The Way of Kings Prime

by Brandon Sanderson

  “Come with me,” the soldier said, nodding to his companions. The group split, giving them passage into the building.

  Merin stepped forward, then glanced back toward Shinri and Renarin. Renarin looked unperturbed—an expression that was growing increasingly common to his features. Shinri, however, looked . . . thoughtful, which surprised Merin.

  “No words of disdain about my foolish loss of a Shardblade?” he asked as they stepped into the building.

  Shinri eyed him, the look somehow conveying that she was annoyed he would think such of her. “Is a Shardblade worth the deaths of ten innocent men?” she asked. “Is it worth the death of even one? I’m surprised to admit that you might have done the right thing, Merin Kholin.”

  Her praise gave him a reflexive burst of confidence as he entered the dome’s central hallway. Here too he noticed signs of modest decoration. The carpets were monochrome, rather than woven with designs like those in Ral Eram. The glyphward tapestries on the walls were simple and relatively unadorned. The atmosphere of the hallway was utilitarian.

  Or was there perhaps something deeper? Was the lack of ornamentation an order from the Veden conquerors, or was it an unconscious symbol of the Lakhenran people’s beaten-down temperament? If the first were true, Merin’s task might be easier than he thought. However, if the people really were so subservient that they intentionally decorated with plainness in order to placate their foreign masters . . .

  A throne room lay beyond a set of double doors at the end of the hallway. It unexpectedly contained an actual throne, and a lavish one at that. Merin quickly realized, however, that this was another symbol of the nation’s conquered nature. The throne sat on a dais, and was unoccupied. Three simpler chairs sat below—the regents were required to rule beneath the empty throne, a likely representation of the absent Veden king.

  Merin stepped into the room, soldiers and companions crowding into the chamber behind him. The three regents were aging men, all of about the same age, perhaps in their sixth decade. They wore squared Veden beards, though few of the men Merin had seen on the streets wore any facial hair. Their clothing was of a Veden cut—militaristic, form-fitted, and non-revealing. All three wore cloaks.

  “You should have stayed where you were put, young man,” the center regent said, leaning forward in his pseudo-throne. He was the thinnest of the three; his skin hung on him in folds, giving a drooping kind of moroseness to his features. He was surprisingly good at the Aleth tongue.

  “In your prison?” Merin asked.

  “It was for your protection,” the man replied. “There are a lot of Veden soldiers in Nanah. This city is not a safe place for Aleth noblemen, especially ones of your affiliation.”

  Merin paused. “You know who I am?”

  The rightmost regent smiled. “Do you know when a Kanaran peasant last earned himself a Shardblade, Merin Kholin?” the plump man asked.

  “Not exactly,” Merin admitted.

  “Well, it didn’t happen during my lifetime, I will say that much,” the fatter regent explained, leaning back in his throne.

  That long? Merin thought with shock. He had realized the event happened rarely, but . . . once in fifty years?

  “His identity is no longer important,” the final regent suddenly snapped in a terse tone. “I say it’s about time we interrogated him. Tell us, boy. What did you do to our Oathgate?”

  “What do you mean?” Merin asked.

  “The Oathgate no loner seems to work, young man,” the middle regent explained. “We’ve been waiting for our Lord King to send men through the Oathgate looking for you, but none came. Finally we had one of our Awakeners try and open the gate from our end. He worked for some time, but nothing happened. He says something is wrong—the opal doesn’t respond to his touch.”

  Merin barely kept himself from glancing back at Shinri. What had the girl done? Why hadn’t she told them? “I don’t know what is wrong with your Oathgate,” Merin said truthfully. “I do find it curious, however, that you were waiting for the Vedens to come for us. You implied that I should have stayed in my prison so that the Veden soldiers wouldn’t see me—yet you were just planning to hand me over to them anyway.”

  The hefty regent chuckled. “We do as our king commands,” he said. “As of yet, he hadn’t commanded—which left us a little confused at what to do with you.”

  “That’s unimportant now,” said the snappish regent. “Every soldier in town must have seen that blue cloak flapping on the boy’s way here. When the officers discover we have a Kholin in the city, and that we’ve been keeping him hidden for several days . . .”

  The central regent raised a tired hand, stilling his companion. “We will do as we must. They cannot take too harsh an action against us—not without orders from the Lord King.”

  Merin should have felt far more intimidated. These were aged lords, the leaders of a nation. A conquered nation, true, but they were still the most powerful men of their race.

  And yet, he found very little anxiety within. Instead, he felt . . . pity. Pity and a bit of anger. Where was the honor in these men? They seemed more tired and crotchety than they did intimidating. There was an uncertainty in their voices, a tone that Merin recognized. Some of the soldiers in his tensquad had born that same tone—the ones who cringed whenever a lord spoke, the men who had been trained or employed by harsh masters.

  “Do not judge us, young Kholin,” the central regent said, studying Merin’s face. He was no aged gaffer, not yet, but he sat with his back bent as if by age. He regarded Merin with eyes that tried to hide the guilt within.

  “Your council comes too late,” Merin said. “I judged you the moment I heard that only you three—out of all the houses of Lakhenran—had chosen to side with your invaders when the conquerors came thirty years before. I judged you to be cowards and traitors. Dare you call my judgement hasty?”

  The central regent actually cringed before the accusation.

  “You don’t know what kind of situation we were in!” spat the man on the left. “All three Veden Houses invaded jointly! We didn’t have the men to resist that kind of attack. Would you have had us die instead?”

  “Instead of this?” Merin asked, nodding toward the three men and their lowly thrones. “Yes, I think I would have rather died, had I been you.”

  “This from a peasant,” the regent said back.

  “A citizen has pride,” Merin said. “He has a tradition. He can be proud of the work he does and the service he performs for a lord he trusts, a lord who cares for his welfare. If his lord betrays this trust, the peasant still has solemn Right of Movement granted him by The Way of Kings. He can protest his lord’s indecency by moving to another village, taking his family’s numbers from that lord’s census and giving them to a more honorable ruler.”

  “A pleasant sentiment,” the portly regent said. “But it is hardly practical to move an entire kingdom, lad. The Way of Kings doesn’t grant protection if the kings themselves ignore it. Your peasant would continue to serve the dishonorable master if swords were presented to threaten his children.”

  “Send for Lord Evenar,” the leftmost regent ordered, pointing toward a soldier. “Tell him we have a gift for him at the Regent’s Dome.”

  The soldier nodded, but glanced at the central regent for confirmation. The haggard man began to nod.

  “Wait!” Merin said. “I came here for a purpose. I wish to ask a favor of you.”

  The leftmost regent snorted. “And that is?”

  Merin continued to look at the center man. “I want you to detain your fleet,” he said. “Don’t send it to Alethkar—delay it, so that King Ahven doesn’t receive the troops in time to do him any good.”

  The room fell silent, then several men chuckled—including the two outer regents.

  “You’d sooner persuade the winds to stop blowing,” the rightmost regent noted. “There are Veden officers on every one of those ships.”

  “How many officers?” Merin asked. �
�A couple per ship? And how many of your own solders walk the decks? Tensets.”

  “What you suggest now wouldn’t be ‘delaying’ our ships,” the leftmost regent laughed. “It would be open war. We can’t kill Veden officers! Ahven’s armies would return to destroy us. Besides, there are five Shardbearers overseeing the loading of those ships. You expect us to fight them too?”

  “You could defeat them,” Merin challenged. “Shardbearers can be killed by common men. Do I need to remind you of how I got my own Blade?”

  “Perhaps,” the portly man said. “But what of the repercussions? What about when Vedenel comes back? Should we sacrifice our own people to protect yours?”

  “You should do something!” Merin said. “Even if King Vedenel does return, he will be weakened. His armies will have fought Alethkar—if he has lost, then his morale will be low. If he has won, then he will have to leave a force in the north to occupy. You could resist! How can you sit here dying before me, then claim to be worried of the death Vedenar will bring upon you? Now is the time when your enemies will be weak! If your leaders are unjust, then the Almighty gives you the right to throw them off. Even peasants know that!”

  The room fell still. The central regent didn’t move, didn’t even seem to breathe, for a long moment. Then he slumped a little further in his throne.

  “I’m sorry, young Kholin,” the regent said. “But our enemies are not weak. The three houses are unified, and I have heard . . . news of our new king. This is not a man to disobey. Besides, your suggestion is impossible. Perhaps it is easy for you to consider the slaying of five Shardbearers, but you are a man who has experienced both privilege and fortune. We have neither. Our men have never seen a Shardblade except in the hands of our oppressors. They have seen their comrades cut down for speaking out of place. To them, the Veden lords are almost as the Heralds themselves. We cannot resist them.”

  The man raised a weary arm, motioning for the messenger to continue on his duty.

  Merin closed his eyes, groaning slightly to himself. He had been wrong. This wasn’t simply an oppressed people; it was an enslaved people. He had hoped that maybe they would be willing to strike back, but it had been a flawed hope from the start. After all, weren’t these the very men who had bowed before Vedenar years before?

  No, they wouldn’t fight. Renarin had said that nobility wasn’t about the Shardblade—and in a way, he was right. But these people couldn’t see anything but the Blade.

  Merin paused. Anything but the Blade . . .

  There wasn’t time to think. “Stop!” Merin said, opening his eyes and turning toward the messenger, hand upraised.

  The man paused just outside the throne room doors.

  Merin turned to the regents. “And what if I defeat them for you?”

  “Them?” the portly regent asked.

  “Your five Veden Shardbearers. If I duel them and win, you won’t have to fear their Blades anymore. Will you take command of your ships then? Delay them, as I have asked?”

  “You’re mad,” said the leftmost Regent. “One man against five? You don’t even have Plate—by the winds, you haven’t even been a Shardbearer for half a year!”

  “Well?” Merin asked, ignoring the man, staring directly at the center regent. The man wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  “Fight,” Merin pled. “You have a chance now. Isn’t that what you told yourself thirty years ago? That you would just appear to serve the Vedens, but wouldn’t give them your heart? You thought you would wait for a better time to fight, a time when they weren’t so strong.”

  The man looked up, and Merin could see that he had guessed correctly. Suddenly the regent’s depressed figure made sense. He was worse than a traitor—he was a man who had lied to himself, but seen through that lie. A coward.

  “They’ll kill you,” the regent warned. “These men are all fine duelists. I have seen them spar.”

  “Better they kill me than I starve in a dungeon somewhere,” Merin said with as much bravado as he could muster. Suddenly his decision was beginning to seem a bit brash.

  The regents said nothing. That’s how they deal with things they don’t want to face. They avoid them, lock them up in a prison above town, refuse to look at them.

  “Fine,” Merin said before his resolve could weaken any further. “I’m going to the docks. I assume that’s where these Shardbearers are?”

  No one contradicted him, so he nodded, turning. He walked up to the man who still held his Blade. “This will be a lot easier if you return that to me,” he said. “Otherwise I’ll have to kill the first one with my knife.”

  The soldier glanced at his regent, but received no support. Finally he turned back to Merin. Then, taking a deep breath, he held up the Blade with a reverent touch. “Good luck, my lord,” he said.

  Merin accepted the sword back, the room’s air curling around his arm in a playful spiral, and strode out the way he had come.

  chapter 67

  Merin 14 and Shinri 13

  Shinri hustled to keep up with the men, silently cursing their lack of courtesy in not summoning her a litter. Of course, most people in the room—regents included—had probably been too surprised by Merin’s declaration to think of such things.

  She could see him up ahead, continuing down the hillside toward the docks. Had he stepped with that same proud bearing before, back in Kholinar? Had he seemed so natural and firm a leader? She hadn’t paid much attention to him at the time—she had been too busy worrying about things of presumed importance.

  Merin’s blue Kholin cloak billowed behind him, his foreign dress distinguishing him from the gathering crowd that trailed behind. The regents scuttled at the head of that crowd. Did Merin realize what he had done? Probably not—from the way he had spoken to the regents, he probably assumed them to be lesser noblemen, not men far above his own station. Perhaps Merin’s firm stride wasn’t related to his self-confidence as much as it was his ignorance.

  Or maybe just his stupidity. Five Shardbearers? What is he thinking? The boy had never even taken part in a dueling competition; how could he presume to fight against men who had been training their entire lives? He would get in no surprise blows this time, would receive no aid from Aredor or another. Merin was in an enemy kingdom.

  Her foot caught a crack in the stone, and she nearly tripped. Shinri flailed for a moment, but fortunately managed to catch her balance. She stood for a moment, cursing the Nanah streetsmoothers. Her delicate seasilk slippers hadn’t been intended for such abuse—one was already tearing and unraveling.

  “We need to hurry, Shinri,” Renarin said quietly from beside her. Only he had slowed his pace to match hers—though she wasn’t certain if that was due to respect or simply a desire to make certain she didn’t flee. She eyed the spindly nobleman. She might be able to escape from him. Merin’s disturbance would probably create enough chaos to keep their captors from searching her out, at least immediately. If she could get to the Oathgates . . .

  Unfortunately, her own curiosity was too strong. She gave Renarin a cool look at his suggestion that she ‘hurry,’ then continued on with as much speed as she could manage. She could find a better time to escape later—after all, Merin would probably be dead. At the very least, he would no longer have a Shardblade. The regents hadn’t been able to communicate with Ahven, which meant they probably didn’t know about her power over the Oathgates, and she . . .

  Shinri paused in her thinking. What was that the regents had said? Their Oathgate no longer worked? They had implied that it wasn’t just due to a locked gate on the other side—they said that the Awakener had felt something different. The opal just . . . didn’t work.

  What did you do? they had accused Merin. But he hadn’t been the one. What had Shinri done? She couldn’t remember much—only peace, and then . . . she had been yanked away by Renarin, pulled through the gate. When she’d closed the gate, her mind had been a blur of anger and longing. And, the truth was, she’d never closed an Oathgate before. Pe
rhaps she had done something wrong.

  She faintly remembered a breaking, a reaction from the gate to her being pulled away. Had that been part of it?

  “I should have looked further,” Renarin mumbled, his eyes growing slightly troubled as he walked. Down below, Merin had nearly reached the docks. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to him, Shinri, but I fear the worst.”

  “And what of me?” she challenged. “Are the things you saw the reason you kidnapped me?”

  He didn’t look down with shame as she had expected. He had changed, somehow, during the last few months. There was a hint of guilt in his eyes, true, but an equal amount of determination. “You, Shinri . . . you affected everything I saw. I didn’t bring you because of any specific foretelling, but because of all of them. In the times to come, the one who has your aid will have a great advantage. You are more valuable than any Shardblade—more valuable, perhaps, than an entire army.”

  “There are only ten Oathgates, Renarin,” Shinri said flatly. “Being able to open them is an advantage, true, but not as great a one as you imply. Once the various kings understand that the gates are no longer secure, the advantage of controlling me will decrease measurably.”

  Renarin shook his head. “There’s more, Shinri. There has to be. Something beyond just the Oathgates.”

  Shinri frowned. His tone implied that whatever it was ‘beyond’ her power over the Oathgates, he wanted to control it. “I expected better of you, Renarin,” she said icily.

  He blushed, showing a hint of the old Renarin, then hurried her forward. They reached the docks a few moments later.

  Merin couldn’t let himself stop. The weight of what he intended to do pushed him forward, the momentum of the crowd rolling behind him like a physical force. The winds above were straight and steady, like a tenset overlapping rivers in the sky.

  “They’re on that ship, my lord,” one of the soldiers said, nodding him toward a particularly ornate vessel.