“I have decided,” Syl declared, “that I’m glad you kept your word to Gaz, even if he is a disgusting person.”
It took Kaladin a moment to realize what she was talking about. “The spheres?”
She nodded. “I thought you might break your word, but I’m glad you didn’t.”
“All right. Well, thank you for telling me, I guess.”
“Kaladin,” she said petulantly, making fists at her side. “This is important.”
“I…” He trailed off, then rested his head back against the wall. “Syl, I can barely breathe, let alone think. Please. Just tell me what’s bothering you.”
“I know what a lie is,” she said, moving over and sitting on his knee. “A few weeks ago, I didn’t even understand the concept of lying. But now I’m happy that you didn’t lie. Don’t you see?”
“No.”
“I’m changing.” She shivered-it must have been an intentional action, for her entire figure fuzzed for a moment. “I know things I didn’t just a few days ago. It feels so strange.”
“Well, I guess that’s a good thing. I mean, the more you understand, the better. Right?”
She looked down. “When I found you near the chasm after the highstorm yesterday,” she whispered, “you were going to kill yourself, weren’t you?”
Kaladin didn’t respond. Yesterday. That was an eternity ago.
“I gave you a leaf,” she said. “A poisonous leaf. You could have used it to kill yourself or someone else. That’s what you were probably planning to use it for in the first place, back in the wagons.” She looked back up into his eyes, and her tiny voice seemed terrified. “Today, I know what death is. Why do I know what death is, Kaladin?”
Kaladin frowned. “You’ve always been odd, for a spren. Even from the start.”
“From the very start?”
He hesitated, thinking back. No, the first few times she’d come, she’d acted like any other windspren. Playing pranks on him, sticking his shoe to the floor, then hiding. Even when she’d persisted with him during the months of his slavery, she’d acted mostly like any other spren. Losing interest in things quickly, flitting around.
“Yesterday, I didn’t know what death was,” she said. “Today I do. Months ago, I didn’t know I was acting oddly for a spren, but I grew to realize that I was. How do I even know how a spren is supposed to act?” She shrank down, looking smaller. “What’s happening to me? What am I?”
“I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“Shouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know what I am either. A bridgeman? A surgeon? A soldier? A slave? Those are all just labels. Inside, I’m me. A very different me than I was a year ago, but I can’t worry about that, so I just keep moving and hope my feet take me where I need to go.”
“You aren’t angry at me for bringing you that leaf?”
“Syl, if you hadn’t interrupted me, I’d have stepped off into the chasm. That leaf was what I needed. It was the right thing, somehow.”
She smiled, and watched as Kaladin began to stretch. Once he finished, he stood and stepped out onto the street again, mostly recovered from his exhaustion. She zipped into the air and rested on his shoulder, sitting with her arms back and her feet hanging down in front, like a girl on the side of a cliff. “I’m glad you’re not angry. Though I do think that you’re to blame for what’s happening to me. Before I met you, I never had to think about death or lying.”
“That’s how I am,” he said dryly. “Bringing death and lies wherever I go. Me and the Nightwatcher.”
She frowned.
“That was-” he began.
“Yes,” she said. “That was sarcasm.” She cocked her head. “I know what sarcasm is.” Then she smiled deviously. “I know what sarcasm is!”
Stormfather, Kaladin thought, looking into those gleeful little eyes. That strikes me as ominous.
“So, wait,” he said. “This sort of thing has never happened to you before?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember anything farther back than about a year ago, when I first saw you.”
“Really?”
“That’s not odd,” Syl said, shrugging translucent shoulders. “Most spren don’t have long memories.” She hesitated. “I don’t know why I know that.”
“Well, maybe this is normal. You could have gone through this cycle before, but you’ve just forgotten it.”
“That’s not very comforting. I don’t like the idea of forgetting.”
“But don’t death and lying make you uncomfortable?”
“They do. But, if I were to lose these memories…” She glanced into the air, and Kaladin traced her movements, noting a pair of windspren darting through the sky on a gusting breeze, uncaring and free.
“Scared to go onward,” Kaladin said, “but terrified to go back to what you were.”
She nodded.
“I know how you feel,” he said. “Come on. I need to eat, and there are some things I want to pick up after lunch.”
15
The Decoy
You do not agree with my quest. I understand that, so much as it is possible to understand someone with whom I disagree so completely.
Four hours after the chasmfiend attack, Adolin was still overseeing the cleanup. In the struggle, the monster had destroyed the bridge leading back to the warcamps. Fortunately, some soldiers had been left on the other side, and they’d gone to fetch a bridge crew.
Adolin walked amid the soldiers, gathering reports as the late afternoon sun inched toward the horizon. The air had a musty, moldy scent. The smell of greatshell blood. The beast itself lay where it had fallen, chest cut open. Some soldiers were harvesting its carapace amid cremlings that had come out to feast on the carcass. To Adolin’s left, long lines of men lay in rows, using cloaks or shirts as pillows on the ragged plateau surface. Surgeons from Dalinar’s army tended them. Adolin blessed his father for always bringing the surgeons, even on a routine expedition like this one.
He continued on his way, still wearing his Shardplate. The troops could have made their way back to the warcamps by another route-there was still a bridge on the other side, leading farther out onto the Plains. They could have moved eastward, then wrapped back around. Dalinar, however, had made the call-much to Sadeas’s dismay-that they would wait and tend the wounded, resting the few hours it would take to get a bridge crew.
Adolin glanced toward the pavilion, which tinkled with laughter. Several large rubies glowed brightly, set atop poles, with worked golden tines holding them in place. They were fabrials that gave off heat, though there was no fire involved. He didn’t understand how fabrials worked, though the more spectacular ones needed large gemstones to function.
Once again, the other lighteyes enjoyed their leisure while he worked. This time he didn’t mind. He would have found it difficult to enjoy himself after such a disaster. And it had been a disaster. A minor lighteyed officer approached, carrying a final list of casualties. The man’s wife read it, then they left him with the sheet and retreated.
There were nearly fifty men dead, twice as many wounded. Many were men Adolin had known. When the king had been given the initial estimate, he had brushed aside the deaths, indicating that they’d be rewarded for their valor with positions in the Heraldic Forces above. He seemed to have conveniently forgotten that he’d have been one of the casualties himself, if not for Dalinar.
Adolin sought out his father with his eyes; Dalinar stood at the edge of the plateau, looking eastward again. What did he search for out there? This wasn’t the first time Adolin had seen such extraordinary actions from his father, but they had seemed particularly dramatic. Standing beneath the massive chasmfiend, holding it back from killing his nephew, Plate glowing. That image was fixed in Adolin’s memory.
The other lighteyes stepped more lightly around Dalinar now, and during the last few hours, Adolin hadn’t heard a single mention of his weakness, not even from Sadeas’s men. He feared it wouldn’t last. Dalinar was h
eroic, but only infrequently. In the weeks that followed, the others would begin to talk again of how he rarely went on plateau assaults, about how he’d lost his edge.
Adolin found himself thirsting for more. Today when Dalinar had leaped to protect Elhokar, he’d acted like the stories said he had during his youth. Adolin wanted that man back. The kingdom needed him.
Adolin sighed, turning away. He needed to give the final casualty report to the king. Likely he’d be mocked for it, but perhaps-in waiting to deliver it-he might be able to listen in on Sadeas. Adolin still felt he was missing something about that man. Something his father saw, but he did not.
So, steeling himself for the barbs, he made his way toward the pavilion.
Dalinar faced eastward with gauntleted hands clasped behind his back. Somewhere out there, at the center of the Plains, the Parshendi made their base camp.
Alethkar had been at war for nearly six years, engaging in an extended siege. The siege strategy had been suggested by Dalinar himself-striking at the Parshendi base would have required camping on the Plains, weathering highstorms, and relying on a large number of fragile bridges. One failed battle, and the Alethi could have found themselves trapped and surrounded, without any way back to fortified positions.
But the Shattered Plains could also be a trap for the Parshendi. The eastern and southern edges were impassable-the plateaus there were weathered to the point that many were little more than spires, and the Parshendi could not jump the distance between them. The Plains were edged by mountains, and packs of chasmfiends prowled the land between, enormous and dangerous.
With the Alethi army boxing them in on the west and north-and with scouts placed south and east just in case-the Parshendi could not escape. Dalinar had argued that the Parshendi would run out of supplies. They’d either have to expose themselves and try to escape the Plains, or would have to attack the Alethi in their fortified warcamps.
It had been an excellent plan. Except, Dalinar hadn’t anticipated the gemhearts.
He turned from the chasm, walking across the plateau. He itched to go see to his men, but he needed to show trust in Adolin. He was in command, and he would do well by it. In fact, it seemed he was already taking some final reports over to Elhokar.
Dalinar smiled, looking at his son. Adolin was shorter than Dalinar, and his hair was blond mixed with black. The blond was an inheritance from his mother, or so Dalinar had been told. Dalinar himself remembered nothing of the woman. She had been excised from his memory, leaving strange gaps and foggy areas. Sometimes he could remember an exact scene, with everyone else crisp and clear, but she was a blur. He couldn’t even remember her name. When others spoke it, it slipped from his mind, like a pat of butter sliding off a too-hot knife.
He left Adolin to make his report and walked up to the chasmfiend’s carcass. It lay slumped over on its side, eyes burned out, mouth lying open. There was no tongue, just the curious teeth of a greatshell, with a strange, complex network of jaws. Some flat platelike teeth for crushing and destroying shells and other, smaller mandibles for ripping off flesh or shoving it deeper into the throat. Rockbuds had opened nearby, their vines reaching out to lap up the beast’s blood. There was a connection between a man and the beast he hunted, and Dalinar always felt a strange melancholy after killing a creature as majestic as a chasmfiend.
Most gemhearts were harvested quite differently than the one had been today. Sometime during the strange life cycle of the chasmfiends, they sought the western side of the Plains, where the plateaus were wider. They climbed up onto the tops and made a rocky chrysalis, waiting for the coming of a highstorm.
During that time, they were vulnerable. You just had to get to the plateau where it rested, break into its chrysalis with some mallets or a Shardblade, then cut out the gemheart. Easy work for a fortune. And the beasts came frequently, often several times a week, so long as the weather didn’t get too cold.
Dalinar looked up at the hulking carcass. Tiny, near-invisible spren were floating out of the beast’s body, vanishing into the air. They looked like the tongues of smoke that might come off a candle after being snuff ed. Nobody knew what kind of spren they were; you only saw them around the freshly killed bodies of greatshells.
He shook his head. The gemhearts had changed everything for the war. The Parshendi wanted them too, wanted them badly enough to extend themselves. Fighting the Parshendi for the greatshells made sense, for the Parshendi could not replenish their troops from home as the Alethi could. So contests over the greatshells were both profitable and a tactically sound way of advancing the siege.
With the evening coming on, Dalinar could see lights twinkling across the Plains. Towers where men watched for chasmfiends coming up to pupate. They’d watch through the night, though chasmfiends rarely came in the evening or night. The scouts crossed chasms with jumping poles, moving very lightly from plateau to plateau without the need of bridges. Once a chasmfiend was spotted the scouts would sound warning, and it became a race-Alethi against Parshendi. Seize the plateau and hold it long enough to get out the gemheart, attack the enemy if they got there first.
Each highprince wanted those gemhearts. Paying and feeding thousands of troops was not cheap, but a single gemheart could cover a highprince’s expenses for months. Beyond that, the larger a gemstone was when used by a Soulcaster, the less likely it was to shatter. Enormous gemheart stones offered near-limitless potential. And so, the highprinces raced. The first one to a chrysalis got to fight the Parshendi for the gemheart.
They could have taken turns, but that was not the Alethi way. Competition was doctrine to them. Vorinism taught that the finest warriors would have the holy privilege of joining the Heralds after death, fighting to reclaim the Tranquiline Halls from the Voidbringers. The highprinces were allies, but they were also rivals. To give up a gemheart to another…well, it felt wrong. Better to have a contest. And so what had been a war had become sport instead. Deadly sport-but that was the best kind.
Dalinar left the fallen chasmfiend behind. He understood each step in the process of what had happened during these six years. He’d even hastened some of them. Only now did he worry. They were making headway in cutting down the Parshendi numbers, but the original goal of vengeance for Gavilar’s murder had nearly been forgotten. The Alethi lounged, they played, and they idled.
Even though they’d killed plenty of Parshendi-as many as a quarter of their originally estimated forces were dead-this was just taking so long. The siege had lasted six years, and could easily take another six. That troubled him. Obviously the Parshendi had expected to be besieged here. They’d prepared supply dumps and had been ready to move their entire population to the Shattered Plains, where they could use these Heralds-forsaken chasms and plateaus like hundreds of moats and fortifications.
Elhokar had sent messengers, demanding to know why the Parshendi had killed his father. They had never given an answer. They’d taken credit for his murder, but had offered no explanation. Of late, it seemed that Dalinar was the only one who still wondered about that.
Dalinar turned to the side; Elhokar’s attendants had retired to the pavilion, enjoying wine and refreshments. The large open-sided tent was dyed violet and yellow, and a light breeze ruffled the canvas. There was a small chance that another highstorm might arrive tonight, the stormwardens said. Almighty send that the army was back to the camp if one did come.
Highstorms. Visions.
Unite them….
Did he really believe in what he’d seen? Did he really think that the Almighty himself had spoken to him? Dalinar Kholin, the Blackthorn, a fearsome warlord?
Unite them.
At the pavilion, Sadeas walked out into the night. He had removed his helm, revealing a head of thick black hair that curled and tumbled around his shoulders. He cut an imposing figure in his Plate; he certainly looked much better in armor than he did wearing one of those ridiculous costumes of lace and silk that were popular these days.
Sadeas caug
ht Dalinar’s eyes, nodding slightly. My part is done, that nod said. Sadeas strolled for a moment, then reentered the pavilion.
So. Sadeas had remembered the reason for inviting Vamah on the hunt. Dalinar would have to seek out Vamah. He made his way toward the pavilion. Adolin and Renarin lurked near the king. Had the lad given his report yet? It seemed likely that Adolin was trying-yet again-to listen in on Sadeas’s conversations with the king. Dalinar would have to do something about that; the boy’s personal rivalry with Sadeas was understandable, perhaps, but counterproductive.
Sadeas was chatting with the king. Dalinar made to go find Vamah-the other highprince was near the back of the pavilion-but the king interrupted him.
“Dalinar,” the king said. “Come here. Sadeas tells me he has won three gemhearts in the last few weeks alone!”
“He has indeed,” Dalinar said, approaching.
“How many have you won?”
“Including the one today?”
“No,” the king said. “Before this.”
“None, Your Majesty,” Dalinar admitted.
“It’s Sadeas’s bridges,” Elhokar said. “They’re more efficient than yours.”
“I may not have won anything the last few weeks,” Dalinar said stiffly, “but my army has won its share of skirmishes in the past.” And the gemhearts can go to Damnation, for all I care.
“Perhaps,” Elhokar said, “but what have you done lately?”
“I have been busy with other important things.”
Sadeas raised an eyebrow. “More important than the war? More important than vengeance? Is that possible? Or are you just making excuses?”
Dalinar gave the other highprince a pointed look. Sadeas just shrugged. They were allies, but they were not friends. Not any longer.
“You should switch to bridges like his,” Elhokar said.
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