Two hours later, Shallan sat at a cluttered desk at the back of one of the Palanaeum’s lower-level rooms, her sphere lantern illuminating a stack of hastily gathered volumes, none of which had proven much use.
It seemed that everybody knew something about the Voidbringers. People in rural areas spoke of them as mysterious creatures that came out at night, stealing from the unlucky and punishing the foolish. Those Voidbringers seemed more mischievous than evil. But then there would be the odd story about a Voidbringer taking on the form of a wayward traveler who-after receiving kindness from a tallew farmer-would slaughter the entire family, drink their blood, then write voidish symbols across the walls in black ash.
Most people in the cities, however, saw the Voidbringers as spirits who stalked at night, a kind of evil spren that invaded the hearts of men and made them do terrible things. When a good man grew angry, it was the work of a Voidbringer.
Scholars laughed at all these ideas. Actual historical accounts-the ones she could find quickly-were contradictory. Were the Voidbringers the denizens of Damnation? If so, wouldn’t Damnation now be empty, as the Voidbringers had conquered the Tranquiline Halls and cast out mankind to Roshar?
I should have known that I’d have trouble finding anything solid, Shallan thought, leaning back in her chair. Jasnah’s been researching this for months, maybe years. What did I expect to find in a few hours?
The only thing the research had done was increase her confusion. What errant winds had brought Jasnah to this topic? It made no sense. Studying the Voidbringers was like trying to determine if deathspren were real or not. What was the point?
She shook her head, stacking her books. The ardents would reshelve them for her. She needed to fetch Tifandor’s biography and return to their balcony. She rose and walked toward the room’s exit, carrying her lantern in her freehand. She hadn’t brought a parshman; she intended to carry back only the one book. As she reached the exit, she noticed another light approaching out on the balcony. Just before she arrived, someone stepped up to the doorway, holding aloft a garnet lantern.
“Kabsal?” Shallan asked, surprised to see his youthful face, painted blue by the light.
“Shallan?” he asked, looking up at the index inscription atop the entry-way. “What are you doing here? Jasnah said you were looking for Tifandor.”
“I…got turned around.”
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“Bad lie?” she asked.
“Terrible,” he said. “You’re two floors up and about a thousand index numbers off. After I couldn’t find you below, I asked the lift porters to take me where they brought you, and they took me here.”
“Jasnah’s training can be exhausting,” Shallan said. “So I sometimes find a quiet corner to relax and compose myself. It’s the only time I get to be alone.”
Kabsal nodded thoughtfully.
“Better?” she asked.
“Still problematic. You took a break, but for two hours? Besides, I remember you telling me that Jasnah’s training wasn’t so terrible.”
“She’d believe me,” Shallan said. “She thinks she’s far more demanding than she is. Or…well, she is demanding. I just don’t mind as much as she thinks I do.”
“Very well,” he said. “But what were you doing down here, then?”
She bit her lip, causing him to laugh.
“What?” she demanded, blushing.
“You just look so blasted innocent when you do that!”
“I am innocent.”
“Didn’t you just lie to me twice in a row?”
“Innocent, as in the opposite of sophisticated.” She grimaced. “Otherwise, they’d have been more convincing lies. Come. Walk with me while I fetch Tifandor. If we hurry, I won’t have to lie to Jasnah.”
“Fair enough,” he said, joining her and strolling around the perimeter of the Palanaeum. The hollow inverted pyramid rose toward the ceiling far above, the four walls expanding outward at a slant. The topmost levels were brighter and easier to make out, tiny lights bobbing along railings in the hands of ardents or scholars.
“Fifty-seven levels,” Shallan said. “I can’t even imagine how much work it must have been for you to create all this.”
“We didn’t create it,” Kabsal said. “It was here. The main shaft, at least. The Kharbranthians cut out the rooms for the books.”
“This formation is natural?”
“As natural as cities like Kholinar. Or have you forgotten my demonstration?”
“No. But why didn’t you use this place as one of your examples?”
“We haven’t found the right sand pattern yet,” he said. “But we’re sure the Almighty himself made this place, as he did the cities.”
“What about the Dawnsingers?” Shallan asked.
“What about them?”
“Could they have created it?”
He chuckled as they arrived at the lift. “That isn’t the kind of thing the Dawnsingers did. They were healers, kindly spren sent by the Almighty to care for humans once we were forced out of the Tranquiline Halls.”
“Kind of like the opposite of the Voidbringers.”
“I suppose you could say that.
“Take us down two levels,” she told the parshman lift porters. They began lowering the platform, the pulleys squeaking and wood shaking beneath her feet.
“If you think to distract me with this conversation,” Kabsal noted, folding his arms and leaning back against the railing, “you won’t be successful. I sat up there with your disapproving mistress for well over an hour, and let me say that it was not a pleasant experience. I think she knows I still intend to try and convert her.”
“Of course she does. She’s Jasnah. She knows practically everything.”
“Except whatever it is she came here to study.”
“The Voidbringers,” Shallan said. “That’s what she’s studying.”
He frowned. A few moments later, the lift came to a rest on the appropriate floor. “The Voidbringers?” he said, sounding curious. She’d have expected him to be scornful or amused. No, she thought. He’s an ardent. He believes in them.
“What were they?” she asked, walking out. Not far below, the massive cavern came to a point. There was a large infused diamond there, marking the nadir.
“We don’t like to talk about it,” Kabsal said as he joined her.
“Why not? You’re an ardent. This is part of your religion.”
“An unpopular part. People prefer to hear about the Ten Divine Attributes or the Ten Human Failings. We accommodate them because we, also, prefer that to the deep past.”
“Because…” she prodded.
“Because,” he said with a sigh, “of our failure. Shallan, the devotaries-at their core-are still classical Vorinism. That means the Hierocracy and the fall of the Lost Radiants are our shame.” He held up his deep blue lantern. Shallan strolled at his side, curious, letting him just talk.
“We believe that the Voidbringers were real, Shallan. A scourge and a plague. A hundred times they came upon mankind. First casting us from the Tranquiline Halls, then trying to destroy us here on Roshar. They weren’t just spren that hid under rocks, then came out to steal someone’s laundry. They were creatures of terrible destructive power, forged in Damnation, created from hate.”
“By whom?” Shallan asked.
“What?”
“Who made them? I mean, the Almighty wasn’t likely to have ‘created something from hate.’ So what made them?”
“Everything has its opposite, Shallan. The Almighty is a force of good. To balance his goodness, the cosmere needed the Voidbringers as his opposite.”
“So the more good that the Almighty did, the more evil he created as a by-product? What’s the point of doing any good at all if it just creates more evil?”
“I see Jasnah has continued your training in philosophy.”
“That’s not philosophy,” Shallan said. “That’s simple logic.”
He sighed
. “I don’t think you want to get into the deep theology of this. Suffice it to say that the Almighty’s pure goodness created the Voidbringers, but men may choose good without creating evil because as mortals they have a dual nature. Thus the only way for good to increase in the cosmere is for men to create it-in that way, good may come to outweigh evil.”
“All right,” she said. “But I don’t buy the explanation about the Voidbringers.”
“I thought you were a believer.”
“I am. But just because I honor the Almighty doesn’t mean I’m going to accept any explanation, Kabsal. It might be religion, but it still has to make sense.”
“Didn’t you once tell me that you didn’t understand your own self?”
“Well, yes.”
“And yet you expect to be able to understand the exact workings of the Almighty?”
She drew her lips into a line. “All right, fine. But I still want to know more about the Voidbringers.”
He shrugged as she guided him into an archive room, filled with shelves of books. “I told you the basics, Shallan. The Voidbringers were an embodiment of evil. We fought them off ninety and nine times, led by the Heralds and their chosen knights, the ten orders we call the Knights Radiant. Finally, Aharietiam came, the Last Desolation. The Voidbringers were cast back into the Tranquiline Halls. The Heralds followed to force them out of heaven as well, and Roshar’s Heraldic Epochs ended. Mankind entered the Era of Solitude. The modern era.”
“But why is everything from before so fragmented?”
“This was thousands and thousands of years ago, Shallan,” Kabsal said. “Before history, before men even knew how to forge steel. We had to be given Shardblades, otherwise we would have had to fight the Voidbringers with clubs.”
“And yet we had the Silver Kingdoms and the Knights Radiant.”
“Formed and led by the Heralds.”
Shallan frowned, counting off rows of shelves. She stopped at the correct one, handed her lantern to Kabsal, then walked down the aisle and plucked the biography off the shelf. Kabsal followed her, holding up the lanterns.
“There’s more to this,” Shallan said. “Otherwise, Jasnah wouldn’t be digging so hard.”
“I can tell you why she’s doing it,” he said.
Shallan glanced at him.
“Don’t you see?” he said. “She’s trying to prove that the Voidbringers weren’t real. She wants to demonstrate that this was all a fabrication of the Radiants.” He stepped forward and turned to face her, the lanternlight rebounding from the books to either side, making his face pale. “She wants to prove once and for all that the devotaries-and Vorinism-are a gigantic fraud. That’s what this is all about.”
“Maybe,” Shallan said thoughtfully. It did seem to fit. What better goal for an avowed heretic? Undermining foolish beliefs and disproving religion? It explained why Jasnah would study something as seemingly inconsequential as the Voidbringers. Find the right evidence in the historical records, and Jasnah might well be able to prove herself right.
“Haven’t we been scourged enough?” Kabsal said, eyes angry. “The ardents are no threat to her. We’re not a threat to anyone these days. We can’t own property…Damnation, we’re property ourselves. We dance to the whims of the citylords and warlords, afraid to tell them the truths of their sins for fear of retribution. We’re whitespines without tusks or claws, expected to sit at our master’s feet and offer praise. Yet this is real. It’s all real, and they ignore us and-”
He cut off suddenly, glancing at her, lips tight, jaw clenched. She’d never seen such fervor, such fury from the pleasant ardent. She wouldn’t have thought him capable of it.
“I’m sorry,” he said, turning from her, leading the way back down the aisle.
“It’s all right,” she said, hurrying after him, suddenly feeling depressed. Shallan had expected to find something grander, something more mysterious, behind Jasnah’s secretive research. Could it all really just be about proving Vorinism false?
They walked in silence out to the balcony. And there, she realized she had to tell him. “Kabsal, I’m leaving.”
He looked at her, surprised.
“I’ve had news from my family,” she said. “I can’t speak of it, but I can stay no longer.”
“Something about your father?”
“Why? Have you heard something?”
“Only that he’s been reclusive lately. More than normal.”
She suppressed a flinch. News had gotten this far? “I’m sorry to go so suddenly.”
“You’ll return?”
“I don’t know.”
He looked into her eyes, searching. “Do you know when you’ll be leaving?” he said in a suddenly cool voice.
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Well then,” he said. “Will you at least do me the honor of sketching me? You’ve never given me a likeness, though you’ve done many of the other ardents.”
She started, realizing that was true. Despite their time together, she’d never done a sketch of Kabsal. She raised her freehand to her mouth. “I’m sorry!”
He seemed taken aback. “I didn’t mean it bitterly, Shallan. It’s really not that important-”
“Yes it is,” she said, grabbing his hand, towing him along the walkway. “I left my drawing things up above. Come on.” She hurried him to the lift, instructing the parshmen to carry them up. As the lift began to rise, Kabsal looked at her hand in his. She dropped it hastily.
“You’re a very confusing woman,” he said stiffly.
“I warned you.” She held the retrieved book close to her breast. “I believe you said you had me figured out.”
“I rescind that statement.” He looked at her. “You’re really leaving?”
She nodded. “I’m sorry. Kabsal…I’m not what you think I am.”
“I think you’re a beautiful, intelligent woman.”
“Well, you have the woman part right.”
“Your father is sick, isn’t he?”
She didn’t answer.
“I can see why you’d want to return to be with him,” Kabsal said. “But surely you won’t abandon your wardship forever. You’ll be back with Jasnah.”
“And she won’t be staying in Kharbranth forever. She’s been moving from place to place almost constantly for the last two years.”
He looked ahead, staring out the front of the lift as they rose. Soon, they had to transfer to another lift to carry them up the next group of floors. “I shouldn’t have been spending time with you,” he finally said. “The senior ardents think I’m too distracted. They never like it when one of us starts looking outside the ardentia.”
“Your right to court is protected.”
“We’re property. A man’s rights can be protected at the same time that he is discouraged from exercising them. I’ve avoided work, I’ve disobeyed my superiors…In courting you, I’ve also courted trouble.”
“I didn’t ask you for any of that.”
“You didn’t discourage me.”
She had no response for that, other than to feel a rising worry. A hint of panic, a desire to run away and hide. During her years of near-solitude on her father’s estate, she had never dreamed of a relationship like this one. Is that what this is? she thought, panic swelling. A relationship? Her intentions in coming to Kharbranth had seemed so straightforward. How had she gotten to the point where she risked breaking a man’s heart?
And, to her shame, she admitted to herself that she would miss the research more than Kabsal. Was she a horrible person for feeling that way? She was fond of him. He was pleasant. Interesting.
He looked at her, and there was longing in his eyes. He seemed…Stormfather, he seemed to really be in love with her. Shouldn’t she be falling in love with him too? She didn’t think she was. She was just confused.
When they reached the top of the Palanaeum’s system of lifts, she practically ran out into the Veil. Kabsal followed, but they needed another lift up to Jasnah’s
alcove, and soon she found herself trapped with him once more.
“I could come,” Kabsal said softly. “Return with you to Jah Keved.”
Shallan’s panic increased. She barely knew him. Yes, they had chatted frequently, but rarely about the important things. If he left the ardentia, he’d be demoted to tenth dahn, almost as low as a darkeyes. He’d be without money or house, in almost as bad a position as her family.
Her family. What would her brothers say if she brought a virtual stranger back with her? Another man to become part of their problems, privy to their secrets?
“I can see from your expression that it’s not an option,” Kabsal said. “It seems that I’ve misinterpreted some very important things.”
“No, it’s not that,” Shallan said quickly. “It’s just…Oh, Kabsal. How can you expect to make sense of my actions when even I can’t make sense of them?” She touched his arm, turning him toward her. “I have been dishonest with you. And with Jasnah. And, most infuriatingly, with myself. I’m sorry.”
He shrugged, obviously trying to feign nonchalance. “At least I’ll get a sketch. Won’t I?”
She nodded as the lift finally shuddered to a halt. She walked down the dark hallway, Kabsal following with the lanterns. Jasnah looked up appraisingly as Shallan entered their alcove, but did not ask why she’d taken so long. Shallan found herself blushing as she gathered her drawing tools. Kabsal hesitated in the doorway. He’d left a basket of bread and jam on the desk. The top of it was still wrapped with a cloth; Jasnah hadn’t touched it, though he always offered her some as a peace offering. Without jam, since Jasnah hated it.
“Where should I sit?” Kabsal asked.
“Just stand there,” Shallan said, sitting down, propping her sketchpad against her legs and holding it still with her covered safehand. She looked up at him, leaning with one hand against the doorframe. Head shaved, light grey robe draped around him, sleeves short, waist tied with a white sash. Eyes confused. She blinked, taking a Memory, then began to sketch.
It was one of the most awkward experiences of her life. She didn’t tell Kabsal that he could move, and so he held the pose. He didn’t speak. Perhaps he thought it would spoil the picture. Shallan found her hand shaking as she sketched, though-thankfully-she managed to hold back tears.
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