Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive, #4)

by Brandon Sanderson

feed on one’s own soul. The agent had noted that Nightblood worked like a larkin, the beasts that could feed on Investiture.

Odium has greatly expanded intelligence, he wrote. He can be in many places at once and can command the elements. But he feels the same way a man does. He can be tricked. And he seems to have a central … self, a core person.

No, the other one. The god. She touched three that I know. The child. The general. And you. The Old Magic … the Nightwatcher … I begin to wonder if it was all a cover, these many centuries. A way for her to secretly bring in people she wanted to touch. She has been playing a far more subtle game than Odium realized.

No. He is not everywhere. His power is, but he is not. There are limits, and his Voidspren eyes fear coming too close to a Bondsmith.

I will arrange for you to be given gemstones with two of my children inside, she said. Odium searches for them. He watches me, certain I will make a mistake and reveal my true intentions. We are Connected, so my children appearing will draw his attention. Good luck, human, when he does come. You are not protected from him as many on this world are. You have made deals that exempt you from such safety.

she’d always found it curious how others put their physical urges ahead of the more powerful emotions of bonding, relating, and engaging.

“A contract,” she said, turning from him and reading the paper. “For Dalinar’s contest with Odium.” Wit had undoubtedly sculpted each word with precision. “If Dalinar wins, Odium retreats to Damnation for a thousand years. If Odium wins, he must remain in the system, but gets Roshar to do with as he pleases. The monarchs will submit to his rule—as will the Radiants who follow Dalinar.” “Perfect,” Wit said. “Wouldn’t you say?” Jasnah sat back. “Perfect for you. If this is agreed to, you win no matter what. Odium remains contained in the Rosharan system either way.”

Long as a soulless star slumbers.” “A soulless star.” “Yes.” “Slumbers.” “As they do.”

“We’ll add a line to the contract,” Wit said, “naming me as a contractual liaison for Honor—whom Dalinar represents. This will protect me from Odium’s direct attacks for the life of the contract. He will have to abide by those terms, as they are part of the promise Rayse made by taking up the Shard of Odium. To fail that promise would give others an opening against him, and said failures have killed gods before. Odium

knows it. So do this, and I can help you openly. As myself.”

“And who is that, Wit?” she asked. “Who are you really?” “Someone,” he said, “who wisely turned down the power the others all took—and in so doing, gained freedoms they can never ag...

Some in the empire considered it a scandal that Dalinar, Jasnah, and Fen were always seated at the same height as the Prime, but Yanagawn had insisted.

“Pardon,” Noura said. “But haven’t we determined that the Heralds are all … insane?” It was hard for her to say; their religion viewed the Heralds as deities. The Makabaki people worshipped them, and not the Almighty.

“I would like you to do something for me. All of the great philosophical texts I’ve read have an undertext.” “Yes, about that…” He wasn’t the only man who had been shaken to discover that for centuries, the women in their lives had been leaving commentaries for one another. Something dictated by a man would often have his wife’s or scribe’s thoughts underneath, never shared aloud. An entire world, hidden from those who thought they were ruling it.

“I would like you to write the undertext for Oathbringer,” Dalinar said. “Openly. To be read and discovered by any who would like to read it.”

we’re revealing a new world, Jasnah, should we not do it together? Arguments and all? I feel like … like we are never going to agree on the details, you and I. This book though—it could show that we agree on the more important matters. After all, if an avowed atheist and a man starting his own religion can unite, then who can object that their personal differences are too large to surmount?” “That’s what you’re doing, then?” she asked. “Creating a religion?” “Revising the old one, at the very least,” Dalinar said. “When the full text of this is released … I suspect it will create a larger schism among Vorinism.”

“No enemy can kill Stormblessed,” Moash said. “He is a force like the storms, and you cannot kill the storms, Fused.” Raboniel handed Moash something. A small dagger. “You speak foolishness. A man is merely a man, no matter how skilled. That dagger can destroy his spren. Spread that sand, and it will turn faintly white when an invisible spren flies overhead. Use it to locate his honorspren, then strike at it, depriving him of power.”

Moash’s Shardblade met something in the air—a phantom spear shaft, barely coalescing between Teft’s hands—and stopped. It threw sparks, but it stopped. Teft gritted his teeth and held on as Moash finally showed an emotion. Surprise. He stumbled back, his eyes wide. Teft let go, and Phendorana appeared beside him on the ground, puffing from exertion. He felt sweat trickling down his brow. Manifesting her like that—even a little—had been like trying to push an axehound through a keyhole. He wasn’t certain he, or she, could do it a second time.

Dalinar said. When you infuse spheres. You can stop time. Slow it greatly, the Stormfather said, through Investiture and Connection to the Spiritual. But just briefly. Do it, Dalinar said. Give him more time.

But see, he can’t take our moments, our Connection, Kaladin. And those are things that really matter.”

“What have you done, Venli?” Leshwi said. “What have you done?” “I … I swore the First Ideal of the Radiants,” Venli said. “I’m sorry.” “Sorry…” Leshwi said. A joyspren burst around her, beautiful, like a blue storm. “Sorry? Venli, they’ve come back to us! They’ve forgiven us.”

Venli rushed over, and she was infused with the deep violet light of Voidlight. Far more so than an ordinary Regal. She glowed more, in fact, than a Fused. “What are you?” Rlain demanded. “A Radiant,” she said to Consolation. “Kind of. I can use Voidlight to power my abilities, so they work in the tower.”

The two snapped into harmony. The boundless energy of Cultivation, always growing and changing, and the calm solidity of Honor—organized, structured. They vibrated together. Structure and nature. Knowledge and wonder. Mixing.

The song of science itself.

The common ground, the Sibling said. Between humans and spren. That is … that is why I was created, so long ago.…

Navani, the Sibling said. I accept your Words. Power flooded Navani. Infused her, making her pain evaporate like water on a hotplate. Together, she and the Sibling created Light. The energy surged through her so fully, she felt it bursting from her eyes and mouth as she looked up at Moash and spoke. “Journey before destination, you bastard.”

“What is this?” Kaladin asked. Lirin remembered, with some embarrassment, what he’d finally let that one-armed fool Noril do to him. A painted shash glyph on Lirin’s forehead. “I figured,” Lirin said, “that if an entire tower was going to show faith in my son, I could maybe try to do the same. I’m sorry, son. For my part.” He reached up and brushed aside Kaladin’s hair to see the brand there. But as he did, he found scabs flaking away, the brands falling off to the stones below like a shell outgrown, discarded. Clean, smooth skin was left behind.

They were being watched—that cremling that harbored a Voidspren was following them along the wall.

“Are there any other spren like the one who bonded you? Would some want other willing singers? Someone like me?” “Yes,” Venli said to Mourning, “but I sent them away. The Fused would have seen them, hunted them.” She paused, then her rhythm changed to Confusion. “And Timbre says … she says you’re spoken for?” “What?” he said. “By that honorspren who said he’d take me? I turned him down. I…” The room went dark. Then it shone as crystals grew out from his feet like … like stained glass windows, covering the floor. They showed a figure rising in blue-glowing Shardplate, and a tower coming alight. Keep fighting, a voice said in his head. Salvation will be, Rlain, listener. Bridger of Minds. I have been sent to you by my mother, at the request of Renarin, Son of Thorns. I have watched you and seen your worthiness. Speak the Words, and do not despair.

“Answer me!” Szeth screamed. “Did you kill the man who held that Blade before you?” “Of course not, foolish man,” Ishar said, summoning his Blade. “The Shin serve the Heralds. They held my sword for me. They returned it when I revealed myself.”

As she began working, Navani noticed an oddity. What was that moving through the tower? Highmarshal Kaladin? Flying quickly, his powers restored, wrapped in spren as armor. He had achieved his Fourth Ideal.

Does this mean that true shardplate is made from each order's cousin spren? Like windspren for windruners? Their armor is made from a bunch of windspren.

The effects shouldn’t be permanent, the Stormfather said. But I cannot say for certain. Ishar Connected them to the ground. Essentially, their powers saw the stones as part of their body—and so tried to fill the ground with Stormlight as it fills their veins.

The powers of a Bondsmith are the powers of creation, the Stormfather said. The powers of gods, including the ability to link souls. Always before, Honor was here to guard this power, to limit it. It seems that Ishar knows how to make full use of his new freedom.

He cannot bear sole blame for the destruction of Ashyn, humankind’s first home, but he was the one Odium first tricked into experimenting with the Surges.

The Shardplate vanished off him and turned into a group of windspren, which soared over to Dabbid, who was about to take an axe to the head.

Another corpse—half revealed by a drawn-back sheet—was on the slab in front of Mela, though this one was far stranger. The elongated body had a black shell covering most of it, from neck to feet. That had been cut free to open up the chest. Dalinar couldn’t make sense of the shell. It looked like clothing, kind of, but was hard like singer carapace—and had apparently been attached to the skin. The head was a soggy mass of black flesh, soft like intestines, with no visible eyes or features. “What on Roshar…” Dalinar said. “The hands seem human, if too long, but the rest of it…” “I have no idea,” Mela said. She glanced away and shivered. “It’s not human, sir. I don’t know what it is.” In the back of Dalinar’s mind, the Stormfather rumbled. This … the spren said. This is not possible. What? Dalinar asked. That is a Cryptic, he said. The Lightweaver spren. Only they don’t have bodies in this realm. They can’t. “Sir,” Lyn said from a nearby slab. The corpse she’d uncovered was a pile of vines vaguely shaped like a person. Cultivationspren … the Stormfather said. Return to that first body you saw. NOW. Dalinar did not object and walked toward the front of the pavilion. What he’d first dismissed as an ordinary body now seemed anything but. The white-blue hair, the pieces of clothing that were—he now recognized—the exact same color as the body. The Stormfather’s thunder grew distant. I knew him, the Stormfather said. I could not see it at first. I did not want to see it. This is V...

“You were supposed to be my champion, Dalinar,” Odium said. “Now I see how you resisted me. You’ve been working with Ishar all along, haven’t you? Is that how you learned to bind the realms?”

Interesting that he doesn't know how Dalinar learned to unite the realms. Means he doesn't really see or know all.

All this time, he’d been asking what a god could possibly fear, but the answer was obvious. Odium feared men who would not obey him.

“Cephandrius,” Odium spat. “Ever the rat. No matter where I go, there he is, scratching in the wall. Burrowing into my strongholds. He could have been a god, yet he insists on living in the dirt.”

“By this, if my champion wins,” Odium said, “then Roshar is mine? Completely and utterly. And if yours wins, I withdraw for a millennium?” “Yes. But what if you break your word? You’ve delayed longer than you should have. What if you refuse to send a champion?” “I cannot break my word,” Odium said, the heat increasing. “I basically am incapable of it.” “Basically?” Dalinar pressed. “What happens, Odium, if you break your word.” “Then the contract is void, and I am in your power. Same, but reversed, if you break the contract. You would be in my power, and the restrictions Honor placed upon me—chaining me to the Rosharan system and preventing me from using my powers on most individuals—would be void. But that is not going to happen, and I am not going to break my word. Because if I did, it would create a hole in my soul—which would let Cultivation kill me.

“Why would I want to destroy you? I am your god, Dalinar.” Odium shook his head, staring into the infinite golden distance. “I need soldiers. For the true battle that is coming, not for one people or one miserable windswept continent. A battle of the gods. A battle for everything. “Roshar is a training ground. The time will come that I unleash you upon the others who are not nearly as well trained. Not nearly as hardened as I have made you.”

“You offer a mortal life for that of a god?” Odium demanded. “No, Dalinar. If I win, I want the Knights Radiant. The forces of Alethkar and Urithiru will surrender to my Fused, and your Radiants will end this war. The other foolish kingdoms of men can keep fighting if they wish, but your people and mine will begin preparing for the true war: the one that will begin when the gods of other worlds discover the strength of Surgebinding. Your heirs will be bound to this, as you are.”

want you, Dalinar.” “My life? Odium, I intend to be my own champion. I’ll have died if you win.” “Yes,” Odium said, eyes shining golden. “You will have. And you will give your soul to me. You, Dalinar, will join the Fused. You will become immortal, and will personally serve me. Bound by your oaths. You will be the one I send to the stars to serve my interests in the cosmere.”

That was Rayse, Taravangian’s predecessor, but Szeth wasn’t able to tell. The sword had consumed clothing and most of the flesh, leaving bits of stone-grey bone. They think that’s me, Taravangian thought, reading the possible futures. Szeth didn’t see what happened to me spiritually. He doesn’t know Odium was here.

She removed her hand and situated herself at the desk. Adolin fell silent, waiting and watching as Shallan lifted the top of Mraize’s cube. With help from Kelek, they’d gotten it open without harming the thing inside: a spren in the shape of a glowing ball of light, a strange symbol at the center. No one here recognized the variety of spren, but Wit called it a seon.

Thank you for this seon, by the way. Wit says that unbound ones are difficult to come by—but they make for extremely handy communication across realms.”

“Subject for what?” the Pursuer asked, reaching the window and looking out over Kholinar at night. “Oh, to see if this really works.” El raised the Voidlight sphere … and the Pursuer saw it was attached to a knife. Did the Light look wrong somehow? Warping the air around the gemstone? “I think this might hurt,” El said, then grabbed the Pursuer by the front of his beard. “Enjoy this final Passion, Defeated One.” He plunged the knife down as the Pursuer struggled. And his soul ripped itself apart.

Her own powers had been ruined by the water, naturally. She could barely feel any energy in her; it flooded out the moment it started to build.

What game do you play here? “A game of sense.” … What? “Sense, Odium. The only kind I have is nonsense. Well, and some cents, but cents are nonsense here too—so we can ignore them. Scents are mine aplenty, and you never cared for the ones I present. So instead, the sense that matters is the sense Dalinar sensibly sent you.”

Odium, the power said. Let me see … I cannot harm you. But here, you have used this other Investiture to store your memories, haven’t you? Because you’ve lived longer than a mortal should, you need to put the excess memories somewhere. I can’t see your mind, but I can see these, can’t I?