Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive, #4)

by Brandon Sanderson

“And here, see this one?” He pulled out a unique triangular weapon, gripped at the base with a kind of handle instead of a true hilt. “Thaylen gtet. I’ve always wanted to train with one of these. Figured I might get some practice in.”

“I didn’t mean to imply there’s not art to a Shardblade,” Adolin told Zu. “I truly love Shardblade duels. I just love finding the best weapon for the job. And when that answer isn’t always the same sword, it’s more satisfying.” “You should become a Radiant,” she said. “Then your sword would always be the right weapon for the job.”

Adolin listened with half an ear, wondering if Taravangian found it odd that the expedition wasn’t taking any Dustbringers. No one had spoken the reason, but it was obvious to Adolin.

The Dustbringers didn’t serve Dalinar, at least not loyally enough for his taste.

“Murdering a man in a back alley, then lying about it? Well, the world is better off without him. In fact, there are a lot of people this world could do without. Let’s start removing them quietly.…” Maybe I murdered Sadeas, Adolin thought. But at least I never killed anyone innocent. At least I didn’t burn my own wife to death.

There it was. The seething knot deep inside him, the one Adolin didn’t dare touch lest it burn him. He knew Dalinar had been a different man then. A man not in his right mind, betrayed, consumed by the power of one of the Unmade. Besides, Dalinar hadn’t killed Adolin’s mother on purpose. One could know these things without feeling them. And this. Wasn’t. Something. You. Forgave.

“And if I think the actions I’ve taken are worthy?” Adolin said. “Then perhaps we need to consider that my training of you in your youth was faulty. That is not surprising. I was not exactly the best of examples.” It’s about you again, Adolin thought. I can’t have an opinion or make choices—I’m only acting like this because of your influence.

“You want me to become one of them, don’t you?” Adolin said. “Part of the purpose of this trip, in your eyes, is for me to become a Radiant!” “Your brother is worthy,” Dalinar said, “and your father—against his best efforts—has proven worthy. I’m sure you will prove yourself too.” As if I didn’t have enough burdens.

The control room hadn’t come with them. Instead, two enormous spren stood in the air nearby: the attendants of this gateway, thirty or forty feet tall, one marble white and the other onyx.

“It is done as the Stormfather requires,” the marble one replied, voice booming. “Our parent, the Sibling, has died. We will obey him instead.”

Long ago, a mysterious spren named the Sibling had lived in Urithiru. It was now dead. Or sleeping. Or maybe that was the same thing. Spren answers about the Sibling contradicted one another. In any case, before dying, the Sibling had commanded these sentries to stop allowing people into Shadesmar.

Many of the gatekeepers maintained this rule. However, a few had listened to the Stormfather’s request. They said that in the absence of other Bondsmiths, Dalinar and the Stormfather were worthy ...

That was fortunate, for while Shallan could slip into Shadesmar using her powers, she couldn’t take anyone with her—and she couldn’t return on her own. Even Jasnah, whose powers supposedly allowed ...

Pattern stood near Shallan; he was a tall figure in too-stiff robes with a changing symbol for a head. Adolin felt he could tell Pattern from the other Cryptics. There was a spring to Pattern’s step; he bounced when the other three Cryptics glided. Their symbols were also slightly … different.

Adolin cocked his head, trying to decide why he should think that, as the symbols were always changing, never repeating that he could see. Yet the speed at which they changed, and the general feel of each one, was distinct.

Zu—the closest Radiant to Adolin—leaped up and grabbed her tall spren in a hug. “Ha!” said the golden-haired Stoneward. “You’re a mountain on this side, Ua’pam!” Her spren’s skin appeared as if it were made of cracked rock, and it was glowing from within as if molten. Otherwise, he had generally humanlike features. Ua’pam wore fur-lined clothing on this side, like one might expect fro...

Godeke was an Edgedancer, so his spren was a cultivationspren, a type Adolin had seen many times before: shaped roughly like a short woman, she was composed entirely of vines. Those vines wound tightly together into a fac...

fine and delicate, emerged from the sleeves of her robe, and she had an aloof a...

The last spren was the oddest to Adolin. She seemed to be made entirely from mist, all save for the face, which hovered on the front of the head in the shape of a porcelain mask. That mask had a kind of twinkling reflection to it, always catching the light—in fact, he could have sworn that from some perspectives it was made of transluc...

This would be the spren of Arshqqam, the Truthwatcher. The spren wore a vest and trousers, both of which somehow floated and encapsulated the body made entirely of white fog. Her hands ended in ...

“Do you like staring at me, human?” she asked with a delicate voice that tinkled like cracking glass. The mask’s lips didn’t move when she spoke. “We mistspren can choose our forms, you know. We usually choose a shape like a person, but we don’t need to. You seem...

he found a final spren sitting there waiting. She was another cultivationspren, with cordlike vines making up her face. But her vines were a dull brown and they pulled tighter—giving her features a sunken-in cast.

Maya still wore the same dull brown rags. However, he saw hints of what they’d once been. Not robes as Godeke’s spren wore. This had been a uniform. Her most unnerving feature was her scratched-out eyes. It seemed as if someone had taken a knife to her face, except she hadn’t bled or been scarred by the cuts. She’d been erased. Ripped apart. Removed from existence. When she looked at Adolin, she seemed like a painting that had been vandalized.

They started walking toward the ramp, but Adolin paused, cocking his head. When Gallant moved, he trailed a faint shadow of light. It was almost imperceptible. When the horse shook his head from side to side, there was a distinct impression of an afterimage the shape of the head, but glowing. “Didn’t expect you to be different here,” Adolin said to the horse.

Should we not walk? On our feet? The ones I now have again? I do like my feet. They are befittingly perambulatory.” He held up his leg, and showed bare feet beneath his robe. Curious. Adolin had always assumed they didn’t have feet. Pattern moved off, humming delightedly to himself.

He pointed at some that drifted by in the air—they resembled chickens, with flapping wings and bulbous bodies. “I think those are gloryspren,” Adolin said. “Emotion spren are like this world’s animals. They get pulled through to our side when they sense some kind of strong emotion, and we see them in distorted ways.”

“The Heralds are not God, but His servants,” Godeke said. “Storms know, I’ve failed Him more than once myself.” He adopted a distant expression. “I don’t think we can blame them for eventually wearing out. Rather, I think about how remarkable it is that they worked for so long to keep us safe.” “And the fact that they confirmed the death of the Almighty?” “The death of Honor,” Godeke said. “One aspect of the Almighty.” He smiled. “It’s all right, Brightlord. I can understand someone questioning now, of all times. Remember though, the church taught that we are all aspects of the Almighty—that He lives in us. As He lived in the being called Honor, who was tasked with protecting men. “The Almighty cannot die. People can die. Heralds can die. Even Honor could die. But Honor, people, and Heralds will all live again—transformed, Soulcast through His power.”

She studied him with a piercing gaze, unwavering. “How could I stay? I still don’t know why I was chosen. A woman at the end of her life? But if a child could answer the call, then I certainly could find no excuse.” The child she referenced was Lift—who had recruited this woman, along with several others, over the past year. The teen seemed to have a knack for locating others who were manifesting powers.

“Another peakspren?” Adolin asked, squinting. “Yes!” “We saw some of those on our last trip,” Adolin said. “They left us stranded at Celebrant.” “Kasiden peakspren, from the east? They are fools! Forget them.”

“You have … different nationalities?” “Obviously! Silly man. You will learn.”

They’d tried to find a spren captain who would sail them straight to Lasting Integrity, the honorspren stronghold. Unfortunately, their options were limited—and all the spren they’d spoken to refused. They said that the honorspren didn’t like ships to sail too close.

He’d noticed some of the Radiants using Stormlight to keep their energy up, but he hadn’t complained. Though their Stormlight resources couldn’t be renewed, the smaller spheres would start running out even before the ocean trip was over. The real reserves—the ones they needed to preserve—were all larger gemstones that would keep their Light much longer.

I’ll do my part, Father, Adolin thought. I’ll give them your letters, but I’ll do more. I’ll find a way to persuade them to help us. And I’ll do it my way. The trick, of course, was to discover what his way was in the first place.

Shallan knelt before her trunk as everyone else unpacked and Adolin brushed his horse. She tried not to panic. She failed. So she settled for seeming like she wasn’t panicking. While packing her things, she’d taken a Memory of Mraize’s communication cube, packed away in her trunk.

With her uncanny abilities, she could picture it precisely where she’d placed it. She’d wanted to be extra careful, but she hadn’t thought the Memory would be relevant so quickly. Because the cube had been moved. Not just shifted in among her things; it had been picked up and rotated. The face that had been up when she’d packed had a few faint scratches on it. That face was now to the side. An imperceptible difference; someone without her abilities would never have noticed. Someone had moved the cube. Somehow, between packing and arriving on the barge, someone had rifled through her things and used the cube. She could come to only one conclusion. The spy was indeed on this mission—and they were using this very device to report to Mraize.

As they left, Kaladin dutifully washed his hands in the exam room’s basin. He’d picked up his father’s mannerisms in that regard. Wisdom of the Heralds, it was said. He’d met some of those Heralds now, and they didn’t seem so wise to him, but whatever.

Below, light flashed in a circle around the Oathgate, making an entire battalion of troops vanish. They’d learned that how much Stormlight was expended for a transfer depended on the Radiant operating the device—the more experienced the Radiant, the less Stormlight required.

Jasnah

was probably operating today; she could do things with her powers that were well beyond the rest of them. Though she didn’t show it off, she’d plainly sworn the Fou...

But Shallan didn’t emerge. Sometimes this was how it was; they couldn’t always choose which of them would be in control. But Shallan’s growing tension … that was worrisome.

There was a final clue in the book, one that Radiant found most curious. Ialai had discovered that the Ghostbloods were obsessed with a specific spren named Ba-Ado-Mishram. That was a name from myth, one of the Unmade. It had been this spren who had taken over for Odium following the Final Desolation; she had granted the singers forms of power.

By capturing Ba-Ado-Mishram—locking her in a gemstone—humankind had stolen the minds of the singers in ancient times. They knew this from the brief—but poignant—messages left by the ancient Radiants before they abandoned Urithiru. By cross-referencing those with musings in Ialai’s book, Radiant began to get a picture of what had happened so many centuries ago.

“I used to think you kept secrets from Adolin because you were like me and enjoyed the thrill of being part of the Ghostbloods,” Veil said. “I was wrong. There’s something

more, isn’t there? Why do you keep lying? What is going on?” I … Shallan said. I … The dark thing stirred inside her. Formless, the personality that could be. The dark thing that represented Shallan’s fears, compounded.

She took a spoonful of lavis and felt the individual grains with her tongue, plump and saturated with sweet curry making a mush in her mouth—gross, but wonderful. Pattern always talked about how strange humans were, surviving off the things they destroyed.

Eventually, the strange mistspren drifted near. The creature’s free-form shape seemed like it would be difficult to capture in a sketch. Like steam, somehow trapped into a humanoid shape, contained by clothing and that strange mask. She flipped to a new page and began drawing, but the spren—who had introduced herself as Dreaming-though-Awake—peeked at the sketchbook.

“What happened to Ba-Ado-Mishram?” Shallan asked, eager. “What was she like? How did she Connect to the singers, and how did trapping her cause them to become parshmen?”

Kaladin didn’t much care for the reverence people showed them. People who had once spat after hearing someone speak of the “Lost Radiants” had turned around quickly when their highprince and their queen had each become one. It made Kaladin wonder how quickly these people might turn on them, if reverence suddenly became unfashionable.

“You lock them in here?” Teft demanded. “In the dark?” “Many of the mentally deficient react poorly to overstimulation,” the ardent said. “We work hard to give them quiet, calm places to live, free of bright lights.” “How do you know?” Kaladin asked, striding after the ardent. “The therapy is prescribed by some of the best thinkers among the ardentia.” “But how do you know?” Kaladin said. “Do any of them get better? Have you tried multiple theories and compared them? Have you tested different cures or remedies on different patient populations?”

“Honorspren can feel where their knight is,” Kaladin said. “So you don’t need to act surprised at finding me.”