Unfettered II: New Tales By Masters of Fantasy

by Shawn Speakman

  Wren woke up when she heard Gronbach’s voice:

  Clay of Elan, natural and good,

  And blood of innocent children,

  By the hair of my beard, be as you should!

  Hear me oh Golem and awaken!

  Wren didn’t know what a golem was, and didn’t think she wanted to, but figured it had something to do with the big statue. Gronbach must have finished the head.

  The Dherg began laughing after that. A high, scary sort of cackle. Exactly the sort of sound an evil sheep might make, or a Dherg who’d just done something sinister.

  It will happen now.

  Wren didn’t know exactly what it was but didn’t think it would be good. Especially not for her. She grabbed the shears and held them tight. The little pair of blades that had lived most of their lives on a peg beyond her reach had become her best friend and only defense.

  It didn’t take long.

  The door opened and Gronbach came into the bone room, looking for her. He was grinning; his teeth looked green with the gem’s light. His eyes were bright, wider than before, and both brows rode high. He hadn’t come for more blood—not strictly speaking, at least. And he didn’t waste time with explanations, or apologies for his deceit. Gronbach charged and grabbed her by the throat with both hands. His stubby fingers wrapped around her neck. For someone so small, he was incredibly strong. His hands gripped her so tightly she couldn’t breathe. Wren went flat on her back as Gronbach bore down on her, his beard falling in her face.

  He intended to kill her, that much was clear. The Dherg’s revulsion to the sight of blood made him select a course that seemed more vicious and personal than a stabbing or bashing. Wren brought the shears up and aimed for Gronbach’s neck. She had the handle squeezed, the blade pinched closed to make them more like a dagger. She imagined the blades cutting into his throat, but they never got that far. Her forearm collided with his wide shoulders. She tried again but with the same result.

  His hands had closed off more than her breath. Blood was no longer flowing through her neck and pressure was building in her head, making her thoughts fuzzy. She stabbed again, this time aiming for his side, but not being able to see, she had the angle wrong and the point missed. The dull side of the blades clapped harmlessly across his back. The shear twisted and the handle sprang open. Wren lost her grip, and her weapon fell. The sound of it hitting the stone was muffled behind the blood pounding in her ears.

  “Exile me will they? Cast me out? I’ll be king over my people now and your kind will be my slaves!” Gronbach growled at her as he leaned in, using all his weight to hold her steady.

  Wren reached up with her hands trying to pull his fingers away, but they were too strong and too tight to get under. With her right hand, she found the shears again. She was out of time. Her eyesight was going. The green glow faded as her vision darkened. A few more seconds and she’d pass out. A few seconds after that, she’d be dead. In a panic, she stabbed at his throat again. A feeble attempt and once more his shoulder stopped her. Then she remembered she’d forgotten to squeeze the handle to make the blades into a dagger point. She squeezed the handle and the two blades hissed across each other.

  Then she heard a scream. Gronbach’s hands let go of her throat and his weight came off her body.

  Air! Air flooded back into her chest. She coughed, sucked in more air, and coughed again.

  The light returned. Her eyesight cleared, and Wren sat up with her left hand on her bruised neck, her right still holding the shears.

  Gronbach had pushed away from her. He’d retreated to the far side of the room with his hands over his face, screaming.

  I cut him! I must have stabbed him in the neck.

  Only he wasn’t holding his neck. By the position of his hands over his face, she thought she’d cut off his nose, but there wasn’t any blood.

  Wren looked down at the shears. Not a drop on the blades or on the . . .

  On the floor between them lay a pile of long hair. Gronbach’s beard had been sheared off. With tears in wild eyes, he fell to his knees and reached out for the pile of hair. “No . . . no . . . no . . .”

  Wren scuttled backward across the floor, holding the shears before her with both hands.

  “My beard . . . you . . .” Gronbach narrowed his eyes. “I still have my golem! Golem! Golem!”

  Wren felt the floor shake as into the room ducked a giant lumbering figure. What Wren remembered as a statue was now a monster of moving rock. As if a stone cliff had come to life. The golem was a series of boulders in the shape of a man with stones for legs and rocks for hands. The head was a solid block with holes for eyes and a crack for a mouth.

  “Kill her!” Gronbach shouted.

  The stone monstrosity hesitated, looking down at the Dherg.

  “Kill her I command you!”

  The golem turned toward Wren. Taking a thundering step at her, which rained dirt and dust down on all of them, he reached out. Wren cringed, expecting to be crushed by its hands of rock, but she was brushed aside as the golem grabbed her basket. Tipping it over, the monster dumped the contents out on the floor. The remaining two biscuits fell out along with her sharp stone. The golem got down on all fours and crawled to it.

  Gronbach stared, stunned. “Get up! Get up you stupid thing! Kill her! Kill her!”

  The golem turned to face the Dherg, who in a rage rushed at the monster.

  Wren didn’t know what Gronbach had intended to do. Shove it maybe? Or perhaps he just wanted to get closer and yell louder in its face. Either way, by rushing the way he did, Gronbach scared the golem the same way the rat had scared Wren. The rock monster didn’t have a pair of shears, but it did have the mind of a rodent. Despite differences in size, a bee will sting a bear and a rat will bite a person when threatened. And it was the same way with a seven-foot-tall stone golem with a head made from the blood of a rat. The monster’s crack of a mouth opened wide and then snapped down on Gronbach’s head.

  There was a lot more blood then, but luckily for Gronbach, he never saw it.

  With shears still in hand, Wren crept out of the bone room and into the workshop. The moment she did, she noticed the tunnel was back, or maybe it had never really been gone. She made a dash for it and found herself once more in a dark world of musty damp soil and witch’s hair roots. Then she saw it—sunlight! Wren burst out of the crack in the cliff and nearly fell into the stagnant pool with the rotting log.

  Caw! The crow was still there and made a half hop to face her.

  Caw! It sounded again.

  She blinked at it. “You tried to warn me, didn’t you?”

  Caw! The bird threw out its wings, pushed off the log, and flew through the trees.

  Wren quickly moved away from the crack, eager to put distance between herself and the golem. Maybe it was too big to escape without Gronbach’s magic, but maybe not. She didn’t want to wait and find out. She walked around the pool then stopped.

  Which way?

  Caw! The crow was seated on a branch not too far away. Caw! Caw!

  Wren stared at the crow. Completely black, it didn’t look like the sort of bird one ought to trust. But then, the sheep had been adorable with its cute little beard, and that didn’t work out so well. Wren peered very hard at its chin for any signs of a beard. Not the slightest tuft or gathering of feathers was visible. This wasn’t the Dherg come back in another form. The bird was something else, and whatever it was, it wasn’t normal. By this point, Wren was getting a pretty good feel for such things.

  Pa would have called her naive. Ma, being kind, might have said she was too innocent to know better. And Lee most certainly would have called her an idiot. But despite everything, Wren thought that maybe not all magic was bad, and if one game of Follow the Leader got her into the forest, perhaps another would get her out.

  Maybe I am naive and an idiot, but I also don’t have a choice. It’s a big forest.

  Trusting to the magic of innocence, she followed the bird and was the f
irst of her family to find their way home.

  Brandon Sanderson

  * * *

  These chapters, which I’ve named “The Thrill,” are a sequence of flashbacks from one of the main characters of the Stormlight Archive. They’re an excerpt from the upcoming third book in the series, though I feel they read well enough on their own. (In fact, I like them so much on their own, I’ve been doing public readings from them for several years now.)

  They don’t contain much in the way of spoilers, as they happen long before the first book actually takes place. They do, however, present a very different view of a main character in the series. So I’m not sure how they’ll feel in isolation from that.

  In any case, though, I hope you enjoy them! Do know that these are a middle draft, which means though we’ve cleaned them up and they read well, there might still be little continuity tweaks we want to make before publication. So don’t consider anything you read here to be set in proverbial stone. As always, thanks for reading!

  Brandon Sanderson

  The Thrill

  Brandon Sanderson

  Thirty-Six Years Ago

  Rockbuds crunched like skulls beneath Dalinar’s boots as he charged across the burning field. His elites pounded after him, a handpicked force of soldiers both lighteyed and dark. They weren’t an honor guard. Dalinar didn’t need guards. These were simply the men he considered competent enough not to embarrass him.

  Around him, rockbuds smoldered. Moss—dried from the summer heat and long days between storms this time of year—flared up in waves, setting the rockbud shells aflame. Flamespren danced among them. And, like a spren himself, Dalinar charged through the smoke, trusting in his padded armor and thick boots to protect him.

  The enemy—pressed on the north by his armies—had pulled back into this town just ahead. With some difficulty, Dalinar had resisted entering that initial clash. He’d known the real fighting would take place in the town. Now that the enemy had been pushed back inside, he’d brought his elites in to flank them from the south. He hadn’t expected the enemy to fire this plain, a desperate move that meant burning their own crops to block the southern approach.

  Well, no matter. The fires could go to Damnation. Though some of his men were overwhelmed by the smoke or heat, most stayed with him. They’d crash into the enemy from the south, pressing them between his force and the main army.

  Hammer and anvil. His favorite kind of tactic: the type that didn’t allow his enemies to get away from him.

  As Dalinar burst from the smoky air, he found a few lines of spearmen hastily forming ranks on the southern edge of the town, anticipationspren—like red streamers growing from the ground, and whipping in the wind—clustering around them. The town was surrounded by the remnants of a wall, but that had been torn down in a contest a few years back. Dalinar had forgotten the town’s name, but the location was ideal. A large ridge to the east made a natural windbreak against the storms and had allowed this place to sprawl, almost like a real city.

  Dalinar bellowed at the enemy soldiers, beating his sword—just a regular longsword—against his shield. He wore a sturdy breastplate and helm along with iron-reinforced boots. The spearmen ahead of him wavered as his elites roared from amid the smoke and flame, shouting a bloodthirsty cacophony.

  A few of the spearmen dropped their weapons and ran. Dalinar grinned. He didn’t need Shards to intimidate.

  He hit the spearmen like a boulder rolling through a grove of saplings, swinging his sword and sending limbs into the air. A good fight was about momentum. Don’t stop. Don’t think. Drive forward and convince your enemies that they’re as good as dead. That way, they’ll fight you less as you send them to their pyres.

  As he waded among them, the spearmen thrust their spears frantically—less to try to kill him, more to try to push away this madman. Their ranks collapsed. Too many of them turned their attention toward him, away from holding the line against his approaching men.

  Dalinar laughed, slamming aside a pair of spears with his shield, then disemboweling one man with a sword deep in the gut. The stabbed man dropped his spear in agony, trying to grab at his entrails. His neighbors backed away at the horrific sight, and Dalinar came in swinging, catching the two off balance, killing them with a sword that bore their friend’s blood.

  Dalinar’s elites struck the now-broken line, and the real slaughter began. Dalinar pushed forward, keeping momentum, shearing through the ranks until he reached the back, breathing deeply and wiping ashen sweat from his face. A young spearman fell before him, weeping, screaming for his mother as he crawled across the stony ground, trailing blood. Fearspren mixed with orange, sinewy painspren all around. Dalinar shook his head, picked up a fallen spear and, striding after the youth, slammed it down into the boy’s heart as he passed.

  Men often cried for their parents as they died. Didn’t matter how old they were. He’d seen greybeards do it, same as kids like this one. He’s not much younger than me, Dalinar thought. Maybe seventeen. But then, Dalinar had never felt young, regardless of his age.

  His elites filed in behind him, having carved the enemy line in two. Dalinar danced, shaking off his bloodied blade, feeling alert, excited, but not yet alive. Where was it?

  Come on . . .

  A larger group of enemy soldiers was jogging down the street toward him, led by several officers in white and red. From the way they suddenly pulled up, their alarm at finding their spearmen so quickly fallen was obvious.

  Dalinar charged. His elites knew to watch, so he was quickly joined by fifty or sixty men—the rest had to finish off the unfortunate spearmen. Fifty would do. The crowded confines of the town would mean Dalinar shouldn’t need more.

  As he neared the new foes, he focused his attention on the one man riding a horse. The fellow wore plate armor obviously meant to resemble Shardplate, though it was only of common steel. It lacked the beauty, the power, of true Plate. He still looked like he was the most important person around. Hopefully that would mean he was the best.

  The man’s honor guard rushed to engage, and Dalinar felt something stir inside him. Like a thirst, a physical need.

  Challenge. He needed a challenge, storms take him!

  He engaged the first member of the guard, attacking with a swift brutality. Fighting on the battlefield wasn’t like in the dueling arena; Dalinar didn’t dance around the fellow, testing his abilities. Out here, that sort of thing got you stabbed in the back by someone else. Instead, Dalinar slammed his sword down against the enemy, who raised his shield to block. Dalinar struck a series of quick, powerful blows, like a drummer pounding out a furious beat. Bam, bam, bam, bam!

  The enemy soldier didn’t have an opportunity to mount a counterattack. He clutched his shield over his head, leaving Dalinar squarely in control. Dalinar kept striking as he raised his own shield before him and shoved it against the man, forcing him back until he stumbled. The man’s shield shifted, letting Dalinar’s sword come down at an angle and bite him in the upper arm.

  The shield dropped completely. This man didn’t get a chance to cry for his mother.

  Dalinar let his elites handle the others; the way was open to the brightlord. Not old enough to be the highprince. Some other important lighteyes? Or . . . didn’t Dalinar remember hearing something about a son mentioned during Gavilar’s endless planning meetings? Well, this man certainly looked grand on that white mare, watching the battle from within his helm’s visor, cape streaming around him.

  Dalinar pulled up, swiping his sword eagerly, panting in and out. The foe raised his sword to his helm in a sign of challenge accepted.

  Idiot.

  Dalinar raised his shield arm and pointed, counting on at least one of his strikers to have lived and stayed with him. Indeed, Jenin stepped up, unhooked the short bow from his back and—as the brightlord shouted his surprise—shot the horse in the chest.

  “Hate shooting horses,” Jenin grumbled as the beast reared in pain. “Like throwing a thousand broa
ms into the storming ocean, Brightlord.”

  “I’ll buy you two when we finish this,” Dalinar said as the brightlord fell backward, tumbling off his horse. Dalinar dodged forward around flashing hooves and squeals of pain, seeking out the fallen man. He was pleased to find the enemy rising.

  Dalinar came in swinging. The brightlord managed to get his sword up, but Dalinar batted it to the side, then dropped his shield completely and came in with a two-handed power swing, intending to knock the lighteyed soldier back down. Fortunately, the man was good enough to recover his stance and intercept the blow with his shield.

  They probably heard the subsequent crack all the way in Kholinar. Indeed, it vibrated up Dalinar’s arms.

  Momentum. Life was about momentum. Pick a direction and don’t let anything—man or storm—turn you aside. Dalinar battered at the brightlord, driving him backward, furious and persistent. He felt like he was winning the bout, controlling it, right up until the man pulled a feint. Dalinar stumbled, trying to parry a blow that didn’t come. The brightlord instead came in close and rammed Dalinar with his shield.

  Dalinar ducked the blow that followed, but the backhand hit him solidly on the side of the head, sending him stumbling. His helm twisted, metal bent by the blow biting into his scalp, drawing blood. He saw double, his vision swimming.

  The brightlord, smartly, came in for the kill. Dalinar swung his blade up in a lurching, full-shouldered blow, slapping the brightlord’s weapon completely out of his hands.

  The man instead punched Dalinar in the face with a gauntlet, and his nose crunched.