Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive, #4)

by Brandon Sanderson

“What are we doing?” she said, landing on his shoulder and sitting primly with her legs crossed and her hands on her knees. “Actually, I don’t care. I need to tell you something. Aladar’s axehounds had puppies. I had no idea how much I needed to see puppies until I flew by them this morning. They are the grossest things on the planet, Kaladin. They’re somehow so gross that they’re cute. So cute I could have died! Except I can’t, because I’m an eternal sliver of God himself, and we have standards about things like that.”

“He’s talking,” the ardent said. “We haven’t been able to get more than a grunt out of him.” “That’s not surprising,” Kaladin said. “When you’re like him, it’s hard to feel like doing anything—even talking. Storms … when it’s bad for me, I think I want anything but someone to talk to. I’m wrong though. While you can’t force it, having someone to talk to usually helps. You should be letting him meet with others who feel like he does.” “That’s not in the book of treatments,” the ardent said. “It says we should keep lunatics away from each other. Talking together would make them feed off one another’s melancholy.”

Tell me, what treatments do you give a person with melancholia?” “We…” The ardent swallowed. “Keep them away from anything that might aggravate or disturb them. Keep them clean. Let them be in peace.” “And someone with aggressive tendencies?” Kaladin asked. “The same,” the ardent admitted. “Battle shock? Seeing hallucinations?” “You know my answer already, Brightlord.” “Someone needs to do better for these people,” Kaladin said. “Someone needs to talk to them, try different treatments, see what they think works. What actually helps.” Storms, he sounded like his father. “We need to study their responses, use an empirical approach to treatment instead of just assuming someone who has suffered mental trauma is permanently broken.”

Kaladin felt a stirring deep within him. He’d worried that working with his father wouldn’t be truly fulfilling. He’d worried that he wouldn’t be able to protect people, as his oaths drove him to do. That he would make an inferior surgeon. But if there was one thing he understood that most ardents and surgeons—even his father—did not, it was this. “Release this man to my care,” Kaladin said. “And warn your superiors I will be coming for others. The ardents can complain all the way to Brightness Navani if they want. They’ll get the same answer from her that I’m giving you now: We’re going to try something new.”

Ornament said. Beryl’s Cryptic had a fine pattern, delicate like lace, and a squeaky voice.

Mosaic said. She was Vathah’s Cryptic, and her pattern had sharp lines to it. She often included rapid fast sections that waved like the women’s script.

Motif, Ishnah’s Cryptic, simply made a bunch of clicking noises in rapid succession. His Alethi was not good, so he preferred to speak in the Cryptic language.

And we didn’t do it, right? Radiant asked pointedly. It was a discomforting question. They weren’t always aware of what one of them did when another was in control. Often these days they worked together, giving up control by conscious choice, helping one another. But there were worse days. Shallan couldn’t remember all the things Veil had done during that day she’d seized control, for example.

“Nor did I,” Shallan whispered. And she knew it to be true. None of the Three had moved it, though she worried about

Formless. Could part of her mind be betraying her? She didn’t think that piece was even aware, or real, yet.

This was how almost everything—from clothing to building supplies—was created in Shadesmar. Spren didn’t quarry stone or spin threads; they took the souls of objects from the physical world, then “manifested” them. The term referred to making the object’s bead on this side instead reflect its physical nature.

Spren didn’t care much for the value of most gemstones; it was the Light that interested them. The bead that had been the table’s soul had vanished, replaced by the object. Interestingly, so far as Veil knew, the real table in the physical world would be unaffected by this process.

“Yes!” Unativi said. “Also, cousin will do the hard work. He is better.” “You have skill,” Ua’pam said. “You have more.” Unativi shook his head. “Skill I need. Instead you go chasing humans. Losing your mind. Going to fight?” “Odium comes,” Ua’pam said, softly. “Odium will come here. We must fight.” “We can run.” “We cannot.” The two stared at one another, and Shallan took some mental notes to add to her natural history. Too often humans—even some spren—regarded all spren as basically the same in personality and temperament. That was wrong. They might not be as fractured as the many nations of men, but they were not a monoculture.

Beryl had learned Lightweaving on her own away from the structure and order of the Radiants. She was an unknown factor, a Surgebinding savant who had come with her own spren already bonded.

As an extra protection, a singular secret weapon hid among Dalinar’s servants. Szeth, wearing the face of a common soldier, had been assigned to guard Dalinar. Navani couldn’t spot him, so the disguise—maintained by one of Shallan’s Lightweavers—was working. Though the sheath to his strange sword had required some physical decorations and disguises, as a Lightweaving wouldn’t stick to it.

So she thought she could pick him out as the one with the oversized weapon at his waist. Another Lightweaver had created an illusion of Szeth in his jail cell. If Taravangian had people reporting on Szeth, they’d indicate he was safely locked up. They wouldn’t know he was instead staying very close to Dalinar. Though she hated the idea, Navani had to admit that Szeth had remained in prison all these months, without a single incident. He seemed obedient to Dalinar without question. And if Szeth could be trusted, there was likely no better guard.

“No Wit?” Navani asked. “He promised to meet me in Azir,” Jasnah said. “He vanishes sometimes, and won’t grace my questions with answers. Not even mocking ones.” “There is something odd about that one, Jasnah.” “You have no idea, Mother.”

Jasnah said. “The quickest changes in history often happen during times of strife, and these are important moments.

Most of the highprinces were out in the field on Dalinar’s orders. It was Alethi tradition: being a leader was essentially the same as being a general. If a king went to war, highprinces would go with him. That was so ingrained in

them that it was hard to remember that other cultures—like both the Azish and the Thaylens—did it differently.

Like everyone, deep down he wanted to be useful. Humans were orderly beings. They liked to see lots of straight

lines, if only so—in some cases—they could be the one drawing curves.

a Stoneward had been called in to shape the rock into an opening—they could make stone soft to their touch.

Badali, a Stoneward, guarded the door. He was an affable older man with a powdery beard and smiling eyes.

Falilar, the engineer, was already inside measuring what they’d discovered: a large room hidden entirely in the stone.

“Judging by the weight of your pen once the conversation is engaged, we should be able to tell how far away the other pen is.” Spanreeds had a certain decay to them. The farther apart they were, the heavier the pens became after activation. In most cases, this was a slight—almost imperceptible—difference. Today, the spanreed board, with pen attached, had been placed on Falilar’s most precise scale. The pen was hooked by strings to other instruments as well.

Navani nodded. Why do you call this a heresy? Navani wrote. The church sees no moral problem with fabrials. No more than they have a problem with hitching a chull to a cart. A chull hitched to a cart is not confined to a tiny space, the reply came, the pen moving furiously, animatedly. Spren are

meant to be free. By capturing them, you trap nature itself. Can a storm survive if placed in a prison? Can a flower bloom with no sunlight? This is what you do. Your religion is incomplete.

Please. Tell us how you know what we don’t. The truth is evident to me, the pen wrote. It is not obvious to us, Navani wrote. Because you are human, it replied. Humans cannot be trusted. You do not know how to keep promises, and promises

are what make the world function. We make the world function. You must release your captive spren. You must you must. “Ash’s mask…” Kalami said. “It’s a spren, isn’t it?” “Yes,” Navani said.

“Another of the Unmade?” Kalami asked. Navani tapped her finger against the spanreed paper, thinking. “I doubt it,” she said. “A spren who wishes to free its kind? A liberationspren? Has anyone heard of such a thing?”

In Shadesmar, spren could manifest the beads that represented the soul of a fire—and in so doing, create flames that provided light, but very little heat.

Her eyes had been scratched out by the events of the Recreance, but she could still see. She’d been blinded without going blind, killed without dying. The ways of spren were strange.

Who were they? How had they found their way to this side? Were they from other lands, like Azure?

“It would be better if someone were to watch out for me,” Veil said. Then she sighed. “Though it might be good for you to listen to Mraize too. You might spot something untrue that he says.” “I do not think he says things that are fully untrue,” Pattern said. “Which makes his lies the best. Mmm. But I cannot tell automatically if something is a lie. I can simply appreciate them better than most, once I realize what they are.”

Browsing the goods were spren of all varieties. Of those, he found the ashspren the most transfixing. They looked like people, but their flesh would crumble off at times, exposing bone. As he passed one, she snapped her fingers, making all the ash of her hand blow away and vanish—then it quickly grew back. He even spotted a couple of highspren, like tears in reality in the shape of people. He gave them a wide berth, though they seemed to be just another pair of merchants.

Though, he thought, passing a tall willowy spren of a type he didn’t recognize, someone ought to tell that one what a protective cup is used for on our side.…

He’d heard they kept near-perfect gemstones in spren banks, storing vast amounts of Stormlight for future use. And of course, having so many humans nearby had attracted small emotion spren, Shadesmar’s equivalent of animals. Gloryspren darted overhead, and fearspren huddled in alleyways looking like large, multi-legged eels with long, globby antennae.

A long flying spren with mustaches and a graceful body landed on the top of a building, then leaped off, ejecting an explosion of tiny crystalline shards that floated down and vanished. Was that a passionspren?

The shopkeeper was an inkspren. Adolin had heard that there were fewer of them than there were of other varieties, and they kept to themselves. The creature was jet black, even reflective, like he was made out of stone—but with an oil-on-water shimmer of color when the light hit him right.

“What danger?” “New deadeyes,” the shopkeeper said, shaking his head. “Radiants should not have started again. Do you know that this thing is? In your kingdom it began, did it not?” “I don’t know of any Radiants betraying their oaths,”

But … a new deadeye? That seemed impossible. Maybe … maybe some young new Surgebinder out in the backwaters of Bavland could have been left without support or friends, and had broken their oaths. It wasn’t too outlandish; the more they learned, the more they realized that Kaladin, Jasnah, and Shallan hadn’t been unique in forming new Radiant bonds these last few years. A general revolution had been happening all across Roshar, with spren sensing the coming of the Everstorm, and some returning to bond with humans.

She’d trained with Pattern as a child. She’d spoken oaths. She’d summoned a Shardblade and struck down her own mother, frantic to survive. And—she looked back at the cube—she’d held one of these?

“What happens again if I pry the thing open?” “You will immediately destroy the spren that lives inside,” Mraize said. “You can’t kill spren.” “I didn’t say kill.”

“Sja-anat is important, little hunter,” Mraize said. “We must bind her to us. A spren of Odium willing to betray him? An ancient creature with equally ancient knowledge? I give you this secondary mission. Watch for these spren closely, and make contact if you can.”

Word had gotten to Mraize, and the false tidbit—that she’d seen a gloryspren watching her—had revealed the truth. Beryl was the spy.

Venli caught herself staring at the new brand of Fused. These ones—called the makay-im, or “Those Ones of the Depths”—had access to one of her same Surges: the ability to turn stone into a liquid.

The Deepest Ones had smooth skin, no hair, and barely any carapace—just shells over their heads and genitals. This put their vibrant patterns on display across the full lengths of their sinuous bodies. Long-legged and long-armed, they reminded Venli of her current form, which was

tall without reaching the unnatural willowy level of Raboniel and t...

This highland valley was mostly barren, supporting just the most rugged of rockbuds and the occasional clump of squat trees, their branches interwoven to create a storm-resistant snarl. Though leaves on these trees would retract before storms, the branches remained firm and interlocked. There wasn’t a single lifespren in sight, though coldspren lined the ground, pointing toward the sky.