Words of Radiance

by Brandon Sanderson

  There it was.

  The beast filled the chasm. Long and narrow, it wasn’t bulbous or bulky, like some small cremlings. It was sinuous, sleek, with that arrowlike face and sharp mandibles.

  It was also wrong. Wrong in a way difficult to describe. Big creatures were supposed to be slow and docile, like chulls. Yet this enormous beast moved with ease, its legs up on the sides of the chasm, holding it so that its body barely touched the ground. It ate the corpse of a fallen soldier, grasping the body in smaller claws by its mouth, then ripping it in half with a gruesome bite.

  That face was like something from a nightmare. Evil, powerful, almost intelligent.

  “Those spren,” Shallan whispered, so soft he could barely hear. “I’ve seen those . . .”

  They danced around the chasmfiend, and were the source of the light. They looked like small glowing arrows, and they surrounded the beast in schools, though occasionally one would drift away from the others and then vanish like a small plume of smoke rising into the air.

  “Skyeels,” Shallan whispered. “They follow skyeels too. The chasmfiend likes corpses. Could its kind be carrion feeders by nature? No, those claws, they look like they’re meant for breaking shells. I suspect we’d find herds of wild chulls near where these things live naturally. But they come to the Shattered Plains to pupate, and here there’s very little food, which is why they attack men. Why has this one remained after pupating?”

  The chasmfiend was almost done with its meal. Kaladin took her by the shoulder, and she allowed him—with obvious reluctance—to pull her away.

  They returned to their things, gathered them up, and—as silently as possible—retreated farther into the darkness.

  * * *

  They walked for hours, going in a completely different direction from the one they’d taken before. Shallan allowed Kaladin to lead again, though she tried her best to keep track of the chasms. She’d need to draw it out to be certain of their location.

  Images of the chasmfiend tumbled in her head. What a majestic animal! Her fingers practically itched to sketch it from the Memory she’d taken. The legs were larger than she’d imagined; not like a legger, with spindly little spinelike legs holding up a thick body. This creature had exuded power. Like the whitespine, only enormous and more alien.

  They were far from it now. Hopefully that meant they were safe. The night was dragging on her, after she’d risen early to get moving on the expedition.

  She covertly checked the spheres in her pouch. She’d drained them all dun in their flight. Bless the Almighty for the Stormlight—she would need to make a glyphward in thanks. Without the strength and endurance it lent, she’d never have been able to keep up with Kaladin longlegs.

  Now, however, she was storming exhausted. As if the Light had inflated her capacity, but now left her deflated and worn out.

  At the next intersection, Kaladin paused and looked her over.

  She gave him a weak smile.

  “We’ll need to stop for the night,” he said.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s not just you,” he said, looking up at the sky. “I honestly have no idea if we’re going the right direction or not. I’m all turned around. If we can get an idea in the morning of where the sun is rising, it will tell us which direction to walk.”

  She nodded.

  “We should still be able to get back in plenty of time,” he added. “No need to worry.”

  The way he said it immediately made her start worrying. Still, she helped him find a relatively dry portion of ground, and they settled down, spheres in the center like a little mock fire. Kaladin dug in the pack she’d found—she’d taken it off a dead soldier—and came out with some rations of flatbread and dried chull jerky. Not the most appetizing of food by any stretch, but it was something.

  She sat with her back to the wall and ate, looking upward. The flatbread was from Soulcast grain—that stale taste was obvious. Clouds above prevented her from seeing the stars, but some starspren moved in front of those, forming distant patterns.

  “It’s strange,” she whispered as Kaladin ate. “I’ve only been down here half a night, but it feels like so much longer. The tops of the plateaus seem so distant, don’t they?”

  He grunted.

  “Ah yes,” she said. “The bridgeman grunt. A language unto itself. I’ll need to go over the morphemes and tones with you; I’m not quite fluent yet.”

  “You’d make a terrible bridgeman.”

  “Too short?”

  “Well, yes. And too female. I doubt you’d look good in the traditional short trousers and open vest. Or, rather, you’d probably look too good. It might be a little distracting for the other bridgemen.”

  She smiled at that, digging into her satchel and pulling out her sketchbook and pencils. At least she had fallen with those. She started sketching, humming softly to herself and stealing one of the spheres for light. Pattern still lay on her skirts, content to be silent in Kaladin’s presence.

  “Storms,” Kaladin said. “You’re not drawing a picture of you wearing one of those outfits . . .”

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “I’m drawing salacious pictures of myself for you after only a few hours together in the chasm.” She scratched at a line. “You have quite the imagination, bridgeboy.”

  “Well it’s what we were talking about,” he grumbled, rising and walking over to look at what she was doing. “I thought you were tired.”

  “I’m exhausted,” she said. “So I need to relax.” Obviously. This first sketch wouldn’t be the chasmfiend. She needed a warm-up.

  So she drew their path through the chasms. A map, kind of, but more a picture of the chasms as if she could see them from above. It was imaginative enough to be interesting, though she was certain she got a few of the ridges and corners wrong.

  “What is that?” Kaladin asked. “A picture of the Plains?”

  “Something of a map,” she said, though she grimaced. What did it say about her that she couldn’t just draw a few lines giving their location, like a regular person? She had to do it like a picture. “I don’t know the full shapes of the plateaus we walked around, just the chasm pathways we used.”

  “You remember it that well?”

  Stormwinds. Hadn’t she intended to keep her visual memory more secret than this? “Uh . . . No, not really. I’m guessing at a lot of this.”

  She felt foolish for revealing her skill. Veil would have had words with her. It was too bad Veil wasn’t down here, actually. She would be better at this whole surviving-in-the-wilderness thing.

  Kaladin took the picture from her fingers, standing up and using his sphere to light it. “Well, if your map is correct, we’ve been making our way southward instead of westward. I need light to navigate better.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, taking out another sheet to begin her sketch of the chasmfiend.

  “We’ll wait for the sun tomorrow,” he said. “That will tell me which way to go.”

  She nodded, beginning her sketch as he made a place for himself and settled down, coat folded into a pillow. She wanted to turn in herself, but this sketch would not wait. She at least had to get something down.

  She only lasted about a half hour—finishing perhaps a quarter of the sketch—before she had to put it away, curl up on the hard ground with the pack as a pillow, and fall asleep.

  * * *

  It was still dark when Kaladin nudged her awake with the butt of his spear. Shallan groaned, rolling over on the chasm floor, and drowsily tried to put her pillow over her head.

  Which, of course, spilled dried chull meat onto her. Kaladin chuckled.

  Sure, that got a laugh out of him. Storming man. How long had she been able to sleep? She blinked bleary eyes and focused on the open crack of the chasm far above.

  Nope, not a single glimmer of light. Two, perhaps three hours of sleep, then? Or, rather, “sleep.” The definition of what she’d done was debatable. She’d probably have called it “tossing and
turning on the rocky ground, occasionally waking with a start to find that she’d drooled a small puddle.” That didn’t really roll off the tongue, though. Unlike the aforementioned drool.

  She sat up and stretched sore limbs, checking to make sure her sleeve hadn’t come unbuttoned in the night or anything equally embarrassing. “I need a bath,” she grumbled.

  “A bath?” Kaladin asked. “You have only been away from civilization for one day.”

  She sniffed. “Just because you’re accustomed to the stench of unwashed bridgeman does not mean I need to join in.”

  He smirked, taking a piece of dried chull meat from her shoulder and popping it in his mouth. “In my home town growing up, bath day was once a week. I think even the local lighteyes would have found it strange that everyone out here, even the common soldiers, finds a bath more frequently.”

  How dare he be this chipper in the morning? Or, rather, the “morning.” She threw another piece of chull meat at him when he wasn’t looking. The storming man caught it.

  I hate him.

  “We didn’t get eaten by that chasmfiend while we slept,” he said, refilling the pack save for a single waterskin. “I’d say that was about as much a blessing as we could expect, under the circumstances. Come on, up on your toes. Your map gives me an idea of which way to go, and we can watch for sunlight to make certain we’re on the right path. We want to beat that highstorm, right?”

  “You’re the one I want to beat,” she grumbled. “With a stick.”

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing,” she said, standing up and trying to make something of her frazzled hair. Storms. She must look like the aftereffect of a lightning bolt hitting a jar of red ink. She sighed. She didn’t have a brush, and he didn’t look like he was going to give her time for a proper braid, so she put on her boots—wearing the same pair of socks two days in a row was the least of her indignities—and picked up her satchel. Kaladin carried the pack.

  She trailed after him as he led the way through the chasm, her stomach complaining about how little she’d eaten the night before. Food didn’t sound good, so she let it growl. Serves it right, she thought. Whatever that meant.

  Eventually, the sky did start to brighten, and from a direction that indicated that they were going the right way. Kaladin fell into his customary quiet, and his chipper mien from earlier in the morning evaporated. Instead, he looked like he was consumed by difficult thoughts.

  She yawned, pulling up beside him. “What are you thinking about?”

  “I was considering how nice it was to have a little silence,” he said. “With nobody bothering me.”

  “Liar. Why do you try so hard to put people off?”

  “Maybe I just don’t want to have another argument.”

  “You won’t,” she said, yawning again. “It’s far too early for arguments. Try it. Give me an insult.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Insult! Now!”

  “I’d rather walk these chasms with a compulsive murderer than you. At least then, when the conversation got tedious, I’d have an easy way out.”

  “And your feet stink,” she said. “See? Too early. I can’t possibly be witty at this hour. So no arguments.” She hesitated, then continued more softly. “Besides, no murderer would agree to accompany you. Everyone needs to have some standards, after all.”

  Kaladin snorted, lips tugging up to the sides.

  “Be careful,” she said, hopping over a fallen log. “That was almost like a smile—and earlier this morning, I could swear that you were cheerful. Well, mildly content. Anyway, if you start to be in a better mood, it will destroy the whole variety of this trip.”

  “Variety?” he asked.

  “Yes. If we’re both pleasant, there’s no artistry to it. You see, great art is a matter of contrast. Some lights and some darks. The happy, smiling, radiant lady and the dark, brooding, malodorous bridgeman.”

  “That—” He stopped. “Malodorous?”

  “A great figure painting,” she said, “shows the hero with inherent contrast—strong, yet hinting at vulnerability, so that the viewer can relate to him. Your little problem would make for a dynamic contrast.”

  “How would you even convey that in a painting?” Kaladin said, frowning. “Besides, I’m not malodorous.”

  “Oh, so you’re getting better? Yay!”

  He looked at her, dumbfounded.

  “Confusion,” she said. “I will graciously take that as a sign that you’re amazed that I can be so humorous at such an early hour.” She leaned in conspiratorially, whispering. “I’m really not very witty. You just happen to be stupid, so it seems that way. Contrast, remember?”

  She smiled at him, then continued on her way, humming to herself. Actually, the day was looking much better. Why had she been in a bad mood earlier?

  Kaladin jogged to catch up with her. “Storms, woman,” he said. “I don’t know what to make of you.”

  “Preferably not a corpse.”

  “I’m surprised someone hasn’t already done that.” He shook his head. “Give me an honest answer. Why are you here?”

  “Well, there was this bridge that collapsed, and I fell . . .”

  He sighed.

  “Sorry,” Shallan said. “Something about you encourages me to crack wise, bridgeboy. Even in the morning. Anyway, why did I come here? You mean to the Shattered Plains in the first place?”

  He nodded. There was a sort of rugged handsomeness to the fellow. Like the beauty of a natural rock formation, as opposed to a fine sculpture like Adolin.

  But Kaladin’s intensity, that frightened her. He seemed like a man who constantly had his teeth clenched, a man who couldn’t let himself—or anyone else—just sit down and take a nice rest.

  “I came here,” Shallan said, “because of Jasnah Kholin’s work. The scholarship she left behind must not be abandoned.”

  “And Adolin?”

  “Adolin is a delightful surprise.”

  They passed an entire wall covered in draping vines that were rooted in a broken section of rock above. They wriggled and pulled up as Shallan passed. Very alert, she noted. Faster than most vines. These were the opposite of those in the gardens back home, where the plants had been sheltered for so long. She tried to snatch one for a cutting, but it moved too quickly.

  Drat. She needed a bit of one so that when they got back, she could grow a plant for experimentation. Pretending she was here to explore and record new species helped push back the gloom. She heard Pattern humming softly from her skirt, as if he realized what she was doing, distracting herself from the predicament and the danger. She swatted at him. What would the bridgeman think if he heard her clothing buzz?

  “Just a moment,” she said, finally snatching one of the vines. Kaladin watched, leaning on his spear, as she cut the tip off the vine with the small knife from her satchel.

  “Jasnah’s research,” he said. “It had something to do with structures hidden out here, beneath the crem?”

  “What makes you say that?” She tucked the tip of the vine away in an empty ink jar she’d kept for specimens.

  “You made too much of an effort to get out here,” he said. “Ostensibly all to investigate a chasmfiend’s chrysalis. A dead one, even. There has to be more.”

  “You don’t understand the compulsive nature of scholarship, I see.” She shook the jar.

  He snorted. “If you’d really wanted to see a chrysalis, you could have just had them tow one back for you. They have those chull sleds for the wounded; one of those might have worked. There was no need for you to come all the way out here yourself.”

  Blast. A solid argument. It was a good thing Adolin hadn’t thought of that. The prince was wonderful, and he certainly wasn’t stupid, but he was also . . . mentally direct.

  This bridgeman was proving himself different. The way he watched her, the way he thought. Even, she realized, the way he spoke. He talked like an educated lighteyes. But what of those slave brands on
his forehead? The hair got in the way, but she thought that one of them was a shash brand.

  Perhaps she should spend as much time wondering about this man’s motives as he apparently fretted about hers.

  “Riches,” he said, as they continued on. He held back some dead branches sticking from a crack so she could pass. “There’s a treasure of some sort out here, and that’s what you seek? But . . . no. You could have wealth easily enough by marriage.”

  She didn’t say anything, stepping through the gap he made for her.

  “Nobody had heard of you before this,” he continued. “The Davar house really does have a daughter your age, and you match the description. You could be an impostor, but you’re actually lighteyed, and that Veden house isn’t particularly significant. If you were going to bother to impersonate someone, wouldn’t you pick someone more important?”

  “You seem to have thought about this a great deal.”

  “It’s my job.”

  “I’m being truthful with you—Jasnah’s research is why I came to the Shattered Plains. I think the world itself could be in danger.”

  “That’s why you talked to Adolin about the parshmen.”

  “Wait. How do you . . . Your guards were there on that terrace with us. They told you? I didn’t realize they were close enough to listen.”

  “I made a point of telling them to stay close,” Kaladin said. “At the time, I was half convinced you were here to assassinate Adolin.”

  Well, he was nothing if not honest. And blunt.

  “My men said,” Kaladin continued, “that you seemed to want to get the parshmen murdered.”

  “I said nothing of the sort,” she said. “Though I am worried that they might betray us. It’s a moot point, as I doubt I’ll persuade the highprinces without more evidence.”

  “If you got your way, though,” Kaladin said, sounding curious, “what would you do? About the parshmen.”

  “Have them exiled,” Shallan said.

  “And who will replace them?” Kaladin said. “Darkeyes?”

  “I’m not saying it would be easy,” Shallan said.

  “They’d need more slaves,” Kaladin said, contemplative. “A lot of honest men might find themselves with brands.”