Colors, many of heroism, yield envy and fear. Time passes over passing time. Fear and envy yield, Hero of Many Colors.
Sarus has been running Bridge Four longer than anyone. He has trouble remembering the world before the Plains, and doesn't bother to imagine one after. But when a new bridgeman comes and offers the crew a chance at hope and freedom, Sarus can't help but take it.
Look to the sky, Curumo. All the old prophecies are being fulfilled. The Doors of Night are open, and Odium comes.
Colors, many of heroism, yield envy and fear. Time passes over passing time. Fear and envy yield, Hero of Many Colors.
As with Ring-Maker, I've decided I want to have a chunky introduction post. But I haven't spent the time I need to figure out what I want in that post. I'm sure it'll fill up over time, like Ring-Maker's did, so I thought it best to reserve it.
To anyone coming into this story fresh, welcome! This story is set within a shared multiverse with Ring-Maker and The Seventh Coming, but reading those stories is neither required nor strongly recommended. This story is intended to work as a standalone.
As a crossover—and part of a wider series—I recognize that some readers may not be familiar with the Stormlight Archive. I do highly recommend it, but if you'd rather dive right into this story, here is a brief primer on what you should know coming into the first few chapters. For those craving a slightly deeper look at the background lore, and one without spoilers for canon, see this video.
Thanks to Elran for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.
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Prologue
To Die
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As World was Sundered to worlds, now God shall be Shattered to gods. History may not repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes.
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Rayse watched through the eyes of his voidspren agent, Ulim, as the singers took the Shin man's Oathstone. He watched as they gave the man his orders. The Connection he shared with his Splinter was not enough—yet—to let them communicate directly. For now, he could only spectate.
Ulim did not stay to watch the assassin carry out his orders. He returned to the singer Venli's gemheart, continuing his slow manipulation. It was almost impressive, watching even this tiniest Splinter of Odium's power spreading the tendrils of its influence throughout her psyche.
Rayse kept his attention on the voidspren's experiences long enough to see Venli and her sister escape Kholinar, then withdrew.
Back to Braize. Back to the cold. Back to the aching, throbbing pain in his skull.
He shivered, hands rubbing at his arms to try to bring some warmth back. He had first noticed his illness before the Heralds had abandoned the Oathpact, but it was a very, very slow thing. He'd assumed he would have plenty of time to investigate it, to fix whatever was wrong with the Odium Shard, once he had returned to Roshar and broken the seal holding him here.
Then the Heralds had abandoned Talenel—the only one of them who had never broken. The Oathpact had bound them for over two thousand years. It had only been at the very last Desolation, the one the humans called Aharietiam, that he had finally broken Jezrien. Rayse had assumed it wouldn't be much harder to break Talenel.
The notion seemed laughable now. Four and a half millennia, and Talenel had never broken. Forget breaking the man—Odium needed to kill him, permanently. If such an incredible man ever Ascended, got himself a Shard…
Rayse. Rayse squeezed his eyes shut, coughing weakly into the cold night. He was Rayse. He might go by the name Odium, but the Odium Shard was his, not the other way around. He breathed into his hands, trying to warm them. It didn't help.
He knew what would. He turned and walked down the barren hill on weak, shaky legs, then descended the stairs into the subterranean depths of Braize.
The stairs carried on for over two hundred feet, cutting a straight line down into the depths of the ice-world. They ended in an aluminum door, thick and padded with insulation, with a wheel in the center to break the vacuum seal. Even as sick as he was, Rayse was still able to turn the wheel and pull the door open.
Heat blasted him in the face. The fire raged, far below. Chains dangled from the ceiling of the cavern, ending in hooks which could be lowered into the flames to heat them. There were still, even four thousand years later, ten great stones to which a person could be chained at the base of the vast chamber.
Only one was filled now.
Rayse stepped off the high balcony and gently floated down to the bottom of the cavern. The fire was warm around him—too warm. Sweat broke out on his skin. But it was better than feeling the fever ravage him in the cold outside.
Talenel's head rose slowly, his hooded eyes staring at Rayse. He was in one of his brief recovery periods right now, short stretches when the Fused and Voidspren allowed his body to heal before resuming the torment. It did them no good to kill him, although even if they did he would simply return here again. Odium, however, had ordered them—Rayse had ordered them not to kill the Heralds if they could avoid it. He suspected that the resurrective process by which the Shadows were functionally immortal might heal some of the mental damage they were suffering. It was a guess borne out by evidence, as those few times a Herald had accidentally been killed under the tender mercies of his servants, that Herald had never been the one to break next.
The Herald of War blinked stupidly at him, eyes glazed and hazy. At this point, the Fused continued his torture out of mere spite. None of them seriously expected him to break at this point, not after resisting for so, so long—but there was something cathartic, both for Odium—Rayse—and his singer servants, in watching the man's body break again and again.
It was one of the two reasons Talenel was still alive. Rayse had had a raysium dagger ready for most of the time they'd been trapped here, affixed with a gemstone of sufficient purity to trap a Cognitive Shadow. But Talenel had refused to break.
Something he hadn't expected to be a problem when he was first trapped on this Adonalsium-forsaken world: Braize was incredibly mineral-poor, with the sole exception of aluminum, which was abundant in its crust. Gemstones were almost impossible to find, large ones even more so. Odium's servants had been scouring it for gemstones of sufficient size and purity for the past two millennia, ever since it had occurred to him that another Herald might manage to die and end up here before he managed to break Talenel. They had come up with nothing. And so, Odium had only one weapon capable of taking out a Herald permanently—a weapon which he would have to save for whichever Herald finally did break, letting them out of here.
…Rayse's servants. Rayse's weapon. Drakefire, he was getting worse.
It was possible, of course, that killing a Herald would alert the rest of the fractured Oathpact. But this chamber in Braize's heart was lined with aluminum, and hopefully that would be enough to dampen the reverberations of the snapping Connection. He knew the concept worked in principle, but it was also limited—a strong enough Connection could shunt through the Spiritual Realm without being deflected by barriers in the Physical. However, with the Oathpact in the terribly frayed state it was, he suspected it would be enough. It wouldn't be completely secure, of course—the Connection would still be broken, and if any of the Heralds, Ishar in particular, tried to trace it up, they'd find the snapped end. But with any luck they wouldn't be alerted, which might just buy Odium all the time he needed.
"Odium…?" Talenel's voice was weak.
"Rayse," Rayse corrected automatically. Wait, no. The Heralds knew him as Odium. He shook his head. "Yes. Hello, Taln."
"Odium…" Talenel's voice slurred fuzzily, the vowels lengthened almost comically. "Mmmudio. No. Muido. Odiumuido."
He often babbled like this. Odium wasn't sure whether his mind would ever recover from the strain. And yet, even as every other thread in his brain frayed and snapped, this man had never crossed that one little line that would let Odium win his final victory.
Rayse. Rayse Rayse Rayse Rayse.
"Fusedesuf," mumbled Talenel. "Symmetryrs—Symmetryte--Symmetryrtemmys. Yes." The condemned man smiled stupidly to himself.
"Are you trying to Vorinize the word symmetry?" Rayse asked.
"Vorinirov," Talenel replied.
Odium stepped towards him, looking up at his body stretched like hide on a tanner's rack. The deep wounds in his flesh were almost healed now. Soon, the torture would begin again. Fruitless torture. Pointless. Habitual.
"How do you do it?" Odium—Rayse!—asked.
"Mm?" Talenel made a questioning grunt.
"Do you have any idea how long you've been suffering here?" Rayse asked. "Your friends abandoned you. And yet you've held out for so long, all alone. How? What do you have that none of them did?"
Talenel blinked. For a moment, Rayse imagined that a spark of lucidity returned. When he opened his mouth, Odium almost expected some great, hidden wisdom to emerge—a secret to the Herald's long, terrible victory. But all he said was, "Abandonodnaba."
Rayse bared his teeth. "Babbling idiot," he spat.
"Idiotoidi."
Rayse turned away in disgust.
"Wallaw."
Rayse stopped. Wall? He hadn't said that. He turned back to see Talenel looking thoughtful. His mouth worked, as though he was working through words in his head. It took him almost a full minute before he spoke again.
"Walled a city make, rams break that wall." Talenel said. "For walls that break rams, make the city a wall."
Odium blinked. "Did you just… compose a perfect ketek in fifty-four seconds?"
Talenel blinked at him, then slumped back down, apparently done speaking for the moment.
Rayse only realized just how long he had been staring at the man when a Fused, in the ethereal, red shape they took here when they lacked bodies, approached him. "Lord?" it asked in a vaguely feminine voice. "Have we your permission to resume?"
Odium blinked at it, then looked back at Talenel. "What do you think, Taln?" he asked. "Should they start again?"
Talenel did not respond in any way. He might as well not have heard. Odium shrugged, then gave the Fused a nod. "Carry on," he said, then turned and stalked away, careful not to give away any sign of the weakness he felt in his limbs.
A brief application of Gravitation raised him back up to the balcony, and he stepped back out into the cold. As he climbed the stairs, he thought on what Talenel had said. Make the city a wall? What did that mean? Did it mean anything, or was it simply the ravings of a shattered mind?
Odium stepped out into the frigid night, shivering. He looked up at the dark sky. It was day, technically, but Braize's atmosphere was so thin, and the sun so distant, that the stars never quite went out.
He could pick out the glittering planet that was Roshar in the distance. He stared at it, feeling intimately aware of every one of the millions of miles between him and it.
Suddenly, he remembered the last time he'd been on Roshar in the flesh. During the so-called first Desolation, while he and Tanavast were still in the process of poaching humanity and the singers from one another.
They'd fought. Tanavast was skilled and powerful, but he was Odium, greatest and most terrible of Shards. Tanavast had nominally survived the encounter, but even as he and Ishar were burying Odium in his Investiture, Connecting him immutably to Braize, they had both known that the cost of the feat would, eventually, be his life.
So had Koravellium. She had been there, too, had watched Tanavast, her husband, with tears in her eyes, knowing there was nothing she could do to save him. She turned them on Rayse, and though there was hate in the inhuman, slitted gaze, there was pity there, too.
"I take comfort," she had said, "in knowing that what happens to you will be worse than what you have done to Tanavast."
"We'll see," Odium had snarled.
She shook her head, holding his gaze. "Tanavast may die," she said, "and Honor may splinter, but you? You will suffer identity-death, the real death, the end of self. You think you control Odium, but how long until he reasserts himself? How long can you hold out, Rayse, against the mind and soul of the greatest of the gods?"
Rayse had been banished to Braize before he could ask her what the hell she was talking about. He suspected, now, that she was talking about this.
How did you know? he wondered, staring up at distant Roshar, where she still lived alone. What did you know about the shards that I didn't? What didn't you tell us, that day on Yolen?
Koravellium was the only dragon among the original sixteen Shatterers. She was, in fact, one of only three dragons Odium had ever heard of. The oldest, Gostir, had died before the Shattering. The youngest, Frost, was still alive on Yolen as far as Odium knew, even all these millennia later. All three were, so far as Odium could discern, the oldest beings in the cosmere, save Adonalsium itself. Perhaps they were even older than it was, if that was what Koravellium had meant by something particularly cryptic she'd once said.
Rayse shook his head. Suddenly he realized just how far he had slipped. How long had he been calling himself Odium in his head without even noticing?
Identity-death, the real death, the end of self.
"Adonalsium," Rayse whispered. "I don't want to die."
The cosmere did not answer, for Adonalsium was dead.
Rayse let out a shuddering breath as his eyes slid closed.
It would not be Rayse who opened them again.
"Lord!" a Fused approached suddenly, blurring into being beside him in its haste. "A Herald is here—Chanarach is here! She is being brought to the chamber now!"
A slow, languid smile spread across Odium's face. He opened his eyes and looked at the Fused. "Good," he said. "Excellent. Give her our customary welcome."
"Yes, Lord!" and the Fused was gone.
Odium took a deep breath of the frigid Braize air. His smile widened. "Well, well, well," he murmured, thinking of a green dragoness who had, it seemed, been awaiting this day for many millennia. Whether with dread or anticipation, he was not yet sure. "It is good to be back. Farewell, Rayse. Your sacrifice is appreciated."
I want to quickly go over a couple of things now that I have a free minute away from work for the morning. This story is structurally based on the Stormlight Archive in the same way that Ring-Maker was based on Worm. Just as Ring-Maker used arcs with subchapters interspersed with interludes, so Of Many Colors will have five parts with three or four interludes between them. Each chapter will have an icon associated with its primary narrator, and an epigraph derived from an in-universe document. Each part will open with a single page where I tell you who the narrators for that part will be. The prologue, as you have seen, is set on the night of King Gavilar's assassination, just like all of the prologues for the first five Stormlight novels. The five part titles are derived from a symmetrical ketek. Etc., etc.
As with the canonical Stormlight books, there are flashbacks interspersed variously throughout the current-event chapters. As with Rhythm of War, while there is one character who has the primary focus in these flashbacks, there are two who may have them in their perspective. The focus character for these flashbacks in Sarus, AKA Curumo, AKA Saruman. The secondary narrator... well, you'll see.
As with the Stormlight books, there is one character whose perspective will appear in at least one chapter in each set of interludes. In Of Many Colors, that character is Melkor.
The five parts of this story are titled thus:
Part 1: The Color of Heroism
Part 2: Yield to Envy
Part 3: Time Over Time
Part 4: Fear Yields
Part 5: Hero of Many Colors
There is one more thing that you should all be aware of up front, and it's something I'm a little nervous about.
While I was writing Ring-Maker, among the many, many criticisms I received was one that I was cleaving too close, at least up to about Arc 6, to canon. "Stations of canon" is the common phrasing. In the case if Ring-Maker, I do not think this criticism held much water. Things diverged in various ways from canon almost immediately—while, yes, certain events outside the main characters' direct control did still happen, the way those events shook out was markedly different.
Of Many Colors is a little different.
The first two whole parts of this story, according to my current outlines, are going to be surprisingly close to canon in terms of what happens when. Part 1 especially. I still intend to keep things fresh by focusing on different characters and making the story primarily about how the things I am changing are affecting the characters involved, but you should not expect things to go off the rails within the first five chapters the way they did in Ring-Maker. There is a reason for this. It is a feature, not a bug. But it is a feature that will take on the order of fifty chapters to fully materialize. I apologize for that, and I wanted to make sure you all went into it with open eyes. After part 2, of course, things will go nuts; and they will go nuts in ways that make the events of the previous two parts pay off in interesting ways. But it will require patience. A lot of patience.
My rule of thumb for canon divergence is that there are two things that can cause canon to diverge. The first is random chance. If an event is a result of the roll of the cosmic dice, I see it as well within my rights to have those dice turn up a different result. This type of divergence starts to happen immediately, but there is very little in the Cosmere that is truly random, especially on the worlds of actively-intervening Shards like Odium and Cultivation.
The other type of divergence is when a character who is changed in one way or another makes choices that were not made in canon. This type of divergence does not start to occur immediately. Again, feature. Not bug.
I thought it necessary to say all this up front because I know I generally hate stations of canon when the story follows rails for no clear reason. In this case, there is a reason. But I struggled a lot with myself before committing to these current plans.
I will post some of this information in the introduction.
Thanks to Elran for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.
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1
Despair
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Something is very, very wrong. Have I gotten your attention yet? No jokes. You know I wouldn't write a letter at all if things weren't dire.
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Sarus was roused by the sound of horns. He stumbled to his feet, ignoring the fearspren bubbling up around the other bridgemen. Not one of the violet marbles were clustered around him. There were only exhaustionspren stirring where he stood. Perhaps this time he would manage to die.
A new figure jogged up to Bridge Four as Sarus took his usual position at the front of the blasted thing. His hair was Alethi black, like Sarus' had been before the strain of bridge runs had started to gray it prematurely. Notably, alongside the ordinary slave brand on the stranger's brow—something many bridgemen, Sarus included, shared—he bore a shash glyph, signifying danger. Some idle process in the back of Sarus' head wondered if this poor bastard had attempted one too many slave rebellions to be sent down here to die. The rest of him didn't really care.
Gaz followed the new bridgeman to the yard, looking the crews up and down. He stopped at Bridge Four, brow furrowing, then looked at Sarus. "What happened to your bridgeleader?"
Sarus just gave Gaz a slow blink.
"Dead," said one of his teammates. "Tossed himself down the Honor Chasm last night."
Realization spread across Gaz's face as he stared at Sarus. He swore. "You were told to keep that storming mouth of yours shut. Months of silence, and now you finally say something?"
Sarus just stared at Gaz's fuzzy outline before him. His tongue felt thick and heavy behind his teeth.
Gaz cursed again. "Storming dullard. I'll run near you lot, listen for my commands. We'll find you a new bridgeleader once we see who survives." He pointed at the newly condemned man. "You, lordling. At the back. Rest of you, get moving!"
The new man gave Sarus a searching look, but then shrugged and made his way to the back of the line. Sarus noticed he didn't have shoes—his feet would be brutalized by the end of the run.
It wouldn't matter if they didn't beat the Parshendi to the plateau. Gaz had put the newcomer at the back of the line. That meant he would be at the very front for the final approach. Bruised and wounded feet would not bother a corpse, and no one survived the front row.
No one, that is, except for Sarus.
Sarus shook his head muzzily and stooped at the knees, grabbing the handles immediately front and center and heaving the bridge upwards. Men filed into two of the other places in the front row, fearspren boiling around them as they readied themselves to die.
The bridge soon started to move, and Sarus moved with it. The uneven rock of the Shattered Plains passed beneath his feet as he jogged along, Bridge Four on his shoulders. He heard the army start up behind the bridges, but it was just noise to him. He kept his eyes on the ground in front of him, stepping over rockbuds and shalebark.
The bridge's weight rubbed through the thin padding of Sarus' leather vest and ground into the calluses on his shoulders. At this point, he'd been torn open so many times there that he wasn't sure he had any blood left in that part of his body. Small mercies.
As the number of permanent bridges across the chasms had grown, so too had the length of the first part of each bridge run—the ceaseless, mind-numbing jog from the warcamp to the first chasm they'd bridge. It was over an hour, this time, before Gaz finally called a halt.
With practiced efficiency, Sarus dropped the bridge, alongside all the other dead men in his crew, then shoved it across the gap.
The other bridgemen fell to the ground, crumpling like puppets with cut strings. Sarus did not. He slowly went through a few stretches, then sat leaning against the bridge itself, watching the army pass him by. As he did, for just a moment, he thought he saw a small figure, like a four-inch-high woman covered in oil, standing on the red-brown stone beside the bridge, watching him. When he looked again, she was gone.
It wasn't the first time he had hallucinated her. It probably wouldn't be the last. Sometimes he wondered what part of his bruised and battered psyche she represented. The temptation, perhaps, to cast himself into the pit and end this cyclic purgatory?
But he hadn't seriously considered throwing himself into a chasm in months. At this point, he figured it was even odds whether he'd eventually manage to die, or if he'd survive to the end of the entire storming war. If that happened, well, he wasn't sure what he'd do. But it would be a far sight better than this.
Suddenly, the new bridgeman, with the shash brand, picked himself up and started rubbing at his muscles. His feet already resembled ground meat, and Sarus knew it would get far worse before it got better. Gaz gave the bridgeman a bewildered look, but by now the man was used to Sarus doing much the same on long runs. He'd learned from long experience that there was nothing more painful than cramping on the way back to the camp. This new bridgeman must have known the same thing.
The newcomer looked up and met his gaze. His eyes were a particularly dark brown, and with his brow furrowed his gaze bore an intensity that reminded Sarus of faraway days spent training in a well-kept courtyard under a clear, sunny sky. Sarus looked away, back towards the men marching across the gap.
The column of the army was ending. Sarus turned and looked at the column of armored lighteyes. At their center, as always, was Highprince Torol Sadeas. He pointedly ignored Sarus' eyes on him as his horse trotted past, hooves thudding resonantly on the wood of Bridge Four.
As the last lighteyes' horse stepped onto the bridge, Gaz shouted for the bridgemen to stand. The new arrival heaved a visible sigh of relief as he stood, but then his face fell at a brief word from the man beside him.
Sarus followed Gaz across the bridge, the rest of the crew beside him. They tugged the bridge across behind after them, picked it back up, and started on again.
Sarus had always found this part even more tedious than the long run across the permanent bridges. Repeatedly picking up the bridge, carrying it across a plateau that was sometimes less than a mile across, then tossing it over the chasm and waiting for the army to pass. Watch Sadeas ignore him again, then cross the bridge and do it all again. Over and over and over.
After the first few chasms, the new bridgeman started staring at Sarus during their brief respites, as if drawing the strength to continue to care for his body from his apparent stoicism. After a few more, it stopped being enough, and the new man started flopping down alongside all the others.
Sarus didn't join them, though the exhaustionspren around him were puffing up with as much vigor as ever. His body was tired, sure, but the real fatigue was mental, and wasn't born of this one bridge run.
It was born of all the ones before.
Eventually, the dreaded command came. "Switch!"
Sarus stared as the other men around him rotated positions. Men from the front went to the back, men in the back came up to the front. Gaz steered the new bridgeman up beside him. "Newcomers get to go first here, Lordship," he sneered.
The new man's brow furrowed, looking Sarus up and down. "He's been here the whole time though," he said to Gaz, gesturing in Sarus' direction.
"Never you mind this idiot," Gaz said. "You just pick up that bridge and get moving."
They started the last march. Four of the slots in the front row were filled by men now. Sarus could see the boiling fearspren and anticipationspren reappearing now—they always faded away during the middle part of the run, while men were too tired to think of the approaching danger, but they returned during this last stage. Up ahead, the last chasm approached, and on the other side…
"Agonies of Taln," whispered the man on the new bridgeman's other side, the left-front corner of the bridge. "They're already lined up. Storms, we're dead!"
The front row of Parshendi knelt, pulling back the strings of their shortbows. The row behind did the same over their shoulders.
Kill me, Sarus begged silently. For Yaezir's sake, kill me this time.
Behind him, men were screaming as they ran towards the line of nocked arrows. Beside him, the new bridgeman's eyes were wide with horror. It was some luck, Sarus thought, to die on his very first run with the bridges. Whether it was good or bad luck, he wasn't sure.
The Parshendi loosed their arrows.
The first wave killed the two men on the outside of the front row, leaving Sarus and the new bridgeman alone. The next line of projectiles missed them both, too, though Sarus heard the familiar sound of another bridge falling on its surviving crew, too few to keep it lifted.
Now, the new bridgeman was screaming. Sarus remained silent.
A third volley. Another bridge fell. Sarus didn't; nor did his new comrade. He felt an odd kinship with this man, this fellow impossibility, who seemed to suffer the same strange fate as Sarus himself—to live where other men always died.
Before the Parshendi could ready another volley, Bridge Four reached the chasm. Sarus hoisted himself out from under the bridge, but before the crew could push it across the chasm, a fourth wave of arrows came, and more men died. Still, Sarus and his new friend survived.
They shoved the bridge across the chasm, barely managing it with so many dead. As the far side of the bridge hit the other end of the chasm, the new bridgeman fell over. Sarus blinked at him, but there was no arrow in him. Mere exhaustion had felled him, and as Sarus watched, his eyes flickered shut as he yielded to unconsciousness.
Sarus shrugged, ignoring the ongoing hail of arrows as he watched the army march towards the bridges. The darkeyed front ranks broke as they crossed the bridge, turning into a tangled mass of sprinting, shouting berserkers. Alethi arrows were joining the Parshendi ones now, sailing over the chasms to hit the Parshendi rearguard.
Sarus looked across the chasm and met the eyes of a Parshendi archer even as she stowed her bow and pulled out her spear. He thought he'd seen that particular pattern of red and white marbling before. She was staring at him, and though he wasn't any sort of expert in Parshendi body language, he thought her eyes seemed sad, even pitying.
Then she turned to fight an Alethi spearman as he crossed the bridge. Sarus watched as she died, her body tumbling into the chasm.
He looked away. As his eyes passed over his new friend, he saw a single windspren, hovering around the man's slack face, looking down at him. Was that concern in its girlish face? Impossible. He must be imagining it.
Suddenly, as though sensing his eyes on it, the spren looked up, meeting his gaze. Concern gave way to surprise. It blinked at him, then giggled and transformed into a ribbon of blue-white light, orbiting once around the new bridgeman before darting upward and out of Sarus' sight.
Sarus turned his gaze back towards the army still crossing the bridge. The lighteyes were starting to cross, now—and at their head was Torol Sadeas, passing mere feet from where Sarus reclined against his bridge.
He knew the man was aware of him. It wasn't coincidence that the Highprince crossed Bridge Four every single time both he and Sarus were present on bridge runs. But as always, he gave no outward sign that he even saw Sarus there among the dust and bodies. He passed so close that Sarus could have reached up and touched the greaves of his crimson Shardplate, stroked the fur of the horse he rode. Unlike its master, the horse at least acknowledged his existence, if only to jerk its head haughtily as it passed by.
And then they were gone, wading into the battle on the other side of the chasm. Sarus sighed. Ignoring the other lighteyed officers, he slumped back against the bridge and allowed his eyes to drift shut.
He was roused when the horns sounded to call the retreat. His eyes fluttered open. Around him, the bridgemen were groaning as they stirred. Glancing over, he saw that the new bridgeman wasn't moving at all. Had he survived the run, survived the front row, only to succumb to the strain?
No. He was still breathing. Sarus could see the steady rise and fall of his chest. It was with muted surprise that he noted his own sense of relief. This poor, dead man had survived alongside him.
Wincing, he forced himself to his feet. The other bridgemen were doing the same. "Pick up that bridge, you louts!" Gaz shouted from a dozen or so feet away. "Anyone who can't stand gets left behind!"
Sarus' brow furrowed. Could the new bridgeman stand? He looked over. The windspren was back, once again in the form of a girl with blue skin and clothes. It was flitting about the new bridgeman's face.
If he hadn't been looking, he wouldn't have noticed the unmistakable sound of a girl's voice, synchronized with the movement of the spren's lips. The windspren was talking. "Kaladin!" it—she—was saying. "Get up, or they'll leave you behind! You'll die!"
The new bridgeman—Kaladin?—made an indistinct sound. The windspren struck his cheek. It didn't seem to do much, but the fact that it did anything at all was bizarre.
"Dullard!" Gaz bellowed. While Sarus had been looking at the spectacle, the man had approached him from behind. "Get to your spot!"
Sarus turned, blinking at him. Gaz glared. He didn't spare a glance for Kaladin—assuming that was his name—and his strange spren.
Part of Sarus wanted to turn and help the other bridgeman to his feet. The rest of him remembered what had happened, over and over, back when he allowed himself to care about other bridgemen. Without a word, he walked back to the front of Bridge Four. Alongside the rest of the survivors, he hoisted it onto his shoulders.
For a moment, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the ink-black woman again, seated on the handle beside him. But when he turned, all he saw was Kaladin stumbling into position there, dark eyes dull with exhaustion.
Sarus tried not to feel too relieved. So someone else had, for the first time, survived the front row with him. It hardly meant he would survive it again. And when he inevitably did die, Sarus would be alone again.
Despair was hardly comforting, but at least it didn't hurt. Not like hope did.
Thanks to Elran for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.
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2
Journey
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I hope my tone can get it through to you just how dire they are.
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Renarin sat with his knees up, feet perched on the edge of his seat. He hadn't clapped his hands over his ears, but it was a near thing.
Beside his right temple, an orange sphere no larger than the eye of a needle hovered, vibrating angrily. Renarin had tried to describe these spren to his family, but no one else could see them. It was only when Adolin had mentioned them within earshot of Jasnah that he had finally gotten confirmation of their existence.
Stimulationspren, she had called them, and elaborated, they're only visible to those suffering from a specific sort of overtaxed mind. I suppose your fits must count, cousin.
The highstorm outside rattled the walls of the building, but that wasn't what bothered him. No, what bothered him—what made him want to curl up into a ball and try to forget that there was a world outside his own body—was his father.
Dalinar Kholin was shaking like a leaf that a tree had failed to pull back in advance of the wind. Sounds emerged from him, sounds that might have been language, but garbled and transfigured into gibbering babble. He shifted in his chair, hard enough that its legs scraped against the flagstones. Renarin knew if he looked back, he would see his father's eyes rolling.
"Is this my fault?" he whispered, quietly enough to be inaudible over the mingled storm outside and stormsick man within. As he spoke, a single red flower petal bloomed out of the air beside him, drifting down towards the ground—a shamespren.
"How could it be your fault?" The voice emerged from a pocket in his coat, near his heart. It was a whisper, too, but even if it had spoken at volume, Renarin knew he would be the only one who could hear it.
"I burned a glyphward once," said Renarin, trying not to move. Merely shifting his weight too much set his clothes scraping against his skin in a way that burned like fire when he was in a mood like this. It wasn't quite one of his fits, but it was close. "I wished someone could understand what it was like to have fits like mine."
"And you think the Almighty answered your prayers?" asked the voice. "I don't think so, Renarin. I don't think the Almighty answers any prayers anymore, and if he did, I don't think he'd use them as an excuse to be cruel."
Renarin didn't answer for a few minutes. He just sat there, listening to his father's groans. Then, when the sound became unbearable, he spoke again. "Glys," he said. "If I was able to find the words you want me to say—could I heal him?"
Glys was silent for a moment in Renarin's coat. "It's possible," he said eventually. "It depends on what's wrong with your father. If it's a physical ailment, like your seizures, probably. If it's a spiritual one, though… probably not."
"And there's no way to tell, I assume," Renarin said.
"Not without someone else with access to the Surge of Progression," said Glys. "Sorry."
Renarin had met Glys only a few months before. The strange red spren—a mistspren, supposedly, though no mist had been about when he had first appeared—had started out cautiously, staying nearby without directly engaging with Renarin. The few glimpses he had caught had been more than a little unsettling.
But apparently Glys, like Renarin, preferred directness. So, once he had satisfied himself that Renarin fit whatever criteria he was looking for, he had introduced himself one late night in Renarin's bedroom. Renarin had been lying awake, cold sweat plastering his hair to his brow after another minor seizure, when the spren had suddenly bloomed out of the air above him like a ruby flower.
The introduction had been enlightening.
Renarin didn't really understand what it meant that Glys wanted him to become a Truthwatcher. He didn't find it too hard to believe that the Knights Radiant hadn't been the treasonous monsters the ardentia liked to paint them as. It wasn't as though he didn't understand the impulse to give up on one's people, and one Day of Recreance didn't completely overshadow at least ten, and probably far more, Desolations of tireless defense.
But as much as he wanted to learn more about the history of the Knights Radiant, about the mysteries of the orders to which he was a potential inheritor, he was also a man in Alethkar. That made historical scholarship… difficult. The only person he both felt he could trust with his inquiries and who could read was Jasnah, and she was half a world away on a research trip.
Which left him in this uncomfortable position. Glys wanted him to swear some sort of oath—an ideal which would formalize the Nahel bond between them and allow them to begin Renarin's training in the Surges. But Glys apparently could not tell him the words of that oath. He had been sworn to it, apparently, a very long time ago.
"Do the exact words matter?" Renarin asked suddenly, as the thought occurred to him.
"No," Glys said. "There were even Radiants, in the old days, who couldn't speak at all. All you have to do is intend a correct meaning. The exact words are beside the point."
Well. Did that make things easier? Renarin still needed to identify a specific idea without any way to—wait. "A correct meaning?" Renarin asked. "Not the correct meaning?"
"That's right," said Glys. "I wasn't there for them—most of the spren who had ever been bonded to Radiants died on the Day of Recreance—but I remember hearing about debates over the exact meaning of some of the Ideals. Especially the First Ideal."
"Then I only have to—to intend to embody an ideal that the ancient Radiants embodied?" Renarin asked.
He hadn't noticed his voice was growing louder in his excitement until, from across the room, Adolin called, "Did you say something, Renarin?"
Renarin froze momentarily, feeling the blood rush to his face. It's just Adolin, he told himself. You don't need to be embarrassed. The stakes are low. It's just Adolin. Just tell him—"No," he responded. "Nothing."
He thought he heard Adolin reply, but it was drowned out by a sudden shout from their father, seated between them in the center of the room.
Renarin took a shuddering breath and buried his chin between his knees. I hate this.
There were footsteps approaching. He looked up in time to see Adolin coming to stand beside him. He didn't look directly at Renarin, instead turning his eyes on the wall in front of him. "Do you have any idea what it means?" he asked.
Renarin blinked at him. "What what means?"
Adolin jerked his chin at the wall—no, at the tapestry which covered the wall. Renarin, despite staring at it for the past hour, hadn't even noticed its existence. This wasn't the room to which their father usually retired during a highstorm—they'd been caught somewhat unawares when it blew in, and they'd had to rush Dalinar into the nearest private room before he collapsed. It was decorated with artwork that was entirely unfamiliar to Renarin.
The tapestry seemed to depict a man standing beneath a solitary tree on a barren hill. He looked down at a battlefield. In his hand was an elegant shardblade, with a hilt clearly meant for two-handed use and a blade that terminated in a semicircle rather than a point. Woven artistically into the leaves of the tree above the man's head was the glyph for the word Journey.
"Journey, someone called it," said Adolin, cocking his head as he studied the tapestry, speaking slightly louder to be heard clearly over their father's mumbling. "I'd expect artwork titled Journey to feature something moving, wouldn't you? He's just standing still."
Renarin looked up at the woven mat, admiring the way the red of the hill gave way to the orange of the sunset sky. "Maybe this is the end of his journey, or the beginning," he said. "Or maybe it's not a physical journey at all. Maybe it's a metaphor for the journey he took to get there. The life he led—a life we have no idea about."
"Hm," said Adolin. Then he shrugged. "Seems unnecessarily convoluted to me."
Adolin and Renarin were both very straightforward people. Yet, somehow, they were both straightforward in completely different ways. Adolin was perfectly comfortable among the intrigues and mysteries of public life, easily dancing within the invisible lines of propriety, whereas Renarin was paralyzed with fear at the very thought of dealing with more than two people at a time, most days. But ask Adolin to follow the thread of a logical argument or a narrative, and he would just bemoan that his time would be better spent training, whereas Renarin derived infinite pleasure from teasing apart the intricate little knots that logic and metaphor could tie into existence.
The satisfaction was not in the complexity, but in knowing that the ideas that emerged from that complexity could not be expressed in any simpler way.
And, quite suddenly, like dawn emerging from behind the Weeping clouds, Renarin got it.
"You don't have to stay, you know," Adolin said quietly. "I can keep watch today. The storm has to be nearly past by now, anyway."
Any other day, Renarin would have protested that he was fine. That he could stay. That he wasn't any more bothered by their father's state than Adolin was. All of these things were true, but now he had something else on his mind. "Okay," he said. "Thanks. I can take a shift next time."
"Sure," said Adolin, though Renarin knew his brother would never trust him to watch over their invalid father alone. And he wasn't wrong—if an assassin did come after Dalinar Kholin, his younger son would be almost completely useless in trying to stop them.
For now, at least.
Renarin stood up, painted a quick smile onto his face for his brother's benefit, and then hurried out of the room. He bustled past the one honor guard they had posted outside the door—only one so as to avoid drawing too much attention, just in case—and sped down the hall.
"What's the rush?" Glys asked from his pocket.
Renarin didn't answer. His mind was racing. A concentrationspren rippled along beside him, hovering a few inches away from the stone wall, keeping pace with his hurried stride. Journey, he thought. Not a physical journey, but a spiritual one. The life we lead to take us where we are going. Not the destination itself, but the journey. Not the end of life, but the life before the end.
He reached his room, and after a moment of fumbling with the latch, managed to close himself inside it. He tugged the dimming cloth off of the sphere lamp on the wall beside the door, then fiddled with the glass. A small door in the glass case opened, and he pulled out the sphere.
For a moment he held it there between his fingers, staring at the pale blue Stormlight as it swam within the heart of the gemstone. Then he licked his lips, opened his mouth, and tried.
"Life before death," he said, and the moment he started speaking, the words fell upon one another like a rockslide. He knew immediately he was right. It wasn't him saying these words, it was these words being spoken by him. He was just the conduit, the catalyst. "Strength before weakness."
It was scary, honestly. Renarin's only defense against the dangers of the world was that he was in control of himself. It was why his fits were so terrifying. His body left his control, and his mind was left unmoored and untethered. This was similar, but where the seizures were cold and alien, this was as warm and familiar as his mother's arms around him. These words might not be coming from him, but as he spoke them, they became his.
"Journey," he said, "before destination."
And as he breathed in, he watched the Stormlight stream from the sphere into him. He felt it filling him up with power, with energy, like he was breathing in a good night's sleep.
These words, said a woman's voice, at once softly sultry and twistingly dissonant, are accepted.
Silence fell. Renarin stared at the dun sphere as the room grew dim, lit only by the grey light streaming in from his one narrow window. A spren bloomed over his head like a ring of dark blue smoke, rotating slowly around him like an orbiting crown. It was an awespren—something he had never seen before, had only heard described a handful of times.
"You did it," whispered Glys. "You found the words."
With shaking hands, Renarin replaced the sphere in its housing. "I found the words," he said.
Glys emerged from his pocket. As he looked at the crystalline spren, Renarin thought he could feel the difference—feel the shadow of the Nahel bond that now connected them. He couldn't read Glys' thoughts any more than he could read anyone else's, but he did feel a little less afraid that he would misunderstand what Glys was trying to tell him, or miss some subtext that others said should have been obvious.
"Welcome," said Glys, "to the Order of Truthwatchers, Renarin Kholin." He suddenly spun, the droplets of sparkling red which constantly dripped upwards away from him scattering like from a damp towel being wrung out. "I'm so excited!"
Renarin found himself smiling. It was an unusual sensation—he didn't often find expressions etching themselves onto his face. They normally had to be put there. Then it turned into a frown. "Glys? You seem… blurry."
"Blurry…? Oh!" Glys laughed. "Take off your glasses, Renarin!"
Renarin did, fully expecting the blurring around the edges of the mistspren to grow worse. Instead, he stared transfixed at the crystal-clear lines, completely visible without a pane of glass between his eyes and what he saw. "My eyes are—healed?"
"Lesson one of Stormlight healing!" said Glys. "Stormlight heals you by bringing your physical body into alignment with your spiritual conception of yourself. This is true both when you use Stormlight to heal yourself and when you use the Surge of Progression to heal someone else. That means that old injuries are much harder to heal than newer ones, because older injuries—especially ones that have forced a person to completely change how they interact with the world, like a severed limb—have had long enough to really embed themselves into a person's idea of themselves."
"But I've worn spectacles my whole life," said Renarin.
"Yes," said Glys, "but you've never really thought of yourself as someone who wears spectacles, have you?"
"I—" Renarin stopped. He didn't, did he? The spectacles were just one more marker of how he was different from those around him, how he failed to fit in with the rest of Alethkar. They themselves didn't matter—it was the difference they marked that was a part of him. "I suppose not."
"You should probably keep wearing them in public," Glys advised. "Maybe we can find someone who will replace the lenses with flat glass, so they don't make things look blurry to you. But it might make people wonder if they find out you've suddenly healed your eyesight."
Renarin grimaced. "That makes sense," he admitted. "I suppose the ardents have been preaching about how evil the Radiants were for a long time. If people found out I am one, it would probably just make things worse."
"It's… not just that." Glys' voice was suddenly hesitant. "I—I didn't expect you to just—I meant to talk about this before you swore to the First Ideal. I didn't mean—I never intended you to make the oath without fully knowing what you were getting into."
Renaring blinked at him. "Talk about what before I swore the First Ideal?"
There was a pause. "The two Surges of the Truthwatchers," said Glys slowly, "are Progression and Illumination. Progression will work the same way for you as for any other Truthwatcher, but Illumination… will be a little different."
"Why?"
"Because I'm… not a normal mistspren. It's hard to explain, and some of it is based on secrets that aren't mine to give out. But… well, you know how it's forbidden to seek knowledge of the future under Vorinism?"
(Will be updated with each chapter, to collect the whole epigraph in one place for ease of reading.)
Part One: The Color of Heroism
Something is very, very wrong. Have I gotten your attention yet? No jokes. You know I wouldn't write a letter at all if things weren't dire. I hope my tone can get it through to you just how dire they are. I realize you're still angry. I understand. I'd say I was sorry, but you know I abhor lying to friends. Your policy of nonintervention must come to an end. You may find issue with my tone of certainty. I ask that you read on to see why I take it.
I write to you now from Roshar, as you may know depending on how this letter found its way to you. However, quite recently I was on Ashyn, and there I saw things that, if I may be frank, I found utterly terrifying. Something has taken up residence there. Something terrible. Something I do not—perhaps cannot—understand. The surviving humans on Ashyn have started using its power, much as humans on shardworlds use Investiture. However, this power does not derive from a Shard. It does not appear to be Investiture at all. You may say this is impossible. Until I saw it for myself, I would have said the same. The word Investiture is, by design, a catch-all term. Yet what I saw on Ashyn breaks all the rules. The people of Ashyn are doomed, by the way. More so than they were already. These new powers have them killing one another in droves. Ashyn's lingering civilization will not survive the next few decades.
The thing giving them their power does not show itself directly. Even the most private of Shards, such as Endowment, are at least willing to allow themselves to be discovered. Whereas this creature seems to have countermeasures in place to actively prevent it from being noticed or observed by the humans it empowers. I only managed to see it because it allowed itself to be seen. I also appear to have had all but the vaguest impressions of that meeting wiped from my memory. The most disturbing facet of this is that I believe I wiped the recollection away myself in order to preserve my sanity. I suspect that, had I not done so, this letter would be mere gibberish. Or, more likely, I would be dead.
I can report only impressions of what I saw. I remember being awed and terrified by the sheer scale of the thing. I can only remember experiencing that feeling once before. You know where. Whatever it was, it was ravenous. I remember that: its intense hunger. Other than that, I can recall only a comparison I made at the time. It reminded me of an immense, terrible spider. Whatever this thing is, it is a threat to the whole cosmere. I see no indication that it intends to remain confined to Ashyn. It is a terror that will make Rayse and Ati look like children playing with masks. In the worst case, it may even work with Rayse to the ruin of us all. I am deathly afraid. I feel no shame in saying so. Had you seen this thing, you would be too. Please. I understand your reasons for neutrality, though I disagree with them, but they do not apply here. This is not Adonalsium's various aspects vying for dominance. This is something from outside Adonalsium's power entirely, and it will not stop until we are all dead.
Help me, old friend. I beg you. Part Two: Yield to Envy
I record these words because, should we fail tomorrow, there will be none left to remember them.
Gostir is dead. Even if he were not, his memory of that time would be markedly different from Koravellium's or my own. He remained loyal. Koravellium did not. I was born too late to have any loyalty in the first place, and Xisis is too young even to remember. If Koravellium and I fail tomorrow, we will surely be consumed by the fain and die. If that happens, not a soul will remain in the cosmere who remembers the world that came before. Unless, of course, one counts Adonalsium itself. And Adonalsium should not be counted. There is a consciousness behind it, but that consciousness does not reside within the hollow shell buried in the Well of Crystal. That consciousness remembers, as it remembers all things, but Adonalsium itself is no more conscious than my flame is once it leaves my lips. That leaves only Koravellium and myself. The last two dragons to remember what that means. A race once so terrible that our wingbeats heralded the endings of civilizations. The greatest experiment and success of the king of power.
I was born in the year 3128 of the Second Age of Arda. I was born under the name Krimfas. In those days, the dragons of the Withered Heath—where I was born—primarily communicated and gave their hatchlings names in the Black Speech as codified by Sauron, first lieutenant of our fell god. My own name translates, roughly, to 'the cold that binds.' More specifically, it refers to the bitter cold that makes flesh stick painfully to steel after a winter night. I have long since forgotten most of the Black Speech. It fell into disuse among the dragons during the early Third Age, and I rarely heard more than a few words of it after the Withered Heath was emptied in the early years of the Fourth Age, when the full might of Gondor renewed fell upon us.
Not many of us survived those purges. Most who did crept into tunnels deep beneath the mountains, hiding like the worms for which Men named us. For myself, I fled south. That was a dangerous road, for it took me nearer to Gondor. I traveled by night, first following the Anduin with the Misty Mountain beneath my right wing. I then turned left, crossing over the vastness of the Greenwood in a single long flight, six days without landing. When at last I reached the Celduin, the River Running, on the far side of that dire forest, I collapsed in exhaustion. I consider it a stroke of incredible fortune that I was not killed there while I slept. The Dwarves of Erebor, the Men of Dale, and the Avari of the reclaimed Greenwood were all hunting me, though I was at least safe from Gondor this far from their hunting bands. But somehow none happened upon me, though I slept for three days uninterrupted. Then I turned south and east, following the Celduin towards the Sea of Rhûn and the Ered Rhûn upon its western shores. And there I, like the rest of my surviving kin, crept into the dark and did my best to survive.
Over the next three millennia, my kind were hunted near to extinction. I, of course, knew little of this. For I had no contact with the outside world. I lived inside those caves, emerging only once every few decades when I could not find subterranean food to eat. No hoard had this dragon, save his own life. The few times I was happened upon by a roving band of orcs or an adventurer from Rhûn, I killed them or fled to a different mountain. What choice did I have? For if any found me and reported my location to their people, I was sure that I would be hunted and killed. Until, one day, I heard a thrumming deep within the mountain I had made my home. It was as though the very stones had come to life, complete with a sonorous heartbeat. I crept down into the very deepest caverns beneath the mountain. It was not curiosity, but caution which drove me. For I knew that while I might be seen as I explored, anything that would be dangerous to me as I investigated would be doubly so if it took me by surprise.
Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw down there in the dark. For one thing, it was not dark at all. A figure stood upon a platform of stone which seemed to have been Sung from the bedrock itself. He was humming a melody, soft as a summer breeze, yet loud as a thunderclap. His hands were upraised, and between his palms a heart of blue crystal was forming, sending twining veins of musical light creeping through the mountain. I fled. Of course I did. For this was no Man, nor Avari, nor Dwarf, Orc, or Goblin. This was an Ainu—and, more than that, I believe it was one of the Valar themselves. I still do not know what he was doing with the mountain, for I dared not stay to find out. I clambered from those deep caverns, climbing up through the narrow tunnels until I emerged out into the open sky for the first time in centuries.
What I saw remains burned in my memory. Great stone structures hung in the sky, with dark clouds drifting between them. They were perfectly silent and still, as if waiting for some sign that the time had come to fall. They were innumerable—they stretched from horizon to horizon, blanketing the world in their shadows. There was nowhere to run from this. The caves now hosted a Vala, and the sky was filled with terror. And so I, believing myself the last of Middle-earth's dragons, laid down on the shores of the Sea of Rhûn and closed my eyes, waiting for death. Death came. But it did not touch me.
I cannot describe what followed. It defies word or logic. A power came out of the West. The very power that, before my birth, had sunk Númenor beneath the waves and twisted the very shape of the earth, bending the world and the sky around one another. If anyone reads this, they will be used to a spherical world. But before Númenor was destroyed, Arda was a flat plane. Then the one the Elves called Ilúvatar struck out in terrible vengeance and destroyed Númenor. Where it sank, He bent the paths. Thereafter, only His chosen people could return to His lands in the Utter West. That power struck out again, and once again it Sundered the world. The earth beneath my feet shattered, and I found myself lingering on a single piece of what was once the only world. I saw thousands, millions, perhaps billions of other scintillae scattering out into the Void, leaving those terrible stone monoliths far behind. Then, beneath my feet, the shard on which I rode twisted. It transformed. What had been a stretch of shoreline and a few shattered mountains grew into a world in its own right. Then many worlds. A whole cosmere blossomed forth from the seed on which I had laid down to die. When at last the sound and terror ended, I was standing on this very ground. The world that would, one day, come to be known as Yolen.
That is the secret. The mystery that Men and Sho Del alike have tried in vain to uncover. The mythical birth of the cosmere. Ilúvatar destroyed one world to create many more. And, if we do not act before the fain can consume the Well of Crystal, Adonalsium will end what the God behind it began. Perhaps no one will read this. It seems all too probable, given that if we fail, Yolen is unlikely to survive. But I joined this company because I had hope. Hope that this cosmere, this fragment of the world-that-was, would see many more sunrises. I helped gather the Dawnshards. I provided the dragonsteel to house them. I helped forge them into the Shatterer. I did not do this because I crave the power that Adonalsium's fragments will offer. Others may take up those mantles, if we succeed. Indeed, if we do succeed, I would rather stay as far from Adonalsium's shards as possible. Koravellium may believe herself the equal of an Ainu, to wield the Song so directly, but I am humbler. No, I did all of this because I prefer life over death. Better an uncertain death tomorrow than a certain one once the Well of Crystal is corrupted, and the Cosmere is consumed by Silence. And also because I choose to have hope. Not faith—faith is for those who are not despised by God. Even if I die, even if all of us die, I have hope. Hope that, somehow, we will succeed. And that one day, someone will return to read these words. Part Three: Time Over Time
I don't think it would be wise for me to act directly and personally against Rayse. I maintain that we Shards must remain separate whenever possible. Even if I was willing to leave the Nalthian system, I don't think I should come to Roshar personally. But that doesn't mean I can't help you.
You've probably found him already, but there is a Returned on Roshar right now. He's had a few names—the last one he used before leaving Nalthis was Vasher. He has a weapon that could be useful in fighting a Shard, if you can use it safely. You probably can't. I don't think even he can. But it's something to consider. I have no idea what a Dawnshard would be doing on Ashyn either. I can confirm that Endure was still contained as of my last correspondence with its keeper. That was less than a year ago. I can't see how it could have gotten all the way to the Rosharan system that quickly.
Thanks to Elran for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.
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3
Names
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I realize you're still angry. I understand. I'd say I was sorry, but you know I abhor lying to friends.
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Sarus still remembered the run when Kaladin had first joined the bridge crew. He remembered how Kaladin had, at least for the first several plateaus, resisted the temptation to throw himself to the ground in a desparate bid for rest. He remembered how the man, clearly militarily trained, had forced himself up, pushed himself to rub and massage his own aching muscles, stayed upright and alert.
That man was gone. On Kaladin's second run, he had lasted fewer plateaus. The run after, still fewer. This was the first run that Kaladin had not even tried to remain standing for a single crossing.
Sarus watched the man lying spread-eagle on the ground. His upturned face was slack, expressionless. Not even pain showed on his features anymore. He might as well have been a corpse, albeit one still breathing. The anticipationspren and fearspren that followed most bridgemen had been replaced, as they were with Sarus, by exhaustionspren, bursting from the plateau like jets of dust.
Torol Sadeas crossed the bridge; Sarus sought his gaze, but as always, the man studiously ignored him. Sarus was suddenly conscious, however, of a prickling on the back of his neck, a sense that he was being watched.
He turned his head to look. In the shadow of the bridge, the thin strip of shade where the near side rested upon the rock, Sarus' personal hallucination sat watching him once again. She sat with her chin upon her knees, her silhouette barely distinct from the gloom around her.
Sarus looked directly at her. She did not disappear.
He frowned. She did not disappear.
The last soldier crossed the bridge. Gaz called the bridgemen to follow and to make ready for the next run. Sarus looked at him, away from the woman. When he looked back, he knew she would be gone.
She wasn't. She stood up as the men around him stirred. She moved slowly, as if to make sure he didn't miss any of her movements. She held out her hands to her sides, then visibly shrank. His eyes tracked her as she diminished until she was almost lost among the dust of the plateau. Almost.
Then that tiny speck moved, tracing a path through the dirt from the shadow of the bridge to his own. Then it jumped onto his shoe and began to creep up the leg of his ragged trousers.
He felt nothing. No pressure, no motion, not even a rustle in his clothes. But he watched as the speck ascended until it came to rest on his shoulder.
"Dullard!" Sarus blinked and looked back at Gaz. The other men were already halfway across the bridge. As he followed, he saw that Kaladin was in the rear—but if the man had so much as glanced back at him, he had missed it.
His eyes darted back at his shoulders. Yes, the speck was still there. It had not moved.
As he pulled the bridge back across the gap with the rest of the crew, he worried that he would dislodge it. He did not. When he lifted the bridge onto his shoulders, he worried he would crush it, but instead it leapt from his shoulder to his knuckle, in the space between the handhold and the bridge's underside.
There, in that tiny alcove that only Sarus could see, the speck expanded again. The woman sat upon his knuckle, folding one leg over the other, her gaze fixed upon him. As he began to run with the rest of the crew, she kept her balance perfectly upon her strange seat.
Sarus had always run the bridge with his head down, just like every other bridgeman. But today he stared upward at that strange figure. What had before been momentary, easily-dismissed glimpses were harder to ignore when they were so constant.
"Do you believe I exist now?" the woman asked.
Sarus almost stumbled, but the momentum of the bridge on his back pulled him back to his feet.
"Only one explanation was," said the woman. "But I do not understand it. Your eyes are, your ears are. Yet you do not believe them. Why?"
But Sarus was having a hard time denying them. The illusory woman had never made so much as a sound before, but now she was speaking directly to him. Yet no one else seemed to hear her. He glanced at the bridgemen to his sides—new men, both. This was their first run. They would be repositioned to the back, for the final run. If they were lucky, they might survive this run, perhaps even two or three more, before they inevitably worked their way up to the front. Neither so much as glanced up at the ink-black woman seated upon Sarus' hand.
"They cannot hear me," she said, watching his eyes dart to the other men. "Not because I am not speaking, but because I am not speaking to them. I am speaking to you."
Sarus blinked up at her.
She cocked her head at him. "You do not speak," she said. "You need not. You still think. That is enough."
Something about those words, spoken in such a clipped, matter-of-fact way, struck Sarus somewhere deep.
The bridge reached the next chasm. Sarus almost didn't notice. The woman shrank back down to a speck and leapt onto his shoulder as he ducked aside with the other bridgemen, letting the bridge fall and pushing it over the chasm.
"Your name is," said the woman—she must be a spren, he realized, like Kaladin's. She was still the size of a speck of dust on his shoulder, but her voice was as clear as ever. "I do not know it. But my name is, too, and that I do know. I am Archive."
A spren with a name? Well, he supposed that was no stranger than one which spoke. He wondered if Kaladin's strange windspren had a name. He wondered if Kaladin knew it. Come to think of it, could Kaladin even see the strange windspren, or was that also just Sarus?
"I am here for a reason," said Archive. "I do not remember what that reason is, but I know that it is. And I know that you are a part of it. I think it is important that you know that I exist."
But why now? Why had she decided to reveal herself today, rather than any of the thousand other days that were exactly the same over the past few years, or any of the thousand more to come?
"But more than that," she continued, and there was an oddly thoughtful quality to her voice now, rather than the snappish firmness that had characterized her up to this point, "I think it is important that you know that I am here for you. You are the reason I am here, and not in some other place."
Sarus felt his whole body suddenly shudder violently, as if wracked by a sudden gust. Distantly, he was aware that Torol Sadeas was passing him by once again, but for once he felt no desire to try to catch the man's gaze.
I am here for you.
Archive remained silent for the rest of the bridge run. She remained silent when they arrived at the target plateau—before the Parshendi, this time—and all the way back to the warcamp. But she also remained present. She sat upon his knuckle as he ran. She shrank down on his shoulder as he rested. She did not leave.
And she stayed longer. She was in the barracks when he lay down that night. She was seated on the edge of his cot when he went to sleep. She was still there in the morning.
Some days, Archive didn't speak at all. Some days, she only said a few words. But every day, she remained with him.
Sarus could not remember the last time he had been so grateful.
-x-x-x-
The weeks dragged on.
Kaladin still had not died. He kept running beside Sarus, sprint after sprint, plateau after plateau, battle after battle. Just as they did with Sarus, the Parshendi arrows seemed not to want to hit him.
It wouldn't last. It couldn't last.
It was early evening. They had made another run in the morning. Not one of the worst, but there had still been casualties. The evening had been punctuated by a brief highstorm—relatively mild, by Sarus' reckoning, and he had gotten fairly good at judging these things after years in poorly-constructed barracks on the exposed plains. Once it had blown over, Sarus stepped outside into the dusk to breathe the cool air and drink of the raindrops on the brisk, after-storm winds. Archive remained comfortingly visible, albeit miniscule, upon his shoulder.
Kaladin stepped out the door behind him. He stood abreast of Sarus for a moment, staring out at the rain. Then he turned suddenly to Sarus.
"Who are you?" he asked, in a quiet voice, rough with exhaustion and disuse.
Sarus looked at him. Part of him willed his lips to move, but most of him was too tired to try.
"You've been here longer than anyone," said Kaladin, and his voice audibly ached, as if he spoke around a sore in the back of his throat. "You're the last person who was here when I arrived. The last other survivor died today. Who are you?"
Sarus did not answer.
"Why are you still alive?" Kaladin asked, but his eyes weren't focused on Sarus anymore. They were staring hazily into the gloom, as if asking the ghosts of the dead. "Why you, and no one else?"
Sarus wished he knew. But suddenly, as he looked at this lonely figure standing in the shadows of the evening, he realized that this was not mere luck, any more than his own survival was mere luck. Something wanted this man to survive, just as something wanted him to survive.
The only question was, which of their devils would be better at preserving the solitary Damnation of their charge?
With a sudden, horrible selfishness, Sarus found himself praying to any monstrous god that might be listening that it would be Kaladin's destiny, and not his own, that emerged victorious. Maybe, just maybe, that would serve as a way out.
"Even Syl is gone now," murmured Kaladin, his voice rustling out into the damp air. "Just like…"
He trailed off. Then, without any further ceremony, he turned and started walking away from the barracks. The sheets of rain fell upon his shoulders, making his loose shirt stick to his back.
Sarus looked after him, frowning. Syl? Was that the name of—
"Syl—is that the honorspren?" murmured Archive on his shoulder. "But why—oh. Oh, no. That imbecile."
"Pleasant evening, Your Lordship?" Gaz's snide voice emerged from beside one of the barracks, just out of Sarus' view.
He saw Kaladin turn towards it. He didn't answer.
"Not stealing anyone's spheres, are you?" Gaz asked Kaladin. Sarus still couldn't see the overseer. "Not if you don't want to be strung up, you aren't." A pause. "You'd best not be thinking of running. You know there are sentries, don't you? They'll—"
He stopped, as if Kaladin had interrupted, but Sarus could not hear his fellow bridgeman over the rain. But Gaz did not object as Kaladin kept walking in the direction of the chasms.
Sarus' heart sank. He wasn't even entirely sure why.
"Lordling!" Gaz called.
Kaladin turned back. Sarus couldn't see his eyes, but his face was set in the slack, expressionless rictus of a man who felt no need to impart any emotion onto his own corpse.
"Leave the sandals and vest," Gaz said. "No sense sending someone to fetch them."
There was a pause. Then, in quick, economical movements, Kaladin shucked his vest, kicked off his sandals, and turned away again.
Sarus was surprised to find that he was affected by this. He wanted to reach out. He wanted to run after Kaladin, to stop him, to pull him back. He did reach out—his hand extended before himself, almost unbidden. His mouth opened, his tongue dry and heavy in his mouth.
But as Kaladin drew further and further away, he let his hand fall again. His mouth closed again. His eyes prickled, but if his cheeks were wet, it was only with the rain.
"He goes to die," said Archive. She sounded mournful. "The honorspren must have realized he was crumbling. His resilience was not. Or, at least, not enough."
Or maybe, Sarus thought, he was just courageous enough to take the step Sarus was too much a coward to.
"Will you save him?" Sarus turned his head to see that Archive had grown—still small, but now large enough for him to make out her face, upturned and watching him from her perch on his shoulder. "You can. If you wish."
Will you leave me if I don't? Sarus wondered.
But Archive could not hear his thoughts. She just watched him. Her eyes, though just as black as the rest of her, reflected light differently. Where most of her body was strangely iridescent, like molten oil, her eyes glittered like gemstones in the dusk.
For a moment, he was almost tempted to ask aloud. To open his mouth, stretch his tongue, and form words for the first time in years. To speak and be heard. To allow the sound of his voice to shape the air, to emerge out into the quiet and change the state of the world in some miniscule way.
But even as his lips parted, he closed them again. He started down at Archive for a long moment.
Then he turned and walked back into the barracks.
Archive let out a soft sound that might have been a sigh as he lay back down on his cot, but she did not leave. She just shrank back down again and sat on the edge of his cot, like every other night.
The empty cot to Sarus' right seemed loud somehow, demanding, accusing. Sarus tried to ignore it as he stared up at the barrack's ceiling.
He still had not managed to fall asleep when the barrack's doors burst open. A cold breeze drifted in, carrying with it a dead man.
Kaladin was a man transformed. The slack face was replaced by hard edges and narrowed eyes. His brown eyes flashed in the half-light. The ribbon of blue light that was his windspren—or was she an honorspren, as Archive had seemed to suggest?—hovered once more over his shoulder. He stomped over to Sarus' bunk and looked down at him. Sarus looked up and met his eyes.
"You're not actually dull or slow," Kaladin said. It wasn't a question. "If I asked your name, would you tell me?"
For a moment, Sarus just blinked at him. Then he shook his head.
"Fine," said Kaladin. "You mind if I give you a name, until you tell me or I find out what yours is?"
Sarus shook his head again.
"All right. I'll call you Tesh," Kaladin said, reaching a hand down towards Sarus' prone form. "I'm Kaladin."
Sarus suddenly imagined he and Kaladin were two candles, and that Kaladin had tilted his wick into Sarus to allow him to share in a flame that he had somehow brought back into the cold dark of the Shattered Plains. As Sarus reached out and took Kaladin's hand firmly in his own, he imagined that he was allowing himself to ignite.
Kaladin did not smile. But he nodded at Sarus, and there was kinship in his eyes. Then he turned to the next bridgeman.
Sarus listened as he gradually coaxed names out of the other bridgemen. He seemed to be hoarding them, like a brightlord with spheres or an ardent with words.
"He yet is," said Archive quietly. "The honorspren must have returned. Good."
Thanks to Elran for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.
-x-x-x-
4
Courage and Generosity
-x-x-x-
Your policy of nonintervention must come to an end. You may find issue with my tone of certainty. I ask that you read on to see why I take it.
-x-x-x-
Twenty Years Ago
For a moment, Torol wasn't sure what had woken him.
He gazed up at the dark corners of the vaulted ceiling. Nomon was bright tonight, and its pale blue light filtered in through the curtains over the bedroom's western window. The bed beneath him was soft, and warmed by Ialai's body at his side, curled around him. A chicken crooned a strange, alien melody into the moonlit night outside, but it was far too quiet to have woken him.
Then he heard it—a sound made not by a chicken, but by a child. A babe wailing in hunger or loneliness, from somewhere below his balcony.
Three weeks ago, Torol would have called the nearest servant and ordered them to find the child and silence it, or at least remove it from his hearing. But a lot had changed in the past three weeks. So instead, he quietly extricated himself from Ialai's limbs and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He stood, fumbling for the warm green robe at the bedside and wrapping it around himself before stepping out into the dark hallway.
One of his ardents was already moving quickly and quietly down the corridor. Even in the dark, Torol saw his grimace when he noticed his Highprince coming out of his bedroom. "I am so sorry, Brightlord," he said in a whisper. "I have no idea whose child that is, but I assure you neither it nor its parents will trouble you again."
"It's all right," said Torol, and was surprised to find he meant it. "Children are loud, as I have recently learned." He hesitated. "The sound seems to be coming from below my balcony," he said. "I'll come with you to see what the matter is."
The ardent blinked at him for a moment, but clearly knew better than to question him. "Very well, Brightlord," he said. "Lead on."
Torol turned and strode down the hall. The thin mat beneath his bare feet helped to insulate him from the chill of the flagstones and muffled the sound of his passage as he descended through the castle.
Castle Sadaras was a very old structure—one of the oldest in Alethkar, or so the ardents had told him when trying to flatter him. It was a magnificent display of his wealth and prestige, they said, to live in a building which had been constructed in the first years of the Age of Solitude. Most of the time, he didn't care at all, except occasionally to be glad that at least Kholinar was older. He wouldn't have liked having to move out just to cater to Gavilar's thirst for history and legacy, and if he had been the one living in an ancient Dawncity, he had a feeling he wouldn't have been for long.
But tonight, something about the dark grey stone felt weightier. The castle was silent, the stiff silence of an old man trying not to move lest his bones creak. He felt as if he was being watched as he walked down those dusky hallways, lit only by the pale green glow of the occasional emerald sphere-lamp. The viridian light seemed to penetrate his flesh like the gaze of the Almighty.
He shook off the strange sensation. His moods had been odd, these past three weeks. So much had changed. He finally understood how Dalinar had felt on that strange day three years ago, before the bloodletting had begun on the Herdazian border.
Dalinar had not been back to see his son for more than two weeks at a time since then. Even Torol, as often as he led his armies, had not been away from Ialai so often. He suspected Gavilar was trying to keep Dalinar away from Kholinar, where he was useful instead of a liability. It was a shame—Torol liked Dalinar, liked his forthrightness, his simplicity—but he couldn't fault Gavilar's logic. A man like the Blackthorn would never be satisfied without blood to wash his blade. If it wasn't provided, he would find some.
It was an admirable trait in Dalinar, to be sure. But not a trait ideal for the work of statecraft in the heart of Alethkar. In this, Gavilar was more similar to Torol than he was to his own brother. Alethkar at war needed a warrior. Alethkar at peace needed a liar.
When Torol finally reached the great wooden doors, there were already several servants bustling about. One almost walked into him before noticing the rich cloth of his robe and the Sadeas sigil on his breast. She stumbled back, eyes wide with fear, then bowed low. "Brightlord," she said. It was one of the darkeyed maids—not a slave, but no higher than sixth or perhaps fifth nahn. Ironically, this placed her far lower in social importance than even the most useless of his ardent slaves.
There was a bundle in her arms—a bundle that was squirming. "Is that the child?" he asked.
She hesitated. Her back straightened slightly, seemingly an unconscious act, though she remained bowed before him in a posture that could not possibly be comfortable. "It is, Brightlord," she said. "I am so sorry if he woke you."
"Is he yours, then?" Torol asked, and was surprised that he didn't have to try keeping anger out of his voice, because there wasn't any to begin with.
The maid clearly didn't want to risk it, however, as she shook her head so rapidly it seemed in danger of flying off like a weak-rooted rockbud in a highstorm. "No, Highprince," she said quickly. "He does—we have not found whose he is."
Torol blinked, looking around at all the assembled servants and slaves watching him. "None of you?"
"No, Brightlord," said the maid. "Only Jinsha has had a child within the past several months, and hers was stillborn."
"Then where did he come from?"
The maid gestured helplessly. "I have no idea, Highprince."
"We will send guards to Sadear in the morning to track down whoever thought it would be clever to leave their child beneath the Highprince's window," said the ardent beside him. "I assure you, Brightlord, an example will be made of whatever darkeyed idiot tried this."
The maid had an odd look on her face. "Um, about that, Ardent Lathas. The boy is…" she trailed off, glancing helplessly at another ardent who had already been here when Torol arrived.
"The boy is possibly lighteyed," the ardent said stiffly. "It is… difficult to tell in this lighting. We will have to examine his eyes in the morning."
"How can it be difficult to tell if a child is—" Torol cut himself off, stepping forward. "Give him here."
The maid offered him the small bundle, and suddenly Torol was greeted by a tiny face, gazing up at him.
It was true. The boy's eyes appeared to be a perfectly neutral grey, reflecting the pale blue light of Nomon and the green of the sphere-lamps in a prismatic blend of color. They were a shade too dark to be light eyes, and a shade too bright to be dark eyes. Torol had never seen anything quite like it.
The infant blinked up at him, and he was suddenly thrown back to another bundle of almost exactly the same size, which he had held not three weeks before. He forced his hands to remain steady as he handed it back to the maid. "You're right," he said. "It's hard to tell. Until we can determine his lineage, let's assume first nahn."
"That seems wise, Brightlord," said Ardent Lathas. He looked at the maid. "Jinsha is still producing milk, isn't she?"
"Yes, sir," said the maid. "Shall I give the child to her to feed?"
"With your leave, Brightlord?" the ardent asked, looking up at Torol.
"Yes," said Torol absently. "That would be best. Tomorrow, send a few guards into town to try and find his parents."
The servants bowed and leapt to do as they were ordered. He watched them for a few minutes, thinking.
He had a feeling they would find no parents. It didn't make sense that anyone would be able to creep into the most heavily guarded compound in the entire highprincedom just to drop off a strange infant. Something more was happening.
Torol Sadeas was not a strong believer in providence. He had ardents to deal with the day-to-day of religion. So long as they burned his glyphwards and continued offering him meaningless platitudes about his righteousness, he was happy to focus his attention on worldly affairs. But tonight seemed somehow less than worldly—or, perhaps, more than worldly.
It wasn't normal for nobility of the second dahn to mingle with darkeyes. But perhaps it would do little Tailiah good to have a playmate her own age. If the only option for that was this strange little boy with eyes that might just be light anyway, well, maybe that was all right.
Of course, Tailiah would mingle with Dalinar and Gavilar's children. But Elhokar was six years older than Tailiah, and Adolin was four. Even that was, proportionally speaking, a very large gap for an infant.
Torol knew this was a bit out of character for him, but perhaps parenthood was a form of temporary insanity. If he changed his mind, it wouldn't be hard to send the boy away somewhere else once he was old enough to travel.
He let out a breath, shrugged to himself, and returned to bed.
-x-x-x-
They found no parents. Even offering a reasonably generous reward of spheres was not enough to convince any of the darkeyes of Sadear to identify any of their fellows who might have had a recently-born child mysteriously vanish—or, at least, none of the darkeyes who came forward were able to make any claims that were not obvious attempts to fleece Torol of his spheres.
The guards saw to these, of course.
A week passed, two, and still there was no sign of a parent for the strange grey-eyed boy. Ialai was at first reluctant to allow him to stay at Sadaras, but her heart softened when she eventually had occasion to see him suckling at the maid Jinsha's breast. Torol was at least comforted that if parenthood was a form of madness, he wasn't alone in it.
Two weeks became three. Three became four. At the end of the fifth week, just a few days before Torol needed to leave once more for the war at the Veden border, he instructed his guards to stop searching for parents who clearly would not be found.
The maid Jinsha seemed relieved. It seemed she had grown attached to the tiny creature that depended on her for life.
That night, over his dinner, the ardent who had met him in the corridor that night—by now, Torol had forgotten his name—approached him between courses. "Highprince," he said with a bow. "Maid Jinsha requests your leave to name the child."
Torol blinked. "To name—oh." It hadn't even occurred to him that the odd circumstances might make it unclear who would have naming rights over the boy. The word yes hung on the tip of his tongue for a moment, but he hesitated. Turning to Ialai, seated at his right beside the small, private dining table, he asked, "What do you think?"
She considered for a moment. "He should have a proper Vorin name," she said. "Not one of the common darkeyed names so many of the lower-dahn servants have." She shrugged. "But beyond that, I don't particularly care."
Torol nodded at the ardent. "Relay that instruction to the maid," he said. "She may name him, but his name is to be approved by an ardent."
"Very well, Highprince," said the servant with another bow.
"And tell me when he has been named," Torol added. "I'm tired of thinking of him as the boy."
"Yes, Brightlord." He bowed again and backed out of the room, just in time for the next course to arrive.
Not two hours later, just before Torol and Ialai retired to bed for the evening, the ardent returned. "The boy has been named, Highprince, Brightlady," he said. "It is not the most traditional name, but it is suitably Vorin. His name is Sarus."
Sarus. Torol tried to work out the meaning behind it. Was the sar derived from saras, or was it sas, and then rusuh? No, that didn't make any sense—that would vaguely mean generosity of nothing, or something like it. Something else entirely? "What are the glyphs?" he asked finally.
"Sadas rusuh, Highprince," said the ardent.
Oh. Torol, as an awespren momentarily blossomed over his head before fading away, was surprised to find how affected he was. Sadas technically meant courage, but it was also the first of the two glyphs in the House Sadeas glyphpair. So, while little Sarus' name technically meant courage and generosity, it also meant generosity of Sadeas.
He hadn't expected the maid to be quite so grateful just to be allowed to name the boy.
"I see," he said finally. "Very good. He is healthy?"
"Yes, Brightlord."
"Excellent. See that he remains so while I'm gone."
"Remind me when you're leaving?" Ialai asked.
"Two more days, love," said Torol, giving her a wry look. "War waits for no man, I'm afraid."
"Of course," she said, smiling at him. "You have a duty to uphold. I know. Just as I know you will return as soon as you can."
![Of Many Colors [Stormlight Archive/Lord of the Rings]](/data/threadmark-index-icons/l/65/65022.jpg?1661803183){kind=icon}
