Wind and Truth (The Stormlight Archive, #5)

by Brandon Sanderson

The Herald had died, and returned. Shallan had killed her and sent her to Braize, where she had broken and come back to Roshar. Initiating the Return, unleashing the Voidbringers, and starting all of this.

Shallan leaned back, the words bringing emotion, like a jolt of cold ice amid the heat. Betrayal, a pain straight into her heart. Then … then slowly it melted away. When she spoke—tears in her eyes—Shallan found the words were not lies. Painful, yes, but not lies. “Mother,” Shallan said, “I forgive you.”

The Rift and Evi’s death would eventually send him to the Old Magic, to seek oblivion of thought and memory. And yet, Odium didn’t know him. Dalinar. Who he had become deep down; Odium couldn’t see that man. For that man … he could not be broken by the truth. Truth was the weapon once used to bloody him, pulled from his own flesh afterward, and now held up as his finest blade. Peace. In that prison chamber, all became as if peaceful. Unite them.

Through those flames, Dalinar could see one thing outside. Two eyes. The eyes of the Blackthorn, cutting through it all. Red like blood. The eyes of a man who, after years of restraint, had finally given in and become the thing everyone said he was. The thing his brother wanted him to be. A destroyer. But Dalinar was not afraid. He no longer feared the past, and Odium had made a mistake in bringing him here.

Kaladin glanced to Szeth, who shrugged. He would have liked to be with Dalinar, but it was not his task. So he started down the hill. “I have decided,” he told Kaladin as the man caught up, “that I need to fight and kill despite my preferences. The duty I bear is too great.” He glanced to Kaladin after he said it, ashamed. The Windrunner merely nodded. “I’m sorry, Szeth. What can I do to help?” “I cannot be persuaded.” “I gathered that from the tone of your voice. Can I help?” Szeth continued more carefully—waiting for the objections. “If I am to be a Herald, I will need to fight. That is that.”

“I’m helping as best I can,” Kaladin said. “What do you feel you should do?” “I feel I need to fight,” Szeth said. “I have to kill. Someone needs to do it.” “Then I’ll support you. Help you work through the pain.” “But you want me to make the other choice,” Szeth said. “Say it.” “I want you to choose. What I’d choose isn’t relevant, Szeth. I’m not here to make you do anything specific. I’m here to try to help you be healthy in making your choice.”

Kaladin was a killer, one of the best Szeth knew. But somehow he expressed the same wisdom as the most peaceful man Szeth had ever met. It was a revelation. Like a burst of gloryspren, though he did not draw any in this place. Kaladin had actually found a path to peace. It was possible.

The room felt colder. Szeth breathed out, and swore he saw it puff. “What is happening to this land, Nin? Why are the people consumed by darkness? Who is the Unmade that I fight? What is going on?” “You don’t need to know that yet. Speak the words.” Szeth met his eyes, and said them. “I,” he whispered, “am not a thing.

“I wish I’d known,” Nale said, “that the key target was not Amaram, but one of his squadleaders. I would have gone myself and made sure you didn’t leave that battlefield alive.” He’s so strange, Syl thought at him. He’s always had this broken belief that if he killed the Radiants, it would prevent the Desolation. But we came back because we felt the Desolation coming.

“Why?” Kaladin said to Nale. “The Desolation would still have come. Syl sought me out because she felt the storm moving through Shadesmar. Taln Returned, finally breaking. Your killing all those Radiants accomplished nothing.

Szeth was the boy who needed Kaladin now. And Kaladin was here in this fight not because of a compulsion—but because he had decided for himself. Wit said he needed to discover who he was when he didn’t need to fight. Remarkably, Kaladin had begun to do that, he realized. New Kaladin still protected, but accepted he might fail. He controlled his sense of loss. Not through callousness, as his father had tried to teach him. But through love.

“Is peace your only ‘good’?” Jasnah asked. “Because freedom and volition are enormous goods unto themselves—and being protected from harm, yet being dominated without the chance to speak or fight for yourself, is not a true good. Shall we speak of the writings of Falabratant, of your own home city, and his moral philosophies regarding self-determination? We could write to him now and see what he says.”

“Did you know,” he whispered, “there is a world out there with an ocean in the sky? Another where people fly upon kites, as if every man were a Windrunner. Yet another where the gods can make any object stand up and walk? I will see them each someday, little knife. And claim a trophy to remember them by.”

How dare Dalinar Kholin—who had butchered all his life—be the one to offer such an uplifting message? How dare the Blackthorn, soaked in blood, claim the high ground? How dare he judge Adolin for killing Sadeas and protecting their family, when Dalinar had burned Adolin’s mother alive?

So he heaved himself up, found the queue to rotate to the front, and took his spot with shield and spear. Strangely, he found motivation in an unexpected place. Kaladin had survived worse than this as a bridgeman. Adolin had heard Lopen and Rock, Sigzil and Skar, describe it multiple times as they’d gone drinking together. At least Adolin could fight back. The call came and he filed in, letting those who had been fighting pull the wounded to safety through the center of the pike line. There, Adolin realized he was smiling. Stupid bridgeboy. Where did he get off, being so inspiring? A moment of brightness. Then back to Damnation.

“I can’t be sure I’m right,” Wit admitted. “But while you were checking on Gavinor I asked my contact on Yolen for her read, and she agrees. Odium severing your Connection to Dalinar, isolating the two of you, would count as interfering with Dalinar’s reaching the meeting on time. The contract explicitly indicates this would mean a forfeit.” “So if Dalinar doesn’t make it,” Navani said, “we win?” “Yes.”

“So…” “So we wait,” Wit said, his eyes seeming hollow. “You should pray. I will wish. Together we will hope that the man we have all chosen as our champion can resist whoever Odium chooses to be his. Because whatever happens tomorrow, I think that secretly, Dalinar Kholin is both champions.”

He defended alone, unsupported, a silhouette holding firm. In his numbness, Adolin imagined it was him fighting gloriously. It was his Plate, and that sealed the illusion in Adolin’s mind. Never in a battle even close to as bad as this one had he been without his armor. He couldn’t be this wretch on the ground with a spear he could hardly grip.

Adolin had stood trial for all of humankind at Lasting Integrity. For what? No help, no answers. Moral victories didn’t matter when cities fell anyway. He’d always tried to fight for his kingdom and his family, while others played games and murdered in the night—but when he stood up for those he loved, he became a villain? For killing a man who had tried to do the same to him?

Adolin did not dance. A duel was a dance. This was not something beautiful, and he was no poet. This was a man, a fallen city, and anger culminating in blood to spill. First theirs, then his.

Adolin … Maya. No. He did not summon her. Why? He did not want her to see him fall. The city was lost, and he … he felt ashamed. No shame in loss … she whispered. I failed Kholinar. Never shame in loss … I failed you. Father. Everyone. Never. I AM COMING.

Life is unfair, she said. Only existence is fair, once it’s all done, and God has made it so. There is no God. Then what am I a piece of?

“Human Fused,” Szeth guessed. “Like my father and my sister. You made their souls able to be recalled to new bodies, so they can be reborn each time they are killed. That’s why I could slay these on my pilgrimage, and you don’t mind.”

“That’s the sole originality we need. A story might have been told before, but you haven’t told it. Every idea might have been thought, but each is new again when you think them. And that lumberman’s son? He couldn’t fail. Because I was to be the judge of his poem, and I deeply, sincerely believe that every person is unique. The contest wasn’t about whether his poem was good, merely if it was unique. He could have stood up, released an odoriferous belch, then sat down, and I’d have considered that acceptable. He was destined to win.”

I’ve decided to let him be a person, Adolin thought. I’m not sure I’ll ever fully forgive him for killing my mother, but I’m willing to love him anyway. More importantly, he’d given up on the dream of his father as some perfect paragon. And if Adolin’s father didn’t have to be the greatest man alive, then Adolin Kholin didn’t have to try to match that kind of incredible reputation.

I think, Adolin said to Maya, that I really felt, deep down, that I had to step up and take my father’s place. I felt, for some reason, that since he had proven to be flawed, I had to take his place and be perfect instead. I’ve been running from that for a long time, because I knew I couldn’t be. She sent him a grunt of appreciation, and a feeling—through their bond—that she understood how messed up that must have felt. Yeah, he thought. My anger over my mother’s death wasn’t just … just about what he did. It was like I was furious at him for toppling my perfect impression of him. Like, he was supposed to be better than that. He should have been, Maya said. But nobody ever really is.

By himself? You have us mixed up, he said. My father is the one who insists on doing everything all alone, as if he’s the only one who matters. Yeah? Maya said. When Kaladin needed help, you were there. Sure, he’s my friend. When Shallan had secrets, you didn’t pry. Just trying to be a good husband,

“When a Radiant says the Words,” Syl agreed, “they don’t just Connect to their spren in the Cognitive Realm, they Connect to the Spiritual Realm. It’s a mini perpendicularity each time. A confluence of power and Intent, and an alignment of self.” “How close are you?” Szeth said, still regarding Kaladin. “I have barely let myself think about the final Words,” Kaladin admitted. “The last set nearly broke me.”

“The burden you ten carried,” Kaladin said, “is unfair. And while trauma doesn’t excuse what you did, it does explain it. We can’t let you, or Ishar, hurt others—but that doesn’t mean you weren’t hurt yourselves. You have a right to receive help.”

“They say,” Abidi growled, “you are this era’s greatest living swordsman.” “No,” Adolin said. “But I was trained by him.” He thrust his hand to the side to summon Maya.

Szeth recognized each of them. Moss. Pozen. Elid. The “dead” Honorbearers, turned into Fused by Ishu. There were six of them, and they helped themselves to the Honorblades in the bed of the wagon. Szeth gritted his teeth and almost went to prevent the larceny, but Ishu spoke.

Adolin didn’t need an explanation. They were wounded. So was he. Sometimes you had to press forward anyway. The ashspren opened her mouth and forced out a few sounds. “Wa … wa … tch…” “Watchers,” Adolin said, “at the rim.” She nodded, and he felt her thoughts. Oaths had fallen, but she would not let him fight alone. “Because in this case,” Adolin said quietly, “a promise is something deeper than an oath.”

An oath could be broken, but a promise? A promise stood as long as you were still trying. A promise understood that sometimes your best wasn’t enough. A promise cried with you when all went to Damnation. A promise came to help when you could barely stand.

Storms. He gazed at Gav. Remembering the child he’d played with, held, rejoiced over. A child he’d seen mere hours ago, by his mental reckoning. Could it be that … that Taravangian had been right all along? That this was the actual way of kings? Not Nohadon’s platitudes about helping. A deeper, darker truth: that a king’s duty was to take upon him the sins of an entire government.

Kaladin rested his hand comfortingly on Ishar’s shoulder, ignoring the hand at his throat, and spoke them. “I will protect myself, so that I may continue to protect others.”

The power of Honor gathered around Dalinar like a corona. The rumbling from Odium became tiny, buzzing instead of thunder. This power … knew it was no longer like the others. It had spent too long without a vessel, and part of it craved to be held again. Yet it had seen so much betrayal. “I know,” Dalinar whispered, his heart trembling. “I was there.”

Honor, in the power’s eyes, was about oaths. But there was a darker side to it. How many men had stabbed someone they loved because of “honor”? How many wars had been started because of an insult to “honor”? How much anger in the world had been caused by a belief in “honor”? The power accepted those definitions of it. It was the power of oaths and the pride that men bore at being thought of as men of oaths.