* * *
“Kill the man,” said the captain holding Navani. He swept his hand toward old Kmakl, Fen’s consort. “We don’t need him.”
Fen screamed against her gag, but she was held tightly. Navani carefully wiggled her safehand fingers out of her sleeve, then touched her other arm and the fabrial there, flipping a latch. Small knobs extended from the front of the device, just above her wrist.
Kmakl struggled to stand. He seemed to want to face his death with dignity, but the other two soldiers didn’t give him that honor. They pushed him back against the wall, one pulling out a dagger.
Navani seized the arm of the man holding her, then pressed the knobs of her pain fabrial against his skin. He screamed and dropped, writhing in agony. One of the others turned toward her, and she pressed the painrial against his uplifted hand. She’d tested the device on herself, of course, so she knew what it felt like. A thousand needles being shoved into your skin, under your nails, into your eyes.
The second man wet himself as he dropped.
The last one managed to cut a gash in her arm before she sent him to the ground, spasming. Bother. She flipped the switch on the painrial, drawing away the agony of the cut. Then she took the knife and quickly cut Fen’s bonds. As the queen freed Kmakl, Navani bound her painless wound.
“These will recover soon,” Navani said. “We may need to dispatch them before that happens.”
Kmakl kicked the man who had almost slit his throat, then cracked the door into the city. A troop of men with glowing eyes rushed past. The entire area was overrun with them.
“These are the least of our trouble, it seems,” the aging man said, shutting the door.
“Back up to the wall, then,” Fen said. “We might be able to spot friendly troops from that vantage.”
Navani nodded, and Fen led the way up. At the top, they barred the door. There were bars on both sides; you wanted to be able to lock out enemies who had seized the wall, and also ones who had broken through the gates.
Navani surveyed their options. A quick glance revealed that the streets were indeed held by Amaram’s troops. Some groups of Thaylens held ground farther up, but they were falling quickly.
“By Kelek, storms, and Passions alike,” Kmakl said. “What is that?”
He’d noticed the red mist on the north side of the battlefield, with its horrific images forming and breaking apart. Shadows of soldiers dying, of skeletal features, of charging horses. It was a grand, intimidating sight.
But Dalinar … Dalinar drew her eyes. Standing alone, surrounded by enemy soldiers, and facing something she could just barely sense. Something vast. Something unimaginable.
Something angry.
* * *
Dalinar lived in two places.
He saw himself crossing a darkened landscape, dragging his Shardblade behind him. He was on the field at Thaylen City with Odium, but he was also in the past, approaching Rathalas. Urged on by the boiling red anger of the Thrill. He returned to the camp, to the surprise of his men, like a spren of death. Coated in blood, eyes glowing.
Glowing red.
He ordered the oil brought. He turned toward a city where Evi was imprisoned, where children slept, where innocent people hid and prayed and burned glyphwards and wept.
“Please…” Dalinar whispered in Thaylen City. “Don’t make me live it again.”
“Oh, Dalinar,” Odium said. “You will live it again and again until you let go. You can’t carry this burden. Please, give it to me. I drove you to do this. It wasn’t your fault.”
Dalinar pulled The Way of Kings close against his chest, clutching it, like a child with his blanket in the night. But a sudden flash of light blasted in front of him, accompanied by a deafening crack.
Dalinar stumbled backward. Lightning. That had been lightning. Had it struck him?
No. It had somehow struck only the book. Burned pages fluttered around him, singed and smoldering. It had been blasted right from his hands.
Odium shook his head. “The words of a man long dead, long failed.”
Overhead, the sun finally passed behind the clouds of the storm, and all fell into darkness. Slowly, the flames of the burning pages went out.
* * *
Teft huddled someplace dark.
Maybe the darkness would hide his sins. But in the distance, he heard shouting. Men fighting.
Bridge Four dying.
* * *
Kaladin stuttered, the Words stumbling.
He thought of his men from Amaram’s army. Dallet and his squad, slain either by Shallan’s brother or by Amaram. Such good friends who had fallen.
And then, of course, he thought of Tien.
* * *
Dalinar fell to his knees. A few gloryspren swirled around him, but Odium batted them away, and they faded.
In the back of his mind, the Stormfather wept.
He saw himself step up to where Evi was imprisoned. That tomb in the rock. Dalinar tried to look away, but the vision was everywhere. He didn’t merely see it, he lived it. He ordered Evi’s death, and listened to her screams.
“Please…”
Odium wasn’t done with him. Dalinar had to watch the city burn, hear the children die. He gritted his teeth, groaning in agony. Before, his pains had driven him to drink. There was no drink now. Just the Thrill.
He had always craved it. The Thrill had made him live. Without it … he’d … he’d been dead.…
He slumped, bowing his head, listening to the tears of a woman who had believed in him. He’d never deserved her. The Stormfather’s weeping faded as Odium somehow shoved the spren away, separating them.
That left Dalinar alone.
“So alone…”
“You’re not alone, Dalinar,” Odium said, going down on one knee beside him. “I’m here. I’ve always been here.”
The Thrill boiled within. And Dalinar knew. He knew he’d always been a fraud. He was the same as Amaram. He had an honest reputation, but was a murderer on the inside. A destroyer. A child killer.
“Let go,” Odium whispered.
Dalinar squeezed his eyes shut, trembling, hands tense as he hunched over and clawed the ground. It hurt so badly. To know that he’d failed them. Navani, Adolin, Elhokar, Gavilar. He couldn’t live with this.
He couldn’t live with her tears!
“Give it to me,” Odium pled.
Dalinar ripped his fingernails off, but the pain of the body couldn’t distract him. It was nothing beside the agony of his soul.
Of knowing what he truly was.
* * *
Szeth tried to walk toward Dalinar. The darkness had grown up his arm, and the sword drank his last wisps of Stormlight.
There was … was a lesson in this … wasn’t there? There had to be. Nin … Nin wanted him to learn.…
He fell to the ground, still holding the sword as it screamed mindlessly.
DESTROY EVIL.
The little Radiant girl scrambled to him. She looked toward the sky as the sun vanished behind clouds. Then she took Szeth’s head in her hands.
“No…” he tried to croak. It will take you too.…
She breathed life into him somehow, and the sword drank of it freely. Her eyes went wide as the black veins began to grow up her fingers and hands.
* * *
Renarin didn’t want to die. But strangely, he found himself welcoming Jasnah’s strike.
Better to die than to live to see what was happening to his father. For he saw the future. He saw his father in black armor, a plague upon the land. He saw the Blackthorn return, a terrible scourge with nine shadows.
Odium’s champion.
“He’s going to fall,” Renarin whispered. “He’s already fallen. He belongs to the enemy now. Dalinar Kholin … is no more.”
* * *
Venli shivered on the plain, near Odium. Timbre had been pulsing to Peace, but now she quieted. Twenty or thirty yards away, a figure in white clothing collapsed to the ground, a little
girl at his side.
Nearer to her, Dalinar Kholin—the man who had resisted—slumped forward, head bowed, holding one hand against his chest and trembling.
Odium stepped back, his appearance that of a parshman with golden carapace. “It is done,” he said, looking toward Venli and the gathered group of Fused. “You have a leader.”
“We must follow one of them?” Turash asked. “A human?”
Venli’s breath caught. There had been no respect in that tone.
Odium smiled. “You will follow me, Turash, or I will reclaim that which gives you persistent life. I care not for the shape of the tool. Only that it cuts.”
Turash bowed his head.
Stone crunched as a figure in glittering Shardplate walked up to them, carrying a Shardblade in one hand and—strangely—an empty sheath in the other. The human had his faceplate up, exposing red eyes. He tossed the silvery sheath to the ground. “I was told to deliver that to you.”
“Well done, Meridas,” Odium said. “Abaray, could you provide this human with an appropriate housing for Yelig-nar?”
One of the Fused stepped forward and proffered a small, uncut smokestone toward the human, Meridas.
“And what is this?” Meridas asked.
“The fulfillment of my promise to you,” Odium said. “Swallow it.”
“What?”
“If you wish for the promised power, ingest that—then try to control the one who follows. But be warned, the queen at Kholinar tried this, and the power consumed her.”
Meridas held up the gemstone, inspecting it, then glanced toward Dalinar Kholin. “So, you’ve been speaking to him all this time too?”
“Even longer than I’ve been speaking to you.”
“Can I kill him?”
“Someday, assuming I don’t let him kill you.” Odium rested his hand on the shoulder of the huddled Dalinar Kholin. “It’s done, Dalinar. The pain has passed. Stand up and claim the station you were born to obtain.”
* * *
Kaladin thought, finally, of Dalinar.
Could Kaladin do it? Could he really say these Words? Could he mean them?
The Fused swept close. Adolin bled.
“I…”
You know what you need to do.
“I … can’t,” Kaladin finally whispered, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I can’t lose him, but … oh, Almighty … I can’t save him.” Kaladin bowed his head, sagging forward, trembling.
He couldn’t say those Words.
He wasn’t strong enough.
Syl’s arms enfolded him from behind, and he felt softness as her cheek pressed against the back of his neck. She pulled him tight as he wept, sobbing, at his failure.
* * *
Jasnah raised her Blade over Renarin’s head.
Make it quick. Make it painless.
Most threats to a dynasty came from within.
Renarin was obviously corrupted. She’d known there was a problem the moment she’d read that he had predicted the Everstorm. Now, Jasnah had to be strong. She had to do what was right, even when it was so, so hard.
She prepared to swing, but then Renarin turned and looked at her. Tears streaming down his face, he met her eyes, and he nodded.
Suddenly they were young again. He was a trembling child, weeping on her shoulder for a father who didn’t seem to be able to feel love. Little Renarin, always so solemn. Always misunderstood, laughed at and condemned by people who said similar things about Jasnah behind her back.
Jasnah froze, as if standing at the edge of a cliff. Wind blew through the temple, carrying with it a pair of spren in the form of golden spheres, bobbing in the currents.
Jasnah dismissed her sword.
“Jasnah?” Ivory said, appearing back in the form of a man, clinging to her collar.
Jasnah fell to her knees, then pulled Renarin into an embrace. He broke down crying, like he had as a boy, burying his head in her shoulder.
“What’s wrong with me?” Renarin asked. “Why do I see these things? I thought I was doing something right, with Glys, but somehow it’s all wrong.…”
“Hush,” Jasnah whispered. “We’ll find a way through it, Renarin. Whatever it is, we’ll fix it. We’ll survive this, somehow.”
Storms. The things he’d said about Dalinar …
“Jasnah,” Ivory said, becoming full size as he stepped free of her collar. He leaned down. “Jasnah, this is right. Somehow it is.” He seemed completely stunned. “It is not what makes sense, yet it is still right. How. How is this thing?”
Renarin pulled back from her, his tearstained eyes going wide. “I saw you kill me.”
“It’s all right, Renarin. I’m not going to.”
“But don’t you see? Don’t you understand what that means?”
Jasnah shook her head.
“Jasnah,” Renarin said. “My vision was wrong about you. What I see … it can be wrong.”
* * *
Alone.
Dalinar held a fist to his chest.
So alone.
It hurt to breathe, to think. But something stirred inside his fist. He opened bleeding fingers.
The most … the most important …
Inside his fist, he somehow found a golden sphere. A solitary gloryspren.
The most important step a man can take. It’s not the first one, is it?
It’s the next one. Always the next step, Dalinar.
Trembling, bleeding, agonized, Dalinar forced air into his lungs and spoke a single ragged sentence.
“You cannot have my pain.”
As I began my journey, I was challenged to defend why I insisted on traveling alone. They called it irresponsible. An avoidance of duty and obligation.
Those who said this made an enormous mistake of assumption.
—From The Way of Kings, postscript
Odium stepped back. “Dalinar? What is this?”
“You cannot have my pain.”
“Dalinar—”
Dalinar forced himself to his feet. “You. Cannot. Have. My. Pain.”
“Be sensible.”
“I killed those children,” Dalinar said.
“No, it—”
“I burned the people of Rathalas.”
“I was there, influencing you—”
“YOU CANNOT HAVE MY PAIN!” Dalinar bellowed, stepping toward Odium. The god frowned. His Fused companions shied back, and Amaram raised a hand before his eyes and squinted.
Were those gloryspren spinning around Dalinar?
“I did kill the people of Rathalas,” Dalinar shouted. “You might have been there, but I made the choice. I decided!” He stilled. “I killed her. It hurts so much, but I did it. I accept that. You cannot have her. You cannot take her from me again.”
“Dalinar,” Odium said. “What do you hope to gain, keeping this burden?”
Dalinar sneered at the god. “If I pretend … If I pretend I didn’t do those things, it means that I can’t have grown to become someone else.”
“A failure.”
Something stirred inside of Dalinar. A warmth that he had known once before. A warm, calming light.
Unite them.
“Journey before destination,” Dalinar said. “It cannot be a journey if it doesn’t have a beginning.”
A thunderclap sounded in his mind. Suddenly, awareness poured back into him. The Stormfather, distant, feeling frightened—but also surprised.
Dalinar?
“I will take responsibility for what I have done,” Dalinar whispered. “If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man.”
* * *
Renarin ran after Jasnah through the Loft Wards of the city. People clogged the streets, but she didn’t use those. She leaped off buildings, dropping onto rooftops of the tiers below. She ran across each of these, then leaped down to the next street.
Renarin struggled to follow, afraid of his weakness, confused by the things he’d seen. He dropped to a rooftop, feeling sudden pain at the fall—
though Stormlight healed that. He limped after her until the pain left.
“Jasnah!” he called. “Jasnah, I can’t keep up!”
She stopped at the edge of a rooftop. He reached her, and she took his arm. “You can keep up, Renarin. You’re a Knight Radiant.”
“I don’t think I’m a Radiant, Jasnah. I don’t know what I am.”
An entire stream of gloryspren flew past them, hundreds in a sweeping formation that curved toward the base of the city. Something was glowing down there, a beacon in the dim light of an overcast city.
“I know what you are,” Jasnah said. “You’re my cousin. Family, Renarin. Hold my hand. Run with me.”
He nodded, and she towed him after her, leaping from the rooftop, ignoring the monstrous creature that climbed up nearby. Jasnah seemed focused on only one thing.
That light.
* * *
Unite them!
Gloryspren streamed around Dalinar. Thousands of golden spheres, more spren than he’d ever seen in one place. They swirled around him in a column of golden light.
Beyond it, Odium stumbled back.
So small, Dalinar thought. Has he always looked that small?
* * *
Syl looked up.
Kaladin turned to see what had drawn her attention. She looked past the Fused who had landed to attack. She was staring toward the ocean of beads, and the trembling lights of souls above it.
“Syl?”
She pulled him tight. “Maybe you don’t have to save anyone, Kaladin. Maybe it’s time for someone to save you.”
* * *
UNITE THEM!
Dalinar thrust his left hand to the side, plunging it between realms, grabbing hold of the very fabric of existence. The world of minds, the realm of thought.
He thrust his right hand to the other side, touching something vast, something that wasn’t a place—it was all places in one. He’d seen this before, in the moment when Odium had let him glimpse the Spiritual Realm.
Today, he held it in his hand.
The Fused scrambled away. Amaram pushed down his faceplate, but that wasn’t enough. He stumbled back, arm raised. Only one person remained in place. A young parshwoman, the one that Dalinar had visited in the visions.
“What are you?” she whispered as he stood with arms outstretched, holding to the lands of mind and spirit.
He closed his eyes, breathing out, listening to a sudden stillness. And within it a simple, quiet voice. A woman’s voice, so familiar to him.
Oathbringer Page 135
