Words of Radiance

by Brandon Sanderson

  His smile broadened. Storms, those eyes . . .

  Careful, Shallan told herself. Careful! Kabsal took you in easily. Don’t repeat that.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Adolin said. “The Parshendi might not be an issue in the near future.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “It’s not widely known, though we’ve told the highprinces. Father is going to be meeting with some of the Parshendi leaders tomorrow. It could end up starting a peace negotiation.”

  “That’s fantastic!”

  “Yeah,” Adolin said. “I’m not hopeful. The assassin . . . anyway, we’ll see what happens tomorrow, though I’ll have to do this between the other work Father has for me.”

  “The duels,” Shallan said, leaning in. “What is going on there, Adolin?”

  He seemed hesitant.

  “Whatever is going on in the camps now,” she said, speaking more softly, “Jasnah didn’t know about it. I feel woefully ignorant about politics here, Adolin. Your father and Highprince Sadeas had a falling-out, I’ve gathered. The king has changed the nature of these plateau runs, and everyone is talking about how you’re dueling now. But from what I’ve been able to gather, you never stopped dueling.”

  “It’s different,” he said. “Now I’m dueling to win.”

  “And you didn’t before?”

  “No, then I dueled to punish.” He glanced about, then met her eyes. “It began when my father started seeing visions . . .”

  He continued. He poured out a surprising story, one with far greater detail than she’d anticipated. A story of betrayal, and of hope. Visions of the past. A unified Alethkar, prepared to weather a coming storm.

  She didn’t know what to make of it all, though she gathered that Adolin was telling her of it because he knew the rumors in camp. She’d heard of Dalinar’s fits, of course, and had an inkling of what Sadeas had done. When Adolin mentioned that his father wanted the Knights Radiant to return, Shallan felt a chill. She glanced about for Pattern—he’d be close—but couldn’t find him.

  The meat of the story, at least in Adolin’s estimation, was the betrayal by Sadeas. The young prince’s eyes grew dark, face flushed, as he talked of being abandoned on the Plains, surrounded by enemies. He seemed embarrassed when he spoke of salvation by a lowly bridge crew.

  He’s actually confiding in me, Shallan thought, feeling a thrill. She rested her freehand on his arm as he spoke, an innocent gesture, but it seemed to spur him forward as he quietly explained Dalinar’s plan. She wasn’t certain he should be sharing all of this with her. They barely knew one another. But speaking of it seemed to lift a weight from Adolin’s back, and he grew more relaxed.

  “I guess,” Adolin said, “that’s the end of it. I’m supposed to win Shardblades off the others, taking away their bite, embarrassing them. But I don’t know if it will work.”

  “Why not?” Shallan asked.

  “The ones who agree to duel me aren’t important enough,” he said, forming a fist. “If I win too much from them, the real targets—the highprinces—will get scared of me and refuse duels. I need matches that are more high profile. No, what I need is to duel Sadeas. Pound that grinning face of his into the stones and take back my father’s Blade. He’s too oily, though. We’ll never get him to agree.”

  She found herself wishing desperately to do something, anything, to help. She felt herself melting at the intense concern in those eyes, the passion.

  Remember Kabsal . . . she reminded herself again.

  Well, Adolin wasn’t likely to try to assassinate her—but then, that didn’t mean she should let her brain turn to curry paste around him. She cleared her throat, tearing her eyes away from his and looking down at her sketch.

  “Bother,” she said. “I’ve left you upset. I’m not very good at this wooing thing.”

  “Could have fooled me . . .” Adolin said, resting his hand on her arm.

  Shallan covered another blush by ducking her head and digging into her satchel. “You,” she said, “need to know what your cousin was working on before she died.”

  “Another volume in her father’s biography?”

  “No,” Shallan said, getting out a sheet of paper. “Adolin, Jasnah thought that the Voidbringers were going to return.”

  “What?” he said, frowning. “She didn’t even believe in the Almighty. Why would she believe in the Voidbringers?”

  “She had evidence,” Shallan said, tapping the paper with one finger. “A lot of that sank in the ocean, I’m afraid, but I do have some of her notes, and . . . Adolin, how hard do you think it would be to convince the highprinces to get rid of their parshmen?”

  “Get rid of what?”

  “How hard would it to be to make everyone stop using parshmen as slaves? Give them away, or . . .” Storms. She didn’t want to start a genocide here, did she? But these were the Voidbringers. “. . . or set them free or something. Get them out of the warcamps.”

  “How difficult would it be?” Adolin said. “Off the cuff, I’d say impossible. That, or really impossible. Why would we even want to do something like that?”

  “Jasnah thought they might be related to the Voidbringers and their return.”

  Adolin shook his head, looking bemused. “Shallan, we can barely get the highprinces to fight this war properly. If my father or the king were to require everyone to get rid of their parshmen . . . Storms! It would break the kingdom in a heartbeat.”

  So Jasnah was right on that count as well. Unsurprising. Shallan was interested to see how violently Adolin himself opposed the idea. He took a big gulp of wine, seeming utterly floored.

  Time to pull back, then. This meeting had gone very well; she wouldn’t want to end it on a sour note. “It was something Jasnah said,” Shallan said, “but really, I’d rather that Brightlady Navani judge how important a suggestion it was. She would know her daughter, her notes, better than anyone.”

  Adolin nodded. “So go to her.”

  Shallan tapped the paper in her fingers. “I’ve tried. She’s not been very accommodating.”

  “Aunt Navani can be overbearing sometimes.”

  “It’s not that,” Shallan said, scanning the words on the letter. It was a reply she’d gotten after requesting to meet the woman and discuss her daughter’s work. “She doesn’t want to meet with me. She barely seems to want to acknowledge I exist.”

  Adolin sighed. “She doesn’t want to believe. About Jasnah, I mean. You represent something to her—the truth, in a way. Give her time. She just needs to grieve.”

  “I’m not certain if this is something that should wait, Adolin.”

  “I’ll talk to her,” he said. “How about that?”

  “Wonderful,” she said. “Much like you yourself.”

  He grinned. “It’s nothing. I mean, if we’re going to halfway-almost-kind-of-maybe-get-married, we should probably look out for one another’s interests.” He paused. “Don’t mention that parshman thing to anyone else, though. That’s not something that will go over well.”

  She nodded absently, then realized she’d been staring at him. She was going to kiss those lips of his someday. She let herself imagine it.

  And, Ash’s eyes . . . he had a very friendly way about him. She hadn’t expected that in someone so highborn. She’d never actually met anyone of his rank before coming to the Shattered Plains, but all the men she knew near his level had been stiff and even angry.

  Not Adolin. Storms, but being with him was something else she could get very, very used to.

  People began to stir on the patio. She ignored them for a moment, but then many began to stand up from their seats, looking eastward.

  Highstorm. Right.

  Shallan felt a spike of alarm as she looked toward the Origin of Storms. The wind picked up, leaves and bits of refuse fluttering across the patio. Down below, the Outer Market had been packed up, tents folded away, awnings withdrawn, windows closed. The entirety of the warcamps braced itself.

 
Shallan stuffed her things into her satchel, then rose to her feet, stepping to the edge of the terrace, freehand fingers on the stone railing there. Adolin joined her. Behind them, people whispered and gathered. She heard iron grinding across stone; the parshmen had begun pulling away the tables and chairs, stowing them to both protect them and make a path for the lighteyes to retreat to safety.

  The horizon had bled from light to dark, like a man flushing with anger. Shallan gripped the railing, watching the entire world transform. Vines withdrew, rockbuds closed. Grass hid in its holes. They knew, somehow. They all knew.

  The air grew chill and wet, and prestorm winds gusted against her, blowing her hair back. Below and just to the north, the warcamps had piled refuse and waste to be blown away with the storm. It was a forbidden practice in most civilized areas, where that waste could blow into the next town. Out here, there was no next town.

  The horizon grew even darker. A few people on the balcony fled to the back room’s safety, their nerves getting the better of them. Most stayed, silent. Windspren zipped in tiny rivers of light overhead. Shallan took Adolin by the arm, staring eastward. Minutes passed until finally, she saw it.

  The stormwall.

  A huge sheet of water and debris blown before the storm. In places, it flashed with light from behind, revealing movement and shadows within. Like the skeleton of a hand when light illuminated the flesh, there was something inside this wall of destruction.

  Most of the people fled the balcony, though the stormwall was still distant. In moments, only a handful remained, Shallan and Adolin among them. She watched, transfixed, as the storm approached. It took longer than she’d expected. It was moving at a terrible speed, but it was so large, they’d been able to spot it from quite a distance.

  It consumed the Shattered Plains, one plateau at a time. Soon, it loomed over the warcamps, coming on with a roar.

  “We should go,” Adolin eventually said. She barely heard him.

  Life. Something lived inside that storm, something that no artist had ever drawn, no scholar had ever described.

  “Shallan!” Adolin began to tow her toward the protected room. She grabbed the railing with her freehand, remaining in place, clutching her satchel to her chest with her safehand. That humming, that was Pattern.

  She’d never been so close to a highstorm. Even when she’d been only inches away from one, separated by a window shutter, she had not been as close as she was now. Watching that darkness descend upon the warcamps . . .

  I need to draw.

  “Shallan!” Adolin said, pulling her away from the railing. “They’ll close the doors if we don’t go now!”

  With a start, she realized that everyone else had left the balcony. She allowed Adolin to get her moving, and she joined him in a dash across the empty patio. They reached the room at the side, packed with huddled lighteyes who watched in terror. Adolin’s guards entered right after her, and several parshmen slammed the thick doors. The bar thumped in place, locking out the sky, leaving them to the light of spheres on the walls.

  Shallan counted. The highstorm hit—she could feel it. Something beyond the thumping of the door and the distant sound of thunder.

  “Six seconds,” she said.

  “What?” Adolin asked. His voice was hushed, and others in the room spoke in whispers.

  “It took six seconds after the servants closed the doors until the storm hit. We could have spent that much longer out there.”

  Adolin regarded her with an incredulous expression. “When you first realized what we were doing on that balcony, you seemed terrified.”

  “I was.”

  “Now you wish you’d stayed out until the last moment before the storm hit?”

  “I . . . yeah,” she said, blushing.

  “I have no idea what to make of you.” Adolin regarded her. “You’re not like anyone I’ve met.”

  “It’s my air of feminine mystique.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s a term we use,” she said, “when we’re feeling particularly erratic. It’s considered polite not to point out that you know this. Now, do we just . . . wait in here?”

  “In this box of a room?” Adolin asked, sounding amused. “We’re lighteyes, not livestock.” He gestured to the side, where several servants had opened doors leading to places burrowed deeper into the mountain. “Two sitting rooms. One for men, the other for women.”

  Shallan nodded. Sometimes during a highstorm, the genders would retire to separate rooms to chat. It looked like the winehouse followed this tradition. They’d probably have finger food. Shallan walked toward the indicated room, but Adolin rested a hand on her arm, making her pause.

  “I’ll see about getting you out onto the Shattered Plains,” he said. “Amaram wants to go explore more, he’s said, than he gets to during a plateau run. I think he and Father are having dinner to talk about it tomorrow night, and I can ask then if I can bring you. I’ll also talk to Aunt Navani. Maybe we can discuss what I’ve come up with at the feast next week?”

  “There’s a feast next week?”

  “There’s always a feast next week,” Adolin said. “We just have to figure out who’s throwing it. I’ll send to you.”

  She smiled, and then they separated. Next week is not soon enough, she thought. I’ll have to find a way to drop in on him when it’s not too awkward.

  Had she really promised to help him breed chasmfiends? As if she needed something else to take her time. Still, she felt good about the day as she entered the women’s sitting room, her guards taking their places in the appropriate waiting room.

  Shallan strolled through the women’s room, which was well lit with gemstones gathered in goblets—cut stones, but not in spheres. An expensive display.

  She felt that, if her teachers had been watching, both would have been disappointed at her conversation with Adolin. Tyn would have wanted her to manipulate the prince more; Jasnah would have wanted Shallan to be more poised, more in control of her tongue.

  It seemed that Adolin liked her anyway. That made her want to cheer.

  The looks of the women about her washed away that emotion. Some turned backs toward Shallan, and others pressed their lips together and looked her up and down skeptically. Courting the kingdom’s most eligible bachelor was not going to make her popular, not when she was an outsider.

  That didn’t bother Shallan. She didn’t need acceptance from these women; she just needed to find Urithiru and the secrets it contained. Gaining Adolin’s trust was a big step in that direction.

  She decided to reward herself by stuffing her face with sweets and thinking further on her plan to sneak into Brightlord Amaram’s house.

  And now, if there was an uncut gem among the Radiants, it was the Willshapers; for though enterprising, they were erratic, and Invia wrote of them, “capricious, frustrating, unreliable,” as taking it for granted that others would agree; this may have been an intolerant view, as often Invia expressed, for this order was said to be most varied, inconsistent in temperament save for a general love of adventure, novelty, or oddity.

  —From Words of Radiance, chapter 7, page 1

  Adolin sat in a high-backed chair, cup of wine in his hand, listening to the highstorm rumble outside. He should have felt safe in this bunker of rock, but there was something about storms that undercut any sense of security, no matter how rational. He’d be glad for the Weeping, and the end of the highstorms for a few weeks.

  Adolin raised his cup toward Elit, who stomped past. He hadn’t seen the man above, on the winehouse terrace, but this chamber also served as a highstorm bunker for several shops in the Outer Market.

  “Are you ready for our duel?” Adolin asked. “You’ve made me wait an entire week so far, Elit.”

  The short, balding man took a drink of wine, then lowered his cup, not looking at Adolin. “My cousin is planning to kill you for challenging me,” he said. “Right after he kills me for agreeing to the challenge.” He finally turned tow
ard Adolin. “But when I stomp you into the sands and claim all of your family’s Shards, I’ll be the rich one and he’ll be forgotten. Am I ready for our duel? I long for it, Adolin Kholin.”

  “You’re the one who wanted to wait,” Adolin noted.

  “The more time to savor what I’m going to do to you.” Elit smiled with white lips, then moved on.

  Creepy fellow. Well, Adolin would deal with him in two days, the date of their duel. Before that, though, was tomorrow’s meeting with the Parshendi Shardbearer. It loomed over him like a thunderhead. What would it mean, if they finally found peace?

  He mulled over that thought, regarding his wine and listening with half an ear to Elit chatting behind him with someone. Adolin recognized that voice, didn’t he?

  Adolin sat upright, then looked over his shoulder. How long had Sadeas been back there, and why hadn’t Adolin spotted him when first entering?

  Sadeas turned to him, a calm smile on his face.

  Maybe he’ll just . . .

  Sadeas strolled up to Adolin, hands clasped behind his back, wearing a fashionable open-fronted short brown coat and an embroidered green stock. The buttons along the front of the coat were gemstones. Emeralds to match the stock.

  Storms. He did not want to deal with Sadeas today.

  The highprince took the seat beside Adolin, their backs to a hearth that a parshman had begun stoking. The room contained a low hum of nervous conversation. You could never quite be comfortable, no matter how pretty the decor, when a highstorm raged outside.

  “Young Adolin,” Sadeas said. “What do you think of my coat?”

  Adolin took a gulp of wine, not trusting himself to reply. I should just get up and walk away. But he didn’t. A small part of him wished for Sadeas to provoke him, push away his inhibitions, drive him to do something stupid. Killing the man right here, right now, would likely earn Adolin an execution—or at least an exile. It might be worth either punishment.

  “You’ve always been so keen-eyed when it comes to style,” Sadeas continued. “I’d know your opinion. I do think the coat is splendid, but I worry that the short cut might be trending out of fashion. What is the latest from Liafor?”