The Way of Kings Prime

by Brandon Sanderson

  “Kemnar, would you take over for me?” Taln asked.

  The bald warrior nodded, and Taln clapped him on the shoulder before leaving the sparring area. Morning was approaching, almost time for the men to bed down, and a light was pooling on the horizon. The soldiers continued their practice around him, Kemnar taking charge as Taln left. There was little for him to do, however—the squad commanders saw that their men performed the proper exercises and formation practices. Kemnar simply had to walk among them, being seen inspecting the practice.

  Several things were evident from the landscape around them. The first was the undeniable fact that Riemak, cradle of Vorinism and most noble of the Epoch Kingdoms, had fallen. The roads, once the kingdom’s pride, had fallen into disuse. Or perhaps ‘disuse’ was an understatement. The few scattered trails they passed were so weathered it was difficult to tell if they had really once been roads, or if their apparitional lines were simply tricks of the eye. Everything was overgrown with rockbuds and weathered by highstorm floods. The occasional stone bridges they passed were worn and often broken, and rubbled remains of villages and towns were regularly reported by the scouts.

  However, scattered among the shadows of what had once been, one could find the facts of what now existed. Riemak, or the area it had once covered, was not as empty as Taln had been led to believe. Frightened, defensive villages farmed inavah among the hills, their buildings huddled and weathered by cromstone—as if they were trying to mask their presence from outsiders. Meridas sent men to trade with these when possible, and the reception they received was cold at best. Still, Jasnah’s gems were valued commodities, as they would allow for trade across Alethkar’s border. Taln worried at the necessity of exposing themselves, but knew that there was little he could do. The trompings of several hundred feet left broken rockbuds and trampled foliage. If the men who chased them were able to discern their initial direction, finding their trail once they passed out of the barren inavah fields would not be a problem. Taln simply had to count on their head start, and the enemy’s hopeful lack of horses, to keep his men away from their pursuers.

  He sighed, ladling a precious bit of water to his lips as his men trained in their formations. They shouldn’t have to worry about pursuit. Men should not fight men—they had a much more dangerous foe to consider. Men would give parlay. The Khothen only sought death. Even the slaughter at Ral Eram’s palace would be tame by comparison to what the Stormshades would do if they caught the people unaware. But thinking about the infantile quarrels of men—even for the hundredth time—would not change the situation. He dropped the ladle, noting how low their water stores were. Fortunately, the highstorms would begin again in about a week. Of course, those would bring their own problems.

  He found Lady Jasnah sitting beneath her canopy—little more than four sticks with an awning, it was nonetheless the closest thing they had to a tent. She sat on her blanket, massaging her feet, but stiffened and stopped as soon as she noticed Taln. He had to smile at her appearance. Despite their extended march, despite the hardships she suffered, Lady Jasnah forced herself to maintain the proprieties of a perfect Aleth noblewoman. She insisted upon enough water to wipe herself clean at the end of each day, and she kept her hair immaculately braided despite her lack of serving women. In fact, her bearing was still that of the calm, commanding noble-woman—the only clues to her predicament lay in her humble clothing and the slight tan her fair skin had begun to adopt.

  As usual, she wore no gemstones—no rings, no hairjewels, not even a pendant. It was so striking an irregularity that Taln was surprised he hadn’t made the connection to her Awakening powers long before she revealed them.

  Taln waved away the pair of guards who stood guarding the lady’s tent. They glanced at Jasnah for confirmation, which she hesitantly gave. These men, at least, were loyal only to her. That was good.

  Taln squatted down as the men left, seating himself on a short boulder beside her blanket. Jasnah stared up at him with a cool expression. It probably angered her that he should see her weak, but he was of little mind to put up with feminine stubbornness, so he ignored the glare. He reached into his cloak pocket and removed a small bag. From this he dumped a small pile of gemstones.

  She paled just slightly. “What are those?”

  Taln raised an eyebrow.

  Jasnah rolled her eyes. “Yes,” she said dryly. “I know they’re gemstones. What are they for?”

  “You know that too,” he said calmly. “The funds you gave me were mostly sapphires and emeralds—I had to do a great deal of searching in Marcabe to find a good sampling of each Polestone.”

  Jasnah glanced down, eyes drawn to the gemstones despite her obvious distaste. Yes, she had the look of an Awakener. He should have seen it, the way her eyes lingered on the stones, the way she obviously had to force her hands to remain in her lap. She had Kemnar handle all of her funds, so she would never have to touch currency, and never wore gemstones—all so she could try and pretend that she wasn’t an Awakener.

  He remembered that call. It wasn’t an easy lure to resist, especially at first. In fact, though he had long since overcome the call himself, a piece of Taln felt dead whenever he touched gemstones this Return. Where they had once sung, they were now strangely silent to him—just as they had been to him before the creation of his nahel Bond. He gritted his teeth against the memories of Awakening, focusing on Jasnah.

  “You have to learn,” he told her.

  She looked away from the stones, regarding him with hostile, angry eyes. “We have had this discussion.”

  “Your abilities are a gift from the Almighty,” Taln said sternly. “He would not have given them to you if He didn’t wish you to use them.”

  “The Almighty?” Jasnah snorted. “You’ll need a better argument than that, Taln.”

  “Very well, then,” Taln said. “What of your people? What of duty to your kingdom? With leather, I could make armor for these soldiers. With steel and Awakener’s fire, I could forge better weapons. With the power of Awakening, we could carry a simple pouch of zircons and emeralds, rather than lug four pullcarts full of water and grain. This is a military expedition, and so far you have been useless to it. Meridas provides leadership and I give the men training, but you are only a liability—especially since you refuse to make use of the one invaluable ability you could provide.”

  Jasnah recoiled, her face growing even more icy. “You speak to me of duty? You, who care nothing for this expedition or its people save that it takes you closer to the Holy City? You, who would have left Ral Eram without even a fight, sneaking away from the invaders without giving warning? Yes, Lhan told me of your plans that day, when you knew of the attack and were preparing to run. One wonders why you even got involved? Did you go to the invaders to see if, perhaps, they might make a more powerful ally? After all, what are kingdoms and deaths to you—you’ve lived three thousand years. Considering all that experience you’ve supposedly had, one would think that you’d be leading the armies of man, not traipsing along with a half-equipped band of untrained soldiers, having abandoned the First Capital to invaders. If you really are one of the Ten Heralds, then I do hope the other nine are more competent than yourself, otherwise it’s a wonder mankind hasn’t been destroyed already.”

  The other nine . . . How could she know? How did she see what he was—the least of ten, surely an embarrassment to the others? Who was he, a simple soldier, to be chosen to join them? Kings, men of great wisdom, brave heroes and masterful knights, all of them—all of them except Taln. Taln the footman. Taln, who should have never been made one of them. Taln, who had doubted their course, the capture of the Magnatah, the formation of the nahel Bond. Memories buried beneath three millennia surfaced, bright and hot as when they had first been imprinted. The other Heralds must be working to save Roshar, for if it were up to Taln, mankind was doomed. If it had been up to him, mankind would have been destroyed long ago . . .

  The flames came again, the first time si
nce the dueling competition. The canopy disappeared in an explosion of burning strips of cloth. The sky overhead bubbled with fire, and all was red around him. The stones melted to lava. His flesh curled, black. And the howling began. Horrid, chilling screams. The screams of a thing that should be dead, but could not die. It appeared from the burning whiteness, a creature wreathed in darkness, a pitiful yet horrifying monstrosity. And it came for him. He stood to face it, hand groping for his Shardblade.

  “Taln!”

  Her voice was pure, and almost he could hear her Soul Tone in the call. Hostility had been replaced with concern, and he saw her, kneeling with fright amidst churning lava and smoking fires. She didn’t burn. She never did.

  “Taln, I like not that look in your eyes,” she pled. “What is happening? Taln, speak to me!”

  Lava cooled beneath his feet and the fires above withered. The canopy reformed itself, growing from ashen sticks back into normal, wooden beauty.

  Taln exhaled, seating himself. He held out a forestalling hand to calm Jasnah’s concern, but she pulled forward anyway, laying a hand on his knee. “What was it?” she asked quietly. “What did you see?”

  “I . . .” It was not a thing he could explain, for it was not a thing he yet understood. Something was . . . very wrong with this Return. “It is nothing, Jasnah,” he said. “Just . . . burdens. When you’ve lived as long as I, you pick up many of them.” He paused, then smiled tiredly. Suddenly he felt exhausted. “We certainly are growing proficient at manipulating one another. I thought we’d agreed not to squabble any more.”

  Jasnah blushed slightly, moving to sit back in her original position. She froze, however. Her unshod foot had touched one of the gemstones, which had been carelessly dropped from uncertain hands when the fires came. The Polestones now lay scattered across the stones at Taln’s feet.

  Jasnah sat for a moment, and he knew what she would be feeling. She could hear the Pole Tone, the pure and resonant sound of an unsoiled Essence. She heard it, but not with a regular sense. She heard it vibrating with her own soul, and she would find it beautiful. It would be even more powerful for her than it had been for him—the Elin, by virtue of their Bond, had powerful Soul Tones, unchangeable by Awakening. Though he had used the power for many, many years, he had never been very strong at it, and his body had never displayed any of the changes Awakening caused. He was far better at Stonewarding.

  Jasnah stiffened suddenly, pulling her leg away. Taln stooped down, gathering up the gemstones. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have tried to shame you into Awakening. I am just amazed that your kingdom would pass up an Awakener—during most eras, your kind were far too valuable not to train.”

  “They’re still valuable,” Jasnah said. “My father and uncle would have forced me to join with the Awakeners, had they known of my skill.”

  Taln paused, frowning. Then he dumped the rest of the gems in the pouch. “How is that possible? What of the Charan? Please tell me that it has not been forgotten? We worked so hard to institute it.”

  “The Charan is still performed,” Jasnah said. Her voice was slow, and had an absent quality to it—not distracted, just reserved. “I discovered my abilities before I came of age.”

  “Ah,” Taln said. It was rare—very rare. Usually, a soul had to hear another Soul Tone for its own latent power to mature. That was one of the prime reasons for the Charan—to use Awakening on every young adolescent so that if they had skill themselves, it could be discovered. For a child to learn Awakening without the Charan . . .

  “I was only seven at the time,” Jasnah said.

  “By the winds,” Taln breathed. So young. She would be incredibly powerful.

  Jasnah continued to speak, her voice quiet. “I did it by accident the first time. I didn’t even know what I was doing, but it was so strong . . . so powerful, and violent. I was visiting the home of a distant cousin. His city obtained most of its profit from an obsidian mine. So much of the stone . . . it called to me even though the mine was well outside the city wall. I went to it, and . . .” She shuddered slightly.

  During the days of the Epoch Kingdoms it had been called it the Conversion. The very first time an Awakener or Epellion used his or her abilities, it came out as a magnificent roar of power. It took most Awakeners decades to reach a point where they could reproduce an effect like that first, amazing Remaking. With a child of her strength, the Conversion must have been extraordinary.

  “They never discovered what happened to the mine,” Jasnah said. “Fortunately, I went there at night, drawn almost mindlessly to a call I did not understand. The burst of destruction, the conversion of a thousand brickweights of stone into black smoke, went unseen in the darkness. I left a gouge in the land the size of a mansion, causing the entire cavern complex to collapse. I . . . don’t know how I crawled back to the city. I don’t even know how I survived. I remember the vibration, though. Inside me, inside my soul. I felt agony, so much that I couldn’t even think. It felt as if . . .”

  “As if you were going to be consumed by the Soul Tone of the gemstone you touched,” Taln said. “As if you, too, would be transformed into smoke.”

  “And puff away,” Jasnah said, staring out into the morning sky. “Like the rocks I had destroyed. My parents thought I had caught a shaking fever, and that the fever delusions had led me from the house and made me wander the streets unseeing. I was bed-ridden for two months, spitting blood, shaking from a thunderclap no one else had been able to hear.

  “From that day on, I could hear gemstones in my mind. I knew what that meant, and knew what . . . it would do to me. I’d heard the stories, even seen my father’s Awakeners on occasion. At first, I was just frightened. I didn’t want to admit what it was, even to myself.”

  “Did you never have an impulse to seek out help?” Taln asked carefully. “Tell your parents what you were?”

  “I considered it, of course,” Jasnah said. “I was almost convinced to go to my father. But, then something happened in court. The son of Lord Daves, one of my father’s Shardbearers, was discovered to be an Awakener at his Charan. And they took him away—away from his parents, away from his friends . . . I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t let them take me; I wouldn’t let them bring back that pain I had felt, let them transform me into one of those alien creatures that served my father. Even if they found out now, they would take me away. They would take the court from me, and lock me away in a virtual prison, where I wouldn’t be allowed to have anything to do with anything.” She reached up, feeling the single tear on her cheek, then holding it up uncertainly, as if confused by its appearance. Finally, she rubbed finger against thumb and looked back at him. “The court is everything I have, Taln. It is everything I’ve ever had. I won’t let them take me from it.”

  Taln nodded slowly, regarding her. She was so young, barely into her thirties. He had seen as many millennia pass as she had seen decades, and he felt he hadn’t really begun to understand the world until he was well into his tenth century. And yet, she was so capable—she had learned so much, considering her short time alive. Sometimes it put him to shame, how much these people could accomplish when they didn’t have the crutch of immortality.

  He rose to go.

  “Leave the bag,” Jasnah said. “I will consider your suggestion. I won’t reveal myself, but I may find time for some . . . practice.”

  chapter 56

  Shinri 10

  Shinri’s first obstacle was her own reticence. Despite her decision to escape, despite her knowledge that she wouldn’t soon find another opportunity as good, she found herself hesitating and delaying.

  Those eyes were always with her. His eyes, looking at her as if from the side making her question her judgement. Ahven was not a man whose threats were trivial; he would send his assassins after her.

  But Jasnah escaped from him, Shinri reminded herself as she walked down a quiet palace hallway, her right-hand fingers trailing along the wall beside her, her left hand carrying a
reed-woven basket.

  Jasnah’s escape lent Shinri strength, for it meant that he was not infallible. Ahven’s power over Shinri seemed complete, but it wasn’t. She could escape. King Amelin had offered her protection, and so she would flee to him. Ahven wouldn’t be able to follow after her.

  Or would he? Shinri paused in the hallway beside an open window, looking out. The vantage overlooked the lower plateau, and the spread of the town below—a city full of people as much prisoners as herself. If she did escape to Thalenah, what assurance did she have that Ahven wouldn’t be able to come after her? The strange power Shinri had over the Oathgates—what if others had it as well? Perhaps she had just been the most convenient one for Ahven to control. She still didn’t even know how he had discovered her ability. Why would he know things about herself that even she did not?

  You’re second-guessing yourself again, Shinri, she thought. King Amelin can keep his Oathgate guarded. Even if Ahven does find another like you, he’ll have a far more difficult time assaulting a city that’s prepared for his trick.

  Shinri sighed, resting against the window’s rim and placing her basket on the sill. The hallway behind was empty—she was in the Riemak wing of the palace, a section that hadn’t been used regularly in centuries. Servants still visited and cleaned, closing the stormshutters for highstorms and keeping the stones free from crom, but there was little need for either activity during the Searing. For the moment, at least, she was alone.

  Ahven’s departure had left her with a shade more freedom. While many soldiers remained in the city, the great majority had gone with him to Crossguard. The direct manifestation of this was Shinri’s lack of guards. Of course, the ramps down to the city were very well-guarded, as were the Oathgates. In a way, the palace itself was just a massive prison.