiny fraction of the money from their writ.

They continued on, passing stalls that sold building materials. According to the signs Syl could read, some items were far more expensive than others. Syl seemed to think the difference had to do with how permanent the thing was in Shadesmar—which made Kaladin worry for the clothing they’d bought.

They found a place selling weapons, and Adolin tried to negotiate while Kaladin browsed. Some kitchen knives. A few hand axes. And sitting in a locked, glass-topped box, a long thin silvery chain.

“You like?” the shopkeeper asked. She was made of vines—her face formed as if from green string—and wore a havah with a crystal safehand exposed. “Only a thousand broams of Stormlight.”

“A thousand broams?” Kaladin asked. He looked down at the box, which was locked to the table and guarded by small orange spren that looked like people. “No thanks.” The pricing here really was bizarre.

The swords proved more expensive than Adolin wanted, but he did buy them two harpoons—and Kaladin felt a lot more secure once one was placed in his hands. Walking on, Kaladin noted that Syl was hunkered down in her oversized poncho, her hair tucked into the collar and her hat pulled down to shadow her face. It seemed like she didn’t trust Shallan’s illusion to keep her from being recognized as an honorspren.

The food stall they found had mostly more “cans” like those on the ship. Adolin started haggling, and Kaladin settled in for another wait, scanning those who passed on the pathway for danger. He found his eyes drawn, however, to a stall across from them. Selling art.

Kaladin had never had much time for art. Either the picture depicted something useful—like a map—or it was basically pointless. And yet, nestled among the paintings for display was a small one painted from thick strokes of oil. White and red, with lines of black. When he looked away, he found himself drawn back toward it, studying the way the highlights played off those dark lines.

Like nine shadows … he thought. With a figure kneeling in the middle …

The ashen spren waved excitedly, pointing to the east and then making a cutting motion. She spoke a language Shallan couldn’t understand, but fortunately Pattern could interpret.

“Ah…” he said. “Mmm, yes. I see. She will not sail back to Cultivation’s Perpendicularity. Mmm. No, she will not go.”

“Same excuse?” Shallan asked.

“Yes. Voidspren sailing warships and demanding tribute from any who approach. Oh! She says she would rather trade with honorspren than take another trip to the perpendicularity. I think this is an insult. Ha ha ha. Mmm…”

“Voidspren,” Azure said. “Can she at least explain what that means?”

The ashen spren began speaking quickly after Pattern asked. “Hmm … There are many varieties, she says. Some of golden light, others are red shadows. Curious, yes. And it sounds like some of the Fused are with them—men with shells that can fly. I did not know this.”

“What?” Azure prompted.

“Shadesmar has been changing these last months,” Pattern explained. “Voidspren have arrived mysteriously just west of the Nexus of Imagination. Near Marat or Tukar on your side. Hmm … and they have sailed up and seized the perpendicularity. She says, ahem, ‘You need but spit into a crowd, and you’ll find one, these days.’ Ha ha ha. I do not think she actually has spit.”

Shallan and Azure shared a look as the sailor retreated onto her ship, to which mandras were being harnessed. The spren of Adolin’s sword lingered nearby, seeming content to stay where told. Passersby looked away from her, as if embarrassed to see her there.

“Well, the dock registrar was right,” Azure said, folding her arms. “No ships sailing toward the peaks or toward Thaylen City. Those destinations are too close to enemy holdings.”

“Maybe we should try for the Shattered Plains instead,” Shallan said. That meant going east—a direction ships were more likely to travel, these days. It would mean going away from both what Kaladin and Azure wanted, but at least it would be something.

If they got there, she’d still need to find a way to engage the Oathgate on this side. What if she failed? She imagined them trapped in some far-off location, surrounded by beads, slowly starving.…

“Let’s keep asking the ships on our list,” she said, leading the way. The next ship in line was a long, stately vessel made of white wood with golden trim. Its entire presentation seemed to say, Good luck affording me. Even the mandras being led toward it from one of the warehouses wore gold harnesses.

According to the list from the dock registrar, this was heading someplace called Lasting Integrity—which was to the southwest. That was kind of the direction Kaladin wanted to go, so Shallan had Pattern stop one of the grooms and ask if the captain of the ship would be likely to take human passengers.

The groom, a spren that looked like she was made of fog or mist, merely laughed and walked off as if she’d heard a grand joke.

“I suppose,” Azure said, “we should take that for a no.”

The next ship in line was a sleek vessel that looked fast to Shallan’s untrained eyes. A good choice, the registrar had noted, and likely to be welcoming toward humans. Indeed, a spren working on the deck waved as they approached. He put one booted foot up on the side of his ship and looked down with a grin.

What kind of spren, Shallan thought, has skin like cracked rock? He glowed deep within, as if molten on the inside. “Humans?” he called in Veden, reading Shallan’s hair as a sign of her heritage. “You’re far from home. Or close, I suppose, just in the wrong realm!”

“We’re looking for passage,” Shallan called up. “Where are you sailing?”

“East!” he said. “Toward Freelight!”

“Could we potentially negotiate passage?”

“Sure!” he called down. “Always interesting to have humans aboard. Just don’t eat my pet chicken. Ha! But negotiations will have to wait. We’ve got an inspection soon. Come back in a half hour.”

The dock registrar had mentioned this; an official inspection of the ships happened at first hour every day. Shallan and the team backed off, and she suggested returning to their meeting place near the dock registrar. As they approached, Shallan could see that Ico’s ship was already under inspection by a dock official—another spren made of vines and crystal.

Maybe we could convince Ico to take us, if we just tried harder. Perhaps—

Azure’s breath caught and she grabbed Shallan by the shoulder, yanking her into an alley between two warehouses, out of sight of the ship. “Damnation!”

“What?” Shallan demanded as Pattern and, lethargically, Adolin’s spren joined them.

“Look up there,” Azure said. “Talking with Ico, on the poop deck.”

Shallan frowned, then peeked out, spotting what she’d missed earlier: A figure stood up there, with the marbled skin of a parshman. He floated a foot or two off the deck next to Ico, looming like a stern tutor over a foolish student.

The spren with the vines and crystal body walked up, reporting to this one.

“Perhaps,” Azure said, “we should have asked who runs the inspections.”

Kaladin’s harpoon drew nervous glances as he crossed the pathway between stalls, to get a closer look at the painting.

Can spren even be hurt in this realm? a part of him wondered. The sailors wouldn’t carry harpoons if things couldn’t be killed on this side, right? He’d have to ask Syl, once she was done interpreting for Adolin.

Kaladin stepped up to the painting. The ones beside it showed far more technical prowess—they were capable portraits, perfectly capturing their human subjects. This one was sloppy by comparison. It looked like the painter had simply taken a knife covered in paint and slopped it onto the canvas, making general shapes.

Haunting, beautiful shapes. Mostly reds and whites, but with a figure at the center, throwing out nine shadows …

Dalinar, he thought. I failed Elhokar. After all we went through, after the rains and confronting Moash, I’ve failed. And I lost your city.

He reached up his fingers to touch the painting.

“Marvelous, isn’t it!” a spren said.

Kaladin jumped, sheepishly lowering his fingers. The proprietor of this stall was a Reacher woman, short, with a bronze ponytail.

“It’s a unique piece, human,” she said. “From the far-off Court of Gods, a painting intended only for a divinity to see. It is exceptionally rare that one escapes being burned at the court, and makes its way onto the market.”

“Nine shadows,” Kaladin said. “The Unmade?”

“This is a piece by Nenefra. It is said that each person who sees one of his masterworks sees something different. And to think, I charge such a minuscule price. Only three hundred broams’ worth of Stormlight! Truly, times are difficult in the art market.”

“I…”

Haunting images from Kaladin’s vision overlapped the stark wedges of paint on the canvas. He needed to reach Thaylen City. He had to be there on time—

What was that disturbance behind him?

Kaladin shook out of his reverie and glanced over his shoulder, just in time to see Adolin jogging toward him.

“We have a problem,” the prince said.

“How could you not mention this!” Shallan said to the little spren at the registrar office. “How could you neglect to point out that Voidspren ruled the city?”

“I thought everyone knew!” he said, vines curling and moving at the corners of his face. “Oh dear. Oh my! Anger is not helpful, human. I am a professional. It is not my job to explain things you should already know!”

“He’s still on Ico’s ship,” Azure said, looking out the office window. “Why is he still on Ico’s ship?”

“That is odd,” the spren said. “Each inspection usually takes only thirteen minutes!”

Damnation. Shallan breathed out, trying to calm herself. Coming back to the registrar had been a calculated risk. He was probably working with the Fused, but they hoped to intimidate him into talking.

“When did it happen?” Shallan asked. “My spren friend told us this was a free city.”

“It’s been months now,” the vine spren said. “Oh, they don’t have firm control here, mind you. Just a few officials, and promises from our leaders to follow. Two Fused check in on us now and then. I think the other is quite insane. Kyril—who is running the inspections—well, he might be mad too, actually. You see, when he gets angry—”

“Damnation!” Azure cursed.

“What?”

“He just set Ico’s ship on fire.”

Kaladin ran back across the street to find Syl a center of activity. She had pulled her oversized hat down to obscure her face, but a collection of spren stood around the food stall, pointing at her and talking.

Kaladin shoved his way through, took Syl by the arm, and pulled her away from the stall. Adolin followed, holding his harpoon in one hand and a sack of food in the other. He looked threateningly toward the spren in the gathered crowd, who didn’t give chase.

“They recognize you,” Kaladin said to Syl. “Even with the illusory skin color.”

“Uh … maybe…”

“Syl.”

She held to her hat with one hand, her other arm in his hand as he towed her through the street. “So … you know how I mentioned I snuck away from the other honorspren…”

“Yes.”

“So, there might have been an enormous reward for my return. Posted in basically every port in Shadesmar, with my description and some pictures. Um … yeah.”

“You’ve been forgiven,” Kaladin said. “The Stormfather has accepted your bond to me. Your siblings are watching Bridge Four, investigating potential bonds themselves!”

“That’s kind of recent, Kaladin. And I doubt I’ve been forgiven—the others on the Shattered Plains wouldn’t talk to me. As far as they’re concerned, I’m a disobedient child. There’s still an incredible reward in Stormlight to be given to the person that delivers me to the honorspren capital, Lasting Integrity.”

“And you didn’t think this was important to tell me?”

“Sure I did. Right now.”

They stopped to allow Adolin to catch up. The spren back at the food stall were still talking. Storms. This news would spread throughout Celebrant before long.

Kaladin glared at Syl, who pulled down into the oversized poncho she’d bought. “Azure is a bounty hunter,” she said in a small voice. “And I’m … I’m kind of like a spren lighteyes. I didn’t want you to know. In case you hated me, like you hate them.”

Kaladin sighed, taking her by the arm again and pulling her toward the docks.

“I should have known this disguise wouldn’t work,” she added. “I’m obviously too beautiful and interesting to hide.”

“News of this might make it hard to get passage,” Kaladin said. “We…” He stopped in the street. “Is that smoke up ahead?”

The Fused touched down on the quay, tossing Ico to the ground of the docks. Behind, Ico’s ship had become a raging bonfire—the other sailors and inspectors scrambled down the gangway in a frantic jumble.

Shallan watched from the window. Her breath caught as the Fused lifted a few inches off the ground, then glided toward the registrar’s building.

She sucked in Stormlight by reflex. “Look frightened!” she said to the others. She grabbed Adolin’s spren by the arm and pulled her to the side of the clerk’s room.

The Fused burst in and found them cringing, wearing the faces of sailors that Shallan had sketched. Pattern was the oddest one, his strange head needing to be covered by a hat to have any semblance of looking realistic.

Please don’t notice we’re the same sailors as on the ship. Please.

The Fused ignored them, gliding up to the frightened vine spren behind the desk.

“That ship was hiding human criminals,” Pattern whispered, translating the Fused’s conversation with the registrar. “They had a hydrator and remnants of human food—eaten—on the deck. There are two or three humans, one honorspren, and one inkspren. Have you seen these criminals?”

The vine spren cringed down by the desk. “They went to the market for needed supplies. They asked me for ships that would get them passage to the perpendicularity.”

“You hid this from me?”

“Why does everyone assume I’ll just tell them things? Oh, I need questions, not assumptions!”

The Fused regarded him with a cold glare. “Put that out,” he said, gesturing toward the fire. “Use the city’s sand stores, if needed.”

“Yes, great one. If I might say, starting fires on the docks is an unwise—”

“You may not say. When you finish putting out the fire, clear your things from this office. You are to be replaced immediately.”

The Fused charged out of the room, letting in the scent of smoke. Ico’s ship foundered, the blaze flaring high. Nearby, sailors from other ships were frantically trying to control their mandras and move their vessels away.

“Oh, oh my,” said the spren behind the desk. He looked to them. “You … you are a Radiant? The old oaths are spoken again?”

“Yes,” Shallan said, helping Adolin’s spren to her feet.

The frightened little spren sat up straighter. “Oh, glorious day. Glorious! We have waited so long for the honor of men to return!” He stood up and gestured. “Go, please! Get on a ship. I will stall, yes I will, if that one comes back. Oh, but go quickly!”

Kaladin sensed something on the air.

Perhaps it was the flapping of clothing, familiar to him after hours spent riding the winds. Perhaps it was the postures of the people farther down the street. He reacted before he understood what it was, grabbing Syl and Adolin, pulling them all into a tent at the edge of the market.

A Fused soared past outside, its shadow trailing behind, pointing the wrong direction.

“Storms!” Adolin said. “Nice work, Kal.”

The tent was occupied only by a single bewildered spren made of smoke, looking odd in a green cap and what seemed to be Horneater clothing.

“Out,” Kaladin said, the smell of smoke on the air filling him with dread. They hurried down an alleyway between warehouses, out onto the docks.

Farther down, Ico’s ship burned brilliantly. There was chaos on the docks as spren ran in all directions, shouting in their strange language.

Syl gasped, pointing at a ship bedecked in white and gold. “We have to hide. Now.”

“Honorspren?” Kaladin asked.

“Yeah.”

“Pull down your hat, go back into the alley.” Kaladin scanned the crowd. “Adolin, do you see the others?”

“No,” he said. “Ishar’s soul! There’s no water to put that fire out. It will burn for hours. What happened?”

One of Ico’s sailors stepped from the crowd. “I saw a flash from something the Fused was holding. I think he intended to frighten Ico, but started the fire by accident.”

Wait, Kaladin thought. Was that Alethi? “Shallan?” he asked as four Reachers gathered around.

“I’m right here,” said a different one. “We are in trouble. The only ship that might have agreed to give us passage is that one there.”

“The one sailing away at full speed?” Kaladin said with a sigh.

“Nobody else would consider taking us on,” Azure said. “And they were all heading the wrong directions anyway. We’re about to be stranded.”

“We could try fighting our way onto a ship,” Kaladin said. “Take control of it, maybe?”

Adolin shook his head. “I think that would take long enough—and make enough trouble—that the Fused would find us.”

“Well, maybe I could fight him,” Kaladin said. “Only one enemy. I should be able to take him.”

“Using all our Stormlight in the process?” Shallan asked.

“I’m just trying to think of something!”

“Guys,” Syl said. “I might have an idea. A great bad idea.”

“The Fused went looking for you,” Shallan said to Kaladin. “It flew to the market.”

“It passed us.”

“Guys?”

“Not for long though. It’s going to turn around soon.”

“Turns out Syl has a bounty on her head.”

“Guys?”

“We need a plan,” Kaladin said. “If nobody…” He trailed off.

Syl had started running toward the majestic white and gold ship, which was slowly being pulled away from the docks. She threw down her poncho and hat, then screamed up at the ship while running along the pier beside it.

“Hey!” she screamed. “Hey, look down here!”

The vessel stopped ponderously, handlers slowing its mandras. Three blue-white honorspren appeared at the side, looking down with utter shock.

“Sylphrena, the Ancient Daughter?” one shouted.

“That’s me!” she shouted back. “You’d better catch me before I scamper away! Wow! I’m feeling capricious today. I might just vanish again, off to where nobody can find me!”

It worked.

A gangway dropped, and Syl scrambled up onto the ship—followed by the rest of them. Kaladin went last, watching nervously over his shoulder, expecting the Fused to come after them at any moment. It did, but it stopped at the mouth of the alleyway, watching them board the ship. Honorspren gave it pause, apparently.

On board, Kaladin discovered that most of the sailors were those spren made of fog or mist. One of these was tying Syl’s arms together with rope. Kaladin tried to intervene, but Syl shook her head. “Not now,” she mouthed.

Fine. He would argue with the honorspren later.

The ship pulled away, joining others that fled the city. The honorspren didn’t pay much mind to Kaladin and the others—though one did take their harpoons, and another went through their pockets, confiscating their infused gemstones.

As the city grew smaller, Kaladin caught sight of the Fused hovering over the docks, beside the smoke trail of a burning ship.

It finally streaked off in the other direction.

103. Hypocrite

Dalinar started awake in an unfamiliar place, lying on a floor of cut stone, his back stiff. He blinked sleepily, trying to orient himself. Storms … where was he?

Soft sunlight shone through an open balcony on the far side of the room, and ethereal motes of dust danced in the streams of light. What were those sounds? They seemed like the voices of people, but muffled.

Dalinar stood, then fastened the side of his uniform jacket, which had come undone. It had been … what, three days since his return from Jah Keved? His excommunication from the Vorin church?

He remembered those days as a haze of frustration, sorrow, agony. And drink. A great deal of drink. He’d been using the stupor to drive away the pain. A terrible bandage for his wounds, blood seeping out on all sides. But so far, it had kept him alive.

I know this room, he realized, glancing at the mural on the ceiling. I saw it in one of my visions. A highstorm must have come while he was passed out.

“Stormfather?” Dalinar called, his voice echoing. “Stormfather, why have you sent me a vision? We agreed they were too dangerous.”

Yes, he remembered this place well. This was the vision where he’d met Nohadon, author of The Way of Kings. Why wasn’t it playing out as it had before? He and Nohadon had walked to the balcony, talked for a time, then the vision had ended.

Dalinar started toward the balcony, but storms, that light was so intense. It washed over him, making his eyes water, and he had to raise his hand to shield his eyes.

He heard something behind him. Scratching? He turned—putting his back to the brilliance—and spotted a door on the wall. It swung open easily beneath his touch, and he stepped out of the loud sunlight to find himself in a circular room.

He shut the door with a click. This chamber was much smaller than the previous one, with a wooden floor. Windows in the walls looked out at a clear sky. A shadow passed over one of these, like something enormous moving in front of the sun. But … how could the sun be pointed this direction too?

Dalinar looked over his shoulder at the wooden door. No light peeked underneath it. He frowned and reached for the handle, then paused, hearing the scratching once more. Turning, he saw a large desk, heaped with papers, by the wall. How had he missed that earlier?

A man sat at the desk, lit by a loose diamond, writing with a reed pen. Nohadon had aged. In the previous vision, the king had been young—but now his hair was silver, his skin marked by wrinkles. It was the same man though, same face shape, same beard that came to a point. He wrote with focused concentration.

Dalinar stepped over. “The Way of Kings,” he whispered. “I’m watching it be written.…”

“Actually,” Nohadon said, “it’s a shopping list. I’ll be cooking Shin loaf bread today, if I can get the ingredients. It always breaks people’s brains. Grain was not meant to be so fluffy.”

What…? Dalinar scratched at the side of his head.

Nohadon finished with a flourish and tossed the pen down. He threw back his chair and stood, grinning like a fool, and grabbed Dalinar by the arms. “Good to see you again, my friend. You’ve been having a hard time of it lately, haven’t you?”

“You have no idea,” Dalinar whispered, wondering who Nohadon saw him as. In the previous vision, Dalinar had appeared as one of Nohadon’s advisors. They’d stood together on the balcony as Nohadon contemplated a war to unite the world. A drastic resort, intended to prepare mankind for the next Desolation.

Could that morose figure have really become this spry and eager? And where had this vision come from? Hadn’t the Stormfather told Dalinar that he’d seen them all?

“Come,” Nohadon said, “let’s go to the market. A little shopping to turn your mind from your troubles.”

“Shopping?”

“Yes, you shop, don’t you?”

“I … usually have people to do that for me.”

“Ah, but of course you do,” Nohadon said. “Very like you to miss a simple joy so you can get to something more ‘important.’ Well, come on. I’m the king. You can’t very well say no, now can you?”

Nohadon led Dalinar back through the door. The light was gone. They crossed to the balcony, which—last time—had overlooked death and desolation. Now, it looked out on a bustling city full of energetic people and rolling carts. The sound of the place crashed into Dalinar, as if it had been suppressed until that moment. Laughing, chatting, calling. Wagons creaking. Chulls bleating.

The men wore long skirts, tied at the waists by wide girdles, some of which came all the way up over their stomachs. Above that they had bare chests, or wore simple overshirts. The outfits resembled the takama Dalinar had worn when younger, though of a far, far older style. The tubular gowns on the women were even stranger, made of layered small rings of cloth with tassels on the bottom. They seemed to ripple as they moved.

The women’s arms were bare up to the shoulders. No safehand covering. In the previous vision, I spoke the Dawnchant, Dalinar remembered. The words that gave Navani’s scholars a starting point to translate ancient texts.

“How do we get down?” Dalinar asked, seeing no ladder.

Nohadon leaped off the side of the balcony. He laughed, falling and sliding along a cloth banner tied between a tower window and a tent below. Dalinar cursed, leaning forward, worried for the old man—until he spotted Nohadon glowing. He was a Surgebinder—but Dalinar had known that from the last vision, hadn’t he?

Dalinar walked back to the writing chamber and drew the Stormlight from the diamond that Nohadon had been using. He returned, then heaved himself off the balcony, aiming for the cloth Nohadon had used to break his fall. Dalinar hit it at an angle and used it like a slide, keeping his right foot forward to guide his descent. Near the bottom, he flipped off the banner, grabbing its edge with two hands and hanging there for an instant before dropping with a thump beside the king.

Nohadon clapped. “I thought you wouldn’t do it.”

“I have practice following fools in their reckless pursuits.”

The old man grinned, then scanned his list. “This way,” he said, pointing.

“I can’t believe you’re out shopping by yourself. No guards?”

“I walked all the way to Urithiru on my own. I think I can manage this.”

“You didn’t walk all the way to Urithiru,” Dalinar said. “You walked to one of the Oathgates, then took that to Urithiru.”

“Misconception!” Nohadon said. “I walked the whole way, though I did require some help to reach Urithiru’s caverns. That is no more a cheat than taking a ferry across a river.”

He bustled through the market and Dalinar followed, distracted by the colorful clothing everyone was wearing. Even the stones of the buildings were painted in vibrant colors. He’d always imagined the past as … dull. Statues from ancient times were weathered, and he’d never considered that they might have been painted so brightly.

What of Nohadon himself? In both visions, Dalinar had been shown someone he did not expect. The young Nohadon, considering war. Now the elderly one, glib and whimsical. Where was the deep-thinking philosopher who had written The Way of Kings?

Remember, Dalinar told himself, this isn’t really him. The person I’m talking to is a construct of the vision.

Though some people in the market recognized their king, his passing didn’t cause much of a stir. Dalinar spun as he saw something move beyond the buildings, a large shadow that passed between two structures, tall and enormous. He stared in that direction, but didn’t see it again.

They entered a tent where a merchant was selling exotic grains. The man bustled over and hugged Nohadon in a way that should have been improper for a king. Then the two started haggling like scribes; the rings on the merchant’s fingers flashed as he gestured at his wares.

Dalinar lingered near the side of the tent, taking in the scents of the grains in the sacks. Outside, something made a distant thud. Then another. The ground shook, but nobody reacted.

“Noh—Your Majesty?” Dalinar asked.

Nohadon ignored him. A shadow passed over the tent. Dalinar ducked, judging the form of the shadow, the sounds of crashing footfalls.

“Your Majesty!” he shouted, fearspren growing up around him. “We’re in danger!”

The shadow passed, and the footfalls grew distant.

“Deal,” Nohadon said to the merchant. “And well argued, you swindler. Make sure to buy Lani something nice with the extra spheres you got off me.”

The merchant bellowed a laughing reply. “You think you got the worse of that? Storms, Your Majesty. You argue like my grandmother when she wants the last spoonful of jam!”

“Did you see that shadow?” Dalinar asked Nohadon.

“Have I told you,” Nohadon replied, “where I learned to make Shin loaf bread? It wasn’t in Shin Kak Nish, if that’s what you were going to reply.”

“I…” Dalinar looked in the direction the enormous shadow had gone. “No. You haven’t told me.”

“It was at war,” Nohadon said. “In the west. One of those senseless battles in the years following the Desolation. I don’t even remember what caused it. Someone invaded someone else, and that threatened our trade through Makabakam. So off we went.

“Well, I ended up with a scouting group on the edge of the Shin border. So you see, I tricked you just now. I said I wasn’t in Shin Kak Nish, and I wasn’t. But I was right next to it.

“My troops occupied a small village beneath one of the passes. The matron who cooked for us accepted my military occupation without complaint. She didn’t seem to care which army was in charge. She made me bread every day, and I liked it so much, she asked if I wanted to learn…”

He trailed off. In front of him, the merchant set weights on one side of his large set of scales—representing the amount Nohadon had purchased—then started pouring grain into a bowl on the other side of the scale. Golden, captivating grain, like the light of captured flames. “What happened to the cook woman?” Dalinar asked.

“Something very unfair,” Nohadon said. “It’s not a happy story. I considered putting it into the book, but decided my story would best be limited to my walk to Urithiru.” He fell silent, contemplative.

He reminds me of Taravangian, Dalinar suddenly thought. How odd.

“You are having trouble, my friend,” Nohadon said. “Your life, like that of the woman, is unfair.”

“Being a ruler is a burden, not merely a privilege,” Dalinar said. “You taught me that. But storms, Nohadon. I can’t see any way out! We’ve gathered the monarchs, yet the drums of war beat in my ears, demanding. For every step I make with my allies, we seem to spend weeks deliberating. The truth whispers in the back of my mind. I could best defend the world if I could simply make the others do as they should!”

Nohadon nodded. “So why don’t you?”

“You didn’t.”

“I tried and failed. That led me to a different path.”

“You’re wise and thoughtful. I’m a warmonger, Nohadon. I’ve never accomplished anything without bloodshed.”

He heard them again. The tears of the dead. Evi. The children. Flames burning a city. He heard the fire roar in delight at the feast.

The merchant ignored them, busy trying to get the grain to balance. The weighted side was still heavier. Nohadon set a finger on the bowl with the grain and pushed down, making the sides even. “That will do, my friend.”

“But—” the merchant said.

“Give the excess to the children, please.”

“After all that haggling? You know I’d have donated some if you’d asked.”

“And miss the fun of negotiating?” Nohadon said. He borrowed the merchant’s pen, then crossed an item off his list. “There is satisfaction,” he said to Dalinar, “in creating a list of things you can actually accomplish, then removing them one at a time. As I said, a simple joy.”

“Unfortunately, I’m needed for bigger things than shopping.”

“Isn’t that always the problem? Tell me, my friend. You talk about your burdens and the difficulty of the decision. What is the cost of a principle?”

“The cost? There shouldn’t be a cost to being principled.”

“Oh? What if making the right decision created a spren who instantly blessed you with wealth, prosperity, and unending happiness? What then? Would you still have principles? Isn’t a principle about what you give up, not what you gain?”

“So it’s all negative?” Dalinar said. “Are you implying that nobody should have principles, because there’s no benefit to them?”

“Hardly,” Nohadon said. “But maybe you shouldn’t be looking for life to be easier because you choose to do something that is right! Personally, I think life is fair. It’s merely that often, you can’t immediately see what balances it.” He wagged the finger he’d used to tip the merchant’s scales. “If you’ll forgive a somewhat blatant metaphor. I’ve grown fond of them. You might say I wrote an entire book about them.”

“This … is different from the other visions,” Dalinar said. “What’s going on?”

The thumping from before returned. Dalinar spun, then charged out of the tent, determined to get a look at the thing. He saw it above the buildings, a stone creature with an angular face and red spots glowing deep in its rocky skull. Storms! And he had no weapon.

Nohadon stepped from the tent, holding his bag of grain. He looked up and smiled. The creature leaned down, then offered a large, skeletal hand. Nohadon touched it with its own, and the creature stilled.

“This is quite the nightmare you’ve created,” Nohadon said. “What does that thunderclast represent, I wonder?”

“Pain,” Dalinar said, backing away from the monster. “Tears. Burdens. I’m a lie, Nohadon. A hypocrite.”

“Sometimes, a hypocrite is nothing more than a man who is in the process of changing.”

Wait. Hadn’t Dalinar said that? Back when he’d felt stronger? More certain?

Other thumps sounded in the city. Hundreds of them. Creatures approaching from all sides, shadows in the sun.

“All things exist in three realms, Dalinar,” Nohadon said. “The Physical: what you are now. The Cognitive: what you see yourself as being. The Spiritual: the perfect you, the person beyond pain, and error, and uncertainty.”

Monsters of stone and horror surrounded him, heads cresting roofs, feet crushing buildings.

“You’ve said the oaths,” Nohadon called. “But do you understand the journey? Do you understand what it requires? You’ve forgotten one essential part, one thing that without which there can be no journey.”

The monsters slammed fists toward Dalinar, and he shouted.

“What is the most important step a man can take?”

Dalinar awoke, huddled in his bed in Urithiru, asleep in his clothing again. A mostly empty bottle of wine rested on the table. There was no storm. It hadn’t been a vision.

He buried his face in his hands, trembling. Something bloomed inside of him: a recollection. Not really a new memory—not one he’d completely forgotten. But it suddenly became as crisp as if he’d experienced it yesterday.

The night of Gavilar’s funeral.

Navani’s Notebook: Vambrace

104. Strength

Navani Kholin had some practice holding a kingdom together.

During Gavilar’s last days, he had gone strange. Few knew how dark he’d grown, but they had seen the eccentricity. Jasnah had written about that, of course. Jasnah somehow found time to write about everything, from her father’s biography, to gender relations, to the importance of chull breeding cycles on the southern slopes of the Horneater Peaks.

Navani strode through the hallways of Urithiru, joined by a nice burly group of Bridge Four Windrunners. As Gavilar had grown more and more distracted, Navani herself had worked to keep squabbling lighteyes from sundering the kingdom. But that had been a different kind of danger from the one she faced today.

Today, her work had implications not only for one nation, but for the entire world. She burst into a room deep within the tower, and the four lighteyes seated there scrambled to their feet—all but Sebarial, who appeared to be flipping through a stack of cards bearing pictures of women in compromising positions.

Navani sighed, then nodded as Aladar gave her a respectful bow, light glinting off his bald head. Not for the first time, Navani wondered if his thin mustache and the tuft of beard on his bottom lip were compensation for his lack of hair. Hatham was there as well: refined, with rounded features and green eyes. As usual, his fashion choices stood out from everyone else. Orange today.

Brightness Bethab had come representing her husband. The men in the army tended to disrespect him for letting her do so—but that ignored the fact that marrying Mishinah for her political acumen had been a wise and calculated move.

The five men of Bridge Four arrayed themselves behind Navani. They had been surprised when she’d asked them to escort her; they didn’t yet understand the authority they lent the throne. The Knights Radiant were the new power in the world, and politics swirled around them like eddies in a river.

“Brightlords and Brightlady,” Navani said. “I’ve come at your request, and am at your service.”

Aladar cleared his throat, sitting. “You know, Brightness, that we are the most loyal to your husband’s cause.”

“Or at the least,” Sebarial added, “we’re the ones hoping to get rich by throwing in our lot with him.”

“My husband appreciates the support,” Navani said, “regardless of motive. You create a stronger Alethkar, and therefore a stronger world.”

“What’s left of either one,” Sebarial noted.

“Navani,” Brightlady Bethab said. She was a mousy woman with a pinched face. “We appreciate that you’ve taken the initiative in this difficult time.” There was a glint to her orange eyes, as if she assumed Navani was enjoying her new power. “But the highprince’s absence is not advantageous for morale. We know that Dalinar has returned to his … distractions.”

“The highprince,” Navani said, “is in mourning.”

“The only thing he seems to be mourning,” Sebarial said, “is the fact that people won’t bring him bottles of wine fast enough for—”

“Damnation, Turinad!” Navani snapped. “That’s enough!”

Sebarial blinked, then pocketed his cards. “Sorry, Brightness.”

“My husband,” Navani said, “is still this world’s best chance for survival. He will push through his pain. Until then, our duty is to keep the kingdom running.”

Hatham nodded, beads on his coat glistening. “This is, of course, our goal. But Brightness, can you define what you mean by kingdom? You do know that Dalinar … came to us and asked what we thought of this highking business.”

That news wasn’t commonly known yet. They’d planned an official announcement, and even had Elhokar seal the papers before leaving. Yet Dalinar had delayed. She understood; he wanted to wait until Elhokar and Adolin—who would become Kholin highprince in Dalinar’s place—returned.

And yet, as more and more time passed, the questions began to grow more pressing. What had happened to them in Kholinar? Where were they?

Strength. They would return.

“The highking proclamation has not been made official,” Navani said. “I think it’s best to pretend you don’t know about it, for now. And whatever you do, don’t mention it to Ialai or Amaram.”

“Very well,” Aladar said. “But Brightness, we have other problems. Surely you’ve seen the reports. Hatham does an excellent job as Highprince of Works, but there isn’t proper infrastructure. The tower has plumbing, but it keeps getting clogged, and the Soulcasters work themselves to exhaustion dealing with the waste.”

“We can’t continue pretending the tower can accommodate this population,” Brightness Bethab said. “Not without a very favorable supply deal from Azir. Our emerald reserves, despite hunts on the Shattered Plains, are dwindling. Our water carts have to work nonstop.”

“Equally important, Brightness,” Hatham added, “we might be facing a severe labor shortage. We have soldiers or caravan men filling in hauling water or packing goods, but they don’t like it. Menial carrying is beneath them.”

“We’re running low on lumber,” Sebarial added. “I’ve tried to claim the forests back near the warcamps, but we used to have parshmen to cut them. I don’t know if I can afford to pay men to do the work instead. But if we don’t start something, Thanadal might try to seize them. He’s building himself quite the kingdom in the warcamps.”

“This is not a time,” Hatham said softly, “when we can afford weak leadership. It is not a time when a would-be king can spend his days locked in his rooms. I’m sorry. We are not in rebellion, but we are very concerned.”

Navani drew in a breath. Hold it together.

Order was the very substance of rule. If things were organized, control could be asserted. She just had to give Dalinar time. Even if, deep down, a part of her was angry. Angry that his pain so overshadowed her growing fear for Elhokar and Adolin. Angry that he got to drink himself to oblivion, leaving her to pick up the pieces.

But she had learned that nobody was strong all the time, not even Dalinar Kholin. Love wasn’t about being right or wrong, but about standing up and helping when your partner’s back was bowed. He would likely do the same for her someday.

“Tell us honestly, Brightness,” Sebarial said, leaning forward. “What does the Blackthorn want? Is this all secretly a way for him to dominate the world?”

Storms. Even they worried about it. And why shouldn’t they? It made so much sense.

“My husband wants unity,” Navani said firmly. “Not dominion. You know as well as I do that we could have seized Thaylen City. That would have led to selfishness and loss. There is no path through conquest to facing our enemy together.”

Aladar nodded slowly. “I believe you, and I believe in him.”

“But how do we survive?” Brightness Bethab said.

“This tower’s gardens once grew food,” Navani said. “We will figure out how it was done, and we will grow here again. The tower once flowed with water. The baths and lavatories prove that. We will delve into the secrets of their fabrials, and we will fix the plumbing problems.

“The tower is above the enemy’s storm, supremely defensible and connected to the most important cities in the world. If there is a nation that can stand against the enemy, we will forge it here. With your help and my husband’s leadership.”

They accepted that. Bless the Almighty, they accepted it. She made a mental note to burn a glyphward in thanks, then finally took a seat. Together, they delved into the tower’s most recent list of problems, talking through—as they’d done many times before—the dirty necessities of running a city.

Three hours later, she checked her arm fabrial—a mirror of the one Dalinar carried, with inset clock and newly designed painrials. Three hours and twelve minutes since the meeting had begun. Exhaustionspren had collected to swirl around them all, and she called an end. They’d hashed out their immediate problems, and would summon their various scribes to offer specific revisions.

This would keep everyone going a little longer. And, bless them, these four did want the coalition to work. Aladar and Sebarial, for all their flaws, had followed Dalinar into the dark of the Weeping and found Damnation waiting there. Hatham and Bethab had been at the advent of the new storm, and could see that Dalinar had been right.

They didn’t care that the Blackthorn was a heretic—or even whether he usurped the throne of Alethkar. They cared that he had a plan for dealing with the enemy, long-term.

After the meeting broke, Navani walked off down the strata-lined hallway, trailed by her bridgeman guards, two of whom carried sapphire lanterns. “I do apologize,” she noted to them, “for how boring that must have been.”

“We like boring, Brightness,” Leyten—their leader today—said. He was a stocky man, with short, curly hair. “Hey, Hobber. Anyone try to kill you in there?”

The gap-toothed bridgeman grinned his reply. “Does Huio’s breath count?”

“See, Brightness?” Leyten said. “New recruits might get bored by guard duty, but you’ll never find a veteran complaining about a nice quiet afternoon full of not being stabbed.”

“I can see the appeal,” she said. “But surely it can’t compare with soaring through the skies.”

“That’s true,” Leyten said. “But we have to take turns … you know.” He meant using the Honorblade to practice Windrunning. “Kal has to return before we can do more than that.”

To a man, they were absolutely certain he’d return, and showed the world jovial faces—though she knew not everything was perfect with them. Teft, for example, had been hauled before Aladar’s magistrates two days ago. Public intoxication on firemoss. Aladar had quietly requested her seal to free him.

No, all was not well with them. But as Navani led them down toward the basement library rooms, a different issue gnawed at her: Brightlady Bethab’s implication that Navani was eager for the chance to take over while Dalinar was indisposed.

Navani was not a fool. She knew how it looked to others. She’d married one king. After he died, she’d immediately gone after the next most powerful man in Alethkar. But she couldn’t have people believing she was the power behind the throne. Not only would it undermine Dalinar, but it would grow tedious for her. She had no problem being a wife or mother to monarchs, but to be one herself—storms, what a dark path that would lead them all down.

She and the bridgemen passed no fewer than six squads of sentries on their way to the library rooms with the murals and—more importantly—the hidden gemstone records. Arriving, she idled in the doorway, impressed by the operation that Jasnah had organized down here since Navani had been forced to step back from the research.

Each gemstone had been removed from its individual drawer, catalogued, and numbered. While one group listened and wrote, others sat at tables, busy translating. The room buzzed with a low hum of discussion and scratching reeds, concentrationspren dotting the air like ripples in the sky.

Jasnah strolled along the tables, looking through pages of translations. As Navani entered, the bridgemen gathered around Renarin, who blushed, looking up from his own papers, which were covered in glyphs and numbers. He did look out of place in the room, the only man in uniform rather than in the robes of an ardent or stormwarden.

“Mother,” Jasnah said, not looking up from her papers, “we need more translators. Do you have any other scribes versed in classical Alethelan?”

“I’ve lent you everyone I have. What is Renarin studying over there?”

“Hm? Oh, he thinks there might be a pattern to which stones were stored in which drawers. He’s been working on it all day.”

“And?”

“Nothing, which is not surprising. He insists he can find a pattern if he looks hard enough.” Jasnah lowered her pages and looked at her cousin, who was joking with the men of Bridge Four.

Storms, Navani thought. He truly looks happy. Embarrassed as they ribbed him, but happy. She’d worried when he had first “joined” Bridge Four. He was the son of a highprince. Decorum and distance were appropriate when dealing with enlisted soldiers.

But when, before this, had she last heard him laugh?

“Maybe,” Navani said, “we should encourage him to take a break and go out with the bridgemen for the evening.”

“I’d rather keep him here,” Jasnah said, flipping through her pages. “His powers need additional study.”

Navani would talk to Renarin anyway and encourage him to go out more with the men. There was no arguing with Jasnah, any more than there was arguing with a boulder. You just stepped to the side and went around.

“The translation goes well,” Navani asked, “other than the bottleneck on numbers of scribes?”

“We’re lucky,” Jasnah said, “that the gemstones were recorded so late in the life of the Radiants. They spoke a language we can translate. If it had been the Dawnchant…”

“That’s close to being cracked.”

Jasnah frowned at that. Navani had thought the prospect of translating the Dawnchant—and writings lost to the shadowdays—would have excited her. Instead, it seemed to trouble her.

“Have you found anything more about the tower’s fabrials in these gemstone records?” Navani asked.

“I’ll be certain to prepare a report for you, Mother, with details of each and every fabrial mentioned. So far, those references are few. Most are personal histories.”

“Damnation.”

“Mother!” Jasnah said, lowering her pages.

“What? I wouldn’t have thought you would object to a few strong words now and—”

“It’s not the language, but the dismissal,” Jasnah said. “Histories.”

Oh, right.

“History is the key to human understanding.”

Here we go.

“We must learn from the past and apply that knowledge to our modern experience.”

Lectured by my own daughter again.

“The best indication of what human beings will do is not what they think, but what the record says similar groups have done in the past.”

“Of course, Brightness.”

Jasnah gave her a dry look, then set her papers aside. “I’m sorry, Mother. I’ve been dealing with a lot of lesser ardents today. My didactic side might have inflated.”

“You have a didactic side? Dear, you hate teaching.”

“Which explains my mood, I should think. I—”

A young scribe called for her from the other side of the room. Jasnah sighed, then went to answer the question.

Jasnah preferred to work alone, which was odd, considering how good she was at getting people to do what she wanted. Navani liked groups—but of course, Navani wasn’t a scholar. Oh, she knew how to pretend. But all she really did was nudge here and there, perhaps provide an idea. Others did all the real engineering.

She poked through the papers Jasnah had set aside. Perhaps her daughter had missed something in the translations. To her mind, the only scholarship of importance was stuffy, dusty writings of old philosophers. When it came to fabrials, Jasnah barely knew her pairings from her warnings.…

What was this?

The glyphs were scrawled in white on the highprince’s wall, the paper read. We quickly ascertained the implement of writing to be a stone pried free near the window. This first sign was the roughest of them, the glyphs malformed. The reason for this later became apparent, as Prince Renarin was not versed in writing glyphs, save the numbers.

The other pages were similar, talking about the strange numbers found around Dalinar’s palace in the days leading up to the Everstorm. They’d been made by Renarin, whose spren had given him warning that the enemy was preparing an assault. The poor boy, uncertain of his bond and frightened to speak out, had instead written the numbers where Dalinar would see them.

It was a little odd, but in the face of everything else, it didn’t really register. And … well, it was Renarin. Why had Jasnah collected all of these?

I have a description for you, finally, Jasnah, another said. We’ve convinced the Radiant that Lift found in Yeddaw to visit Azimir. Though she has not yet arrived, you can find sketches of her spren companion here. It looks like the shimmer you see on a wall when you shine light through a crystal.

Troubled, Navani set the sheets down before Jasnah could return. She got a copy of the translated portions from the gemstones—several young scribes were assigned to making these available—then slipped out to go check on Dalinar.

105. Spirit, Mind, and Body

Only the very most important people were allowed to watch Gavilar’s holy interment.

Dalinar stood at the front of the small crowd, gathered in the royal catacombs of Kholinar, beneath the stone sight of kings. Fires burned at the sides of the room, a primal light, traditional. Distinctly more alive than the light of spheres, it reminded him of the Rift—but for once, that pain was overpowered by something new. A fresh wound.

The sight of his brother, lying dead on the slab.

“Spirit, mind, and body,” the wizened ardent said, her voice echoing in the stone catacomb. “Death is the separation of the three. The body remains in our realm, to be reused. The spirit rejoins the pool of divine essence that gave it birth. And the mind … the mind goes to the Tranquiline Halls to find its reward.”

Dalinar’s nails bit his skin as he clenched his hands into fists—tight, to keep him from trembling.

“Gavilar the Majestic,” the ardent continued, “first king of Alethkar in the new Kholin Dynasty, thirty-second highprince of the Kholin princedom, heir of the Sunmaker and blessed of the Almighty. His accomplishments will be lauded by all, and his dominion extends to the hereafter. Already he leads men again on the battlefield, serving the Almighty in the true war against the Voidbringers.”

The ardent thrust a bony hand toward the small crowd. “Our king’s war has moved to the Tranquiline Halls. The end of our war for Roshar did not end our duty to the Almighty! Think upon your Callings, men and women of Alethkar. Think of how you might learn here, and be of use in the next world.”

Jevena would use any available opportunity to preach. Dalinar clenched his hands tighter, angry at her—angry at the Almighty. Dalinar should not have lived to see his brother die. This was not the way it should have gone.

He felt eyes on his back. Collected highprinces and wives, important ardents, Navani, Jasnah, Elhokar, Aesudan, Dalinar’s sons. Nearby, Highprince Sebarial glanced at Dalinar, eyebrows raised. He seemed to be expecting something.

I’m not drunk, you idiot, Dalinar thought. I’m not going to make a scene to amuse you.

Things had been going better lately. Dalinar had started controlling his vices; he’d confined his drinking to monthly trips away from Kholinar, visiting outer cities. He said the trips were to let Elhokar practice ruling without Dalinar looking over his shoulder, as Gavilar had been spending more and more time abroad. But during those trips, Dalinar drank himself to oblivion, letting himself escape the sounds of children crying for a few precious days.

Then, when he returned to Kholinar, he controlled his drinking. And he’d never again yelled at his sons, as he had at poor Renarin during that day on the way back from the Shattered Plains. Adolin and Renarin were the only pure remnant of Evi.

If you control your drinking when back in Kholinar, a part of him challenged, what happened at the feast? Where were you when Gavilar was fighting for his life?

“We must use King Gavilar as a model for our own lives,” the ardent was saying. “We must remember that our lives are not our own. This world is but the skirmish to prepare us for the true war.”

“And after that?” Dalinar asked, looking up from Gavilar’s corpse.

The ardent squinted, adjusting her spectacles. “Highprince Dalinar?”

“After that, what?” Dalinar said. “After we win back the Tranquiline Halls? What then? No more war?”

Is that when we finally get to rest?

“You needn’t worry, Blackthorn,” Jevena said. “Once that war is won, the Almighty will certainly provide for you another conquest.” She smiled comfortingly, then moved on to the ritual sayings. A series of keteks, some traditional, others composed by female family members for the event. Ardents burned the poems as prayers in braziers.

Dalinar looked back down at his brother’s corpse, which stared upward, lifeless blue marbles replacing his eyes.

Brother, he’d said, follow the Codes tonight. There is something strange upon the winds.

Dalinar needed something to drink, storm it.

“You, always about dreams. My soul weeps. Farewell, weeping soul. My dreams … about, always, You.”

The poem slapped him harder than the others. He sought out Navani, and knew instantly that the ketek had been hers. Gazing straight ahead, she stood with one hand on Elhokar’s—King Elhokar’s—shoulder. So beautiful. Next to her, Jasnah stood with arms wrapped around herself, eyes red. Navani reached toward her, but Jasnah pulled away from the others and stalked off toward the palace proper.

Dalinar wished he could do the same, but instead drew himself to attention. It was over. He’d never have a chance to live up to Gavilar’s expectations. Dalinar would live the rest of his life as a failure to this man whom he had loved so dearly.

The hall grew still, quiet save for the crinkling sound of paper burning in the fires. The Soulcaster stood up, and old Jevena stepped hastily backward. She wasn’t comfortable with what was coming next. None of them were, judging by the shuffling feet, the coughs into hands.

The Soulcaster might have been male, might have been female. Hard to say, with that hood up over their face. The skin beneath was colored like granite, cracked and chipped, and seemed to glow from within. The Soulcaster regarded the corpse, head cocked, as if surprised to find a body here. They ran their fingers along Gavilar’s jaw, then brushed the hair off his forehead.

“The only part of you that is true,” the Soulcaster whispered, tapping a stone that had replaced one of the king’s eyes. Then, light emerged as the Soulcaster drew their hand from their pocket, revealing a set of gemstones bound into a fabrial.

Dalinar didn’t look away, despite how the light made his eyes water. He wished … he wished he’d taken a drink or two before coming. Was he really supposed to watch something like this while sober?

The Soulcaster touched Gavilar on the forehead, and the transformation happened instantly. One moment Gavilar was there. The next he had become a statue.

The Soulcaster slipped a glove onto their hand while other ardents hurried to remove the wires that had held Gavilar’s body in position. They used levers to tip him carefully forward until he was standing, holding a sword with point toward the ground, his other hand outstretched. He stared toward eternity, crown on his head, the curls of his beard and hair preserved delicately in the stone. A powerful pose; the mortuary sculptors had done a fantastic job.

The ardents pushed him back into an alcove, where he joined the lines of other monarchs—most of them highprinces of the Kholin princedom. He would be forever frozen here, the image of a perfect ruler in his prime. Nobody would think of him as he’d been that terrible night, broken from his fall, his grand dreams cut short by treason.

“I’ll have vengeance, Mother,” Elhokar whispered. “I’ll have it!” The young king spun toward the gathered lighteyes, standing before his father’s outstretched stone hand. “You’ve each come to me privately to give support. Well, I demand you swear it in public! Today, we make a pact to hunt those who did this. Today, Alethkar goes to war!”

He was greeted by stunned silence.

“I swear it,” Torol Sadeas said. “I swear to bring vengeance to the traitorous parshmen, Your Majesty. You can depend upon my sword.”

Good, Dalinar thought, as others spoke up. This would hold them together. Even in death, Gavilar provided an excuse for unity.

Unable to stand that stone visage any longer, Dalinar left, stomping into the corridor toward the palace proper. Other voices echoed after him as highprinces swore.

If Elhokar was going to chase those Parshendi back toward the plains, he’d expect the Blackthorn’s help. But … Dalinar hadn’t been that man for years. He patted his pocket, looking for his flask. Damnation. He pretended he was better these days, kept telling himself he was in the process of finding a way out of this mess. Of returning to the man he’d once been.

But that man had been a monster. Frightening, that nobody had blamed him for the things he’d done. Nobody but Evi, who had seen what the killing would do to him. He closed his eyes, hearing her tears.

“Father?” a voice said from behind.

Dalinar forced himself to stand upright, turning as Adolin scrambled up to him.

“Are you well, Father?”

“Yes,” Dalinar said. “I just … need to be alone.”

Adolin nodded. Almighty above, the boy had turned out well, through little effort of Dalinar’s. Adolin was earnest, likable, and a master of the sword. He was truly capable in modern Alethi society, where how you moved among groups was even more important than strength of arm. Dalinar had always felt like a tree stump in those kinds of settings. Too big. Too stupid.

“Go back,” Dalinar said. “Swear for our house on this Vengeance Pact.”

Adolin nodded, and Dalinar continued onward, fleeing those fires below. Gavilar’s stare, judging him. The cries of people dying in the Rift.

By the time he reached the steps, he was practically running. He climbed one level, then another. Sweating, frantic, he raced through ornate hallways past carved walls, sedate woods, and accusatory mirrors. He reached his chambers and scrabbled in his pockets for the keys. He’d locked the place tight; no more would Gavilar sneak in to take his bottles. Bliss waited inside.

No. Not bliss. Oblivion. Good enough.

His hands wouldn’t stop shaking. He couldn’t— It—

Follow the Codes tonight.

Dalinar’s hands trembled, and he dropped the keys.

There is something strange upon the winds.

Screams for mercy.

Get out of my head! All of you, get out!

In the distance, a voice …

“You must find the most important words a man can say.”

Which key was it? He got one into the lock, but it wouldn’t turn. He couldn’t see. He blinked, feeling dizzy.

“Those words came to me from one who claimed to have seen the future,” the voice said, echoing in the hallway. Feminine, familiar. “ ‘How is this possible?’ I asked in return. ‘Have you been touched by the void?’

“The reply was laughter. ‘No, sweet king. The past is the future, and as each man has lived, so must you.’

“ ‘So I can but repeat what has been done before?’

“ ‘In some things, yes. You will love. You will hurt. You will dream. And you will die. Each man’s past is your future.’

“ ‘Then what is the point?’ I asked. ‘If all has been seen and done?’

“ ‘The question,’ she replied, ‘is not whether you will love, hurt, dream, and die. It is what you will love, why you will hurt, when you will dream, and how you will die. This is your choice. You cannot pick the destination, only the path.’ ”

Dalinar dropped the keys again, sobbing. There was no escape. He would fall again. Wine would consume him like a fire consumed a corpse. Leaving only ash.

There was no way out.

“This started my journey,” the voice said. “And this begins my writings. I cannot call this book a story, for it fails at its most fundamental to be a story. It is not one narrative, but many. And though it has a beginning, here on this page, my quest can never truly end.

“I wasn’t seeking answers. I felt that I had those already. Plenty, in multitude, from a thousand different sources. I wasn’t seeking ‘myself.’ This is a platitude that people have ascribed to me, and I find the phrase lacks meaning.

“In truth, by leaving, I was seeking only one thing.

“A journey.”

For years, it seemed that Dalinar had been seeing everything around him through a haze. But those words … something about them …

Could words give off light?

He turned from his door and walked down the corridor, searching for the source of the voice. Inside the royal reading room, he found Jasnah with a huge tome set before her at a standing table. She read to herself, turning to the next page, scowling.

“What is that book?” Dalinar asked.

Jasnah started. She wiped her eyes, smearing the makeup, leaving her eyes … clean, but raw. Holes in a mask.

“This is where my father got that quote,” she said. “The one he…”

The one he wrote as he died.

Only a few knew of that.

“What book is it?”

“An old text,” Jasnah said. “Ancient, once well regarded. It’s associated with the Lost Radiants, so nobody references it anymore. There has to be some secret here, a puzzle behind my father’s last words. A cipher? But what?”

Dalinar settled down into one of the seats. He felt as if he had no strength. “Will you read it to me?”

Jasnah met his eyes, chewing her lip as she’d always done as a child. Then she read in a clear, strong voice, starting over from the first page, which he’d just heard. He had expected her to stop after a chapter or two, but she didn’t, and he didn’t want her to.

Dalinar listened, rapt. People came to check on them; some brought Jasnah water to drink. For once, he didn’t ask them for anything. All he wanted was to listen.

He understood the words, but at the same time he seemed to be missing what the book said. It was a sequence of vignettes about a king who left his palace to go on a pilgrimage. Dalinar couldn’t define, even to himself, what he found so striking about the tales. Was it their optimism? Was it the talk of paths and choices?

It was so unpretentious. So different from the boasts of society or the battlefield. Just a series of stories, their morals ambiguous. It took almost eight hours to finish, but Jasnah never gave any indication she wanted to stop. When she read the last word, Dalinar found himself weeping again. Jasnah dabbed at her own eyes. She had always been so much stronger than he was, but here they shared an understanding. This was their send-off to Gavilar’s soul. This was their farewell.

Leaving the book on the lectern, Jasnah walked over to Dalinar as he stood up. They embraced, saying nothing. After a few moments, she left.

He went to the book, touching it, feeling the lines of the writing stamped into its cover. He didn’t know how long he’d been standing there when Adolin peeked in. “Father? We’re planning to send expeditionary forces to the Shattered Plains. Your input would be appreciated.”

“I must,” Dalinar whispered, “go on a journey.”

“Yeah,” Adolin said. “It’s a long way. Might get some hunts in while we’re on our way, if there’s time. Elhokar wants these barbarians wiped out quickly. We could be gone and back in a year.”

Paths. Dalinar could not choose his end.

But perhaps his path …

The Old Magic can change a person, Evi had said. Make something great of them.

Dalinar stood up taller. He turned and stepped toward Adolin, seizing him by the shoulder. “I’ve been a poor father these last few years,” Dalinar said.

“Nonsense,” Adolin said. “You—”

“I’ve been a poor father,” Dalinar repeated, raising his finger. “To you and your brother both. You should know how proud I am of you.”

Adolin beamed, glowing like a sphere right after a storm. Gloryspren sprang up around him.

“We will go to war together,” Dalinar said. “Like we did when you were young. I will show you what it is to be a man of honor. But first, I need to take an advance force—without you, I’m afraid—and secure the Shattered Plains.”

“We talked about that,” Adolin said, eager. “Like your elites, from before. Fast, quick! You’ll march—”

“Sail,” Dalinar said.

“Sail?”

“The rivers should be flowing,” Dalinar said. “I’ll march south, then take a ship to Dumadari. From there, I’ll sail to the Ocean of Origins and make landfall at New Natanan. I’ll move in toward the Shattered Plains with my force and secure the region, preparing for the rest of you to arrive.”

“That would be a sound idea, I guess,” Adolin said.

It was sound. Sound enough that when one of Dalinar’s ships was delayed—and Dalinar himself remained in port, sending most of his force on without him—nobody would think it strange. Dalinar did get himself into trouble.

He would swear his men and sailors to secrecy, and travel a few months out of his way before continuing on to the Shattered Plains.

Evi had said the Old Magic could transform a man. It was about time he started trusting her.

106. Law Is Light

Szeth of Shinovar flew with the Skybreakers for three days, southward.

They stopped several times to recover hidden stockpiles in mountain peaks or remote valleys. To find doorways, they often had to hack through five inches of crem. That amount of buildup had probably taken centuries to accumulate, yet Nin spoke of the places as if he’d just left. At one, he was surprised to find the food long since decayed—though fortunately, the gemstone stockpile there had been hidden in a place where it remained exposed to the storms.

In these visits, Szeth finally began to grasp how ancient this creature was.

On the fourth day, they reached Marat. Szeth had been to the kingdom before; he had visited most of Roshar during the years of his exile. Historically, Marat wasn’t truly a nation—but neither was it a place of nomads, like the backwaters of Hexi and Tu Fallia. Instead, Marat was a group of loosely connected cities, tribally run, with a highprince at their head—though in the local dialect, he was called “elder brother.”

The country made for a convenient waystop between the Vorin kingdoms of the east and the Makabaki ones of the center west. Szeth knew that Marat was rich in culture, full of people as proud as you’d find in any nation—but of almost no value on the political scale.

Which made it curious that Nin chose to end their flight here. They landed on a plain full of strange brown grass that reminded Szeth of wheat, save for the fact that this pulled down into burrows, leaving visible only the small bob of grain on the top. This was casually eaten by wild beasts that were wide and flat, like walking discs, with claws only on the underside to shove the grain into their mouths.

The disclike animals would probably migrate eastward, their droppings containing seeds that—stuck to the ground—would survive storms to grow into first-stage polyps. Those would later blow to the west and become second-stage grain. All life worked in concert, he’d been taught in his youth. Everything but men, who refused their place. Who destroyed instead of added.

Nin spoke briefly with Ki and the other masters, who took to the air again. The others joined them—all but Szeth and Nin himself—and streaked toward a town in the distance. Before Szeth could follow, Nin took him by the arm and shook his head. Together, the two of them flew to a smaller town on a hill near the coast.

Szeth knew the effects of war when he saw them. Broken doors, ruins of a short, breached wall. The destruction looked recent, though any bodies had been cleaned out and the blood had been washed away by highstorms. They landed before a large stone building with a peaked roof. Mighty doors of Soulcast bronze lay broken off in the rubble. Szeth would be surprised if somebody didn’t return to claim those for their metal. Not every army had access to Soulcasters.

Aw, the sword said from his back. We missed the fun?

“That tyrant in Tukar,” Szeth said, looking through the silent town. “He decided to end his war against Emul, and expand eastward?”

“No,” Nin said. “This is a different danger.” He pointed toward the building with the broken doors. “Can you read that writing above the doorway, Szeth-son-Neturo?”

“It’s in the local language. I don’t know the script, aboshi.” The divine honorific was his best guess of how to address one of the Heralds, though among his people it had been reserved for the great spren of the mountains.

“It says ‘justice,’ ” Nin said. “This was a courthouse.”

Szeth followed the Herald up the steps and into the cavernous main room of the ruined courthouse. In here, sheltered from the storm, they found blood on the floor. No bodies, but plenty of discarded weapons, helms, and—disturbingly—the meager possessions of civilians. The people had likely taken refuge inside here during the battle, a last grasp at safety.

“The ones you call parshmen name themselves the singers,” Nin said. “They took this town and pressed the survivors into labor at some docks farther along the coast. Was what happened here justice, Szeth-son-Neturo?”

“How could it be?” He shivered. The dark reaches of the room seemed to be filled with haunted whispers. He drew closer to the Herald for safety. “Ordinary people, living ordinary lives, suddenly attacked and murdered?”

“A poor argument. What if the lord of this city had stopped paying his taxes, then forced his people to defend the city when higher authorities arrived and attacked? Is not a prince justified in maintaining order in his lands? Sometimes, it is just to kill ordinary people.”

“But that did not happen here,” Szeth said. “You said this was caused by an invading army.”

“Yes,” Nin said softly. “This is the fault of invaders. That is true.” He continued walking through the hollow room, Szeth staying close behind him. “You are in a unique position, Szeth-son-Neturo. You will be the first to swear the oaths of a Skybreaker in a new world, a world where I have failed.”

They found steps near the back wall. Szeth got out a sphere for light, as Nin did not appear to be so inclined. That drove the whispers back.

“I visited Ishar,” Nin continued. “You call him Ishu-son-God. He has always been the most wise of us. I did not … want to believe … what had happened.”

Szeth nodded. He had seen that. After the first Everstorm, Nin had insisted that the Voidbringers hadn’t returned. He had given excuse after excuse, until eventually he’d been forced to admit what he was seeing.

“I worked for thousands of years to prevent another Desolation,” Nin continued. “Ishar warned me of the danger. Now that Honor is dead, other Radiants might upset the balance of the Oathpact. Might undermine certain … measures we took, and give an opening to the enemy.”

He stopped at the top of the steps and looked down at his hand, where a glistening Shardblade appeared. One of the two missing Honorblades. Szeth’s people had care of eight. Once, long ago, it had been nine. Then this one had vanished.

He’d seen depictions of it, strikingly straight and unornamented for a Shardblade, yet still elegant. Two slits ran the length of the weapon, gaps that could never exist in an ordinary sword, as they would weaken it.

They walked along a loft at the top of the courtroom. Records storage, judging by the scattered ledgers on the floor.

You should draw me, the sword said.

“And do what, sword-nimi?” Szeth whispered.

Fight him. I think he might be evil.

“He is one of the Heralds—one of the least-evil things in the world.”

Huh. Doesn’t bode well for your world, then. Anyway, I’m better than that sword he has. I can show you.

Picking his way past the legal debris, Szeth joined Nin beside the loft’s window. In the distance, farther along the coast, a large bay glistened with blue water. Many masts of ships gathered there, figures buzzing around them.

“I have failed,” Nin repeated. “And now, for the people, justice must be done. A very difficult justice, Szeth-son-Neturo. Even for my Skybreakers.”

“We will endeavor to be as passionless and logical as you, aboshi.”

Nin laughed. It didn’t seem to carry the mirth that it should have. “Me? No, Szeth-son-Neturo. I am hardly passionless. This is the problem.” He paused, staring out the window at the distant ships. “I am … different from how I once was. Worse, perhaps? Despite all that, a part of me wishes to be merciful.”

“And is … mercy such a bad thing, aboshi?”

“Not bad; merely chaotic. If you look through the records in this hall, you will find the same story told again and again. Leniency and mercy. Men set free despite crimes, because they were good fathers, or well-liked in the community, or in the favor of someone important.

“Some of those who are set free change their lives and go on to produce for society. Others recidivate and create great tragedies. The thing is, Szeth-son-Neturo, we humans are terrible at spotting which will be which. The purpose of the law is so we do not have to choose. So our native sentimentality will not harm us.”

He looked down again at his sword.

“You,” he said to Szeth, “must choose a Third Ideal. Most Skybreakers choose to swear themselves to the law—and follow with exactness the laws of whatever lands they visit. That is a good option, but not the only one. Think wisely, and choose.”

“Yes, aboshi,” Szeth said.

“There are things you must see, and things you must know, before you can speak. The others must interpret what they have sworn before, and I hope they will see the truth. You will be the first of a new order of Skybreakers.” He looked back out the window. “The singers allowed the people of this town to return here to burn their dead. A kinder gesture than most conquerors would allow.”

“Aboshi … may I ask you a question?”

“Law is light, and darkness does not serve it. Ask, and I will answer.”

“I know you are great, ancient, and wise,” Szeth said. “But … to my lesser eyes, you do not seem to obey your own precepts. You hunted Surgebinders, as you said.”

“I obtained legal permission for the executions I performed.”

“Yes,” Szeth said, “but you ignored many lawbreakers to pursue these few. You had motives beyond the law, aboshi. You were not impartial. You brutally enforced specific laws to achieve your ends.”

“This is true.”

“So is this just your own … sentimentality?”

“In part. Though I have certain leniencies. The others have told you of the Fifth Ideal?”

“The Ideal where the Skybreaker becomes the law?”

Nin held out his empty left hand. A Shardblade appeared there, different and distinct from the Honorblade he carried in the other hand. “I am not only a Herald, but a Skybreaker of the Fifth Ideal. Though I was originally skeptical of the Radiants, I believe I am the only one who eventually joined his own order.

“And now, Szeth-son-Neturo, I must tell you of the decision we Heralds made, long ago. On the day that would become known as Aharietiam. The day we sacrificed one of our own to end the cycle of pain and death…”

107. The First Step

Dalinar found a washbasin ready for him in the morning. Navani meticulously kept it filled, just as she cleaned up the bottles and allowed the servants to bring him more. She trusted him better than he trusted himself.

Stretching in his bed, Dalinar woke feeling far too … whole, considering the drinking he’d been doing. Indirect sunlight illuminated the room from the window. Normally they kept the shutters in this room closed to ward off the cold mountain air. Navani must have opened them after rising.

Dalinar splashed his face with water from the basin, then caught a hint of his own scent. Right. He looked into one of the connecting rooms, which they’d appropriated for a washroom, as it had a back entrance the servants could use. Sure enough, Navani had ordered the tub filled for him. The water was cold, but he’d known his share of cold baths. It would keep him from lingering.

A short time later, he took a razor to his face, peering at himself in a bedroom mirror. Gavilar had taught him to shave. Their father had been too busy getting himself cut apart in foolish duels of honor, including the one where he’d taken a blow to the head. He’d never been right after that.

Beards were unfashionable in Alethkar these days, but that wasn’t why Dalinar shaved. He liked the ritual. The chance to prepare, to cut away the nightly chaff and reveal the real person underneath—furrows, scars, and harsh features included.

A clean uniform and underclothes waited for him on a bench. He dressed, then checked the uniform in the mirror, pulling down on the bottom of the coat to tighten any folds.

That memory of Gavilar’s funeral … so vivid. He’d forgotten parts. Had that been the Nightwatcher, or the natural course of memories? The more he recovered of what he had lost, the more he realized that the memories of men were flawed. He’d mention an event now fresh to his mind, and others who had lived it would argue over details, as each recalled it differently. Most, Navani included, seemed to remember him as more noble than he deserved. Yet he didn’t ascribe any magic to this. It was simply the way of human beings, subtly changing the past in their minds to match their current beliefs.

But then … that vision with Nohadon. Where had that come from? Just a common dream?

Hesitant, he reached out to the Stormfather, who rumbled distantly. “Still there, I see,” Dalinar said, relieved.

Where would I go?

“I hurt you,” Dalinar said. “When I activated the Oathgate. I was afraid you would leave me.”

This is the lot I have chosen. It is you or oblivion.

“I’m sorry, regardless, for what I did. Were you … involved in that dream I had? The one with Nohadon?”

I know of no such dream.

“It was vivid,” Dalinar said. “More surreal than one of the visions, true, but captivating.”

What was the most important step a man could take? The first, obviously. But what did it mean?

He still bore the weight of what he had done at the Rift. This recovery—this stepping away from the week spent drinking—wasn’t a redemption. What would he do if he felt the Thrill again? What would happen the next time the weeping in his mind became too difficult to bear?

Dalinar didn’t know. He felt better today. Functional. For now, he would let that be enough. He picked a piece of lint off his collar, then belted on a side sword and stepped out of the bedroom, walking through his study and into the larger room with the hearth.

“Taravangian?” he said, surprised to find the elderly king seated there. “Wasn’t there to be a meeting of the monarchs today?” He vaguely remembered Navani telling him of it early that morning.

“They said I wasn’t needed.”

“Nonsense! We’re all needed at the meetings.” Dalinar paused. “I’ve missed several, haven’t I? Well, regardless, what are they talking about today?”

“Tactics.”

Dalinar felt his face go red. “The deployment of troops and the defense of Jah Keved, your kingdom?”

“I think they believe that I will give up the throne of Jah Keved, once a suitable local man has been found.” He smiled. “Do not be so outraged on my behalf, my friend. They didn’t forbid me; they simply noted I wasn’t needed. I wanted some time to think, so I came here.”

“Still. Let’s go up, shall we?”

Taravangian nodded, standing. He wobbled on unsteady legs and Dalinar hurried over to help him. Stabilized, Taravangian patted Dalinar’s hand. “Thank you. You know, I’ve always felt old. But lately, it seems my body is determined to give me persistent reminders.”

“Let me summon a palanquin to carry you.”

“No, please. If I give up walking, I fear my deterioration will increase. I’ve seen similar things happen to people in my hospitals.” But he held Dalinar’s arm as they walked toward the doorway. Outside, Dalinar collected some guards of his own along with Taravangian’s large Thaylen bodyguard. They started toward the lifts.

“Do you know,” Dalinar said, “if there’s word…”

“From Kholinar?” Taravangian asked.

Dalinar nodded. He vaguely remembered updates from Navani. No news of Adolin, Elhokar, or the Radiants. But had he been of sound enough mind to listen?

“I’m sorry, Dalinar,” Taravangian said. “So far as I know, we haven’t had a message from them. But we must keep hope, of course! They might have lost their spanreed, or gotten trapped in the city.”

I … may have felt something, the Stormfather said. During a recent highstorm, it felt like Stormblessed was there with me. I do not know what it means, for I cannot see him—or the others—anywhere. I presumed them dead, but now … now I find myself believing. Why?

“You have hope,” Dalinar whispered, smiling.

“Dalinar?” Taravangian asked.

“Just whispering to myself, Your Majesty.”

“If I might say … You seem stronger today. You’ve decided something?”

“More, I’ve remembered something.”

“Is it something you can share with a worried old man?”

“Not yet. I’ll try to explain once I have it figured out myself.”

After an extended trip up the lifts, Dalinar led Taravangian into a quiet, windowless chamber on the penultimate floor of the tower. They’d dubbed it the Gallery of Maps, after a similar location in the warcamps.

Aladar led the meeting, standing beside a table that was covered by a large map of Alethkar and Jah Keved. The dark-skinned Alethi man wore his war uniform—the mix of a traditional takama skirt and modern jacket that had been catching on among his officers. His bodyguard, Mintez, stood behind him in full Shardplate—Aladar preferred not to use the Shards personally. He was a general, not a warrior. He nodded to Dalinar and Taravangian when they entered.

Ialai sat nearby, and studied Dalinar, saying nothing. He’d almost have welcomed a wisecrack; in the old days, she’d been quick to joke with him. Her silence now didn’t mean she was being respectful. It meant she was saving her barbs to whisper where he couldn’t hear.

Highprince Ruthar—thick-armed and wearing a full beard—sat with Ialai. He’d opposed Dalinar from the start. The other Alethi highprince who had come today was Hatham, a long-necked man with light orange eyes. He wore a red and gold uniform of a type that Dalinar hadn’t seen before, with a short jacket that buttoned only at the top. Silly-looking, but what did Dalinar know of fashion? The man was extremely polite, and he ran a tight army.

Queen Fen had brought the Thaylen high admiral, a scrawny old man with mustaches that drooped almost to the table. He wore a short sailor’s saber and sash, and looked like exactly the type who would complain about being stuck on the land for too long. She’d also brought her son—the one Dalinar had dueled—who saluted Dalinar sharply. Dalinar saluted back. That boy would make an excellent officer, if he could learn to keep his temper.

The Azish emperor wasn’t there, nor was their little Edgedancer. Instead, Azir had sent a collection of scholars. Azish “generals” tended to be of the armchair type, military historians and theorists who spent their days in books. Dalinar was certain they had men with practical knowledge in their military, but those rarely ended up promoted. So long as you failed certain tests, you could remain in the field and command.

Dalinar had met the two Veden highprinces during his trip to their city. The brothers were tall, prim men with short black hair and uniforms much like those of the Alethi. Taravangian had appointed them after their predecessors had been poisoned, following the civil war. Jah Keved obviously still had many problems.

“Dalinar?” Aladar said. He stood up straighter, then saluted. “Brightlord, you’re looking better.”

Storms. How much did the rest of them know?

“I’ve spent some time in meditation,” Dalinar said. “I see you’ve been busy. Tell me about the defensive array.”

“Well,” Aladar said, “we—”

“That’s it?” Queen Fen interrupted. “What in Damnation was wrong with you? You ran all around Vedenar like a wildman, then locked yourself in your room for a week!”

“I was excommunicated from the Vorin church soon after hearing of Kholinar’s fall. I took it poorly. Did you expect me to react by throwing a feast?”

“I expected you to lead us, not sulk.”

I deserved that. “You are right. You can’t have a commander who refuses to command. I’m sorry.”

The Azish whispered among themselves, looking surprised at the bluntness of the exchange. But Fen settled back and Aladar nodded. Dalinar’s mistakes had needed to be aired.

Aladar began explaining their battle preparations. The Azish generals—all wearing robes and Western hats—crowded around, offering commentary through translators. Dalinar used a little Stormlight and touched one on the arm, to gain access to their language for a short time. He found their advice surprisingly astute, considering that they were basically a committee of scribes.

They’d moved ten battalions of Alethi troops through the Oathgates, along with five battalions of Azish. That put fifteen thousand men on the ground in Jah Keved, including some of their most loyal Kholin and Aladar forces.

That seriously cut into his troop numbers. Storms, they’d lost so many at Narak—the companies that Dalinar had remaining at Urithiru were mostly recruits or men from other princedoms who had asked to join his military. Sebarial, for example, had cut back to maintaining only a single division, giving Dalinar the rest to wear Kholin colors.

Dalinar had interrupted a discussion of how to fortify the Jah Keved border. He offered some insights, but mostly listened as they explained their plans: stockpiles here, garrisons there. They hoped the Windrunners would be able to scout for them.

Dalinar nodded, but found that something bothered him about this battle plan. A problem he couldn’t define. They’d done well; their lines of supply had been drawn realistically and their scout posts were spaced for excellent coverage.

What, then, was wrong?

The door opened, revealing Navani, who froze when she saw Dalinar, then melted into a relieved smile. He nodded to her, as one of the Veden highprinces explained why they shouldn’t abandon the backwater strip of land running east of the Horneater Peaks. Aladar had been ready to cede it and use the Peaks as a barrier.

“It’s not only about the opportunity to levy troops from His Majesty’s Horneater subjects, Brightlord,” the highprince—Nan Urian—explained in Alethi. “These lands are lush and well appointed, buffered from storms by the very Alethi highlands you’ve been speaking of. We’ve always fought desperately for them against invasions, because they will succor those who seize them—and provide staging areas for assaults on the rest of Jah Keved!”

Dalinar grunted. Navani stepped over to where most of them stood around the table map, so he reached out and put his arm around her waist. “He’s right, Aladar. I spent a long time skirmishing on that very border. That area is more important strategically than it first appears.”

“Holding it is going to be tough,” Aladar said. “We’ll get mired in an extended battle for that ground.”

“Which is what we want, isn’t it?” the Veden highprince said. “The longer we stall the invasion, the more time it will give my Veden brethren to recover.”

“Yes,” Dalinar said. “Yes…” It was easy to get mired in battles along that vast Veden front. How many years had he spent fighting false bandits there? “Let’s take a break. I want to consider this.”

The others seemed to welcome the opportunity. Many stepped into the larger chamber outside, where attendants with spanreeds waited to relay information. Navani stayed beside Dalinar as he surveyed the map. “It’s good to see you up,” she whispered.

“You’re more patient than I deserve. You should have dumped me out of bed and poured the wine on my head.”

“I had a feeling you’d push through.”

“I have for now,” he said. “In the past, a few days—or even weeks—of sobriety didn’t mean much.”

“You’re not the man you were back then.”

Oh, Navani. I never grew beyond that man; I just hid him away. He couldn’t explain that to her yet. Instead, he whispered thanks into her ear, and rested his hand on hers. How could he ever have been frustrated at her advances?

For now, he turned his attention to the maps, and lost himself in them: the fortresses, the storm bunkers, the cities, the drawn-in supply lines.

What’s wrong? Dalinar thought. What am I not seeing?

Ten Silver Kingdoms. Ten Oathgates. The keys to this war. Even if the enemy can’t use them, they can hinder us by seizing them.

One in Alethkar, which they already have. One in Natanatan—the Shattered Plains—which we have. One in Vedenar, one in Azimir, one in Thaylen City. All three ours. But one in Rall Elorim and one in Kurth, both the enemy’s by now. One in Shinovar, belonging to neither side.

That left the one in Panatham in Babatharnam—which the combined Iriali and Riran armies might have captured already—and one in Akinah, which Jasnah was confident had been destroyed long ago.

Jah Keved made the most sense for the enemy to attack, didn’t it? Only … once you engaged yourself in Jah Keved, you were stuck fighting a long war of attrition. You lost mobility, had to dedicate enormous resources to it.

He shook his head, feeling frustrated. He left the map, trailed by Navani, and stepped into the other room for refreshment. At the wine table, he forced himself to pour a warm, spiced orange. Something with no kick.

Jasnah joined the group, delivering a stack of papers to her mother.

“May I see?” Ialai asked.

“No,” Jasnah replied; Dalinar hid a smile in his drink.

“What secrets are you keeping?” Ialai asked. “What happened to your uncle’s grand talk of unification?”

“I suspect that each monarch in this room,” Jasnah said, “would prefer to know that state secrets are allowed to remain their own. This is an alliance, not a wedding.”

Queen Fen nodded at that.

“As for these papers,” Jasnah continued, “they happen to be a scholarly report which my mother has not yet reviewed. We will release what we discover, once we are certain that our translations are correct and that nothing in these notes might give our enemies an advantage against this city.” Jasnah cocked an eyebrow. “Or would you prefer our scholarship be sloppy?”

The Azish seemed mollified by this.

“I just think,” Ialai said, “you showing up here with them is a slap in the face for the rest of us.”

“Ialai,” Jasnah said, “it is good you are here. Sometimes, an intelligent dissenting voice tests and proves a theory. I do wish you’d work harder on the intelligent part.”

Dalinar downed the rest of his drink and smiled as Ialai settled back in her chair, wisely not escalating a verbal battle against Jasnah. Unfortunately, Ruthar did not have similar sense.

“Don’t mind her, Ialai,” he said, mustache wet with wine. “The godless have no concept of proper decency. Everyone knows that the only reason to abandon belief in the Almighty is so that you can explore vice.”

Oh, Ruthar, Dalinar thought. You can’t win this fight. Jasnah has thought about the topic far more than you have. It’s a familiar battleground to her—

Storms, that was it.

“They aren’t going to attack Jah Keved!” Dalinar shouted, interrupting Jasnah’s rebuttal.

Those in the room turned to him, surprised, Jasnah’s mouth half open.

“Dalinar?” Highprince Aladar asked. “We decided that Jah Keved was the most likely—”

“No,” Dalinar said. “No, we know the terrain too well! The Alethi and the Vedens have spent generations fighting over that land.”

“What, then?” Jasnah asked.

Dalinar ran back into the map room. The others flooded in around him. “They went to Marat, right?” Dalinar asked. “They cut through Emul and into Marat, silencing spanreeds nationwide. Why? Why go there?”

“Azir was too well fortified,” Aladar said. “From Marat, the Voidbringers can strike at Jah Keved from both the west and the east.”

“Through the bottleneck in Triax?” Dalinar asked. “We talk of Jah Keved’s weakness, but that’s relative. They still have a huge standing army, strong fortifications. If the enemy wades into Jah Keved now, while solidifying their own power, it will drain their resources and stall their conquest. That isn’t what they want right now, when they still have the upper hand in momentum.”

“Where, then?” Nan Urian asked.

“A place that was hit hardest of all by the new storms,” Dalinar said, pointing at the map. “A place whose military might was severely undermined by the Everstorm. A place with an Oathgate.”

Queen Fen gasped, safehand going to her lips.

“Thaylen City?” Navani asked. “Are you sure?”

“If the enemy takes Thaylen City,” Dalinar said, “they can blockade Jah Keved, Kharbranth, and what few lands in Alethkar we still own. They can seize command of the entire Southern Depths and launch naval assaults on Tashikk and Shinovar. They could swarm New Natanan and have a position from which to assault the Shattered Plains. Strategically, Thaylen City is far more important than Jah Keved—but at the same time, far worse defended.”

“But they’d need ships,” Aladar said.

“The parshmen took our fleet.…” Fen said.

“After that first terrible storm,” Dalinar said, “how were there any ships left for them to take?”

Fen frowned. “As I think about it, that’s remarkable, isn’t it? There were dozens remaining, as if the winds left them alone. Because the enemy needed them…”

Storms. “I’ve been thinking too much like an Alethi,” Dalinar said. “Boots on stone. But the enemy moved into Marat immediately, a perfect position from which to launch at Thaylen City.”

“We need to revise our plans!” Fen said.

“Peace, Your Majesty,” Aladar said. “We have armies in Thaylen City already. Good Alethi troops. Nobody is better on the ground than Alethi infantry.”

“We have three divisions there right now,” Dalinar said. “We’ll want at least three more.”

“Sir,” Fen’s son said. “Brightlord. That’s not enough.”

Dalinar glanced at Fen. Her wizened admiral nodded.

“Speak,” Dalinar said.

“Sir,” the youth said, “we’re glad to have your troops on the island. Kelek’s breath! If you’re going to get into a fight, you definitely want the Alethi on your side. But an enemy fleet is a much larger problem than you’re assuming—one you can’t easily fix by moving troops around. If the enemy ships find Thaylen City well defended, they’ll just sail on and attack Kharbranth, or Dumadari, or any number of defenseless cities along the coast.”

Dalinar grunted. He did think too much like an Alethi. “What, then?”

“We need our own fleet, obviously,” Fen’s admiral said. He had a thick accent of mushed syllables, like a mouth full of moss. “But most of our ships were lost to the blustering Everstorm. Half were abroad, caught unaware. My colleagues now dance upon the bottom of the depths.”

“And the rest of your fleet was stolen,” Dalinar said with a grunt. “What else do we have?”

“His Majesty Taravangian has ships at our port,” the Veden highprince said.

All eyes turned toward Taravangian. “Merchant ships only,” the old man said. “Vessels that carried my healers. We haven’t a true navy, but I did bring twenty ships. I could perhaps provide ten more from Kharbranth.”

“The storm took a number of our ships,” the Veden highprince said, “but the civil war was more devastating. We lost hundreds of sailors. We have more ships than we have crew for right now.”

Fen joined Dalinar beside the map. “We might be able to scrape together a semblance of a navy to intercept the enemy, but the fighting will be on the decks of ships. We’ll need troops.”

“You’ll have them,” Dalinar said.

“Alethi who’ve never seen a rough sea in their lives?” Fen asked, skeptical. She looked to the Azish generals. “Tashikk has a navy, doesn’t it? Staffed and supplemented by Azish troops.”

The generals conferred in their own language. Finally, one spoke through an interpreter. “The Thirteenth Battalion, Red and Gold, has men who do a rotation on ships and patrol the grand waterway. Getting others here would take much time, but the thirteenth is already stationed in Jah Keved.”

“We’ll supplement them with some of my best men,” Dalinar said. Storms, we need those Windrunners active. “Fen, would your admirals present a suggested course for the gathering and deployment of a unified fleet?”

“Sure,” the short woman said. She leaned in, speaking under her breath. “I warn you. Many of my sailors follow the Passions. You’re going to have to do something about these claims of heresy, Blackthorn. Already there’s talk among my people that this is—at long last—the right time for the Thaylens to break free from the Vorin church.”

“I won’t recant,” Dalinar said.

“Even if it causes a wholesale religious collapse in the middle of a war?”

He didn’t reply, and she let him withdraw from the table, thinking about other plans. He spoke with the others about various items, thanked Navani—again—for holding everything together. Then eventually, he decided to go back down below and take a few reports from his stewards.

On his way out, he passed Taravangian, who had taken a seat by the wall. The old man looked distracted by something.

“Taravangian?” Dalinar said. “We’ll leave troops in Jah Keved too, in case I’m wrong. Don’t worry.”

The old man looked to Dalinar, then strangely wiped tears from his eyes.

“Are … are you in pain?” Dalinar asked.

“Yes. But it is nothing you can fix.” He hesitated. “You are a good man, Dalinar Kholin. I did not expect that.”

Ashamed by that, Dalinar hurried from the room, followed by his guards. He felt tired, which seemed unfair, considering he’d just spent a week basically sleeping.

Before seeking his stewards, Dalinar stopped on the fourth floor from the bottom. An extended walk from the lifts took him to the outer wall of the tower, where a small series of rooms smelled of incense. People lined the hallways, waiting for glyphwards or to speak with an ardent. More than he’d expected—but then, they didn’t have much else to do, did they?

Is that how you think of them already? a part of him asked. Only here to seek spiritual welfare because they don’t have anything better to do?

Dalinar kept his chin high, resisting the urge to shrink before their stares. He passed several ardents and stepped into a room lit and warmed by braziers, where he asked after Kadash.

He was directed onto a garden balcony, where a small group of ardents was trying to farm. Some placed seed paste while others were trying to get some shalebark starters to take along the wall. An impressive project, and one he didn’t remember ordering them to begin.

Kadash was quietly chipping crem off a planter box. Dalinar settled down beside him. The scarred ardent glanced at him and kept working.

“It’s very late coming,” Dalinar said, “but I wanted to apologize to you for Rathalas.”

“I don’t think I’m the one you need to apologize to,” Kadash said. “Those who could bear an apology are now in the Tranquiline Halls.”

“Still, I made you part of something terrible.”

“I chose to be in your army,” Kadash said. “I’ve found peace with what we did—found it among the ardents, where I no longer shed the blood of men. I suppose it would be foolish of me to suggest the same to you.”

Dalinar took a deep breath. “I’m releasing you, and the other ardents, from my control. I won’t put you in a position where you have to serve a heretic. I’ll give you to Taravangian, who remains orthodox.”

“No.”

“I don’t believe you have the option to—”

“Just listen for one storming moment, Dalinar,” Kadash snapped, then he sighed, forcibly calming himself. “You assume that because you’re a heretic, we don’t want anything to do with you.”

“You proved that a few weeks ago, when we dueled.”

“We don’t want to normalize what you’ve done or what you’re saying. That doesn’t mean we will abandon our posts. Your people need us, Dalinar, even if you believe you don’t.”

Dalinar walked to the edge of the garden, where he rested his hands on the stone railing. Beyond him, clouds mustered at the base of the peaks, like a phalanx protecting its commander. From up here, it looked like the entire world was nothing more than an ocean of white broken by sharp peaks. His breath puffed in front of him. Cold as the Frostlands, though it didn’t seem as bad inside the tower.

“Are any of those plants growing?” he asked softly.

“No,” Kadash said from behind. “We aren’t sure if it’s the cold, or the fact that few storms reach this high.” He kept scraping. “What will it feel like when a storm goes high enough to engulf this entire tower?”

“Like we’re surrounded by dark confusion,” Dalinar said. “The only light coming in flashes we can’t pinpoint or comprehend. Angry winds trying to tow us in a dozen different directions, or barring that, rip our limbs from our bodies.” He looked toward Kadash. “Like always.”

“The Almighty was a constant light.”

“And?”

“And now you make us question. You make me question. Being an ardent is the only thing that lets me sleep at night, Dalinar. You want to take that from me too? If He’s gone, there’s only the storm.”

“I think there must be something beyond. I asked you before, what did worship look like before Vorinism? What did—”

“Dalinar. Please. Just … stop.” Kadash drew in a deep breath. “Release a statement. Don’t let everyone keep whispering about how you went into hiding. Say something pedantic like, ‘I’m pleased with the work the Vorin church does, and support my ardents, even if I myself no longer have the faith I once did.’ Give us permission to move on. Storms, this isn’t the time for confusion. We don’t even know what we’re fighting.…”

Kadash didn’t want to know that Dalinar had met the thing they were fighting. Best not to speak of that.

But Kadash’s question did leave him considering. Odium wouldn’t be commanding the day-to-day operations of his army, would he? Who did that? The Fused? The Voidspren?

Dalinar strolled a short distance from Kadash, then looked toward the sky. “Stormfather?” he asked. “Do the enemy forces have a king or a highprince? Maybe a head ardent? Someone other than Odium?”

The Stormfather rumbled. Again, I do not see as much as you think I do. I am the passing storm, the winds of the tempest. All of this is me. But I am not all of it, any more than you control each breath that leaves your mouth.

Dalinar sighed. It had been worth the thought.

There is one I have been watching, the Stormfather added. I can see her, when I don’t see others.

“A leader?” Dalinar asked.

Maybe. Men, both human and singer, are strange in what or whom they revere. Why do you ask?

Dalinar had decided not to bring anyone else into one of the visions because he worried about what Odium would do to them. But that wouldn’t count for people already serving Odium, would it?

“When is the next highstorm?”

Taravangian felt old.

His age was more than the aches that no longer faded as the day proceeded. It was more than the weak muscles, which still surprised him when he tried to lift an object that should have seemed light.

It was more than finding that he’d slept through yet another meeting, despite his best efforts to pay attention. It was even more than slowly seeing almost everyone he’d grown up with fade away and die.

It was the urgency of knowing that tasks he started today, he wouldn’t finish.

He stopped in the hallway back to his rooms, hand resting on the strata-lined wall. It was beautiful, mesmerizing, but he only found himself wishing for his gardens in Kharbranth. Other men and women got to live out their waning hours in comfort, or at least familiarity.

He let Mrall take him by the arm and guide him to his rooms. Normally, Taravangian would have been bothered by the help; he did not like being treated like an invalid. Today though … well, today he would suffer the indignity. It was a lesser one than collapsing in the hallway.

Inside the room, Adrotagia sat amid six different scribbling spanreeds, buying and trading information like a merchant at market. She looked at him, but knew him well enough not to comment on his exhausted face or slow steps. Today was a good day, of average intelligence. Perhaps a little on the stupid side, but he’d take that.

He seemed to be having fewer and fewer intelligent days. And the ones he did have frightened him.

Taravangian settled down in a plush, comfortable seat, and Maben went to get him some tea.

“Well?” Adrotagia asked. She’d grown old too, with enormous bags around her green eyes, the persistent kind formed by drooping skin. She had liver spots and wispy hair. No man would look at her and see the mischievous child she’d once been. The trouble the two of them had gotten into …

“Vargo?” Adrotagia asked.

“My apologies,” he said. “Dalinar Kholin has recovered.”

“A problem.”

“An enormous one.” Taravangian took the tea from Maben. “More than you can guess, I should say, even with the Diagram before you. But please, give me time to consider. My mind is slow today. Have you reports?”

Adrotagia flipped over a paper from one of her stacks. “Moelach seems to have settled in the Horneater Peaks. Joshor is on his way there now. We might again soon have access to the Death Rattles.”

“Very well.”

“We’ve found what happened to Graves,” Adrotagia continued. “Scavengers found the storm-blown wreckage of his wagon, and there was an intact spanreed inside.”

“Graves is replaceable.”

“And the Shards?”

“Irrelevant,” Taravangian said. “We won’t win the prize through force of arms. I was reluctant to let him try his little coup in the first place.”

He and Graves had disagreed about the Diagram’s instructions: to kill Dalinar or recruit him? And who was to be king of Alethkar?

Well, Taravangian had been wrong about the Diagram himself many times. So he’d allowed Graves to move forward with his own plots, according to his own readings of the Diagram. While the man’s schemes had failed, so had Taravangian’s attempt to have Dalinar executed. So perhaps neither of them had read the Diagram correctly.

He took some time to recover, frustrated that he should need to recover from a simple walk. A few minutes later, the guard admitted Malata. The Radiant wore her usual skirt and leggings, Thaylen style, with thick boots.

She took a seat across from Taravangian at the low table, then sighed in a melodramatic way. “This place is awful. Every last idiot here is frozen, ears to toes.”

Had she been this confident before bonding a spren? Taravangian hadn’t known her well then. Oh, he’d managed the project, full of eager recruits from the Diagram, but the individuals hadn’t mattered to him. Until now.

“Your spren,” Adrotagia asked, getting out a sheet of paper. “Has she anything to report?”

“No,” Malata said. “Only the tidbit from earlier, about other visions Dalinar hasn’t shared with everyone.”

“And,” Taravangian asked, “has the spren expressed any … reservations? About the work you’ve given her?”

“Damnation,” Malata said, rolling her eyes. “You’re as bad as Kholin’s scribes. Always poking.”

“We need to be cautious, Malata,” Taravangian said. “We can’t be certain what your spren will do as her self-awareness grows. She will surely dislike working against the other orders.”

“You’re as frozen as the lot of them,” Malata said. She started glowing, Stormlight rising from her skin. She reached forward, whipping off her glove—safehand no less—and pressing it against the table.

Marks spread out from the point of contact, little swirls of blackness etching themselves into the wood. The scent of burning filled the air, but the flames didn’t persist if she didn’t will them to.

The swirls and lines extended across the tabletop, a masterwork of engraving accomplished in moments. Malata blew off the ash. The Surge she used, Division, caused objects to degrade, burn, or turn to dust.

It also worked on people.

“Spark is fine with what we’re doing,” Malata said, pressing her finger down and adding another swirl to the table. “I told you, the rest of them are idiots. They assume all the spren are going to be on their side. Never mind what the Radiants did to Spark’s friends, never mind that organized devotion to Honor is what killed hundreds of ashspren in the first place.”

“And Odium?” Taravangian asked, curious. The Diagram warned that the personalities of the Radiants would introduce great uncertainty to their plans.

“Spark is game for whatever it takes to get vengeance. And what lets her break stuff.” Malata grinned. “Someone should have warned me how fun this would be. I’d have tried way harder to land the job.”

“What we do is not fun,” Taravangian said. “It is necessary, but it is horrible. In a better world, Graves would have been right. We would be allies to Dalinar Kholin.”

“You’re too fond of the Blackthorn, Vargo,” Adrotagia warned. “It will cloud your mind.”

“No. But I do wish I hadn’t gotten to know him. That will make this difficult.” Taravangian leaned forward, holding his warm drink. Boiled ingo tea, with mint. Smells of home. With a start, he realized … he’d probably never live in that home again, would he? He’d thought perhaps he would return in a few years.

He wouldn’t be alive in a few years.

“Adro,” he continued, “Dalinar’s recovery convinces me we must take more drastic action. Are the secrets ready?”

“Almost,” she said, moving some other papers. “My scholars in Jah Keved have translated the passages we need, and we have the information from Malata’s spying. But we need some way to disseminate the information without compromising ourselves.”

“Assign it to Dova,” Taravangian said. “Have her write a scathing, anonymous essay, then leak it to Tashikk. Leak the translations from the Dawnchant the same day. I want it all to strike at once.” He set aside the tea. Suddenly, scents of Kharbranth made him hurt. “It would have been so, so much better for Dalinar to have died by the assassin’s blade. For now we must leave him to the enemy’s desires, and that will not be as kind as a quick death.”

“Will it be enough?” Malata asked. “That old axehound is tough.”

“It will be enough. Dalinar would be the first to tell you that when your opponent is getting back up, you must act quickly to crush his knees. Then he will bow, and present to you his skull.”

Oh, Dalinar. You poor, poor man.

Shallan’s Sketchbook: Shadesmar Spren

108. Honor’s Path

Shallan sketched in her notepad as she stood on the deck of the honorspren ship, the wind of its passing ruffling her hair. Next to her, Kaladin rested his arms on the ship’s railing, overlooking the ocean of beads.

Their current vessel, Honor’s Path, was faster than Ico’s merchant ship. It had mandras rigged not only at the front, but also to winglike rails jutting from the sides. It had five decks—including three below for crew and storage—but those were mostly empty. It felt like a war vessel intended to carry troops, but which didn’t currently have a full complement.

The main deck was similar to the top deck of human ships, but this craft also had a high deck running down its center from prow to stern. Narrower than the main deck, it was supported by broad white pillars, and probably offered an excellent view. Shallan could no more than guess, as only the crew was allowed up there.

At least they’d been let out—Shallan and the others had spent their first week on board locked in the hold. The honorspren had given no explanation when, finally, the humans and Pattern had been released and allowed to move on deck, so long as they stayed off the high deck and did not make nuisances of themselves.

Syl remained imprisoned.

“Look here.” Shallan tipped her sketched map toward Kaladin. “Pattern says there’s an honorspren stronghold near Kharbranth in our world. They call it Unyielding Fidelity. We’ve got to be heading there. We went southwest after leaving Celebrant.”

“While we were in the hold,” Kaladin said softly, “I saw a sea of tiny flames through the porthole. A town on our side?”

“That was here,” Shallan said, pointing at her map. “See where the rivers meet, just southwest of the lake? There are towns there, on our side. The river peninsulas should have blocked our way, but the spren seem to have cut a canal through the stone. We wove east around the Icingway River, then swung west again.”

“So you’re saying…”

She pointed at a spot with her charcoal pencil. “We’re right about here, heading toward Kharbranth across the Frostlands.”

Kaladin rubbed his chin. He glanced toward an honorspren passing above, and narrowed his eyes. He’d spent their first day of freedom arguing with the honorspren—which had ended with him locked up for another two days.

“Kaladin…” Shallan said.

“They need to let her out,” he said. “Prisons are terrible for me—they’ll be worse for her.”

“Then help me figure out a way off this ship.”

He looked back at her map and pointed. “Thaylen City,” he said. “If we continue this direction, we’ll eventually pass just north of it.”

“ ‘Just north’ in this case meaning more than three hundred miles away from it, in the middle of a bead ocean.”

“Far closer than we’ve been to any other Oathgate,” he said. “And if we can get the ship to swing south a little, we could maybe get to the coast of Longbrow’s Straits, which will be stone on this side. Or do you think we should still be trying for Azure’s phantom ‘perpendicularity’ in the Horneater Peaks?”

“I…” He spoke with such authority, such a compelling sense of motion. “I don’t know, Kaladin.”

“We’re heading in the right direction,” he said, firm. “I saw it, Shallan. We just need to continue with the ship a few more days, then find a way to escape. We can hike to the Oathgate on this side, and you can transfer us to Thaylen City.”

It sounded reasonable. Well, except for the fact that the honorspren were watching them. And the fact that the Fused knew where they were now, and were probably gathering forces to give chase. And the fact that they had to somehow escape from a ship in the middle of a sea of beads, reach the shore, then hike two hundred miles to reach Thaylen City.

All of that could fade before Kaladin’s passion. All but the worry that topped them all—could she even make the Oathgate work? She couldn’t help feeling that too much of this plan depended on her.

Yet those eyes …

“We could try a mutiny,” Veil said. “Maybe those mistspren who do all the work will listen. They can’t be happy, always hopping about, following honorspren orders.”

“I don’t know,” Kaladin said, voice hushing as one of these spren—made entirely of mist, save for the hands and face—walked past. “Could be reckless. I can’t fight them all.”

“What if you had Stormlight?” Veil asked. “If I could pinch it back for you? What then?”

He rubbed at his chin again. Storms, he looked good with a beard. All ragged and untamed through the face, contrasted by his sharp blue uniform. Like a wild spren of passion, trapped by the oaths and codes …

Wait.

Wait, had that been Veil?

Shallan shook free of the momentary drifting of personality. Kaladin didn’t seem to notice.

“Maybe,” he said. “You really think you can steal the gemstones back for us? I’d feel a lot more comfortable with some Stormlight in my pocket.”

“I…” Shallan swallowed. “Kaladin, I don’t know if … Maybe it would be best not to fight them. They’re honorspren.”

“They’re jailers,” he said, but then calmed. “But they are taking us the right direction, if only inadvertently. What if we stole back our Stormlight, then simply jumped off the ship? Can you find a bead to make us a passage toward land, like you did at Kholinar?”

“I … guess I could try. But wouldn’t the honorspren simply swing around and pick us up again?”

“I’ll think about that,” Kaladin said. “Try and find some beads that we can use.” He walked across the deck, passing by Pattern—who stood with hands clasped behind his back, thinking number-filled thoughts. Kaladin eventually settled beside Azure, speaking softly with her, probably outlining their plan.

Such that it was.

Shallan tucked her sketchpad under her arm and looked over the side of the ship. So many beads, so many souls, piled on top of each other. Kaladin wanted her to search through all of that for something helpful?

She glanced toward a passing sailor, a mistspren who had gaseous limbs that ended in gloved hands. Her feminine face was the shape of a porcelain mask, and she—like the others of her kind—wore a vest and trousers that seemed to float on a body made of swirling, indistinct fog.

“Is there a way for me to get some of those beads?” Shallan asked.

The mistspren stopped in place.

“Please?” Shallan asked. “I—”

The sailor jogged off, and then returned a short time later with the captain: a tall, imperious-looking honorspren named Notum. He glowed a soft blue-white, and wore an outdated—but sharp—naval uniform, which was part of his substance. His beard was of a cut she hadn’t seen before, with the chin shaved, almost like a Horneater, but with a thin mustache and a sculpted line of hair that ran from it up his cheeks and blended into his sideburns.

“You have a request?” he asked her.

“I would like some beads, Captain,” Shallan said. “To practice my art, if you please. I need to do something to pass the time on this trip.”

“Manifesting random souls is dangerous, Lightweaver. I would not have you doing it wantonly upon my decks.”

Keeping the true nature of her order from him had proven impossible, considering how Pattern followed her around.

“I promise not to manifest anything,” she said. “I merely want to practice visualizing the souls inside the beads. It’s part of my training.”

He studied her, clasping his hands behind his back. “Very well,” he said—which surprised her. She hadn’t expected that to work. He gave an order, however, and a mistspren lowered a bucket on a rope to get her some beads.

“Thank you,” Shallan said.

“It was a simple request,” the captain said. “Just be careful. I suppose you’d need Stormlight to manifest anyway, but still … be careful.”

“What happens if we carry the beads away too far?” Shallan asked, curious as the mistspren handed her the bucket. “They are tied to objects in the Physical Realm, right?”

“You can carry them anywhere in Shadesmar you wish,” the captain said. “Their tie is through the Spiritual Realm, and distance doesn’t matter. However, drop them—let them free—and they’ll work their way back to the general location of their physical counterpart.” He eyed her. “You are very new to all of this. When did it begin again? Radiants, swearing Ideals?”

“Well…”

Her mother’s dead face, eyes burned.

“It hasn’t been going on for long,” Shallan said. “A few months for most of us. A few years for some…”

“We had hoped this day would never come.” He turned to march toward the high deck.

“Captain?” Shallan asked. “Why did you let us out? If you’re so worried about Radiants, why not just keep us locked away?”

“It wasn’t honorable,” the captain said. “You are not prisoners.”

“What are we, then?”

“Stormfather only knows. Fortunately, I don’t have to sort it out. We’ll deliver you and the Ancient Daughter to someone with more authority. Until then, please try not to break my ship.”

As days passed, Shallan fell into a routine on the honorspren ship. She spent most days sitting on the main deck, near the wale. They let her have beads in plenitude to play with, but most of them were useless things. Rocks, sticks, bits of clothing. Still, it was useful to visualize them. Hold them, meditate on them. Understand them?

Objects had desires. Simple desires, true, but they could adhere to those desires with passion—as she’d learned during her few attempts at Soulcasting. Now, she didn’t try to change those desires. She just learned to touch them, and to listen.

She felt a familiarity to some of the beads. A growing understanding that, perhaps, she could make their souls blossom from beads into full-fledged objects on this side. Manifestations, they were called.

Between practices with the beads, she did sketches. Some worked, some didn’t. She wore the skirt that Adolin had purchased for her, hoping it would make her feel more like Shallan. Veil kept poking through, which could be useful—but the way it just kind of happened was frightening to her. This was the opposite of what Wit had told her to do, wasn’t it?

Kaladin spent the days pacing the main deck, glaring at honorspren he passed. He looked like a caged beast. Shallan felt some of his same urgency. They hadn’t seen any sign of the enemy, not since that day in Celebrant. But she slept uneasily each night, worried that she’d wake to calls of an enemy ship approaching them. Notum had confirmed that the Voidspren were creating their own empire in Shadesmar. And they controlled Cultivation’s Perpendicularity, the easiest way to get between realms.

Shallan sorted through another handful of beads, feeling the impression of a small dagger, a rock, a piece of fruit that had started to see itself as something new—something that could grow into its own identity, rather than merely a part of the whole.

What would someone see when looking at her soul? Would it give a single, unified impression? Many different ideas of what it was to be her?

Nearby, the ship’s first mate—an honorspren woman with short hair and an angular face—left the hold. Curiously, she was carrying Azure’s Shardblade. She stepped onto the main deck, beneath the shadow of the high deck, and went hiking toward Azure, who stood watching the ocean pass nearby.

Curious, Shallan pocketed the bead representing a knife—just in case—then left the bucket on top of her sketchbook and walked over. Nearby, Kaladin was pacing again, and he also noticed the sword.

“Draw her carefully,” Azure said to Borea, the first mate, as Shallan approached. “Don’t pull her out all the way—she doesn’t know you.”

Borea wore a uniform like the captain’s, all stiff and no-nonsense. She undid a small latch on the Shardblade, eased it from its sheath a half inch, then drew in a sharp breath. “It … tingles.”

“She’s investigating you,” Azure said.

“It really is as you say,” Borea said. “A Shardblade that requires no spren—no enslavement. This is something else. How did you do it?”

“I will trade knowledge, per our deal, once we arrive.”

Borea snapped the Blade closed. “A good bond, human. We accept your offer.” Surprisingly, the woman held the weapon toward Azure, who took it.

Shallan stepped closer, watching as Borea walked off toward the steps up to the high deck.

“How?” Shallan asked as Azure belted on the sword. “You got them to give your weapon back?”

“They’re quite reasonable,” Azure said, “so long as you make the right promises. I’ve negotiated for passage and an exchange of information, once we reach Lasting Integrity.”

“You’ve done what?” Kaladin said. He stalked over. “What did I just hear?”

“I’ve made a deal, Stormblessed,” Azure said, meeting his gaze. “I’ll be free, once we reach their stronghold.”

“We’re not going to reach their stronghold,” Kaladin said softly. “We’re going to escape.”

“I’m not your soldier, or even Adolin’s subject. I’m going to do what gets me to the perpendicularity—and, barring that, I’m going to find out what these people know about the criminal I’m hunting.”

“You’d throw away honor for a bounty?”

“I’m only here because you two—through no fault of your own, I admit—trapped me. I don’t blame you, but I’m also not indebted to your mission.”

“Traitor,” he said softly.

Azure gave him a flat look. “At some point, Kal, you need to admit that the best thing you can do right now is go with these spren. At their stronghold, you could clear up this misunderstanding, then move on.”

“That could take weeks.”

“I wasn’t aware we were on a schedule.”

“Dalinar is in danger. Don’t you care?”

“About a man I don’t know?” Azure said. “In danger from a threat you can’t define, happening at a time you can’t pinpoint?” She folded her arms. “Forgive me for not sharing in your anxiety.”

Kaladin set his jaw, then turned and stalked away—right up the steps toward the high deck. They weren’t supposed to go up there, but sometimes rules didn’t seem to apply to Kaladin Stormblessed.

Azure shook her head, then turned and gripped the ship railing.

“He’s just having a bad day, Azure,” Shallan said. “I think he feels anxious because his spren is imprisoned.”

“Maybe. I’ve seen a lot of young hotheads in my time, and young Stormblessed feels like another color altogether. I wish I knew what it was he was so desperate to prove.”

Shallan nodded, then glanced again at Azure’s sword. “You said … the honorspren have information on your bounty?”

“Yeah. Borea thinks the weapon I’m chasing passed through their fortress a few years ago.”

“Your bounty is a … weapon?”

“And the one who brought it to your land. A Shardblade that bleeds black smoke.” Azure turned toward her. “I don’t mean to be callous, Shallan. I realize you’re all eager to return to your lands. I can even believe that—through some tide of Fortune—Kaladin Stormblessed has foreseen some danger.”

Shallan shivered. Be wary of anyone who claims to be able to see the future.

“But,” Azure continued, “even if his mission is critical, it doesn’t mean mine isn’t as well.”

Shallan glanced toward the high deck, where she could faintly hear Kaladin making a disturbance. Azure turned and clasped her hands, adopting a far-off look. She seemed to want to be alone, so Shallan trailed back toward where she’d left her things. She settled down and removed the bucket from her sketchpad. The pages fluttered, showing various versions of herself, each one wrong. She kept drawing Veil’s face on Radiant’s body, or vice versa.

She started back into her latest bucket of beads. She found a shirt and a bowl, but the next bead was a fallen tree branch. This brought up memories of the last time she’d dipped into Shadesmar—freezing, near death, on the banks of the ocean.

Why … why hadn’t she tried to Soulcast since then? She’d made excuses, avoided thinking about it. Had focused all her attention on Lightweaving.

She’d ignored Soulcasting. Because she’d failed.

Because she was afraid. Could she invent someone who wasn’t afraid? Someone new, since Veil was broken, and had been since that failure in the Kholinar market …

“Shallan?” Adolin asked, coming over to her. “Are you all right?”

She shook herself. How long had she been sitting there? “I’m fine,” she said. “Just … remembering.”

“Good things or bad?”

“All memories are bad,” she said immediately, then looked away, blushing.

He settled down next to her. Storms, his overt concern was annoying. She didn’t want him worrying about her.

“Shallan?” he asked.

“Shallan will be fine,” she said. “I’ll bring her back in a moment. I just have to recover … her…”

Adolin glanced at the fluttering pages with the different versions of her. He reached out and hugged her, saying nothing. Which turned out to be the right thing to say.

She closed her eyes and tried to pull herself together. “Which one do you like the most?” she finally asked. “Veil is the one who wears the white outfit, but I’m having trouble with her right now. She peeks out sometimes when I don’t want, but then won’t come when I need her. Radiant is the one who practices with the sword. I made her prettier than the others, and you can talk to her about dueling. But some of the time, I’ll have to be someone who can Lightweave. I’m trying to think of who she should be.…”

“Ash’s eyes, Shallan!”

“Shallan’s broken, so I think I’m trying to hide her. Like a cracked vase, where you turn the nice side toward the room, hiding the flaw. I’m not doing it on purpose, but it’s happening, and I don’t know how to stop it.”

He held her.

“No advice?” she asked, numb. “Everyone always seems to have loads.”

“You’re the smart one. What can I say?”

“It’s confusing, being all these people. I feel like I’m presenting different faces all the time. Lying to everyone, because I’m different inside. I … That doesn’t make sense, does it?” She squeezed her eyes shut again. “I’ll pull it back together. I’ll be … someone.”

“I…” He pulled her tight again as the ship rocked. “Shallan, I killed Sadeas.”

She blinked, then pulled back and looked him in the eyes. “What?”

“I killed Sadeas,” Adolin whispered. “We met in the corridors of the tower. He started insulting Father, talking about the terrible things he was going to do to us. And … and I couldn’t listen anymore. Couldn’t stand there and look at his smug red face. So … I attacked him.”

“So all that time we were hunting a killer…”

“It was me. I’m the one the spren copied the first time. I kept thinking about how I was lying to you, to Father, and to everyone. The honorable Adolin Kholin, the consummate duelist. A murderer. And Shallan, I … I don’t think I’m sorry.

“Sadeas was a monster. He repeatedly tried to get us killed. His betrayal caused the deaths of many of my friends. When I formally challenged him to a duel, he wiggled out of it. He was smarter than me. Smarter than Father. He’d have won eventually. So I killed him.”

He pulled her to him and took a deep breath.

Shallan shivered, then whispered, “Good for you.”

“Shallan! You’re a Radiant. You’re not supposed to condone something like this!”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I only know that the world is a better place for the death of Torol Sadeas.”

“Father wouldn’t like it, if he knew.”

“Your father is a great man,” Shallan said, “who is, perhaps, better off not knowing everything. For his own good.”

Adolin breathed in again. With her head pressed to his chest, the air moving in and out of his lungs was audible, and his voice was different. More resonant. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, maybe. In any case, I think I know what it’s like to feel like you’re lying to the world. So maybe if you figure out what to do, you could tell me?”

She leaned into him, listening to his heartbeat, his breathing. She felt his warmth.

“You never did say,” she whispered, “which one you prefer.”

“It’s obvious. I prefer the real you.”

“Which one is that, though?”

“She’s the one I’m talking to right now. You don’t have to hide, Shallan. You don’t have to push it down. Maybe the vase is cracked, but that only means it can show what’s inside. And I like what’s inside.”

So warm. Comfortable. And strikingly unfamiliar. What was this peace? This place without fear?

Noises from above spoiled it. Pulling back, she looked toward the upper deck. “What is the bridgeboy doing up there?”

“Sir,” the misty sailor spren said in broken Alethi. “Sir! Not. Please, not!”

Kaladin ignored her, looking through the spyglass he’d taken from the chain nearby. He stood on the rear section of the high deck, searching the sky. That Fused had watched them leave Celebrant. The enemy would find them eventually.

Dalinar alone. Surrounded by nine shadows …

Kaladin finally handed the spyglass to the anxious mistspren. The captain of the ship, in a tight uniform that probably would have been uncomfortable on a human, approached and dismissed the sailor, who scuttled away.

“I would prefer,” Captain Notum said, “if you would refrain from upsetting my crew.”

“I would prefer that you let Syl go,” Kaladin snapped, feeling her anxiety through their bond. “As I told you, the Stormfather has condoned what she did. There is no crime.”

The short spren clasped his hands behind his back. Of all the spren they’d interacted with on this side, the honorspren seemed to share the most human mannerisms.

“I could lock you away again,” the captain said. “Or even have you tossed overboard.”

“Yeah? And what would that do to Syl? She told me that losing a bonded Radiant was hard on their spren.”

“True. But she would recover, and it might be for the best. Your relationship with the Ancient Daughter is … inappropriate.”

“It’s not like we eloped.”

“It is worse, as the Nahel bond is far more intimate a relationship. The linking of spirits. This is not a thing that should be done lightly, unsupervised. Besides, the Ancient Daughter is too young.”

“Young?” Kaladin said. “Didn’t you just call her ancient?”

“It would be difficult to explain to a human.”

“Try anyway.”

The captain sighed. “The honorspren were created by Honor himself, many thousands of years ago. You call him the Almighty, and … I’m afraid he’s dead.”

“Which makes sense, as it’s pretty much the only excuse I would have accepted.”

“That wasn’t levity, human,” Notum said. “Your god is dead.”

“Not my god. But please continue.”

“Well…” Notum frowned; he’d obviously thought the concept of Honor’s death would have been more difficult for Kaladin to accept. “Well, sometime before his death, Honor stopped creating honorspren. We don’t know why, but he asked the Stormfather to do it instead.”

“He was setting up an heir. I’ve heard that the Stormfather is a kind of image of the Almighty.”

“More like a weak shadow,” Notum said. “You … actually understand this?”

“Understand, no. Follow? Mostly.”

“The Stormfather created only a handful of children. All of these, save Sylphrena, were destroyed in the Recreance, becoming deadeyes. This loss stung the Stormfather, who didn’t create again for centuries. When he was finally moved to remake the honorspren, he created only ten more. My great-grandmother was among them; she created my grandfather, who created my father, who eventually created me.

“It was only recently, even by your reckoning, that the Ancient Daughter was rediscovered. Asleep. So, in answer to your question, yes, Sylphrena is both old and young. Old of form, but young of mind. She is not ready to deal with humans, and certainly not ready for a bond. I wouldn’t trust myself with one of those.”

“You think we’re too changeable, don’t you? That we can’t keep our oaths.”

“I’m no highspren,” the captain spat. “I can see that the variety of humankind is what gives you strength. Your ability to change your minds, to go against what you once thought, can be a great advantage. But your bond is dangerous, without Honor. There will not be enough checks upon your power—you risk disaster.”

“How?”

Notum shook his head, then looked away, off into the distance. “I cannot answer. You should not have bonded Sylphrena, either way. She is too precious to the Stormfather.”

“Regardless,” Kaladin said, “you’re about half a year too late. So you might as well accept it.”

“Not too late. Killing you would free her—though it would be painful for her. There are other ways, at least until the Final Ideal is sworn.”

“I can’t imagine you’d be willing to kill a man for this,” Kaladin said. “Tell me truthfully. Is there honor in that, Notum?”

He looked away, as if ashamed.

“You know Syl shouldn’t be locked away like this,” Kaladin said softly. “You’re an honorspren too, Notum. You must know how she feels.”

The captain didn’t speak.

Finally, Kaladin gritted his teeth and strode off. The captain didn’t demand that Kaladin go down below, so he took up a position at the very front of the high deck, hanging out over the bow.

With one hand on the flagpole, Kaladin rested a boot on the low railing, overlooking the sea of beads. He wore his uniform today, since he’d been able to wash it the previous night. Honor’s Path had good accommodations for humans, including a device that made a great deal of water. The design—if not the vessel itself—probably stretched back centuries to when Radiants traveled Shadesmar with their spren.

Beneath him, the ship creaked as sailors shifted her heading. To the left, he could see land. Longbrow’s Straits—on the other side of which they’d find Thaylen City. Tantalizingly close.

Technically, he was no longer Dalinar’s bodyguard. But storms, during the Weeping, Kaladin had nearly abandoned his duty. The thought of Dalinar needing him now—while Kaladin was trapped and unable to help—brought a pain that was almost physical. He’d failed so many people in his life.…

Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination. Together, these Words formed the First Ideal of the Windrunners. He’d said them, but he wasn’t certain he understood them.

The Second Ideal made more direct sense. I will protect those who cannot protect themselves. Straightforward, yes … but overwhelming. The world was a place of suffering. Was he really supposed to try to prevent it all?

I will protect even those I hate, so long as it is right. The Third Ideal meant standing up for anyone, if needed. But who decided what was “right”? Which side was he supposed to protect?

The Fourth Ideal was unknown to him, but the closer he drew to it, the more frightened he became. What would it demand of him?

Something crystallized in the air beside him, a line of light like a pinprick in the air that trailed a long, soft luminescence. A mistspren sailor near him gasped, then nudged his companion. She whispered something in awe, then both scrambled away.

What have I done now?

A second pinprick of light appeared near him, spinning, coordinated with the other. They made spiral trails in the air. He’d have called them spren, but they weren’t any he’d seen before. Besides, spren on this side didn’t seem to vanish and appear—they were always here, weren’t they?

K-Kaladin? a voice whispered in his head.

“Syl?” he whispered.

What are you doing? It was rare that he heard her directly in his mind.

“Standing on the deck. What’s happened?”

Nothing. I can just … feel your mind right now. Stronger than usual. They let you out?

“Yes. I’ve tried to get them to set you free.”

They’re stubborn. It’s an honorspren trait which I, fortunately, escaped.

“Syl. What is the Fourth Ideal?”

You know you have to figure that out on your own, silly.

“It’s going to be hard, isn’t it?”

Yes. You’re close.

He leaned forward, watching the mandras float beneath them. A small flock of gloryspren zipped past. They took a moment to fly up and spin about him before heading to the south, faster than the ship.

The strange pinpricks of light continued to whirl around him. Sailors gathered behind, making a ruckus until the captain pushed through and gaped.

“What are they?” Kaladin asked, nodding toward the pinpricks of light.

“Windspren.”

“Oh.” They did remind him a little of the way windspren would fly on gusts of wind. “They’re common. Why is everyone so upset?”

“They’re not common on this side,” the captain said. “They live on your side, almost completely. I … I’ve never seen them before. They’re beautiful.”

Perhaps I haven’t been giving Notum enough credit, Kaladin thought. Perhaps he would listen to a different kind of plea.

“Captain,” Kaladin said. “I have taken an oath, as a Windrunner, to protect. And the Bondsmith who leads us is in danger.”

“Bondsmith?” the captain asked. “Which one?”

“Dalinar Kholin.”

“No. Which Bondsmith, of the three?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Kaladin said. “But his spren is the Stormfather. I told you I’d spoken to him.”

It seemed, from the captain’s aghast expression, that perhaps Kaladin should have mentioned this fact earlier.

“I must keep my oath,” Kaladin said. “I need you to let Syl go, then take us to a place where we can transfer between realms.”

“I’ve sworn an oath myself,” the captain said. “To Honor, and to the truths we follow.”

“Honor is dead,” Kaladin said. “But the Bondsmith is not. You say that you can see how human variety gives us strength—well, I challenge you to do the same. See beyond the letter of your rules. You must understand that my need to defend the Bondsmith is more important than your need to deliver Syl—especially considering that the Stormfather is well aware of her location.”

The captain glanced at the windspren, which were still spinning about Kaladin, leaving trails that drifted the entire length of the ship before fading.

“I will consider,” the captain said.

Adolin stopped at the top of the steps, just behind Shallan.

Kaladin, the storming bridgeman, stood at the bow of the ship, surrounded by glowing lines of light. They illuminated his heroic figure—determined, undaunted, one hand on the prow’s flagpole, wearing his crisp Wall Guard uniform. The ship’s spren gazed upon him as if he were a storming Herald come to announce the reclamation of the Tranquiline Halls.

Just ahead of him, Shallan seemed to change. It was in her bearing, the way she stopped resting lightly on one foot, and stood solidly on two feet instead. The way her posture shifted.

And the way that she seemed to melt upon seeing Kaladin, lips rising to a grin. Blushing, she adopted a fond—even eager—expression.

Adolin breathed out slowly. He’d caught those glimpses from her before—and seen the sketches of Kaladin in her book—but looking at her now, he couldn’t deny what he was seeing. She was practically leering.

“I need to draw that,” she said. But she just stood there instead, staring at him.

Adolin sighed and made his way up onto the high deck. Seemed they weren’t forbidden here any longer. He joined Pattern, who had come up another set of steps, and was humming happily to himself.

“Kind of hard to compete with that,” Adolin noted.

“Mmm,” Pattern said.

“You know, I’ve never really felt like this before? It’s not just Kaladin, it’s all of this. And what’s happening to us.” He shook his head. “We certainly are an odd bunch.”

“Yes. Seven people. Odd.”

“It’s not like I can blame him. It’s not as if he’s trying to be like he is.”

Nearby, a sailor spren—one of the few who hadn’t gathered around Stormblessed and his halo of glowing lights—lowered a spyglass. She frowned, then raised it again. Then she began to call out in the spren language.

People tore themselves away from Kaladin and crowded around. Adolin stepped back, watching until Kaladin and Shallan joined him. Azure crested the steps nearby, looking concerned.

“What is it?” Kaladin asked.

“No idea,” Adolin said.

The captain waved for the mistspren and honorspren to make space, then took the spyglass. He finally lowered it and looked back at Kaladin. “You were right, human, when you said you might be followed.” He waved Kaladin and Adolin forward. “Look low on the horizon, at two hundred ten degrees.”

Kaladin looked through the spyglass, then breathed out. He extended it toward Adolin, but Shallan snatched it first.

“Storms!” she said. “There’s at least six of them.”

“Eight, my scout says,” the captain replied.

Adolin finally got his turn. Because of the black sky, it took him forever to spot the distant specks flying toward the ship. The Fused.

109. Neshua Kadal

Dalinar ran his fingers along a line of red crystal embedded in the stone wall. The little vein started at the ceiling and wound all the way down the wall—within the pattern of the light green and grey strata—to the floor. It was smooth to the touch, distinct in texture from the rock around it.

He rubbed his thumb across the crystal. It’s like the other strata lines ripple out from this one, getting wider as they move away from it.

“What does it mean?” he asked Navani. The two of them stood in a storage room near the top of the tower.

“I don’t know,” Navani said, “but we’re finding more and more of them. What do you know of Essential Theology?”

“A thing for ardents and scribes,” he said.

“And Soulcasters. That is a garnet.”

Garnet? Let’s see … Emeralds for grain, that was the most important, and heliodors for flesh. They raised animals for their gemhearts to provide those two. He was pretty sure diamonds made quartz, and … storms, he didn’t know much about the others. Topaz made stone. They’d needed those for the bunkers on the Shattered Plains.

“Garnets make blood,” Navani said. “We don’t have any Soulcasters that use them.”

“Blood? That sounds useless.”

“Well, scientifically, we think Soulcasters were able to use garnets to make any liquid that was soluble in water, as opposed to oil-based … Your eyes are crossing.”

“Sorry.” He felt at the crystals. “Another mystery. When will we find answers?”

“The records below,” Navani said, “speak of this tower like a living thing. With a heart of emerald and ruby, and now these veins of garnet.”

He stood up, looking around the darkened room, which held the monarchs’ chairs between meetings. It was lit by a sphere he’d set on a stone ledge by the door.

“If this tower was alive,” Dalinar said, “then it’s dead now.”

“Or sleeping. But if that’s the case, I have no idea how to wake it. We’ve tried infusing the heart like a fabrial, even had Renarin try to push Stormlight into it. Nothing’s worked.”

Dalinar picked up a chair, then pushed the door open. He held the door with his foot—shooing away a guard who tried to do it for him—while Navani collected the sphere and joined him in the conference room, in front of the glass wall looking toward the Origin.

He set down the chair and checked his forearm clock. Stupid thing. He was growing far too dependent upon it. The arm device had a painrial in it too: a kind of fabrial with a spren that feasted upon pain. He’d never yet remembered to use the thing.

Twelve minutes left. Assuming Elthebar’s calculations were correct. With spanreeds confirming the storm’s arrival hours before in the east, the calculations were down to judging the speed of the storm.

A runner arrived at the door. Creer—the duty sergeant for guards today—accepted it. He was a bridgeman from … Bridge Twenty, was it? He and his brother were both guards, though Creer wore spectacles, unlike his twin.

“Message from Brightness Khal, sir,” Creer said, handing the note to Navani. It looked like it had come from a spanreed. It had marks on the sides from the clips that had held it to the board, and the tight letters covered only the center of the page.

“From Fen,” Navani said. “A merchant ship vanished in the Southern Depths this morning, just off Marat. They went ashore at what they hoped was a safe distance—to use the spanreed—and reported a large number of ships at dock along the coast. Glowing figures rose from a nearby city and descended upon them, and the communication cut off.”

“Confirmation,” Dalinar said, “that the enemy is building up a navy.” If that fleet launched from Marat before his own ships were ready, or if the winds were wrong when his armada did launch …

“Have Teshav write back to the Thaylens,” Dalinar said. “Suggest to Queen Fen and our other allies that we hold the next meeting in Thaylen City. We’ll want to inspect fortifications and shore up the ground defenses.”

He sent the guards to wait outside, then approached the window and checked his wrist clock. Just a few minutes left. He thought he could see the stormwall below, but it was difficult to be sure from this height. He wasn’t accustomed to looking down on a highstorm.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Navani asked.

“The Stormfather asked me something similar this morning. I asked him if he knew the first rule of warfare.”

“Is that the one about terrain, or the one about attacking where the enemy is weak?”

He could pick it out now, a dark ripple surging through the sky below.

“Neither,” Dalinar said.

“Ah, right,” Navani said. “I should have guessed.” She was nervous, with good cause. It was the first time he’d stepped back into the visions since meeting Odium.

But Dalinar felt blind in this war. He didn’t know what the enemy wanted, or how they intended to exploit their conquests.

The first rule of war. Know your enemy.

He raised his chin as the storm slammed into Urithiru, roughly at the height of its third tier.

All went white. Then Dalinar appeared in the ancient palace—the large open room with sandstone pillars and a balcony that looked out on an antiquated version of Kholinar. Nohadon strode through the center of the pillared chamber. This was the youthful Nohadon, not the elderly version from his recent dream.

Dalinar had taken the place of a guardsman, near the doors. A slender Parshendi woman appeared beside the king, in the spot Dalinar had occupied so long ago. Her skin was marbled red and white in a complex pattern, and she had long orange-red hair. She looked down with red eyes, surprised by her sudden appearance and the robes she wore, those of an advisor to the king.

Nohadon began speaking to her as if she were his friend Karm. “I don’t know what to do, old friend.”

Odium sees that a vision has begun, the Stormfather warned Dalinar. The enemy is focusing on us. He comes.

“Can you hold him back?”

I am but a shadow of a god. His power vastly outstrips my own. He sounded smaller than Dalinar was accustomed to. Like the quintessential bully, the Stormfather didn’t know how to face someone stronger than himself.

“Can you hold him back? I need time to talk to her.”

I will … try.

Good enough. Unfortunately, it meant that Dalinar didn’t have time to let this Parshendi woman experience the vision in full. He strode toward her and Nohadon.

Venli turned around. Where was she? This wasn’t Marat. Had Odium summoned her again?

No. It’s the wrong storm. He doesn’t come during highstorms.

A young Alethi male in robes was blathering at her. She ignored him, biting her hand to see if she could feel the pain.

She could. She shook her hand and looked down at the robes she wore. This couldn’t be a dream. It was too real.

“My friend?” the Alethi man asked. “Are you well? I realize that events have taken their toll on us all, but—”

Footsteps rang loudly on the stone as another Alethi man approached, wearing a crisp blue uniform. White dusted the hair at his temples, and his face wasn’t as … round as other human faces. His features could almost have been those of a listener, even if that nose was wrong and the face bore far more creases than a listener’s ever would.

Wait … she thought, attuning Curiosity. Is that …

“Disturbance on the battlefield, sir,” the older man said to her companion. “You are needed immediately.”

“What is this? I didn’t hear—”

“They didn’t say what it was, Your Majesty, only that you are urgently requested.”

The human king drew his lips to a tight line, and then—obviously frustrated—stalked toward the doorway. “Come,” he said to Venli.

The older man grabbed her arm above the elbow. “Don’t,” he said softly. “We need to talk.”

This is the Alethi warlord.

“My name is Dalinar Kholin,” the man said. “I lead the Alethi, and you’re seeing a vision of past events. Only your mind has been transported, not your body. We two are the only real people here.”

She yanked her arm out of his hand and attuned Irritation. “How … why have you brought me here?”

“I want to talk.”

“Of course you do. Now that you’re losing, now that we’ve seized your capital, now you want to talk. What of the years spent slaughtering my people on the Shattered Plains?” It had been a game to them. Listener spy reports had shown the humans had enjoyed the sport on the Shattered Plains. Claiming wealth, and listener lives, as part of a grand contest.

“We were willing to talk, when you sent your emissary,” Dalinar said. “The Shardbearer. I’m willing to talk again now. I want to forget old grievances, even those personal to me.”

Venli walked away, still attuned to Irritation. “How have you brought me to this place? Is this a prison?” Is this your work, Odium? Testing my loyalty with a false vision of the enemy?

She was using the old rhythms. She’d never been able to do that when Odium’s attention had been on her.

“I’ll send you back soon,” Kholin said, catching up to her. Though he was not short for a human, her current form was a good six inches taller than he was. “Please, just hear me out. I need to know. What would a truce between our people cost?”

“A truce?” she asked to Amusement, stopping near the balcony. “A truce?”

“Peace. No Desolation. No war. What would it cost?”

“Well, for a start, it would cost your kingdom.”

He grimaced. His words were dead, like those of all humans, but he wore his feelings on his face. So much passion and emotion.

Is that why the spren betrayed us for them?

“What is Alethkar to you?” he said. “I can help you build a new nation on the Shattered Plains. I will give you laborers to raise cities, ardents to teach any skill you want. Wealth, as payment in ransom for Kholinar and its people. A formal apology. Whatever you demand.”

“I demand that we keep Alethkar.”

His face became a mask of pain, his brow furrowed. “Why must you live there? To you, Alethkar is a place to conquer. But it’s my homeland.”

She attuned Reprimand. “Don’t you understand? The people who live there—the singers, my cousins—are from Alethkar. That is their homeland too. The only difference between them and you is that they were born as slaves, and you as their master!”

He winced. “Perhaps some other accommodation, then. A … dividing of the kingdom? A parshman highprince?” He seemed shocked to be considering it.

She attuned Resolve. “Your tone implies you know that would be impossible. There can be no accommodation, human. Send me from this place. We can meet on the battlefield.”

“No.” He seized her arm again. “I don’t know what the accommodation will be, but we can find one. Let me prove to you that I want to negotiate, instead of fight.”

“You can start,” she said to Irritation, pulling away from him, “by not assaulting me.”

She wasn’t certain she could fight him, honestly. Her current body was tall, but fragile. And in truth, she’d never been proficient at battle, even during the days when she’d taken an appropriate form.

“At least let us try a negotiation,” he said. “Please.”

He didn’t sound very pleading. He’d grown stern, face like a stone, glaring. With the rhythms, you could infuse your tone with the mood you wished to convey, even if your emotions weren’t cooperating. Humans didn’t have that tool. They were as dull as the dullest slave.

A sudden thump resounded in the vision. Venli attuned Anxiety and rushed out onto the balcony. A half-destroyed city stretched below, where a battle had happened, dead heaped in piles.

That pounding sounded again. The … the air was breaking. The clouds and sky seemed to be a mural painted on an enormous dome ceiling, and as the pounds continued, a web of cracks appeared overhead.

Beyond them shone a vivid yellow light.

“He’s here,” she whispered, then waved toward it. “That’s why there can’t be a negotiation, human. He knows we don’t need one. You want peace? Surrender. Give yourselves up and hope that he doesn’t care to destroy you.”

A faint hope, considering what Rine had said to her about exterminating the humans.

With the next pound, the sky fractured and a hole appeared overhead, a powerful light shining beyond. The very shards of the air—broken like a mirror—were sucked into that light.

A pulse of power blasted from the hole, shaking the city with a terrible vibration. It tossed Venli to the balcony’s floor. Kholin reached to help her, but a second pulse caused him to fall as well.

The bricks in the room’s wall separated from one another and began to float apart. The boards that made up the balcony began to lift, nails floating into the sky. A guard ran to the balcony, but stumbled, and his very skin started to separate into water and a dried husk.

Everything just … came apart.

A wind rose around Venli, pulling debris toward that hole in the sky, and the brilliant, terrible light beyond. Boards shredded to splinters; bricks floated past her head. She growled, the Rhythm of Resolve thumping inside her as she grabbed and clung to parts of the floor that hadn’t yet separated.

That burning. She knew it well, the terrible pain of Odium’s heat scalding her skin, scorching her until her very bones—somehow still able to feel—became ash. It happened every time he gave her orders. What worse thing would he do if he found her fraternizing with the enemy?

She attuned Determination and crawled away from the light. Escape! She reached the chamber beyond the balcony and lurched to her feet, trying to run. The wind pulled at her, making each step a struggle.

Overhead, the ceiling separated in a single magnificent burst—each brick exploding away from the others, then streaming toward the void. The pieces of the unfortunate guard rose after them, a sack drained of grain, a puppet with no controlling hand.

Venli dropped to the ground again and continued crawling, but the stones of the floor separated, floating upward with her on them. Soon, she was scrambling precariously from one floating piece of stone to another. The Rhythm of Resolve still attuned, she dared to glance backward. The hole had widened, and the all-consuming light feasted on the streams of refuse.

She turned away, desperate to do what she could to delay her own burning. Then … she stopped and looked back again. Dalinar Kholin stood on the balcony. And he was glowing.

Neshua Kadal. Radiant Knight.

Without meaning to, she attuned the Rhythm of Awe. Around Kholin, the balcony was stable. Boards trembled and quivered at his feet, but did not move into the sky. The balcony railing had ripped apart to either side of him, but where he held to it with a firm grip, it remained secure.

He was her enemy, and yet …

Long ago, these humans had resisted her gods. Yes, the enslavement of her cousins—the singers—was impossible to ignore. Still, the humans had fought. And had won.

The listeners remembered this as a song sung to the Rhythm of Awe. Neshua Kadal.

The calm, gentle light spread from Dalinar Kholin’s hand to the railing, then down into the floor. Boards and stones sank down from the air, reknitting. Venli’s current block of stone settled back into place. All through the city, buildings burst apart and zoomed upward, but the walls of this tower returned to their positions.

Venli immediately made for the steps downward. If whatever Kholin was doing stopped, she wanted to be on solid rock. She wound her way to the ground floor, then—once on the street—she positioned herself near the balcony and Kholin’s influence.

Above, Odium’s light went out.

Stones and splinters rained down on the city, crashing about her. Dried bodies dropped like discarded clothing. Venli pressed back against the tower wall, attuning Anxiety, raising her arm against the dust of the debris.

The hole remained in the sky, though the light was gone from behind it. Below, the rubbled remains of the city seemed … a sham. No cries of fear, no moans of pain. Bodies were just husks, skins lying empty on the ground.

A sudden pounding broke the air behind her, opening another hole, lower down and near the edge of the city. The sky crumbled into the gap, revealing that hateful light again. It consumed everything near it—wall, buildings, even the ground disintegrating and flowing into the maw.

Dust and debris washed over Venli in a furious wind. She pressed against the stone wall, clinging to one of the balcony’s supports. Terrible heat washed across her from the distant hole.

Clamping her eyes shut, she tightened her grip. He could come claim her, but she would not let go.

And what of the grand purpose? What of the power he offers? Did she still want those things? Or was that merely something to grasp onto, now that she had brought about the end of her people?

She gritted her teeth. In the distance, she heard a quiet rhythm. Somehow it sounded over the roar of the wind, the clacking of dust and stones. The Rhythm of Anxiety?

She opened her eyes, and saw Timbre fighting against the wind in an attempt to reach her. Bursts of light exploded from the little spren in frantic rings.

Buildings crumbled along the street. The entire city was collapsing away—even the palace broke apart, all save this one patch near the balcony.

The little spren changed to the Rhythm of the Lost and began to slide backward.

Venli shouted and released the pillar. She immediately was pushed with the wind—but although she wasn’t in stormform any longer, this was a form of power, incredibly nimble. She controlled her fall, going down on her side and skidding on the stones, feet toward the oppressive light. As she neared the little spren, Venli jammed her foot into a cleft in the street, then grabbed a crack in a broken stone, pulling herself to a halt. With her other hand, she twisted and snatched Timbre from the air.

Touching Timbre felt like touching silk being blown by a wind. As Venli folded her left hand around the spren, she felt a pulsing warmth. Timbre pulsed to Praise as Venli pulled her close to her breast.

Great, Venli thought, lowering her head against the wind, her face against the ground, holding on to the cleft in the rock with her right hand. Now we can fall together.

She had one hope. To hold on, and hope that eventually …

The heat faded. The wind stilled. Debris came clattering back to the ground, though the fall was less clamorous this time. Not only had the wind been pulling sideways rather than up, there simply wasn’t much debris left.

Venli rose, covered in dust, her face and hands cut by chips of stone. Timbre pulsed softly in her hand.

The city was basically gone. No more than the occasional outline of a building foundation and the remains of the strange rock formations known as the windblades. Even those had been weathered down to knobs five or six feet tall. The only structure in the city that remained was a quarter of the tower where Kholin had been standing.

Behind her was a black, gaping hole into nothingness.

The ground trembled.

Oh no.

Something beat against the stones underneath her. The very ground began to shake and crumble. Venli ran toward the broken palace right as everything—at last—fell apart. The ground, the remaining foundations, even the air seemed to disintegrate.

A chasm opened beneath her, and Venli leaped, trying to reach the other side. She came up a few feet short, and plummeted into the hole. Falling, she twisted in the air, reaching for the collapsing sky with one hand and clutching Timbre in the other.

Above, the man in the blue uniform leaped into the chasm.

He fell beside the hole’s perimeter, and stretched one hand toward Venli. His other ground against the rock wall, hand scraping the stone. Something flashed around his arm. Lines of light, a framework that covered his body. His fingers didn’t bleed as they scraped the stone.

Around her, the rocks—the air itself—became more substantial. In defiance of the heat below, Venli slowed just enough that her fingers met those of Kholin.

Go.

She crashed to the floor of her cave back in Marat, the vision gone. Sweating, panting, she opened her left fist. To her relief, Timbre floated out, pulsing with a hesitant rhythm.

Dalinar dissolved into pure pain.

He felt himself being ripped apart, flayed, shredded. Each piece of him removed and allowed to hurt in isolation. A punishment, a retribution, a personalized torment.

It could have persisted for an eternity. Instead, blessedly, the agony faded, and he came to himself.

He knelt on an endless plain of glowing white stone. Light coalesced beside him, forming into a figure dressed in gold and white, holding a short scepter.

“What were you seeing?” Odium asked, curious. He tapped his scepter on the ground like a cane. Nohadon’s palace—where Dalinar had been moments before—materialized out of light beside them. “Ah, this one again? Looking for answers from the dead?”

Dalinar squeezed his eyes shut. What a fool he had been. If there had ever been a hope of peace, he’d probably destroyed it by pulling that Parshendi woman into a vision and subjecting her to Odium’s horrors.

“Dalinar, Dalinar,” Odium said. He settled down on a seat formed from light, then rested one hand on Dalinar’s shoulder. “It hurts, doesn’t it? Yes. I know pain. I am the only god who does. The only one who cares.”

“Can there be peace?” Dalinar asked, his voice ragged. Speaking was hard. He’d felt himself being ripped apart in the light moments before.

“Yes, Dalinar,” Odium said. “There can be. There will be.”

“After you destroy Roshar.”

“After you destroy it, Dalinar. I am the one who will rebuild it.”

“Agree to a contest between champions,” Dalinar forced out. “Let us … let us find a way to…” He trailed off.

How could he fight this thing?

Odium patted Dalinar’s shoulder. “Be strong, Dalinar. I have faith in you, even when you don’t have it in yourself. Though it will hurt for a time, there is an end. Peace is in your future. Push through the agony. Then you will be victorious, my son.”

The vision faded, and Dalinar found himself back in the upper room of Urithiru. He collapsed into the seat he’d placed there, Navani taking his arm, concerned.

Through his bond, Dalinar sensed weeping. The Stormfather had kept Odium back, but storms, he had paid a price. The most powerful spren on Roshar—embodiment of the tempest that shaped all life—was crying like a child, whispering that Odium was too strong.

110. A Million Stars

Captain Notum gave the command, and two of the sailors unlatched a section of the hull, exposing the crashing waves of beads just beyond.

Shallan put her freehand on the frame of the open cargo door and leaned out over the churning depths. Adolin tried to tug her back, but she remained in place.

She’d chosen to wear Veil’s outfit today, in part for the pockets. She carried three larger gemstones; Kaladin carried four others. Their broams had all run out of Stormlight. Even these larger, unset gems were getting close to failing. Hopefully they would last long enough to get them to Thaylen City and the Oathgate.

Beyond the waves—so close that the sailors feared hidden rocks beneath the beads—a dark landscape interrupted the horizon. The inverse of Longbrow’s Straits, a place where trees grew tall, forming a black jungle of glass plants.

A sailor clomped down the steps into the hold and barked something at Captain Notum. “Your enemies are close now,” the captain translated.

Honor’s Path had made a heroic effort these last few hours, pushing its mandras to exhaustion—and it hadn’t been nearly enough. The Fused were slower than Kaladin could go, but they were still far faster than the ship.

Shallan looked at the captain; his bearded face, which glowed with a soft, phantom light, betrayed nothing of what must have been a powerful conflict for him. Turn over the captives to the enemy and perhaps save his crew? Or set them free, and hope the Ancient Daughter could escape?

A door at the back of the hold opened, and Kaladin led Syl from her cabin. The captain had only now given permission to release her, as if wishing to delay the decision until the last possible moment. Syl’s color seemed muted, and she clung to Kaladin’s arm, unsteady. Was she going to be able to make it to shore with them?

She’s a spren. She doesn’t need air. She’ll be fine. Hopefully.

“Go, then,” the captain said. “And be swift. I cannot promise that my crew, once captured, will be able to keep this secret for long.” Apparently it was difficult to kill spren, but hurting them was quite easy.

Another sailor released Adolin’s sword spren from her cabin. She didn’t look as weathered as Syl—one place seemed as good as another to her.

Kaladin led Syl over.

“Ancient Daughter,” the captain said, bowing his head.

“Won’t meet my eyes, Notum?” Syl said. “I suppose locking me away here isn’t too different from all those days you spent running about at Father’s whims back home.”

He didn’t reply, but instead turned away.

With Syl and the deadeye joining them, that only left one person. Azure lounged by the steps, wearing her breastplate and cloak, arms folded.

“You sure you won’t change your mind?” Shallan asked.

Azure shook her head.

“Azure,” Kaladin said. “I was too harsh earlier. That doesn’t mean I—”

“It’s not that,” she said. “I simply have a different thread to chase, and besides, I left my men to fight these monsters in Kholinar. Doesn’t feel right to do the same again.” She smiled. “Don’t fear for me, Stormblessed. You will have a much better chance if I stay here—as will these sailors. When you boys next meet the swordsman who taught you that morning kata, warn him that I’m looking for him.”

“Zahel?” Adolin said. “You know Zahel?”

“We’re old friends,” she said. “Notum, have your sailors been cutting those bales of cloth into the shapes I requested?”

“Yes,” the captain said. “But I don’t understand—”

“You soon will.” She gave Kaladin a lazy salute. He returned it, sharper. Then she nodded to them and walked up toward the main deck.

The ship crashed through a large wave of beads, sending some through the open cargo deck doors. Sailors with brooms started brushing them back toward the opening.

“Are you going?” the captain said to Shallan. “Every moment you delay increases the danger to us all.” He still wouldn’t look at Syl.

Right, Shallan thought. Well, someone had to start the party. She took Adolin by one hand and Pattern by the other. Kaladin linked hands with Pattern and Syl, and Adolin grabbed his spren. They crowded into the opening into the cargo hold, looking at the glass beads below. Churning, catching the light of a distant sun, sparkling like a million stars …

“All right,” she said. “Jump!”

Shallan threw herself off the ship, joined by the others. She crashed into the beads, which swallowed her. They seemed to slip too easily into them—like before, when she’d fallen into this ocean, it felt like something was pulling her down.

She sank into the beads, which rolled against her skin, overwhelming her senses with thoughts of trees and rocks. She fought the sensations, struggling to keep herself from thrashing too much. She clung to Adolin, but Pattern’s hand was pulled from her grip.

I can’t do this! I can’t let them claim me. I can’t—

They hit the bottom, which was shallow, here near the shore. Then Shallan finally let herself draw in Stormlight. One precious gemstone’s worth. It sustained her, calmed her. She fished in her pocket for the bead she’d picked from the bucket earlier.

When she fed the bead Stormlight, the other beads around her trembled, then pulled back, forming the walls and ceiling of a small room. The Stormlight curling from her skin illuminated the space with a faint glow. Adolin let go of her hand and fell to his knees, coughing and gasping. His deadeye just stood there, as always.

“Damnation,” Adolin said, wheezing. “Drowning with no water. It shouldn’t be so hard, should it? All we had to do was hold our breath.…”

Shallan stepped to the side of the room, listening. Yes … it was almost like she could hear the beads whispering to her beneath their clattering. She plunged her hand through the wall and her fingers brushed cloth. She grabbed hold, and a moment later Kaladin seized her arm and pulled himself into the room made from beads, stumbling and falling to his knees.

He wasn’t glowing.

“You didn’t use a gemstone?” Shallan asked.

“Almost had to,” he said. He took a few deep breaths, then stood up. “But we need to conserve those.” He turned around. “Syl?”

A disturbance at the other side of the chamber announced someone approaching. Whoever it was wasn’t able to get in until Shallan walked over and broke the surface of the bead wall with her hand. Pattern entered and looked around the room, humming happily. “Mmm. A nice pattern, Shallan.”

“Syl,” Kaladin repeated. “We jumped hand-in-hand, but she let go. Where—”

“She’ll be fine,” Shallan said.

“Mmm,” Pattern agreed. “Spren need no air.”

Kaladin took a deep breath, then nodded. He started pacing anyway, so Shallan settled down on the ground to wait, pack in her lap. They each carried a change of clothing, three water jugs, and some of the food Adolin had purchased. Hopefully it would be enough to reach Thaylen City.

Then she’d have to make the Oathgate work.

They waited as long as they dared, hoping the Fused had passed them by, chasing the ship. Finally, Shallan stood up and pointed. “That way.”

“You sure?” Kaladin asked.

“Yes. Even the slope agrees.” She kicked at the obsidian ground, which ran at a gentle incline.

“Right,” Adolin said. “Lock hands.”

They did so and—heart fluttering—Shallan recovered the Stormlight from her shell of a room. Beads came crashing down, enveloping her.

They started up the slope, against the tide of beads. It was more difficult than she’d imagined; the current of the shifting beads seemed determined to hold them back. Still, she had Stormlight to sustain her. They soon reached a place where the ground was too steep to walk on easily. Shallan let go of the men’s hands and scrambled up the incline.

A moment after her head broke the surface, Syl appeared on the bank, reaching down and helping Shallan up the last few feet. Beads rolled off her clothing, clattering against the ground, as the others pulled themselves onto the shore.

“I saw the enemy fly past,” Syl said. “I was hiding by the trees here.”

At her urging, they entered the forest of glass plants before settling down to recover from their escape. Shallan immediately felt herself itching for her sketchpad. These trees! The trunks were translucent; the leaves looked like they were blown from glass in a multitude of colors. Moss drooped from one branch, like melted green glass, strands hanging down in silky lines. When she touched them, they broke off.

Overhead, the clouds rippled with the mother-of-pearl iridescence that marked another highstorm in the real world. Shallan could barely see it through the canopy, but the effect on Pattern and Syl was immediate. They stood up straighter, and Syl’s wan color brightened to a healthy blue-white. Pattern’s head shifted more quickly, spinning through a dozen different cycles in a matter of minutes.

Stormlight still trailed from Shallan’s skin. She’d taken in a rather large amount of it, but hadn’t lost too much. She returned it to the gemstone, a process she didn’t quite understand, but which felt natural at the same time.

Nearby, Syl looked to the southwest with a kind of wistful, far-off expression. “Syl?” Shallan asked.

“There’s a storm that way too…” she whispered, then shook herself and seemed embarrassed.

Kaladin dug out two gemstones. “All right,” he said, “we fly.”

They’d decided to use two gemstones’ worth of Stormlight to fly inward, a gamble to get a head start on their hike—and to get away from the coast. Hopefully the Fused wouldn’t treat the honorspren too harshly. Shallan worried for them, but equally for what would happen if the Fused doubled back to search for her group.

A short flight now should deposit them far enough inland that they’d be tough to locate. Once they landed, they would hike across several days’ worth of Shadesmar landscape before reaching the island of Thaylenah, which would manifest as a lake here. Thaylen City, and its Oathgate, were on the very rim of that lake.

Kaladin Lashed them one at a time—and fortunately, his arts worked on the spren as they did humans. They took to the air and started the last leg of their journey.

111. Eila Stele

Dalinar stepped out of the Oathgate control building into Thaylen City and was met by the man he most wanted to punch in all Roshar.

Meridas Amaram stood straight in his House Sadeas uniform, clean-shaven, narrow-faced, square-jawed. Tall, orderly, with shining buttons and a sharp posture, he was the very image of a perfect Alethi officer.

“Report,” Dalinar said, hopefully keeping the dislike out of his voice.

Amaram—Sadeas—fell into step with Dalinar, and they walked to the edge of the Oathgate platform, overlooking the city. Dalinar’s guards gave them space to converse.

“Our crews have done wonders for this city, Brightlord,” Amaram said. “We focused our initial attentions on the debris outside the walls. I worried that would give an invading force too much cover—not to mention rubble to construct a ramp up to the wall.”

Indeed, the plain before the city walls—which had once housed the markets and warehouses of the docks—was completely clear. A killing field, interrupted by the occasional outline of a broken foundation. The Almighty only knew how the Thaylen military had allowed a collection of buildings outside the walls in the first place. That would have been a nightmare to defend.

“We shored up positions where the wall was weakened,” Amaram continued, gesturing. “It’s not high by Kholinar standards, but is an impressive fortification nonetheless. We cleared out the buildings right inside to provide staging and resource dumps, and my army is camped there. We then helped with general reconstruction.”

“The city looks far better,” Dalinar said. “Your men did well.”

“Then maybe our penance can be over,” Amaram said. He said it straight, though angerspren—a pool of boiling blood—spread from beneath his right foot.

“Your work here was important, soldier. You didn’t only rebuild a city; you built the trust of the Thaylen people.”

“Of course.” Amaram added, more softly, “And I do see the tactical importance of knowing the enemy fortifications.”

You fool. “The Thaylens are not our enemies.”

“I misspoke,” Amaram said. “Yet I cannot ignore that the Kholin troops have been deployed to the border between our kingdom and Jah Keved. Your men get to liberate our homeland, while mine spend their days digging in rocks. You do realize the effect this has on their morale, particularly since many of them still assume you assassinated their highprince.”

“I hope that their current leader has worked to disabuse them of such false notions.”

Amaram finally turned to look Dalinar in the eyes. Those angerspren were still there, though his tone was crisp and militaristic. “Brightlord. I know you for a realist. I’ve modeled my career after yours. Frankly, even if you did kill him—which I know you must deny—I would respect you for it. Torol was a liability to this nation.

“Let me prove to you that I am not the same. Storms, Dalinar! I’m your best frontline general, and you know it. Torol spent years wasting me because my reputation intimidated him. Don’t make the same mistake. Use me. Let me fight for Alethkar, not kiss the feet of Thaylen merchants! I—”

“Enough,” Dalinar snapped. “Follow your orders. That is how you’ll prove yourself to me.”

Amaram stepped back, then—after a deliberate pause—saluted. He spun on his heel and marched down into the city.

That man … Dalinar thought. Dalinar had intended to tell him that this island would host the front lines in the war, but the conversation had slipped from him. Well, Amaram might quickly get the fighting he wanted—a fact he would discover soon enough, at the planning meeting.

Boots on stone sounded behind him as a group of men in blue uniforms joined him at the rim of the plateau. “Permission to stab him a little, sir,” said Teft, the bridgeman leader.

“How do you stab someone ‘a little,’ soldier?”

“I could do it,” Lyn said. “I’ve only started training with a spear. We could claim it was an accident.”

“No, no,” Lopen said. “You want to stab him a little? Let my cousin Huio do it, sir. He’s the expert on little things.”

“Short joke?” Huio said in his broken Alethi. “Be glad not short temper.”

“I’m just trying to involve you, Huio. I know that most people overlook you. It’s very easy to do, you see.…”

“Attention!” Dalinar snapped, though he found himself smiling. They scrambled into ranks. Kaladin had trained them well.

“You’ve got”—Dalinar checked the clock on his arm—“thirty-seven minutes until the meeting, men. And, er, women. Don’t be late.”

They rushed off, chatting among themselves. Navani, Jasnah, and Renarin joined him soon after, and his wife gave him a sly smile as she noticed him checking his arm clock again. Storming woman had gotten him to start arriving early for appointments just by strapping a device to his arm.

As they gathered, Fen’s son climbed up onto the Oathgate platform and greeted Dalinar warmly. “We have rooms for you, above the temple where we’ll be meeting. I … well, we know you don’t need them, since you can simply Oathgate home in an instant…”

“We’ll take them gladly, son,” Dalinar said. “I could use a little refreshment and time to think.”

The young man grinned. Dalinar never would get used to those spiked eyebrows.

They climbed down from the platform, and a Thaylen guard gave the all clear. A scribe sent word via spanreed that the next transfer could take place. Dalinar paused to watch. A minute later a flash occurred, surrounding the Oathgate with light. The Oathgates were under almost perpetual use these days—Malata was running the device today, as was becoming her duty more often.

“Uncle?” Jasnah said as he lingered.

“Merely curious about who’s coming in next.”

“I could pull the records for you…” Jasnah said.

The new arrivals turned out to be a group of Thaylen merchants in pompous clothing. They made their way down the larger ramp, surrounded by guards and accompanied by several men carrying large chests.

“More bankers,” Fen’s son said. “The quiet economic collapse of Roshar continues.”

“Collapse?” Dalinar said, surprised.

“Bankers all across the continent have been pulling out of cities,” Jasnah said, pointing. “See that fortress of a building at the front of the Ancient Ward down below? That’s the Thaylen Gemstone Reserve.”

“Local governments are going to have difficulty financing troops after this,” Fen’s son said with a grimace. “They’ll have to write here with authorized spanreeds and get spheres shipped to them. It’s going to be a nightmare of logistics for anyone not close to an Oathgate.”

Dalinar frowned. “Couldn’t you encourage the merchants to stay and support the cities they were in?”

“Sir!” he replied. “Sir, force the merchants to obey military authority?”

“Forget I asked,” Dalinar said, sharing a look with Navani and Jasnah. Navani smiled fondly at what was probably a huge social misstep, but he suspected Jasnah agreed with him. She’d probably have seized the banks and used them to fund the war.

Renarin lingered, watching the merchants. “How big are the gemstones they’ve brought?” he asked.

“Brightlord?” Fen’s son asked, glancing toward Dalinar for help. “They’ll be spheres. Normal spheres.”

“Any larger gemstones?” Renarin asked. He turned toward them. “Anywhere in the city?”

“Sure, lots of them,” Fen’s son said. “Some really nice pieces, like in every city. Um … why, Brightlord?”

“Because,” Renarin said. He didn’t say anything more.

Dalinar splashed water onto his face from a basin in his rooms, which were in a villa above the temple of Talenelat, on the top tier of the city—the Royal Ward. He wiped his face with the towel and reached out to the Stormfather. “Feeling any better?”

I do not feel like men. I do not sicken like men. I am. The Stormfather rumbled. I could have been destroyed, though. Splintered into a thousand pieces. I live only because the enemy fears exposing himself to a strike from Cultivation.

“So she lives still, then? The third god?”

Yes. You’ve met her.

“I … I have?”

You do not remember. But normally, she hides. Cowardice.

“Perhaps wisdom,” Dalinar said. “The Nightwatcher—”

Is not her.

“Yes, you’ve said. The Nightwatcher is like you. Are there others, though? Spren like you, or the Nightwatcher? Spren that are shadows of gods?”

There is … a third sibling. They are not with us.

“In hiding?”

No. Slumbering.

“Tell me more.”

No.

“But—”

No! Leave them alone. You hurt them enough.

“Fine,” Dalinar said, setting aside the towel and leaning against the window. The air smelled of salt, reminding him of something not yet clear in his mind. One last hole in his memory. A trip by sea.

And his visit to the Valley.

He glanced at the dresser beside the washbasin, which held a book written in unfamiliar Thaylen glyphs. A little note beside it, in Alethi glyphs, read, “Pathway. King.” Fen had left him a gift, a copy of The Way of Kings in Thaylen.

“I’ve done it,” Dalinar said. “I’ve united them, Stormfather. I’ve kept my oath, and have brought men together, instead of dividing them. Perhaps this can be penance in some small way, for the pain I’ve caused.”

The Stormfather rumbled in reply.

“Did he … care about what we felt?” Dalinar asked. “Honor, the Almighty? Did he truly care about men’s pain?”

He did. Then, I didn’t understand why, but now I do. Odium lies when he claims to have sole ownership of passion. The Stormfather paused. I remember … at the end … Honor was more obsessed with oaths. There were times when the oath itself was more important than the meaning behind it. But he was not a passionless monster. He loved humankind. He died defending you.

Dalinar found Navani entertaining Taravangian in the common area of their villa. “Your Majesty?” Dalinar asked.

“You could call me Vargo, if you wish,” Taravangian said, pacing without looking at Dalinar. “It is what they called me as a youth.…”

“What’s wrong?” Dalinar asked.

“I’m just worried. My scholars … It is nothing, Dalinar. Nothing. Silliness. I am … I am well today.” He stopped and squeezed his pale grey eyes shut.

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But it is not a day to be heartless. So I worry.”

Heartless? What did he mean?

“Do you need to sit out the meeting?” Navani asked.

Taravangian shook his head quickly. “Come. Let us go. I will be better … better once we’ve started. I’m sure.”

As Dalinar stepped into the temple’s main chamber, he found that he was looking forward to the meeting.

What a strange revelation. He’d spent so much of his youth and middle years dreading politics and the endless rambling of meetings. Now he was excited. He could see the outlines of something grand in this room. The Azish delegation warmly greeted Queen Fen, with Vizier Noura even giving Fen a poem she’d written as thanks for the Thaylen hospitality. Fen’s son made a point of sitting next to Renarin and chatting with him. Emperor Yanagawn looked comfortable on his throne, surrounded by allies and friends.

Bridge Four joked with the guards of Highprince Aladar, while Lift the Edgedancer perched on a windowsill nearby, listening with a cocked head. In addition to the five scout women in uniform, two women in havahs had joined Bridge Four. They carried notepads and pencils, and had sewn Bridge Four patches to the upper sleeves of their dresses—the place where scribes commonly wore their platoon insignia.

Alethi highprinces, Azish viziers, Knights Radiant, and Thaylen admirals all in one room. The prime of Emul talking tactics with Aladar, who had been aiding the beleaguered country. General Khal and Teshav speaking with the princess of Yezier, who was eyeing Halam Khal—their eldest son—standing tall in his father’s Shardplate by the door. There was talk of a political union there. It would be the first in centuries between an Alethi and a Makabaki princedom.

Unite them. A voice whispered the words in Dalinar’s mind, echoing with the same resonant sound from months ago, when Dalinar had first started seeing the visions.

“I’m doing so,” Dalinar whispered back.

Unite them.

“Stormfather, is that you? Why do you keep saying this to me?”

I said nothing.

It was growing hard to distinguish between his own thoughts and what came from the Stormfather. Visions and memories struggled for space in Dalinar’s brain. To clear his mind, he strode around the perimeter of the circular temple chamber. Murals on the walls—ones he had healed with his abilities—depicted the Herald Talenelat during several of his many, many last stands against the Voidbringers.

A large map had been mounted on one wall depicting the Tarat Sea and surrounding areas, with markers noting the locations of their fleet. The room quieted as Dalinar stepped up and studied this. He glanced for a moment out the doors of the temple, toward the bay. Already, a few of the faster ships of their fleet had arrived, flying the flags of both Kharbranth and Azir.

“Your Excellency,” Dalinar said to Yanagawn. “Could you share news of your troops?”

The emperor gave leave for Noura to report. The main fleet was less than a day away. Their outriders—or scout ships, as she called them—had spotted no indications of the enemy advance. They’d worried that this window between storms would be when the enemy would move, but so far there was no sign.

The admirals began to discuss how to best patrol the seas while keeping Thaylen City safe. Dalinar was pleased by the conversation, mostly because the admirals seemed to think that the real danger to Thaylen City had passed. A Veden highprince had managed to get a foot scout close enough to Marat to count the ships at the docks. Well over a hundred vessels were waiting in the various coves and ports along the coast. For whatever reason, they weren’t ready to launch yet, which was a blessing.

The meeting progressed, with Fen belatedly welcoming everyone—Dalinar realized he should have let her take charge from the start. She described the defenses in Thaylen City and raised concerns from her guildmasters about Amaram’s troops. Apparently they’d been carousing.

Amaram stiffened at that. For all his faults, he liked to run a tight army.

Sometime near the end of this discussion, Dalinar noticed Renarin shifting uncomfortably in his seat. As the Azish scribes began explaining their code of rules and guidelines for the coalition, Renarin excused himself in a hoarse voice, and left.

Dalinar glanced at Navani, who seemed troubled. Jasnah stood to follow, but was interrupted by a scribe bringing her a small sheaf of documents. She accepted them and moved to Navani’s side so they could study them together.

Should we break? Dalinar thought, checking his forearm clock. They’d only been going for an hour, and the Azish were obviously excited by their guidelines.

The Stormfather rumbled.

What? Dalinar thought.

Something … something is coming. A storm.

Dalinar stood up, looking about the room, half expecting assassins to attack. His sudden motion caught the attention of one of the Azish viziers, a short man with a very large hat.

“Brightlord?” the interpreter asked at a word from the vizier.

“I…” Dalinar could feel it. “Something’s wrong.”

“Dalinar?” Fen asked. “What are you talking about?”

Spanreeds suddenly started blinking throughout the room. A dozen flashing rubies. Dalinar’s heart sidestepped. Anticipationspren rose around him, streamers whipping from the ground, as the various scribes grabbed the blinking spanreeds from boxes or belts and set them out to begin writing.

Jasnah didn’t notice that one of hers was blinking. She was too distracted by what she and Navani were reading.

“The Everstorm just hit Shinovar,” Queen Fen finally explained, reading over a scribe’s shoulder.

“Impossible!” Ialai Sadeas said. “It has only been five days since the last one! They come at nine-day intervals.”

“Yes, well, I think we have enough confirmation,” Fen said, nodding toward the spanreeds.

“The storm is too new,” Teshav said. She pulled her shawl closer as she read. “We don’t know it well enough to truly judge its patterns. The reports from Steen say it is particularly violent this time, moving faster than before.”

Dalinar felt cold.

“How long until it reaches us?” Fen asked.

“Hours yet,” Teshav said. “It can take a full day for the highstorm to get from one side of Roshar to the other, and the Everstorm is slower. Usually.”

“It’s moving faster though,” Yanagawn said through his interpreter. “How far away are our ships? How are we going to shelter them?”

“Peace, Your Excellency,” Fen said. “The ships are close, and the new docks miles farther along the coast are sheltered from both east and west. We merely need to make sure the fleet goes directly there, instead of stopping here to drop off troops.”

The room buzzed with conversations as the various groups received reports from their contacts in Tashikk, who in turn would be relaying information from contacts in Iri, Steen, or even Shinovar.

“We should break for a short time,” Dalinar told them. The others agreed, distracted, and separated into groups scattered about the room. Dalinar settled back in his seat, releasing a held breath. “That wasn’t so bad. We can deal with this.”

That wasn’t it, the Stormfather said. He rumbled, his concerned voice growing very soft as he continued, There’s more.

Dalinar jumped back to his feet, instincts prompting him to thrust his hand to the side, fingers splayed, to summon a Blade he no longer possessed. Bridge Four responded immediately, dropping food from the table of victuals, grabbing spears. Nobody else seemed to notice.

But … notice what? No attack came. Conversations continued on all sides. Jasnah and Navani were still huddled side by side, reading. Navani gasped softly, safehand going to her mouth. Jasnah looked at Dalinar, lips drawn to a line.

Their message wasn’t about the storm, Dalinar thought, pulling his chair over to them. “All right,” he whispered, though they were far enough from other groups to have some privacy. “What is it?”

“A breakthrough was made in translating the Dawnchant,” Navani whispered. “Teams in Kharbranth and the monasteries of Jah Keved have arrived at the news separately, using the seed we provided through the visions. We are finally receiving translations.”

“That’s good, right?” Dalinar said.

Jasnah sighed. “Uncle, the piece that historians have been most eager to translate is called the Eila Stele. Other sources claim it is old, perhaps the oldest document in written memory, said to be scribed by the Heralds themselves. From the translation that finally came in today, the carving appears to be the account of someone who witnessed the very first coming of the Voidbringers, long, long ago. Even before the first Desolation.”

“Blood of my fathers,” Dalinar said. Before the first Desolation? The last Desolation had happened more than four thousand years ago. They were speaking of events lost to time. “And … we can read it?”

“ ‘They came from another world,’ ” Navani said, reading from her sheet. “ ‘Using powers that we have been forbidden to touch. Dangerous powers, of spren and Surges. They destroyed their lands and have come to us begging.

“ ‘We took them in, as commanded by the gods. What else could we do? They were a people forlorn, without home. Our pity destroyed us. For their betrayal extended even to our gods: to spren, stone, and wind.

“ ‘Beware the otherworlders. The traitors. Those with tongues of sweetness, but with minds that lust for blood. Do not take them in. Do not give them succor. Well were they named Voidbringers, for they brought the void. The empty pit that sucks in emotion. A new god. Their god.

“ ‘These Voidbringers know no songs. They cannot hear Roshar, and where they go, they bring silence. They look soft, with no shell, but they are hard. They have but one heart, and it cannot ever live.’ ”

She lowered the page.

Dalinar frowned. It’s nonsense, he thought. Is it claiming that the first parshmen who came to invade had no carapace? But how would the writer know that parshmen should have carapace? And what is this about songs.…

It clicked. “That was not written by a human,” Dalinar whispered.

“No, Uncle,” Jasnah said softly. “The writer was a Dawnsinger, one of the original inhabitants of Roshar. The Dawnsingers weren’t spren, as theology has often postulated. Nor were they Heralds. They were parshmen. And the people they welcomed to their world, the otherworlders…”

“Were us,” Dalinar whispered. He felt cold, like he’d been dunked in icy water. “They named us Voidbringers.”

Jasnah sighed. “I have suspected this for a time. The first Desolation was the invasion of humankind onto Roshar. We came here and seized this land from the parshmen—after we accidentally used Surgebinding to destroy our previous world. That is the truth that destroyed the Radiants.”

The Stormfather rumbled in his mind. Dalinar stared at that sheet of paper in Navani’s hand. Such a small, seemingly unimportant object to have created such a pit inside of him.

It’s true, isn’t it? he thought at the Stormfather. Storms … we’re not the defenders of our homeland.

We’re the invaders.

Nearby, Taravangian argued softly with his scribes, then finally stood up. He cleared his throat, and the various groups slowly stilled. The Azish contingent had servants pull their chairs back toward the group, and Queen Fen returned to her place, though she didn’t sit. She stood, arms folded, looking perturbed.

“I have had disconcerting news,” Taravangian said. “Over the spanreed, just now. It involves Brightlord Kholin. I don’t wish to be objectionable…”

“No,” Fen said. “I’ve heard it too. I’m going to need an explanation.”

“Agreed,” Noura said.

Dalinar stood up. “I realize this is troubling. I … I haven’t had time to adjust. Perhaps we could adjourn and worry about the storm first? We can discuss this later.”

“Perhaps,” Taravangian said. “Yes, perhaps. But it is a problem. We have believed that ours is a righteous war, but this news of mankind’s origins has me disconcerted.”

“What are you talking about?” Fen said.

“The news from the Veden translators? Ancient texts, manifesting that humans came from another world?”

“Bah,” Fen said. “Dusty books and ideas for philosophers. What I want to know about is this highking business!”

“Highking?” Yanagawn asked through an interpreter.

“I’ve an essay,” Fen said, slapping papers against her hand, “from Zetah the Voiced claiming that before King Elhokar left for Alethkar, he swore to Dalinar to accept him as emperor.”

Noura the vizier leaped to her feet. “What?”

“Emperor is an exaggeration!” Dalinar said, trying to reorient toward this unexpected attack. “It’s an internal Alethi matter.”

Navani stood beside him. “My son was merely concerned about his political relation to Dalinar. We have prepared an explanation for you all, and our highprinces can confirm that we are not looking to expand our influence to your nations.”

“And this?” Noura said, holding up some pages. “Were you preparing an explanation for this as well?”

“What is that?” Dalinar asked, bracing himself.

“Accounts of two visions,” Noura said, “that you didn’t share with us. In which you supposedly met and fraternized with a being known as Odium.”

Behind Dalinar, Lift gasped. He glanced toward her, and the men of Bridge Four, who were muttering among themselves.

This is bad, Dalinar thought. Too much. Too fast for me to control.

Jasnah leaped to her feet. “This is obviously a concentrated attempt to destroy our reputation. Someone deliberately released all this information at the same time.”

“Is it true?” Noura asked in Alethi. “Dalinar Kholin, have you met with our enemy?”

Navani gripped his arm. Jasnah subtly shook her head: Don’t answer that.

“Yes,” Dalinar said.

“Did he,” Noura asked pointedly, “tell you you’d destroy Roshar?”

“What of this ancient record?” Taravangian said. “It claims that the Radiants already destroyed one world. Is that not what caused them to disband? They worried that their powers could not be controlled!”

“I’m still trying to wrap my mind around this highking nonsense,” Fen said. “How is it merely an ‘internal Alethi matter’ if you’ve allowed another king to swear to you?”

Everyone started talking at once. Navani and Jasnah stepped forward, responding to the attacks, but Dalinar only sank into his seat. It was all falling apart. A sword, as keen as any on a battlefield, had been rammed into the heart of his coalition.

This is what you feared, he thought. A world that turns not upon force of armies, but upon the concerns of scribes and bureaucrats.

And in that world, he had just been deftly outflanked.

112. For the Living

Kaladin remembered a woman’s kiss.

Tarah had been special. The darkeyed daughter of an assistant quartermaster, she had grown up helping with her father’s work. Though she was a hundred percent Alethi, she preferred dresses of an old-fashioned Thaylen style, which had an apronlike front with straps over the shoulders and skirts that ended right below the knee. She’d wear a buttoned shirt underneath, often in a bright color—brighter than most darkeyes could afford. Tarah knew how to squeeze the most out of her spheres.

That day, Kaladin had been sitting on a stump, shirt off, sweating. The evening was growing cold as the sun set, and he basked in the last warmth. His spear resting across his lap, he toyed with a rock of white, brown, and black. Alternating colors.

The warmth from the sun was mirrored as someone warm hugged him from behind, wrapping her arms across his chest. Kaladin rested a callused hand on Tarah’s smooth one, drinking in her scent—of starched uniforms, new leather, and other clean things.

“You’re done early,” he said. “I thought there were greenvines to outfit today.”

“I have the new girl doing the rest.”

“I’m surprised. I know how much you like this part.”

“Storms,” she said, slipping around in front of him. “They get so embarrassed when you measure them. ‘Hold on, kid. I’m not making a pass at you because I’m putting a measuring tape up against your chest, I swear.…’ ” She lifted his spear, looking it over with a critical eye, testing the balance. “I wish you’d let me requisition a new one for you.”

“I like that one. Took me forever to find one long enough.”

She peered along the length of the weapon, to make sure it was straight. She would never trust it, as she hadn’t personally requisitioned it for him. She wore green today, under a brown skirt, her black hair tied back in a tail. Slightly plump, with a round face and firm build, Tarah’s beauty was a subtle thing. Like an uncut gemstone. The more you saw of it—the more you discovered of its natural facets—the more you loved it. Until one day it struck you that you’d never known anything as wonderful.

“Any young boys among the greenvines?” Kaladin asked, standing up and pocketing Tien’s stone.

“I didn’t notice.”

He grunted, waving to Gol—one of the other squadleaders. “You know I like to watch for kids who might need a little extra looking out for.”

“I know, but I was busy. We got a caravan from Kholinar today.” She leaned close to him. “There was real flour in one of the packages. I traded in some favors. You know I’ve been wanting you to try some of my father’s Thaylen bread? I thought maybe we’d fix it tonight.”

“Your father hates me.”

“He’s coming around. Besides, he loves anyone who compliments his bread.”

“I have evening practice.”

“You just got done practicing.”

“I just got done warming up.” He looked to her, then grimaced. “I organized the evening practice, Tarah. I can’t just skip it. Besides, I thought you were going to be busy all evening. Maybe tomorrow, lunch?”

He kissed her on the cheek and reclaimed his spear. He’d taken only a step away when she spoke.

“I’m leaving, Kal,” she said from behind.

He stumbled over his own feet, then spun about. “What?”

“I’m transferring,” she said. “They offered me a scribe’s job in Mourn’s Vault, with the highprince’s house. It’s a good opportunity, particularly for someone like me.”

“But…” He gaped. “Leaving?”

“I wanted to tell you over dinner, not out here in the cold. It’s something I have to do. Father’s getting older; he’s worried he’ll end up being shipped to the Shattered Plains. If I can get work, he can join me.”

Kaladin put a hand to his head. She couldn’t just leave, could she?

Tarah walked over, stood on the tips of her toes, and kissed him lightly on the lips.

“Could you … not go?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Maybe I could get a transfer?” he said. “To the highprince’s standing house guard?”

“Would you do that?”

“I…”

No. He wouldn’t.

Not while he carried that stone in his pocket, not while the memory of his brother dying was fresh in his mind. Not while lighteyed highlords got boys killed in petty fights.

“Oh, Kal,” she whispered, then squeezed his arm. “Maybe someday you’ll learn how to be there for the living, not just for the dead.”

After she left, he got two letters from her, talking about her life in Mourn’s Vault. He had paid someone to read them to him.

He never sent responses. Because he was stupid, because he didn’t understand. Because men make mistakes when they’re young and angry.

Because she had been right.

Kaladin shouldered his harpoon, leading his companions through the strange forest. They’d flown part of the way, but needed to conserve what little Stormlight they had left.

So, they’d spent the last two days hiking. Trees and more trees, lifespren floating among them, the occasional bobbing souls of fish. Syl kept saying that they were lucky they hadn’t encountered any angerspren or other predators. To her, this forest was strangely silent, strangely empty.

The jungle-style trees had given way to taller, more statuesque ones with deep crimson trunks and limbs like burnt-red crystals that, at the ends, burst into small collections of minerals. The rugged obsidian landscape was full of deep valleys and endless towering hills. Kaladin was beginning to worry that—despite the motionless sun to provide an unerring way to gauge their heading—they were going in the wrong direction.

“Storms, bridgeboy,” Adolin said, hiking up the incline after him. “Maybe a break?”

“At the top,” Kaladin said.

Without Stormlight, Shallan trailed farthest behind, Pattern at her side. Exhaustionspren circled in the air above, like large chickens. Though she tried to push herself, she wasn’t a soldier, and often was the biggest limitation to their pace. Of course, without her mapmaking skills and memory of Thaylen City’s exact location, they probably wouldn’t have any idea which way to go.

Fortunately, there was no sign of pursuit. Still, Kaladin couldn’t help worrying that they were moving too slowly.

Be there, Tarah had told him. For the living.

He urged them up this hillside, past a section of broken ground, where the obsidian had fractured like layers of crem that hadn’t hardened properly. Worry pulled him forward. Step after relentless step.

He had to get to the Oathgate. He would not fail like he had in Kholinar.

A single glowing windspren burst alight next to him as he reached the top of the hill. Cresting it, he found himself overlooking a sea of souls. Thousands upon thousands of candle flames bobbed about in the next valley over, moving above a grand ocean of glass beads.

Thaylen City.

Adolin joined him, then finally Shallan and the three spren. Shallan sighed and settled to the ground, coughing softly from the effort of the climb.

Amid the sea of lights were two towering spren, much like the ones they’d seen in Kholinar. One sparkled a multitude of colors while the other shimmered an oily black. Both stood tall, holding spears as long as a building. The sentries of the Oathgate, and they didn’t look corrupted.

Beneath them, the device itself manifested as a large stone platform with a wide, sweeping white bridge running over the beads and to the shore.

That bridge was guarded by an entire army of enemy spren, hundreds—perhaps thousands—strong.

113. The Thing Men Do Best

Dalinar stood alone in the rooms Queen Fen had given him, staring out the window, looking west. Toward Shinovar, far beyond the horizon. A land with strange beasts like horses, chickens. And humans.

He’d left the other monarchs arguing in the temple below; anything he said only seemed to widen the rifts among them. They didn’t trust him. They’d never really trusted him. His deception proved them right.

Storms. He felt furious with himself. He should have released those visions, should have immediately told the others about Elhokar. There had simply been so much piling on top of him. His memories … his excommunication … worry for Adolin and Elhokar …

Part of him couldn’t help but be impressed by how deftly he’d been outmaneuvered. Queen Fen worried about Dalinar being genuine; the enemy had delivered perfect proof that Dalinar had hidden political motives. Noura and the Azish worried that the powers were dangerous, whispering of Lost Radiants. To them, the enemy indicated that Dalinar was being manipulated by evil visions. And to Taravangian—who spoke so often of philosophy—the enemy suggested that their moral foundation for the war was a sham.

Or maybe that dart was for Dalinar himself. Taravangian said that a king was justified in doing terrible things in the name of the state. But Dalinar …

For once, he’d assumed what he was doing was right.

Did you really think you belonged here? the Stormfather asked. That you were native to Roshar?

“Yes, maybe,” Dalinar said. “I thought … maybe we came from Shinovar originally.”

That is the land you were given, the Stormfather said. A place where the plants and animals you brought here could grow.

“We weren’t able to confine ourselves to what we were given.”

When has any man ever been content with what he has?

“When has any tyrant ever said to himself, ‘This is enough’?” Dalinar whispered, remembering words Gavilar had once spoken.

The Stormfather rumbled.

“The Almighty kept this from his Radiants,” Dalinar said. “When they discovered it, they abandoned their vows.”

It is more than that. My memory of all this is … strange. First, I was not fully awake; I was but the spren of a storm. Then I was like a child. Changed and shaped during the frantic last days of a dying god.

But I do remember. It was not only the truth of humankind’s origin that caused the Recreance. It was the distinct, powerful fear that they would destroy this world, as men like them had destroyed the one before. The Radiants abandoned their vows for that reason, as will you.

“I will not,” Dalinar said. “I won’t let my Radiants retread the fate of their predecessors.”

Won’t you?

Dalinar’s attention was drawn to a solemn group of men leaving the temple below. Bridge Four, spears held on slumped shoulders, heads bowed as they quietly marched down the steps.

Dalinar scrambled out of his villa and ran down the steps to intercept the bridgemen. “Where are you going?” he demanded.

They halted, falling into ranks at attention.

“Sir,” Teft said. “We thought we’d head back to Urithiru. We left some of the men behind, and they deserve to know about this business with the ancient Radiants.”

“What we’ve discovered doesn’t change the fact that we are being invaded,” Dalinar said.

“Invaded by people trying to reclaim their homeland,” Sigzil said. “Storms. I’d be mad too.”

“We’re supposed to be the good guys, you know?” Leyten said. “Fighting for a good cause, for once in our storming lives.”

Echoes of his own thoughts. Dalinar found he couldn’t formulate an argument against that.

“We’ll see what Kal says,” Teft replied. “Sir. All respect, sir. But we’ll see what he says. He knows the right of things, even when the rest of us don’t.”

And if he never returns? Dalinar thought. What if none of them return? It had been four weeks. How long could he keep pretending that Adolin and Elhokar were alive out there somewhere? That pain hid behind the rest, taunting him.

The bridgemen gave Dalinar their unique cross-armed salute, then left without waiting to be dismissed.

In the past, Honor was able to guard against this, the Stormfather told him. He convinced the Radiants they were righteous, even if this land hadn’t originally been theirs. Who cares what your ancestors did, when the enemy is trying to kill you right now?

But in the days leading to the Recreance, Honor was dying. When that generation of knights learned the truth, Honor did not support them. He raved, speaking of the Dawnshards, ancient weapons used to destroy the Tranquiline Halls. Honor … promised that Surgebinders would do the same to Roshar.

“Odium claimed the same thing.”

He can see the future, though only cloudily. Regardless, I … understand now as I never did before. The ancient Radiants didn’t abandon their oaths out of pettiness. They tried to protect the world. I blame them for their weakness, their broken oaths. But I also understand. You have cursed me, human, with this capacity.

The meeting in the temple seemed to be breaking up. The Azish contingent started down the steps.

“Our enemy hasn’t changed,” Dalinar said to them. “The need for a coalition is as strong as ever.”

The young emperor, being carried in a palanquin, didn’t look at him. Oddly, the Azish didn’t make for the Oathgate, instead taking a path down into the city.

Only Vizier Noura idled to speak to him. “Jasnah Kholin might be right,” she said in Azish. “The destruction of our old world, your secret visions, this business with you being highking—it seems too great a coincidence for it all to come at once.”

“Then you can see that we’re being manipulated.”

“Manipulated by the truth, Kholin,” she said, meeting his eyes. “That Oathgate is dangerous. These powers of yours are dangerous. Deny it.”

“I cannot. I will not found this coalition on lies.”

“You already have.”

He drew in a sharp breath.

Noura shook her head. “We will take the scout ships and join the fleet carrying our soldiers. Then we will wait out this storm. After that … we shall see. Taravangian has said we may use his vessels to return to our empire, without needing to use the Oathgates.”

She walked off after the emperor, eschewing the palanquin waiting to carry her.

Others drifted down the steps around him. Veden highprinces, who gave excuses. Thaylen lighteyes from their guild councils, who avoided him. The Alethi highprinces and scribes expressed solidarity—but Alethkar couldn’t do this on its own.

Queen Fen was one of the last to leave the temple.

“Will you leave me too?” Dalinar asked.

She laughed. “To go where, old hound? An army is coming this way. I still need your famous Alethi infantry; I can’t afford to throw you out.”

“Such bitterness.”

“Oh, did it show? I’m going to check on the city’s defenses; if you decide to join us, we’ll be at the walls.”

“I’m sorry, Fen,” Dalinar said, “for betraying your trust.”

She shrugged. “I don’t really think you intend to conquer me, Kholin. But oddly … I can’t help wishing I did have to worry. Best I can tell, you’ve become a good man right in time to bravely sink with this ship. That’s commendable, until I remember that the Blackthorn would have long since murdered everyone trying to sink him.”

Fen and her consort climbed into a palanquin. People continued to trickle past, but eventually Dalinar stood alone before the quiet temple.

“I’m sorry, Dalinar,” Taravangian said softly from behind. Dalinar turned, surprised to find the old man sitting on the steps. “I assumed everyone had the same information, and that it would be best to air it. I didn’t expect all of this.…”

“This isn’t your fault,” Dalinar said.

“And yet…” He stood up, then walked—slowly—down the steps. “I’m sorry, Dalinar. I fear I can no longer fight beside you.”

“Why?” Dalinar said. “Taravangian, you’re the most pragmatic ruler I’ve met! Aren’t you the one who talked to me about the importance of doing what was politically necessary!”

“And that is what I must do now, Dalinar. I wish I could explain. Forgive me.”

He ignored Dalinar’s pleas, limping down the stairs. Moving stiffly, the old man climbed into a palanquin and was carried away.

Dalinar sank down on the steps.

I tried my best to hide this, the Stormfather said.

“So we could continue living a lie?”

It is, in my experience, the thing men do best.

“Don’t insult us.”

What? Is this not what you’ve been doing, these last six years? Pretending that you aren’t a monster? Pretending you didn’t kill her, Dalinar?

Dalinar winced. He made a fist, but there was nothing here he could fight. He dropped his hand to his side, shoulders drooping. Finally, he climbed to his feet and quietly trudged up the stone steps to his villa.

THE END OF

Part Four