Eventually, he had realized what it was. She was starting to believe. Despite all of her logic, all of her words against the Almighty and His worship, Jasnah Kholin was coming to believe in this madman Herald. And so, Dalenar had come to see for himself—had come to watch the man who could inspire belief in a woman such as Jasnah.
And he was impressed.
Taln wasn’t just a Shardbearer. Though he fought without Plate, he took no wounds. Though he had the bulk of a long-time warrior, he moved with the grace of a dancer. And he was brutally efficient. None of the men he struck arose, few even moved. No weapon could come close to him without being sheared in two, and no man could stand against him without being brushed aside.
He was almost too good. It was like . . . like he didn’t even need the army at his back, like he could take the entire Veden force on his own.
Dalenar shivered, turning his horse to seek out his destination. He knew what it was like to be good at killing, and wondered what burdens this false Herald carried.
Perhaps they were what had driven him mad.
“Bah!” General Tenata said. “I’m not sending another Shardbearer to the eastern flank. That man has killed five already! Let him slaughter spearmen all day, if he wishes. Our Blades will do more good elsewhere.”
Jek studied the map. The Veden forces had tried pushing against the east first, but the man who called himself a Herald formed too strong an opposition. It wasn’t just him—where he fought, other soldiers seemed to do better as well. Together with them, the Herald formed an impenetrable flank that had rebuffed every offensive.
The west, however, was another story—it was here that Ahven had been focusing his subtle, yet telling, suggestions. Slowly, Jek was beginning to wonder if the Idiot King’s philosophy was not justified—one man, Ahven Vedenel, was having a very profound effect on this particular battle.
“General,” Ahven said, drawing Tenata’s attention. “Might I make another suggestion?”
“Your majesty,” Tenata said, “the last seven suggestions you’ve made have brought down entire sections of the Aleth line. Whatever it is, you need not ask our permission to give the order.”
Jek saw Ahven’s subtle smile. These men would reject a usurper, especially one with little obvious battle experience. But, like most soldiers, they responded quickly to results.
“The Aleth forces have just shored up this far western section with a group of heavy infantry,” Ahven explained. “That squad is led by one Taven Reintar, a high-ranked lord—but one without a Shardblade. Taven is a stalwart man, not prone to quick judgement. However, he tried the entire Pralir campaign to earn himself a Blade and failed. Most of the few mistakes of command he made were performed because he was so desperate to get himself one of the weapons.”
“Your command?” Tenata asked.
“Send a Shardbearer who doesn’t have Plate to attack the spearmen a short distance from Taven. Taven won’t be able to resist sending his squad to attack, and you can have your forces ready to surround and destroy him.”
“It will be done,” Tenata said, moving off to give the orders. Most of the other generals had gone to the battlefield somewhere, working as Shardbearers to seek duels, fill in weak sections, or do extra damage to the enemy.
Ahven placed his hands on the map, as if trying to see his personal enemy through its numbers and movements. “She’s there,” he whispered. “She fights me, but she doesn’t realize it. I know her, and she doesn’t know me. That is her weakness. And . . . there is more. But what?”
He became fixated on the map, standing over it even as scribes approached and replaced it with another, marked with new troop placements and formations. Ahven stared at it after they had gone, his mind distant.
Then he looked up, an almost demonic smile forming on his lips. “‘The Song of a Hundred Lovers.’ ‘The Blessing of Minalah.’ ‘Windborn Fate.’ Do you recognize these songs, assassin?”
“No,” Jek said. “Should I?”
Ahven’s smile deepened. “They are the same songs that were favored by the man Tethren Rienar.”
Jek frowned.
“Romantic ballads, assassin,” Ahven explained, eyes alight, voice going soft. “Lady Jasnah Kholin is in love.”
“Of course she is,” Jek said. “Your spies say she was recently married.”
Ahven shook his head. “The man Meridas, her supposed husband, is over here—in a section of the battlefield receiving almost no attention. These are songs of unfulfilled love, assassin.” He looked down at the map, speaking quietly. “Yes, the over-defense of the fourth eastern line makes sense now. Everything makes sense now. I know you, Jasnah Kholin. I understand you. ”
He looked up, staring into Jek’s eyes. “She has bothered me for too long, assassin. She escaped my trap, she ran from my soldiers, but she cannot hide from you. It is time for you to earn your title.
“It is time to destroy Jasnah Kholin.”
The fires eventually descended upon him. The men around Taln burst alight, bodies flaring until he fought figures made only of flame.
Cloaks, he thought. Focus on the cloaks. He forced himself to maintain this one detail of reality—flames in blue were allies. Flames in white were enemies.
After that, he dueled with the flames. He stood in magma, ignoring its searing touch. Each figure he struck sprayed fire into the air, tiny molten droplets flashing red. The mountains beyond were pyres to the dead, and the sky above was a dome of burning rage.
The screams hounded him, but he kept fighting. He couldn’t tell which yells came from the flames inside and which came from the deaths of his enemies. He stopped caring, and only fought. He knew that hundreds had died beneath his sword already, and hundreds more would come.
He struck across the inferno, protecting the blue, killing the white. Here a blue stumbled, and he moved, their protection. Here a white stumbled, and he moved, their death.
He barely felt the prick in his side.
It was a small thing, really. A blue moved away, a man Taln had been defending, and his addled mind had to struggle to make the connection.
One of his own men had struck him.
He tried to keep fighting, but his side gave into the fires. He reached down with a bemused hand, and then lifted it up. His palm and fingers flared red, blazing, matching the sky and sun overhead.
He grew weak. Heralds were strong, and they were powerful, but their bodies were not immortal—only their souls. They died every Return, eventually.
All was alight. And from within the depths of the flame came the dark, screaming thing—the thing that always stalked him. He knew it now, finally. It was a piece of him, the section of his mind that was completely mad, the piece of his soul that he had banished months before.
Taln stumbled to his knees as the churning, insane thing approached him. It held memories that Taln did not want to face, memories of an eternity in agony, memories of a man broken.
He wanted to push it away, but he was getting weak . . . so weak. He wanted to scream at it, but he could no longer speak. He fell backward, smashing to the hard stones beneath, and the dark thing loomed over him.
He had no voice for yells, only a whisper. “Jasnah,” he mumbled as the dark madness took him.
And the flame that was Taln fled into the void.
The false Herald collapsed, dead. Jek pulled up the side of his stolen Aleth cloak, obscuring his face as best he could as he screamed, “The Herald!”
Men stopped fighting on both sides to regard the dead man.
“The Herald is dead!” Jek screamed in a terrified voice. “We are doomed!”
Around him squads shattered. A group of men ran forward to the Herald’s side, as if to protect him—but they were, of course, too late. They were too focused on the corpse, and the Veden aggressors cut them down.
A surge of revitalized strength pumped through the Veden line. The beast that had tormented them had fallen, and suddenly they remembered that they really were
on the dominant side of this particular battle. An equal surge of sudden despair washed across the Aleth ranks as the horrible truth struck them. Their god was dead. He would protect them no more. And if he could be killed, then what hope did they have?
As Jek fled the battle, Ahven’s voice whispered to him from the past.
The more perfectly a leader maintains the appearance that he is infallible, the more his soldiers will be able to ignore their own guilt, and the better they will fight. But, if he falls . . .
Behind Jek, the Aleth line crumbled.
Jasnah saw the ranks falter through her window, but she didn’t know the horrible truth, not until the beleaguered messenger arrived.
She nodded at his words, but stopped listening halfway through. He was obviously speaking lies, she decided as she sat back onto her stool, eyes unfocusing. Men shouldn’t lie to battle commanders. It created all kinds of confusion.
It was a few moments before Jasnah realized the man was trying to get her attention. She said yes to whatever he was asking, though she couldn’t understand his words. They were garbled. Ridiculous.
Lies.
The Shardbearer finally yielded. Dalenar stepped back, puffing and dismissing his Blade as a squad of soldiers rushed forward to take the enemy Shardbearer captive, stripping him of Plate and Blade. Former Aleth Shardbearers who had lost their Blades waited back at the city, hoping to be equipped with captured weapons so that they could rush onto the battlefield and bolster their side.
Dalenar grimaced, holding his arm. His opponent’s Blade had bit deeply there, scarring the metal and pushing a strip of it into Dalenar’s shoulder. He could feel blood seeping into his gauntlet, and cursed the foolish mistake that had given him the wound. He would have to return to the city to be bandaged.
As he turned and pulled himself, with some effort, onto horseback, he noticed a messenger dashing his direction. Dalenar moved back away from the line, riding slowly to meet the man.
“My lord!” the messenger said, puffing. “You are needed at the command center! The eastern line is crumbling!”
“What?” Dalenar demanded. “What is Jasnah doing?”
“She cannot help us, my lord. Something’s . . . happened to her.”
“What?” Dalenar asked. “Is she hurt?”
“No, my lord,” the messenger said. “The Herald fell. When she heard the news, she was stunned. None of us can get through to her.”
Dalenar cursed, kicking his horse into motion. He arrived at the city a few minutes later and clinked up to the command center, moving with a Plate-wearer’s speed.
He found Jasnah sitting quietly, a sub-general furiously giving commands and trying to organize the eastern flank. The man sighed thankfully as Dalenar entered.
Dalenar stepped up to the window, and saw the horrible truth. The entire eastern flank had fallen, and a spurt of white was pouring through the gap, dividing the Aleth forces into two. It was like the final note of a tragic ballad. Perhaps if it had been plugged sooner . . .
Do not fool yourself, Dalenar, he told himself. Face the truth. The enemy has a fourth as many troops as you, better equipment, and stronger men. This battle was doomed from the beginning. It’s remarkable we held out as long as we did.
Dalenar turned to Jasnah. He knelt down, shaking her slightly by the shoulders. “Jasnah?”
She blinked a few times, then focused on him. “Uncle?” she said, as if in a daze.
“Jasnah, our lines are breaking. We need you!”
She became a little more lucid, glancing around. “Is it true?” she asked. “Is he dead?”
“Apparently,” Dalenar said.
And then a chilling event happened—something Dalenar had never thought to see, had he lived to be a thousand.
A tear rolled down Jasnah’s cheek. “I loved him, Uncle,” she whispered.
Kevahin, Dalenar thought, dumbstruck. Even as a child, Jasnah had been so somber, never screaming like other girls. She had always been collected and controlled, even from her youth. In a way, he had almost stopped thinking of her as human. Jasnah was something else, something not affected by foolish emotions.
But she was human. All too human. “Oh, child,” he said, pulling her close.
“My Lord Dalenar!” an alarmed voice called. Dalenar stood—Jasnah’s pain would have to wait. Alethkar was falling.
He turned, several aides—finally realizing his wound—rushing forward to remove his pauldron and pull out some bandages. A messenger stumbled up the stairs. Not the man who had fetched him on the field, but a different one—a man who, as Dalenar recalled, had been stationed on the lait ridge.
“My lord,” the messenger said, his face hinting that his news was not good.
“Speak,” Dalenar said, sighing.
“The scouts have just spotted ships in the distance,” the man said. “It’s the Lakhenran fleet, my lord. At least thirty vessels. Troop ships.”
Dalenar closed his eyes, grunting as the aides pulled his bandage tight. “So it was a game all along,” he said. “They knew we didn’t have a chance. They pushed us to the coast, then brought in their fleets.”
Thirty or more vessels. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, more men.
In a strikingly unnerving thought, Dalenar realized something. I am the last king of Alethkar.
Jek entered the Veden command camp to a scene of general jovialness. Two of the generals who had been afield had returned, and they stood around the map table, smiling and congratulating one another.
At their head stood King Ahven. They recognized him for what he was now. When the generals saw Jek, they appraised him with new eyes—no longer was he simply Ahven’s strange attendant. Now they understood him to be a warrior. They probably thought he had fought and killed the false Herald in a fair duel.
“You’ve been keeping him from us all this time, your majesty,” one of the generals chided.
“A secret weapon is of no use when it is widely know, Lord Jenazen. Jeksonsonvallano is a tool to be used . . . strategically.” Ahven smiled, full of himself. There was more to his joy than a simple victory. From now on, in future battles, the generals wouldn’t just listen to ‘suggestions.’ They would give him command, for he had earned it.
And there would be further battles. Jek glanced at the man Balenmar, who stood quietly at the edge of the command center, watching the proceedings but never interacting. He had spoken truth. Ahven would continue on, would become a conqueror after this day. Ahven didn’t want Alethkar; he wanted all of Roshar.
“My lord,” an aide said calmly, approaching and bowing. “The Lakhenran fleet has made contact. They intend to land on the beach to our south, then bring their troops up to be dispensed as you command.”
“Hardly necessary now,” General Tenata said, chuckling. “We’ve almost got the Aleth forces broken into a third section. Only five hours into the battle, and the end is already in sight.”
“Come now, generals,” Ahven said. “Did you ever think they would give us any real trouble? After what they’ve been through, it’s surprising they didn’t just surrender after the first hour.”
Jek glanced to the side, and in the distance he could make out several tensets of dark spots approaching on the waters.
The realization was painful, but Jek had to make it. Ahven had executed this day perfectly. From the manipulation of his own generals, to the defeat of Jasnah Kholin, to the destruction of Alethkar and timely arrival of reinforcements, the Idiot King’s genius was manifest.
He was the most horrible man Jek had ever served, but he was also the most competent. Alethkar had never really stood a chance.
Across the waters, coming in from beneath a western wind, Merin Kholin gripped the ship’s gunwale and squinted at the approaching shoreline.
“It’s not looking good, Lord Merin,” said Tamar, former Head Regent and now King of Lakhenran. “The Aleth forces are divided and dying. One side is mashed against the city wall, the other force is much small
er, and can’t escape because of the river at their back.”
Merin nodded, still watching the shore. Wind patterns shifted in the air, as if a dozen different translucent sheets shimmered between himself and the land.
“Does Lord Dalenar’s glyph still fly?” he asked.
“Well, yes,” Tamar said. “His banner is the highest above the city wall, marking him as the ranking nobleman at this battle.”
“That is all I need to know,” Merin said calmly.
“My lord,” Tamar said hesitantly. “We can’t land on the shore as you ordered. That’s just not the way it is done. The tide and winds are wrong. We’ll have to stay out in the bay and ferry our men in with the smaller vessels. It will take a great deal of time, and when we are finished, I fear that—”
“Tell your men to be ready,” Merin said.
Tamar sighed, but waved over a messenger to deliver the order. Behind him stood Kalden and several other men, all watching Merin expectantly. There was far too much faith in their eyes.
Merin looked away from them. So much was confusing lately. Renarin wasn’t dead, but neither was he really alive. Shinri had gone, and he hadn’t even really grown to know her. Kalden could have been a friend, but he was too . . . worshipful.
They expected so much from him. And what did he have? A few of Renarin’s confusing explanations? A promise that he was a Windrunner?
He did know one thing for certain. Back at the dueling competition, when the need was great, he had called the winds. They had proven themselves his ally. Perhaps they would come again.
He stood up and held aloft a jade pitcher scavenged from one of the quarters of a former Veden captain. He closed his eyes.
In the distance, the far, far distance, he could feel it. A highstorm, still hours away from Roshar. It raged over the Stone Desert, blowing steadily in his direction.
He didn’t call to it, but he memorized it, felt it, knew it. And then, he called upon the jade and commanded.
The Way of Kings Prime Page 95
