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September 3 - October 12, 2022
She looked down at what she had drawn. Two figures stood on the landing above, wearing the too-straight robes, like cloth made from metal. They leaned down, watching her go. She looked up again. The landing was empty. What’s happening to me?
She screamed then, jumping to her feet on her bed, dropping the pad, backing against the wall. Before she could consciously think of what she was doing, she was struggling with her sleeve, trying to get the Soulcaster out. It was the only thing she had resembling a weapon. No, that was stupid. She didn’t know how to use it. She was helpless. Except … Storms! she thought, frantic. I can’t use that. I promised myself. She began the process anyway. Ten heartbeats, to bring forth the fruit of her sin, the proceeds of her most horrific act.
If you were to overthrow the lighteyes and place yourselves in power, abuses would still happen. They’d just happen to other people.
“Regardless, he’s a battalionlord. If we kill an officer that high, we’re all but guaranteed to be in the next group sent to the Shattered Plains. We’re taking him. Imagine it, Dallet. Real soldiers. A warcamp with discipline and lighteyes with integrity. A place where our fighting will mean something.”
The Shardbearer broke out of Amaram’s lines. He’d been riding through them, cutting down men as he passed. For a brief moment, Kaladin’s mind refused to acknowledge that this creature—this beautiful divinity—could be an enemy. The fact that the Shardbearer had come through their side reinforced that illusion. Kaladin’s confusion lasted right up until the moment the Shardbearer trampled Cenn, Shardblade dropping and cutting through Dallet’s head in a single, easy stroke. “No!” Kaladin bellowed. “No!”
Cenn stopped wheezing. He convulsed once, eyes still open. “He watches!” the boy hissed. “The black piper in the night. He holds us in his palm … playing a tune that no man can hear!”
Kaladin stepped forward, dazed, raising his hand toward the hilt of the Blade. He hesitated just an inch away from it. Everything felt wrong. If he took that Blade, he’d become one of them. His eyes would even change, if the stories were right. Though the Blade glistened in the light, clean of the murders it had performed, for a moment it seemed red to him. Stained with Dallet’s blood. Toorim’s blood. The blood of the men who had been alive just moments before.
Spears were dangerous for him to hold. They made him want to fight, and might lead him to think he was who he’d once been: Kaladin Stormblessed, confident squadleader. He wasn’t that man any longer.
“A lot of soldiers,” Kaladin said, running his thumb across the pole, feeling the grain of the wood, “they think that you fight the best if you’re passionless and cold. I think that’s stormleavings. Yes, you need to be focused. Yes, emotions are dangerous. But if you don’t care about anything, what are you? An animal, driven only to kill. Our passion is what makes us human. We have to fight for a reason. So I say that it’s all right to care. We’ll talk about controlling your fear and anger, but remember this as the first lesson I taught you.”
“The bread was poisoned. Backbreaker powder. Very lethal, dusted over the bread to look like flour. I suspect the bread was similarly treated every time he visited. His goal was to get me to eat a piece.” “But I ate a lot of that bread!” “The jam had the antidote,” Jasnah said. “We found it in several empty jars he’d used.”
“You still haven’t answered my question. Why attack? It wasn’t for the Shardblade. You rejected that.”
“Why?” Amaram said. “Why did you reject it? I have to know.” “I don’t want it, sir.” “Yes, but why?” Because it would make me one of you. Because I can’t look at that weapon and not see the faces of the men its wielder slaughtered so offhandedly.
The others pulled out swords, then began moving toward the four remaining members of Kaladin’s squad.
Kaladin found himself weeping, struggling uselessly at the four men holding him. The blood of the fallen spearmen soaked the boards. They were dead. All of them were dead. Stormfather! All of them!
Amaram hesitated by the door, resting the blunt edge of the stolen Shardblade on his shoulder. The guilt was still there in his eyes, but he grew hard, covering it. “You are being discharged as a deserter and branded as a slave. But you are spared death by my mercy.” He opened the door and walked out. The branding iron fell, searing Kaladin’s fate into his skin. He let out a final, ragged scream.
I am sorry, he thought. Then he dashed in to start the slaughter.
Szeth found himself crying. His orders were simple. Kill. Kill as you have never killed before. Lay the innocent screaming at your feet and make the lighteyes weep. Do so wearing white, so all know who you are. Szeth did not object. It was not his place. He was Truthless. And he did as his masters demanded.
“Father,” Renarin said. “For the Old Magic to have affected you, you’d have had to travel to the West and seek it. Wouldn’t you?” “Yes,” he said, ashamed. The empty place in his memories where his wife had once existed had never seemed as obvious to him as it did at that moment.
“An excuse is what you make after the deed is done, while a justification is what you offer before.”
It was time to let the Blackthorn loose. Dalinar punched through the Parshendi ranks. He felled Parshendi like a man sweeping crumbs from the table after a meal. There was no controlled precision here, no careful engagement of a few squads with his honor guard at the back. This was a full-out attack, with all the power and deadly force of a life-long killer enhanced by Shards. He was like a tempest, slashing through legs, torsos, arms, necks, killing, killing, killing. He was a maelstrom of death and steel. Weapons bounced off his armor, leaving tiny cracks. He killed dozens, always moving,
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Did the Alethi notice? Probably not. But he could see that the Parshendi revered their dead—revered them to the extent that they would endanger the living to preserve the corpses of the fallen. Kaladin could use that. He would use that. Somehow.
“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon. Too often, we forget that.”
“It means taking responsibility,” Kaladin said. “The Uvara, they were happy to kill and murder, so long as they could blame the emperor. It wasn’t until they realized there was nobody to take the responsibility that they showed grief.”
no accomplishment has substance nearly as great as the road used to achieve it. We are not creatures of destinations. It is the journey that shapes us. Our callused feet, our backs strong from carrying the weight of our travels, our eyes open with the fresh delight of experiences lived.
For the substance of our existence is not in the achievement, but in the method.
Strength does not make one capable of rule; it makes one capable of service.”
But weakness can imitate strength if bound properly, just as cowardice can imitate heroism if given nowhere to flee.”
But here, Sadeas callously condemned thousands of men, lighteyed and dark. Supposed allies. That betrayal seemed to weigh as heavy on Kaladin as the bridge itself. It pressed on him, made him gasp for breath. Was there no hope for men? They killed those they should have loved. What good was it to fight, what good was it to win, if there was no difference between ally and enemy? What was victory? Meaningless. What did the deaths of Kaladin’s friends and colleagues mean? Nothing. The entire world was a pustule, sickeningly green and infested with corruption.
Kaladin screamed, reaching the end of the bridge. Finding a tiny surge of strength somewhere, he raised his spear and threw himself off the end of the wooden platform, launching into the air above the cavernous void.
“We didn’t destroy the Voidbringers,” Jasnah said from behind, her voice haunted. “We enslaved them.”
