Of Many Colors [Stormlight Archive/Lord of the Rings]

[Lithos Maitreya]

Thanks to Elran and @BeaconHill for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.

-x-x-x-

13

Always



-x-x-x-​

Whereas this creature seems to have countermeasures in place to actively prevent it from being noticed or observed by the humans it empowers.

-x-x-x-

Fifteen Years Ago​

"Don't run, Sarus," chided his mother gently.

Sarus forced himself to slow, falling back into step just a few paces ahead of her. "Well, hurry up then!" he demanded, looking back at her.

"The fair will still be there when we arrive, even if we take our time and don't get there sweaty and mussed."

"Fine…" He fell into step beside her, reaching up and taking her hand in his. She squeezed his fingers.

"That's a good boy," she said. "If you behave, we can stay for the duel."

Sarus brightened. There were duels a few times a year in the arenas outside the castle, but he usually wasn't allowed to go see them. They weren't true Shardbearer duels—Sarus had never even seen a Shardblade, they were simply too rare and important to use on simple entertainment—but lighteyed soldiers would sometimes approximate with their side-swords. "Really?"

"I promise. But only if you behave. Will you be good?"

"I'll be good!"

His mother smiled down at him. "I know you will."

It was easy to say he'd behave in the moment. It was harder to stay at pace with her leisurely stroll for the whole mile-long walk down the lane to the city. The castle was built into the west side of a mountain, high enough on the foothills that it still looked over the city in the valley below. The road zig-zagged down the slope. If Sarus had been alone, running freely without regard for the path, he could have made the journey in just a few short minutes. But his mother always insisted on taking the paths. "We are direct servants of Brightlord Sadeas," she would tell him. "We must behave the part."

Still, despite feeling like his body might burst with excitement, he managed to stay at pace with his mother. He did let go of her hand and dart away once or twice to check the vinebud clusters that grew alongside the cobblestone road. The variety that grew here in northwestern Alethkar produced succulent, violet berries in the autumn. Unfortunately, it seemed he was too early. The vinebuds had lost most of their conical, yellow flowers, but what few fruits had taken their places were still hard and gray, more like pebbles than berries.

"No vineberries yet?" his mother asked as she caught up with him.

"No. When will they grow, Mother?"

"Within a month, most likely. You're getting too old for sweets, you know."

Sarus frowned. "I don't want to stop eating vineberries. I don't care if they're sweet."

"I didn't say you have to stop eating them," she said. "I learned a recipe for a men's pie that uses vineberries last winter, but you were too young to start eating men's food then. I'll make it for you this Weeping."

"Will it be spicy?"

"Of course," she said. "It's men's food."

"I don't like spicy," he complained.

"You've hardly had spicy food yet," she pointed out. "You only started eating men's food three weeks ago. It will grow on you."

"What if I don't want it to grow on me?"

"Then I suppose you had best join the ardentia," she said dryly. "Where instead of learning to use the spear you can learn to read and write and eat sweets like a woman."

He stuck out his tongue. "Ew."

She laughed.

Truthfully, it didn't sound so terrible. His mother sometimes read him stories from the books in the castle library. She'd read him the history of Sunmaker's siege of Vedenar and his duel with King Renchilo of Herdaz. She'd read him the fable of Ishi'Elin on the Shore of Origins, how the cleverest of the Heralds had fooled a hundred Voidbringers into being crushed on the rocks by a newborn highstorm. She'd read him the tale of Pathas, a thief who had pilfered treasures from a hundred kings only to fall at the hands of the Highprince of Sadeas.

Some of the stories weren't true, he knew that. But even those that weren't had the seed of truth in them, or so his mother said. The Sunmaker really had united Alethkar, had really conquered all of Herdaz and even ridden as far as Azir. Pathas really had been a legendary thief who had been captured by a prince who had lived in the same castle where Sarus now lived with his mother.

And Ishi'Elin really had been a Herald who fought the Voidbringers long ago. According to the ardents, at least.

Sarus knew that, as a boy, he would one day have to put away those stories. He might be second nahn, but once he grew old enough to work, he would have to dedicate himself to his Calling. He didn't know what that Calling would be, but it wouldn't be history or fiction. Those were feminine arts. Perhaps when he was old enough to marry, his wife would read to him as his mother did now, but that was so far in the distant future as to be meaningless.

After an interminably long time, they did finally reach the gates of the city. Sadear was a blur of color, resplendent in flapping banners of green, red, and gold. Shopkeepers had flung the doors of their stores wide, and those who had dedicated assistants or apprentices had turned them outside to attract the attention of anyone who might have money to spend. In front of the stores were stalls for those who did not do business in the city year-round or who had come in with the fair's traveling performers.

Many tried to call out to his mother, but one called out to him. "Ho there, little one!" called a man at one stall, gesturing to a table of small wooden figurines painted in vibrant colors. "Wouldn't you like a new toy? A Sadeas officer, or a Kholin Shardbearer? I have a whole army for you to browse like a general surveying the troops!"

"Oh, Mother, may I?" he asked, looking up at her. "Just one?"

She glanced over at the display. "Do you think you'll play with it?" she asked. "Or will you forget it after only a few days?"

"I'll play with it! Please, Mother, may I have some spheres?"

"Now, now," she chided, glancing down at him. "You know you're not to carry spheres around. But I'll come and buy you one, so long as they're not too expensive." His mother never let him carry his own spheres. She always said there was no need for a child of barely five years to have his own purse.

A few minutes later, Sarus happily followed his mother away from the stall, a wooden soldier in green and silver armor clutched in his fingers. Golden captain's knots were intricately carved on his shoulder. "Thank you!"

"You're welcome, Sarus," said his mother. "Now, don't lose that toy before we return home."

"I won't!"

They stopped for lunch at an outdoor pavilion serving foods he had never heard of. His mother ordered from the serving man who bustled between the circular tables. "Thaylen sweetfish for me," she said. "And the Azish flatbread for the little one. Moderately spiced, please."

As the man bustled away, Sarus grimaced at his mother. "Does it have to be moderately spiced?"

"You must grow used to spicier foods, little one," she said. "It would be a shame to join the ardentia just because you never got used to men's food."

That was fair, he supposed. If he did join the ardentia, it should at least be because he wanted to, not because he was a picky eater.

And when the food arrived, it was surprisingly good. Spicy, but maybe he really was getting used to that. "When is the duel?" he asked between bites.

"A few hours before sunset," said his mother. "We have just long enough for me to go to the produce market before then. I want to see if they have anything from Thaylenah."

"Why?"

"I tried a Thaylen cake a few weeks ago when I was waiting on Brightness Ialai. They were good, and I'd like to see if I can make them." Sarus' mother often did that. It was why they had stopped at this pavilion for lunch, rather than packing something from home. She frequently sought out foods from elsewhere on Roshar, places neither of them would ever go.

As it turned out, the market didn't have Thaylen cakes. But they did have some Thaylen bread—an odd, puffy loaf which yielded to the merchant's fingers, then bounced back as if he hadn't even touched it. His mother bought it along with a jar of Azish truthberry jam. She slipped both into her purse, then offered to put Sarus' toy soldier in with them.

"No," he said, clutching the wooden captain in both hands. "I want him out when I see the duel. To compare."

As if his words had been a cue, a trumpet rang out from the fields outside the city. He jumped in excitement. "Mother, is that—"

"That will be the duel," she said, smiling at him. "And you have been very good, so we'll stay to see it."

They weren't the only ones moving in that direction. Sarus' mother kept a tight grip on his hand as they followed the crowd walking down the thoroughfare in the direction of the city's western gate.

The arena was marked by a rope, suspended by metal stakes which had been driven into the rock. It was surrounded by wooden stands for the lighteyed spectators to sit in, but darkeyes like Sarus and his mother had to stand further back, behind a second rope barrier.

Still, they had been fairly close to the arena when the trumpets rang out, so they managed to find a good place. It was fairly near to the gate where lighteyes entered the arena and stands, and gave a good view of the arena itself. Sarus clutched the rope in front of him with one hand, the other holding his toy captain, eagerly waiting for the show to start. It couldn't start yet, of course. The best spectator's box wasn't yet filled. No one would start before the Highprince arrived.

Suddenly, Sarus' mother breathed in sharply. Sensing the change in her mood, Sarus looked up, then followed her gaze towards the path leading to the lighteyes' gate.

Three familiar people walked up the lane. Highprince Sadeas wore a dark green uniform, with silver buttons in two columns running up the sides of his breast. Beside him, Brightness Ialai wore a glittering silvery dress with green trim, perfectly complementing his outfit.

Between them was a girl Sarus knew. Tailiah's hair was done in a braid, and she wore a frilly dress in a pale green. She was young enough that her safehand was not yet covered by the sleeve of a havah, but she carried it daintily behind her back, already practicing for the day when she would have to begin hiding it in public.

Her eyes found Sarus'. Her face brightened. She started moving, passing her parents and coming in his direction.

Sarus' mother grabbed for his hand. He dropped his officer as she tugged him, back into the crowd and away from the duel. He tried to reach down with his free hand, but by the time he knew what was happening, they had left the toy far behind. He glanced up, catching Tailiah's confused, hurt eyes until she vanished behind a man's broad back.

Sarus resisted the urge to throw a tantrum. He was better than that—and he understood why they had left so suddenly. Tailiah should have known, too. But it was probably much easier to forget these things as the highprince's daughter than as the son of one of his maids. He swallowed that bitterness down.

Instead of complaining, he turned and jogged a little to keep up with his mother, so that she wasn't pulling him along like a cart behind a chull. "We're out of sight," he told her.

She slowed. "Are you sure?" She glanced back. "Oh, good, so we are."

He swallowed. "I lost my officer."

"Oh, darling, I'm so sorry," she said, looking down at him with sad eyes. "I'll buy you a new one, if you'd like."

"No," he said, shaking his head. "No, it's okay. But can we go back to see the duel, once Brightlord Sadeas and his family have sat down?"

There was an odd expression on his mother's face. "I told you we could see the duel if you were good," she said. "And you have been very, very good. Yes, we can go back. In just a few minutes."

The view wasn't as good anymore. But Sarus could still see the warriors clashing, blades flashing in the sunlight. It was good enough.

That night, after they had returned home, Sarus' mother spread the Azish jam over the Thaylen bread. It was very sweet. "You were very good today, Sarus," she said, smiling at him over their small table. "You've earned a meal without having to worry about eating proper men's food."

"Thank you," he said, looking down at the green jam spread over the puffy, almost cakey bread. Then he looked up and met her eyes. "Should I not be friends with Tailiah?" he asked.

Her face fell. "Oh, darling… it's not that simple."

"I know." And he did. "She's second dahn. We're second nahn."

"Yes. But that's—it's Tailiah's choice, and her family's choice, if she wants to interact with you. But her parents don't want her to interact with you out in public, especially not in front of other lighteyes. It's not that you can't be friends, dear one. It's just that, right now, you probably shouldn't be friends out in the city."

He nodded. "I'll be careful."

His mother didn't really understand what he'd been asking. He understood why they'd had to leave the duel, abandoning their prime view of the arena, just to avoid being seen as familiar with the highprince's daughter. His question, rather, was a strategic one. Is it too dangerous for me to remain friends with Tailiah? Do I need to tell her we mustn't be seen together anymore, even within the castle?

But though his mother hadn't given him the question, he understood the answer well enough. Yes. It was too dangerous. The wise thing to do was to break away from Tailiah now, when she was still too young to enact vengeance for hurt feelings and while she still had parents to help her understand the situation.

But it also wasn't Sarus' choice. It was Tailiah's. Because she was the lighteyes, and he was the darkeyes, and that was simply the way of the world.

Soon after, his mother sent him to bed. The only light in his small bedroom was the moonlight which streamed in through the window out into the courtyard. His mother always took the spherelamp out of his room when it was time for him to sleep.

He lay awake, staring up at the stone ceiling, thinking. It was just another part of growing up, really. He had to start eating men's food. He had to stop demanding stories from his mother. And, yes, he had to stop playing with Tailiah. He understood why.

That didn't mean it didn't hurt.

There was a sudden tapping on his window. He blinked and sat up.

There was a small figure outside in the courtyard. Her head barely cleared the windowsill. Her eyes caught Mishim's light and sparkled green.

He couldn't help but smile wryly as he stood and opened the window. "You shouldn't be here," he said.

"Don't care," said Tailiah in a whisper. She reached up, holding something out to him. In the moonlight he could see that its paint was a little chipped, but it was unmistakably his little Sadeas solider. "I think I made you drop this."

His mouth quivered. Bizarrely, he suddenly felt like crying. "Thanks," he said, taking the figurine.

"It was my fault you lost it in the first place," she said. "I'm sorry you didn't get to see the duel."

"I did, actually. We came back once you'd sat down."

"Oh, that's good." She smiled at him. The greenish moonlight glistened in her hair, no longer in its tight braid, and shimmered on the shoulders of her pale nightgown. "Mom was mad that I went over to you. I know I shouldn't have. I just forgot. You don't usually go out to the city."

"I convinced Mother to take me to the fair this year. It was nice."

"I imagine it was different for you than for me," said Tailiah, grimacing. "I had the privilege of joining Brightness Palinal for tea. She's the only person I know who can be boring after two whole glasses of sapphire wine."

Sarus laughed quietly. "Is she still boring after three?"

"After two, Mom usually decides she's been enough of a bad influence on me for one day," Tailiah said. She glanced over her shoulder. "I should get back to my rooms before someone notices I'm gone."

"Yes, you should."

She looked up at him. "I'll be more careful, I promise," she said. "But we'll still be friends, Sarus. We'll always be friends."

Sarus' hand shook on his wooden captain. "Always," he promised.

Tailiah smiled at him again, then turned and darted back into the night.

 

[Lithos Maitreya]

After some conversation on the SB mirror, I decided to go back and make minor edits to the chapter to convert it to a duel with side-swords. Multiple readers made compelling cases for why jousting, even if it might have appeared by the time of The Way Of Kings, would probably not be commonplace in Alethkar fifteen years earlier. I do not promise to do this sort of thing again, I just happened to have time this week. Mostly I wanted to see how hard it would be to convert. The changes were not difficult, but there were enough of them that rather than a full changelog I decided to just put the original here for posterity.

Spoiler: Original Chapter 13

Thanks to Elran and BeaconHill for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.

-x-x-x-

13

Always



-x-x-x-​

Whereas this creature seems to have countermeasures in place to actively prevent it from being noticed or observed by the humans it empowers.

-x-x-x-

Fifteen Years Ago​

"Don't run, Sarus," chided his mother gently.

Sarus forced himself to slow, falling back into step just a few paces ahead of her. "Well, hurry up then!" he demanded, looking back at her.

"The fair will still be there when we arrive, even if we take our time and don't get there sweaty and mussed."

"Fine…" He fell into step beside her, reaching up and taking her hand in his. She squeezed his fingers.

"That's a good boy," she said. "If you behave, we can stay for the joust."

Sarus brightened. There were jousts a few times a year in the lists outside the castle, but he usually wasn't allowed to go see them. "Really?"

"I promise. But only if you behave. Will you be good?"

"I'll be good!"

His mother smiled down at him. "I know you will."

It was easy to say he'd behave in the moment. It was harder to stay at pace with her leisurely stroll for the whole mile-long walk down the lane to the city. The castle was built into the west side of a mountain, high enough on the foothills that it still looked over the city in the valley below. The road zig-zagged down the slope. If Sarus had been alone, running freely without regard for the path, he could have made the journey in just a few short minutes. But his mother always insisted on taking the paths. "We are direct servants of Brightlord Sadeas," she would tell him. "We must behave the part."

Still, despite feeling like his body might burst with excitement, he managed to stay at pace with his mother. He did let go of her hand and dart away once or twice to check the vinebud clusters that grew alongside the cobblestone road. The variety that grew here in northwestern Alethkar produced succulent, violet berries in the autumn. Unfortunately, it seemed he was too early. The vinebuds had lost most of their conical, yellow flowers, but what few fruits had taken their places were still hard and gray, more like pebbles than berries.

"No vineberries yet?" his mother asked as she caught up with him.

"No. When will they grow, Mother?"

"Within a month, most likely. You're getting too old for sweets, you know."

Sarus frowned. "I don't want to stop eating vineberries. I don't care if they're sweet."

"I didn't say you have to stop eating them," she said. "I learned a recipe for a men's pie that uses vineberries last winter, but you were too young to start eating men's food then. I'll make it for you this Weeping."

"Will it be spicy?"

"Of course," she said. "It's men's food."

"I don't like spicy," he complained.

"You've hardly had spicy food yet," she pointed out. "You only started eating men's food three weeks ago. It will grow on you."

"What if I don't want it to grow on me?"

"Then I suppose you had best join the ardentia," she said dryly. "Where instead of learning to use the spear you can learn to read and write and eat sweets like a woman."

He stuck out his tongue. "Ew."

She laughed.

Truthfully, it didn't sound so terrible. His mother sometimes read him stories from the books in the castle library. She'd read him the history of Sunmaker's siege of Vedenar and his duel with King Renchilo of Herdaz. She'd read him the fable of Ishi'Elin on the Shore of Origins, how the cleverest of the Heralds had fooled a hundred Voidbringers into being crushed on the rocks by a newborn highstorm. She'd read him the tale of Pathas, a thief who had pilfered treasures from a hundred kings only to fall at the hands of the Highprince of Sadeas.

Some of the stories weren't true, he knew that. But even those that weren't had the seed of truth in them, or so his mother said. The Sunmaker really had united Alethkar, had really conquered all of Herdaz and even ridden as far as Azir. Pathas really had been a legendary thief who had been captured by a prince who had lived in the same castle where Sarus now lived with his mother.

And Ishi'Elin really had been a Herald who fought the Voidbringers long ago. According to the ardents, at least.

Sarus knew that, as a boy, he would one day have to put away those stories. He might be second nahn, but once he grew old enough to work, he would have to dedicate himself to his Calling. He didn't know what that Calling would be, but it wouldn't be history or fiction. Those were feminine arts. Perhaps when he was old enough to marry, his wife would read to him as his mother did now, but that was so far in the distant future as to be meaningless.

After an interminably long time, they did finally reach the gates of the city. Sadear was a blur of color, resplendent in flapping banners of green, red, and gold. Shopkeepers had flung the doors of their stores wide, and those who had dedicated assistants or apprentices had turned them outside to attract the attention of anyone who might have money to spend. In front of the stores were stalls for those who did not do business in the city year-round or who had come in with the fair's traveling performers.

Many tried to call out to his mother, but one called out to him. "Ho there, little one!" called a man at one stall, gesturing to a table of small wooden figurines painted in vibrant colors. "Wouldn't you like a new toy? A Sadeas heavy cavalryman, or a Kholin Shardbearer? I have a whole army for you to browse like a general surveying the troops!"

"Oh, Mother, may I?" he asked, looking up at her. "Just one?"

She glanced over at the display. "Do you think you'll play with it?" she asked. "Or will you forget it after only a few days?"

"I'll play with it! Please, Mother, may I have some spheres?"

"Now, now," she chided, glancing down at him. "You know you're not to carry spheres around. But I'll come and buy you one, so long as they're not too expensive." His mother never let him carry his own spheres. She always said there was no need for a child of barely five years to have his own purse.

A few minutes later, Sarus happily followed his mother away from the stall, a wooden cavalryman in green and silver armor aside a black charger clutched in his fingers. "Thank you!"

"You're welcome, Sarus," said his mother. "Now, don't lose that toy before we return home."

"I won't!"

They stopped for lunch at an outdoor pavilion serving foods he had never heard of. His mother ordered from the serving man who bustled between the circular tables. "Thaylen sweetfish for me," she said. "And the Azish flatbread for the little one. Moderately spiced, please."

As the man bustled away, Sarus grimaced at his mother. "Does it have to be moderately spiced?"

"You must grow used to spicier foods, little one," she said. "It would be a shame to join the ardentia just because you never got used to men's food."

That was fair, he supposed. If he did join the ardentia, it should at least be because he wanted to, not because he was a picky eater.

And when the food arrived, it was surprisingly good. Spicy, but maybe he really was getting used to that. "When is the joust?" he asked between bites.

"A few hours before sunset," said his mother. "We have just long enough for me to go to the produce market before then. I want to see if they have anything from Thaylenah."

"Why?"

"I tried a Thaylen cake a few weeks ago when I was waiting on Brightness Ialai. They were good, and I'd like to see if I can make them." Sarus' mother often did that. It was why they had stopped at this pavilion for lunch, rather than packing something from home. She frequently sought out foods from elsewhere on Roshar, places neither of them would ever go.

As it turned out, the market didn't have Thaylen cakes. But they did have some Thaylen bread—an odd, puffy loaf which yielded to the merchant's fingers, then bounced back as if he hadn't even touched it. His mother bought it along with a jar of Azish truthberry jam. She slipped both into her purse, then offered to put Sarus' cavalryman in with them.

"No," he said, clutching the wooden toy in both hands. "I want him out when I see the joust. To compare."

As if his words had been a cue, a trumpet rang out from the fields outside the city. He jumped in excitement. "Mother, is that—"

"That will be the joust," she said, smiling at him. "And you have been very good, so we'll stay to see it."

They weren't the only ones moving in that direction. Sarus' mother kept a tight grip on his hand as they followed the crowd walking down the thoroughfare in the direction of the city's western gate.

The lists were marked by a rope, suspended by metal stakes which had been driven into the rock. A stable along the city wall had been repurposed for the contestants' horses. There were wooden stands for the lighteyed spectators to sit in, but darkeyes like Sarus and his mother had to stand further back, behind a second rope barrier.

Still, they had been fairly close to the lists when the trumpets rang out, so they managed to find a good place. It was fairly near to the gate where lighteyes entered the lists and stands, and gave a good view of the arena itself. Sarus clutched the rope in front of him with one hand, the other holding his cavalryman, eagerly waiting for the show to start. It couldn't start yet, of course. The best spectator's box wasn't yet filled. No one would start before the Highprince arrived.

Suddenly, Sarus' mother breathed in sharply. Sensing the change in her mood, Sarus looked up, then followed her gaze towards the path leading to the lighteyes' gate.

Three familiar people walked up the lane. Highprince Sadeas wore a dark green uniform, with silver buttons in two columns running up the sides of his breast. Beside him, Brightness Ialai wore a glittering silvery dress with green trim, perfectly complementing his outfit.

Between them was a girl Sarus knew. Tailiah's hair was done in a braid, and she wore a frilly dress in a pale green. She was young enough that her safehand was not yet covered by the sleeve of a havah, but she carried it daintily behind her back, already practicing for the day when she would have to begin hiding it in public.

Her eyes found Sarus'. Her face brightened. She started moving, passing her parents and coming in his direction.

Sarus' mother grabbed for his hand. He dropped his cavalryman as she tugged him, back into the crowd and away from the joust. He tried to reach down with his free hand, but by the time he knew what was happening, they had left the toy far behind. He glanced up, catching Tailiah's confused, hurt eyes until she vanished behind a man's broad back.

Sarus resisted the urge to throw a tantrum. He was better than that—and he understood why they had left so suddenly. Tailiah should have known, too. But it was probably much easier to forget these things as the highprince's daughter than as the son of one of his maids. He swallowed that bitterness down.

Instead of complaining, he turned and jogged a little to keep up with his mother, so that she wasn't pulling him along like a cart behind a chull. "We're out of sight," he told her.

She slowed. "Are you sure?" She glanced back. "Oh, good, so we are."

He swallowed. "I lost my cavalryman."

"Oh, darling, I'm so sorry," she said, looking down at him with sad eyes. "I'll buy you a new one, if you'd like."

"No," he said, shaking his head. "No, it's okay. But can we go back to see the joust, once Brightlord Sadeas and his family have sat down?"

There was an odd expression on his mother's face. "I told you we could see the joust if you were good," she said. "And you have been very, very good. Yes, we can go back. In just a few minutes."

The view wasn't as good anymore. But Sarus could still see the warriors clashing, lances striking shields as they unhorsed one another. It was good enough.

That night, after they had returned home, Sarus' mother spread the Azish jam over the Thaylen bread. It was very sweet. "You were very good today, Sarus," she said, smiling at him over their small table. "You've earned a meal without having to worry about eating proper men's food."

"Thank you," he said, looking down at the green jam spread over the puffy, almost cakey bread. Then he looked up and met her eyes. "Should I not be friends with Tailiah?" he asked.

Her face fell. "Oh, darling… it's not that simple."

"I know." And he did. "She's second dahn. We're second nahn."

"Yes. But that's—it's Tailiah's choice, and her family's choice, if she wants to interact with you. But her parents don't want her to interact with you out in public, especially not in front of other lighteyes. It's not that you can't be friends, dear one. It's just that, right now, you probably shouldn't be friends out in the city."

He nodded. "I'll be careful."

His mother didn't really understand what he'd been asking. He understood why they'd had to leave the joust, abandoning their prime view of the lists, just to avoid being seen as familiar with the highprince's daughter. His question, rather, was a strategic one. Is it too dangerous for me to remain friends with Tailiah? Do I need to tell her we mustn't be seen together anymore, even within the castle?

But though his mother hadn't given him the question, he understood the answer well enough. Yes. It was too dangerous. The wise thing to do was to break away from Tailiah now, when she was still too young to enact vengeance for hurt feelings and while she still had parents to help her understand the situation.

But it also wasn't Sarus' choice. It was Tailiah's. Because she was the lighteyes, and he was the darkeyes, and that was simply the way of the world.

Soon after, his mother sent him to bed. The only light in his small bedroom was the moonlight which streamed in through the window out into the courtyard. His mother always took the spherelamp out of his room when it was time for him to sleep.

He lay awake, staring up at the stone ceiling, thinking. It was just another part of growing up, really. He had to start eating men's food. He had to stop demanding stories from his mother. And, yes, he had to stop playing with Tailiah. He understood why.

That didn't mean it didn't hurt.

There was a sudden tapping on his window. He blinked and sat up.

There was a small figure outside in the courtyard. Her head barely cleared the windowsill. Her eyes caught Mishim's light and sparkled green.

He couldn't help but smile wryly as he stood and opened the window. "You shouldn't be here," he said.

"Don't care," said Tailiah in a whisper. She reached up, holding something out to him. In the moonlight he could see that its paint was a little chipped, but it was unmistakably his little Sadeas cavalryman. "I think I made you drop this."

His mouth quivered. Bizarrely, he suddenly felt like crying. "Thanks," he said, taking the figurine.

"It was my fault you lost it in the first place," she said. "I'm sorry you didn't get to see the joust."

"I did, actually. We came back once you'd sat down."

"Oh, that's good." She smiled at him. The greenish moonlight glistened in her hair, no longer in its tight braid, and shimmered on the shoulders of her pale nightgown. "Mom was mad that I went over to you. I know I shouldn't have. I just forgot. You don't usually go out to the city."

"I convinced Mother to take me to the fair this year. It was nice."

"I imagine it was different for you than for me," said Tailiah, grimacing. "I had the privilege of joining Brightness Palinal for tea. She's the only person I know who can be boring after two whole glasses of sapphire wine."

Sarus laughed quietly. "Is she still boring after three?"

"After two, Mom usually decides she's been enough of a bad influence on me for one day," Tailiah said. She glanced over her shoulder. "I should get back to my rooms before someone notices I'm gone."

"Yes, you should."

She looked up at him. "I'll be more careful, I promise," she said. "But we'll still be friends, Sarus. We'll always be friends."

Sarus' hand shook on his wooden cavalryman. "Always," he promised.

Tailiah smiled at him again, then turned and darted back into the night.

 

[Lithos Maitreya]

Thanks to Elran and @BeaconHill for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.

-x-x-x-

14

A Thousand Weapons



-x-x-x-​

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.

-x-x-x-​

Sarus looked up as Syl darted inside the barrack window, taking the form of a leaf blown in by the chill breeze. She changed back into her usual girlish form. "He's awake," she said, looking at Sarus, Rock, and Murk seated side by side on a bunk near the door.

Sarus stood up, the other two only a beat behind him. He ignored the confusion of the wounded men by the door as he strode out of the barrack into the chill wind.

A highstorm started with a cold front.The air would grow thin—at high altitudes, it was enough to set more sensitive men groaning in their bunks. The wind would slowly rise, as though the land itself was inhaling deeply to brace itself for what was coming. The lull, it was called.

For five years now, Sarus had hated that term. The lull was the last opportunity anyone had to find shelter before the stormwall hit. If they failed, they died.

And if they succeeded, and had ill intentions, someone else might.

He circled the barrack until he reached the easterly wall, and there he was. Kaladin had been brutalized. He wasn't as injured as Moash or Teft, but blood still leaked from his split lip and torn ear, even hours later. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and dried blood still caked much of his face and clothes. He dangled by his ankles from the roof of the barrack where he had been strung up.

"Kaladin," Murk murmured behind Sarus.

"Murk," Kaladin responded, his voice barely a croak. "Tesh. Rock. Everyone get back from the battle all right?"

"Yes," Murk said. "All of us, at least. But the battle was…" He trailed off.

"A disaster," their bridgeleader said. His eyes were on Sarus, who nodded.

Over two hundred bridgemen had died. Not a single one was from Bridge Four. The survivors were only able to carry eleven of the bridges back from the plateau, and the rest had been abandoned—normally, soldiers might have retrieved them, but by the time the retreat had been sounded the Parshendi were still assembled in their firing line, and attempting to retrieve the other fallen bridges would have meant taking more fire. Bridgemen were expendable to Torol Sadeas. More than expendable—they were condemned. Soldiers, however, were valuable.

Kaladin sighed, let his eyes drift towards the ground below where he hung upside-down. "Storms," he said. "I'm an idiot."

No, Sarus thought. An idiot wouldn't have immediately realized that in trying to protect his men, he had doomed the battle. He knew Kaladin must have been a squadleader before being sent to the bridge crews—anyone with any training at all could see that he had experience with command—but a squadleader was trained to oversee a squad. To figure out how to use them effectively within a larger strategy. He was not expected to even understand, let alone plan, that strategy.

Kaladin had been doing as he had been trained. But bridgemen were not supposed to be trained. Bridgemen were not supposed to survive. And that dichotomy, that misunderstanding, had lost Sadeas yet another battle for the Tower.

"We wanted to say something," Rock said, his deep voice quiet in his chest. "Is from all the men, but most wouldn't come out. With highstorm so close—"

"It's all right," Kaladin murmured, still looking down at the rock. "I understand."

Rock fell momentarily silent. Sarus saw his jaw work for a moment before he found the strength to continue. "Well, is this. We will remember you. Bridge Four. We won't go back to how we were before you came. Maybe we all die, but we will show the newcomers first. Laughter around the fire. Food. Life. We will make it a tradition. In your memory."

"They say that Talenelat'Elin once held back an entire army of Voidbringers," whispered Murk. "First, he batted aside their weapons with his blade. When they disarmed him, he held his shield before him to block their weapons. When his shield broke, he defended the pass with his body. A thousand weapons pierced him, but he did not stand aside. He suffered and died, was sent back to Damnation to hold back the Enemy, so that the other Heralds could continue the fight. Today, Kaladin, you are Talenelat'Elin."

A strange smile touched Kaladin's lips. "There are worse people to be compared to," he murmured.

"If you ask us," said Rock, "we will cut you down."

"That would just earn you a similar punishment, and I'd just be strung up again for the next storm."

"Perhaps," said Rock. "But that would be a little time."

Kaladin shook his head. "No. I'm not letting my last act on Roshar be to get you all killed. Not after I tried so hard to save you."

Sarus felt something touch his beard. A drop of water. For a moment, he feared that the storm had come—but no, there had been no stormwall. Then he realized that he was crying. His tears were dripping into the salt-and-pepper tangle below his chin.

"Who sentenced me?" Kaladin asked.

"Highpr—no. Sadeas himself." Murk's voice was hard. "He said he was letting the Stormfather judge you. He said that if you deserved to live, you would."

Sadeas had been smiling as he said those words. It was the same smile he had worn as he held the branding iron to Sarus' skin.

"I want you three to do something for me," Kaladin said.

"Anything," Rock vowed.

"I want you to go back into the barrack and tell the men to come out after the storm passes. Tell them to come and look at me. And tell them that I'll open my eyes and look back, and they'll know that I survived. I chose not to take my own life, and I'm not letting Sadeas take it now."

Rock smiled. It was not a joyful expression. "I almost believe you will do it."

Sarus didn't. As Kaladin met his eyes, he saw there the same certainty that consumed every bridgeman eventually.

Kaladin was going to die. He knew it. And yet, even in the face of that certainty, he wanted to leave them not with despair, but with hope. Even when they came out later and found his corpse, he was leaving them that last gift, if they could only keep it.

Even as he died, Kaladin wanted to help Bridge Four. Even as he died for the crime of protecting them, he wanted to give them one last shield of warmth against the void.

Sarus hid his face behind an unsteady hand.

Then, hesitantly, a whisper came from his shoulder, soft enough that the rising wind hid it from the other men's ears. "I might be able to help him."

Sarus' eyes widened. His gaze snapped to the tiny black speck on his vest.

"You've probably heard the saying," Murk said. "Carry a sphere with you into the storm…"

"...And at least you'll have a light by which to see," Kaladin finished.

Sarus wasn't listening to either of them.

"I do not think the honorspren remembers the words," murmured Archive. The words left her almost as if ripped from her chest by the rising wind. "I could tell Kaladin. It might give him a chance."

Do it, then! Sarus had no idea what she was talking about, or what was making her hesitate.

"A risk is," she warned, clearly interpreting his expression. "One I do not fully understand. Honorspren do not like my kind, and I do not remember why. But if you ask it of me, I will tell him the words."

For a single, awful moment, Sarus found himself hesitating. But it wasn't fear of the nebulous animosity between honorspren and whatever Archive was that held him back.

I am here for you, Archive had said. Now she, like every man in the crew barrack, wanted to help Kaladin. Sarus could no more prevent the ugly surge of envy in him than he could have held back the storm itself.

But he could decide whether to heed it. Jerkily, he nodded at Archive.

"I will follow you inside shortly," she said, and leapt from his shoulder to be lost in the gloom.

Sarus looked up to see that Murk and Rock were both already walking away, Murk glancing back to see if he would follow.

"Go, Tesh," Kaladin said.

My name, Sarus thought, is Sarus.

His mother had named him for two virtues. She had named him for courage, and he was too afraid of failing to make a difference to even speak words into the air. She had named him for generosity, and the serpent of envy even now curled around his gut. He did not envy Kaladin's fate. But he envied in Kaladin the strength to meet that fate with clear eyes, a proud heart, and an unbent back.

His name was Sarus, and if he didn't say it now, Kaladin might well die without ever knowing it. Whatever words Archive intended to tell him, she clearly didn't think they would assure Kaladin's survival.

But it wasn't as though Sarus was worthy of his own name anyway.

Sarus turned and, without looking again at the man who had almost managed to convince him that the world was worth living in, walked back around and into the barrack.

He strode past Sigzil and Lesk as they closed the door behind him. He passed Moash and Teft where they lay in their bunks, then passed Murk and Rock where they sat without looking at each other near the entrance. He walked down the length of the barrack, west to east, until he reached the inner side of the wall where Kaladin now hung unprotected.

Then he sat with his back to it and put his face in his hands.

-x-x-x-​

Kaladin could see the stormwall in the distance. It was far enough away, over the plains, that it still seemed to be moving slowly. He knew better. By the time it reached the edge of the warcamp, it would be mere seconds from him.

"Speak again the ancient oaths," said a soft voice beside him.

He turned his head sharply. There was a figure standing beside the wall, her back against the stone. She was tall—nearly as tall as Kaladin—and her skin and clothes were black and iridescent, as though she was composed entirely of tar.

She had to be a spren, but she didn't look like any spren Kaladin had ever heard of.

"What—who are you?" Syl said, suddenly between Kaladin and the strange spren. She seemed to be glowing brighter than normal, as if she was bristling.

The spren ignored her. She turned, and her jet-black eyes fixed on Kaladin. "Life before death," she said. "Strength before weakness. Journey before destination."

"What?" Kaladin asked.

"Say the words," said the spren. "Intend them. They are your only hope." Then she stepped past him and rounded the corner of the barrack, passing out of his sight.

Syl darted after her, but stopped before she rounded the corner, returning to Kaladin. "I'd forgotten them," she said.

"Forgotten what?"

"The words," Syl said, staring up at him. There was an odd, almost ashamed look on her face. "How could I have forgotten the words?"

"What words—"

-x-x-x-​

The stormwall hit.

As close to the wall as he was, Sarus heard the deluge of water striking the barracks in a thundering patter, interspersed with thuds and crashes as rocks and branches were carried alongside the rain.

Then he heard the scraping. Kaladin was being blown along the barrack wall, his back dashed against the rough stone. Then it stopped as Kaladin sailed upward. Sarus could see it in his mind's eye—the man flapping in the wind like a macabre sailcloth, like laundry left mistakenly out into the maelstrom.

Sarus felt the tiniest pressure on his shoulder as Archive alighted back upon her perch. "I have told him the words," she whispered in his ear. "The rest is up to him."

Sarus was about to try and come up with a way to ask any one of a dozen questions, but the awful sounds resumed and drove all of them from his mind. There was a terrible crack as the breeze let up and Kaladin fell onto the sloping roof. The impact had audibly broken something in the man's body, and around him, Sarus saw multiple men wince.

But the impact did not repeat. Not at once, at least. Had Kaladin been torn free of the rope, or was he still alive enough to grab hold of the roof?

Sarus rested his head back against the wall, at once hating himself for not being out there beside Kaladin, and feeling as though some part of him was.

-x-x-x-​

Kaladin blinked in the sudden blackness. He still felt his bruises, still felt the cold steel of the ring from which he had been hung. He had caught it in one hand, trying to minimize the impacts against the roof. The cold rainwater still streamed down his back and face. But the wind had stopped.

He looked up and his breath caught in his chest. There was a face in the dark. Its skin was as black as its surroundings, but the lines of its features were faintly traced in light. It was as wide as the whole breadth of the storm, yet somehow Kaladin could still see it entirely. It smiled at him.

Suddenly the sphere in his left hand blossomed with sapphire light. It illuminated the roof, the tattered rags he wore, the lacerations across his body. He glanced down, and when he looked back up, the face was gone.

Then lightning flashed, and the storm returned. He gasped, nearly losing his grip on his handhold under the onslaught. Syl burst with light before him, arms spread wide as if she could will the storm to part around her like a stream around a stone.

"Say the words!" she screamed. "I'm not losing you just because I'm too stupid to remember them!"

The words? He felt as if he had been in this storm for years. Had it really been mere minutes ago that the strange spren had come and told him… told him—

"Life before death," he said, the words lost in the gale. The words meant something. There was a profundity to them, as though he were reciting an ardent's prayer. He didn't know exactly what they meant—but, somehow, he knew exactly what he meant by them. His mind flashed to that moment after another highstorm, staring down into the Honor Chasm, when he had decided not to give up.

"Strength before weakness." He remembered the spear in his hands as he moved through his kata, down in the chasms.

"Journey before destination." He remembered nights spent surrounded by laughing men encircling Rock's cookfire.

The sphere in his hand blazed with blue fire. The storm rumbled around him, and suddenly he felt frozen, as if pinned to the rooftop by the gaze of the Almighty.

These words, said the Stormfather, in the voice of the highstorm itself, are accepted.

Kaladin's grip slipped from the metal ring. The wind carried him into the air, then threw him into the roof. The sphere in his other hand shone brighter than the sun, and the sight of it was the last thing he remembered for a while.

-x-x-x-​

There was a momentary lull in the barrage, and then it came back. And, soon enough, the rhythmic thudding resumed on the roof. Kaladin had been holding onto the roof, and no longer was. Unconscious, if not already dead. Sarus supposed there wasn't much of a difference.

"Perhaps it was too little," Archive said. "Perhaps it was too late."

It was the longest highstorm Sarus had ever weathered. It lasted centuries, a millennium of that cracking thud, beating against the roof of the barrack like a Voidbringer's drum. Somehow, the worst part was that he had no idea when Kaladin slipped away—when unconsciousness gave way to death.

At least when Tailiah and his mother had died, it had been immediately obvious. He had known when horror should give way to grief, instead of holding both in this awful limbo.

But at long last, the winds died down. The body on the roof thudded one last time, then rolled audibly down the wall. The rain still pattered against the barrack, but it was the drizzle that always followed a storm.

Sarus stood up on shaking legs. As he crossed the barrack, he heard men standing to follow him. He pushed open the door, heedless of the cold wind and water, and walked out into the night. It was illuminated faintly by rainspren flickering like blue candles over puddles in the rock, and by windspren drifting on the last breezes left behind by the storm as it marched westward.

Rock fell into step beside Sarus. "I almost believe he lives," said the big Horneater quietly. "I almost think that it will be as he said. That he will open his eyes and all will be well. That there is justice in the world, and mercy in the storm."

Sarus just sighed.

They rounded the final corner. Kaladin looked like butchered meat. He bled from a hundred wounds, so many that there seemed to be more skin missing than remained on his corpse. The rainwater ran red down the side of the building, forming a dark pool beneath him.

Sarus glanced over at a sound and saw a few soldiers approaching from their own barrack, clad in thick raincloaks. They were looking over at the bridgemen, assembled like worshipers before the altar of their martyr. Sadeas must have sent them to assure that Kaladin had not been cut down early.

Well, he hadn't. Sarus looked back at the body. Beside him, Rock bowed his head.

As a result, Sarus was the only one who saw a ribbon of blue light sail down from over the barrack. Syl stopped beside Kaladin's face, looking down past his lacerated cheeks at his closed eyes. Her expression was one of worry, not of grief.

Kaladin opened his eyes. The movement was so sudden, so startling, that some of the other bridgemen actually slipped in the rainwater and fell. Sarus, however, did not. He just stared at Syl as she smiled. Then she turned, and her eyes found Sarus' own. Her smile didn't fade, but there was something odd in the way her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. Something like suspicion.

Kaladin took in a wheezing breath, gazing unseeingly into the dark. His hand, which had been dangling below him in a tightly clenched fist, fell open, and something dropped into the puddle of blood and water below.

Sarus knelt. It was the sphere that Murk had given Kaladin. And, despite the highstorm that had passed not five minutes ago, the storm which should have infused it with Stormlight, it was as dun as if it had sat through an entire Weeping.

"He spoke the words," said Archive. She sounded satisfied.

Sarus looked down at his shoulder, demanding explanation. The speck there was silent for a moment before seeming to notice his gaze.

"Cut him down," Archive ordered, "and bring him Stormlight. As much as you can find. He will need that and more."

Stormlight? What could Stormlight do? But, well, tonight was apparently a night for miracles. Sarus straightened as Rock called for a ladder and knife.

There were not many spheres in a bridgeman's barrack, and those they had were never hung outside to be infused. Finding Stormlight would not be easy. But Sarus was determined.

This was one friend he would not allow to die.

He pocketed the sphere and helped Rock and Murk carry Kaladin into the barrack. They laid him down on a bunk near the back, where his blood immediately began to seep into the cot. Sarus did his best to follow Kaladin's example in suturing and bandaging the wounds, but he wasn't nearly as effective as Kaladin himself would have been.

Murk and Rock stayed nearby, helping by looking through Kaladin's things for his medical supplies. A little over half an hour of work passed before Sarus stood up, rolling his stiff shoulders, confident that he had done as much as he could.

"Do you think he'll survive the night?" Murk asked quietly.

Sarus nodded. And he believed it. Kaladin had survived the storm itself. He would not slip away in the dark hours of the morning.

"Thank you," said Syl quietly, hovering above Kaladin. She didn't look at Sarus, instead focused on the man lying below her.

Sarus took out the sphere Kaladin had dropped and set in on the man's pillow. For a moment, he thought he saw it glowing faintly–not blue, like an infused sphere, but orange. But the glimmer faded as Rock walked away. It must have been his hair reflected in the glass.

Archive made a quiet sound on his shoulder. He glanced at the speck where she sat.

"He will survive," she said. "But you should bring him Stormlight as soon as possible."

Payday was in two days. Sarus' pay had never gone to his slave debt, less because he actually wanted to spend it in other ways, and more because he refused to let any sphere pass into the Sadeas coffers that didn't need to. Generally, he used it to buy wine, as fine as he could get, like that he'd just started to drink before everything went wrong five years ago. This time, however, he had a better use for the spheres—so long as they were infused.

 

[Lithos Maitreya]

Thanks to Elran and @BeaconHill for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.

-x-x-x-

15

Windows



-x-x-x-​

The most disturbing facet of this is that I believe I wiped the recollection away myself in order to preserve my sanity.

-x-x-x-​

"I should have known he'd do this," said Adolin quietly.

Renarin glanced over at him. His brother was looking across the room at their father. Dalinar was, once again, tied to a heavy chair as a highstorm raged outside.

A week ago, he had told them that he intended to abdicate the Kholin Highprincedom in favor of Adolin. He had promised to consider it when Adolin had protested. Even then, Renarin had known that he would only be considering how to brush aside Adolin's protests. Once Dalinar Kholin made a decision, neither army nor highstorm could turn him aside.

"You're disappointed?" Renarin asked.

"Of course I'm disappointed! I just wanted him to be a bit more circumspect about these visions! I didn't want him to abdicate over that one issue!"

"Why is it so bad?" Renarin asked. "He'll still be here to ask for advice."

Adolin shot him a look that Renarin couldn't read. "I'm not ready to be highprince."

"Will you ever be?"

Adolin's face twisted. "I don't know," he admitted.

"Then isn't this better? If you'll never feel ready, then better to become highprince while you still have Father to ask for advice."

"I don't… I suppose so, maybe. But is now really the time? In the middle of the war, when none of us have even been home in five years?"

"We're Alethi, Brother," said Renarin softly. "The only time we think we're healthy is at war."

"But there's a difference between this and border skirmishes," Adolin protested. "It would be one thing if we were just clashing with the other highprinces, or even if we were fighting Herdaz or Jah Keved on the frontier. This is a different kind of war. It requires experienced leaders."

"Experience isn't helping the other highprinces any," said Glys dryly where he hovered over Renarin's shoulder. "In fact, that might be the problem. They're all approaching the assaults on the plateaus the same as any other contest when they're supposed to be trying to avenge the old king."

"Ten experienced highprinces aren't making any headway against the Parshendi," said Renarin. "Maybe they need a new way of looking at it?"

Adolin sighed, looking back at Dalinar. "I don't want this," he said quietly.

Part of Renarin was bitter. But the rest of him… "I understand," he murmured.

"I thought things were finally getting back to normal," Adolin said. "When Father returned home after Uncle Gavilar died, he was different. He was better."

That was true. Renarin remembered holding his father as he sobbed, shaking and clutching the tiny wine bottle as though it was the one upright stone in a highstorm. Renarin had brought it to him in a desperate bid for Dalinar to just feel better. There were very few things he regretted more.

Then, two years later, King Gavilar had died. Dalinar had left Kholinar scarcely a week later, and had not returned for months after the assassination—long enough that he and Adolin had worried terribly. But then, at long last, he had arrived. And he had been changed. He no longer reached for wine. His eyes were clear, his back straight. And he had marshaled the armies of House Kholin and marched them south to their new King's muster.

"He still is better," Renarin said. "Even with these visions, he's better than he was."

"And yet he remained highprince for years after Mother died," said Adolin. "Why can't he see that?"

"You were a child then," Renarin pointed out. "You're a man now. You can be highprince, which wasn't true before."

Adolin grunted. "I still feel like a child sometimes."

Renarin didn't know how to answer that. So he remained silent.

"Do you really think this is right?" Adolin asked suddenly, turning to face him. "Do you really think Father should abdicate?"

"I…" Renarin hesitated. The truth was, he didn't know. He was just so used to rationalizing the actions of more powerful men that it came naturally to defend Dalinar's decision. "I'm not sure."

"Well, I am," said Adolin. "And I know that no matter how much of a problem Father's visions are, I would be worse."

"You're not—"

"I'm not ready, Renarin. I spend my days fumbling courtships and looking for duels. I've learned how to lead in theory, but I don't have any experience putting it into practice. I should be taking things over gradually—command of a small force, administration of a small territory, learning how to rule before I have to be responsible for the whole highprincedom. It shouldn't be like this."

"So says every son whose father dies before his time," said Glys, audible only to Renarin. "At least Dalinar's still breathing."

Renarin said nothing.

Adolin crossed to the window. The two layers of glass rattled quietly where they were set in the soulcast stone. He raised the shutters momentarily to look at the gale outside. "It's dying down," he said.

It was. Only a few more minutes passed before Dalinar's eyes cleared. "I've returned," he said hoarsely, at last speaking Alethi again instead of babbling in strange tongues.

"I'll get you a cup of wine," said Renarin as his brother moved to untie the older man. His father no longer drank heavily, but a glass of soothing orange was scarcely alcoholic at all and would help settle Dalinar's nerves. He knew from experience how helpful that was after a fit.

Glys darted ahead of him as he left the room. "I wonder what he sees in those visions," he said.

"He thinks the Almighty speaks to him," Renarin said. He entered the nearby sitting room and found a bottle of orange on the table.

"Sure, but what does he see? If the Almighty just wanted to have a quick chat, it wouldn't take the entire highstorm every time."

One of Renarin's eyebrows rose as he started back down the hall towards his family. "Does the Almighty have a usual way of speaking to people?"

"Fair point," Glys said. "If He does, I'm not—" He stopped with a sudden grunt.

Renarin suddenly had a feeling he knew what that grunt meant. "Is that…?"

"Another vision."

"Oh, no."

"I'm sorry," Glys said. "Do you want me to try and hold it?"

"No," Renarin sighed. "Let's get it out of the way."

"I'm sorry," said Glys as the vision overcame them.

It was different this time. Not a series of discrete moments, temporal and sequential, but half a dozen simultaneous instants. They lined the walls of the corridor like panes of stained glass.

He saw his cousin Jasnah, a silver shardblade in one hand. Its point was speared through Renarin's own chest. He saw his eyes burning out.

He saw a creature of stone tearing itself from a rocky shoreline.

He saw a single Parshendi with her hand on a pillar of white crystal. From her palm a violet corruption spread through the column.

He saw Kholinar aflame.

He saw his father kneeling before a figure wearing a crown adorned with three hollows, as if for absent jewels. Dalinar's eyes glowed red.

He saw dozens of Parshendi, their eyes alight with red flame, raising their hands upward to a gathering storm. Upon this final image, symbols flickered in golden lines, as if torn through the air between himself and the window. He thought he recognized them as the women's script, but he couldn't read whatever they said.

He had just long enough to take in all the visions before they vanished, melting back into the stone walls. He blinked. Suddenly he noticed that his hand was wet. It was shaking, he saw, and several drops of the orange wine had dribbled onto his fingers.

He staggered back down the corridor and returned to his family. He pushed the glass of orange wine, still mostly full, into his father's hands. Then he sank into a chair and put his head in his hands.

Glys, he said on the surface of his mind. What in Damnation was that?

"A vision," said Glys. But he sounded uncertain.

It was different from last time, said Renarin.

"I saw," said Glys. "I really don't know why, Renarin. Maybe it'll be different every time? I'm sorry I don't have more answers for you. There was text, too. We need to learn to read, Renarin."

You can't?

"Not Alethi women's script," Glys said. "I know a few languages, but not that one. Sorry."

We'll figure that out later. Renarin swallowed, then forced his head up.

"—I believed they were from the Almighty," Dalinar was saying. "You've convinced me that I may have jumped to that conclusion too readily. I don't yet know enough to trust them. I could be mad. Or they could be supernatural, but not of the Almighty."

"How could that be?" Adolin asked.

"The Old Magic," Renarin said hoarsely. Suddenly things were coming together in his head.

"What?" Adolin blinked at him. "The Old Magic is a myth."

"Unfortunately not," said their father, sipping from the wine. "I know this for a fact."

"You went to see her, didn't you?" Renarin asked. "The Nightwatcher." Cultivation, he added silently, thinking of a giant creature with armor of green scales. Glys had told him of the ancient, godlike being who, according to some spren, still lived in those western glades. It had been her death he had seen in his first vision.

Dalinar looked down, as if ashamed. "I did."

"The Nightwatcher could cause visions like these…" said Glys. "But he would know if they were either his boon or his curse."

"Unless these visions are either your boon or your curse," Renarin said, echoing the spren neither of the others could hear, "then I don't think these visions are from her."

"They aren't," said Dalinar firmly. "My boon and my curse are my own, but neither of them relate to these visions."

"Then I doubt this is the Old Magic," Renarin said.

"I agree."

"Then why bring it up at all?" Adolin asked, exasperated.

"Because, son, I don't know what's happening to me. These visions seem too detailed to be products of my mind. But your arguments are compelling. I could be wrong, and I am going mad. Or you could be wrong, and they are from the Almighty. Or they could be something entirely different. We simply don't know, and unless we do, it's too dangerous for me to be left in command."

"I still think we can contain it," said Adolin stubbornly.

"I had an episode in front of dozens of our soldiers two weeks ago, Adolin," said Dalinar. "Clearly we cannot. And I cannot simply ignore them, either. I cannot lead while second-guessing my every decision, and that is exactly what I would have to do if I tried to disregard these visions. They are changing me, son. Either I must trust myself, or I must step down. And unless we can trust these visions, I cannot trust myself."

"So what do we do?" Adolin asked helplessly.

"We experiment," Renarin suggested.

They both blinked at him. "What?" Dalinar asked.

"What if we tried to verify whether the visions were true?" Renarin asked. "You say they're detailed. What do you see, exactly?"

Dalinar hesitated. "I often see the Knights Radiant," he said, almost reluctantly. "At the end of each episode, someone—one of the Heralds, I suspect—comes to me and commands me to unite the highprinces."

"Huh," Glys said. "That's either a much more optimistic vision of the future than we've been getting, or he's seeing the past."

Or neither, Renarin said.

"Or neither," Glys acknowledged.

"Today," Dalinar continued, "I saw the Day of Recreance."

"The past, then," said Glys. "That's much easier to test."

"The Radiants abandoned their Shards and walked away. The Plate and Blades seemed to… fade as they were left behind. It's not something I feel I would have imagined. If the visions are products of my own mind, then my imagination is far more active than I knew."

"Damnation," said Glys. "Well, they're definitely true."

Renarin blinked, but forced himself to stay in the moment. "Do you remember any specifics?" he asked. "Names? Dates? Events or locations? Anything we could trace in history might be helpful."

"This last was at a place called Feverstone Keep," Dalinar remembered.

"I've never heard of it," Adolin said.

"Feverstone Keep," said Dalinar again. "There was a war going on near there. The Radiants had been fighting on the front lines before they withdrew and abandoned their Shards."

"Perhaps we could find something in history," said Renarin. "Proof either that this keep existed, or that the Radiants didn't abandon their duty there. Then we'd know."

Dalinar nodded slowly.

"I don't know," said Adolin slowly. "There aren't many histories going that far back. That's centuries before the Hierocracy."

"But not no histories," said Renarin. "Jasnah might know something. We could contact her."

"Even if Feverstone Keep does turn out to exist," said Adolin. "That's not necessarily proof. Father may have heard of it somewhere, then forgotten it until now."

"It's possible," said Renarin. "But the more details we can find that the dreams don't contradict, the more likely it is that they're legitimate. Some aspect of a delusion would have to be pure fancy, especially if he's seeing historical events that he never studied in detail."

"It's a good idea, son," said Dalinar. "We need to get a scribe to record the vision I just had, while it's still fresh."

Renarin stood. He felt much steadier on his feet now. "I'll go fetch one."

As he left the room again, he glanced at Glys. "So," he said. "Shards?"

"Swear the Third Ideal," Glys said. "Then we'll talk about Shards. For now, what he described is a detail that I doubt any humans at the time thought to record." He sighed, sounding sad. "I just wish I knew why."

"Why the Radiants betrayed their calling?"

"Why they betrayed their oaths. They killed thousands of us, Renarin. In one day, they wiped out generations of every type of thinking spren. And none of us know why. Or if any do, they aren't telling."

Renarin stopped. Somehow, he had never made the connection before. "If I go back on my oaths, you die."

"Yes," said Glys.

Renarin's hands shook. "Why did you come to me?" he asked. "How could you risk that? Why would you risk that?"

"Those are three very different questions, Renarin," said Glys gently. "How could I risk that? It wasn't easy. It's hard to come into the Physical Realm, and there's a toll to pay. Why would I risk it? Well, someone has to. Not all of us have given up on humanity and Roshar. But also because I wanted to. I'm a mistspren, Renarin, and we're curious by nature. I think I wanted to come to the Physical Realm for years before I actually did it. Maybe decades, or even centuries. That curiosity, more than duty, is what drove me to cross over, what drove me to become enlightened, and what eventually led me here. Why did I come to you? That's the easiest one to answer. Because you, Renarin Kholin, are worthy."

"I'm not," whispered Renarin.

"You are," Glys said. "And you prove it to me every single day."

 

[Lithos Maitreya]

Thanks to Elran and @BeaconHill for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.

-x-x-x-

16

Forgelight



-x-x-x-​

I suspect that, had I not done so, this letter would be mere gibberish. Or, more likely, I would be dead.

-x-x-x-​

"Back," mumbled Kaladin, his glazed eyes half-open and staring at nothing. "Stay back. I won't… No… I can't…"

Sarus sighed, keeping his hand on Kaladin's shoulder. The man had thrashed in a frenzy the last time he had mumbled about the dark shapes, and it wouldn't do for him to reopen the wounds that had only barely closed.

Syl hovered over Kaladin's chest. Her translucent, blue-white hands held a translucent, blue-white sword. She turned slowly, her steps careful upon a floor of open air. She cast her eyes around, brandishing her weapon as if to ward off an enemy force that surrounded her and Kaladin. Periodically, she leapt forward, slashing or thrusting with her blade, before withdrawing to her post.

She was warding off deathspren. Sarus could just barely see their outlines—many-legged, twisted shadows in the gloom of the barrack. It was not the first time he had seen them. Every so often he caught a glimpse of one descending on a dying bridgeman or soldier, though they were barely visible in the daylight.

Two days had passed. Two days during which there was a man as badly injured as Teft or Moash had been, but without a surgeon to watch him. Sarus had tried to make do with what little he had gleaned from watching Kaladin, but it was no substitute for whatever training Kaladin had. Two days of constant worry, constant fear that any moment, Kaladin might breathe out—and never in again.

As long as Syl stands guard, he told himself, Kaladin is still alive.

He looked up as Murk sat down beside him. "Gaz wouldn't give me your pay," he said, holding out five spheres. "But here's mine, if it'll help."

It was payday today. Normally, Sarus would have been outside to take his five diamond marks from Gaz. Before Kaladin had come, he had always spent those spheres immediately, and had passed the evening of payday pleasantly buzzed. There was no point in saving, but he refused to let even his tiny contribution pass into the Sadeas coffers.

Last payday had been the first exception. Sarus had given his pay to Kaladin to buy food and supplies for the injured men. He had intended to continue doing so. If Kaladin lived—which seemed increasingly likely—he likely would. But he'd have to track Gaz down tomorrow and get the spheres first.

One of Murk's spheres was dun, but the other four were still mostly infused. They were diamond marks, and while a mark would never hold as much Stormlight as a broam, they were far better than chips, which would often go entirely dun within two or three days after a highstorm.

Sarus took one of the infused spheres and held it out to Kaladin. He had no idea what he was expecting to happen, but still he was disappointed when nothing did.

"Hold it towards his face," Archive whispered in his ear. "It is easier to breathe in, or so I have heard."

Sarus moved the sphere towards Kaladin's face. A moment passed. Then, the man inhaled—sudden, sharp, a far cry from the shallow gasps that were becoming all too familiar. Murk gasped audibly as the pale Stormlight flowed, almost liquid, out of his sphere and into the man. Then, as he breathed out, the light rose from his lips like a wisp of steam, and his eyes glowed faintly blue, like embers giving up a final thread of smoke. The gaseous Stormlight billowed around Kaladin's wounds, and Sarus saw one gash visibly slim, as if he was watching a week of healing pass in a moment

It wasn't much, but it was something. Archive was right—Kaladin could absorb Stormlight. It might heal him entirely, if it was provided in sufficient quantities.

The trouble would be finding those quantities.

He passed the dun sphere back to Murk and took the three remaining infused ones. Then he pointed towards Rock. The large Horneater had just reentered the barrack, his week's pay glowing as he dropped it into his pocket.

Murk was still staring, open-mouthed, at Kaladin. Sarus snapped his fingers under Murk's nose to get his attention, then pointed more insistently at Rock.

"What?" Murk asked, blinking at him.

Sarus sighed, then gestured with the sphere in his hand, before pointing at Rock again.

"Oh! Right, I'll—yes. Be right back." He jumped to his feet and fled.

Sarus turned back to Kaladin and held out the remaining three spheres. Kaladin breathed in the Stormlight, and when he breathed out again—as the steam knitted his wounds together—the air left his lungs more easily.

He was still terribly injured. But, by the time Sarus had given him three more infused spheres from Rock's pay, he seemed to be healthy enough to be out of immediate danger. Sarus glanced around, but he could not see any deathspren congregating around the cot anymore.

The notion was confirmed when Syl sighed in relief and, slowly, left her combat stance. Rather than sheathing her sword, it seemed to shrink down into herself. She turned and gave Sarus and Rock a tired smile. "Thank you," she said quietly. "Both of you."

Rock bowed his head, touching his shoulders and then his brow in a strange, respectful gesture. "Of course, mafah'liki. If only all healing was so cheap."

"If only," Syl echoed.

-x-x-x-​

Kaladin woke that night.

"Tesh? Rock? Murk?" The voice was quiet enough that none of the other men in the barrack seemed to hear it. Sarus glanced over, then stood up from his bunk and passed between the beds until he reached Kaladin's.

Syl was seated on air beside Kaladin's head, high enough that Sarus guessed she was probably just inside his peripheral vision. They both looked up as Sarus approached. "Tesh," Kaladin rasped. "Did you—how am I… what happened?"

Sarus raised an eyebrow.

"Guess you can't tell me," Kaladin said.

"They healed you, Kaladin," Syl told him. "It's been two days."

"Healed me? How?"

"They gave you Stormlight."

Kaladin blinked slowly. "What?"

Sarus nodded.

"That doesn't—what do you mean, they gave me Stormlight?"

"I don't know what to tell you," Syl said. "They held infused spheres up to you, and then they went dun, and you were a little healthier."

Kaladin stared at Sarus. "That doesn't make any sense."

Sarus shrugged. It wasn't as though he knew what was going on, either.

Kaladin stared at nothing, mouth moving slightly as though he was working through a problem in his head. Then, with no apparent cause, he stopped. Something seemed to dull in his eyes as he lay back against his pillow. "Thanks," he said.

Sarus frowned.

"Kaladin?" Syl asked.

The man said nothing for a long moment. When he did speak, it was in a whisper. "Bridgemen aren't supposed to survive."

Ah. Lamaril's words had left an impression, it appeared. Which… Kaladin, did you really not know this?

Suddenly, Sarus realized what it was Kaladin had missed. Not the tactical effects of side carry—neither of them had seen the massacre coming—but the fundamental role of the bridge crews. Kaladin must have been so confused to see a military force which never drilled, a force whose highprince was willing to let them be idle for most of the day. He must have been flabbergasted by their repeated deployment with no armor to protect them from the rain of arrows. He must have assumed that Sadeas was being foolish, and squandering resources in senseless cruelty.

The notion was laughable. Sarus knew Torol Sadeas. The man was cruel, certainly, but never foolish, and never wasteful. Sarus hadn't immediately understood why men were being sent to run headlong at the firing line. At first, he had assumed it was a question of speed. But with run after run of arrows sailing towards him, he eventually came to understand that every arrow which was fired at a bridgeman was one that wasn't striking a soldier.

Blood was cheap. It was a lesson Sarus had not truly learned until it was his blood being spent. From the perspective of a Highprince of Alethkar, there were always more darkeyes. Training, however, was valuable. Equipment was valuable. Spheres and status were valuable. Seen through that lens, the bridge crews were an entirely economic idea. They were an exchange of low-value darkeyed lives for currencies of higher value—the time spent training soldiers, the cost of the equipment they wore, the value and status won by claiming a chasmfiend's gemheart.

It was cruel. It was even monstrous. But it was also brutally pragmatic. It was, in short, exactly what Sarus had come to expect from Highprince Sadeas. The man rarely killed without gaining something in exchange…

—blood running over the flagstones—

…even if all he gained was vengeful satisfaction.

"Syl," Kaladin whispered. "What am I supposed to do now?"

Neither Sarus nor Syl had any answer to offer him.

-x-x-x-​

The next day, Sarus pulled Murk aside while Rock led the men through drills. "You need something, Tesh?" the former ardent asked.

Sarus tapped his palm with a finger, then pointed at Gaz, who was sitting in the shadow of the Bridge Nine barrack.

"Oh," said Murk. "Sure, let's get your pay."

Gaz looked up as they approached. "What do you want, Dullard?"

"Don't call him that," said Murk shortly.

"What should I call him, then? Told you his name, has he?"

Murk hesitated. Sarus touched his shoulder, then turned to Gaz and held out a hand expectantly.

"He wants his pay," said Murk.

"Oh, does he," said Gaz, sneering. "And why should I believe you? It's not payday. He wants his pay off schedule, he can ask for them like anyone else."

Sarus lowered his hand, eyes fixed on Gaz. Beside him, he heard Murk breathe in sharply.

Gaz paled as Sarus stepped forward. He seemed to shrink against the side of the barrack. He looked small, even pathetic, like a cremling trapped beneath an axehound's paw, waiting for the predator to reach down and snap it up. "Storming—how the Damnation do you do that?" he wheezed, grabbing for his coinpurse. "Fine. Have your damn spheres."

Sarus stepped back, holding out his hand expectantly. Five diamond marks fell into his palm. Two were still weakly infused—the rest were dun.

"There," Gaz growled. "Now get back to your crew, storm you both."

Sarus turned without another look at Gaz and started back towards Bridge Four. He slipped the spheres into his pocket as he went.

Murk caught up with him. "How do you do that?" he asked.

Sarus glanced at him with a raised eyebrow.

"You know," said Murk. "That thing where you step forward and—it's like you grow bigger. Without actually growing. You just sort of loom."

Sarus shrugged. He wasn't sure how he did it. He just did.

Before they could return to their places in the line, however, the horns rang out. Murk cursed. "Shalash's moonblood," he said. "I thought we'd have at least another day before we had to run again."

But they didn't. Rock took up the role of interim bridgeleader, and the crew formed up in their positions. Sarus saw two unfortunates in the back row, who would be in front with him for the final sprint: Maps and Hobber.

He shot a glance at the barracks. He imagined Kaladin lying in his bed, staring at the closed door. How did he feel as the crew took up the bridge without him? Did he feel guilty for not joining them? Relieved? Both?

As Sarus hefted the bridge onto his shoulders, he shook the thought off. For now, at least, it didn't matter.

Once again, Torol Sadeas crossed Sarus' bridge. But this time, Sarus didn't look at him. For nineteen crossings, Sadeas passed him by, the both of them keenly aware of one another, both pretending otherwise.

Nineteen crossings wasn't nearly so long a run as the disaster of three days ago. But it was still long enough that they didn't beat the Parshendi to the plateau. They arrived no more than a minute behind, however.

There was no attempt at side carry this time. Even when they saw the Parshendi scrambling for their bows, they only put their heads down and sprinted for the chasm. They hadn't beaten the enemy to the plateau, but the firing line had not been fully prepared by the time they arrived.

The Parshendi didn't have long enough to fire more than a single volley. But that was enough to bring down both Maps and Hobber.

Sarus, the rest of the crew behind him, dropped the bridge, thrust it across, then ducked aside to let the cavalry pass. Then, as Rock led the men to a safe hollow, Sarus turned back to find the fallen men.

He was too late for Maps. Hobber, however, was still alive, gasping in pain and clutching at an arrow in his lower leg. Sarus picked him up and sprinted for cover, then took Kaladin's medical equipment from Rock and got to work. He still wasn't Kaladin—not even close—but he learned quickly. Hobber would not die on this run.

They returned to the warcamp tired, but mostly relieved. Only one death and one injury placed them far, far better than any of the other bridge crews. The army celebrated a successful assault, but Bridge Four was just happy to be alive.

They returned to the barracks. Rock carried Hobber into a bunk, while Sarus crossed to the back of the barracks where Kaladin lay in the gloom.

"How did it go?" Kaladin asked, his eyes on Hobber as Rock laid him down near the door.

Sarus held up one finger.

"One death?"

Sarus nodded.

Kaladin sighed. "I should have been there."

None of us should be there, Sarus thought. But rather than give any response, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his pay from Gaz. Light glimmered in the dusk.

"What on Roshar?" Kaladin said, blinking at the spheres. On Sarus' shoulder, Archive let out a wordless exclamation. All of them stared down at the spheres in Sarus' hand.

Two spheres were infused with pale blue Stormlight. The other three, however, were no longer dun. Instead, they glowed a dim orange. It was as though Sarus was holding three tiny candle flames in his hand.

"What are those?" Syl asked, darting forward to examine the strange spheres.

Sarus shook his head slowly, staring down at his hand. Then he held out the spheres to Kaladin.

"I don't think that'll work," said Syl. "Whatever's in those gems, it's not Stormlight. I doubt Kaladin can—"

Kaladin breathed in sharply. Twin streams of light flowed into him—one pale blue, the other orange as flame. On Sarus' shoulder, Archive suddenly grunted—loudly enough that he saw Murk blink and look around for the source of the sound. Sarus' eyes darted to the spren.

"Something strange is," Archive murmured, leaping up to rest inside his ear, the size of a speck of dust. The sensation tickled slightly, but was not particularly unpleasant. "I felt… Something."

"That," said Syl, "doesn't make any sense."

Sarus looked back at the five now-dun spheres. She was right. It made no sense at all.

"I think it worked, though," Kaladin said, sounding stronger. And Sarus couldn't deny it. His wounds were knitting closed before Sarus' eyes. "I feel better already."

"Rgh." Syl let out a frustrated grunt. "I hate how little I remember! I know that, whatever Light was in those spheres, you shouldn't have been able to use it. But I can't remember why!"

"Does it matter?" Kaladin asked.

"Yes!" Syl exclaimed. "Because that Light came from somewhere! And where it came from matters!"

Kaladin looked at Sarus. "Were they like that when you got them?"

Sarus shook his head.

"Then they must have gotten infused on the run," Kaladin said. "Anything unusual happen?"

Again, Sarus shook his head.

Kaladin considered the dun spheres. "Keep them on you," he said slowly. "I wonder if something similar will happen again."

The next morning, Kaladin joined the crew for drills. And, when Sarus checked the spheres that he had kept under his pillow, all five were glowing bright orange, as if they had been left out in a strange highstorm all night.

 

[Lithos Maitreya]

Thanks to Elran and @BeaconHill for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.

-x-x-x-

17

Hope



-x-x-x-​

I can report only impressions of what I saw. I remember being awed and terrified by the sheer scale of the thing.

-x-x-x-​

All around Sarus, men laughed and joked with one another. The firelight illuminated a ring in the dark night, contrasting with the violet glow of Salas shining luminous overhead.

Sarus held his sphere pouch in one hand. He kept it closed, but he knew that if he opened it, he would see ten spheres glowing the same orange as the campfire beneath Rock's pot.

A little more than a week had passed since Kaladin had risen. Since then, Bridge Four had been on two runs. The Parshendi only had a firing line waiting for them on the first, and they had been lucky enough to escape with no deaths and only three injuries, all of which had healed now. Even Moash and Teft were finally on their feet again, though both were still too weak to do more than help Lopen with the waterskins. For the first time in months, Bridge Four was fighting fit. No bunks were occupied by the invalid.

But that didn't seem to help Kaladin now. In the flickering firelight, his eyes seemed unnaturally dark, like twin voids in his head.

I guess you aren't perfect. I guess you are still human, just like me. Sarus thought this, eyes on Kaladin, and hated himself for the grim satisfaction that stirred in the darkest corners of his heart.

"Oy, Rock!" called Gadol. He tossed a package to the big Horneater, who caught it in midair. "Now we're all being fed again, the men chipped in for you."

Rock opened the package. Then he stilled, looking down at its contents. It was a straight razor and makeshift mirror.

"You complained about not being able to shave a few times," Murk said, grinning at Rock. "Thought we'd fix it."

Rock blinked hard. He glanced down at his pot. "Stew is ready," he said thickly, then fled the campfire.

Murk frowned. "You don't think we did wrong?" he asked Sarus quietly.

Sarus shook his head. Those tears had been of joy and gratitude. Then he reached to the side and nudged Kaladin.

The bridgeleader looked up from the rock between his feet. "What is it, Tesh?"

Sarus nodded in the direction of Teft, who was pulling another package from behind a rock. "We got you something too," Teft said, passing it over to Kaladin.

Kaladin sat with the paper-wrapped package in his hands for a moment without opening it. His expression hung suspended over some indeterminate emotion. "Thank you," he said at last, as he began to unwrap the parcel.

Within was a small leather wallet. In the wallet were several small needles, each a different length and girth, each polished to mirror brightness and sharp as a spearpoint. Strapped to the side of the wallet was a scalpel.

"Wanted to get you a spear, lad," said Teft quietly. "But getting that scalpel was hard enough for bridgemen."

"It feels a bit self-serving," said Murk with some embarrassment. "To get you something that you'll use to take care of us. We just didn't know what else to get you."

"It isn't self-serving," said Kaladin. His voice was slightly hoarse.

Sarus had contributed two spare spheres—the ten he had already was as many as his pouch could hold without risk of bursting—from his most recent wages to help purchase those needles. As he watched Kaladin's lips tremble, the envy that so often burned in his gut faded away, and he was unreservedly glad of his own contribution.

Kaladin looked up from his gift, the campfire reflected in his eyes. "I don't know what to do," he said quietly.

The mood around the campfire changed quite suddenly.

"I thought that, if I could just show the lighteyes the value of the men whose lives they were throwing away, I could make things better." The words poured from Kaladin like water loosed at last from behind a dam. "But they don't want bridgemen to be men of value. They don't keep us from being trained and equipped just because they don't want to pay for our training and gear. They keep us untrained and dressed in rags because it makes us easier targets. Because it makes us tempting to the Parshendi archers, and every arrow that hits an easily-replaced bridgeman is one that isn't fired at a soldier who's gone through expensive training and wearing hundreds of spheres' worth of gear. And I don't know how I can change that."

"Are you giving up, then?" Moash asked. Sarus glanced at him. His expression was conflicted. He had spent weeks holding out against the comfort Kaladin offered, and now that he was finally here around the fire with the rest of them, now Kaladin was buckling beneath the weight.

Kaladin didn't answer for a long moment. "No," he said finally. "I just don't know what to do. I still…" he looked up at where Syl hovered, invisible to all but a few, above the flames. "I refuse to give up on doing something. I just don't know what to try next."

The hearth lapsed into silence. It was broken when Rock emerged from the barrack, laughing. He had shaved his chin clean of stubble, but had left rich red sideburns running down his cheeks. "Ah, I feel like myself again!" Then he took in the change that had come over the crew. "What is wrong?"

"My fault, Rock," said Kaladin.

"Ah," said Rock, returning to his seat. "Is very bad situation we are in."

"Understatement of the decade," muttered Teft.

Rock ignored him. "The way I see it is this," he said. "We were dead men the moment we joined the bridge crew. But these past weeks, you have given us hope. Is it false hope? Maybe. But is the thing about hope: you never know whether it is false until afterward. This does not mean we should not bother with hoping. It means just the opposite. These past weeks that we have had hope, we have had fewest deaths of any bridge crew. Most who are injured recover. If we ever do find a way out, most of us will only see it because these weeks were good, and these weeks were only good because we had hope. You see?"

"You're saying false hope is better than no hope," Moash said.

Rock shook his head. "I am saying that hope is better than no hope, because by hoping we make it less false. We will never arrive at the summit if we do not begin walking uphill. Even lowlanders know this."

"Journey before destination," whispered Teft.

Kaladin's head shot up. "What did you say?"

Teft started, blinking at him. "Journey before destination," he said. "It's part of the… well, it's something I heard when I was a lad. It was part of the first oath the Knights Radiant swore, before the Recreance."

Kaladin blinked at him.

"Where'd you hear that?" Murk asked. "Not much is known about the Radiants. Most of the records from that far back were lost when the Hierocracy—"

"Life before death," Kaladin said softly.

Teft froze. He stared at Kaladin. Kaladin stared back. "That's how you survived the storm," Teft whispered.

Slowly, Kaladin nodded.

"Wait a moment," Murk said. "Are you saying that—Kaladin, are you saying you're a Knight Radiant?"

"I think I must be," said Kaladin quietly. "But I don't know what that means. I don't know what I should be able to do. I know I can heal with Stormlight, which is why I'm already walking after my injuries. But I don't know how that can help us in the long term."

"Well, healing with Stormlight probably can't get the rest of us out of here," said Teft. "But Surgebinding just might."

"Surgebinding?"

"The powers of the Radiants." Teft stood. "I don't know as much as I wish I did, but I might know enough to get us started."

"Before that, though," said Murk, following Teft to his feet. He looked around at the men around the fire. "I probably don't need to tell you all this," he said, "but it would make trouble if word got back to the lighteyes about this."

"You don't say," said Sigzil.

Murk ignored him. "I'm probably the most devout Vorin here," he said. "And I'm not going to tell anyone about this. So, I'm hoping none of you will, either. Can you all promise that?"

There were nods all around the fire. Sarus scanned each face and found no sign of a lie.

"Good!" said Rock, clapping his hands together in a sudden burst of sound. "We have no plan yet, but we have an idea. Is nearly as good. Enough to keep hoping, I think."

"For now," muttered Moash.

"It is hope," Rock said. "'For now' is all that matters. Now, anyone who wishes, I will shave!"

There was a pause. Then Kaladin smiled slightly. "I think I'll take you up on that."

The crew trickled in after him. Sarus, however, remained outside. He didn't think he could stand to be inside the cool spherelight of the barracks right now. Not surrounded by the rest of the encouraged crew. Kaladin had strained, had nearly broken, and then more than two dozen men who should have tumbled around him as he fell had somehow pulled him back up.

It should have been impossible. Kaladin was the pillar that supported them. How could the roof keep the walls upright? Yet it had happened.

Sarus was glad that it had happened. It had been painful to watch Kaladin curl inward on himself. But now the envy was back. Even when he stumbled, Kaladin stood taller than Sarus could dream to match.

"You never seem happy," Archive observed quietly from his shoulder. "Whether the men around you are hopeful or despairing, some discontent is. Why?"

Sarus shook his head. Even if he had been able to convince himself to speak in this moment, he didn't think he could bear to breathe life into his feelings. To speak them was to acknowledge them, and to acknowledge them was to admit to his shame.

Archive was silent for a time. When she spoke again, it was on a different topic. "You do not need to say them," she said. "But I must believe you mean them. I cannot force that belief any more than you can force the power."

The words. Life before death, Sarus thought. Journey before destination. There was another part to it, he suspected. Something about the rhythm of the words, the way the sounds flowed together in a musical phrase, suggested that there should be a third clause between the other two.

He had guessed it when Teft had spoken of the Radiants. Archive had known those words, and had known that Kaladin could benefit from them. Only two men in the crew had spren who followed them around, whispering in their ears. And Sarus suspected that the both of them were nascent Knights Radiant.

But only one of them seemed to deserve it. The other just burned with envy that he did not.

Archive sighed. "You have not let go of your despair," she said. "You cling to it like a child with a favorite blanket. You must grow past it."

Easy for you to say, thought Sarus.

"Your fear is. You are like Moash. You fear hope. You fear the comforting lie. But wise words are this night. Heed them."

Was that part of it? Sarus had originally taken up Kaladin's drills out of sheer boredom. Had he not truly bought into the dream of hope that the other men had been drawn into?

…Admittedly, no, he hadn't. But that wasn't the heart of the problem. It was a symptom, not a cause.

"I have misread something," said Archive quietly. "It is in your expression. This is well, so long as you know what must change. Because this cannot continue. He who remains at the same height while the water rises around him is doomed to drown."

The water rises…

The thought came quite suddenly, in a burst of inspiration. The water, Sarus thought. Where does the water go?

The chasms flooded during every highstorm. Torrential rain sent rushing rivers through those crevasses, water enough to widen the bases of the chasms through the long work of erosion, and to deposit hardening crem on every surface nearly thirty feet from the chasm's bases. Yet when Sarus and the crew climbed down after every storm, the only water they found was in small puddles localized to particular depressions in the floor.

Where does the water go? It was said that there was no other way out of the chasms save the ladder the bridgemen used to climb in and out for their scavenging duties, but if that were true the chasms would have overflowed centuries ago, or been long since filled in entirely by layers upon layers of sedimentary crem.

The water has to flow somewhere. Somewhere the armies haven't mapped. Somewhere to the east.

"You have realized something," Archive said.

He had. But how was he going to convey the idea to Kaladin, who so desperately wanted a way to protect his men? The very idea of speaking made beads of cold sweat rise up on Sarus' skin. It would be one thing to speak once, just a few words, to convey this one seed of a plan. But if he did so, he knew it would be just the beginning. The others would try to draw him out. They would try to get him to speak again. They would try to learn his name, unsuited as he was to it.

He entered the barrack, still thinking. The men were smiling with renewed hope as Rock shaved away the bristles on Sigzil's cheeks.

"You want a shave, Tesh?" Kaladin asked from where he sat on a bunk near the door.

Sarus shook his head. Truly, what he wanted was a trim—he had only just begun to grow his first bristles when he had been sent to the Plains, and he found he liked the idea of wearing a beard. It was just that his current one was wildly unkempt. But he was already thinking how to convey one complex idea without words—he didn't have the thought to spare on how to convey the length he wanted to wear his beard.

He went to bed that night still uncertain.

Inspiration came the next morning in the form of a lighteyed woman, borne to the barracks on a palanquin. ""I am Brightness Hashal," she said to the assembled Bridge Four. "My husband, Brightlord Matal, has been assigned as your new overseer."

He must have angered Sadeas somehow, thought Sarus dryly.

"I am told that this crew has caused significant trouble in the past," she said. "Well, my husband does not intend to run these crews with the lax attitude of his predecessor. There will be more order in these crews now. Every man will know his place and his duties. From now on, each crew will be assigned only one type of work duty. Gaz!"

The bridge sergeant ambled over, looking wary. "Yes, Brightness?"

"My husband wishes that Bridge Four be assigned permanently to chasm duty. Whenever they are not needed for bridge duty, they are to be working those chasms. This way, they shall know which areas have been recently scoured. It will be far more efficient. They will start at once."

Sarus heard a growl building in Kaladin's throat. He put a hand on his bridgeleader's shoulder. Kaladin subsided, glancing at him. Sarus raised a finger to his lips, then raised it further to tap the side of his head.

Kaladin's eyes widened. Then he turned back to Hashal and Gaz. "Understood, Brightness," he said. "We'll get down to the chasms, then."

The lighteyed woman glared at him for a moment, as though looking for sarcasm or duplicity. Finding none, she waved imperiously for her porters to bear her palanquin away.

"Not going to complain, Lordling?" asked Gaz.

"Not to you," said Kaladin, turning to Sarus. "You have an idea, Tesh?"

Sarus nodded, then jerked his head in the direction of the chasms.

"Sure," said Kaladin. "Come on, let's get down there."

The crew followed them to the edge of the chasm, then down the ladder. There was, once again, a puddle right at its base, splashing around their boots as they landed.

As man after man landed in the ankle-deep water, Sarus nudged Kaladin. He pointed at the puddle. Then at the crem lining the walls.

Kaladin frowned. "What are you getting at, Tesh?"

Sarus sighed. Then he knelt down, resting his palm on the surface of the water, just inches above the chasm floor. Then he raised it above his head. He made a gesture, miming waves rushing from east to west.

Kaladin's eyes suddenly widened in comprehension. "Where does all the water go," he whispered.

Sarus nodded.

"Wait, what?" Murk asked.

"The water," Kaladin said. "Every highstorm, these chasms fill with whole rivers worth of water. But they empty after the storm. Where does all that water go? It has to flow somewhere."

"And if we can find where it flows…" Teft said slowly, his eyes widening.

"We might be able to follow it out," Kaladin finished.

"It'd have to be a long way," said Murk slowly. "A long way. There are a couple warcamps east of us, and several to the south. Someone would have found a way out if there was one anywhere near any of the camps."

"True," said Kaladin. "You ever learn to draw maps before you ended up down here, Murk?"

"Not my specialty, I'm afraid," Murk said. "But I could give it a try, if we had something to write with."

"I can find something in the next few days," said Kaladin. "Buy it from somewhere. And it's not as though we won't have time to go looking for an exit. We're about to spend an awful lot of time down here. We might as well get something for it."

The men were smiling now, teeth pale in the gloom. Sarus felt their hope stirring around him. For the first time, he felt it stirring inside him, too. This might actually be a functional plan. If he was honest with himself, it probably wasn't. There were certainly ways that water might exit these chasms that would be impassable to bridgemen, and it was entirely possible that any exit would be too far for them to reach on foot without running afoul of a chasmfiend.

But it was a plan that didn't rely on the mercy of Torol Sadeas, which made it significantly more likely to succeed than what they had been trying for the past several weeks.

"And," said Kaladin slowly, "just in case we can't find another way out… I think it's time I start training you all with the spear. If we can't find a way out down here, well, we'll have to find a way out up there."

An uprising? Sarus found the idea didn't sound as hopeless as it once might have. If Kaladin could train these men, and perhaps outfit them with gear they scavenged down here… they would have thirty trained fighters. Not enough to fight an army, and incapable of outrunning cavalry… but probably enough to overwhelm a single guard post.

Kaladin seemed to be thinking much the same. "If we get through the perimeter and make it far enough before Sadeas realizes we're gone, we might be able to avoid his search parties," he said. "He'll send them, if only so the other bridge crews don't think they can escape that easily. But if we can avoid them, we can make our way west. Get out of Alethkar entirely, into Jah Keved or even further."

"And we'll be free," said Moash.

"And we'll be free," agreed Kaladin. "There's a lot of things that could go wrong. But it's better than nothing."

 

[Lithos Maitreya]

Thanks to Elran and @BeaconHill for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.

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18

Temperamental Kholins



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I can only remember experiencing that feeling once before. You know where.

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The King's Wit was absent from the evening's feast. It wasn't especially surprising that he would be gone from his customary pedestal—the current Wit had an unhealthy fascination with appearing unpredictable—but to be absent entirely was unusual. Yet as Torol scanned the five islands, he saw no sign of the man among the relatively sparse dinner guests. It was possible he was hidden among the thicker crowds on the king's island.

The autumn was growing colder, and this night was particularly brisk. Torol pulled his thick cloak close around him as he crossed the bridge to the central islet of the feasting basin.

"Ah, Brightlord Sadeas!" Torol turned to see Highprince Aladar approaching him. "Could I have a word?"

"Of course," said Torol smoothly, mind already racing. Aladar must be off of the king's island for a reason. Why? The only guess Torol could field immediately was that Aladar was waiting for him in the thinner crowds of the outer isles, where it would be harder to miss when Torol arrived. Why would Aladar want so badly to speak with him that he would hold back from joining the king and the other highprinces?

It has to be about Dalinar. What's the old fool done this time?

"I haven't spoken with you since you were named Highprince of Information," Aladar said, falling into step beside Torol as they crossed the isle. "How goes the investigation?"

"It is nearly complete," said Torol. And it was true.

On a chasmfiend hunt several weeks ago, King Elhokar had fallen from his horse when an essential strap of his saddle had snapped. Torol had originally assumed it to be nothing more than random chance—though he had, of course, intimated otherwise to the paranoid young king. However, the more he had his trusted servants investigate the matter, the more unsettling things became.

Elhokar's Shardplate had cracked upon being thrown from his mount. At the time, that hadn't seemed unusual. But Torol had since experimented with his own Plate, and found that a fall from that height shouldn't have been enough to do nearly so much damage. Elhokar's horse was a powerful beast, but it was several hands shorter than a Ryshadium, and he had slipped from the side and fallen cleanly where a Ryshadium might have been able to buck him and send him falling still further.

He had sent men to check with the king's stable, and they had confirmed that the strap had been cut, although it might well have been by the buckle on the saddle itself rather than a deliberate action. Still, in combination with damaged Plate…

The infused gems which had powered Elhokar's Shardplate had been cracked when Elhokar had doffed it after the hunt. It was possible that the fall had overloaded them, drawn too much Stormlight too quickly, but Shardplate often lasted the entire length of a battle without breaking and an entire campaign without cracking its gems. It seemed far more likely that the armor had been deliberately fitted with flawed gemstones, perhaps stones which had already shown signs of weakness in a previous battle.

Torol did not believe someone had attempted to assassinate Elhokar. If someone was capable of interfering unnoticed with both the king's saddle and the infused gems which powered his Plate, they could certainly have found a more reliable way to facilitate his death. Torol could think of three off the top of his head. The truth he suspected instead was far, far worse.

The only person who could have gained private access to both the king's horse and his Plate without raising any suspicion at all was the king himself. Torol could practically hear the young man rationalizing it: Uncle Dalinar isn't taking my safety seriously enough! A real assassination attempt would shake him.

"And have you identified any particular suspects?" Aladar asked.

"I intend to announce my preliminary findings tonight," Torol said.

Aladar hesitated, then lowered his voice. "May I speak freely with you, Sadeas?"

They were on the bridge between the islands. No one was within earshot if they kept their voices down. Torol turned, leaning back against the delicate filigree of the railing. "Speak."

"Dalinar asked to form an alliance with me a few weeks ago."

"An alliance?"

"Yes. He wanted our two armies to perform joint hunts, splitting the spoils between us. He claimed that by combining our strengths, we could attempt entirely new tactics."

Torol considered the man. "Why do you tell me this?"

"Because I believe Dalinar is growing impatient with the state of the war. I believe he wants us to focus more heavily on seeking vengeance for his brother than gemheart contests. And I believe that his loyalty to the king is beyond question." Aladar looked Torol in the eye. "I do not believe Dalinar is still entirely competent. But I do believe that his honor is, as it always has been, beyond question."

This was a threat, Torol realized. Aladar was telling him that if Torol used his position as Highprince of Information to accuse Dalinar of attempted assassination, Aladar would rally behind House Kholin.

Torol considered his next words carefully. "I assure you, Highprince Aladar," he said finally, "I remain as committed to the unity of Alethkar as I ever was while I campaigned with Gavilar. I have no desire to see it descend into civil war."

Aladar looked slightly mollified. "I am glad to hear it. If you have evidence to contradict anything I have said, I would be willing to hear it."

"I think," Torol said, "that my announcement will clarify things entirely for you."

Aladar's face fell. "I hope you are right. Have a pleasant evening, Brightlord Sadeas."

"The same to you, Brightlord Aladar."

Aladar nodded and turned, crossing back to the central island. Torol watched him go for a moment. He must be going to speak with an advisor.

"The rest of the kingdom waits with bated breath for this mysterious announcement."

Torol turned. The King's Wit had somehow snuck up behind him, making scarcely a sound as he traversed the bridge. "Wit," he said.

"Highprince," said Wit with a nod. The dark rings Torol had seen around his eyes at the previous feast had faded somewhat, but they were replaced with an unexpectedly grim expression on the man's angular face. "I'm afraid I can't stay for your speech—I must be going at once. Would you mind satisfying my curiosity before I do?"

"Yes," said Torol. "I would. Where are you going?"

"Away," said Wit vaguely. "The cosmere waits for no one, I'm afraid. There is work to be done, and I appear, tragically, to be the only one willing and able to do it."

"Well, I'm sure whomever you must go so urgently to insult will be very glad of your presence."

Wit sighed dramatically. "I am unfortunately cursed to be underappreciated everywhere I go, no matter how vital the service I may perform there." His light blue eyes fixed on Torol with a sudden intensity. "In case I do not return, I will share something with you. A morsel of knowledge that I've acquired which might be of interest to you. I may be wrong—but I seldom am."

"Enough dodging," Torol said flatly. "What is it, Wit?"

"Your blame," said Wit, "is not only misplaced—it need not be placed at all."

Torol frowned. "What?"

Wit smiled suddenly. "Ah, you should see your face! I'm afraid that being cryptic is one of the great joys of my life. So, for now, that's all you get. If we both survive, I'll tell you more one day."

Torol rolled his eyes, already putting the man's words out of his mind. "I'm sure. Perhaps the king will be able to find a slightly more competent Wit with your absence."

"Perhaps," said Wit. Then his expression went solemn again. "The winds are changing, Brightlord Sadeas. I ask that you survive them. It would be a terrible shame if you were to die before the truth becomes clear."

"I am not in the habit of dying," said Sadeas.

"No?" asked Wit. "You might be surprised. I would tell you to keep your eyes peeled, but that would perhaps be in poor taste." He passed Torol and crossed the bridge. "Good evening, Brightlord," he called behind him. "Farewell."

Torol sighed, filing the man's parting words away in his mind's rubbish-bin. Then he turned and crossed to the king's island at last.

The crowd of lighteyes parted for him, allowing him easy access to the king's table between the stone Jezerezeh and Ishi. "Your Majesty," he greeted as he arrived.

"Ah, Highprince Sadeas," Elhokar said. He gestured vaguely, and a lesser lighteyes—third or fourth dahn, most likely—vacated the seat at his immediate right.

Torol took it, then called for a plate from a servant. The meal today was more traditionally Alethi than the past few feasts. On Torol's plate was a steamed stagm tuber in a peppery gravy thickened with tallew flour. It was hearty in a way few nations of Roshar could match, like all good Alethi food. Torol cut himself a bite.

He sat patiently eating as Elhokar quickly finished exchanging pleasantries across the table with Highprince Bethab. As soon as it was polite to do so, however, the king turned to him. "Highprince Sadeas," he said. "Welcome. I was worried you wouldn't make it to the feast."

"I would not miss it, Your Majesty," said Torol. "It is an excellent feast. My compliments to your kitchen staff."

"They shall hear of it, I'm sure," said Elhokar. "How go the gemheart hunts?"

"Well enough, Your Majesty," said Torol, though he couldn't help the flicker of rage that suddenly ignited in his heart. Even now, more than two weeks later, he still remembered watching Bridge Four rotate on the field, dooming his assault to disaster. "There was a discipline problem among the bridge crews, but it has been resolved."

"I heard you had a slave strung up in a highstorm," Elhokar said. "Rumors say he survived the ordeal."

"Rumors always spring up around such things," said Torol lightly. "I do not put much stock in them, myself."

Those two sentences were not lies. However, Torol knew that the bridgeleader had miraculously survived the highstorm to which he had been condemned. Torol wasn't willing to break the appearance of honor just to punish one slave, but he had found another solution.

Matal was a fool and a drunkard, but he was a fool and a drunkard with an ambitious, absolutely vicious wife. Brightness Hashal would see Bridge Four brought to heel, and in exchange her husband's past indiscretions would be forgiven. That was the accord.

"I see." Elhokar looked slightly disappointed. Torol supposed that was understandable—if it hadn't been his slave, one who had ruined his battle, he would also have been entertained by the story of a darkeyed man surviving a highstorm. Still, Elhokar willingly changed the subject. "I wonder how many more Shards the Parshendi have out on the Plains. There is at least one more Blade, isn't there?"

"At least one," Torol confirmed, relishing the envy that ignited at the thought. So far, three Blades and two sets of Plate had been won in the war. Torol had not gotten lucky enough to win any of them, but there was at least one more Blade out on the battlefields. Hopefully, that one would be his. "They do not deploy their Shardbearers to every fight—or even to most fights. That suggests that if they have more than one Shardblade left, it is not much more than one."

"I agree," said Elhokar. "And I think—" he cut off suddenly, glancing across the table. "Yes, Uncle?"

Torol turned. Dalinar was standing on the other side of the table, glowering in his direction. For a fleeting moment, Torol could see the shadow of the Blackthorn on his face, a remnant of the terrifying, glorious warrior Dalinar had once been. But then the moment was gone, and Torol was left looking at the shadow of his former friend. "Sadeas," Dalinar said. "What is the status of your investigation into His Majesty's cut girth strap?"

Torol blinked, his mind quickly racing through questions. Had Aladar told Dalinar of their conversation? What did Dalinar think Torol was going to say? If he was challenging Torol like this, did that mean he was ready for a fight to break out in the middle of the feast? Surely he wouldn't risk an open conflict, not here in the middle of the king's court, would he? "Dalinar," he began, "are you—"

"Your investigation, Sadeas," Dalinar interrupted.

Torol sighed and looked at Elhokar. "Your Majesty, I was planning to make an announcement regarding my investigation tonight. I intended to wait until later and speak with you first. But if Dalinar is going to be so insistent…"

"Go ahead, Sadeas," said Elhokar with a wave of his hand. "I'm curious now." He waved to a servant who rushed to quiet the flutist while another rang the chimes for silence.

Torol gave Dalinar an annoyed look. "Your Majesty, I wasn't planning to have such an audience," he said. "This was mostly planned for your ears only."

Dalinar rolled his eyes, and Elhokar scoffed. "Don't weary me with your sense of drama, Sadeas. I'm listening, they're listening. Dalinar looks ready to burst a vein. Speak."

Well. Now Torol absolutely could not talk to Elhokar about his private suspicions. Maybe he could talk to Elhokar in private later… but probably not. Not without raising some questions. No, he would have to provide the sanitized version of his findings, and improvise as necessary. Damn these Kholins. Stop taking me by surprise!

"Very well," Torol said aloud. "My very first task as Highprince of Information was to identify the source of the attempt on His Majesty's life during the greatshell hunt some weeks ago." He snapped his fingers at one of his servants. The man handed him the cut strip of leather while another went to fetch the groom from Elhokar's stable. He'd been planning on confronting Elhokar with the evidence, but he had also been prepared to offer much of it in public afterward. He would have to make do with having things out of order. "I took this strap to three leatherworkers in three different warcamps. All agreed—this leather is too new, and too well cared for, for this to have occurred naturally. Someone slit it." Albeit that 'someone' might have just been the buckle.

"For what purpose—" Dalinar interrupted.

Torol held up a hand, forcibly keeping his glare down. Dalinar was worried that Torol was about to accuse him of attempted assassination on his own nephew. It made sense that he would try to control events the only way he knew how—by riding roughshod over everyone in his path. That didn't mean it wasn't incredibly annoying in this moment. "Please, Highprince," he said stiffly. "First you insist I report publicly, then you interrupt me?"

Dalinar fell perfectly still, his eyes fixed on Torol in a mixture of dread and anger. The crowd around them was growing thicker. Torol would have to choose his words carefully; the slightest misstep could lead to potentially devastating rumors.

"But when was it cut?" Torol asked rhetorically. "That is the essential question. I interviewed several men on that hunt. None reported anything specific, save one odd event. There was a moment when Highprince Dalinar and His Majesty raced to a rock formation. For that brief moment, a few short minutes, His Majesty and Highprince Dalinar were completely alone.

Dalinar paled a shade. Beside Torol, so did Elhokar.

Damnation, thought Torol. Elhokar's face wasn't that of a man learning his uncle might have made an attempt on his life. It was the face of a man who was realizing he might have accidentally condemned his uncle to be accused of a crime he had not committed.

But there would be time to deal with that revelation later. "There was a problem, however," Torol said. "One Dalinar himself raised. Why cut the strap on a Shardbearer's saddle? It would be useless. The Plate would easily protect His Majesty from such a fall." He held out his hand, and a second servant handed him a pouch of gemstones. Torol produced a large sapphire—one of the cracked ones he had found in Elhokar's Plate. "That question," Torol continued, "led me to examine the king's Shardplate. Eight of the ten sapphires used to infuse it were cracked following the battle."

"It happens," said Dalinar's elder son, Adolin, stepping up beside his father. "You lose a few in every battle."

Torol rolled his eyes. Would you idiots just let me finish? "But eight?" he asked. "One or two is normal. Even three. Have you ever lost eight in a single short battle, young Kholin? Let alone to a single fall from a horse?"

Adolin shot him a venomous look but gave no other reply.

Torol tucked the gemstone away before turning to the groom who had just arrived. "This is one of the grooms in the king's employ." The darkeyed boy looked on the edge of fainting. Torol took pity on him. "Fin, isn't it?"

"Y—yes, Brightlord," stammered the boy. He was so young. Younger than Tailiah had been.

Torol swallowed down the grief. "Tell me again what it is you told me earlier, Fin," he said. "Speak loudly enough for all to hear, please."

The darkeyed boy looked sick. He must have feared reprisal, even though he had done nothing wrong. "Well, sir, it was just this: Everyone spoke of the saddle being checked over in Brightlord Dalinar's camp. And I suppose it must have been. But I'm the one as prepared His Majesty's horse before it was sent over to Brightlord Dalinar's men. And I did. Put on his favorite saddle and everything. But when it…"

He trailed off, looking positively terrified of Dalinar, who seemed to be on the verge of summoning his Blade. Stop looking at the boy like you're going to do to him what you did to Rathalas, thought Torol crossly. We both know you won't. "When it returned?" Torol prompted.

"When the king's head grooms took the horse past the stable on the way to Highprince Dalinar's camp, it was wearing a different saddle. I swear it's true!"

Dalinar's face froze in confusion. Torol almost couldn't hold back his amusement at the comical expression on his face.

"But that happened in the king's palace complex!" said Adolin triumphantly.

"Yes," Torol said dryly. "How very astute of you. This discovery, in combination with the cracked gemstones, leads me to an inescapable conclusion. Whoever attempted to kill His Majesty must have planted flawed gemstones which would break when strained, then placed a careful slit in his saddle. As His Majesty suspected, they must have intended him to fall to an accident while hunting. However—these things all happened within the palace complex. My current suspicion is that whoever attempted to kill His Majesty likely intended to cast suspicion upon Dalinar." Or just to force Dalinar to take the threats seriously, because my king is a paranoid child. "It may not have even been intended to kill His Majesty—only to cast suspicion upon his uncle."

Adolin Kholin broke the silence. "What?"

"All evidence," said Torol, speaking slowly, as if the boy was slow of wit rather than merely dumbstruck, "points to your father's innocence." Then, in a burst of pettiness, he added, "You find this surprising?"

"No, but…" Adolin trailed off.

Torol turned away from him, handing the strap and gemstones back to his men before sending them away with the king's groom. Then he gave Elhokar a stiff nod before moving away towards the trays of food along one side of the islet.

Damnation, he thought. Damnation!

He had hoped that he was wrong. That was not an experience he was familiar with. But he really didn't want to have to deal with a king who was so paranoid that he was willing to attempt assassination on himself just to throw a tantrum and get his uncle's attention. Being arbitrary and mercurial was bad enough. This was so, so much worse.

Torol took a small plate of peppered tallew biscuits from a tray and looked out over the low waters of the artificial lake. The light of Mishim reflected viridian in the water.

Gavilar, what would you want me to do? He's your son. He's our king. He represents the unity of Alethkar. But how long can we stay united when he seems determined to give us reasons to crumble?

Suddenly, Torol felt a hand on his arm. He turned. Dalinar stood beside him, an odd look on his face. "Thank you," said Torol's former friend. "For not going through with it."

Torol took a moment to think through his options. Dalinar assumed that Torol had taken the office of Highprince of Information in order to cast suspicion on Dalinar. It wasn't completely inaccurate. The primary goal had been the same as Dalinar's reasons for seeking the office of Highprince of War—to give the other highprinces someone to rally behind, and to make Elhokar seem a little more objective than he really was. But Torol wouldn't have shed a tear if it had turned out Dalinar was guilty. He had even considered fabricating the evidence before deciding that doing so would only cause Alethkar to shatter completely.

But telling Dalinar that would open no doors. It would confirm Dalinar's suspicions and make him grow only more wary of Torol in future. Whereas convincing Dalinar that Torol was not his enemy had a great deal of potential.

"For not going through with what?" Torol asked, tugging his arm out of Dalinar's grip. "I had hoped to make this presentation with more evidence—enough to fully exonerate you. There will still be rumors."

Once again, every sentence was true. He had hoped to collect more evidence, because he hadn't wanted to believe that Elhokar was the monumental disaster he appeared to be. He had wanted to exonerate Dalinar, because accusing him would fracture Alethkar. And there would still be rumors, even if Torol had to fuel them himself.

The best lies were always completely true.

"Wait," said Dalinar. "You wanted to prove me innocent?"

Torol scowled at him. This isn't about you, senile old fool. "Do you know what your problem is, Dalinar?" he snapped. "Why everyone has begun to find you so very tiresome? The self-righteousness. Yes, I asked Elhokar for this position intending to prove you innocent. Is it so difficult for you to believe anyone else in this army might do something honest?"

"I…"

"Of course it storming is. You've been looking down on every other man in this court like a man standing on a single sheet of paper and thinking he can see for miles." Torol turned away with disgust that wasn't even feigned. "That book you hold onto like it's the last memory you have of Gavilar," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, it's little more than crem, and the same for those Codes of War you cling to. I would understand if you wanted to keep to them because Gavilar did—but you seem to believe in them. They're nothing more than lies people in antiquity pretended to follow to soothe their wounded consciences. But Codes or no Codes, book or no book, I didn't want to see you maligned for this attempt to kill Elhokar. We both know that if you'd actually wanted him dead, you'd have just burned out his storming eyes and been done with it."

He turned back to Dalinar, taking a sip of his violet wine. It burned pleasantly going down. "The problem was that Elhokar kept going on and on about that blasted strap," he said. And that was true—it was a problem. A paranoid king was a king who felt insecure, and a king who felt insecure was a king who was insecure. "And people started talking because he was under your protection. Stormfather knows how they thought you would try to have him assassinated—you can barely bring yourself to kill the Parshendi these days. But the rumors were problems all the same, and I sought to correct them." Torol shook his head and picked his plate back up, turning to walk away.

Dalinar caught his arm again. "I owe you a debt," he said quietly. "I shouldn't have treated you as I have these six years."

Torol rolled his eyes, swallowing a bite of his pepper cake. "It wasn't for you. It was for Alethkar. If everyone suspected you, no one would look for the truth. And if there really was an assassin"—I should have said 'is,' but Dalinar isn't likely to catch that—"then they would have been entirely free to try again. And someone did try to kill him. The strap might be a coincidence, but eight gemstones cracking after one fall from a horse? That's absurd. The strap alone would have been a ridiculous way to attempt assassination, but with weakened Plate?"

Torol stopped, a thought suddenly occurring to him. What if Elhokar only cut his own strap? he thought with rising dread. Even without the strap, the gemstones would have worked alone as a sincere attempt on his life. Is there a real assassin out there? We can't survive losing another king so soon.

"And the talk of me being framed?" Dalinar asked.

"Entirely possible," Torol said. "But also something for the others to gossip about while I investigate the reality." He looked down at Dalinar's hand, still clutching his sleeve. "Would you let go?"

Dalinar did.

Torol looked into his face. The man was off-balance, but there was hope in his expression. Almost vulnerability. He wanted to believe the best of Torol.

Torol could use that.

"I haven't given up on you yet," he told Dalinar. "Alethkar will need you before this is through. But I have to admit I don't know what to make of you lately. There are rumors of you wanting to abandon the Vengeance Pact. Is there any truth to that?"

"I mentioned it in confidence to Elhokar," Dalinar said. "So yes, there's truth to it. I don't want to abandon the Vengeance Pact, but I'm tired of the state of this war. We've been out here for five years, killing Parshendi by the handful, making no real progress to avenging Gavilar. Retreat would be better than this—Alethkar needs its king and highprinces to be in Alethkar. But I've given up on that idea—instead, I want to win. But the others won't listen." He sighed. "They assume I'm trying to outplay them with some trick."

"You'd sooner punch a man in the face than stab him in the back," Torol said.

"Ally with me."

Torol froze. He had expected something less overt than that—and he had expected it to take far longer than a single evening.

"You know I'm not going to betray you, Sadeas," Dalinar said. "You trust me in a way the others don't. Even if you don't like me, you know I'm forthright. Jointly assault plateaus with me."

"It won't work," Torol said. "I can't even get my whole army to the assaults in time. There would be no point in doubling that force."

"Together, we can try new tactics. Think, Sadeas! Your bridge crews are fast, but my shock troops are the best in the kingdom. What if you pushed to a plateau quickly to harry the Parshendi, buying time for my slower troops to arrive as reinforcement."

That… might actually work. Dalinar wasn't wrong. It wouldn't exactly be traditionally virtuous—the Alethi way was contest, in all things. But it would give them better odds. And if he could convince Dalinar to expose himself…

"It could mean a Shardblade, Sadeas," Dalinar coaxed.

Torol didn't even try to hide the greed and envy those words spurred in him.

"I know you've fought Parshendi Shardbearers," said Dalinar, "but you've lost. Without a Blade, you're at a disadvantage. I've slain two, but I don't often reach the plateaus in time. Together we can win more often, and I can get you a Blade. It will be like the old days."

Torol smiled, almost nostalgic. "Like the old days," he said. "I'd like to see the Blackthorn in battle again."

But that was the problem, wasn't it? Dalinar still had a tactical mind, but the Blackthorn was gone. He had died in the ashes of Rathalas, and his remains had spent years pickling in wine. Whoever stood before Torol now was a different man.

"How would we split the gemhearts?" he asked.

"Two thirds to you," Dalinar said immediately. "You have twice the success rate as I do on assaults alone."

"And the Shards?"

"The first Blade to you. The first Plate to me, to give to my son, Renarin."

"The invalid?"

"What do you care?" Dalinar asked. "You already have Plate. Sadeas, this could mean winning the war. Winning, and finally going home."

Torol's heart sank. Ialai was here on the plains with him. What did he have to go home to? An empty castle and memories. But he kept the grief inside, shrugging. "Fine," he said. "Send me the details by messenger later. But for now, I've missed enough of this feast."

Dalinar smiled and left him to his food.

Torol turned back to the water. He wasn't yet sure how he was going to use this… but he could already see more than a dozen ways he could. The essential question was where he wanted Dalinar to end up.

The man had his uses. He was straightforward, honest, and had a fearsome reputation. But that reputation was decaying more and more rapidly with every passing month. Soon, there would be nothing left but an embarrassment. The punchline of the joke that was the Kholin name.

Adolin was young. Hotheaded. He might yet become a good highprince in time, but with every passing month, Dalinar left more of an impression on him.

I need to keep this kingdom standing, Torol thought. Can I do that with Dalinar preaching about his Codes and sneering at everyone who behaves properly Alethi?

…No. I can't. Not if Elhokar is also going to be throwing tantrums on a yearly basis. I can only deal with one temperamental Kholin at a time.

Torol sighed. He didn't want to see Dalinar die. But he was the last of Gavilar's allies left who hadn't died, gone mad, or changed completely. This kingdom was on his shoulders, and he would keep it standing.

Even if it meant driving the knife into his oldest friend's back.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a shape scuttle across the surface of the table, like a cremling darting from one crack to another. But when he glanced back, it was gone.

 

[Lithos Maitreya]

Thanks to Elran and @BeaconHill for betareading.

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19

Fragment of a God



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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.

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Kaladin dreamed he was the highstorm.

He sailed over the wide waters of the Ocean of Origins. He passed the storm-tossed coast of New Natanan, blowing on a wave of wind and water past the Natan people's slanted homes half buried in the rock.

He crossed the Shattered Plains. He saw in a mere moment the way the chasms grew wider in the east, where the storms had nearly worn away the plateaus entirely, leaving the Unclaimed Hills to smoothly join with the depths, interspersed with tall, spindly pillars.

Despite the difference between east and west, there was a symmetry to the chasms themselves. It was as if some incredible impact had broken the ground in an entirely regular pattern—one which had been slowly eroded over centuries by the billowing storms.

Then he was past the plains, sailing over the inland Sea of Spears where jagged rocks rose from the water's surface. Waves were jostled by his passage, crashing into the irregular stones. He passed over Alethkar in the north, glimpsing for an instant the great cities of Kholinar and Revolar.

Then he turned southward, far from anything he knew. He passed the wide plains until he reached a majestic range of mountains higher than any of the Unclaimed Hills, densely populated around steam vents near their summits. These, he realized, must be the Horneater Peaks, completely enclosed within the kingdom of Jah Keved.

The highest peaks breached above the stormwall itself. He left them behind, rolling with thunder and fury into foreign lands. He passed fields and cities, villages and rivers, hills and valleys. Among it all there were many armies. Dozens of them. They cowered in encampments built against the leeward sides of rock formations all over Roshar. Lighteyes and generals planned their campaigns within wagons and Soulcast forts.

There were so many. How many wars were being fought across Roshar? Was there anywhere at all that wasn't embroiled in it? Anywhere men didn't die in vain?

He passed over cities that looked strange to his eyes. Wonders built both by the hands of men and by the natural forces that had shaped Roshar, long before men had ever built their first houses. The armies grew scarcer as he sailed westward, but still they remained.

He passed into a city laid out in a triangular pattern, with four tall mountains spearing upwards at the corners and center. There were flashes of light coming from a building on the central peak. Kaladin rushed towards it, then burst in through an unlatched window. He billowed down the hallway, passing servants with long skirts and hair like spun gold, calling out in a strange language.

He burst through a door and passed into a hall where a man stood over two corpses. The man wore white. His head was shaved. In his hand he held a long, thin sword. He turned as Kaladin blew past him, revealing wide, Shin eyes. Stormlight was dissipating around him like mist in the morning sun.

Kaladin blew out another window and sailed further. Then, quite suddenly, he was caught. He was plucked out of the storm like a fish on a line. He felt the winds blowing past him as he fell still, turning in the air.

There was an eye looking down at him. It was as if a crystalline moon hung low in the sky, and within the glass sphere was a green eye the size of a nation. Yet—no, it was not that the eye and its sphere were large. It was that, quite suddenly, he was small. The size of a cremling pierced by a pin and affixed to a table.

Well, said a woman's voice, at once soft and warm yet powerful as the storm itself. I thought I felt someone gliding past the Valley. Do you know you smell of Invention?

Smell of invention? What did that mean? How could someone smell like invention? It would be like reeking of creativity. "Who are you?" Kaladin called out.

No one you need to concern yourself with just yet. I am Cultivation, but I doubt that means anything to you.

It didn't. "There are so many wars," Kaladin said. If this was a dream, he wanted to ask the important question before he awoke. "Why are so many men fighting? What are they all fighting about?"

Ah, you aren't much for pleasantries, are you? the voice asked. She sounded amused—and a little sad. I should have expected that of a son of Tanavast. You remind me of him.

"What does that even mean?"

Nothing to you. For now. I could give you a more detailed answer to your question, but you wouldn't understand it. For now, this is all you need to know. Her voice grew quiet. Odium reigns.

"Who?"

Odium. Come and find me when he arrives, Son of Tanavast. I predict that we will be able to help one another before this story ends.

"Find you where?" Kaladin called out, struggling against the hands holding him down. Then he blinked. Hands?

"You have returned to us, I think," said Rock in his ear.

Kaladin was pinned to the floor of the barrack by Rock and Tesh, who were each holding down two of his limbs. Several others were standing nearby, watching nervously. Syl was nowhere to be seen, but that wasn't unusual—she often liked to fly out into the highstorms.

After his dream, he thought he could even see the appeal.

"You tried to walk out into the storm, lad," said Teft quietly.

"I'm—I must have been sleepwalking," said Kaladin, finding his throat unexpectedly hoarse.

"Sleep-screaming, too," said Murk, looking shaken. "You all right now?"

"I think so," said Kaladin as Rock and Tesh let him sit up. Tesh reached down and pulled him to his feet. His head ached, and he breathed in, trying to clear it.

The pain faded. Tesh's face twitched, and Kaladin realized he must have drawn in some of that strange, orange light from the man's sphere pouch.

"Sorry," he said.

Tesh shook his head, as if to say, No harm done.

"What is it you dreamed?" asked Rock

Kaladin hesitated, but these men knew he was apparently a Knight Radiant and so far had told no one. He could trust them with a strange dream. "I dreamed that I was the highstorm," he said. "I saw all of Roshar, going east to west. I saw cities like nothing I've ever seen before. I think I might have even seen the Assassin in White."

"What cities did you see?" Sigzil asked from a nearby bunk.

"Probably nothing real," said Teft.

"Which is why it's worth checking," Sigzil said dryly.

"I saw…" Kaladin thought back. "There was a city built into troughs in the ground, concentric rings with spiraling cuts connecting them."

Sigzil's face visibly tensed. "Sesemalex Dar," he said. "What else?"

Kaladin swallowed. "There was a city in the far west built around four peaks. It was laid out like a triangle, with one peak at each corner and one at the center."

"Rall Elorim, the City of Shadows."

"That's where the Assassin in White was," Kaladin remembered. "He had just killed two people in a building on the central peak. A palace, maybe."

"Wait," Teft said. "You've never heard those places described before?"

"Never," Kaladin confirmed. "Not that I recall, anyway."

"It is possible that you have consciously forgotten something you once heard," Sigzil said. "My master taught me to be wary of memory. It is so often inaccurate. But this seems… too much to be coincidence."

"There was a voice, too," said Kaladin. "At the end of the dream, it plucked me out of the storm. It called me a 'son of Tanavast,' and said that I smelled of invention."

Sigzil frowned. "Invention…" he mused. "I think I have heard that word before. Used as a specific name, not the generic term. But I can't recall where."

"In one of your travels, maybe?" Rock asked. "Your kind travel far."

"My kind?" Sigzil asked. "The Azish?"

"Not your race, your trade," Rock laughed. "The Worldsingers."

Sigzil's expression froze. Then, stiffly, he stood and walked out of the barrack.

Rock blinked after him. "Now why is he so upset?" he asked. "I am not ashamed of being cook. Why is he ashamed of being Worldsinger?"

"Worldsinger?" Kaladin asked.

Rock shrugged. "Is strange people. They travel to each kingdom and tell the people there of other kingdoms. They think this thing is important, but I do not know why."

"Hey, what'd you do to Sigzil?" Dunny asked, joining them. He was probably the youngest of the bridgeman, with an infectious cheer that always lifted the spirits of the rest of the crew. "He promised to tell me about my homeland after the storm, but now he's all grumpy."

"Your homeland?" Murk asked. "I thought you told me you were from the Roion highprincedom."

"Sigzil said my violet eyes aren't native to Alethkar," said Dunny. "He said I must have Veden blood in me."

"Your eyes aren't violet," said Moash from his bunk.

"Sure they are," said Dunny. "You can see it in direct sunlight. They're just really dark. Sort of like how Tesh's eyes look almost pale in the right lighting."

Tesh glanced at him, and Kaladin noticed that today was apparently not 'the right lighting.' Tesh's eyes were a dark slate-grey in the gloom of the barrack. The man must be in a dour mood, possibly because he'd been woken in the early morning and forced to hold down his bridgeleader for who knew how long.

"Ha! If you are from Vedenar, we are like cousins!" Rock laughed. "The Peaks are near Vedenar. Sometimes the people there have our hair!"

"Could be worse, Dunny," said Kaladin. "Someone could have mistaken your eyes for red and called you a Voidbringer. Rock, Murk, Teft, Moash, get your subsquads together. I want the men oiling their vests and sandals."

The men nearest him sighed, but all got to work. In the after-storm damp, oiling the leather gear was the only way to prevent the hogshide from rotting after a few months, and the metal buckles would rust far faster. Most bridgemen typically did not live that long, but their leathers were reused. The army provided the oil so that new, expensive leather wouldn't need to be bought.

About an hour into the morning chores, Kaladin saw a line of wretches being herded into the lumberyard. It was Chachel, the third day of the week, and the day in which new wares were displayed in the slave markets. It was thus also the day that the bridge crews had their numbers replenished.

Kaladin beckoned to Tesh, and together the two of them crossed the yard to meet Gaz.

The bridge sergeant saw them approaching. "Now, I know you'll probably yell at me anyway," Gaz said, "but I really can't change anything here."

"You're bridge sergeant," said Kaladin dryly.

"Yeah, but I don't make assignments anymore. Brighness Hashal does it herself. In her husband's name, of course."

"So we get nothing."

"Didn't say that," Gaz said. "She gave you one."

"Which?" Kaladin asked, looking over the men. There had to be nearly a hundred. "He'd better not be an invalid, or too short to carry the bridge."

"Oh, he's plenty tall," Gaz said. "Good worker, too, by all accounts." He gestured at the other slaves, who parted to reveal…

"A parshman?" Kaladin asked incredulously.

The parshman had been looking eastward towards the horizon, but at the exclamation, he turned and met Kaladin's eyes. His were black, and his round, hairless head was marbled in symmetric red and black. His face was completely expressionless.

"Why not?" Gaz scoffed. "They're the perfect slaves. Never complain, never talk back. He's domesticated, or so I was told."

"I thought parshmen were too valuable to use in bridge runs," Kaladin said. And I assumed that Sadeas wasn't sure they'd be tempting enough targets for the Parshendi archers.

"Just an experiment, lordling," Gaz said. "Brightness Hashal wants to know her options. Finding enough bridgemen has been difficult lately. Parshmen could help fill in holes."

"Right," said Kaladin, rolling his eyes. "How long you think until she manages to grind Bridge Four into the ground?"

"I give you a few weeks," Gaz said. "Maybe even a couple months. You are good at keeping your crew alive, lordling, I have to give you that."

It was perhaps the most sincere thing Gaz had ever said to him. Kaladin sighed. "We'll see if I'm good enough," he said. "You, parshman—come with me."

The parshman followed him and Tesh back towards the Bridge Four barrack. They were greeted by Kaladin's four subsquad-leaders—Murk, Rock, Moash, and Teft.

"What on Roshar?" Teft asked, staring past Kaladin at their newest crewmate. "What are they playing at?"

"An experiment, according to Gaz, and I believe him," said Kaladin. "Either we find out parshmen can be trusted to run bridges, or he snaps and tries to kill us. Either way, Hashal gets what she wants."

"Pailiah's safehand fingernails," Murk cursed—although, with how imaginative his curses could be, the word blasphemed might be more accurate. "That woman will see us all dead, Kaladin."

"That's her goal," said Kaladin. "But we're not quite doomed yet."

"No," Moash agreed, looking speculatively at the parshman. "We could get him to run out in front of the bridge, take an arrow for one of us. Turn things to our advantage.

Turn a liability into an advantage whenever you can. Kaladin had first heard those words spoken by the man who had sent his brother out to die. As they echoed in his head, Syl alighted on his shoulder, finally returning from her jaunt on the winds. She was looking at the parshman, a strange grief on her face.

Storm it. "No, Moash," Kaladin said. "He's one of us now. I don't care what he was before. I don't care what any of you were. We're Bridge Four, and so is he."

"But he's a parshman," Moash protested.

"And you're a darkeyes!" Kaladin snapped back. "You think the lighteyes don't talk about us the same way? You think it's right for you to do it to him, but it's wrong when they do it to us?"

Moash grimaced, but gave no further argument. Kaladin turned to the parshman. "You have a name?"

The parshman shook his head.

That's two members of the crew I've had to come up with names for, Kaladin thought wryly. "Well, we'll have to call you something. How about Shen?"

The newly-named Shen shrugged, which was about the same response Tesh had given on that first evening.

"All right," Kaladin said, turning back to the others. "This is Shen. He's one of us now."

"I don't like it, Kaladin," Teft said. "I've never liked the parshmen. They make me uncomfortable. Especially down here."

"If we rejected people from the bridge crews because they made the rest of us uncomfortable, Teft, we'd have had to kick you out long ago."

Teft snorted in laughter, suddenly smiling. "Fair enough. But I'll be keeping an eye on our friend 'Shen.'"

"Feel free," said Kaladin. "Rock, find him a vest and sandals. He's in your subsquad."

Rock nodded, beckoning to Shen. The parshman followed him into the barrack.

"The rest of you," Kaladin said, looking at the other four men. "Make sure the men take care of their equipment."

"What will you be doing?" Moash asked.

"I'm going to take a walk," said Kaladin. "I'll be back in an hour or so. I need to think."

"Hold a moment, Kaladin," said Teft, nudging Tesh. The silent man nodded, holding out his sphere pouch to Kaladin.

By now, all four of Kaladin's subsquad leaders had seen Tesh's strange orange spheres. Other than them, however, no one was told. Kaladin didn't mind the rest of the crew knowing about his apparently being a Knight Radiant, but Tesh's strange orange Stormlight was his secret, not Kaladin's. For as long as he seemed to want it kept secret, Kaladin was happy to oblige him.

Teft had taken a keener interest in the matter than the others. He had suggested that Kaladin and Tesh rotate their spheres between each other, so that Kaladin would always have infused spheres, and Tesh would have dun.

It was a good suggestion. So, with a sigh, Kaladin took Tesh's pouch and handed his own over. "I doubt I'll get into any fights in the warcamp," he told Teft. "I'm not that stupid."

"You never know for sure," Teft warned. "Always be ready, lad. It may not matter today, but one day, carrying those spheres may well save your life."

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About an hour later, Kaladin had still not returned to his crew. He strolled through the warcamp, deep in thought.

He had promised to try and train the bridgemen, and he intended to do so. But that would take time they did not have. Shen's arrival showed that Hashal was not content to wait for the natural course of the bridge runs to kill him and his men—which, given that her predecessor had apparently been killed for Kaladin's mistake, made a fair amount of sense.

But he had seen the plains in his vision. The east side had chasms so wide that they eventually melted directly into the Unclaimed Hills. It was an awful, inhospitable part of Roshar—but, if Kaladin's vision was to be believed, it might be their best option.

"You seem troubled, Kaladin," Syl said, coming to a stop directly in front of him. She had spent much of the walk darting hither and thither in front of him, dancing between market stalls, making faces invisibly at passing soldiers.

"I am," Kaladin said.

"What about?"

"Getting the bridgemen free is going to be more difficult than any of my previous escape attempts as a slave. And I failed in all of those."

"It will be different this time," Syl said confidently. "I can feel it. You've said the Words now."

The Words. "You said you didn't remember those," he said. "The—the other spren woman, she knew them. What was she?"

"An inkspren," said Syl. "I don't think her kind like mine very much."

"What, windspren?"

"No," said Syl. "Honorspren. I remembered it after you said the First Ideal. It's… hard, Kaladin, sometimes. My head feels fuzzy a lot of the time, like I'm trying to think through water. That doesn't make any sense, does it?"

"No," Kaladin admitted.

"Well, it's true. It's like my thoughts are heavy, and I keep dropping them. But saying the Words was like opening a gate, or like lifting off a weight. Everything's a little clearer now. And I remember a little more. Not much, but a little. I remember noticing you from a long way off, and sneaking off to find you even when everyone else thought I was crazy to do it. But I don't remember where that was or why they thought that."

Kaladin considered that. "There are more of those ideals," he said.

"There are," Syl confirmed. "I don't remember what they were, but I think that's less because I'm still too dumb to remember them and more because they're different for everyone. Your Second Ideal is going to be a little different from someone else's. I think." She paused. "Or maybe the Second Ideal is specific to the Order? Either way, I don't think I'm supposed to remember the other Ideals. Only you can figure out what the oaths are."

"Oaths?"

"Speak again the ancient oaths," Syl recited, and Kaladin remembered the strange woman—the inkspren—intoning the very same words into the rising wind. "The oaths deepen the bond between a Radiant and their spren. They let me give you power, and they make it easier for me to think."

Kaladin frowned. "But—if you need Radiants to be able to think, how were you able to come and find me? And how are there more honorspren out there if there haven't been any Radiants in two thousand years? Are they all just acting like windspren?"

"No…" Syl said slowly. "No, we can think fine. We just can't think fine here."

"In Alethkar?"

"On Roshar. I think I'm from… somewhere else."

Kaladin glanced at her. "The Tranquiline Halls?"

"I don't think so. But I can't remember."

That was frustrating. But as he looked at her face, her downcast eyes, he realized it must be even more frustrating for her.

Still, if her memories were starting to return…

"Syl," he began, struck by an impulse, but before he could ask his question Syl cut him off.

"Kaladin, I'm worried about Tesh." Then she blinked. "Oh, sorry, what were you saying?"

"It's nothing," Kaladin said. "What worries you? I think he's improving. Still not speaking, but he seems happier."

"I… that's true. And I'm happy for him. Really!" She looked reluctant. "I'm not worried for him. I'm… worried about him. I know it's Tesh, and I appreciate everything he's done for you. I don't like being suspicious. But that inkspren came from somewhere."

"You think she's tied to him?" Kaladin asked. "Like you are to me?"

"I think she has to be connected to someone. And I can't think of anyone else it might be. But even an inkspren shouldn't give him the abilities he apparently has. That orange Light he makes… Kaladin, no human should be able to make Light. Even spren can't make Light, besides the Stormfather."

Kaladin frowned. That felt somewhat dogmatic—Tesh was odd, yes, but so was Kaladin. If having strange abilities were cause for concern, then Kaladin himself should have been right at the top of the watchlist. "Is it dangerous?"

"I… don't think so. You can use it, and it should work the same as Stormlight does when you do. But it's a bad sign. Even if the Light itself isn't dangerous, the fact that a man is creating it probably is."

"He seemed just as surprised as we were," Kaladin pointed out.

"That's true…" She didn't seem convinced.

"We'll keep our eyes open," Kaladin promised. "If I start feeling any odd effects from that orange Stormlight, I'll let you know. You keep an eye on Tesh and let me know if you see him doing anything concerning. But remember, he's our friend. He's one of my men. We can be careful, but we shouldn't be paranoid."

"Okay. Yes, we can be careful. Whatever this is, we'll get to the bottom of it." She looked encouraged. "Oh, you were going to say something, right?"

"Right, I had a question. There were three names I heard in my dream. Four, if invention counts. I wonder if you've heard any of them before."

"We can see if they jog any memories," Syl said. "Invention doesn't, unfortunately."

"That's fine. I'm not sure it was even a name." Kaladin thought back, remembering the woman's voice. "The first one is Tanavast."

Syl breathed in sharply. Her eyes widened. "I know that name," she whispered. "Where do I know that name from?" For a long moment, her face remained screwed up in concentration. Then, slowly, she said, "...I don't think that's the name I knew them by. I think I heard it once or twice, but I think whoever Tanavast is, I knew them by a different name. I can't… remember anything else. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. That's something, at least."

She didn't look like that was especially comforting. "You said there were three names?"

"The second was Cultivation."

Syl sighed happily. "I think she might be my mother," she said speculatively. "That's what it feels like, anyway." Then she frowned. "I also get the feeling that the other honorspren wouldn't like me putting it that way."

"Your mother?" Kaladin asked. "Spren have parents?"

"Not like humans do," Syl said. "Spren are little splinters of gods. I think Cultivation is one of the gods that spren are little bits of. But I don't think there's much of Cultivation in honorspren."

Gods? That sounded… "Not very good Vorin orthodoxy," Kaladin commented. "Teaching about gods other than the Almighty."

"Oh, I think the Almighty might be the other one," Syl said. "Or one of the other ones. I think there are only two, but there are also more."

"That makes even less sense than anything else you've said."

"I know," she complained, hanging her head. "I really can't remember much, Kaladin. Just impressions. I remember that I'm a little tiny piece of a god. I remember that Cultivation is that kind of god. I remember that there was one other. But I also remember that there were a lot more than one other. I realize that's a contradiction, but I don't know how it fits together. I'm sorry."

"Well, I'll have to figure out the next oath and we can see if you remember then," Kaladin said.

Syl smiled. "Yes, that might work," she said. "I don't think I ever had a Radiant before who swore past the Fourth Ideal at the latest, and I remember being a lot less… muzzy than I am now. I think my head was clearer most of the time, in the old days." She looked at Kaladin. "You said there were three names?"

"The last was Odium," said Kaladin.

Syl froze, her whole transparent body tensing. She hissed out a breath through her teeth. "I know that name," she said. "I don't think you should say it out loud, Kaladin. Not if you can avoid it."

"Why?"

"Because he might be able to hear," Syl said. "He probably can't, but you never know. He's the enemy, Kaladin. The god behind the Desolations."

Kaladin's footsteps stuttered to a stop. "The what?"

Syl nodded. "He's why we exist," she said. "Why spren started to make Radiants in the first place. It's all so that humanity would have a way to fight him. I remember that much."

Kaladin swallowed. "Cultivation said that—that he reigns."

"That's probably why I decided to come, then," Syl said. "I figured there had to be a reason. A reason why I'd decide to make a new bond now after two thousand years without Radiants. It's probably because of whatever Cultivation was talking about."

Kaladin swallowed. "Does that mean…" he whispered, suddenly keenly aware of how many people were walking down the streets around him. None were in earshot, but he was still unsettled. "Does that mean that a Desolation is coming?"

"I think it might," Syl said quietly.

 

[Lithos Maitreya]

Thanks to Elran and @BeaconHill for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.

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20

Desecration



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It reminded me of an immense, terrible spider.

-x-x-x-​

Sarus turned over a corpse dressed in a Kholin blue officer's uniform. The man's pale green eyes stared sightlessly up, his red officer's knots hardened by congealed blood from the arrow wound in his neck. Quickly, Sarus rifled through the man's pockets for spheres and valuables. Finding little, he picked up the man's side-sword and then returned to the pile of weapons the crew was accumulating.

Many of the men were drilling in spear forms with Teft in a nearby hollow. He could hear the commands to 'hold,' 'strike,' and 'parry' echoing through the chasm. Most of the remaining crew—Rock and Murk's subsquads, mostly—were searching for as many supplies as they could gather. They didn't need to gather as much plunder as the whole crew together could—they just needed enough to fool Hashal and Gaz. Since neither was particularly adept or at all familiar with the situation in the chasms, that was easier than it might have been.

Kaladin and Syl were scouting eastward. The armies had tried that, in the past, as a few questions to soldiers and merchants had revealed. But those men hadn't had an honorspren capable of flight, or a Knight Radiant who could use Stormlight to keep from tiring, to speed up their expeditions. It was still all too likely that any path eastward out of the chasms might be too long for them to manage without running afoul of highstorm or chasmfiend. But with Kaladin and Syl scouting, they would at least be able to make a guess as to how likely.

But with every passing rotation of chasm duty, the odds of escaping through the depths seemed to grow thinner. There was still no sign of an eastward exit. Even if they found one, it would almost certainly be too far to reach while carrying supplies, gear, and their injured companions, especially with chasmfiends on the hunt. It was looking increasingly likely that any attempt to flee the bridge crews would need to be made on the surface, through the Sadeas army's sentries.

Luckily, things were changing in the warcamp. A few short weeks ago, Kaladin had reported seeing Adolin Kholin in the Sadeas camp. Shortly afterward, the Kholin army had begun joining Sadeas on plateau assaults. Since that day, Kholin soldiers had been increasingly present throughout Sadeas' territory. Sarus hadn't yet figured out how to use that, but he suspected it would be possible. If he could distract a guard post by making them focus on the Kholins…

"Tesh," called a voice.

Sarus looked up. Kaladin had returned, and was beckoning him.

"I need a hand," said Kaladin in a low voice as Sarus approached. "And I can't risk Shen hearing."

Sarus cocked his head. Why?

"I've had an idea for how I can make the Parshendi archers focus on me instead of the others," Kaladin said. Two more men had died in the past two weeks—Idolir and Brils. Kaladin had taken each as a personal failure.

Sarus followed Kaladin towards a cluster of fallen Parshendi corpses. Then Kaladin picked up a shortspear and tossed another to Sarus.

"We're going to peel off their armor," he said. "Cut it away from them, then use it to make a suit for me."

Sarus blinked. Why would Kaladin want to armor himself? Then he realized, and his eyes widened.

Kaladin nodded. "You get it. I got the idea from how Shen reacted when we scavenged that bow from the Parshendi archers last week. I know the Parshendi are different from parshmen, but that's the one situation that makes even parshmen react strongly—interfering with their dead. I'm hoping the Parshendi will react similarly."

Focusing their fire on you and leaving the bridge crew alone. Sarus nodded appreciatively, kneeling beside the body. Clever.

"I've asked Lopen to gather any leather straps he can salvage from the soldiers' gear," Kaladin continued as they worked. "Then I'm hoping to piece together a suit for myself. It won't be much real protection, I expect, but it will be clearly visible. Hopefully, that'll be enough."

Sarus began to nod, already working to sever the carapace from a corpse. Then he froze, spear tip half wedged beneath the Parshendi's armor. With a quick motion, he reached out and seized Kaladin's forearm, stopping his efforts to pry the carapace free.

"What--?" Kaladin began, before looking at Sarus' expression. Then he heard it too.

There was a terrible grinding, scraping noise coming from down a nearby chasm. Sarus slowly turned his head. He could just barely see, down a long, straight chasm, a distant shape creeping along on the rock. It was larger than the chrysalises Sarus had seen on bridge runs—much larger. The size of a building, nearly as big as the forty-bed barracks where all of Bridge Four slept.

But it didn't come in their direction. Sarus saw it turn down another chasm. Painfully slowly, the echoes of its passage grew quieter, more distant.

Kaladin let out a breath. "I heard another one while I was scouting," he said. "That's why I came back. We'll never make it out this way, Tesh. Even if we held out for a break in the storms that lasted two or more weeks, there are too many chasmfiends down here. We'd never make it that far."

Sarus nodded grimly. He'd suspected as much.

"So our best chance," Kaladin said, returning to his work, "is to get the men trained with the spear, then break through one of the guard posts under cover of night. Head south, away from Alethkar. But the men need time to train, and that means I have to find a way to give them that time."

Sarus let out a breath, then continued peeling back the Parshendi's carapace. Kaladin was right.

"I'm going to need Stormlight," Kaladin said. "Your spheres are still getting infused?"

Sarus nodded.

"Good. That's going to be a necessary part of this. I can't pull the Parshendi fire if I get killed the first time I try."

"Hey, gon!" Lopen's voice came from nearby. The Herdazian rounded a corner, laden with strips of leather under his remaining arm and a coil of rope over his shoulder. "Found what you were looking for."

"Keep your voice down," ordered Kaladin, taking both leather and rope from him. "There's a chasmfiend just a few plateaus over. We heard it."

Lopen paled. "Sure, I'll keep it down," he said, a little shrill. "Quiet as a flamespren in a blizzard, that's me."

They soon scavenged enough carapace to construct a workable suit of armor. Workable in the loosest sense, at least—it was little more than pauldrons, a breastplate, and a makeshift shield. It would provide far less protection than anything made by a professional, but it was recognizable as Parshendi plate, and that was all they needed.

"But gancho, how are we going to get this out of the chasm, anyway? I doubt the guards will let you keep it, even assuming Shen does." Lopen gestured upward, pointing at a permanent bridge which cast a shadow over the chasm floor. "Sure, we could tie it to an arrow and have Rock shoot it at the bridge, but I'm pretty sure it's a bit heavier than the sphere we found last time."

A little over a week ago, they had found an incredibly valuable emerald broam in the chasms. In order to get it out, they had tied it to an arrow and Rock had demonstrated skill with a bow in firing it into a bridge above. But that wouldn't work with something as bulky as this carapace.

"That definitely won't work," Kaladin agreed as he piled the armor into a sack. "But I have an idea. Help me find rocks, both of you—about the size of a fist."

What are you planning? Sarus wondered, even as he started searching. It wasn't hard to find stones of roughly the right size, and soon they had gathered a small pile in the middle of the chasm floor. Kaladin scooped them into a sack, then tied it to his belt. He took a long rope from Lopen and wound one end of it around his arm.

Then he took a deep breath. On Sarus' shoulder, too small to be seen, Archive breathed in sharply—a sure sign that the man was breathing in Sarus' orange Stormlight. Even if he hadn't heard her, it would be obvious from the way orange light began wafting from Kaladin's skin.

Kaladin ran his hand along one side of a stone. Where his fingers passed, the light seemed to adhere to the surface. Then he held it up and pressed it against the wall. He let go, and it hung there, stuck fast to the side of the chasm.

Kaladin grinned in satisfaction. He took out another stone, then affixed it a little higher up. One after another, he created handholds for himself as he climbed up the chasm wall. By the time he was about halfway up, the lower handholds were falling to the ground behind him, but he reached the bridge before he ran out of places to grip.

Kaladin tied the rope around his arm to one of the bridge's supports, a wooden strut connected to the side of the chasm. He caught hold of the short end of the rope past the knot, then looked back down and called out. "Tesh, pull this tight."

Sarus nodded, understanding. He grabbed the trailing rope and pulled hard. The knot held against him.

It also held Kaladin's weight when he leapt from his perch, swinging free. He paused there a moment, still streaming Stormlight in a cold mist all around him. "Okay," he said. "Now tie the armor to the other end of the rope.

"He is resourceful," Archive commented. Sarus tied a knot around the sack, pulling it tight so that it would remain closed when Kaladin pulled it up.

He did just that, gripping the rope with his legs and pulling the length below him up towards the bridge. He tied it to the underside of the bridge, near the railing, where a man could stretch out over the side and grab it from above. He looked down, then back up at the knot holding him. Sarus heard him speaking quietly to Syl, too softly to be audible from the chasm floor. He was still for a moment, then moved sharply, as if afraid of losing his nerve. Sarus' eyes widened as he slashed at the rope above him with his knife. It snapped, and he fell. Sarus moved to catch him, but then stopped as he saw Kaladin twisting in midair. Orange light poured from him, streaking behind him like the tail of a comet in the night sky. Kaladin set his feet facing the ground just before he struck the chasm floor. A burst of mist escaped him, and frost crept along the floor beneath his sandals.

Kaladin let out a grunt at the impact, his knees bending to absorb the shock. Then he stood up as easily as if he had fallen no more than five or six feet.

"Storms! Teft said you could do strange things with Stormlight, gon," said Lopen faintly. "But seeing it…"

Kaladin smiled. "I'm still learning how it works, but I think it might come in useful. Still—keep it quiet. The men can know, but no one outside Bridge Four." He pointed up at the sack, now suspended high above them. "You think you can get that on our next run, Lopen?"

"Sure," Lopen said. "Nobody will see. I'm easy to ignore."

"Good. Let's see how the men are doing in their drills."

-x-x-x-​

They had an opportunity to make use of Kaladin's new carapace armor just a few short days later. When the horns rang out to call the crew to another bridge run, Kaladin pointed to Lopen. "Bring a bigger sack than usual for the waterskins," he ordered. "Something that'll hold the water and the… gear we prepared."

Lopen nodded and dashed into the barrack. The rest of the crew formed up by the bridge. Kaladin took his place beside Sarus. The two of them didn't bother to rotate when the rest of the crew did. No one complained—if they were going to run at and immediately beside the deathpoint on every single run, they earned the right to see where they were going on the long march.

"Here's hoping this works," Kaladin muttered.

Sarus nodded.

"It will," said Syl, flitting about their heads. "It's a good idea, Kaladin. I didn't like it when you came up with it, but it does make sense. And it'll help you protect the crew."

"I hope so."

They raised the bridge and began to run. Sarus knew the moment they crossed the bridge with the armor tied beneath it—not because the sack dangling below was visible, but simply because his mental map of the chasms and bridges near the warcamps was extremely well-developed after so long.

It had the added benefit of being one of the bridges closest to the warcamp, which meant they were nearly guaranteed to cross it. Unfortunately, that meant Lopen would have a great distance to run to catch up with them, laden with both armor and water.

Lopen alone could not carry water enough for the entire crew, so another man always went with him. That role, like every position beneath the bridge itself, was on the rotation for the crew. It was the most coveted position by far, because it meant the lucky man didn't need to carry the bridge or expose himself to the Parshendi arrows on that run. Today, it was Treff.

Lopen and Treff caught up with them a few minutes after they pushed the bridge across the first chasm. They distributed the water, and Kaladin took the opportunity to reach inside the sack and verify that the armor was still in one piece. By the look of dark satisfaction on his face, Sarus guessed that it was.

As the bridgeleader pulled back from the sack, Sarus saw Shen looking down at it. There was a complicated expression on his face—subtle, difficult to distinguish from his usual blankness, but Sarus could see it clearly. His eyes were sad and horrified as he gazed on the defiled carapace. Sarus even saw his hands shaking slightly.

Sarus suddenly imagined the Parshendi wearing human skin and bones into battle. He imagined a helmet made of half a ribcage on the head of an archer aiming at him as he ran across the final plateau. Was that how it felt to Shen to see them using the carapace of the Parshendi this way?

On an impulse, Sarus reached out and caught Shen's shoulder. The parshman looked up and met his eyes. They stood there for a moment, perfectly silent while the men chatted around them, a half-full waterskin in each of their hands.

Then Shen nodded once. It was not the slow, ponderous movement that Sarus had grown accustomed to. It was sharp. Almost military.

And, quite suddenly, Sarus understood.

You shouldn't be here, he thought, studying the man. His red brow was marbled with patterns of black creeping up from his cheeks, and his black eyes seemed suddenly deep and alien in the sunlight. You should be the servant of some highly-placed lighteyes. You were, weren't you? But somewhere you slipped up, you unsettled someone, and they sent you here to die. You're not a parshman at all, are you?

The Alethi had assumed that the Parshendi looked different from the parshmen they kept as slaves because they always had. Sarus still remembered those first days after the expedition had encountered them in the deep south. They had been described as having strange, alien forms, often as radically different from one another as from the humans. He remembered the chatter in the warcamp during the first year of the war, as men wondered where the strange carapace armor had come from—armor which they had never seen on the Parshendi until they were in battle. Armor which the Parshendi could apparently grow from their bodies.

If the Parshendi could grow armor some of the time, could take different shapes when they were called for… who was to say they could not take the shape of a parshman?

Shen's eyes narrowed. Sarus had been staring at him for a while. He must be making the man—the Parshendi infiltrator—nervous. But there was no need for Shen to worry.

Sarus grinned, baring teeth. Shen blinked. Now he knew what to look for, Sarus saw him cycling through a dozen different expressions. Then he smiled back—a small, hesitant expression, but there nonetheless.

What loyalty did Sarus owe Alethkar anymore, after all?

The final soldiers crossed the bridge. Sarus and Shen joined the rest of the crew as they dashed across, pulled it behind them, and continued the run.

At the penultimate crossing before the assault, Kaladin reached into the sack, using the rest of the crew to hide him from the army. He pulled out the armor and put it on. Sarus saw Shen wince and turn his eyes away.

"I'll run alongside the bridge," Kaladin said quietly to Sarus. "You mind taking my spot in the deathpoint?"

Sarus shook his head.

"I appreciate it," Kaladin said. "With luck, they won't be shooting at you anyway."

They crossed, lifted the bridge, and began the final run. The Parshendi had already prepared a firing line, and as they drew nearer, Sarus saw them drawing back bowstrings. Then, just before they fired, Kaladin ducked, taking his hands from the bridge and sprinting ahead. Sarus heard Brightlord Matal, Hashal's husband and the official overseer of the bridge crews, screaming in shock and panic.

But he could do nothing to stop Kaladin now.

Sarus saw the Parshendi within sighting distance of Bridge Four lower their bows. It was too far to see their expressions, but he could imagine their fury. He had seen a pale echo of it on Shen's face less than an hour ago. Then, nearly every archer in the Parshendi line—all those, at least, within range—turned and fired on Kaladin instead of the bridges.

From her perch among the handholds of the bridge, Archive gasped. Sarus couldn't see it in the bright daylight, but he knew Kaladin must have started streaming orange light. The man moved, sharp and erratic, dodging between arrows and ducking beneath the rain of death. Not a single arrow was fired on Bridge Four. Few were fired at any of the nearby bridges. Sarus saw that the bridges most distant from Kaladin were still taking fire, whether because the archers there had not noticed Kaladin or because they could not hope to hit him at that range.

Kaladin ducked behind an outcrop, then emerged again, zig-zagging wildly. He took hits—Sarus saw an arrow slice across his arm, and another impact his leg. But he kept running. In the bright, early afternoon light, Sarus couldn't see the orange Stormlight knitting his wounds closed, but he knew it must be happening.

Then Sarus saw Kaladin raise his shield towards another volley. It was subtle, but unmistakable to Sarus' eyes, as several arrows curved in mid-flight, striking Kaladin's shield instead of sailing past it and into its bearer.

Kaladin's motions, dancing between the arrows, had slowed him. The bridges soon caught up. Without so much as a word exchanged between crews, they parted around him like a river around a boulder, leaving him to absorb the fire while they placed their bridges. As soon as that was done, the army rushed in behind them. Once the battle joined, the archers had to focus elsewhere, and Kaladin was able to return to the crew.

"You storming idiot!" Moash shouted as he arrived. "What was that? What were you thinking?"

Kaladin smiled tiredly. Then he caught Sarus' eye and gestured to his pouch. Sarus shook his head to confirm that the Stormlight rising from him had not been visible.

"Talenelat's blood-soaked smallclothes," muttered Murk in awe, pawing at the arrow holes in Kaladin's vest. There were two shafts still dangling from it.

Kaladin breathed heavily. Then a thought seemed to occur to him, and he turned to face the direction from which they had come—the direction of the army's rear officers. "Fall into line, men," he ordered.

They did so, quickly forming ranks behind him. Sarus realized why at once. Brightlord Matal was standing beside their bridge, looking very nearly terrified. And towards him was riding a familiar man in blood-red Shardplate.

—smoke slipping through his shaking fingers—

Sarus shook off the memory as Kaladin began to jog over in the direction of the two lighteyes. Sarus reluctantly joined the rest of the crew as they followed him.

They arrived just a moment after Sadeas did. Matal bowed, followed by Kaladin and the bridge crew.

Sarus did not, at least for a moment. He saw Sadeas meet his eyes. Then, just before the highprince could say anything, Sarus forced himself to stoop before him, feeling hate, grief, rage, and old fear roiling within his belly like boiling water in a cauldron.

"Avarak Matal," said Sadeas. Kaladin stood up straight again. Sarus gratefully followed suit with the rest of the crew. Highprince Sadeas was no longer looking at him, focused instead on Kaladin. "This man looks familiar."

"He is the one from several weeks ago, Brightlord," said Matal, voice slightly higher than normal. "The one who…"

"Ah, yes. The 'miracle.' And you sent him forward as a decoy like that? I would think that you would be… hesitant to dare such measures, after what happened to your predecessor when this man took unusual actions."

"I take full responsibility, Brightlord," said Matal, his face screwed up in resignation.

Sadeas looked past the bridge at the battle on the plateau across it. "Well, fortunately for you, it worked. Those savages almost ignored the bridges in favor of firing on one slave. I suppose I'll have to promote you now." He sighed. "All twenty bridges laid, with scarcely a casualty among the crews." He turned his head slightly, and Sarus met his eyes again. "It seems almost a shame."

Sarus gritted his teeth.

"Consider yourself commended," Sadeas said to Matal, then spurred his horse into motion, crossing the bridge and joining the battle.

The moment he was gone, Matal spun to face Kaladin, eyes wide with fury. "You could have gotten me executed!"

"But I got you promoted instead," said Kaladin. "You're welcome."

"You're welcome—" Matal spluttered. "I should see you strung up."

"You're welcome to try," said Kaladin. "It didn't work last time, and do you really want to give me a chance to survive another storm? Besides—from now on, Sadeas is going to expect me to be out there, distracting the archers. Good luck getting anyone else to try that."

Matal flushed in impotent rage. Without another word, he stalked off to another crew.

Kaladin slumped slightly in relief. As the men crowded around him, he turned and caught Sarus' arm.

"Thank you," he said quietly. "I know that must have been hard."

Sarus nodded once.

Kaladin studied him for a moment before turning to face Rock. "We should get the men—" he stopped, eyes widening, staring past Rock at the battle on the next plateau.

Sarus followed his gaze. A crew of Parshendi archers had broken from the battle. Seemingly heedless of the risk from behind, they were aiming directly for the crew. For Kaladin.

"Take cover!" Kaladin shouted, but even as he said it, Sarus knew it would be far too late.

Fortunately, they were not alone on the battlefield. The archers were interrupted in the act of drawing back their bowstrings by a squadron in Kholin blue. A single man in slate-grey Shardplate leapt nearly a dozen feet, bowling over two Parshendi to take a position on the edge of the plateau, between the archers and Bridge Four. He swung in wide arcs with a seven-foot Shardblade, leaving Parshendi corpses falling around him with eyes sputtering out like burning embers.

Highprince Dalinar Kholin, armed with the legendary sword Oathbringer, had come to the rescue of a crew of thirty-one slaves and unfortunates. The Parshendi scattered before him, directly into the blades and spears of his men.

As the Parshendi squadron routed, Dalinar turned to face the bridge crew. He raised Oathbringer in an unmistakable salute, then turned to rejoin the battle.

"Storms!" said Drehy. "That was him, wasn't it? Dalinar Kholin?"

Sarus nodded, but no one was watching him.

"Aye," said Teft, sounding awed. "The king's own uncle."

"He saved us!" Lopen crowed.

"Bah," said Moash. "He saw an opportunity to take out some undefended archers, and took it. Lighteyes don't care about us. Right, Kaladin?"

Sarus looked over at Kaladin. The man's face was vaguely confused. Then he turned, not towards the crew, but looking down the line of bridges.

"Who will care?" he whispered to himself, inaudible to the rest of the crew. Then he blinked and seemed to return to himself. "You're probably right, Moash," he said, "but even if it was just an opportunity taken, I'm not about to be outdone by a storming highprince." He turned to them, gesturing down the line of bridges before them. "There are still plenty of bridgemen from the other crews injured," he said. "Let's see what we can do for them."

 

[Lithos Maitreya]

Thanks to Elran and @BeaconHill for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.

-x-x-x-

21

The March of Progress



-x-x-x-​

Whatever this thing is, it is a threat to the whole cosmere. I see no indication that it intends to remain confined to Ashyn.

-x-x-x-​

"With every passing assault, he trusts me more," Torol said.

He and Ialai reclined together in the sitting room of their war palace. It was far humbler than Sadaras, back home—and far humbler than Torol could afford, in theory—but he couldn't be seen to have a grander palace than Elhokar, or even to be attempting to compete with him.

Still, despite the relatively small size—Torol couldn't justify more than half a dozen guest rooms and two extra halls—he was able to furnish it to a suitable level of comfort. He himself sat in a plush armchair, a small map of the Shattered Plains on a table by his left arm. Ialai lounged on a sofa on the other side of the room. The doors were closed, and though there were guards outside, Torol had made certain long ago that any room where he discussed business with Ialai was properly soundproofed. No one would hear anything short of a shout.

"Then do you think our window of opportunity has opened?" Ialai asked, brows furrowed thoughtfully over her shrewd eyes. "Will Dalinar question you if you suggest something that will leave him exposed?"

Torol hesitated, resting his head back against the cushion of his seat. "I'm not certain," he admitted. "Dalinar is… difficult to predict. He always was, but especially these days. Those blasted Codes have entirely rotted away any good Alethi sensibilities that remained to him, Ialai."

"Ironic," she mused, "that the ancient Alethi Codes of War should so heavily undermine modern Alethi customs."

"Culture, like every other measure of human achievement, is a march of progress," Torol said. "I don't think it's at all odd that the so-called 'wisdom' of the ancients should be more an impediment than an aid to us now."

"Hm." Ialai seemed unconvinced. Rather than argue, she returned to the topic at hand. "Do you think there will ever come a point where you can expect him to expose himself to a planned betrayal?" she asked. "If he's so unpredictable these days, we may have to trust at least something to luck, though we can mitigate the risks."

"I don't think I can afford to trust any part of this to luck," said Torol darkly. "If I don't remove Dalinar completely—if I even let one man escape whatever trap I set—I lose my grip on Elhokar entirely. There can be suspicion that I may have betrayed Dalinar, but there can never be proof. Proof would shatter Alethkar irrevocably."

"Not if we could rally the other highprinces behind us," Ialai pointed out. "We both know Elhokar is incompetent. Perhaps Gavilar did the hard work of unification, not for his son, but for us?"

"No. A kingdom founded by a dynasty that lasted only two generations, both of which were killed or deposed before their time? It's a foundation that can't stand, Ialai. It's like building a house on the windward side of a mountain—it'll crumble at the first storm."

Ialai let out a noise of derision. "Elhokar's rule is scarcely better. Even if we had to reconquer half the highprincedoms, it would be better than this."

"I don't believe that." I can't believe that. Not yet. "Elhokar has something going for him that we don't, after all."

Ialai shot him a questioning glance.

Torol smiled sadly. "A living heir."

Ialai's face fell. She looked away from him with a sigh. "I suppose that's true."

Torol's official heir, nowadays, was the son of Ialai's sister. Even if the boy were more than three years old, it was an incredibly tenuous link on which to hang a highprincedom; to dangle the hopes of an entire kingdom on such a thread would doom that kingdom to instability and failure.

Torol and Ialai had, of course, been trying to produce a new heir for years. Even before the rebellion, before Torol's world had come crashing about his ears, they had been trying to produce a male child so that they wouldn't have to trust the highprincedom to an unknown man who had the good fortune to marry their daughter.

They were now most of a dozen stillbirths and miscarriages deep, with Tailiah as their only success. It was looking increasingly like the unbroken line of Sadeas was doomed to end with Torol. Within the next few years, Ialai would cease being fertile entirely, and that would be that.

Certainly, Torol could take mistresses. It was even possible that one of the mistresses he'd had in his youth had actually borne him a child of which he had no knowledge. But such a thing had little appeal to him now. Young women could be beautiful, certainly, but the one time he had tried to lay with one in the past several years he had been unable to stop seeing what his daughter might have looked like, had she only had the time to grow a little older.

Besides, he loved Ialai. More than he would have thought possible, thirty years ago. And the idea of seeking to replace both her and their daughter made him want to retch. No—his legacy would not be in his children, or the continuation of his house. He would leave his immortal mark on the world in the kingdom he kept standing, even as its first king's family tried their very best to bungle it all away.

"Do you think you could manipulate Dalinar into suggesting something himself?" Ialai asked suddenly.

Torol raised an eyebrow, welcoming the change of topic. He had grieved his daughter many times. Right now, he had work to do. "How would you suggest I do that?"

Ialai tapped her lips with a finger, deep in thought. "He wants to change the course of the war. Eliminate a large force of Parshendi at once."

"Yes." Dalinar had expressed the need to do that several times since they had begun collaborating.

"What about the Tower?" Ialai suggested. "It's a very remote plateau, so to reach it in time for a battle would require Dalinar to use your bridges. His chull-pulled ones would never arrive in time. It's only accessible from two other plateaus, as I recall, even for the Parshendi's leaps, which would make it far easier to box them in. And the chasmfiends have planted their chrysalises on it many times already."

A slow smile crossed Torol's face. "You should have been born a man," he said. "But I am grateful every day that you were not, love. It's brilliant."

"A lesser woman might take offense to that," Ialai said.

"You," Torol said, grinning at her, "are not a lesser woman. There may not be another opportunity to assault the Tower for months, but there's no great rush. I'll keep an eye out for any other opportunities, but if an opportunity to assault the Tower appears, that will be our opening."

-x-x-x-​

The opportunity came far sooner than Torol had expected. Less than a month later, his sentries sounded the horns, and the runner gave the report he had waited for.

"A chasmfiend has surfaced on the Tower, Brightlord," reported a man in armor. Darkeyed, but relatively respectable. Third nahn, at the lowest.

"Excellent," said Torol, springing to his feet from the chair at his dining table. Anticipationspren sprung up around his feet like red ribbons spiraling in the faint breeze. "Have my horse readied as quickly as possible. I must go to the Kholin warcamp."

The runner saluted, then dashed off again.

Torol walked quickly to his armory, where his servants were already preparing his Plate. They helped him remove his fine outerwear, then slipped his arms into his padded doublet and clipped the red Plate to the arming points. He felt it the moment the suit of Shardplate closed around him—a surge of sudden strength, immediately noticeable, as the Stormlight in the gems powering the armor activated. The Plate transformed in an instant from a weight on his body into a source of strength.

As soon as it was done, he sped from the armory, barely holding himself back from breaking into a dead run. His horse was waiting for him outside the stable. It was not a Ryshadium, so he couldn't leap onto its back without risking injury to it. Instead, he carefully mounted, trying not to resent the delay too much.

The moment he was astride the beast, he spurred it onward, out of the warcamp and towards the one visible on the horizon where Dalinar would be mobilizing his forces.

A single shamespren danced on the wind beside him as he galloped along the plain. He forcibly tamped down on that traitorous part of his mind. It would be devastating if Dalinar or one of his advisors saw a shamespren flitting about now, with success so close Torol could practically taste it.

This is necessary, he told himself again. Your friend died years ago, and if he could see the man who has taken his place, he would give you his blessing. Dalinar knew that sacrifices would be necessary to preserve Alethkar.

He would forgive you. He will forgive you when you meet again in the Tranquiline Halls.

The shamespren faded away. For a moment, Torol thought he saw another spren, like a shadowy shape creeping along the rock face beside his horse, keeping pace with it. But when he turned his head, all he saw was the faint irregularities in the texture and color of the rock itself.

He reached the Kholin warcamp in under ten minutes. The sentries let him pass without so much as a hail—just further evidence that his gambit with Dalinar was paying off. The man, after more than a dozen joint assaults, trusted him implicitly. He had practically bared his back in preparation for Torol's knife.

"You should be with your forces, Sadeas." Dalinar greeted him, already clad in his unadorned Plate. Beside him, young Adolin was just finishing the final components of his own Kholin-blue armor. "The Tower is a distant plateau. Speed will be of the essence."

"Agreed," said Torol. "But we need to confer first, my friend."

"What about?"

"The Tower is more than just a distant plateau, Dalinar! You were the one who said we needed to find a way to trap a large force of Parshendi on a plateau." Dalinar had said that, much to Torol's delight. The moment he'd heard his former friend thinking aloud, he had known that if an assault on the Tower became an option, Dalinar would slide easily into his place. "The Tower is ideal. They always bring a large force there, and two sides are inaccessible even to them. We would only need to box them in on the north and west sides."

Torol didn't bother to hold in his delight when he saw Adolin nodding. "He's right, Father," said the young man. "If we can trap them there, hit them from both sides, it could mean a turning point in the war."

"My scribes estimate they can't have more than twenty or thirty thousand troops left in total," Torol said. That was also true, although their estimates were vague and unreliable at best. The expeditions into the Unclaimed Hills in the years before Gavilar's assassination had not given particularly exact estimates as to the Parshendi population. "The Parshendi will commit ten thousand to the Tower—they always do. If we can entrap and kill that entire force, it will cripple their ability to wage war on the Plains."

"This will work!" Adolin said, seeming to join in with Torol's excitement—albeit for a different reason. "It could be what you've been waiting for—a chance to deal enough damage to the Parshendi that they can't afford to keep fighting!"

"We need troops, Dalinar," Torol coaxed. "How many can you field, at maximum?"

"Eight thousand, perhaps, on such short notice." Dalinar seemed less excited at the prospect than Adolin, but not out of any hesitance. He seemed instead to be considering how to achieve the goal, not considering that Torol might have a different goal entirely.

Good. "I can deploy about seven thousand," said Torol. That was a decent ratio. He had hoped that his army would number about the same as Dalinar's on this final assault, just in case it came down to actual combat. But seven thousand wasn't much less than eight thousand, and if he could wipe out eight thousand Kholin soldiers in one move, it would cripple the rival highprincedom irrevocably.

The logic was the same as that for trapping the Parshendi. But Torol's gaze was longer than Dalinar's. Where Dalinar wanted to win a war in vengeance for the fallen king, Torol wanted to eliminate one of the largest threats to the stability of Alethkar. The Parshendi couldn't threaten the kingdom. Dalinar Kholin could.

"The Parshendi will reach the Tower first," Torol continued. "That's inevitable with a plateau that far out. But if we take all forty of my bridge crews, we can get both of our armies to them faster than ever before."

"I won't risk lives on your bridge crews, Sadeas," Dalinar said firmly. "I don't know that I can agree to a completely joint assault."

Thank the Almighty for that damn bridgeman and his tenacity, Torol thought. Never thought I'd be glad he failed to die. "I have a new way of using the bridgemen," he said aloud, keeping his tone dismissive. "Their casualties have dropped to nearly nothing."

"Really?" Dalinar sounded surprised—and intrigued. "Is it because of the armored bridgemen? What made you change?"

"Perhaps you've gotten through to me," Torol said. Or perhaps I've just been turning the liabilities that appear in my path into advantages. "Regardless, we can't afford to wait for your heavy bridges. Your army will never arrive in time. I can't risk engaging without you, not with the numbers they'll have. This is the best chance we'll get."

There was a moment's pause as Dalinar considered. Torol tried not to let his anxiety boil over, though he couldn't completely avoid drawing a few anticipationspren.

Then Dalinar nodded sharply. "Very well. Let's finish this. Adolin, send word to mobilize the Fourth through Eighth Divisions."

Torol smiled. "I'll go rejoin my men," he said. "This will work, Dalinar."

"I know," said Dalinar, determination writ in every line of his face. "We'll join you soon."

As Torol galloped back to his own warcamp, he finally released the iron grip on his emotions. Triumph flared, drawing a wave of passionspren like crystalline snowflakes. Blending with them were the white petals of shamespren.

I will miss you, Dalinar, Torol finally admitted to himself. I already do. But I swore to keep this kingdom together, and I can't do that with you. This is the march of progress, old friend, and today you will be trampled beneath it.