Wind and Truth (The Stormlight Archive, #5)

by Brandon Sanderson

“You can’t ‘grow beyond’ the tide, Gavilar,” Thaidakar replied. “You swim with it or get swept away. Our plans are already in motion. Though to be honest, I don’t know that we did much. That tide was coming regardless.”

“What are you?” Gavilar whispered, hoarse. The biggest fool of them all, the Stormfather said. Goodbye, Gavilar. I have seen a glimpse of what is coming. I will not prevent it. “What?” Gavilar demanded. “What is coming?” Your legacy.

He held the sphere out toward the Stormfather, his vision fuzzing. Thinking … was … difficult. “You must take this,” Gavilar whispered to the Stormfather. “They must not get it. Tell … tell my brother … he must find the most important words a man can say

In the end, Gavilar Kholin, heir to the Heralds, died. As all men, ultimately, must. Alone.

Dark days. But days like this existed too. And he would remember.

He’d managed to survive. And it wasn’t his fault that he had.

“Listen,” Wit said. “Everything you’ve done—Kal, everything you’ve been—has prepared you for what’s next. It’s going to be hard. Fortunately, life has been hard, so you’re working under familiar constraints.”

I once spoon-fed broth to a trembling child in a kingdom that no longer exists. I found her on a road leading away from a battlefield, after her parents—simple peasants—were slaughtered. Her elder brother lay dead a half mile behind, having starved. “You think that kid who starved didn’t want to eat? You think her parents didn’t want to escape the ravages of war badly enough? You think if they’d had more Passion, the cosmere would have saved them? How convenient to believe that people are poor because they didn’t care enough about being rich. That they just didn’t pray hard enough. So convenient to make suffering their own fault, rather than life being unfair and birth mattering more than aptitude. Or storming Passion.”

“A virtue is something that is valuable even if it gives you nothing. A virtue persists without payment or compensation. Positive thinking is great. Vital. Useful. But it has to remain so even if it gets you nothing. Belief, truth, honor … if these exist only to get you something, you’ve missed the storming point.”

If hope doesn’t mean anything to you when you lose, then it wasn’t ever a virtue in the first place. It took me a long time to learn that, and I finally did so from the writings of a man who lost every belief he thought he had, then started over new.” “Sounds like someone wise,” Syl said. “Oh, Sazed is among the best. Hope I get to meet him someday.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do though,” Kaladin said. “War is coming, but I’m not involved. I’m just going to help a maniac return to his senses.” “That’s it, eh?” Wit said. “Just you becoming your world’s first therapist.”

“Life breaks us,” Dalinar said. “Then we fill the cracks with something stronger.”

“If I am to give you parting wisdom,” the Herald said, “it is this: just because something is fleeting, do not imagine it to be unimportant.” He hesitated, then continued. “And likewise, just because something is eternal, do not assume it to be … to be relevant …”

“This device points to something far in the distance. Something the Sibling called ‘the Grand Knell, source of the Current, the death of a god.’”

“Honor isn’t dead,” Adolin continued, “so long as he—it—lives on in us.

“Oh, bollocks,” he whispered, and leaped from the bed, shockspren erupting all around, Design scurrying down the wall and across the floor toward him. “The darkest, hairiest, greasiest bollocks on the most unkempt nethers of the most wanton demon of the most obscure religion’s damnable hellscape.”

“More, they aren’t quite bound in the same way. Oh, they’ll have to keep this agreement for the contest of champions—a formal agreement like that binds the power, not just the individual, something Rayse himself discovered long ago. But lesser promises—like the one made to Dalinar about not exploiting loopholes—are a different matter. He is breaking that one easily, because he did not make

“The Nightwatcher came from the Night, as the Stormfather came from the Wind. Though, when I was young, the Wind was different. So very different.” “When were you created, Sibling?” Jasnah asked. “Some six thousand years ago, when the Stones wanted a legacy in the form of a child of Honor and Cultivation. Back when Bondsmiths bonded not to spren, but to the ancient forces, left by gods.” “And the Stormfather?” “Soon before me.”

I knew the Stormfather when he was young. I, formed from the Stone, which was the sibling of Wind and Night. The Night left.

“Ask your spren what happens if fragments of a god are left to their own devices for too long. They stand up, start walking about, and start riding around in people’s earrings. They start caring.

“I have yet to know a person,” Wit said, “who took up one of those Shards and didn’t regret it, my friend.”

“Technically, yes,” he said. “But it is extremely difficult to do. Once you are a god, Dalinar, it is nearly impossible to let go.” “Surely it has been done,” Dalinar said. Wit grew distant, a faint smile on his lips. “Once. It wasn’t a full Ascension, but a mortal did give up the power once. It proved to be the wrong choice, but it was the most selfless thing I believe I’ve ever witnessed. So yes, Dalinar, it is possible. But not easy.”

But let me teach a truth here that is often misunderstood: sometimes, it is not weakness, but strength, to stand up and walk away.

Again the little dancing column of light appeared—though she knew it would be invisible to other humans. Lift saw into the other realm a little. Something related to what had happened to her when she’d gone to the Nightwatcher, that lying liar who didn’t keep her promises.

As I fear not the child with a weapon he cannot lift, I will never fear the mind of a man who does not think.

Bridge Four stew tonight. You coming?” “Who’s cooking?” “Does it matter?” “Determines whether I eat first,” Renarin said, smiling. “It’s me.” “Then I’ll come hungry,”

As a king leaves a people with the gift of his absence, so that they may grow and solve their own problems, without his hand to always guide them.

May you have the courage someday to walk away. And the wisdom to recognize that day when it arrives.

“We have Ash and Taln with us, back at Urithiru. Your friends.” Ishar sniffed. “Useless. Both of them.” He met Kaladin’s eyes. “Do you know what I do for them, child? I founded the Oathpact, so I can siphon some of their pains onto myself. I bear their darkness. Each of them would be crushed by it, were it not for me. You’ve seen Taln? He is insensate, so in the thrall of the darkness?” “Yes,” Syl said. “That is because I do not bear his darkness as I carry the others,” Ishar said. “They would all be as helpless if not for me. I am the conflux of all darkness and sorrow. Their pains are upon me. And still I stand before you. I am a god.”

Isolated as the others were, he could watch and prepare exactingly how to defeat each one. Only one of them held two Shards of power, but that one was unable to function properly. Odium’s predecessor had never taken a second Shard of power for that reason. These can be defeated, he thought, seeing the permutations of possibility. They will regret ignoring me. He kept his thoughts from Cultivation as she tried showing him peaceful nations on many planets. He instead was most curious about the fact that two of the Shards appeared to be missing, completely vanished from interacting with the others. Hidden. One he understood with some effort. But Valor—where had Valor gone, and how did she hide from even his eyes?

Zahel? That’s him. Vasher changes his name sometimes. He never calls himself Warbreaker anymore! I liked that name, but he hates it. Isn’t that strange? “Sword,” Kaladin said, “I think Zahel might be far older than a normal human gets. You say he made you? Like a god made the Honorblades?” Yup! He came to your lands, saw the Honorblades, and thought to himself, “My sword can’t talk. That’s dumb. I want a sword that can talk!” So he made me with Shashara. Yesteel was so upset! I haven’t seen Yesteel in a while. A few weeks at least. Vivenna wasn’t there. I didn’t even know her yet. “Vivenna?” Yes, she’s great. But she’s super, super grumpy. Do you know her?

Wait, wait, Maya thought, laughing—something that was so good to hear from her. Adolin. Were you a slut?

I don’t think it was that impressive, Nightblood said in his hand. “She made the stone flow like water,” Kaladin said. Water flows like water all the time, and it’s super stupid. Have you tried talking to it?

“Ideals are dead things,” Kaladin said, “unless they have people behind them. Laws exist not for themselves, but for those they serve.”

“And … the Wind you mentioned earlier. It spoke to me.” “A fallen god.” “A fallen god,” Dalinar said. “There are gods other than Honor, Cultivation, and Odium? Here on Roshar?” “There are pieces of the god who made the planet,” the Stormfather said. “No longer relevant, as humans—poorly adapted to this land—began to fear the storm above all else. And so it took on life … became an Adversary. A new demigod for Roshar.”

I remember this, Kaladin thought. From my childhood. I remember moving, and the Wind joining me. I remember … peace and freedom. He danced through it, and Syl danced with him, both riding the eddies of the Wind. And if he’d ever known a perfect moment in his life—crystallized joy, like light made into something you could hold—this was it. Worries abandoned. No, worries battered away. Worries refused. In that—at the edge of the world and the advent of the end of all things—Kaladin Stormblessed allowed himself to be happy. For what felt like the first time since Tien’s death.

“I don’t deserve it,” she whispered. “What was done to me is not my fault. It’s all right to accept that I have pain, but I shouldn’t accept that I deserve it.”

people break, and sometimes the strong ones break harder than the weak ones—because they’re the ones you pile everything on top of.

For the briefest moment, he stood on a burned hillside at night, in a land with a strange pale moon. A broken city smoldered before him, one with high walls that had been shattered, and within it a strange people. He raised what he knew was a weapon, though it was no sword or polearm, and unleashed lines of light while his armies surged around him. He wore black Shardplate.

“Makibak and his rebels are proud,” Jezrien said, making a gesture with two fingers. “But they are good people, and I cannot blame them for their hatred of me. They seek better lands, where the wind sings to the plants and causes them to grow. My people are dying in this mud pit.” “Better than burning on your old world.” “This one will come to flames as well, soon. I can’t halt it, but I think you might be able to. The singers listen to you.” Elodi looked to the sky again. “And I listen to the old gods. The Wind, the Stone. They whisper for me to go east, to leave this pile of tinder before the bonfire begins.” “In leaving,” Jezrien said, “you take with you every hint of common sense left to the singer nation. There will be war.” “There’s already war, my friend,” Elodi said. “Stay on your side of the mountains.” “I don’t think we can do that, Elodi,” Jezrien said. “Not if humans are dying.” “Then pray that I do leave for the east, so we do not meet again,” Elodi said. “My people are listening to your god these days. I hope to drown out his voice with the Rhythm of Peace, but …”

Nale is one of the most honorable men I’ve ever known.” “He was our enemy!” Chana said. “And we were wrong,” Vedel whispered. “He knew the truth of the god Passion long before any of us did. We fought on the wrong side of that war, Chana. I feel I will spend my life regretting that choice.”

When you stared down death, it was the people who mattered.

They formed the Shattered Plains, as she’d seen before—with ridges instead of chasms. They came to make a city, like the others, the stones said. Humans. They brought with them power—power to make the stones vibrate. An incredible power. She saw the thoughts of the stones. This land had been home to singers once, then to humans with a vaguely blue tint to their skin. They’d built a grand nation, and had wanted a capital city, as befitted the other great nations. A tenth Oathgate. Beautiful walls and patterns of stone. They had built it. With power.

Once, you sang with us, the stones said, needing no Radiant bond. The humans were the same.

Because of the new gods, the stones thought with sorrow. They didn’t understand. No one understood the alien stones at the place’s heart. Alien stones? The fourth moon. Now dead. Now fallen. With stone that is not quite stone. And when gods came here … Stone went haywire, vibrating at insane speed. She saw people sink into it. She saw destruction. Terror. A landscape broken by the hand of Honor himself. Why had he destroyed this city? Had it been because they’d dared use Surges?

Hiding isn’t necessary, the Wind said. They prayed, and Honor listened to such prayers during this time. He will modulate the storm in this small region, preventing it from destroying his faithful.

We are what Adonalsium left … the Wind said. And even the storm, before Honor, could be pled with at times … “The Stormfather never told me that,” Dalinar said. “The Stormfather says the storm simply is. That it has no choice but to destroy.” This is Roshar. Nothing merely is. Everything thinks. Everything has a choice. Watch. As humans choose.

“El is dead,” Jezrien whispered. “I stabbed him myself.” “And yet he lives,” Nale said. “Jezrien, if El has joined the Fused … not only are our enemies being reborn, but they are recruiting the strongest and most talented singers to immortality. We have to counter it, or we will lose this war.” “Ishar was correct all along, Jezrien,” Chana said—by his side, as she’d been in each previous vision. “This is Passion’s doing. Our god has fully betrayed us.” “I believe we betrayed him first,” Jezrien said softly. “The moment I acknowledged that Nale had been correct, things started changing. He was never Passion, Chana. Always Odium.”

“We are sad, as Vedel’s entire nation did not make the transition to this land with her. Vedel was visiting us when the … end began.” “So I left them,” she whispered. “To burn.” “You are a healer, Vedel, not a Firesmith,” Jezrien said, walking across the tent to comfort her. “There was nothing you could do once the chain reaction set the air ablaze.”

“Honor,” Nale said, shoving his way to the front of the group, “how do we know this won’t play out as it did last time?” “Nale,” Tanavast said. “It is good to see you. Tell the others. Did I lie to you last time?” “No,” Nale said. “But the powers you gave me … they helped burn the world itself.” Honor’s expression softened. “I’m sorry. But did I warn you?” “Yes,” Nale admitted. “You did.”