Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Sanderson, Brandon

  “I am willing to listen to you,” Navani said. “Willing to change. But if the Fused take the tower, corrupt it…”

  The … Lady of Pains is here, the Sibling said, voice growing softer. More frightened? It sounded like a child’s voice, Navani decided.

  “I don’t know who that is,” Navani said.

  She is bad. Terrible. Few Fused are as … frightening to me as she is. She’s trying to change me. So far, she changed only the portion of me that suppresses Surgebinding, reversing it so it affects Radiants instead of Fused. But she intends to go further. Much further.

  “Is there a way to rescue our Radiants other than recovering the pillar?”

  No, the Sibling said. Get to the pillar, and we could reverse the effects. But otherwise … no. Those highly Invested might not be as strongly affected. Unmade, for example, were sometimes able to push through my suppression. Radiants of the high oaths might be able to access their powers. And Honor’s Truest Surge, the Surge of Binding and Oaths, could still work.

  “What can I do to help?” Navani said. “We’re mounting an assault to try to recapture the pillar heart. Is there something else I could try? Earlier you told me I needed to infuse something—but were cut off before you could finish.”

  The Lady of Pains is returning, the Sibling said. I think … I think she’s going to change me. My mind might alter. I might not care.

  “Do you care now?” Navani asked, urgent.

  Yes. The voice seemed very small.

  “Tell me what to do.”

  Long ago, before I banished men from these halls, my last Bondsmith made me something. A method of protecting me from the dangers I saw in men. He thought it would help me trust again. It did not. But it might stop the Fused from corrupting me further.

  “Please,” Navani said. “Let me help. Please.”

  You cannot be trusted.

  “Let me show you that I can.”

  I … You will need Stormlight, Navani Kholin. A great deal of Stormlight.

  Of course, I admit this is a small quibble. A difference of semantics more than anything.

  Venli wasn’t required to fight unless she was attacked. A part of her wanted to go up above and look for Leshwi, who would have arrived by now with the other Heavenly Ones. But no, that was foolish. Even if being near Leshwi would help make sense of all this. Leshwi seemed to see so much more clearly than other Fused.

  Regardless, as their troops marched up the steps to assault the first floors of the tower city, Venli stayed with Raboniel in the basement. The Lady of Wishes didn’t seem terribly nervous about the invasion. She strolled along the wide hallway here, inspecting its murals. Venli stayed at her side as directed, and realized the reason she’d been brought along. Raboniel wanted a servant at hand.

  “Does this strike you as a particularly human form of decoration, Last Listener?” Raboniel asked her, speaking to Craving as she stood with her hands before her, fingertips touching the large mural, this portion of which depicted Cultivation in the shape of a tree.

  “I … I don’t know humans well enough to say, Ancient One.”

  Sounds echoed from the stairwell at the opposite end of this hallway from the pillar room. Screams. Calls of horror. Clashes of weapon against weapon. By now the shanay-im would have arrived by air, delivering some of the most terrible and capable Fused to the sixth floor.

  “To me it seems obvious,” Raboniel said. “Humans never use what is around them to its fullest. They always impose their will far too strongly. Though the shells of beasts and the colors of stone would offer striking variety for creating complex murals, the humans ignored natural materials. Instead they painted each square, then affixed it to this wall.

  “One of the singers of old, creating a similar work of art, would have divided the bits of shell into a spectrum of colors. They would have asked themself what kind of mural would naturally be suggested by the pieces they had obtained. Their mural would have used no paint, and would have lasted millennia longer than this one. See how the colors here fade.”

  A hulking form darkened the other end of the hallway, near the stairwell. The Pursuer looked like a dark scar of black and red upon the light stone. As he moved forward, Venli found herself trembling. Surely this was the most dangerous Fused in all the army.

  “I have your leave,” the Pursuer said to Raboniel, “to find this Windrunner and kill him?”

  “Him alone,” Raboniel said. “If he is here. There’s a good chance one of his skill went with the others to Azir.”

  “If he is not here, he will return to try to liberate the tower,” the Pursuer said. “It is in his nature.” He turned, looking upward through the stone. “The Radiants we capture are dangerous. They have skill beyond what we anticipated, considering the newness of their bonds. We should behead them, each and every one.”

  “No,” Raboniel said. “I will need them. Your orders are the same as what I told the others: Kill only those who resist. Gather the fallen Radiants for me. On my orders, you are to show … restraint.”

  The Pursuer hummed—loudly and forcefully—to Craving. “You, who were once banished for recklessly endangering our kind in your attempts to exterminate humankind? You, Lady of Wishes, ask for restraint?”

  Raboniel smiled and hummed softly another rhythm that Venli had never heard. Something brand new. Something incredible. Dark, dangerous, predatory, and beautiful. It implied destruction, but a quiet and deadly destruction.

  Odium had granted this femalen her own rhythms.

  No, Venli thought, the Pursuer is not the most dangerous of them.

  “I care not for a single battle,” Raboniel said. “We will end this war, Pursuer. Forever. We have spent far, far too long in an endless cycle. I will break it—and once I am finished in this tower, there will be no turning back, ever. You will help in this, and you will start by collecting the fallen Radiants and delivering them to me.”

  “I may kill the one, when I find him?” he repeated. “You relieve the Nine’s prohibition upon me?”

  “Yes,” Raboniel said. “You may claim your prize and keep your custom, Pursuer. I take responsibility for this order.”

  He hummed to Destruction and stalked off.

  “If Stormblessed is here in the tower, he’ll be helpless when you find him, Pursuer!” Venli called. “You would murder an enemy who cannot resist you?”

  “Tradition is more important than honor, foolish one,” the Pursuer called back to Derision. “I must kill those who have killed me. I have always killed those who have killed me.”

  He transformed into a ribbon of red light, leaving behind a lifeless husk, and shot out into the stairwell so he could fly to the upper levels.

  Timbre pulsed uncertainly in Venli’s chest. Yes … she was right. The Pursuer did have a madness to him. It wasn’t as obvious as in the other Fused—the ones who would grin and refuse to speak, their eyes seeming to stare without seeing. It was there nonetheless. Perhaps this Pursuer had lived so long that his traditions had taken control of his reason. He was like a spren, existing more than living.

  Timbre pulsed at that. She didn’t think she existed without living, and Venli was forced to apologize. Still, she worried that all the Fused were like him. Maybe not mad—maybe that was the wrong word for it, and disrespectful to people who were themselves mad. The Fused instead seemed more like people who had lived so long thinking one way that they had come to accept their opinions as the natural state of things.

  Venli had been like that once.

  “So telling,” Raboniel said to Thoughtfulness, still regarding the murals. “Humans take as their own everything they see. Yet they do not understand that by holding so tightly, they cause the very thing they desired to crumble. They truly are children of Honor.”

  Raboniel turned from the mural and strolled farther down the hallway, approaching an intersection where doors opened on either side. These led into chambers with tables, bookshelves, stacks of paper. Venli followed Raboniel
into one of them, then hurried—at a wave of her fingers, a gesture Venli’s translation powers interpreted—to fetch a cup of wine from the station at the side of the room.

  Venli passed huddled scholars and monks, sitting on the floor by the wall beneath the watchful eyes of a few Regal stormforms. The poor humans were surrounded by fearspren, though Venli had to remind herself that no human could ever be completely trusted. They didn’t have forms. A human might wear the robes of their priesthood, but could secretly have trained as a warrior. It was part of what made humans so duplicitous. No rhythms to hum to, just facial features easy to fake. No forms to indicate their duty. Just clothing that could be changed as easily as a lie required it.

  Timbre pulsed.

  Well, of course I’m different, Venli thought. Even if she did lie by humming the wrong rhythms at times. And wear a form that didn’t express the spren she truly followed.

  Timbre pulsed in satisfaction.

  Don’t make this harder than it already is, Venli thought, hastening to Raboniel. I’m not here to help the humans. I can barely help my own kind.

  She delivered Raboniel’s wine as the tall Fused was inspecting a contraption of metal and gemstones. A human fabrial delivered by one of the Deepest Ones.

  “What should we make of this?” the Deepest One asked to Craving. “I have never seen its like before. How can the humans have discovered things we never knew about?”

  “They have always been clever,” Raboniel said to Derision. “We merely left them alone too long this time. Go and interrogate the scholars. I would find out who leads their studies here.”

  The Fused glanced upward.

  “The conquest will happen easily,” Raboniel said to Conceit. “By now, the shanay-im have used Vyre to activate the Oathgate, bringing our troops. Let us stay focused while they work.”

  “Yes, Lady of Wishes,” the Deepest One said, gliding off.

  Raboniel absently took the cup from Venli’s hands. She turned the fabrial over in her hand, and hummed softly to … to Subservience?

  She’s impressed, Venli realized. And she’s keeping most of the scholars alive—along with the Radiants. She wants something from this tower.

  “You don’t care about the conquest,” Venli guessed, speaking to Craving. “You aren’t here to further the war or to dominate the humans. You’re here because of these things. The fabrials humans are creating.”

  Raboniel hummed to Command. “Yes, Leshwi does pick the best, doesn’t she?” She held out the fabrial, letting the light catch it. “Do you know what the humans gain by being so forceful? By reaching to seize before they are ready? Yes, their works crumble. Yes, their nations collapse from within. Yes, they end up squabbling, and fighting, and killing one another.

  “But in the moment, they are the sprinter who outpaces the steady runner. In the moment, they create wonders. One cannot fault their audacity. Their imagination. Surely you’ve noticed that the Fused have a problem. We think along the same old, familiar pathways. We don’t create because we assume we’ve already created what we need to. We are immortal, and so think nothing can ever surprise us—and that makes us complacent.”

  Venli hummed to Abashment, realizing she’d been thinking that same thing.

  “That is the reason this war is eternal,” Raboniel said. “They cannot hold or exploit that which they create, but we cannot stretch far enough to come up with anything new. If we truly want an end, it will take a partnership.”

  “I do not think the Alethi will partner with you,” Venli said. “Like the Iriali have.”

  “They can be guided,” Raboniel said. She glanced at Venli, then smiled again, humming her new rhythm. Her individual dangerous rhythm. “If there is one thing I can guarantee you about humankind, Last Listener, it is this: Provide them with a sword, and they will find a way to impale themselves upon it.”

  * * *

  The stench of burned flesh assaulted Navani as she entered the ground floor of Urithiru. She hoped that most of the civilians had been able to flee to the upper floors, for what she saw now seemed nothing short of Damnation itself. The large foyer in front of the grand staircase was empty save for a few scattered corpses. Burned. Human.

  The thick, pungent scent made her want to retch.

  Red lights flashed in the near hallways, and cracks of thunder echoed off the stone. Loud, sharp, and unnatural. One shouldn’t be able to hear thunder in these hallways, buried beneath a million tons of stone and a ten-minute walk to the perimeter.

  Between the peals of thunder, Navani was certain she heard distant moans and cries. Her kingdom had become a war zone. What scout reports she received spoke of fragmented squads of soldiers desperately holding out before nightmares moving in quick roving bands. They thought the singers were securing points of strategic value, but their information was too disjointed to get a full picture of the enemy’s plans.

  Storms … they’d become so dependent on spanreeds. It felt downright primitive to lack knowledge of enemy movements. Navani moved through the foyer, urging her band of scholars, ardents, and engineers to follow. They balked, remaining in a cluster on the wide steps. She glanced back and saw many staring in horror at the burned corpses on the ground.

  Right. Few of her current attendants had ever been subjected to real battlefields. They had worked the warcamps, had designed bridges and flying platforms, but they weren’t the types who saw corpses in anything other than a sanitized funeral service.

  Navani remembered being like that. Before Gavilar. He’d always promised that a unified Alethkar would be a wonderful blessing to all the people of the land. With him around, it always had been easier to rationalize the price in blood.

  Regardless of their feelings, they had to keep moving. They’d given Battalionlord Teofil an hour to gather his assault force and send some initial sallies to clear the landing. During that time Navani had gathered as much Stormlight as she could. Her attendants carried the spheres and gemstones in large bags.

  The wait had let Navani send for two specific women. They stood near the center of the huddle of attendants: Thaylen scholars from Queen Fen’s court who were visiting the tower to listen to Navani’s lectures. They’d come to her command post willingly, probably believing that Navani had sent for them because she wanted to protect them during the invasion. Their panicked glances now showed they were beginning to question those assumptions.

  A soldier stood guarding the way through a particular hallway. Navani hurried in that direction, leaving her attendants behind for now. She entered a large open hall that in times past they’d used as a meeting place. Some five hundred soldiers crowded the corners and a couple of side corridors. Not fully out of sight, but obscured enough for their purpose. Other than the numerous crossbowmen among them, the items of most interest were two large metal pillars on wheels.

  Teofil noticed her and stepped over. “Brightness,” he said. “I’d be more comfortable if you waited closer to the steps.”

  “Objection noted,” Navani said. “How does it look?”

  “I’ve gathered our best veterans,” he said. “This will be bloody work, but I think we have a chance. The enemy is relying on the Regals to seize the ground floor. I keep reminding the men that as frightening as the enemy powers are, the ones using them have only a year of training.”

  The human advantage had so far been their experience. Parshmen newly awakened from their lives of slavery were no replacement for battle-hardened troops. This advantage was slowly being worn away as enemy troops gained more and more practical combat experience.

  An exhausted messenger dashed into the room from the hallway directly across from Navani—the hallway leading toward the steps to the basement. The messenger nodded to Teofil before moving to the side and putting her hands on her knees, breathing in deep gasps.

  Teofil gestured for Navani to retreat, and she moved to the mouth of the corridor. She didn’t retreat farther than that, so Teofil stoically walked over and handed her some
wax and pointed at his ears. Then he fell into position, sword out, with one group of soldiers.

  A controlled retreat was difficult enough, but what they were trying here—a fake rout leading to an ambush—was even trickier. You had to bait the enemy into thinking you were fleeing, and that involved turning your backs on them. A trickle of human soldiers soon came running into the room, and their panic seemed real to Navani. It probably was. The line between a feint and a true collapse of morale was thin as a sheet of paper.

  The trickle of soldiers became a flood. Fleeing men, chased by flashes of light and thunder that made Navani hastily stuff her ears with the wax. She spared a moment of grief for the slowest of the fleeing soldiers, who sold this ruse with their lives, dying in a bright flash of lightning.

  The chasing Regals soon charged into the room: wicked-looking singers with pointed carapace and glowing red eyes. Teofil waited longer than Navani would have to give the order to loose—he wanted as many Regals in the room as possible. The pause was long enough that the first of the enemies had time to stop, then raise arms crackling with electric energy.

  Navani braced herself as they released flashes of light toward the waiting soldiers. Those flashes, however, struck the carefully placed metal pillars, which drew the lightning like tall trees might in an open field.

  Teofil gave the order with a raised piece of red cloth—though Navani barely saw it, as she was blinking blinded eyes. Crossbows loosed in wave after deadly wave, cutting down the Regals—who didn’t have the same power to heal themselves that the Fused possessed.

  “Hoist those lightning rods!” Teofil shouted, his voice sounding muted to her ears. “Move, men! Stay away from blood on the ground. We push for the basement!”

  As quickly as that, the “rout” reversed, and human troops piled into the hallway to chase the remaining Regals. Teofil left her with a salute. He set out on a near-impossible task: to push down a long stairwell into the basement, harried by Regals and Fused. If Navani wasn’t able to get to him after he reached the pillar, he was to destroy the construction of garnets that suppressed Radiant powers. The Sibling indicated this would be effective at restoring the Radiants.