Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive, The)

by Sanderson, Brandon

  The other woman lounged with feet out, a wide-brimmed white hat tipped over her eyes despite the fact that she was supposed to be driving. Shallan wore Bluth’s hat, which she’d recovered from his things, to keep the sun off.

  Tyn turned to the side, lifting her hat. “Huh?”

  “Right there!” Shallan said. “The color.”

  Tyn squinted. “I don’t see anything.”

  How could she miss that color, so vibrant when compared to the rolling hills full of rockbuds, reeds, and patches of grass? Shallan took the woman’s spyglass and raised it to look more closely. “Plants,” Shallan said. “There’s a rock overhang there, sheltering them from the east.”

  “Oh, is that all?” Tyn settled back, closing her eyes. “Thought it might be a caravan tent or something.”

  “Tyn, it’s plants.”

  “So?”

  “Divergent flora in an otherwise uniform ecosystem!” Shallan exclaimed. “We’re going! I’ll go tell Macob to steer the caravan that way.”

  “Kid, you’re kind of strange,” Tyn said as Shallan yelled at the other wagons to stop.

  Macob was reluctant to agree to the detour, but fortunately he accepted her authority. The caravan was about a day out from the Shattered Plains. They’d been taking it easy. Shallan struggled to contain her excitement. So much out here in the Frostlands was uniformly dull; something new to draw was exciting beyond normal reason.

  They approached the ridge, which had caused a high shelf of rock at exactly the right angle to form a windbreak. Larger versions of these formations were called laits. Sheltered valleys where a town could flourish. Well, this wasn’t nearly so large, but life had still found it. A grove of short, bone-white trees grew here. They had vivid red leaves. Vines of numerous varieties draped the rock wall itself, and the ground teemed with rockbuds, a variety that remained open even when there wasn’t rain, blossoms drooping with heavy petals from the inside, along with tonguelike tendrils that moved like worms, seeking water.

  A small pond reflected the blue sky, feeding the rockbuds and trees. The leafy shade in turn gave shelter to a bright green moss. The beauty was like veins of ruby and emerald in a drab stone.

  Shallan hopped down the moment the wagons pulled up. She frightened something in the underbrush, and a few very small, feral axehounds burst away. She wasn’t sure of the breed—she honestly wasn’t even sure they were axehounds, they moved so quickly.

  Well, she thought, walking into the tiny lait, that probably means I don’t have to worry about anything larger. A predator like a whitespine would have frightened away smaller life.

  Shallan walked forward with a smile. It was almost like a garden, though the plants were obviously wild rather than cultivated. They moved quickly to retract blooms, feelers, and leaves, opening a patch around her. She stifled a sneeze and pushed through to find a dark green pond.

  Here, she set down a blanket on a boulder, then settled herself to sketch. Others from the caravan went scouting through the lait or around the top of the rock wall.

  Shallan breathed in the wonderful humidity as the plants relaxed. Rockbud petals stretching out, timid leaves unfolding. Color swelled around her like nature blushing. Stormfather! She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the variety of beautiful plants. She opened her sketchbook and drew out a quick prayer in the name of Shalash, Herald of Beauty, Shallan’s namesake.

  The plants retracted again as someone moved through them. Gaz stumbled past a group of rockbuds, cursing as he tried not to step on their vines. He came up to her, then hesitated, looking down at the pool. “Storms!” he said. “Are those fish?”

  “Eels,” Shallan guessed as something rippled the green surface of the pool. “Bright orange ones, it appears. We had some like them back in my father’s ornamental garden.”

  Gaz leaned down, trying to get a good look, until one of the eels broke the surface with a flipping tail, spraying him with water. Shallan laughed, taking a Memory of the one-eyed man peering into those verdant depths, lips pursed, wiping his forehead.

  “What do you want, Gaz?”

  “Well,” he said, shuffling. “I was wondering . . .” He glanced at the sketchpad.

  Shallan flipped to a new page in the pad. “Of course. Like the one I did for Glurv, I assume?”

  Gaz coughed into his hand. “Yeah. That one looked right nice.”

  Shallan smiled, then started sketching.

  “Do you need me to pose or something?” Gaz asked.

  “Sure,” she said, mostly to keep him busy while she drew. She tidied up his uniform, smoothing out his paunch, taking liberties with his chin. Most of the difference, however, had to do with the expression. Looking up, into the distance. With the right expression, that eye patch became noble, that scarred face became wise, that uniform became a mark of pride. She filled it in with some light background details reminiscent of that night beside the fires, when the people of the caravan had thanked Gaz and the others for their rescue.

  She removed the sheet from the pad, then turned it toward him. Gaz took it reverently, running his hand through his hair. “Storms,” he whispered. “Is that really what I looked like?”

  “Yes,” Shallan said. She could faintly feel Pattern as he vibrated softly nearby. A lie . . . but also a truth. That was certainly how the people Gaz saved had viewed him.

  “Thank you, Brightness,” Gaz said. “I . . . Thank you.” Ash’s eyes! He actually seemed to be tearing up.

  “Keep it safe,” Shallan said, “and don’t fold it until tonight. I’ll lacquer it so it won’t smudge.”

  He nodded and walked, frightening the plants again as he retreated. He was the sixth of the men to ask her for a likeness. She encouraged the requests. Anything to remind them of what they could, and should, be.

  And you, Shallan? she thought. Everyone seems to want you to be something. Jasnah, Tyn, your father . . . What do you want to be?

  She flipped back through her sketchbook, finding the pages where she’d drawn herself in a half-dozen different situations. A scholar, a woman of the court, an artist. Which did she want to be?

  Could she be them all?

  Pattern hummed. Shallan glanced to the side, noticing Vathah lurking in the trees nearby. The tall mercenary leader hadn’t said anything of the sketches, but she saw his sneers.

  “Stop frightening my plants, Vathah,” Shallan said.

  “Macob says we’ll stop for the night,” Vathah replied, then moved away.

  “Trouble . . .” Pattern buzzed. “Yes, trouble.”

  “I know,” Shallan said, waiting as the foliage returned, then sketching it. Unfortunately, though she’d been able to get charcoal and lacquer from the merchants, she didn’t have any colored chalks, or she might have tried something more ambitious. Still, this would be a nice series of studies. Quite a change from the rest in this sketchbook.

  She pointedly did not think about what she had lost.

  She drew and drew, enjoying the simple peace of the small thicket. Lifespren joined her, the little green motes bobbing between leaves and blossoms. Pattern moved out onto the water and, amusingly, began quietly counting the leaves on a nearby tree. Shallan got a good half-dozen drawings of the pond and trees, hoping she’d be able to identify those from a book later on. She made sure to do some close-up views showing the leaves in detail, then moved on to drawing whatever struck her.

  It was so nice to not be moving on a wagon while sketching. The environment here was just perfect—sufficient light for drawing, still and serene, surrounded by life . . .

  She paused, noticing what she’d drawn: a rocky shore near the ocean, with distinctive cliffs rising behind. The perspective was distant; on the rocky shore, several shadowy figures helped one another out of the water. She swore one of them was Yalb.

  A hopeful fancy. She wished so much for them to be alive. She would probably never know.

  She turned the page and drew what came to her. A sketch of a woman kneeling over
a body, raising a hammer and chisel, as if to slam it down into the person’s face. The one beneath her was stiff, wooden . . . maybe even stone?

  Shallan shook her head as she lowered her pencil and studied this drawing. Why had she drawn it? The first one made sense—she was worried about Yalb and the other sailors. But what did it say about her subconscious that she’d drawn this strange depiction?

  She looked up, realizing that shadows had grown long, the sun easing down to rest on the horizon. Shallan smiled at it, then jumped as she saw someone standing not ten paces away.

  “Tyn!” Shallan said, raising her safehand to her breast. “Stormfather! You gave me a fright.”

  The woman picked her way through the foliage, which shied away from her. “Those drawings are nice, but I think you should spend more time practicing to forge signatures. You’re a natural at that, and it’s a kind of work you could do without having to worry about getting into trouble.”

  “I do practice it,” Shallan said. “But I need to practice my art too.”

  “You get really into those drawings, don’t you?”

  “I don’t get into them,” Shallan said, “I put others into them.”

  Tyn grinned, reaching Shallan’s stone. “Always fast with a quip. I like that. I need to introduce you to some friends of mine once we reach the Shattered Plains. They’ll spoil you right quick.”

  “That doesn’t sound very pleasant.”

  “Nonsense,” Tyn said, hopping up onto a dry part of the next rock over. “You’d still be yourself. Your jokes would merely be dirtier.”

  “Lovely,” Shallan said, blushing.

  She thought the blush might make Tyn laugh, but instead the woman became thoughtful. “We are going to have to figure out a way to give you a taste of realism, Shallan.”

  “Oh? Does it come in the form of a tonic these days?”

  “No,” Tyn said, “it comes in the form of a punch to the face. It leaves nice girls crying, assuming they’re lucky enough to survive.”

  “I think you’ll find,” Shallan said, “that my life hasn’t been one of nonstop blossoms and cake.”

  “I’m sure you think that,” Tyn said. “Everyone does. Shallan, I like you, I really do. I think you’ve got heaps of potential. But what you’re training for . . . it will require you to do very difficult things. Things that wrench the soul, rip it apart. You’re going to be in situations that you’ve never been in before.”

  “You barely know me,” Shallan said. “How can you be so certain I’ve never done things like this?”

  “Because you aren’t broken,” Tyn said, expression distant.

  “Perhaps I’m faking.”

  “Kid,” Tyn said, “you draw pictures of criminals to turn them into heroes. You dance around in flower patches with a sketchpad, and you blush at the mere hint of something racy. However bad you think you’ve had it, brace yourself. It’s going to get worse. And I honestly don’t know that you’ll be able to handle it.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Shallan asked.

  “Because in a little over a day’s time, we’re going to reach the Shattered Plains. This is the last chance for you to back out.”

  “I . . .”

  What was she going to do about Tyn when she arrived? Admit that she had only gone along with Tyn’s assumptions in order to learn from her? She knows people, Shallan thought. People in the warcamps who might be very useful to know.

  Should Shallan continue with the subterfuge? She wanted to, though part of her knew it was because she liked Tyn, and didn’t want to give the woman a reason to stop teaching her. “I am committed,” Shallan found herself saying. “I want to go through with my plan.”

  A lie.

  Tyn sighed, then nodded. “All right. Are you ready to tell me what this grand scam is?”

  “Dalinar Kholin,” Shallan said. “His son is betrothed to a woman from Jah Keved.”

  Tyn raised an eyebrow. “Now that’s curious. And the woman isn’t going to arrive?”

  “Not when he expects,” Shallan said.

  “And you look like her?”

  “You could say that.”

  Tyn smiled. “Nice. You had me thinking it would be blackmail, which is very tough. This, though, this is a scam you might actually be able to do. I’m impressed. It’s bold, but attainable.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So what’s your plan?” Tyn said.

  “Well, I’ll go introduce myself to Kholin, indicate I’m the woman his son is to marry, and let him set me up in his household.”

  “No good.”

  “No?”

  Tyn shook her head sharply. “It puts you too much in Kholin’s debt. It will make you seem needy, and that will undermine your ability to be respected. What you’re doing here is called a pretty face con, an attempt to relieve a rich man of his spheres. That kind of job is all about presentation and image. You want to set up in an inn somewhere in a different warcamp and act like you’re completely self-sufficient. Maintain an air of mystery. Don’t be too easy for the son to capture. Which one is it, by the way? The older one or the younger one?”

  “Adolin,” Shallan said.

  “Hmmm . . . Not sure if that’s better or worse than Renarin. Adolin Kholin is a flirt by reputation, so I can see why his father wants him married off. It will be tough to keep his attention, though.”

  “Really?” Shallan asked, feeling a spike of real concern.

  “Yeah. He’s been almost engaged a dozen times. I think he has been engaged before, actually. It’s good you met me. I’ll have to work on this one awhile to determine the right approach, but you are certainly not going to accept Kholin hospitality. Adolin will never express interest if you’re not in some way unobtainable.”

  “Hard to be unobtainable when we’re already in a causal.”

  “Still important,” Tyn said, raising a finger. “You’re the one who wants to do a love scam. They’re tricky, but relatively safe. We’ll figure this out.”

  Shallan nodded, though inside, her worries had spiked. What would happen with the betrothal? Jasnah wasn’t around to push for it any longer. The woman had wanted Shallan tied to her family, presumably because of the Surgebinding potential. Shallan doubted the rest of the Kholin house would be so determined to have a nobody Veden girl marry into the family.

  As Tyn rose, Shallan stuffed away her anxiety. If the betrothal ended, so be it. She had far more important concerns in Urithiru and the Voidbringers. She would have to figure out a way to deal with Tyn, though—a way that didn’t involve actually scamming the Kholin family. Just one more thing to juggle.

  Oddly, she found herself excited by the prospect as she decided to do one more drawing before finding some food.

  Smokeform for hiding and slipping ’tween men.

  A form of power—like Surges of spren.

  Do we dare to wear this form again? It spies.

  Crafted of gods, this form we fear.

  By Unmade touch its curse to bear,

  Formed from shadow—and death is near. It lies.

  —From the Listener Song of Secrets, 51st stanza

  Kaladin led his troop of sore, tired men up to Bridge Four’s barrack, and—as he’d secretly requested—the men got a round of cheers and welcoming calls. It was early evening, and the familiar scent of stew was one of the most inviting things Kaladin could imagine.

  He stepped aside and let the forty men tromp past him. They weren’t members of Bridge Four, but for tonight, they’d be considered such. They held their heads higher, smiles breaking out as men passed them bowls of stew. Rock asked one how the patrolling had gone, and though Kaladin couldn’t hear the soldier’s reply, he could definitely hear the bellowing laughter it prompted from Rock.

  Kaladin smiled, leaning back against the barrack wall, folding his arms. Then he found himself checking the sky. The sun hadn’t quite set, but in the darkening sky, stars had begun to appear around Taln’s Scar. The Tear hung just above the
horizon, a star much brighter than the others, named for the single tear that Reya was said to have shed. Some of the stars moved—starspren, nothing to be surprised by—but something felt odd about the evening. He breathed in deeply. Was the air stale?

  “Sir?”

  Kaladin turned. One of the bridgemen, an earnest man with short dark hair and strong features, had not joined the others at the stew cauldron. Kaladin searched for his name . . .

  “Pitt, isn’t it?” Kaladin said.

  “Yes, sir,” the man replied. “Bridge Seventeen.”

  “What did you need?”

  “I just . . .” The man glanced at the inviting fire, with members of Bridge Four laughing and chatting with the patrol group. Nearby, someone had hung a few distinctive suits of armor on the barrack walls. They were carapace helms and breastplates, attached to the leathers of common bridgemen. Those had now been replaced with fine steel caps and breastplates. Kaladin wondered who had hung the old suits up. He hadn’t even known that some of the men had fetched them; they were the extra suits that Leyten had crafted for the men and stashed down in the chasms before being freed.

  “Sir,” Pitt said, “I just want to say that I’m sorry.”

  “For?”

  “Back when we were bridgemen.” Pitt raised a hand to his head. “Storms, that seems like a different life. I couldn’t think rightly during those times. It’s all hazy. But I remember being glad when your crew was sent out instead of mine. I remember hoping you’d fail, since you dared to walk with your chin up . . . I—”

  “It’s all right, Pitt,” Kaladin said. “It wasn’t your fault. You can blame Sadeas.”

  “I suppose.” Pitt got a distant look on his face. “He broke us right good, didn’t he, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Turns out, though, men can be reforged. I wouldn’t have thought that.” Pitt looked over his shoulder. “I’m going to have to go do this for the other lads of Bridge Seventeen, aren’t I?”

  “With Teft’s help, yes, but that’s the hope,” Kaladin said. “Do you think you can do it?”

  “I’ll just have to pretend to be you, sir,” Pitt said. He smiled, then moved on, taking a bowl of stew and joining the others.