The Way of Kings Prime

by Brandon Sanderson

  “Not directly, my lord,” the wiry messenger said.

  Relief flashed briefly in Ahven’s eyes. “Then we will speak in private,” he said, gesturing toward the pavilion.

  The messenger nodded. “Yes, your majesty.”

  Jek trailed behind the two, and was not forbidden, though Ahven did glance at him. He probably expects to have to send me to kill someone, Jek realized as he pulled the tent flap closed.

  “Speak quietly,” Ahven said to the messenger, “and do not repeat your message to anyone else. If you have bad news, I will need to control it for the good of the army. We go to war on the morrow.”

  “I understand, my lord,” the messenger said.

  “Good. What is your news?”

  “It’s about your wife, my lord,” the man said uncomfortably. “She . . . appears to be in league with the Aleths.”

  Ahven actually paled. “What happened?”

  “She fled the city, my lord,” the messenger said. “She helped Lord Dalenar’s son and the other Aleth nobleman escape, then fled with them through the Oathgates.”

  Ahven reached out, as if looking for something to steady himself. His eyes flashed shock, then uncertainty, then finally rage—a deep, wild rage, so passionate that it made him tremble. Jek watched with interest, and the messenger took a step back in surprise.

  Ahven gritted his teeth, eyes wide, breathing deep, as a buried instability manifested. Jek had always wondered if it were there—a man such as Ahven could not be completely sane.

  “Where did she go?” Ahven finally forced out between hissing breaths.

  “We . . . we don’t know, my lord. The Oathgates have stopped working.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes, my lord,” the messenger said.

  Ahven’s struggle to regain control of himself was manifest in his twisting expressions. Eventually, he pointed toward another room of the pavilion. “Go there,” he told the messenger, “and stay. Speak to no one.”

  Even as the messenger was bowing his response, Ahven stalked from the room with a hurried gait. Jek trailed behind, walking from the tent and passing the curious generals. Ahven walked only a short distance, toward a dark brown tent that Jek had never seen him enter.

  Jek frowned as they approached, realizing he didn’t even know the tent’s purpose. It was in the lord’s section of the camp, but it flew no glyphs or other identification. It was tucked out of the way, off the main pathways, though it did bear a couple of soldiers as guards.

  The men bowed as Ahven approached, but the king didn’t acknowledge them. He threw back the entrance flaps with an impatient gesture, then stalked into the room beyond.

  Jek slipped in behind, and was met by a familiar sight. It must have been difficult to transport the large onyx block so far, but apparently Ahven thought the gain worth the effort. The three youthful seers sat atop the black stone, as they had in the temple back in Veden City. Except this time, one of them—the youngest boy—lay on his back instead of sitting. The boy was not moving. The other two sat, staring at their trickling sands and the patterns they made on the floor.

  “What is happening!” Ahven demanded without preface. “The girl is lost to me, and the Oathgates have collapsed.”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” said the oldest of the three seers, a girl of perhaps sixteen years. There was a powerful weariness to her voice, and more than a bit of frustration.

  “You don’t know?” Ahven all but screamed. “Tell me what you see!”

  “You’re pushing them too hard, my lord,” said a robed figure at the side. “They don’t have the—”

  Ahven held up a stiff hand, cutting the man off. “Speak!” he commanded the female seer.

  “It’s muddy,” she complained. “Someone is changing things.”

  “Someone?” Ahven asked. “This Windrunner you’ve warned me about?”

  “No,” the girl said. Jek stepped closer, trying to get a better look at the youths in the dark light. The air was musty with incense, light provided only by a dim brazier.

  “It’s not him,” the girl continued. “It must be a seer, one of us. Another one, somewhere.”

  “So powerful . . .” said the seer beside her, the boy who was sitting up. “He’s so powerful.”

  “He? Who is he?” Ahven prodded.

  The girl shook her head. “Everything used to be clear, but now . . . it’s as if someone has reached out and scattered my sand.”

  “He’s interfering intentionally?” Ahven asked.

  “No,” the girl said. “He’s just . . . so powerful that he makes it difficult for the rest of us. His light is bright enough to make the shadows of what we might have seen disappear.”

  “He helped take the Elsecaller,” the boy whispered. “And she is linked to everything. We told you to take her, and to hold her, but you let her go. She is the key. He who controls her controls the world.”

  Ahven gritted his teeth, but most of his rage appeared to have dissipated. He was in control again, though he was still obviously frustrated. He glanced at the third child, the one who was lying on his back. Jek edged a little closer, and saw to his horror that the child wasn’t just resting. The young boy was staring sightlessly into the air, his eyes blank. His body was rigid and motionless, a bit of spittle dribbling slowly down his cheek. Somehow Jek knew this was no trance or passing fit. Something had happened, something that had taken the child’s mind.

  “When did he go?” Ahven demanded, nodding toward the boy.

  “A short time ago, my lord,” the cloaked figure said. “We were going to tell you tonight.”

  “The void took him,” the female seer whispered. “He saw something in the sands that frightened him.”

  “What?” Ahven demanded.

  The girl shook her head. “He wouldn’t tell us, but it scared him. Terrified him. The muddled sands wouldn’t tell him any more about it, and he grew frustrated. He looked where men should not, though we told him not to.”

  “He had to know,” the non-comatose boy said. “It calls to us, you know. The knowledge.”

  Jek shivered, backing away from the pedestal and its youthful seers. Ahven, however, looked more annoyed than he did frightened.

  “Only two left, and they are of no use,” the king said. “Keep looking. Do not rest until you discover where that girl has gone!”

  The female seer nodded, though from the look of her tired face, Jek doubted she would be able to remain awake much longer.

  Ahven stared at the seers for a moment longer, then turned and threw the tent flaps out of his way and stalked outside. He pointed at the first guard he saw.

  “You!” he commanded.

  “Yes, my lord?” the man said.

  “Go to the generals by my pavilion,” he told the messenger. “Give them an order on my behalf.”

  “What order, my lord?” the soldier asked.

  “Tell them to prepare the men to march,” Ahven said. “We leave for Crossguard within the hour.”

  “Yes, my lord,” the guard said, then bowed and backed away.

  “Crossguard?” Jek asked with surprise.

  “There has been enough waiting already,” Ahven said. “I will sit no longer. It is time to attack.”

  “The generals won’t like moving this quickly,” Jek noted carefully. Ahven’s temper was probably still lurking beneath the newly-restored calm face.

  “Their preference is immaterial,” Ahven said. “By the time we arrive, Elhokar and Dalenar will likely have finished killing one another. Even if they haven’t, their separate forces will be weakened irreparably. I will not wait three more days to claim Alethkar. We march tonight.”

  Jek nodded, more because he saw the inevitability of the march than because he agreed with it. Besides, there was another topic he was curious about.

  “What happened to that boy?” he asked, glancing back toward the brown tent.

  “It takes them all, eventually,” Ahven said with a dismissive gesture
. “The temptation to look is too great.”

  “To look at what?” Jek asked.

  Ahven glanced at him, annoyance glaring in his eyes. Jek bowed his head, a signal that he was done asking questions.

  “I’m trying to decide whether to send you after her or not,” Ahven finally said.

  “Who?” Jek asked. “Your wife?”

  “She should not have run,” Ahven said. “I warned her what would happen if she disobeyed me.”

  “Why send me after her?” Jek protested. “We don’t even know where she went. Are you certain you want to waste me on another frivolous chase?”

  Ahven didn’t answer. He turned and stared toward the army. Men were already starting to bustle about—the messenger had obviously spread his news. The generals would soon come looking for Ahven, demanding an explanation.

  “You will hunt her eventually,” Ahven decided, “but not today. Come, we have preparations to make.”

  chapter 66

  Shinri 12

  Shinri sat quietly on her stone bench, knees pulled up against her chest in a very unladylike position, watching as the Shardbearer Merin repeatedly summoned and dismissed his Blade. He appeared fascinated by the process.

  Merin held out his hand. The milky smoke gathered in his palm, then it lengthened, vaguely outlining the shape of his Shardblade. The smoke then coalesced, transforming into the silvery Shardblade. Merin stared at it with a thoughtful expression, then dismissed it, his eyes trailing the smoke as it rose toward the sky. It happened the exact same way it had the last tenset times, yet he regarded it with wonder.

  He was still just a boy, despite his manly girth. Yet he was a boy who had slain three Shardbearers in a period of just a few months—two of those times he hadn’t even owned a Blade himself. In fact, he had defeated the final one with his hands manacled together and his body weakened from extended captivity.

  He was also a boy who had been brave enough to fight for his freedom, but heartless enough to kidnap the very woman who had helped him escape. He was a boy who had accidentally killed the man Shinri was to have married, a boy who had saved King Elhokar’s life on two separate occasions. He was both a fool and a hero.

  Merin summoned and dismissed his Blade again, ignorant of Shinri’s judgements.

  Renarin’s bench sat up against the southern wall, to Shinri’s right. Like Merin and Shinri, he had been allowed to retain his possessions, and he held his onyx chip between two fingers, caressing it with an almost motherly touch. There was a strangely . . . patient air about him. In Shinri’s opinion, he was far too unconcerned about their captivity. So far, he hadn’t begun any more of his strange number patterns, but he kept glancing at the wall longingly. If he remained a captive much longer, Shinri didn’t doubt that he would begin scratching at the wall like he had in the other cell.

  Shinri wasn’t certain what to make of their current accommodations. They sat in the same three-room chamber that the guards had ushered them into several days before, just after their escape from Ral Eram. They had not been treated poorly; yet neither had they been given permission to leave their rooms.

  Nanah, the capital of Lakhenran, sat against a series of seaside cliffs, and Shinri’s prison had been built near the top of one of the inclines. The main room bore a large window on one side, granting a view of the city and its harbors, with the ocean spreading out beyond. Nanah was a city of domes and spires—the Lakhenran had always been an artistically-inclined people. The rooms were sparely furnished, but Shinri and the others had been given every requested amenity. Merin’s Blade had not been removed from him, and while their captors had given them nothing in the way of audiences or information, they had been treated with respect.

  Despite Shinri’s fears, no Veden soldiers had come for them. The guards at their chamber doors wore Lakhenran light blue—though the white Veden crests that marked their shoulders bespoke the true rulers of this nation.

  What did it mean? Surely the Veden soldiers had come through the Lakhenran Oathgate looking for Shinri and the others. While the Vedens probably assumed that their captives had escaped to Kholinar, they would have been fools not to check through friendly Oathgates just to be certain.

  Shinri shook her head. She wasn’t certain why they hadn’t been taken back to Veden City yet, but Merin and Renarin’s choice to travel to Lakhenran was pure insanity. And bringing Shinri through against her will . . .

  Merin summoned and dismissed the Blade. Shinri kept her anger contained, contenting herself by giving the boy an icy glare that he could not see. Renarin had been the one to pull her through, but Merin had drawn his Blade against her. Though they were both at fault, it was difficult to maintain any measure of proper anger with Renarin. He was just too unassuming to be provoking. Merin, however . . . everything about him was infuriating.

  It wasn’t just his common blood, either—Shinri half-wished she were petty enough to let that provide her a reason for disliking him. No, she knew her emotions came from something deeper, and something a bit more shameful. She was jealous.

  Merin had only been a lord for three months, yet he already seemed more comfortable in his place than Shinri did. He spoke to Renarin as an equal—even as a superior. Back in Alethkar, on the few times she had interacted with Merin, he had seemed uncannily comfortable with Aredor and the others. Merin didn’t seem to have the same worries and concerns that she did. He didn’t seem to feel the same sense of internal falseness—the same conflict between loathing the nobility and wishing to emulate them.

  Who was he to slay Shardbearers and so easily take his place among kings? Who was he to be so comfortable when Shinri felt anxious? The injustice of it all was frustrating.

  Merin summoned and dismissed his Blade again, and Shinri couldn’t hold her tongue.

  “Is that really necessary?” Shinri snapped. “I believe you’ve quite firmly established that if you call, the Blade will come.”

  Merin looked up with surprise, then flushed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It just . . . seems to help me think.”

  He seemed so harmless. Shinri read him, gauging his personality, trying to look past her biases. He was an earnest man; it was easy to tell from his treatment of others that he cared what they thought of him, and considered their evaluations to be more truthful than his own. He wanted to be trusted, and he wanted to do what was right—or, at least, what others told him was right. He didn’t like small spaces—he constantly paced, and insisted that the window remain open at all times except during highstorms. He didn’t know how to talk to women—Shinri’s study of him obviously made him nervous. Harmless indeed.

  But what was it Renarin said about him? A Windrunner? That was, of course, ridiculous. Windrunners were things of legend. They were one of the Ten Epellion Knighthoods—sects of mystical Epoch Warriors who had supposedly been founded to keep peace in Roshar and fight the Stormshades. Merin was a fine duelist, especially considering his limited training, but he was hardly legendary.

  And yet, there was something to Renarin’s words, something that made them difficult to dismiss idly. Perhaps it had been that odd look in his eyes—one that had been strange even for Renarin. Or perhaps it had been the combined effect of his eerie, maddened scribblings and his foreboding words. And then there was her own memory, her . . . longings. She had felt something when she’d touched the Oathgate opals. She had difficulty remembering specifics, but there had been something there—something marvelous, and something she had an amorphous longing to feel again, even if she couldn’t quite recall the experience.

  She did have power over the Gates—that much could not be disputed. What happened seventeen years ago . . . ? Renarin’s whispered words returned to her. She tried to dismiss them as the ramblings of a strange mind, but she couldn’t. Not quite.

  And that frustrated her even more.

  There was something very odd about the sensation of summoning and dismissing a Shardblade. Merin couldn’t quite define it, even after tensets of repetitio
ns. When he called the Blade, there was an anticipation within, like a held breath. His heartbeats seemed to thump more loudly as the summoning progressed. And then the Blade formed, falling into his waiting grip, never taking him by surprise or catching him off-balance.

  The dismissal was like a puffed breath. There was no anticipation, no waiting for heartbeats; it simply happened. Yet in that brief moment when the Blade vanished, Merin felt a sharp sense of familiarity. That fraction of a heartbeat, gone before he could do more than acknowledge it, gave him pause, causing him to summon and dismiss the blade repeatedly. He felt like he had dismissed a Blade sometime before, though that was impossible. He hadn’t Bonded his Blade until earlier that very morning, his hundred days—extended slightly by time spent separated from the Blade—finally up.

  That sensation . . . it was so familiar. He almost reached out his hand to summon the Blade again—he felt that if he could try just a few more times, he would be able to pinpoint where he had felt that dismissing sensation before.

  He caught himself, however, lowering his hand. He didn’t look at Lady Shinri, but he didn’t have to look to know that her eyes were on him, studying him, understanding him. He didn’t want to meet those eyes, for he knew his own guilt would show. Why had he let Renarin persuade him to bring the girl? If they hadn’t kidnapped her, she would be safe. There was no reason for her to be with them, held in yet another cell—which was exactly what it was, despite their guards’ assurances that they were only being detained for their own protection.

  At least Merin had his jade. He looked down at the bracelet around his wrist. He had managed to pry the thin metal backing off of the bracelet, and then pushed down the stones so that they touched his skin when he put on the piece of jewelry. He wore it always, despite its feminine designs, and the world around him wiggled with motion invisible to everyone else.

  He also had his Blade. Ironically, his possession of the weapon was what kept him from trying to break free from the captivity. Leaving a Shardbearer with his Blade was a very dangerous move—one that indicated a hesitance. Perhaps their captors weren’t sure what to do with Merin and the others. Perhaps there was still a chance that he would be set free.