Chaos in Alethkar is, of course, inevitable. Watch carefully, and do not let power in the kingdom solidify. The Blackthorn could become an ally or our greatest foe, depending on whether he takes the path of the warlord or not. If he seems likely to sue for peace, assassinate him expeditiously. The risk of competition is too great.
—From the Diagram, Writings upon the Bedstand Lamp: paragraph 4 (Adrotagia’s 3rd translation from the original hieroglyphics)
The Shattered Plains had been shattered again.
Kaladin strolled across them with Szeth’s Shardblade on his shoulder. He passed heaps of rock and fresh cracks in the ground. Enormous puddles like small lakes shimmered amid huge chunks of broken stone. Just to his left, an entire plateau had crumbled into the chasms around it. The jagged, ripped-up base of the plateau had a black, charred cast to it.
“This is going to happen again?” Kaladin said. “That other storm is still out there?”
“Yes,” Syl said, sitting on his shoulder. “A new storm. It’s not of us, but of him.”
“Will it be this bad every time it passes?” Kaladin asked, surveying the wreckage. Of the plateaus he could see, only the one had been destroyed completely. But if the storm could do that to pure rock, what would it do to a city? Particularly since it blew the wrong way.
Stormfather . . . Laits would no longer be laits. Buildings that had been constructed to face away from the storms would suddenly be exposed.
“I don’t know,” Syl said softly. “This is a new thing, Kaladin. Not from before. I don’t know how it happened or what it means. Hopefully, it won’t be this bad except when a highstorm and an everstorm crash into each other.”
Kaladin grunted, picking his way over to the edge of his current plateau. He breathed in a little Stormlight, then Lashed himself upward to offset the natural pull of the ground. He became weightless. He pushed off lightly with his foot and drifted across the chasm to the next plateau.
“So how did the army vanish like that?” he asked, removing his Lashing and settling down on the rock.
“Uh . . . how should I know?” Syl said. “I was kind of distracted.”
He grunted. Well, this was the plateau where everyone had been. Perfectly round. Odd, that. On a nearby plateau, what had once been a large hill had been cracked wide open, exposing the remnants of a building inside. This perfectly circular one was far more flat, though it looked like there was a hill or something at the center. He strode in that direction.
“So they’re all spren,” he said. “Shardblades.”
Syl grew solemn.
“Dead spren,” Kaladin added.
“Dead,” Syl agreed. “Then they live again a little when someone summons them, syncing a heartbeat to their essence.”
“How can something be ‘a little’ alive?”
“We’re spren,” Syl said. “We’re forces. You can’t kill us completely. Just . . . sort of.”
“That’s perfectly clear.”
“It’s perfectly clear to us,” Syl said. “You’re the strange ones. Break a rock, and it’s still there. Break a spren, and she’s still there. Sort of. Break a person, and something leaves. Something changes. What’s left is just meat. You’re weird.”
“I’m glad we established that,” he said, stopping. He couldn’t see any evidence of the Alethi. Had they really escaped? Or had a sudden surge of the storm swept them all into the chasms? It seemed unlikely such a disaster would have left nothing behind.
Please let it not be so. He lifted Szeth’s sword off his shoulder and set it down, point first, in front of him. It sank a few inches into the rock.
“What about this?” he asked, looking over the thin, silvery weapon. An unornamented Blade. That was supposed to be odd. “It doesn’t scream when I hold it.”
“That’s because it’s not a spren,” Syl said softly.
“What is it, then?”
“Dangerous.”
She stood up from his shoulder, then walked as if down a flight of steps toward the sword. She rarely flew when she had a human form. She flew as a ribbon of light, or as a group of leaves, or as a small cloud. He’d never noticed before how odd, yet normal, it was that she stuck to the nature of the form she used.
She stopped just before the sword. “I think this is one of the Honorblades, the swords of the Heralds.”
Kaladin grunted. He’d heard of those.
“Any man who holds this weapon will become a Windrunner,” Syl explained, looking back at Kaladin. “The Honorblades are what we are based on, Kaladin. Honor gave these to men, and those men gained powers from them. Spren figured out what He’d done, and we imitated it. We’re bits of His power, after all, like this sword. Be careful with it. It is a treasure.”
“So the assassin wasn’t a Radiant.”
“No. But Kaladin, you have to understand. With this sword, someone can do what you can, but without the . . . checks a spren requires.” She touched it, then shivered visibly, her form blurring for a second. “This sword gave the assassin power to use Lashings, but it also fed upon his Stormlight. A person who uses this will need far, far more Light than you will. Dangerous levels of it.”
Kaladin reached out and took the sword by the hilt, and Syl flitted away, becoming a ribbon of light. He hefted the weapon and set it back on his shoulder before continuing on his way. Yes, there was a hill up ahead, probably a crem-covered building. As he drew closer, blessedly, he saw motion around it.
“Hello?” he called.
The figures near it stopped and turned. “Kaladin?” a familiar voice called. “Storms, is that you?”
He grinned, the figures resolving into men in blue uniforms. Teft scrambled across the rock like a madman to meet him. Others came after, shouting and laughing. Drehy, Peet, Bisig, and Sigzil, Rock towering over them all.
“Another one?” Rock asked, eyeing Kaladin’s Shardblade. “Or is he yours?”
“No,” Kaladin said. “I took this from the assassin.”
“He is dead, then?” Teft asked.
“Yes.”
“You slew the Assassin in White,” Bisig breathed. “It’s truly over then.”
“I suspect that it is just beginning,” Kaladin said, nodding toward the building. “What is this place?”
“Oh!” Bisig said. “Come on! We need to show you the tower—that Radiant girl taught us how to summon the plateau back, so long as we have you.”
“Radiant girl?” Kaladin asked. “Shallan?”
“You don’t sound surprised,” Teft said with a grunt.
“She has a Shardblade,” Kaladin said. One that didn’t scream in his mind. Either she was a Radiant or she had another of these Honorblades. As he stepped up to the building, he noticed a bridge in the shadows nearby.
“It’s not ours,” Kaladin said.
“No,” Leyten said. “That belongs to Bridge Seventeen. We had to leave ours behind in the storm.”
Rock nodded. “We were too busy stopping lighteyed heads from becoming too friendly with swords of enemies. Ha! But we needed bridge here. Way platform works, we had to get off him for Shallan Davar to transport herself back.”
Kaladin poked his head into the chamber inside the hill, then paused at the beauty he found inside. Other members of Bridge Four waited here, including a tall man Kaladin didn’t immediately recognize. Was that one of Lopen’s cousins? The man turned around, and Kaladin realized what he’d mistaken for a cap was a reddish skullplate.
Parshendi. Kaladin tensed as the Parshendi man saluted. He was wearing a Bridge Four uniform.
And he had the tattoo.
“Rlain?” Kaladin said.
“Sir,” Rlain said. His features were no longer rounded and plump, but instead sharp, muscular, with a thick neck and a stronger jaw, now lined by a red and black beard.
“It appears you are more than you seemed,” Kaladin said.
“Pardon, sir,” he said. “But I would suggest that applies to both of us.” When he spoke now, his voice had a certain musicality to it—an odd rhythm to his words.
“Brightlord Dalinar has pardoned Rlain,” Sigzil explained, walking around Kaladin and entering the chamber.
“For being Parshendi?” Kaladin asked.
“For being a spy,” Rlain said. “A spy for a people who, it appears, no longer exist.” He said this to a different beat, and Kaladin thought he could sense pain in that voice. Rock walked over and put a hand on Rlain’s shoulder.
“We can give you the story once we get back to the city,” Teft said.
“We figured you’d come back here,” Sigzil added. “To this plateau, and so we needed to be here to greet you, for all Brightness Davar grumbled. Anyway, there’s a lot to tell—a lot is happening. I think that you’re kind of going to be at the center of it.”
Kaladin took a deep breath, but nodded. What else did he expect? No more hiding. He had made his decision.
What do I tell them about Moash? he wondered as the members of Bridge Four piled into the room around him, chattering about how he needed to infuse the spheres in the lanterns. A couple of the men bore wounds from the fighting, including Bisig, who kept his right hand in his coat pocket. Grey skin peeked out from the cuff. He’d lost the hand to the Assassin in White.
Kaladin pulled Teft aside. “Did we lose anyone else?” Kaladin asked. “I saw Mart and Pedin.”
“Rod,” Teft said with a grunt. “Dead to the Parshendi.”
Kaladin closed his eyes, breathing out in a hiss. Rod had been one of Lopen’s cousins, a jovial Herdazian who hardly spoke Alethi. Kaladin had barely known him, but the man had still been Bridge Four. Kaladin’s responsibility.
“You can’t protect us all, son,” Teft said. “You can’t stop people from feeling pain, can’t stop men from dying.”
Kaladin opened his eyes, but did not challenge those statements. Not vocally, at least.
“Kal,” Teft said, voice getting even softer. “At the end there, right before you arrived . . . Storms, son, I swear I saw a couple of the lads glowing. Faintly, with Stormlight.”
“What?”
“I’ve been listening to readings of those visions Brightlord Dalinar sees,” Teft continued. “I think you should do the same. From what I can guess, it seems that the orders of the Knights Radiant were made up of more than just the knights themselves.”
Kaladin looked over the men of Bridge Four, and found himself smiling. He shoved down the pain at his losses, at least for the time being. “I wonder,” he said softly, “what it will do to Alethi social structure when an entire group of former slaves starts going about with glowing skin.”
“Not to mention those eyes of yours,” Teft said with a grunt.
“Eyes?” Kaladin said.
“Haven’t you seen?” Teft said. “What am I saying? Ain’t no mirrors out on the Plains. Your eyes, son. Pale blue, like glassy water. Lighter than that of any king.”
Kaladin turned away. He’d hoped his eyes wouldn’t change. The truth, that they had, made him uncomfortable. It said worrisome things. He didn’t want to believe that lighteyes had any grounds upon which to build the oppression.
They still don’t, he thought, infusing the gemstones in the lanterns as Sigzil instructed him. Perhaps the lighteyes rule because of the memory, buried deeply, of the Radiants. But just because they look a little like Radiants doesn’t mean they should have been able to oppress everyone.
Storming lighteyes. He . . .
He was one of them now.
Storm it!
He summoned Syl as a Blade, following Sigzil’s instructions, and used her as a key to work the fabrial.
* * *
Shallan stood at the front gates of Urithiru, looking up, trying to comprehend.
Inside, voices echoed in the grand hall and lights bobbed as people explored. Adolin had taken command of that endeavor, while Navani set up a camp to see to the wounded and to measure supplies. Unfortunately, they’d left most of their food and gear behind on the Shattered Plains. In addition, the travel through the Oathgate had not been as cheap as Shallan had first assumed. Somehow, the trip had drained the majority of the gemstones held by the men and women on the plateau—including Navani’s fabrials, clutched in the hands of engineers and scholars.
They had run a few tests. The more people you moved, the more Light was required. It seemed that Stormlight, and not just the gemstones that contained it, would become a valuable resource. Already, they had to ration their gemstones and lanterns to explore the building.
Several scribes passed by, bringing paper to draw out maps of Adolin’s exploration. They bobbed quick, uncomfortable bows to Shallan and called her “Brightness Radiant.” She still hadn’t talked at length with Adolin about what had happened to her.
“Is it true?” Shallan asked, tilting her head all the way back, looking up the side of the enormous tower toward the blue sky high above. “Am I one of them?”
“Mmm . . .” Pattern said from her skirt. “Almost you are. Still a few Words to say.”
“What kind of words? An oath?”
“Lightweavers make no oaths beyond the first,” Pattern said. “You must speak truths.”
Shallan stared up at the heights for a time longer, then turned and walked back down toward their improvised camp. It was not the Weeping here. She wasn’t certain if that was because they were actually above the rainclouds, or if the weather patterns had simply been thrown off by the arrival of the strange highstorms.
In camp, men sat on the stone, divided by ranks, shivering in their wet coats. Shallan’s breath puffed before her, though she had taken in Stormlight—just a dash—to keep herself from noticing the cold. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to use for fires. The large stone field in front of the tower city bore very few rockbuds, and the ones that did grow were tiny, smaller than a fist. They would provide little wood for fires.
The field was ringed by ten columnar plateaus, with steps winding around their bases. The Oathgates. Beyond that extended the mountain range.
Crem did cover some of the steps here, and dripped over the sides of the open field. There wasn’t nearly as much as there had been on the Shattered Plains. Less rain must fall up here.
Shallan stepped up to one edge of the stone field. A sheer drop. If Nohadon really had walked to this city, as The Way of Kings claimed, then his path would have included scaling cliff faces. So far, they had found no way down other than through the Oathgates—and even if there were such a way, one would still be stranded in the middle of the mountains, weeks from civilization. Judging from the sun height, the scholars placed them near the center of Roshar, somewhere in the mountains near Tu Bayla or maybe Emul.
The remote location made the city incredibly defensible, or so Dalinar said. It also left them isolated, potentially cut off. And that, in turn, explained why everyone looked at Shallan as they did. They’d tried other Shardblades; none were effective at making the ancient fabrial work. Shallan was literally their only way out of these mountains.
One of the soldiers nearby cleared his throat. “You certain you should be that close to the edge, Brightness Radiant?”
She gave the man a droll look. “I could survive that drop and stroll away, soldier.”
“Um, yes, Brightness,” he said, blushing.
She left the edge and continued on to find Dalinar. Eyes followed her as she walked: soldiers, scribes, lighteyes, and highlords alike. Well, let them see Shallan the Radiant. She could always find freedom later, wearing another face.
Dalinar and Navani supervised a group of women near the center of the army. “Any luck?” Shallan asked, approaching.
Dalinar glanced at her. The scribes wrote letters using every spanreed they had, delivering messages of warning to the warcamps and to the relay room in Tashikk. A new storm might come, blowing in from the west, not the east. Prepare.
New Natanan, on the very eastern coast of Roshar, would be struck today after the everstorm left the Shattered Plains. Then it would enter the eastern ocean and move toward the Origin.
None of them knew what would happen next. Would it round the world and come crashing into the western coast? Were the highstorms all one storm that rounded the planet, or did a new one start at the Origin each time, as mythology claimed?
Scholars and stormwardens thought the former, these days. Their calculations said that, assuming the everstorm moved at the same speed as a highstorm this time of year, they’d have a few days before it returned and hit Shinovar and Iri, then blew across the continent, laying waste to cities thought protected.
“No news,” Dalinar said, voice tense. “The king seems to have vanished. What’s more, Kholinar appears to be in a state of riot. I haven’t been able to get straight answers on either question.”
“I’m sure the king is somewhere safe,” Shallan said, glancing at Navani. The woman maintained a composed face, but as she gave instructions to a scribe, her voice was terse and clipped.
One of the pillarlike plateaus nearby flashed. It happened with a wall of light revolving around its perimeter, leaving streaks of blurred afterimage to fade. Someone had activated the Oathgate.
Dalinar stepped up beside her and they waited tensely, until a group of figures in blue appeared at the plateau edge and started down the steps. Bridge Four.
“Oh, thank the Almighty,” Shallan whispered. It was him, not the assassin.
One of the figures pointed down toward where Dalinar and the rest of them stood. Kaladin separated from his men, dropping off the steps and floating over the army. He landed on the stones in stride, carrying a Shardblade on his shoulder, his long officer’s coat unbuttoned and coming down to his knees.
He still has the slave brands, she thought, though his long hair obscured them. His eyes had become a pale blue. They glowed softly.
“Stormblessed,” Dalinar called.
“Highprince,” Kaladin said.
“The assassin?”
“Dead,” Kaladin said, hefting the Blade and sticking it down into the rock before Dalinar. “We need to talk. This—”
“My son, bridgeman,” Navani asked from behind. She stepped up and took Kaladin by the arm, as if completely unconcerned by the Stormlight that drifted from his skin like smoke. “What happened to my son?”
“There was an assassination attempt,” Kaladin said. “I stopped it, but the king was wounded. I put him someplace safe before coming to help Dalinar.”
“Where?” Navani demanded. “We’ve had our people in the warcamps search monasteries, mansions, the barracks . . .”
“Those places were too obvious,” Kaladin said. “If you could think to look there, so might the assassins. I needed someplace nobody would think of.”
“Where, then?” Dalinar asked.
Kaladin smiled.
* * *