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May 10 - June 26, 2023
‘From what I have observed,’ Jasnah said, ‘these sailors are men who have found a purpose in life and now take simple pleasure in it.’ Jasnah looked at the next drawing. ‘Many people make far less out of life.
How did she do it? How could she control her surroundings without seeming to do anything at all?
‘There is an entire world, Shallan,’ Jasnah said, ‘of which our minds skim but the surface. A world of deep, profound thought. A world created by deep, profound thoughts. When you see Shadesmar, you enter those depths.
The woman could make it seem easier to resist a full highstorm than to disagree with her.
‘You promised me that I could have a chance to measure your . . . particular abilities.’ ‘Promised?’ Kaladin asked. ‘I don’t remember a promise.’ ‘You grunted.’
‘Something bad is going to happen,’ Kaladin said. ‘Things can’t just continue to be good for me. That’s not how life is.
‘Soldier?’ Dalinar asked, stopping by the door. ‘Sir.’ Kaladin stood up straight again and saluted. It felt good to do that, to stand at attention, to find a place.
‘We’ll do it, Jasnah,’ Shallan said. ‘We’ll travel to the Shattered Plains and we’ll find Urithiru. We’ll get the evidence and convince everyone to listen.’ ‘Ah, the optimism of youth,’ Jasnah said. ‘That is nice to hear on occasion too.’
You don’t have the luxury of being bad at this. Don’t complain. Change.
‘Natural laws?’ Syl said, finding the concept amusing. ‘Laws are of men, Kaladin. Nature doesn’t have them!’ ‘If I toss something upward, it comes back down.’ ‘Except when it doesn’t.’ ‘It’s a law.’ ‘No,’ Syl said, looking upward. ‘It’s more like . . . more like an agreement among friends.’ He looked at her, raising an eyebrow. ‘We have to be consistent,’ she said, leaning in conspiratorially. ‘Or we’ll break your brains.’
‘Oh, that question.’ ‘You’ve been expecting it, then?’ ‘Yeah. Sort of.’ ‘So you’ve had plenty of time to think about a good answer,’ Kaladin said, folding his arms and leaning back against a somewhat dry portion of the wall. ‘That makes me wonder if you’ve come up with a solid explanation or a solid lie.’
Grabbing you was like trying to keep my hands on a live lakefish! One that has been covered in butter! Ha!’
A worker had difficulty committing violence – there was a block in the mind somewhere. That was one of the reasons she liked the form. It forced her to think differently to get around problems.
‘Long ago, there was only One. One knew everything, but had experienced nothing. And so, One became many – us, people. The One, who is both male and female, did so to experience all things.’
Progress is learning to control your world. Put up walls to stop the storms, choose when to become a mate. Progress was taking nature and putting a box around it.
Looking through her old maps, Eshonai found a powerful longing within her. Once, she’d seen the world as something fresh and exciting. New, like a blossoming forest after a storm. She was dying slowly, as surely as her people were.
But being a child had little to do with age.
‘A man hunting game will return with a mink if there are no telm to be found,’
Were you happy to be a well-treated slave? Or did you try to run, fight your way to freedom?
‘But words aren’t going to change these men or the troubles they are in.’ ‘On the contrary,’ Shallan said, meeting his eyes, ‘in my experience, words are where most change begins.
Joyspren rose around her, like blue leaves that started at her feet then moved up in a swirl before flaring out above her as if in a blast of wind. Shallan watched them with a big smile. Those were very rare.
It was important to dress the part when you had a role to play.
Her life must be so lonely, Shallan thought. Always moving, always taking whatever she can get, but never giving. Except once in a while, to a young thief she can foster . . .
The Rider of Storms was a traitor, yes – but you could not have a traitor who had not originally been a friend.
This is what I would have been, Shallan thought, if I had not been raised in a household of fear. So this is what I will be today.
It wasn’t a lie. It was a different truth.
‘I hate them,’ Sebarial said. ‘But I try to hate everyone. That way, I don’t risk leaving out anyone who is particularly deserving.
‘Doesn’t that bother you?’ Kaladin asked. ‘That you might be a creation of human perception?’ ‘You’re a creation of your parents. Who cares how we were born? I can think. That’s good enough.’
a spindly lighteyed man with teeth so large, he might have had some rat in his heritage somewhere
‘It’s just a tool,’ Zahel said. ‘A valuable one, but still just a tool. Remember that.’
He leaned against the barrel, taking a ladle of water, feeling the good exhaustion deep in his muscles that told him he’d been doing something worthwhile.
I find nothing more frightening than a man trying to do what he has decided is important. Very little in the world has ever gone astray – at least on a grand scale – because a person decided to be frivolous.’
‘Two blind men waited at the end of an era, contemplating beauty.
‘We are going to find out,’ Shallan whispered, ‘just what we can do.’ ‘Exciting!’ Pattern said.
She’d had so much more time when she was younger. She couldn’t help thinking she’d wasted much of it.
I’m sorry, Father, but once in a while you just have to let someone else do their job. You can’t fix every problem with your own hands.’
The way men kill one another says far more about a culture than any scholar’s ethnography.’
‘I’m a soldier, not a musician,’ Kaladin said. ‘Besides, music is for women.’ ‘All people are musicians,’ Wit countered. ‘The question is whether or not they share their songs. As for music being feminine, it’s interesting that the woman who wrote that treatise – the one you all practically worship in Alethkar – decided that all of the feminine tasks involve sitting around having fun while all the masculine ones involve finding someone to stick a spear in you. Telling, eh?’
‘They’re scared of you.’ Zahel’s voice, drifting again above the crowd. ‘Do you see it in them? Show them why.’
Stealing regular stuff was no fun. She wanted a real challenge. Over the last two years, she’d picked the most difficult places to enter. Then she’d snuck in. And eaten their dinners.
‘You have an odd sense of morality, mistress.’ ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said. ‘Every sense of morality is odd.’
The storm grew close, ’til it chewed his heels. Upon his neck, Fleet felt its chill. Its breath of ice was all around, a mouth of night and wings of frost. Its voice was of the breaking rocks; its song was of the crashing rain.’
‘I find sleeping very odd,’ Pattern said. ‘I know that all beings in the Physical Realm engage in it. Do you find it pleasant? You fear nonexistence, but is not unconsciousness the same thing?’ ‘With sleep, it’s only temporary.’ ‘Ah. It is all right, because in the morning, you each return to sentience.’ ‘Well, that depends on the person,’ Shallan said absently. ‘For many of them, ‘sentience’ might be too generous a term. . . .’
‘Would you have me unable to laugh?’ she demanded, suddenly holding back tears. ‘Would you have me crippled? That is what those memories would do to me. I can be what I am because I cut them off.’
What is a woman’s place in this modern world? Jasnah Kholin’s words read. I rebel against this question, though so many of my peers ask it. The inherent bias in the inquiry seems invisible to so many of them. They consider themselves progressive because they are willing to challenge many of the assumptions of the past. They ignore the greater assumption – that a ‘place’ for women must be defined and set forth to begin with. Half of the population must somehow be reduced to the role arrived at by a single conversation. No matter how broad that role is, it will be – by nature – a reduction from
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Unlike a sword, scorn has only the bite you give it.’
It was a classic ploy. Discredit your enemy, then kill him, to make certain he didn’t become a martyr.
‘All right then,’ Shallan said. She took a deep breath, then snapped her satchel closed. ‘We walk back, and we start immediately.’ ‘You don’t want to sit for a moment and catch your breath?’ ‘My breath is quite well caught,’ Shallan said. ‘If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather be moving. Once back, we can sit sipping mulled wine and laugh about how silly it was of us to hurry all that way, since we had so much time to spare. I’d like very much to feel that foolish. You?’ ‘Yeah.’
Anyway, if you start to be in a better mood, it will destroy the whole variety of this trip.’ ‘Variety?’ he asked. ‘Yes. If we’re both pleasant, there’s no artistry to it. You see, great art is a matter of contrast. Some lights and some darks. The happy, smiling, radiant lady and the dark, brooding, malodorous bridgeman.’
‘Storms, woman,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to make of you.’ ‘Preferably not a corpse.’
