Lhan shook his head. “He won’t tell me. I don’t think he really ever
confronts them himself. I think, maybe, they are why he acts like he does.”
“Insane?”
Lhan frowned. “I don’t know. He’s not like other madmen I’ve known,
Lady Jasnah. Perhaps he’s not really mad at all.”
“You believe him?” Jasnah asked incredulously.
“Believe is a strong word, my lady,” Lhan said. “Do I think he’s some sort of deity? No, I don’t believe that. But, what are these Heralds that we
worship, really? Beings sent by the Almighty, creatures whose purposes are to protect and to warn. Throughout lore, the Elins have cared for mankind, going where the Almighty cannot, lest his tenfold perfection destroy the
flawed world around him. The Heralds have been heroes and sages, bringing
peace when possible, and leading war when inevitable. I wonder—is this a
path we should dissuade a man from emulating?”
“He doesn’t try to emulate, Lhan,” Jasnah said. “He thinks he is one of them.”
Lhan shrugged. “If the end result is the man who sits on the stone over
there, then I think that we could be far worse treated.”
Jasnah paused, then spoke in a more hushed tone. “It’s not that simple,
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Lhan. You were there, that evening of the duels. You saw his eyes; you
know how he can get.”
She waited, her silence prompting him to grudgingly nod his head. “Yes,
I saw.”
“He frightened me that day,” Jasnah said. “Frightened me more than,
perhaps, I should admit. Now that I have seen him fight, I’m frightened even more. I saw him kill two Shardbearers in the space of three heartbeats, Lhan.
I saw him slaughter nearly a tenset of men with casual grace. Mix that with what I’ve seen in his eyes . . . the uncertainty, the instability . . . What will happen then, Lhan? Will anyone in this group be able to stop him?”
Lhan shifted uncomfortably, and Jasnah felt shame at her words. She
wanted to tell herself that Taln would never do something that horrible.
Yet she couldn’t be certain. At times, he seemed so stable, so stalwartly
wise. Then he would mention one of the other Heralds, if only in passing,
and she would remember that glint in his eyes. Could anyone truly trust
such a man?
Jasnah shivered as she looked at Taln. She sensed something else from
him, something unrelated to wisdom or madness. At times, when he stared
off like he did at the moment, he didn’t seem like soldier, lunatic, or Herald.
He just seemed . . . lonely. Alone, like Jasnah felt when she would admit
the emotion to herself.
“Is there nothing you can do for him?” she asked quietly.
“My lady,” Lhan said seriously, “one of the first things I learned at Peacehome was that there was little I could do to help anyone. At best, I can
know when to listen and know when to speak; when to comfort, and when
to annoy. Even if I were better at such things, I don’t know if anyone could understand how to help Taln. He’s a special case. With normal madmen,
there’s little to do in the way of ‘curing;’ but you can help them understand how to fit themselves into regular society.
“With Taln, I don’t think that’s necessary. He understands society—in
fact, he seems rather adept at finding his place and doing well by it. I don’t know what to tell you. Perhaps he will confront what he hides, and will
realize that he doesn’t need to be a ‘Herald’ to protect those around him. Or perhaps he will continue on as he is, using the crutch of madness to keep
from facing those images that haunt him. That decision, unfortunately, is
left to him—or, more appropriately, to whether or not his mind is capable
of recognizing it as a decision at all.”
Lhan let the words hang between them, and a moment later Jasnah
realized that the sounds of wind above had ceased. Sure enough, a pounding
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came on the door a few moments later, followed by a voice telling them
that the Bellow had passed.
Remnants of rockbuds formed the bulk of the refuse. Broken shel s, limp
stalks torn from their purchase, and mashed leaves lay scattered across the village. The fragments must have been carried with the storm for miles, for the hills immediately surrounding Marcabe had been cleared for farming.
Mixed with the scattered pieces of foliage, of course, were other scraps
that showed a human touch. Pieces of stormshutters, strips of leather, and even fragments of worked stone were littered about, most laying morosely
in vast pools of crom-clouded water. Village peasants moved through
the wreckage, picking through the broken scraps for anything worthy of
salvage.
Jasnah had seen far worse. Ral Eram lay exposed to highstorms on the
side of the mountainface. Even its mighty walls and clever positioning didn’t make up for the lack of a lait valley, and many of its houses were lavish, with expensive woods and rugs. If such a home’s stormshutters broke, the
Bel ow found a plentitude of delicate items upon which to expend its wrath.
Here, in Marcabe, few of the buildings seemed to have suffered any
serious damage—though a couple of older homes had finally given into the
elements, stone walls or roofs collapsing upon themselves. Hopefully
the occupants had been smart enough to realize the danger, and had
spent the Bellow inside the common stormshelter.
“Well?” Taln asked, climbing up the stormshelter steps and pausing
beside her.
Jasnah nodded. “Let’s be going, then. Gather our things.”
Taln waved for Kemnar and his soldiers, then ducked inside the inn
to gather their packs. Jasnah stood waiting. Her new clothing felt . . .
uncomfortable. Unnatural. She wore pants divided for a masculine stride—
like trousers, though they maintained some semblance of femininity by
remaining relatively loose and flowing. She wore a sencoat instead of a
cloak. The garment—essentially a cloak with sleeves—was far more practical than her delicate feminine cloaks. It was sturdy, barely embroidered, and
designed to be easily tied closed in case of a storm or chill—which would
be common, since they were to travel mostly at night. Beneath the sencoat
and tucked into her pants, her shirt was barely distinguishable from that
of a man.
She had four other outfits similar to it. They weren’t indecent—such
clothing had been worn by Kanaran women for centuries in places
THE WAY OF KINGS PRIME 483
such as Lakhenran and even Jah Keved. However, Alethkar was far more
conservative. For an Aleth noblewoman, especially one so closely related
to the king, to wear such things . . . well, it probably wouldn’t be quite a scandal, but it would certainly earn her some gossip in the court.
No one from court can see you, Jasnah reminded herself. Still, she wished she had given into Meridas’s clothing suggestions as opposed to Taln’s.
Even after she had made the decision to walk, Meridas had suggested more
traditional clothing, while Taln had pushed for brutal practicality.
He displayed such as he left the inn, a large pack on his back. He dropped a similar pack beside her, and she didn’t even have to ask to realize that he expected her to carry it. Hers was far smaller than his, true, but she had assumed that agreeing to walk would be enough. Still, she didn’t argue.
<
br /> She stood quietly, expecting someone else to make her objection for her.
And he did.
“Surely you jest?” Meridas asked pointedly.
Jasnah turned with a smile, then was surprised to see that Meridas wasn’t
looking at her, but at the large pack Taln was holding out for him to carry.
“If you want to drink or eat on this trip,” Taln said, “you’ll need to
carry some food. We’re going too far, with too little expectation of relief, to let anyone go without helping.”
Meridas sneered at the pack, but accepted it. Despite her own frustra-
tions, Jasnah was amused to think how out-of-place his rich clothing would look with the utilitarian brown pack strapped on his back. Meridas’s two
attendants received their own packs without complaint, now that their
master had acceded to the necessity.
Taln looked over their small group, nodding to himself. Then he gathered
up a set of captured spears and began distributing them, one per person,
even to those who were already wearing weapons.
“You’ll appreciate them as walking staves, if nothing else,” Taln said
before anyone could object. “And we might have need of them. All right,
we ready to go?”
“Of course not,” Meridas said. “We have to wait for the others.”
Taln froze. “Others?” he asked. “There are no others.”
“Indeed there are,” Meridas said. “Lady Jasnah ordered me to gather
them. Do you not remember?”
“What? ” Jasnah demanded, speaking even before Taln could voice his own question.
“Surely you remember, my lady,” Meridas said smoothly—this was an
argument he had been anticipating. “It was while you were deciding on new
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garments, two days before. You told me that, if I wished, I could bring men to help in Lord Elhokar’s war efforts.”
“I was talking about Tenin and Chathan,” Jasnah said.
“Ah,” Meridas said. “You did not make that clear. I’m afraid I may have
done something rash in promising the others they could join us, then.”
Jasnah opened her mouth to ask, but closed it as they began to arrive.
Men, both young and old, gathered around the inn. Tenset upon tenset
of them came, all bearing a weapon of some sort—spears both crude
and fine, axes for the wealthiest, cudgels for the poorest. They wore their own packs, but most looked laughable compared to Taln’s well-planned,
carefully-organized supplies.
“I apologize, my lady,” Meridas said as the men continued to arrive. “I
gave them my oath, and that of the king, trusting on what you had said to
me. I promised them that they could join us in liberating Alethkar from
our enemies.”
Taln stepped up beside her, his face hard with anger.
“What?” Jasnah asked quietly, so only he could hear. “What is he doing?
There must be nearly a hundred men here. I thought it was decided we were
to travel by stealth!”
“He never wanted to,” Taln said. “He wanted to go straight north.”
“He’d intentionally sabotage us for the sake of his pride?” Jasnah asked.
Taln shook his head. “No, this is about something greater. This is about
power, not just pride. Before, the only soldiers in the group were your
guards. Meridas just changed that. He’s made himself an army.”
A short distance away, Meridas smiled as he regarded his ‘troops.’ Some
of them were from the original refugee group, but many were from the
village. “Think, Lady Jasnah,” he declared, “and I believe you shall see this is for the best. Why ride to our king’s warning with just a couple of soldiers, when we could bring a hundred men instead!”
“And of our need for haste?” Jasnah demanded.
“They are young, able men,” Meridas said. “And there really aren’t so
many of them to be bulky. We can move as quickly as before. Besides, we
have sent messengers.”
“And our pursuers?” Taln demanded.
Meridas raised an eyebrow. “If you recall, madman, most of us still
disbelieve that pursuit comes as quickly as your paranoia indicates. We’re a good four weeks march from Ral Eram. We will be gone long before
enemies arrive. And if they send horsemen, we now have the numbers to
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resist them. If they send Shardbearers . . . well, we’ll distract them, and you can just attack them from behind with your usual flair.”
Taln sighed, turning to Jasnah. “We can’t take them.”
“Leaving them would make an Oathbreaker of Meridas,” Jasnah said,
“and by association myself, since he acts on my orders.”
“Oaths and intricacies of honor are not reasons to risk a kingdom’s
safety,” Taln said.
“You don’t care about the kingdom,” Jasnah reminded. “You just want to
get to the Holy City.”
“True,” Taln said. “But I’d rather get there alive. You think this fluff will be of help?”
Jasnah glanced at the troops, then at Meridas, and felt a sudden
swelling of shame. Meridas should never have been able to surprise her
this way.
What is wrong with you lately? she thought angrily at herself. Ever since the attack on Ral Eram, you’ve been missing things—important things.
There was time to ponder her deficiencies later. At the moment, she
needed to make a decision. Honor or no, she could order Meridas to
leave the men behind. The good of Alethkar came first.
Yet Jasnah hesitated to disperse the men. She studied them, and she was
impressed by the resolve she saw in their eyes. They were a rag-tag mix,
true, but they had honor. These men might have avoided military service
during the Pralir campaign or Elhokar’s attack on Crossguard, but now
that an enemy had invaded, they came willing to serve. They had heard
of the slaughter at Ral Eram and they knew, as she did, that this was one
war they could fight confident that their side was in the right. Could she deny them the opportunity to serve?
“Meridas does have a point,” Jasnah said to Taln. “These men will be of
use when we reach my brother. He will need fresh troops.”
“They’re untrained,” Taln pointed out.
“Most rural men in Alethkar are at least marginally skilled in the spear
and formations,” Jasnah said. “Weren’t you supposed to have set up that
little suggestion, several centuries back?”
Taln gave her a thin-eyed look, then regarded the troop of would-be
soldiers. “This is ridiculous,” he said. “We’ll have traded one group for
another nearly as large.”
“We’ll have traded the weak, young, wounded, and female for potential
soldiers,” Jasnah said, growing more confident in her decision.
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“You’re actually going to consider this?”
Jasnah nodded. One word from Meridas’s earlier comments stuck in her
mind: paranoid. Was Taln really imagining this ‘pursuit’ he supposedly
heard in the caverns beneath Ral Eram? He continually spoke of the
coming of the Stormshades, warning that all of Roshar was in danger of
destruction. She wanted to trust his judgement, but that look in his eyes
at the duels, when he had faced her, when she had thought—for just a
moment—he
would grab a weapon and cut down every person in the room,
nobleman, servant, and noblewoman alike . . .
When the truth surfaced, she knew she would rather have a hundred
armed men at her back and face Taln’s pursuit then pass up the soldiers.
Perhaps she had spent too long at war in Prallah, or maybe it was the
suspicious, distrustful nature that Elhokar seemed so fond of claiming
she had. Either way, she made her decision.
“We take them,” she said.
Taln held her eyes, but he did not glare. Finally, he nodded. “We can’t
leave for several more hours, then. We’ll need to spend some of your horse money to buy pushcarts and supplies for all these men.”
It was dark by the time they left Marcabe. That wasn’t a problem in
itself—the Dwelling was high in the sky during the summer months, and
the intense collection of stars provided fine light for marching.
As the first hours of the march progressed, Jasnah took a serious look at
herself. She had decided to bring the hundred men, but she was still angry at herself for letting Meridas maneuver her into the position of having to decide.
She simply didn’t give the man enough credit—and that would have to stop.
Unfortunately, her underestimation of Meridas was a sign of a greater
problem. Ever since she’d left the palace comforts behind, she’d had trouble controlling her surroundings. As she trudged along beneath the starlit sky, Jasnah was forced to admit her deficiencies.
She had commanded armies. She was a master of tactics, both on the
battlefield and in the political court. Yet she had never done this before—
she had never been forced to walk across stone hills beside regular men.
Even during the Pralir campaign, her place had been one of comfort. She
commanded the court, true, but she was also dependent upon it.
With everything she knew removed, she found herself grasping toward
whatever flimsy reminders she could devise. Meridas’s offer of pretty
clothing had tempted her not because of its luxury, but because of what
that luxury represented—comfort, familiarity, and control.
THE WAY OF KINGS PRIME 487
You will have to do better, Jasnah. You can’t depend on what you knew before.
You have to learn to work in a different environment now.
The first thing she had to do was remind herself that Meridas wasn’t
Brandon Sanderson - [Stormlight Archive 01] Page 67
