Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Sanderson, Brandon

  She consumed the words. Locked away as she was, she couldn’t do much else. Each day she wrote mundane instructions to her scholars—and hid ciphered messages within them that equated to nonsense. Rushu would know what she was doing from context, but the Fused? Well, let them waste their time trying to figure out a reason to the figgldygrak she wrote. Their confusion might help her slip through important messages later.

  That didn’t take much time, and she spent the rest of her days studying light. Surely there could be no harm in her learning, as Raboniel wanted. And the topic was so fascinating.

  What was light? Not just Stormlight, but all light. Some of the ancient scholars claimed you could measure it. They said it had a weight to it. Others disagreed, saying instead that it was the force by which light moved that one could measure.

  Both ideas fascinated her. She’d never thought of light as a thing. It simply … was.

  Excited, she performed an old experiment from her books: splitting apart light into a rainbow of colors. All you had to do was put a candle in a box, use a hole to focus the light, then direct it through a prism. Then, curious, she extrapolated and—after several attempts—was able to use another prism to recombine the component colors into a beam of pure white light.

  Next, she used a diamond infused with Stormlight instead of a candle. It worked the same, splitting into components of light, but with a larger band of blue. Voidlight did the same, though the band of violet was enormous, and the other colors mere blips. That was strange, as her research indicated different colors of light should only make bands brighter or weaker, not increase their size.

  The most interesting result happened when she tried the experiment on the Towerlight Raboniel had collected. It wasn’t Stormlight or Lifelight, but a combination of the two. When she tried the prism experiment with this light, two separate rainbows of colors—distinct from one another—split out of the prism.

  She couldn’t recombine them. When she tried sending the colors through another prism, she ended up with one beam of white-blue light and a separate beam of white-green light, overlapping but not combined as Towerlight was.

  She sat at the table, staring at the two dots of light on the white paper. That green one. Could it be Lifelight? She likely couldn’t have told the difference between it and Stormlight, without the two to compare—it was only next to one another that Stormlight looked faintly blue, and Lifelight faintly green.

  She stood up and dug through the trunk of personal articles she’d had Raboniel’s people fetch for her, looking for her journals. The day of Gavilar’s death was still painful to remember, fraught with a dozen different conflicting emotions. She’d recorded her impressions of that day’s events six separate times, in differing emotional states. Sometimes she missed him. At least the man he had once been, when they’d all schemed together as youths, planning to conquer the world.

  That was the face he’d continued to show most everyone else after he’d started to change. And so, for the good of the kingdom, Navani had played along. She’d created a grand charade after his death, writing about Gavilar the king, the unifier, the mighty—but just—man. The ideal monarch. She’d given him exactly what he’d wanted, exactly what she’d threatened to withhold. She’d given him a legacy.

  Navani closed the journal around her finger to hold her place, then took a few deep breaths. She couldn’t afford to become distracted by that tangled mess of emotions. She reopened the journal and turned to the account she’d made of her encounter with Gavilar in her study on the day of his death.

  He had spheres on the table, she had written. Some twenty or thirty of them. He’d been showing them to his uncommon visitors—most of whom have vanished, never to be seen again.

  There was something off about those spheres. My eyes were drawn to several distinctive ones: spheres that glowed with a distinctly alien light, almost negative. Both violet and black, somehow shining, yet feeling like they should extinguish illumination instead of promote it.

  Navani reread the passages, then inspected the pale green light she had split out of the Towerlight. Lifelight, the Light of Cultivation. Could Gavilar have had this Light too? Could she have mistaken Lifelight diamonds for emeralds? Or, would Lifelight in a gemstone appear identical to a Stormlight one at a casual glance?

  “Why wouldn’t you talk to me, Gavilar?” she whispered. “Why wasn’t I worth trusting.…” She braced herself, then read further in her account—right up to the point where Gavilar plunged the knife in the deepest.

  You aren’t worthy. That’s why, she read. You claim to be a scholar, but where are your discoveries? You study light, but you are its opposite. A thing that destroys light. You spend your time wallowing in the muck of the kitchens and obsessing about whether or not some lighteyes recognizes the correct lines on a map.

  Storms. That was so painful.

  She forced herself to linger on his words. You are its opposite. A thing that destroys light …

  Gavilar had spoken of the same concept as Raboniel, of light and its opposite. Coincidence? Did it have to do with that sphere that bent the air?

  The guard at her door began humming, then stepped to the side. Navani could guess what that meant. Indeed, Raboniel soon entered, followed by that other Fused who was so often nearby. The femalen with a similar topknot and skin pattern, but a blank stare. Raboniel seemed to like to keep her near, though Navani wasn’t certain if it was for protection or for some other reason. The second Fused was one of the more … unhinged that Navani had seen. Perhaps the more sane ones purposely kept an eye on specific insane ones, to prevent them from hurting themselves or others.

  The insane Fused walked over to the wall and stared at it. Raboniel walked toward the desk, so Navani rose and bowed to her. “Ancient One. Is something wrong?”

  “Merely checking on your progress,” Raboniel said. Navani made room so Raboniel could bend down, the orange-red hair of her topknot brushing the table as she inspected Navani’s experiment: a box letting out the illumination from a Towerlight gemstone, which was split through a prism, then recombined through another into two separate streams of light.

  “Incredible,” Raboniel said. “This is what you do when you experiment, instead of fighting against me? Look, Stormlight and Lifelight. As I said.”

  “Yes, Ancient One,” Navani said. “I’ve been reading about light. The illumination that comes from the sun or candles cannot be stored in gemstones, but Stormlight can. So what is Stormlight? It is not simply illumination, as it gives off illumination.

  “It’s as if Stormlight is at times a liquid. It behaves like one when you draw it from a full gemstone into an empty one, mimicking osmosis. While captured, the illumination given off by Stormlight behaves like sunlight: it can be split by a prism, and diffuses the farther it gets from its source. But the Stormlight must be different from the illumination it radiates. Otherwise, how could we hold it in a gemstone?”

  “Can you combine them?” Raboniel asked. “Stormlight and Voidlight, can they be mixed?”

  “To prove that humans and singers can be unified,” Navani said.

  “Yes, of course. For that reason.”

  She’s lying, Navani thought. She couldn’t be certain, as singers often acted in strange ways, but Navani suspected more here.

  The strange insane Fused began saying something in their language. She stared up at the wall, then said it louder.

  Raboniel glanced at her, hummed softly, then looked at Navani. “Have you discovered anything more?”

  “That’s about it,” Navani said. “I couldn’t get Lifelight and Stormlight to recombine, but I don’t know if this counts as truly splitting them apart—as I’ve only split their radiation, not the pooled Light itself.”

  “I’ve thought about your mixing of oil and water, and I am intrigued. We need to know. Can Stormlight and Voidlight be mixed? What would happen if they were combined?”

  “You are quite focused on that idea, Ancient One,” Navan
i said, thoughtfully leaning back. “Why?”

  “It’s why I came here,” Raboniel said.

  “Not to conquer? You talk of peace between us. What would that alliance be like, to you, if we could achieve it?”

  Raboniel hummed a rhythm and opened Navani’s box, taking out the sphere of Towerlight. “The war has stretched so long, I’ve seen this kind of tactic play out dozens of times. We have never held the tower before, true, but we’ve seized Oathgates, taken command posts, and held the capital of Alethela a couple of times. All part of an eternal, endless slog of a war. I want to end it. I need to find the tools to truly end it, for all of our … sanity.”

  “End how?” Navani pressed. “If we work together like you want, what happens to my people?”

  Raboniel turned the Towerlight sphere over in her fingers, ignoring the question. “We’ve known about this new Light ever since the tower was created—but I am the one who theorized it was Stormlight and Lifelight combined. You have confirmed this. This is proof. Proof that what I want to do is possible.”

  “Have you ever heard of spheres that warp the air around them?” Navani asked. “Like they were extremely hot?”

  Raboniel’s rhythm cut off. She turned toward Navani. “Where did you hear of such a thing?”

  “I remembered a conversation about it,” Navani lied, “from long ago—with someone who claimed to have seen one.”

  “There are theories,” Raboniel said. “Matter has its opposite: negative axi that destroy positive axi when combined. This is known, and confirmed by the Shards Odium and Honor. So some have thought … is there a negative to light? An anti-light? I had discarded this idea. After all, I assumed that if there was an opposite to Stormlight, it would be Voidlight.”

  “Except,” Navani said, “we have no reason to believe that Stormlight and Voidlight are opposites. Tell me, what would happen if this theoretical negative light were to combine with its positive?”

  “Destruction,” Raboniel said. “Instantaneous annihilation.”

  Navani felt cold. She’d told her scholars—the ones to whom she’d entrusted Szeth’s strange sphere—to experiment with the air-warping light. To move it to different gemstones, to try using it in fabrials. Could it be that … they’d somehow mixed that sphere’s contents with ordinary Voidlight?

  “Continue your experiments,” Raboniel said, putting down the sphere. “Anything you need for your science shall be yours. If you can combine Voidlight and Stormlight without destroying them—therefore proving they are not opposites … well, I should like to know this. It will require me to discard years upon years of theories.”

  “I have no idea where to begin,” Navani protested. “If you let me have my team back…”

  “Write them instructions and put them to work,” Raboniel said. “You have them still.”

  “Fine,” Navani said, “but I have no idea what I’m doing. If I were trying to do this with liquids, I’d use an emulsifier—but what kind of emulsifier does one use on light? It defies reason.”

  “Try anyway,” Raboniel said. “Do this, and I’ll free your tower. I’ll take my troops and walk away. This knowledge is worth more than any one location, no matter how strategic.”

  I’m sure, Navani thought. She didn’t believe for a single heartbeat that Raboniel would do so—but at the same time, this knowledge would obviously give Navani an edge. Why did Raboniel want to prove, or disprove, that the two Lights were opposites? What was her game here?

  She wants a weapon, perhaps? That explosion I inadvertently caused? Is that what Raboniel is hunting?

  The Fused by the wall started talking again, louder this time. Again Raboniel hummed and glanced over.

  “What does she say?” Navani asked.

  “She … asks if anyone has seen her mother. She’s trying to get the wall to talk.”

  “Her mother?” Navani thought, cocking her head. She hadn’t thought that the Fused would have parents—but of course they did. The creatures had been born mortal, thousands of years ago. “What happened to her mother?”

  “She’s right here,” Raboniel said softly, gesturing to herself. “That was another hypothesis of mine that was disproven. Long ago. The thought that a mother and daughter, serving together, might help one another retain their sanity.”

  Raboniel walked to her daughter and turned her to steer her out the door. And while singers tended not to show emotion on their faces, Navani thought for sure she could read pain in Raboniel’s expression—a wince—as the daughter continued to ask for her mother. All the while staring unseeingly past her.

  I am not convinced any of the gods can be destroyed, so perhaps I misspoke. They can change state however, like a spren—or like the various Lights. This is what we seek.

  —From Rhythm of War, page 21 undertext

  Dalinar touched his finger to the young soldier’s forehead, then closed his eyes and concentrated.

  He could see something extending from the soldier, radiating into the darkness. Pure white lines, thin as a hair. Some moved, though one end remained affixed to the central point: the place where Dalinar’s finger touched the soldier’s skin.

  “I see them,” he whispered. “Finally.”

  The Stormfather rumbled in the back of his mind. I was not certain it could be done, he said. The power of Bondsmiths was tempered by Honor, for the good of all. Ever since the destruction of Ashyn.

  “How did you know about this ability?” Dalinar said, eyes still closed.

  I heard it described before I fully lived. Melishi saw these lines.

  “The last Bondsmith,” Dalinar said. “Before the Recreance.”

  The same. Honor was dying, possibly mad.

  “What can I do with these?” Dalinar asked.

  I don’t know. You see the Connections all people have: to others, to spren, to time and reality itself. Everything is Connected, Dalinar, by a vast web of interactions, passions, thoughts, fates.

  The more Dalinar watched the quivering white lines, the more details he could pick out. Some were brighter than others, for example. He reached out and tried to touch one, but his fingers went through it.

  Spren have these too, the Stormfather said. And the bond that makes Radiants is similar, but far stronger. I don’t think these little ones are particularly useful.

  “Surely these mean something,” Dalinar said.

  Yes, the Stormfather said. But that doesn’t mean they can be exploited. I heard Melishi say something once. Imagine you had two pieces of cloth, one red, one yellow. Before you and your brother parted, you each reached into a bag and selected one—but kept it hidden, putting it away in a box, unseen.

  You parted, traveling to distant quarters of the land. Then, by agreement, let us say that on the same day at the same time you each opened your box and took out your cloth. Upon finding the red one, you’d instantly know your brother had found the yellow one. You shared something, that bond of knowledge—the Connection exists, but isn’t something that can necessarily be exploited. At least not by most people. A Bondsmith though …

  Dalinar removed his finger and opened his eyes, then thanked the young soldier—who seemed nervous as he returned to his place near the front of the building, joining the still-disguised Szeth. Dalinar checked his arm fabrial. Jasnah and the others should be returning from the front lines soon. The battle won, the celebrations completed. All without Dalinar.

  It felt so strange. Here he was, worried about Navani and the tower—but unable to do anything until he had more information. Worried about Adolin off in Shadesmar—separated from him, like the two brothers in the Stormfather’s story. Shared destinies, shared fates, yet Dalinar felt powerless to help either his son or his wife.

  You do have a part in this, he told himself firmly. A duty. Master these powers. Best Odium. Think on a scale bigger than one battle, or even one war. It was difficult, with how slowly his skills seemed to be progressing. So much time wasted. Was this what Jasnah had experienced all tho
se years, chasing secrets when nobody else had believed her?

  He had another duty today, in addition to his practice. He’d been putting it off, but he knew he should delay no longer. So, he collected Szeth and walked through the camp, turning his path toward the prison.

  He needed to talk to Taravangian in person.

  The building that housed the former king was not a true prison. They hadn’t planned for one of those in the temporary warcamp here in Emul. A stockade, yes. But military discipline was by necessity quick. Anything demanding more than a week or two in confinement usually resulted in a discharge or—for more serious infractions—an execution.

  Taravangian required something more permanent and more delicate. So they’d blocked off the windows on a sturdy home, reinforced the door, and set guards from among Dalinar’s best soldiers. As Dalinar approached, he noted how the upper-floor windows were now filled with stark crem bricks, mortared into place. It had felt wrong to give Taravangian a home instead of a cell—but seeing those windows, it also felt wrong to leave him without sunlight.

  Dalinar nodded to the salutes at the door, then waited for the guards to undo the locks and pull the door open for him. Nobody worried about his safety or made a comment about his single guard. They all thought the precautions were to prevent Taravangian from being rescued, and would never have wondered whether the Blackthorn could handle himself against an elderly statesman.

  They didn’t have any inkling, even now, how dangerous Taravangian was. He sat on a stool near the far wall of the main room. He’d put a ruby into the corner and was staring at it. He turned when Dalinar entered, and actually smiled. Storming man.

  Dalinar waved for Szeth to remain right inside the door as the guards closed and locked it behind them. Then Dalinar approached the corner, wary. He’d charged into many a battle with less trepidation than he now felt.

  “I had wondered if you would come,” Taravangian said. “It has been nearly two weeks since my betrayal.”

  “I wanted to be certain I wasn’t somehow being manipulated,” Dalinar said, honestly. “So I waited until certain tasks were accomplished before coming to you, and risking letting you influence me.”