Words of Radiance

by Brandon Sanderson

  “I don’t walk . . .” Pattern said.

  “You know what I mean,” Shallan said.

  Pattern moved, and the image moved with him. It didn’t walk, unfortunately. The image just kind of glided. Like light reflected onto the wall from a spoon you idly turned in your hands. She cheered to herself anyway. After so long failing to get sounds from one of her creations, this different discovery seemed a major victory.

  Could she get it to move more naturally? She settled down with her sketchpad and started drawing.

  ONE AND A HALF YEARS AGO

  Shallan became the perfect daughter.

  She kept quiet, particularly in Father’s presence. She spent most days in her room, sitting by the window, reading the same books over and over or sketching the same objects again and again. He had proven several times by this point that he would not touch her if she angered him.

  Instead, he would beat others in her name.

  The only times she allowed herself to drop the mask was when she was with her brothers, times when her father couldn’t hear. Her three brothers often cajoled her—with an edge of desperation—to tell them stories from her books. For their hearing only, she made jokes, poked fun at Father’s visitors, and invented extravagant tales by the hearth.

  Such an insignificant way to fight back. She felt a coward for not doing more. But surely . . . surely things would get better now. Indeed, as Shallan was involved more by the ardents in accounts, she noted a shrewdness to the way her father stopped being bullied by other lighteyes and started playing them against each other. He impressed her, but frightened her, in how he seized for power. Father’s fortunes changed further when a new marble deposit was discovered on his lands—providing resources to keep up with his promises, bribes, and deals.

  Surely that would make him start laughing again. Surely that would drive the darkness from his eyes.

  It did not.

  * * *

  “She is too low for you to marry,” Father said, setting down his mug. “I won’t have it, Balat. You will break off contact with that woman.”

  “She belongs to a good family!” Balat said, standing, palms on the table. It was lunch, and so Shallan was expected to be here, rather than remaining shut up in her room. She sat to the side, at her private table. Balat stood facing Father across the high table.

  “Father, they’re your vassals!” Balat snapped. “You yourself have invited them to dine with us.”

  “My axehounds dine at my feet,” Father said. “I do not allow my sons to court them. House Tavinar is not nearly ambitious enough for us. Now, Sudi Valam, that might be worth considering.”

  Balat frowned. “The highprince’s daughter? You can’t be serious. She’s in her fifties!”

  “She is single.”

  “Because her husband died in a duel! Anyway, the highprince would never approve it.”

  “His perception of us will change,” Father said. “We are a wealthy family now, with much influence.”

  “Yet still headed by a murderer,” Balat snapped.

  Too far! Shallan thought. On Father’s other side, Luesh laced his fingers in front of him. The new house steward had a face like a well-worn glove, leathery and wrinkled in the places most used—notably the frown lines.

  Father stood up slowly. This new anger of his, the cold anger, terrified Shallan. “Your new axehound pups,” he said to Balat. “Terrible that they caught a sickness during the latest highstorm. Tragic. It is unfortunate they need to be put down.” He gestured, and one of his new guards—a man Shallan did not know well—stepped outside, pulling his sword from its sheath.

  Shallan grew very cold. Even Luesh grew concerned, placing a hand on Father’s arm.

  “You bastard,” Balat said, growing pale. “I’ll—”

  “You’ll what, Balat?” Father asked, shaking off Luesh’s touch, leaning toward Balat. “Come on. Say it. Will you challenge me? Don’t think I wouldn’t kill you if you did. Wikim may be a pathetic wreck, but he will serve just as well as you for what this house needs.”

  “Helaran is back,” Balat said.

  Father froze, hands on the table, unmoving.

  “I saw him two days ago,” Balat said. “He sent for me, and I rode out to meet him in the city. Helaran—”

  “That name is not to be spoken in this house!” Father said. “I mean it, Nan Balat! Never.”

  Balat met his father’s gaze, and Shallan counted ten beats of her thumping heart before Balat broke the stare and looked away.

  Father sat down, looking exhausted as Balat stalked out of the room. The hall fell completely silent, Shallan too frightened to speak. Father eventually stood up, shoving his chair back and leaving. Luesh trailed soon after.

  That left Shallan alone with the servants. Timidly she stood up, then went after Balat.

  He was in the kennel. The guard had worked swiftly. Balat’s new pod of pups lay dead in a pool of violet blood on the stone floor.

  She’d encouraged Balat to breed these. He’d been making progress with his demons, over the years. He rarely hurt anything larger than a cremling. Now he sat on a box, looking down at the small corpses, horrified. Painspren cluttered the ground near him.

  The metal gate into the kennel rattled as Shallan pushed it open. She raised her safehand to her mouth as she drew closer to the pitiful remains.

  “Father’s guards,” Balat said. “It’s like they were waiting for a chance to do something like this. I don’t like the new group he has. That Levrin, with the angry eyes, and Rin . . . that one frightens me. What ever happened to Ten and Beal? Soldiers that you could joke with. Almost friends . . .”

  She rested a hand on his shoulder. “Balat. Did you really see Helaran?”

  “Yes. He said I wasn’t to tell anyone. He warned me that this time when he left, he might not be coming back for a long time. He told me . . . told me to watch over the family.” Balat buried his head in his hands. “I can’t be him, Shallan.”

  “You don’t need to be.”

  “He’s brave. He’s strong.”

  “He abandoned us.”

  Balat looked up, tears running down his cheeks. “Maybe he was right. Maybe that’s the only way, Shallan.”

  “Leave our house?”

  “What of it?” Balat asked. “You spend every day locked away, brought out only for Father to display. Jushu has gone back to his gambling—you know he has, even if he’s smarter about it. Wikim talks about becoming an ardent, but I don’t know if Father will ever let go of him. He’s insurance.”

  It was, unfortunately, a good argument. “Where would we go?” Shallan asked. “We have nothing.”

  “I have nothing here either,” Balat said. “I’m not going to give up on Eylita, Shallan. She’s the only beautiful thing that has happened in my life. If she and I have to go live in Vedenar as tenth dahn, with me working as a house guard or something like that, we’ll do it. Doesn’t that seem a better life than this?” He gestured toward the dead pups.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Would you go with me? If I took Eylita and left? You could be a scribe. Earn your own way, be free of Father.”

  “I . . . No. I need to stay.”

  “Why?”

  “Something has hold of Father, something awful. If we all leave, we give him to it. Someone has to help him.”

  “Why do you defend him so? You know what he did.”

  “He didn’t do it.”

  “You can’t remember,” Balat said. “You’ve told me over and over that your mind blanks. You saw him kill her, but you don’t want to admit that you witnessed it. Storms, Shallan. You’re as broken as Wikim and Jushu. As . . . as I am sometimes . . .”

  She shook off her numbness.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “If you go, are you going to take Wikim and Jushu with you?”

  “I couldn’t afford to,” Balat said. “Jushu in particular. We’d have to live lean, and I couldn’t trust that he’d . . . you know. But if
you came, it might be easier for one of us to find work. You’re better at writing and art than Eylita.”

  “No, Balat,” Shallan said, frightened of how eager a part of her was to say yes to him. “I can’t. Particularly if Jushu and Wikim remain here.”

  “I see,” he said. “Maybe . . . maybe there’s another way out. I’ll think.”

  She left him in the kennel, worried that Father would find her there and that it would upset him. She entered the manor, but couldn’t help feeling that she was trying to hold together a carpet as dozens of people pulled out threads from the sides.

  What would happen if Balat left? He backed down from fights with Father, but at least he resisted. Wikim merely did what he was told, and Jushu was still a mess. We have to just weather this, Shallan thought. Stop provoking Father, let him relax. Then he’ll come back. . . .

  She climbed the steps and passed Father’s door. It was open a crack; she could hear him inside.

  “. . . find him in Valath,” Father said. “Nan Balat claims to have met him in the city, and that is what he must have meant.”

  “It will be done, Brightlord.” That voice. It was Rin, captain of Father’s new guards. Shallan backed up, peeking into the room. Father’s strongbox shone behind the picture on the back wall, bright light bursting through the canvas. To her it was almost blinding, though the men in the room didn’t seem able to see it.

  Rin bowed before Father, hand on sword.

  “Bring me his head, Rin,” Father said. “I want to see it with my own eyes. He is the one who could ruin all of this. Surprise him, kill him before he can summon his Shardblade. That weapon will be yours in payment so long as you serve House Davar.”

  Shallan stumbled back from the door before Father could look up and see her. Helaran. Father had just ordered Helaran’s assassination.

  I have to do something. I have to warn him. How? Could Balat contact him again? Shallan—

  “How dare you,” said a feminine voice within.

  Stunned silence followed. Shallan edged back to look into the room. Malise, her stepmother, stood in the doorway between the bedroom and the sitting room. The small, plump woman had never seemed threatening to Shallan before. But the storm on her face today could have frightened a whitespine.

  “Your own son,” Malise said. “Have you no morals left? Have you no compassion?”

  “He is no longer my son,” Father growled.

  “I believed your story about the woman before me,” Malise said. “I’ve supported you. I’ve lived with this cloud over the house. Now I hear this? It is one thing to beat the servants, but to kill your son?”

  Father whispered something to Rin. Shallan jumped, and barely got down the hallway to her room before the man slipped out of the room, then closed Father’s door with a click.

  Shallan shut herself in her room as the shouting started, a violent, angry back-and-forth between Malise and her father. Shallan huddled up beside the bed, tried to use a pillow to keep out the sounds. When she thought it was over, she removed the pillow.

  Her father stormed out into the hallway. “Why will nobody in this house obey?” he shouted, thumping down the stairs. “This wouldn’t happen if you all just obeyed.”

  This is, I suspect, a little like a skunk naming itself for its stench.

  Life continued in Kaladin’s cell. Though the accommodations were nice for a dungeon, he found himself wishing he were back in the slave wagon. At least then he’d been able to watch the scenery. Fresh air, wind, an occasional rinse in the highstorm’s last rains. Life certainly hadn’t been good, but it had been better than being locked away and forgotten.

  They took the spheres away at night, abandoning him to blackness. In the dark, he found himself imagining that he was someplace deep, with miles of stone above him and no pathway out, no hope of rescue. He could not conceive a worse death. Better to be gutted on the battlefield, looking up at the open sky as your life leaked away.

  * * *

  Light awoke him. He sighed, watching the ceiling as the guards—lighteyed soldiers he didn’t know—replaced the lamp spheres. Day after day, everything was the storming same in here. Waking to the frail light of spheres, which only made him wish for the sun. The servant arrived to give him his breakfast. He’d placed his chamber pot in reach of the opening at the bottom of the bars, and it scraped stone as she pulled it out and replaced it with a fresh one.

  She scurried away. He frightened her. With a groan at stiff muscles, Kaladin sat up and regarded his meal. Flatbread stuffed with bean paste. He stood, waving away some strange spren like taut wires crossing before him, then forced himself to do a set of push-ups. Keeping his strength up would be difficult if the imprisonment continued too long. Perhaps he could ask for some stones to use for training.

  Was this what happened to Moash’s grandparents? Kaladin wondered, taking the food. Waiting for a trial until they died in prison?

  Kaladin sat back on his bench, nibbling on the flatbread. There’d been a highstorm yesterday, but he’d barely been able to hear it, locked away in this room.

  He heard Syl humming nearby, but couldn’t find where she’d gone. “Syl?” he asked. She kept hiding from him.

  “There was a Cryptic at the fight,” her voice said softly.

  “You mentioned those before, didn’t you? A type of spren?”

  “A revolting type.” She paused. “But not evil, I don’t think.” She sounded begrudging. “I was going to follow it, as it fled, but you needed me. When I went back to look, it had hidden from me.”

  “What does it mean?” Kaladin asked, frowning.

  “Cryptics like to plan,” Syl said slowly, as if recalling something long lost. “Yes . . . I remember. They debate and watch and never do anything. But . . .”

  “What?” Kaladin asked, rising.

  “They’re looking for someone,” Syl said. “I’ve seen the signs. Soon, you might not be alone, Kaladin.”

  Looking for someone. To choose, like him, as a Surgebinder. What kind of Knight Radiant had been made by a group of spren Syl so obviously detested? It didn’t seem like someone he’d want to get to know.

  Oh, storms, Kaladin thought, sitting back down. If they choose Adolin . . .

  The thought should have made him sick. Instead, he found Syl’s revelation oddly comforting. Not being alone, even if it did turn out to be Adolin, made him feel better and drove away some small measure of his gloom.

  As he was finishing his meal, a thump came from the hallway. The door opening? Only lighteyes could visit him, though so far none had. Unless you counted Wit.

  The storm catches everyone, eventually. . . .

  Dalinar Kholin stepped into the room.

  Despite his sour thoughts, Kaladin’s immediate reaction—drilled into him over the years—was to stand and salute, hand to breast. This was his commanding officer. He felt an idiot as soon as he did it. He stood behind bars and saluted the man who’d put him here?

  “At ease,” Dalinar said with a nod. The wide-shouldered man stood with hands clasped behind his back. Something about Dalinar was imposing, even when he was relaxed.

  He looks like the generals from the stories, Kaladin thought. Thick of face and greying of hair, solid in the same way that a brick was. He didn’t wear a uniform, the uniform wore him. Dalinar Kholin represented an ideal that Kaladin had long since decided was a mere fancy.

  “How are your accommodations?” Dalinar asked.

  “Sir? I’m in storming prison.”

  A smile cracked Dalinar’s face. “So I see. Calm yourself, soldier. If I’d ordered you to guard a room for a week, would you have done it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then consider this your duty. Guard this room.”

  “I’ll make sure nobody unauthorized runs off with the chamber pot, sir.”

  “Elhokar is coming around. He’s finished cooling off, and now only worries that releasing you too quickly will make him look weak. I’ll need you to stay here a
few more days, then we’ll draft a formal pardon for your crime and have you reinstated to your position.”

  “I don’t see that I have any choice, sir.”

  Dalinar stepped closer to the bars. “This is hard for you.”

  Kaladin nodded.

  “You are well cared for, as are your men. Two of your bridgemen guard the way into the building at all times. There is nothing to worry you, soldier. If it’s your reputation with me—”

  “Sir,” Kaladin said. “I guess I’m just not convinced that the king will ever let me go. He has a history of letting inconvenient people rot in dungeons until they die.”

  As soon as he said the words, Kaladin couldn’t believe they’d come from his lips. They sounded insubordinate, even treasonous. But they’d been sitting there, in his mouth, demanding to be spoken.

  Dalinar remained in his posture with hands clasped behind his back. “You speak of the silversmiths back in Kholinar?”

  So he did know. Stormfather . . . had Dalinar been involved? Kaladin nodded.

  “How did you hear of that incident?”

  “From one of my men,” Kaladin said. “He knew the imprisoned people.”

  “I had hoped we could escape those rumors,” Dalinar said. “But of course, rumor grows like lichen, crusted on and impossible to completely scrub free. What happened with those people was a mistake, soldier. I’ll admit that freely. The same won’t happen to you.”

  “Are the rumors about them true, then?”

  “I would really rather not speak of the Roshone affair.”

  Roshone.

  Kaladin remembered screams. Blood on the floor of his father’s surgery room. A dying boy.

  A day in the rain. A day when one man tried to steal away Kaladin’s light. He eventually succeeded.

  “Roshone?” Kaladin whispered.

  “Yes, a minor lighteyes,” Dalinar said, sighing.

  “Sir, it’s important that I know of this. For my own peace of mind.”

  Dalinar looked him up and down. Kaladin just stared straight ahead, mind . . . numb. Roshone. Everything had started to go wrong when Roshone had arrived in Hearthstone to be the new citylord. Before then, Kaladin’s father had been respected.