Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive, #4)

by Brandon Sanderson

concentrationspren moved like ripples in the sky, and a few logicspren—like little stormclouds—hovered in the air.

The secret to making the Fourth Bridge fly—and to making this handheld device work—involved a rare metal called aluminum. It was what the Fused used for weapons that could block Shardblades, but the metal didn’t just interfere with Shardblades—it interfered with all kinds of Stormlight mechanics. Interactions with it during the expedition into Aimia earlier in the year had led Navani to order experiments, and Falilar himself had made the breakthrough.

The trick was to use a specific fabrial cage, made from aluminum, around the conjoined rubies. The details were complicated, but with the proper caging, an artifabrian could make a conjoined ruby ignore motion made by the other along specific vectors or planes. So, in application, the Fourth Bridge could use two different dummy ships to move. One to go up and down, the other to go laterally.

There were ways they could use this to directly translate Stormlight energy into mechanical energy.

Taravangian stepped close, and a part of Navani panicked. This man terrified her, she realized.

“I’ve been speaking with my spren, Your Majesty, and I might be able to offer a potential solution to this problem. I believe we should send an envoy to the honorspren.” Navani leaned forward in her seat. “What kind of envoy?” “The honorspren can be a … touchy group,” Sigzil explained. “Many are not as carefree as our initial interactions

with them led us to believe. Among spren, they are some of the closest in spirit and intent to the god Honor. While obviously individuals will vary in personality, there is a general feeling of discontent—well, insult—among them regarding humans.”

“So, you’re saying we need to repair relations,” Fen said, “for something that happened thousands of years ago?” “Your Majesty,” Sigzil said, “with respect, the Recreance is ancient history to us—but to the spren it was only a few generations ago. The honorspren are upset; they feel their trust was betrayed. In their eyes, we never addressed what we did to them. For lack of a better term, their honor was offended.”

“Can we send you, Radiant?” Fen asked Sigzil. “You seem to understand their mindset.” Sigzil grimaced. “That might be a bad idea. We Windrunners … we’re acting in defiance of honorspren law. We’d make the worst envoys, because of … well, they don’t much like Kaladin, to be honest. If one of us showed up at their fortress, they might try to arrest us.

He cocked his head, listening to something none of the rest of them could hear. “She thinks so, sir. It’s a good start, at least. She says to send gifts, and to ask for help. Honorspren have a difficult time turning away people in need. Apologize for the past, promise to do better, and explain how dire our situation is. That might work.” He paused. “It also wouldn’t hurt if the Stormfather were to speak on our behalf, sir.”

“I used to think these fabrials were terrible,” he eventually said, “replacing the life of a fire with something so … cold. Warm, yes, but cold. Strange, how quickly I’ve come

to enjoy them. No need to keep piling on logs. No worry about the flue clogging and smoke boiling out. It’s amazing how much removing a few background worries can free the mind.”

“I know,” Dalinar said, his eyes seeming to glow as he stared at the bright ruby in the hearth. “I won’t ever suffer that feeling again, Navani. That moment of standing on the Shattered Plains watching Sadeas retreat. Of knowing that my faith in someone—my stupid naivety—had doomed the lives of thousands of men. I won’t be Taravangian’s pawn.”

“When I … when I burned the Rift, I did it in anger. Children and innocents died because of my fury. I know that feeling; I could spot it. If Taravangian killed a child, he’d do it not for vengeance. Not for fury. Not for wealth or renown. But because he sincerely thought the child’s death was necessary.” “He would call it good, then?” “No. He would acknowledge it as evil, would say it stains his soul. He says … that’s the point of having a monarch. A man to wallow in blood, to be stained by it and destroyed by it, so that others might not suffer.”

In the dark room beyond, he slept. She didn’t need to come look to know that. She’d have felt if he’d woken. But … He has two brains too, she thought. A light brain and a dark brain. She wished she could understand him. He needed help. Maybe this new duty would be all he needed. She so profoundly hoped that it would. But she worried it wouldn’t be enough.

How had the first honorspren—or cultivationspren, or inkspren, or peakspren, or any of the other intelligent ones—been created? Had they been shaped from raw Investiture by Honor himself? Had they grown out of these, their cousins? She felt so much kinship with them, though they

were clearly different. Not as smart. Could she help them become smart?

Then blackness took her. A fuller blackness than the absence of light. It was the split moment that her father could create. Time was a funny thing. It was always flowing along in the background like a river, but bring too much power to bear, and it warped. It slowed; it wanted to pause and take a look. Anytime too much power—too much Investiture, too much self—congregated, realms became porous and time behaved oddly.

“Regardless, I need to understand him so I can help him,” Syl said. “Not because I’m going to be consumed by his desires, but because this is what I want to do. So I ask again. Will you make me capable of feeling what he does?” I CANNOT DO THIS THING, the Stormfather said. YOUR WISHES ARE NOT EVIL, SYLPHRENA, BUT THEY ARE DANGEROUS. “You cannot? Or you will not?” I HAVE THE POWER, BUT NOT THE ABILITY.

She needed to stay within a few miles of Kaladin, or her Connection to the Physical Realm would start to fade and her mind would weaken.

She made herself visible to Dalinar, but he didn’t jump as humans sometimes did when she appeared. She didn’t understand why they did that—weren’t they used to spren

fading in and out all the time around them? Humans were like storms, magnets for all kinds of spren.

“Your abilities are what made the original Oathpact,” she said. “And they existed—and were named—long before the Knights Radiant were founded. A Bondsmith Connected the Heralds to Braize, made them immortal, and locked our enemies away. A Bondsmith bound other Surges and brought humans to Roshar, fleeing their dying world. A Bondsmith created—or at least discovered—the Nahel bond: the ability of spren and humans to join together into something better. You Connect things, Dalinar. Realms. Ideas. People.”

Syl looked upward, along the tower’s pointing finger, raised toward the sky. “I … had another knight once. We came here to the tower, when it was alive—though I don’t fully remember what that meant. I lost memories during the … pain.” “What pain?” Dalinar asked. “What pain does a spren feel?” “He died. My knight, Relador. He went to fight, despite his age. He shouldn’t have, and when he was killed, it hurt. I felt alone. So alone that I started to drift…”

Dalinar nodded. “I suspect that Kaladin feels something similar, though from what I’ve been told about his ailment, it doesn’t have a specific cause. He will sometimes start to … drift, as you put it.” “The dark brain,” she said. “An apt designation.” Maybe I can already understand Kaladin, she thought. I had a dark brain of my own, for a while.

Sja-anat had been named Taker of Secrets long ago by a scholar no one remembered. She liked the name. It implied action. She didn’t simply hear secrets; she took them. She made them hers. And she kept them. From the other Unmade. From the Fused. From Odium himself.

Sometimes Fused, or even common singers, would notice her. They’d grow stiff, look over their shoulders. They’d glimpse a shadow, a brief darkness, quickly missed. Actually seeing her required reflected light.

Sja-anat did not consider herself the most clever of the Unmade. Certainly she was one of the more intelligent, but that was not the same. Some of the Unmade—such as Nergaoul, sometimes called the Thrill—were practically mindless, more like emotion spren. Others—such as Ba-Ado-Mishram, who had granted forms to the singers during the False Desolation—were crafty and conniving.

But she knew she was not as smart as Odium was. She could keep only a few secrets from him, and she had to choose carefully, clouding them behind other secrets that she gave away.

Sja-anat flowed into the hallway of the palace and met with two of her children, touched windspren. Humans called them “corrupted,” but she hated this term. She did not corrupt. She Enlightened them, showing them that a different path was possible. Did not the humans revere Transformation—the ability of all beings to become someone new, someone better—as a core ideal of their religion? Yet they grew angry when she let spren change?

Protect some children. Sacrifice others. A choice only a god could make. A god like Sja-anat.

She rose up, taking the form of a woman of streaming black smoke with pure white eyes. Shadows and mist, Odium’s pure essence. If he were to know the deepest secret parts of her soul, he would not be surprised. For she had come from him. Unmade by his hand.

You will not go to the tower, Odium said. He hated how she referred to the Sibling—the slumbering child of Honor and Cultivation—as her cousin. But we are about to make a ploy with the betrayal of the man Taravangian. You will watch him.

There was a weakness here. In the division between the Vessel and the Shard.

Later today, Taravangian would leave for Azir with Dalinar and Jasnah. Soon afterward, Taravangian’s armies—acting on Odium’s orders—would betray their allies and switch sides. It was a death sentence for Taravangian, who would be left surrounded by his enemies. He was bringing an army just the right size to put Dalinar and the other monarchs at ease: large enough to convince them Taravangian was committed, but small enough to leave them certain they could capture him in the event of a betrayal.

“I am a diversion,” Taravangian explained. “I must go with the expeditionary force into Emul. Then, when Jah Keved turns, the Blackthorn will be so focused on me and the immediate threat to his soldiers that he will miss whatever Odium will be attempting in the meantime.” “It can’t be important enough to risk you,” Mrall said.

Taravangian had his suspicions. Perhaps Odium’s ploy would be worth the cost, perhaps not. It didn’t matter. At the god’s orders, Taravangian had spent a year preparing Jah Keved to switch sides, promoting the people Odium wanted in place, moving troops into position. Now that he was done, Taravangian was useless. Worse, he was a potential weakness.

Taravangian looked back to Adrotagia and unfolded a piece of paper from his pocket. “For my daughter,” he said. “She will be queen of Kharbranth when this is through. Be certain she disavows me. This is the reason I’ve kept her clean. Guide her well, and do not trust Dova. Having met more of the other Heralds, I’m certain Battah is not as stable as she seems.”

He walked to the hearth and watched the dancing flamespren before dropping his copy of the Diagram into the fire.

She’d noticed the Alethi doing double takes—both for the variegated colors, and because she wore what was traditionally a man’s outfit.

But a warrior was who she was, and Jah Keved was her heritage. She would convey both.

“I couldn’t spot her Cryptic,” Radiant said as she walked away to inspect the others. “Mmm?” Pattern said, riding on her back, right below her collar. “Pattern? She usually rides on the inside of Beryl’s shirt, near her skin. Pattern doesn’t like to be seen.” “I’d prefer if you used the Cryptic’s other name,” Radiant said. “It’s confusing, otherwise.” After being pressured, each of the other Cryptics had picked individual names for the humans to use. “I don’t understand why,” he said. “Our names are already all different. I am Pattern. She is Pattern. Gaz has Pattern.” “Those … are the same words, Pattern.” “But they’re not,” he said. “Mmm. I could write the numbers for you.”

Beryl and Darcira already had their own spren—though they had yet to earn their swords. That meant they weren’t squires according to the Windrunner definition. Cryptics weren’t as uptight as honorspren, and didn’t wait as long to start bonds.

Shallan was the Master Lightweaver. The others were Agent Lightweavers. If someone new joined, they were called a squire during the short time before they acquired a spren. Together, they’d begun calling themselves the Unseen Court. Both Veil and Shallan loved the title … though Radiant had noticed more than a few eye rolls from Windrunners when it was mentioned.

Ishnah was one of those who had earned her Blade. By Windrunner terms, she should be off gathering her own squires and making her own team—they seemed to assume everyone would want to follow their command structure. The Unseen Court, however, didn’t care for Windrunner methods.

“From what I’ve heard,” Ishnah replied, “the honorspren don’t much like anyone.” “This is true,” Radiant said. “But Syl has told me that while they don’t trust Cryptics, honorspren don’t hate them like they do inkspren or highspren. I have decided to bring three Lightweavers along with me.”

Inside she found a metal cube roughly the size of a person’s head. The note on it was in one of Mraize’s ciphers.

“I memorized the patterns. It reads, ‘Spanreeds do not work between realms, but this will. Be very careful with it. It has a value beyond that of some kingdoms. Do not open it, or you risk destroying it. Once on your mission and in a secluded place, hold the cube and call my name. I will speak to you through it. Good hunting, little knife.’”

Is this feruchemy? Information stored in metal?

“I dropped by to give you this.” “What is it?” Kaladin asked, taking the disc. One side was engraved with a picture of a divine figure in robes, while the other side bore the same figure in battle gear. Both were surrounded by strange foreign glyphs. It had been coated with some colored enamel at one point, but that had mostly worn off. “Zahel gave it to me when I finished my training with him,” Adolin said. “Says it’s from his homeland—they use these things as money. Weird, eh?”

“Be careful, Adolin,” she said, flitting up into the air. “My kind aren’t like highspren—we don’t look to laws, but to morality, as our guide.” “That’s good, isn’t it?” Adolin said. “It is … unless you happen to disagree with their interpretation of morality. My kind can be very difficult to persuade with logic, because for us … well, what we feel can often be more important to us than what we think. We’re spren of honor, but remember, honor is—even to us—what humans and spren define it to be. Particularly with our god dead.”