Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Sanderson, Brandon

  In that moment, Kaladin did something to the window. As he stepped back, he left the Pursuer stuck to the glass, immobilized and lacking the Voidlight to eject his soul. Kaladin didn’t attack. Instead he reached down and infused the ground, but with power that didn’t glow as strong as she thought it should.

  The Pursuer’s head … it was pulling forward against his neck, his eyes bulging. He groaned, and Venli realized that Stormblessed had infused the ground, then made it pull on the Pursuer’s head. But his body was stuck to the wall.

  Kaladin turned and strode toward the watching Heavenly Ones as the Pursuer’s head ripped from his body and slammed to the floor with a crunch.

  “Stormblessed,” Leshwi said, stepping out to meet him. “You have fought and won. Your loss is powerful, I know, as mortals are—”

  Kaladin shoved her aside. He was coming for Venli, she was sure of it. She braced herself, but he stalked past her, leaving her trembling to the Terrors. Instead Kaladin strode for the Heavenly One who was holding his father. Of course.

  That Heavenly One panicked as any would. She shot off into the air, carrying the man. Two other Heavenly Ones followed.

  Stormblessed looked up, then launched into the air using the strange fabrial that mimicked the Lashings.

  Venli slumped to the ground, feeling worn out, though she hadn’t done anything. At least it seemed to be over.

  But not for the soldiers from the Pursuer’s personal army, who gathered around his corpse. Dead a second time, to the same man. His reputation might be in shambles, but he was still Fused. He would return.

  The soldiers turned toward the infirmary, remembering his last orders. They couldn’t kill Stormblessed.

  But they could finish off the invalid Radiants.

  * * *

  Kaladin could barely see straight. He had only a vague memory of killing the Pursuer. He knew he’d done it, but remembering was hard. Thinking was hard.

  He soared upward, chasing the creatures who had taken his father. He heard Lirin’s shouts echoing from above, so he’d gotten his gag off. Each sound condemned Kaladin.

  He didn’t actually believe he could save his father. It was as if Lirin was already dead, and was screaming at Kaladin from Damnation. Kaladin wasn’t exactly certain why he followed, but he had to get up high. Perhaps … perhaps he could see better from up high.…

  Syl streaked ahead of him, entering the shafts that let lifts reach the final tiers of the tower. She landed on the topmost level of Urithiru. Kaladin arrived after activating a second weight halfway through the flight, then swung himself over the railing and deactivated the device in one move. He landed facing a Heavenly One who tried to block his path.

  Kaladin …

  He left that Heavenly One broken and dying, then tore through the upper chambers. Where?

  The roof. They’d make for the roof to escape. Indeed, he found another Fused blocking the stairwell up, and Kaladin slammed Navani’s device into the Fused’s chest and locked it in place, sending him flying away, up through the stairwell and off into the sky.

  Kaladin … I’ve forgotten.… Syl’s voice. She was zipping around him, but he could barely hear her.

  Kaladin burst out onto the top of the tower. The storm spread out around them, almost to the pinnacle, a dark ocean of black clouds rumbling with discontent.

  The last of the Heavenly Ones was here, holding Kaladin’s father. The Fused backed away, shouting something Kaladin couldn’t understand.

  Kaladin … I’ve forgotten … the Words.…

  He advanced on the Heavenly One, and in a panic she threw his father. Out. Into the blackness. Kaladin saw Lirin’s face for a brief moment before he vanished. Into the pit. The swirling storm and tempest.

  Kaladin scrambled to the edge of the tower and looked down. Suddenly he knew why he’d come this high. He knew where he was going. He’d stood on this ledge before. Long ago in the rain.

  This time he jumped.

  For ones so lost, they are somehow determined.

  —Musings of El, on the first of the Final Ten Days

  Navani managed to get to her feet, but after a few steps—fleeing toward the pillar, away from Moash—she was light-headed and woozy. Each breath was agony, and she was losing so much blood. She stumbled and pressed up against the wall—smearing blood across a mural of a comet-shaped spren—to keep from falling.

  She glanced over her shoulder. Moash continued walking, an inevitable motion. Not rushed. His sword—with its elegant curve—held to the side so it left a small cut in the floor beside him.

  “Lighteyes,” Moash said. “Lying eyes. Rulers who fail to rule. Your son was a coward at the end, Queen. He begged me for his life, crying. Appropriate that he should die as he lived.”

  She saved her breath, not daring to respond despite her fury, and pressed on down the hallway, trailing blood.

  “I killed a friend today,” Moash said, his terrible voice growing softer. “I thought surely that would hurt. Remarkably, it didn’t. I have become my best self. Free. No more pain. I bring you silence, Navani. Payment for what you’ve done. How you’ve lived. The way you—”

  Navani hazarded a glance over her shoulder as he cut off suddenly. Moash had stopped above Raboniel’s body. The Fused had latched on to his foot with one hand. He cocked his head, seeming baffled.

  Raboniel launched herself at him, clawing up his body. Her legs didn’t work, but she gripped Moash with talonlike fingers, snarling, and stabbed him repeatedly with the dagger Navani had left.

  The knife had no anti-Voidlight remaining—but it was draining his Stormlight. Raboniel had reversed the blade. Moash flinched at the attack, distracted, trying to maneuver his Shardblade to fight off the crazed Fused who grappled with him.

  Move! Navani thought to herself. Raboniel was trying to buy time.

  Even with renewed vigor, Navani didn’t get far before the pain became too much. She stumbled into the room with the crystal pillar, abandoning thoughts of trying to escape into the tunnels beneath Urithiru.

  Instead she forced herself forward to the pillar, then fell against it. “Sibling,” she whispered, tasting blood on her lips. “Sibling?”

  She expected to hear whimpering or weeping—the only response she’d received over the last few days. This time she heard a strange tone, both harmonious and discordant at once.

  The Rhythm of War.

  * * *

  Dalinar flew through the air, Lashed by Lyn the Windrunner, on his way to find the Herald Ishar.

  He felt something … rumbling. A distant storm. Everything was light around him up here, the sun shining, making it difficult to believe that somewhere it was dark and tempestuous. Somewhere, someone was lost in that blackness.

  The Stormfather appeared beside him, moving in the air alongside Dalinar—a rare occurrence. The Stormfather never had features. Merely a vague impression of a figure the same size as Dalinar, yet extending into infinity.

  Something was wrong.

  “What?” Dalinar said.

  The Son of Tanavast has entered the storm for the last time, the Stormfather said. I feel him.

  “Kaladin?” Dalinar said, eager. “He’s escaped?”

  No. This is something far worse.

  “Show me.”

  * * *

  Kaladin fell.

  The wind tossed him and whipped at him. He was just rags. Just … rags for a person.

  I’ve forgotten the Words, Kaladin, Syl said, weeping. I see only darkness. He felt something in his hand, her fingers somehow gripping his as they fell in the storm.

  He couldn’t save Teft.

  He couldn’t save his father.

  He couldn’t save himself.

  He’d pushed too hard, used a grindstone on his soul until it had become paper thin. He’d failed anyway.

  Those were the only Words that mattered. The only true Words.

  “I’m not strong enough,” he whispered to the angry winds, and closed his eyes, lett
ing go of her hand.

  * * *

  Dalinar was the storm around Kaladin. And at the same time he wasn’t. The Stormfather didn’t give Dalinar as much control as he had before, likely fearing that Dalinar would want to push him again. He was right.

  Dalinar watched Kaladin tumble. Lost. No Stormlight. Eyes closed. It wasn’t the bearing of a man who was fighting. Nor was it the bearing of someone who rode the winds.

  It was the bearing of someone who had given up.

  What do we do? Dalinar asked the Stormfather.

  We witness. It is our duty.

  We must help.

  There is no help, Dalinar. He is too close to the tower’s interference to use his powers, and you cannot blow him free of this.

  Dalinar watched, pained, the rain his tears. There had to be something. The moment between, Dalinar said. When you infuse spheres. You can stop time.

  Slow it greatly, the Stormfather said, through Investiture and Connection to the Spiritual. But just briefly.

  Do it, Dalinar said. Give him more time.

  * * *

  Venli hummed to Agony as the slaughter began.

  Not of the Radiants, not yet. Of the civilians. As soon as the Pursuer’s soldiers started toward the helpless Radiants, the watching crowd of humans went insane. Led by a few determined souls—including a gruff-looking man with one arm—the humans started fighting. A full-on rebellion.

  Of unarmed people against trained soldiers in warform.

  Venli turned away as the killing began. The humans didn’t give up though. They flooded the space between the warforms and the room with the Radiants, blocking the way with their own bodies.

  “Can we prevent this?” Venli asked Leshwi, who had settled beside her after being pushed aside by Stormblessed.

  “I will need the authority of Raboniel to countermand this particular order,” Leshwi said to Abashment. “The Pursuer has command of law in the tower. I have already sent another of the Heavenly Ones to ask Raboniel.”

  Venli winced at the screams. “But Raboniel said these Radiants were to be preserved!”

  “No longer,” Leshwi said. “Something happened in the night. Raboniel had needed the Radiants for tests she intended to perform, but she had one of them brought to her, and afterward she said she needed no further tests. The rest are now a liability, possibly a danger, should they wake.” She looked toward the dying humans, then shied away as some warforms ran past with bloody axes.

  “It is … unfortunate,” Leshwi said. “I do not sing to Joy in this type of conflict. But we have done it before, and will do it again, in the name of reclaiming our world.”

  “Can’t we be better?” Venli begged to Disappointment. “Isn’t there a way?”

  Leshwi looked at her, cocking her head. Venli had again used one of the wrong rhythms.

  Venli searched the room, past the angerspren and fearspren. Some of the singer troops weren’t joining in the killing. She picked out Rothan and Malal, Leshwi’s soldiers. They hesitated and did not join in. Leshwi picked better people than that.

  Show her, Timbre pulsed. Showhershowhershowher.

  Venli braced herself. Then she drew in Stormlight from the spheres in her pocket, and let herself begin glowing.

  Leshwi hummed immediately to Destruction and grabbed Venli by the face in a powerful grip.

  “What?” she said. “What have you done?”

  * * *

  Kaladin entered the place between moments.

  He’d met the Stormfather here on that first horrible night when he’d been strung up in the storm. The night when Syl had fought so hard to protect him.

  This time he drifted in the darkness. No wind tossed him, and the air became impossibly calm, impossibly quiet. As if he were floating alone in the ocean.

  WHY WON’T YOU SAY THE WORDS? the Stormfather asked.

  “I’ve forgotten them,” Kaladin whispered.

  YOU HAVE NOT.

  “Will they mean anything if I don’t feel them, Stormfather? Can I lie to swear an Ideal?”

  Silence. Pure, incriminating silence.

  “He wants me, as he wanted Moash,” Kaladin said. “If he keeps pushing, he’ll have me. So I have to go.”

  THAT IS A LIE, the Stormfather said. IT IS HIS ULTIMATE LIE, SON OF HONOR. THE LIE THAT SAYS YOU HAVE NO CHOICE. THE LIE THAT THERE IS NO MORE JOURNEY WORTH TAKING.

  He was right. A tiny part of Kaladin—a part that could not lie to himself—knew it was true.

  “What if I’m too tired?” Kaladin whispered. “What if there’s nothing left to give? What if that is why I cannot say your Words, Stormfather? What if it’s just too much?”

  YOU WOULD CONSIGN MY DAUGHTER TO MISERY AGAIN?

  Kaladin winced, but it was true. Could he do that to Syl?

  He gritted his teeth as he began to struggle. Began to fight through the nothingness. Through the inability to think. He fought through the pain, the agony—still raw—of losing his friend.

  He screamed, trembled, then sank inward.

  “Too weak,” he whispered.

  There simply wasn’t anything left for him to give.

  * * *

  It’s not enough, Dalinar said. He couldn’t see in this endless darkness, yet he could feel someone inside it. Two someones. Kaladin and his spren.

  Storms. They hurt.

  We need to give them more time, Dalinar said.

  We cannot, the Stormfather said. Respect his frailty, and don’t force me on this, Dalinar! You could break things you do not understand, the consequences of which could be catastrophic.

  Have you no compassion? Dalinar demanded. Have you no heart?

  I am a storm, the Stormfather said. I chose the ways of a storm.

  Choose better, then! Dalinar searched in the darkness, the infinity. He was full of Stormlight in a place where that didn’t matter.

  In a place where all things Connected. A place beyond Shadesmar. A place beyond time. A place where …

  What is that? Dalinar asked. That warmth.

  I feel nothing.

  Dalinar drew the warmth close, and understood. This place is where you make the visions happen, isn’t it? Dalinar asked. Time sometimes moved oddly in those.

  Yes, the Stormfather said. But you must have Connection for a vision. You must have a reason for it. A meaning. It cannot be just anything.

  GOOD, Dalinar said, forging a bond.

  What are you doing?

  CONNECTING HIM, Dalinar said. UNITING HIM.

  The Stormfather rumbled. With what?

  For ones so confused, they are somehow brilliant.

  —Musings of El, on the first of the Final Ten Days

  Kaladin jolted, opening his eyes in confusion. He was in a small tent. What on Roshar?

  He blinked and sat up, finding himself beside a boy, maybe eleven or twelve years old, in an antiquated uniform. Leather skirt and cap? Kaladin was dressed similarly.

  “What do you think, Dem?” the boy asked him. “Should we run?”

  Kaladin scanned the small tent, baffled. Then he heard sounds outside. A battlefield? Yes, men yelling and dying. He stood up and stepped out into the light, blinking against it. A … hillside, with some stumpweight trees on it. This wasn’t the Shattered Plains.

  I know this place, Kaladin thought. Amaram’s colors. Men in leather armor.

  Storms, he was on a battlefield from his youth. The exhaustion had taken a toll on him. He was hallucinating. The surgeon in him was worried at that.

  A young squadleader walked up, haggard. Storms, he couldn’t be older than seventeen or eighteen. That seemed so young to Kaladin now, though he wasn’t that much older. The squadleader was arguing with a shorter soldier beside him.

  “We can’t hold,” the squadleader said. “It’s impossible. Storms, they’re gathering for another advance.”

  “The orders are clear,” the other man said—barely out of his teens himself. “Brightlord Sheler says we’re to hold here. No retreat.”r />
  “To Damnation with that man,” the squadleader said, wiping his sweaty hair, surrounded by jets of exhaustionspren. Kaladin immediately felt a kinship with the poor fool. Given impossible orders and not enough resources? Looking along the ragged battle line, Kaladin guessed the man was in over his head, with all the higher-ranked soldiers dead. There were barely enough men to form three squads, and half of those were wounded.

  “This is Amaram’s fault,” Kaladin said. “Playing with the lives of half-trained men in outdated equipment, all to make himself look good so he’ll get moved to the Shattered Plains.”

  The young squadleader glanced at Kaladin, frowning. “You shouldn’t talk like that, kid,” the man said, running his hand through his hair again. “It could get you strung up, if the highmarshal hears.” The man took a deep breath. “Form up the wounded men on that flank. Tell everyone to get ready to hold. And … you, messenger boy, grab your friend and get some spears. Gor, put them in front.”

  “In front?” the other man asked. “You certain, Varth?”

  “You work with what you have…” the man said, hiking back the way he had come.

  Work with what you have.

  Everything spun around Kaladin, and he suddenly remembered this exact battlefield. He knew where he was. He knew that squadleader’s face. How had he not seen it immediately?

  Kaladin had been here. Rushing through the lines, searching for … Searching for …

  He spun on his heel and found a young man—too young—approaching Varth. He had an open, inviting face and too much spring in his step as he approached the squadleader. “I’ll go with them, sir,” Tien said.

  “Fine. Go.”

  Tien picked up a spear. He gathered the other messenger boy from the tent and started toward the place where he’d been told to stand.

  “No, Tien,” Kaladin said. “I can’t watch this. Not again.”

  Tien came and took Kaladin’s hand, then walked him forward. “It’s all right,” he said. “I know you’re frightened. But here we can stand together, all of us. Three are stronger than one, right?” He held out his spear, and the other boy—who was crying—did the same.