Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive, The)

by Sanderson, Brandon

  But once in a while, the Blackthorn needed to come out. The men needed it. Storms, he needed it. The—

  Navani thundered into the tent.

  Too late. He sighed as she stalked up to him, passing this tent’s fabrial—which glowed on a little pedestal, collecting water around it in a shimmering globe. That water streamed off along two metal rods at the sides of the fabrial, spilling onto the ground, then running out of the tent and over the plateau’s edge.

  He looked up at Navani grimly, expecting to be dressed down like a recruit who had forgotten his whetstone. Instead, she took him by his good side, then pulled him close.

  “No reprimand?” Dalinar asked.

  “We’re at war,” she whispered. “And we’re losing, aren’t we?”

  Dalinar glanced at the archers, who were running low on arrows. He didn’t speak too loudly, lest they hear. “Yes.” The surgeon glanced at him, then lowered her head and kept sewing.

  “You rode to battle when someone needed you,” Navani said. “You saved the lives of a highprince and his soldiers. Why would you expect anger from me?”

  “Because you’re you.” He reached up with his good hand and ran his fingers through her hair.

  “Adolin has won his plateau,” Navani said. “The Parshendi there are scattered and routed. Aladar holds. Roion has failed, but we’re still evenly matched. So how are we losing? I can sense that we are, from your face, but I don’t see it.”

  “An even match is a loss for us,” Dalinar said. He could feel it building. Distant, to the west. “If they complete that song, then as Rlain warned, that is the end.”

  The surgeon finished as best she could, wrapping the wound and giving Dalinar leave to replace his shirt and coat, which would hold the bandage tight. Once dressed, he climbed to his feet, intending to go to the command tent and get an update on the situation from General Khal. He was interrupted as Roion burst into the pavilion.

  “Dalinar!” the tall, balding man rushed in, grabbing him by the arm. The bad one. Dalinar winced. “It’s a storming bloodbath out there! We’re dead. Storms, we’re dead!”

  Nearby archers shuffled, their arrows spent. A sea of red eyes gathered on the plateau across the chasm, smoldering coals in the darkness.

  For all that Dalinar wanted to slap Roion, that wasn’t the sort of thing you did to a highprince, even a hysterical one. Instead, he towed Roion out of the pavilion. The rain—now a full-blown storm—felt icy as it washed over his soaked uniform.

  “Control yourself, Brightlord,” Dalinar said sternly. “Adolin has won his plateau. Not all is as bad as it seems.”

  “It should not end this way,” the Almighty said.

  Storm it! Dalinar shoved Roion away and strode out into the center of the plateau, looking up toward the sky. “Answer me! Let me know if you can hear me!”

  “I can.”

  Finally. Some progress. “Are you the Almighty?”

  “I said I am not, child of Honor.”

  “Then what are you?”

  I AM THAT WHICH BRINGS LIGHT AND DARKNESS. The voice took on more of a rumbling, distant quality.

  “The Stormfather,” Dalinar said. “Are you a Herald?”

  NO.

  “Then are you a spren or a god?”

  BOTH.

  “What is the point of talking to me?” Dalinar shouted at the sky. “What is happening?”

  THEY CALL FOR A STORM. MY OPPOSITE. DEADLY.

  “How do we stop it?”

  YOU DON’T.

  “There has to be a way!”

  I BRING YOU A STORM OF CLEANSING. IT WILL CARRY AWAY YOUR CORPSES. THIS IS ALL I CAN DO.

  “No! Don’t you dare abandon us!”

  YOU MAKE DEMANDS OF ME, YOUR GOD?

  “You aren’t my god. You were never my god! You are a shadow, a lie!”

  Distant thunder rumbled ominously. The rain beat harder against Dalinar’s face.

  I AM CALLED. I MUST GO. A DAUGHTER DISOBEYS. YOU WILL SEE NO FURTHER VISIONS, CHILD OF HONOR. THIS IS THE END.

  FAREWELL.

  “Stormfather!” Dalinar yelled. “There has to be a way! I will not die here!”

  Silence. Not even thunder. People had gathered around Dalinar: soldiers, scribes, messengers, Roion and Navani. Frightened people.

  “Don’t abandon us,” Dalinar said, voice trailing off. “Please . . .”

  * * *

  Moash stepped forward, his faceplate up, his face pained. “Kaladin?”

  “I had to make the choice that would let me sleep at night, Moash,” Kaladin said wearily, standing before the unconscious form of the king. Blood pooled around Kaladin’s boot from the wounds he’d reopened. Light-headed, he had to lean on his spear to keep on his feet.

  “You said he was trustworthy,” Graves said, turning toward Moash, his voice ringing inside his Shardplate helm. “You promised me, Moash!”

  “Kaladin is trustworthy,” Moash said. It was just the three of them—four, if you counted the king—standing in a lonely hallway of the palace.

  This would be a sad place to die. A place away from the wind.

  “He’s just a little confused,” Moash said, stepping forward. “This will still work. You didn’t tell anyone, right, Kal?”

  I recognize this hallway, Kaladin realized. It’s the very place we fought the Assassin in White. To his left, windows lined the wall, though shutters kept out the light rainfall. Yes . . . there. He spotted where planks had been installed over the hole that the assassin had cut through the wall. The place where Kaladin had fallen into blackness.

  Back here again. He took a deep breath and steadied himself as best he could on his good leg, then raised the spear, point toward Moash.

  Storms, his leg hurt.

  “Kal, the king is obviously wounded,” Moash said. “We followed your trail of blood here. He’s practically dead already.”

  Trail of blood. Kaladin blinked bleary eyes. Of course. His thoughts were coming slowly. He should have caught that.

  Moash stopped a few feet from Kaladin, just out of easy striking range with the spear. “What are you going to do, Kal?” Moash demanded, looking at the spear pointed toward him. “Would you really attack a member of Bridge Four?”

  “You left Bridge Four the moment you turned against our duty,” Kaladin whispered.

  “And you’re different?”

  “No, I’m not,” Kaladin said, feeling a hollowness in his stomach. “But I’m trying to change that.”

  Moash took another step forward, but Kaladin pushed the spear point upward, toward Moash’s face. His friend hesitated, raising his gauntleted hands in a warding gesture.

  Graves moved forward, but Moash shooed him away, then turned to Kaladin. “What do you think this will accomplish, Kal? If you get in our way, you’ll just get yourself killed, and the king will still be dead. You want me to know you don’t agree with this? Fine. You tried. Now you’re overmatched, and there is no point in fighting. Put down the spear.”

  Kaladin glanced over his shoulder. The king was still breathing.

  Moash’s armor clinked. Kaladin turned back, raising the spear again. Storms . . . his head was really throbbing now.

  “I mean it, Kal,” Moash said.

  “You’d attack me?” Kaladin said. “Your captain? Your friend?”

  “Don’t turn this around on me.”

  “Why not? Which is more important to you? Me or petty vengeance?”

  “He murdered them, Kaladin,” Moash snapped. “That sorry excuse for a king killed the only family I ever had.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why are you protecting him?”

  “It wasn’t his fault.”

  “That’s a load of—”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” Kaladin said. “But I’d be here even if it had been, Moash! We have to be better than this, you and I. It’s . . . I can’t explain it, not perfectly. You have to trust me. Back down. The king hasn’t yet seen you or Graves. We’ll go to Dal
inar, and I’ll see that you get justice against the right man, Roshone, the one truly behind your grandparents’ deaths.

  “But Moash, we’re not going to be this kind of men. Murders in dark corridors, killing a drunk man because we find him distasteful, telling ourselves it’s for the good of the kingdom. If I kill a man, I’m going to do it in the sunlight, and I’m going to do it only because there is no other way.”

  Moash hesitated. Graves clinked up beside him, but again Moash raised a hand, stopping him. Moash met Kaladin’s eyes, then shook his head. “Sorry, Kal. It’s too late.”

  “You won’t have him. I won’t back down.”

  “I guess I wouldn’t want you to.” Moash slammed his faceplate down, the sides misting as it sealed.

  1118251011127124915121010111410215117112101112171344831110715142541434109161491493412122541010125127101519101112341255115251215755111234101112915121061534

  —From the Diagram, Book of the 2nd Ceiling Rotation: pattern 15

  The stone block slid inward, confirming Shallan’s deduction. They had opened a building that hadn’t been entered, or even seen, for centuries. Renarin stepped back from the hole he’d made, giving Shallan a chance to step forward. The air from inside smelled stale, musty.

  Renarin dismissed his Blade, and oddly, as he did so, he let out a relieved sigh and relaxed against the outer wall of the building. Shallan moved to enter, but the bridgemen slipped in front of her to check the building’s safety first, raising sapphire lanterns.

  The light revealed majesty.

  Shallan’s breath caught in her throat. The large, circular room was a space worthy of a palace or temple. A mosaic mural covered the wall and floor with majestic images and dazzling color. Knights in armor stood before swirling skies of red and blue. People from all walks of life were depicted in all manner of settings, each crafted from vivid colors of every kind of stone—a masterwork that brought the whole world into one room.

  Worried she’d damage the portal somehow, she’d placed Renarin’s cuts near a ripple that she had hoped indicated a doorway, and it seemed that she’d been correct. She entered through the hole and walked a curving path through the circular chamber, silently counting the divisions in the floor mural. There were ten main ones, just as there had been ten orders of knights, ten kingdoms, ten peoples. And then—between the segments representing the first and tenth kingdoms—was a narrower eleventh section. It depicted a tall tower. Urithiru.

  She’d found it, the portal. And this artwork! Such beauty. It was breathtaking.

  No, there wasn’t time to admire art right now. The large floor mosaic swirled around the center, but the swords of each knight pointed toward the same area of the wall, so Shallan walked in that direction. Everything in here seemed perfectly preserved, even the lamps on the walls, which appeared to still hold dun gemstones.

  On the wall, she found a metal disc set into the stone. Was this steel? It hadn’t rusted or even tarnished despite its long abandonment.

  “It’s coming,” Renarin announced from the other side of the room, his quiet voice echoing across the domed chamber. Storms, that boy was disturbing, particularly when accompanied by a howling storm and the sound of rain pelting the plateau outside.

  Brightness Inadara and several scholars arrived. Stepping into the chamber, they gasped and then began talking over one another as they rushed to examine the mural.

  Shallan studied the strange disc set into the wall. It was shaped like a ten-pointed star and had a thin slot directly in the center. The Radiants could operate this place, she thought. And what did the Radiants have that nobody else did? Many things, but the shape of that slot in the metal gave her a pretty good guess why only they could make the Oathgate work.

  “Renarin, get over here,” Shallan said.

  The boy clomped in her direction.

  “Shallan,” Pattern said warningly. “Time is very short. They have summoned the Everstorm. And . . . and there’s something else, coming from the other direction. A highstorm?”

  “It’s the Weeping,” Shallan said, looking to Pattern, who dimpled the wall just beside the steel disc. “No highstorms.”

  “One is coming anyway. Shallan, they’re going to hit together. Two storms coming, one from each direction. They will crash into each other right here.”

  “I don’t suppose they’ll just, you know, cancel each other out?”

  “They will feed each other,” Pattern said. “It will be like two waves hitting with their peaks coinciding . . . it will create a storm like none the world has ever seen. Stone will shatter, plateaus themselves might collapse. It’s going to be bad. Very, very bad.”

  Shallan looked to Inadara, who had walked up beside her. “Thoughts?”

  “I don’t know what to think, Brightness,” Inadara said. “You were right about this place. I . . . I no longer trust myself to judge what is correct and what is false.”

  “We need to move the armies to this plateau,” Shallan said. “Even if they defeat the Parshendi, they’re doomed unless we can make this portal work.”

  “It doesn’t look like a portal at all,” Inadara said. “What will it do? Open a doorway in the wall?”

  “I don’t know,” Shallan said, looking to Renarin. “Summon your Shardblade.”

  He did so, wincing as it appeared. Shallan pointed at the slot like a keyhole in the wall—acting on a hunch. “See if you can scratch that metal with your Blade. Be very careful. We don’t want to ruin the Oathgate, in case I’m wrong.”

  Renarin stepped up and carefully—using his hand to pinch the weapon from above—placed the tip of the blade on the metal around the keyhole. He grunted as the Blade wouldn’t cut. He tried a little harder, and the metal resisted the Blade.

  “Made of the same stuff!” Shallan said, growing excited. “And that slot is shaped like it might fit a Blade. Try sliding the weapon in, very slowly.”

  He did so, and as the point moved into the hole, the entire shape of the keyhole shifted, the metal flowing to match the shape of Renarin’s Shardblade. It was working! He got the weapon placed, and they turned around, looking over the chamber. Nothing appeared to have changed.

  “Did that do anything?” Renarin asked.

  “It has to have,” Shallan said. They’d unlocked a door, perhaps. But how to turn the equivalent of the doorknob?

  “We need Highlady Navani to help,” Shallan said. “More importantly, we need to bring everyone here. Go, soldiers, bridgemen! Run and tell Dalinar to gather his armies on this plateau. Tell him that if he doesn’t, they are doomed. The rest of you scholars, we’re going to put our heads together and figure out how this storming thing works.”

  * * *

  Adolin danced through the storm, trading blows with Eshonai. She was good, though she didn’t use stances he recognized. She dodged back and forth, feeling him out with her Blade, bursting through the storm like a crackling thunderbolt.

  Adolin kept after her, sweeping with his Shardblade, forcing her away. A duel. He could win a duel. Even in the middle of a storm, even against a monster, this was something he could do. He backed her away across the battlefield, closer to where his armies had crossed the chasm to join this battle.

  She was difficult to maneuver. He had only met this Eshonai twice, but he felt he knew her through the way she fought. He sensed her eagerness for blood. Her eagerness to kill. The Thrill. He did not feel it himself. He sensed it in her.

  Around him, Parshendi fled or fought in pockets as his men harried them. He passed a Parshendi, forced to the ground by soldiers, being gutted in the rain as he tried to crawl away. Water and blood splashed on the plateau, frantic yells sounding amid the thunder.

  Thunder. Distant thunder from the west. Adolin glanced in that direction, and nearly lost his concentration. He could see it building, wind and rain spinning in a gigantic pillar, flashing red.

  Eshonai swung for him, and Adolin turned back, blocking the blow with his forearm. That section of his Plate was gett
ing weak, the cracks leaking Stormlight. He stepped into the blow and swung his own Blade, one-handed, into Eshonai’s side. He was rewarded by a grunt. She didn’t fold, though. She didn’t even step back. She raised her Blade and smashed it down against his forearm yet again.

  The Plate there exploded in a flash of light and molten metal. Storms. Adolin was forced to pull the arm back and release the gauntlet—now too heavy, without the connecting Plate to help it—letting it drop off his hand. The wind that blew against his exposed skin was startlingly powerful.

  A little more, Adolin thought, not backing away despite the lost section of Plate. He grabbed his Shardblade in two hands—one metal, the other flesh—and battered forward with a series of strikes. He transitioned out of Windstance. No sweeping majesty for him. He needed the frantic fury of Flamestance. Not just for the power, but because of what he needed to convey to Eshonai.

  Eshonai growled, forced backward. “Your day has ended, destroyer,” she said inside her helm. “Today, your brutality turns against you. Today, extinction turns from us to you.”

  A little more.

  Adolin pressed her with a burst of swordplay, then he flagged, presenting her with an opening. She took it immediately, swinging for his helm, which leaked from an earlier blow. Yes, she was fully caught up in the Thrill. That lent her energy and strength, but it drove her to recklessness. To ignore her surroundings.

  Adolin took the hit to the head and stumbled. Eshonai laughed with glee and moved to swing again.

  Adolin lunged forward and slammed his shoulder and head into her chest. His helm exploded from the force of it, but his gambit succeeded.

  Eshonai had not noticed how close they were to the chasm.

  His shove threw her over the plateau’s edge. He felt Eshonai’s panic, heard her shout, as she was dropped into the open blackness.

  Unfortunately, the exploding helm left Adolin momentarily blinded. He stumbled, and when he put a foot down, it landed only on empty air. He lurched, then fell toward the void of the chasm.

  For a timeless moment, all he felt was panic and fright, a frozen eternity before he realized he wasn’t falling. His vision cleared, and he looked down into the maw before him, rain falling in curtains all around. Then he looked back over his shoulder.