Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive, The)

by Sanderson, Brandon

  “Mmm,” Pattern said.

  Shallan’s carriage started to slow. She frowned, scooting to the door, meaning to peek out the window. The door opened, however, to reveal Highlady Navani standing outside, Dalinar himself holding up an umbrella for her.

  “Would you mind company?” Navani asked.

  “Not at all, Brightness,” Shallan said, scrambling to pick up her papers and books, which she’d spread about on all of the seats. Navani patted Dalinar fondly on the arm, then climbed into the coach, using a towel to dry her feet and legs. She sat once Dalinar shut the door.

  They started rolling again, and Shallan fidgeted with her papers. What was her relationship with Navani? She was Adolin’s aunt, but she was romantically involved with his father. So she was kind of Shallan’s future mother-in-law, though by Vorin tradition Dalinar would never be allowed to marry her.

  Shallan had tried for weeks to get this woman to listen to her, and had failed. Now, she seemed to have been forgiven for bearing the news of Jasnah’s death. Did that mean Navani . . . liked her?

  “So,” Shallan said, feeling awkward, “did Dalinar exile you to the coach to protect you from getting sore, as Adolin did to me?”

  “Sore? Heavens no. If anyone should be riding in the coach, it’s Dalinar. When there is fighting to be done, we’ll need him rested and ready. I came because it’s rather difficult to read while riding in the rain.”

  “Oh.” Shallan shifted in her seat.

  Navani studied her, then finally sighed. “I have been ignoring things,” the older woman said, “that I should not. Because they bring me pain.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for.” Navani held out her hand toward Shallan. “May I?”

  Shallan looked at her handful of notes, diagrams, and maps. She hesitated.

  “You are engaged in work you obviously think very important,” Navani said softly. “This city Jasnah was searching for, according to the notes you sent me? Perhaps I can help you interpret my daughter’s intentions.”

  Was there anything in these pages that would incriminate Shallan and reveal her powers? Her activities as Veil?

  She didn’t think so. She’d been studying the Knights Radiant as part of it, but she was searching for their center of power, so that made sense. Hesitant, she handed over the papers.

  Navani leafed through them, reading by spherelight. “The organization of these notes is . . . interesting.”

  Shallan blushed. The organization made sense to her. As Navani continued to look through the notes, Shallan found herself growing oddly anxious. She’d wanted Navani’s help—she’d all but begged for it. Now, however, she found herself feeling like this woman was intruding. This had become Shallan’s project, her duty and her quest. Now that Navani had apparently overcome her grief, would she insist on taking over completely?

  “You think like an artist,” Navani said. “I can see it in the way you put the notes together. Well, I suppose I can’t expect everything you do to be annotated precisely as I’d wish. A magical portal to another city? Jasnah actually believed in this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm,” Navani said. “Then it’s probably true. That girl never did have the decency to be wrong an appropriate amount of the time.”

  Shallan nodded, glancing at the notes, feeling anxious.

  “Oh, don’t get so touchy,” Navani said. “I’m not going to steal the project from you.”

  “I’m that transparent?” Shallan said.

  “This research is obviously very important to you. I assume Jasnah persuaded you that the fate of the world itself rested upon the answers you find?”

  “She did.”

  “Damnation,” Navani said, flipping to the next page. “I shouldn’t have ignored you. It was petty.”

  “It was the act of a grieving mother.”

  “Scholars don’t have time for such nonsense.” Navani blinked, and Shallan caught a tear in the woman’s eye.

  “You’re still human,” Shallan said, reaching across, putting her hand on Navani’s knee. “We can’t all be emotionless chunks of rock like Jasnah.”

  Navani smiled. “She sometimes had the empathy of a corpse, didn’t she?”

  “Comes from being too brilliant,” Shallan said. “You grow accustomed to everyone else being something of an idiot, trying to keep up with you.”

  “Chana knows, I wondered sometimes how I raised that child without strangling her. By age six, she was pointing out my logical fallacies as I tried to get her to go to bed on time.”

  Shallan grinned. “I always just assumed she was born in her thirties.”

  “Oh, she was. It just took thirty-some years for her body to catch up.” Navani smiled. “I won’t take this from you, but neither should I allow you to attempt a project so important on your own. I would be part. Figuring out the puzzles that captivated her . . . it will be like having her again. My little Jasnah, insufferable and wonderful.”

  How surreal it was to imagine Jasnah as a child being held by a mother. “It would be an honor to have your aid, Brightness Navani.”

  Navani held up the page. “You’re trying to overlay Stormseat with the Shattered Plains. It’s not going to work unless you have a point of reference.”

  “Preferably two,” Shallan said.

  “It’s been centuries since that city fell. It was destroyed during Aharietiam itself, I believe. We’re going to have trouble finding clues out here, though your list of descriptions will help.” She tapped her finger against the papers. “This isn’t my area of expertise, but I have several archaeologists among Dalinar’s scribes. I should show them these pages.”

  Shallan nodded.

  “We’ll want copies of everything here,” Navani said. “I don’t want to lose originals to all of this rain. I could have the scribes work on it tonight, after we camp.”

  “If you wish.”

  Navani looked up at her, then frowned. “It is your decision.”

  “You’re serious?” Shallan asked.

  “Absolutely. Think of me as an additional resource.”

  All right then. “Yes, have them make copies,” Shallan said, digging in her satchel. “And copies of this too—it’s my attempt at re-creating one of the murals described as being on the outer wall of the temple to Chanaranach in Stormseat. It faced leeward, and was supposedly shaded, so we might be able to find hints of it.

  “Also, I need a surveyor to measure each new plateau we cross, once we get farther in. I can draw them out, but my spatial reasoning can be off. I want exact sizes to make the map more accurate. I’ll need guards and scribes to ride out with me ahead of the army to visit plateaus parallel to our course. It would really help if you could convince Dalinar to allow this.

  “I’d like a team to study the quotes on that page underneath the map. They talk about methods for opening the Oathgate, which was supposed to be the duty of the Knights Radiant. Hopefully we can discover another method. Also, alert Dalinar that we’ll be trying to open the portal if we find it. I do not expect there to be anything dangerous on the other side, but he’ll undoubtedly want to send soldiers through first.”

  Navani raised an eyebrow at her. “You’ve done a touch of thinking about this, I see.”

  Shallan nodded, blushing.

  “I’ll see it done,” Navani said. “I myself will head the research team studying those quotes you mention.” She hesitated. “Do you know why Jasnah thought this city, Urithiru, was so important?”

  “Because it was the seat of the Knights Radiant, and she expected to find information on them—and the Voidbringers—there.”

  “So she was like Dalinar,” Navani said, “trying to bring back powers that—perhaps—we should leave alone.”

  Shallan felt a sudden spike of anxiety. I need to say it. Say something. “She wasn’t trying. She succeeded.”

  “Succeeded?”

  Shallan took a deep breath. “I don’t know what she said reg
arding the origin of her Soulcaster, but the truth was that it was a fake. Jasnah could Soulcast on her own, without any fabrial. I saw her do it. She knew secrets from the past, secrets I don’t think anyone else knows. Brightness Navani . . . your daughter was one of the Knights Radiant.” Or as close to one as the world was going to have again.

  Navani raised an eyebrow, obviously skeptical.

  “I swear this is true,” Shallan said, “on the tenth name of the Almighty.”

  “That is disturbing. Radiants, Heralds, and Voidbringers alike are supposed to be gone. We won that war.”

  “I know.”

  “I will go get to work on this,” Navani said, knocking for the carriage driver to halt the vehicle.

  * * *

  The Weeping began.

  A steady stream of rain. Kaladin could hear it inside his room, like a whisper in the background. Weak, miserable rain, without the fury and passion of a true highstorm.

  He lay in the darkness, listening to the patter, feeling his leg throb. Wet, cold air leaked into his room, and he dug for the extra blankets that the quartermaster had delivered. He curled up and tried to sleep, but after sleeping most of the day yesterday—the day that Dalinar’s army had left—he found himself wide awake.

  He hated being wounded. Bed rest wasn’t supposed to happen to him. Not anymore.

  Syl . . .

  The Weeping was a bad time for him. Days spent trapped indoors. A perpetual gloom in the sky that seemed to affect him more than it did others, leaving him lethargic and uncaring.

  A knock came at his door. Kaladin raised his head in the darkness, then sat up and settled himself on his bench of a bed. “Come,” he said.

  The door opened and let in the sound of rain, like a thousand little footsteps scrambling about. Very little light accompanied the sounds. The overcast sky of the Weeping left the land in perpetual twilight.

  Moash stepped in. He wore his Shardplate, as always. “Storms, Kal. Were you asleep? I’m sorry!”

  “No, I was awake.”

  “In the darkness?”

  Kaladin shrugged. Moash clicked the door shut behind him, but took off his gauntlet and hung it from a clip at the waist of his Shardplate. He reached beneath a fold in the metal and pulled out a handful of spheres to light his way. Riches that would have seemed incredible to bridgemen were now pocket change to Moash.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be guarding the king?” Kaladin asked.

  “On and off,” Moash said, sounding eager. “They quartered the five of us guards up by his rooms. In the palace itself! Kaladin, it’s perfect.”

  “When?” Kaladin asked softly.

  “We don’t want to ruin Dalinar’s expedition,” Moash said, “so we’re going to wait until he’s out there some distance, maybe until he’s engaged the enemy. That way, he’ll be committed and won’t turn back when he gets news. Better for Alethkar if he succeeds at defeating the Parshendi. He will return a hero . . . and a king.”

  Kaladin nodded, feeling sick.

  “We have everything planned out,” Moash said. “We’ll raise an alert in the palace that the Assassin in White has been seen. Then we’ll do what was done last time—send all of the servants into hiding in their rooms. Nobody will be around to see what we do, nobody will get hurt, and they’ll all believe that the Shin assassin was behind this. We couldn’t have asked for this to play out better! And you won’t have to do anything, Kal. Graves says that we won’t need your help after all.”

  “So why are you here?” Kaladin asked.

  “I just wanted to check on you,” Moash said. He stepped in closer. “Is it true, what Lopen says? About your . . . abilities?”

  Storming Herdazian. Lopen had stayed behind—with Dabbid and Hobber—to take care of the barrack and watch over Kaladin. They’d been talking to Moash, it seemed.

  “Yes,” Kaladin said.

  “What happened?”

  “I’m not sure,” he lied. “I offended Syl. I haven’t seen her in days. Without her, I can’t draw in Stormlight.”

  “We’ll have to fix that somehow,” Moash said. “Either that, or get you Plate and Blade of your own.”

  Kaladin looked up at his friend. “I think she left because of the plot to kill the king, Moash. I don’t think a Radiant could be involved in something like this.”

  “Shouldn’t a Radiant care about doing what is right? Even if it means a difficult decision?”

  “Sometimes lives must be spent for the greater good,” Kaladin said.

  “Yes, exactly!”

  “That’s what Amaram said. In regards to my friends, whom he murdered to cover up his secrets.”

  “Well, that’s different, obviously. He’s a lighteyes.”

  Kaladin looked to Moash, whose eyes had turned as light a tan as those of any Brightlord. Same color as Amaram’s, actually. “So are you.”

  “Kal,” Moash said. “You’re worrying me. Don’t say things like that.”

  Kaladin looked away.

  “The king wanted me to deliver a message,” Moash said. “That’s my excuse for being here. He wants you to come talk to him.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I don’t know. He’s been dipping into the wine, now that Dalinar is gone. Not the orange stuff, either. I’ll tell him you’re too wounded to come.”

  Kaladin nodded.

  “Kal,” Moash said. “We can trust you, right? You’re not having second thoughts?”

  “You said it yourself,” Kaladin said. “I don’t have to do anything. I just have to stay away.” What could I do, anyway? Wounded, with no spren?

  Everything was in motion. It was too far along for him to stop.

  “Great,” Moash said. “You heal up, all right?”

  Moash walked out, leaving Kaladin in the darkness again.

  AhbuttheywereleftbehindItisobviousfromthenatureofthebondButwherewherewherewhereSetoffObviousRealizationlikeapricityTheyarewiththeShinWemustfindoneCanwemaketouseaTruthlessCanwecraftaweapon

  —From the Diagram, Floorboard 17: paragraph 2, every second letter starting with the first

  In the darkness, Shallan’s violet spheres gave life to the rain. Without the spheres, she couldn’t see the drops, only hear their deaths upon the stones and the cloth of her pavilion. With the light, each falling speck of water flashed briefly, like starspren.

  She sat at the edge of the pavilion, as she liked to watch the rainfall between bouts of sketching, while the other scholars sat closer to the center. So did Vathah and a couple of his soldiers, watching over her like nesting skyeels with a single pup. It amused her that they’d grown so protective; they seemed actively proud to be her soldiers. She’d honestly expected them to run off after gaining their clemency.

  Four days into the Weeping, and she still enjoyed the weather. Why did the soft sound of gentle rain make her feel more imaginative? Around her, creationspren slowly vanished, most having taken the shapes of things about the camp. Swords that sheathed and unsheathed repeatedly, tiny tents that untied and blew in unseen wind. Her picture was of Jasnah as she’d been on that night just over a month ago, when Shallan had last seen her. Leaning upon the desk of a darkened ship’s cabin, hand pushing back hair freed from its customary twists and braids. Exhausted, overwhelmed, terrified.

  The drawing didn’t depict a single faithful Memory, not as Shallan usually did them. This was a re-creation of what she remembered, an interpretation that was not exact. Shallan was proud of it, as she’d captured Jasnah’s contradictions.

  Contradictions. Those were what made people real. Jasnah exhausted, yet somehow still strong—stronger, even, because of the vulnerability she revealed. Jasnah terrified, yet also brave, for one allowed the other to exist. Jasnah overwhelmed, yet powerful.

  Shallan had recently been trying to do more drawings like this—ones synthesized from her own imaginings. Her illusions would suffer if she could only reproduce what she’d experienced. She needed to be able to create, not just copy.

>   The last creationspren faded away, this one imitating a puddle that was being splashed by a boot. Her sheet of paper dimpled as Pattern moved up onto it.

  He sniffed. “Useless things.”

  “The creationspren?”

  “They don’t do anything. They flit around and watch, admire. Most spren have a purpose. These are merely attracted by someone else’s purpose.”

  Shallan sat back, thinking on that, as Jasnah had taught her. Nearby, the scholars and ardents argued about how large Stormseat had been. Navani had done her part well—better than Shallan could have hoped. The army’s scholars now worked at Shallan’s command.

  Around her in the night, an uncountable array of lights both near and far indicated the breadth of the army. The rain continued to sprinkle down, catching the purple spherelight. She had chosen all spheres of one color.

  “The artist Eleseth,” Shallan observed to Pattern, “once did an experiment. She set out only ruby spheres, in their strength, to light her studio. She wanted to see what effect the all-red light would have upon her art.”

  “Mmmm,” Pattern said. “To what result?”

  “At first, during a painting session, the color of light affected her strongly. She would use too little red, and fields of blossoms would look washed out.”

  “Not unexpected.”

  “The interesting thing, however, was what happened if she continued working,” Shallan said. “If she painted for hours by that light, the effects diminished. The colors of her reproductions grew more balanced, the pictures of flowers more vivid. She eventually concluded that her mind compensated for the colors she saw. Indeed, if she switched the color of the light during a session, she’d continue for a time to paint as if the room were still red, reacting against the new color.”

  “Mmmmmm . . .” Pattern said, content. “Humans can see the world as it is not. It is why your lies can be so strong. You are able to not admit that they are lies.”

  “It frightens me.”