The Way of Kings Prime

by Brandon Sanderson

  “Well, he organized us and taught us. We learned to fight pretty well, I’d say. He married my sister. He was a smart one, Taven was. Said he’d learned to read with the mercenaries, from a woman who’d once been a noblewoman in Alethkar. He didn’t care that it was a woman’s art—to him, it was just another skill to learn. He had books too, my lady. I don’t know where he got them, but they were old. He found them fighting somewhere in Riemak, I suppose. Maybe the Holy City itself, do you think?”

  “I really don’t know,” Jasnah said. “Continue.”

  “Well, he knew all kinds of strange things,” the peasant said. “Was always telling them to people, though they didn’t make any sense to us. Pretty random, those things he said and things he knew. But he did train us good—and he fought like nothing else, my lady. He was so good at it. Bandits soon learned to stay away from Callenhas, I’ll tell you that! Ten years he led our town, and we were beginning to think pretty good of ourselves. But then . . .”

  “Well?” Jasnah asked.

  “Well, the local despot—a real nasty man, named Kess. He decided he was tired of Callenhas ignoring his threats. He got together a lot of men—more than were even in our village—and he attacked. In the end, we just couldn’t stop them. Riemak’s a hard place, my lady. Seems like for every man who has a mind to work for his food, there are two men waiting to take it from him. They got through eventually, though Taven—he killed a number.

  “In the end, Kess left Taven alive. Killed my sister and Taven’s son, though. Killed them in an awful, brutal way, and made Taven watch. After that . . . well, Taven wasn’t the same, like I said. We learned to do what Kess said, but Taven—he just left. Walked away in a daze, and none of us had a mind to stop him—not with Kess’s men watching us.

  “And, well, that’s about it. That was five years ago. I thought Taven dead for sure, until that day your army passed and I went out to see the Herald for myself. I don’t know what he did during those five years, but I really don’t think he recognized me. Taven wasn’t ever very good at pretending.”

  Jasnah nodded, closing her eyes. Oh, my deal, poor Taln. Is that what you saw those times when your madness almost took you, the times where your eyes fuzzed, and you got that look of terror in your eyes? Was it her, being tortured? No wonder you wanted to forget.

  Jasnah opened her eyes. “Thank you, citizen . . .”

  “Praesh,” the man said.

  “You will be compensated, Citizen Praesh,” Jasnah promised. “But I do want you to keep quiet about these things. The army wanted a Herald, and your brother-in-law became one for them. I don’t want to taint their memory of him.”

  “Of course, my lady,” the man said. “But, if it pleases you . . .”

  “What?” Jasnah asked.

  “I didn’t come here for gems, my lady,” the man said, hands still twitching slightly. “I came for his body. You see, well, I want to make certain he’s properly taken care of.”

  “I will see to that,” Jasnah promised.

  “But—”

  “That is all, Citizen Praesh,” Jasnah said firmly.

  The man jumped slightly, then bowed and backed from the room.

  Jasnah turned to regard Taln’s slumbering corpse again. I don’t blame you for the lies, she finally decided, resting a hand on his shoulder. For, to you, I don’t think they really were lies. In fact, I think Brother Lhan was right. We could use a few more liars like you.

  Merin stepped quietly into the room. The battle was over, his armor removed, yet his arm still felt numb from his calling of the winds.

  Lord Dalenar still sat inside, cradling Renarin’s near-lifeless body. Because of the battle’s chaotic aftermath, the reunion—such that it was—had only happened a few minutes before. Dalenar had been warned, but that hadn’t made much of a difference.

  The great Tyrantbane, the king of Alethkar, was crying.

  Merin stood, embarrassed, in the doorway of the stone chamber, one of many in the Teth-Kanar palace. This is my fault. I didn’t cause Renarin’s injury, but I am responsible. That’s what Renarin himself taught me. It isn’t about choosing right, it’s about accepting the consequences for what you have done.

  “You saved my kingdom,” Dalenar whispered, not looking up from his son’s comatose face. “But you took my last son from me. I don’t know if I can reward you enough, and I don’t know if I can ever forgive you.”

  There was only one response—Merin had steeled himself for it weeks before. He walked into the room, stepping firmly, and stuck his Shardblade into the ground at Dalenar’s feet.

  “You gave a command, many months ago,” Merin said. “You said that any who disobeyed would be stripped of Blade and rank. I accept your judgement.” He reached out and, clenching his teeth, knocked his opal free of the Blade.

  He would almost sooner have knocked the heart from his chest.

  He picked the black stone up off the ground, and put it in his cloak pocket. Dalenar’s cloak. That he did not intend to return.

  Merin turned, knowing there was no more to be said, and walked toward the doorway.

  “I do not demand this of you, Merin,” Dalenar said from behind.

  “No,” Merin said, turning. Dalenar had finally looked up at him. “But I believe honor does. Besides, I don’t think I was ever really that good at being a nobleman—or a soldier, for that matter. Not in my heart, at least.”

  “What will you do?” Dalenar asked.

  Merin paused. “Go back to my village,” he said. “Or perhaps find a different one—a place where I can become a farmer again. I think I need a break.”

  “I shall see that you have a horse,” Dalenar said, “and a constant supply of feed to keep it. Go with the thanks of Alethkar.”

  Merin nodded, and turned to leave. He couldn’t help noticing, however, that Dalenar didn’t seem to feel much sorrow at Merin’s abdication.

  To him, I will always be the one who persuaded his son to leave, then brought the boy back as a mindless invalid. Honor wouldn’t let him shun me for it, but it would let him hate me.

  It was better for both of them this way.

  On a sullen, misty morning, Shinri’s ship finally reached the Thalen docks.

  She stepped from the vessel, thankful for the firmness beneath her feet. Though she had come to enjoy the ocean, there was a rightness to the solid ground. It felt good to step upon it again.

  She paused, looking northward for a moment, pulling her cloak tight and staring across the open waters. She couldn’t see much through the fog. Eventually, she turned and called out to the dockmaster, asking him to send for a city guardsman. She had learned her lesson last time—she would not make King Amelin search for her this time.

  He came immediately. In fact, she was surprised at how quickly the king made it to the docks. She had expected him to send a litter for her, but not to come in person. Yet after just a short period of waiting, she saw him emerge from the mist beside her ship, trailing his Awakener and stormkeeper councilors behind him.

  As soon as he saw her, he smiled, but his eyes grew troubled. “Shinri, it is you.”

  Shinri smiled. “King Amelin. I seem to recall you offering me sanctuary in Thalenah some time before. Is the proposal still in effect?”

  “Oh Shinri, child . . .” Amelin said. “Wife of King Ahven Vedenel. Elsecaller with power over the Oathgates themselves.”

  “Are those things problems?” Shinri asked hesitantly.

  “No,” King Amelin said sorrowfully. “But they are terrible, terrible advantages. The kind of advantages a king prays to receive, but then fears the Almighty might actually listen to him.” He sighed. “But, come, child. We will see you situated.”

  Shinri paused. Something seemed wrong. She pulled her cloak tighter. “And if . . . I change my mind?” she said, glancing back at her ship.

  “Then I will be forced to insist,” Amelin said, waving for several soldiers to appear out of the mist and move toward her ship.


  Shinri backed away, growing cold. “Not you,” she whispered. “Not you too.”

  “I am not a monster, child,” Amelin promised. “You came here for refuge, and I will give it to you—and anything else you desire. But, when the time comes, I may need your . . . assistance.”

  Another prison, Shinri realized. Each one prettier than the last, but each one just as restrictive. She lowered her head as two more soldiers appeared from the mist and moved to her sides.

  Nowhere was safe, she realized. No one could be trusted. How many times would she need to learn this lesson?

  She raised her head, steeling herself as Jasnah had always taught. She had escaped from Ahven and then from Merin. She would simply have to do the same again.

  “My lady?” said a familiar, yet surprising voice.

  Jasnah looked up from her funeral preparations, and was stunned by what she saw. “Balenmar?”

  The old man smiled, shaking his head in amazement as he walked into the tent. “Lady Jasnah,” he said warmly. “I never thought to see you alive again. How did you survive the attack on the palace?”

  “I was led out by a friend,” Jasnah said, “through a passage in the cellars. What of you? I had given you up for dead!”

  Balenmar’s grandfatherly smile deepened. “I was visiting relatives in an outlying city at the time—pure chance, though I thank the Almighty for it. I guess these old bones have some years in them yet.”

  “But how did you come to be here?” Jasnah asked.

  “The Veden forces took me captive when they passed through my town,” Balenmar said. “Someone must have betrayed me. I know not why the Veden king didn’t execute me—he seemed to enjoy interrogating me, though I tried to explain that I was just an irrelevant, tired old man.”

  “Amazing,” Jasnah said, shaking her head.

  “Indeed. But you must return to your preparations,” the old man paused, glancing at Taln’s body. “There will be time for chatting at another time.”

  Jeksonsonvallano, Truthless of Shinavar, stumbled, his hands and feet bound, as the soldiers tugged him through the city. His body was weak and battered. The Windrunner’s power had thrown him with a nonchalant twist of air. If Jek had doubted the Onyxseers, he could no longer delude himself. The old powers had indeed returned to the men of the east.

  But such things were no longer his problem. Execution undoubtedly awaited him—by now, the Aleth commanders would be discovering just who he was, and how closely he had served Ahven. When they discovered who had slain their Herald . . .

  Perhaps they already knew. The guards were being unreasonably rough with him. Yes, he could see it in their eyes. They hated him. Well, after his sins, he looked forward to a good, clean execution. He had waited a long time to die.

  Your master still lives. The warning of honor came from within as Jek stumbled against yet another stone, falling against the rocks. Holy, blessed stone.

  How he wished he hadn’t seen Ahven being held captive. How he wished he could convince himself that the Idiot King was dead.

  Your master still lives. Jek had to serve still, though he hated and loathed himself for it. He had to serve.

  The soldiers were getting impatient. One tugged on the rope again. Jek lay a few streets inside the city gates, near a stone house crusted with cromstone.

  “Please,” Jek said, intentionally increasing his accent. “Do not let me rot in a cell. There is no Truth. Give me a knife. Let me kill myself here, honorably.”

  One of the guards snorted, but the idea seemed to appeal to the second man.

  “I give my oath,” Jek said, his stomach twisting. “I will use the blade only on myself. In Shinavar, this request would never be rejected by men of honor.”

  The uncertain guard looked to his companion. Finally, the man shrugged. They were in an inconspicuous location. “I suppose,” he said slowly.

  The other man pulled out his belt knife and tossed it at Jek’s feet. Jek picked up the weapon in bound hands, crouching pathetically before the two soldiers, both obviously confident that they could control one wounded, helpless man.

  “It’s all right,” the second soldier said. “In my entire life, I’ve never met a Shin who would lie.”

  Jek closed his eyes, unsheathing the blade. You just did, he thought.

  The funeral ceremony took place as evening finally fell. Thousands came for the event—despite the work to be done, despite wounds and losses, despite fatigue, they came to see. They came to witness.

  Taln lay on a pyre of wood, unarmored, but holding a sword—not his Blade, of course, but a fine nobleman’s weapon nonetheless. The crowd was oddly silent as they regarded their fallen god.

  Jasnah stepped from the tent. She was to speak first. Brother Lhan would come second, followed, finally, by Dalenar. The king stood to the side with a group of upper nobility. His face still showed a haunted grief—for a short time, he had thought he still had a son. It almost would have been better had Renarin never returned.

  Jasnah regarded the crowd, the nobility, and the dead man before her. She glanced to the side. Meridas stood by Dalenar. The man would retain his title as Parshen, as per Jasnah’s request. Dalenar needed the merchant’s connections and wealth, for a time at least, to ensure that Alethkar survived the next few years. It would be a difficult time—so many men dead, so many resources expended.

  Meridas. She hated him, she realized. Not just because of his slimy personality and situational nobility. No, she hated what he represented about herself—that she would choose a man like him over Taln, simply because she somehow rationalized the match as being better for Alethkar.

  She looked at Taln again. Then she raised a hand and held out a small, black gemstone. Obsidian. Dalenar frowned, and the crowd murmured.

  They fell silent immediately after the gemstone began to glow.

  Jasnah took a deep, fulfilling breath. The pure, clear harmony of her Soul Tone hummed in her ears, and she stroked the gemstone with its vibrations. The obsidian’s dark light increased, and it rose above her hand, shining and spinning in the night.

  It was brilliant, like a star floating above her palm. She could hear its music—the beautiful, unearthly note that she had feared for so long. It whispered to her, embraced her like a child who had wandered astray but finally returned.

  With a flick of her mind, she sent the gem spinning toward Taln’s corpse. The life gone from him, the Charan no longer had effect. The gemstone shattered, transferring its Tone to the flesh, and Jasnah held it steady—forcing the corpse’s Tone to change and match that of the gemstone.

  Taln’s body puffed instantly to smoke. Outcries began, yells of fear and of surprise, but Jasnah ignored them. She stared upward, toward the white smoke that floated away from the pyre. Away with it went her political career, her title and station, her place in the court. Away with it went everything that she had been, everything she had let define who she was.

  For those were the things that had kept her from him.

  “When Heralds die,” she whispered, though by that time no one could hear her over the yells of outrage, “their bodies turn to smoke.”

  It had been truth to him. She would let it be truth for her as well.

  The peasant stood at the outskirts of the crowd, a little surprised by Jasnah’s display, but hardly shocked. Few things shocked him any more.

  Though his features were those of the man who had gone to see Jasnah a short time before, begging to take the Herald’s body, his posture was different. His hands still shook, that was no artifice, but he stood more straight-backed, his mannerisms somewhat more confident.

  “That was close,” the peasant’s companion said. He was a square-faced, hard-eyed man with a flat cut of firm hair.

  “Not really,” the peasant said. “Even if she hadn’t Awakened him, they would have burned the body. If I’d realized she was going to have the funeral so soon, I wouldn’t have bothered trying to talk her into giving me the corpse.”

&nbs
p; “Still too close,” the companion said decisively. “If she’d waited just one more day to hold the funeral . . . Anyway, it’s over now. He’s gone for good this time.”

  The peasant nodded, eyes trailing the last bits of smoke evaporating above. Around the pyre, men were yelling in outrage—one in particular demanding an end to his marriage, based on the fact that his wife had hidden her nature as an Awakener from him.

  The peasant ignored such screams. He focused only on the smoke. No more immortality. Though they didn’t age, they could no longer be reborn. The cycle was over. Death was final, now.

  His companion was ready to leave—impatient to be moving, as always. The peasant, however, was more thoughtful. “Why did he come back, Nale?” he asked. “It’s all supposed to be over.”

  “I don’t know,” Nale snapped. “What did I ever care about these things? Perhaps he found an Elsecaller or something—there are several ways he could have gotten here.”

  The peasant nodded. But then he asked the harder question. “Do you think . . . they’re coming too?”

  Nale snorted. “Don’t be foolish, Prael. After this long? It’s all over, just like Jezrien promised. Come on, we’ve got a long walk ahead of us.”

  Prael nodded obligingly, and he began to trail after his companion as he slipped away from the crowd. Prael paused, however, when he caught sight of someone standing at the front of the group, with the noblemen—a man who had been hidden from Prael’s sight earlier by the large pyre.

  He reached out with a shaking hand, catching Nale on the shoulder.

  “What?” Nale asked with annoyance.

  “Nale!” Prael whispered, pointing back toward the crowd. “Look!”

  Nale paused, then suddenly grew tense. “Well, I’ll . . .” The man trailed off. It wasn’t often that one saw Nale stunned silent.

  “He’s supposed to be dead!” Prael said. “Dead for good. No coming back this time!”