Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive, #3)

by Brandon Sanderson

“It was … wrong,” Adolin finally said. “Haunting. A nightmare made manifest.” “Kind of like my face?” Kaladin asked. Adolin glanced at him, then grinned. “Fortunately, Shallan covered it up for you with that illusion.”

“Well, I figured we’d want someplace safe,” Adolin said. “We’d need to stay with someone I’d trust with my life, or more.” He looked at Kaladin, then gestured toward the woman. “So I brought us to my tailor.”

“I had it reversed. I thought Brightness Shallan was the persona. But the spy—that’s the false identity.” “Wrong,” Shallan said. “They’re both equally false.”

I’m going to go chart the hidden undersea caverns of Aimia; find my maps in Akinah.

I like him, Veil thought. An … odd thought, in how much stronger that feeling was to Veil than it had been to Shallan. I like that brooding sense he has about him, those dangerous eyes. Why did Shallan focus so much on Adolin? He was nice, but also bland. You couldn’t tease him without feeling bad, but Kaladin, he glared at you in the most satisfying of ways.

She focused on his voice, something familiar. Not the memory of a sword protruding from her own chest, not the callous way she’d been dumped here and left to rot, not the line of corpses with exposed bones, haunted faces, chewed-out eyes … Don’t think. Don’t see it.

Smile. I need you to smile. I need what happened to be all right. Something that can simply roll off me. Please.

Yours is the power Ishar once held. Before he was Herald of Luck, they called him Binder of Gods. He was the founder of the Oathpact. No Radiant is capable of more than you. Yours is the power of Connection, of joining men and worlds, minds and souls. Your Surges are the greatest of all, though they will be impotent if you seek to wield them for mere battle.

This time Vizier Noura herself stepped forward and took it. “ ‘Verdict,’ ” she read from the top. “ ‘By Jasnah Kholin.’ ” The others pushed through the guards, gathering around, and began reading it to themselves. Though this was the shortest of the essays, he heard them whispering and marveling over it. “Look, it incorporates all seven of Aqqu’s Logical Forms!” “That’s an allusion to the Grand Orientation. And … storms … she quotes Prime Kasimarlix in three successive stages, each escalating the same quote to a different level of Superior Understanding.” One woman held her hand to her mouth. “It’s written entirely in a single rhythmic meter!” “Great Yaezir,” Noura said. “You’re right.” “The allusions…” “Such wordplay…” “The momentum and rhetoric…” Logicspren burst around them in the shape of little stormclouds. Then, practically as one, the scions and viziers turned to Dalinar. “This is a work of art,” Noura said.

“I was that man,” Dalinar said. “I’ve merely been blessed with enough good examples to make me aspire to something more.”

An animal … An animal reacts when it is prodded … Memories. You whip it, and it becomes savage.

A day after being murdered in a brutal fashion, Shallan found that she was feeling much better.

Wit glanced to the side, where he’d put his pack. He started, as if surprised. Shallan cocked her head as he quickly recovered, jumping back into the story so fast that it was easy to miss his lapse. But now, as he spoke, he searched the audience with careful eyes.

He just recognized me, she realized. I’m still wearing Veil’s face. But how … how did he know?

Shallan slipped forward and glanced inside his pack, catching sight of a small jar, sealed at the top. It was mostly black, but the side pointed toward her was instead white.

“Are you one of them?” Shallan blurted out. “Are you a Herald, Wit?” Pattern hummed softly. “Heavens no,” Wit said. “I’m not stupid enough to get mixed up in religion again. The last seven times I tried it were all disasters. I believe there’s at least one god still worshipping me by accident.”

“Some men, as they age, grow kinder. I am not one of those, for I have seen how the cosmere can mistreat the innocent—and that leaves me disinclined toward kindness. Some men, as they age, grow wiser. I am not one of those, for wisdom and I have always been at cross-purposes, and I have yet to learn the tongue in which she speaks. Some men, as they age, grow more cynical. I, fortunately, am not one of those. If I were, the very air would warp around me, sucking in all emotion, leaving only scorn.” He tapped the table. “Other men … other men, as they age, merely grow stranger. I fear that I am one of those. I am the bones of a foreign species left drying on the plain that was once, long ago, a sea. A curiosity, perhaps a reminder, that all has not always been as it is now.”

“Of course! ‘Sincerity’ is a word people use to justify their chronic dullness.”

“What’s the point of goals, if not to spur you to something lofty?” “Yes, yes. Aim for the sun. That way if you miss, at least your arrow will fall far away, and the person it kills will likely be someone you don’t know.”

“Then be wise about it. There are two kinds of important men, Shallan. There are those who, when the boulder of time rolls toward them, stand up in front of it and hold out their hands. All their lives, they’ve been told how great they are. They assume the world itself will bend to their whims as their nurse did when fetching them a fresh cup of milk. “Those men end up squished. “Other men stand to the side when the boulder of time passes, but are quick to say, ‘See what I did! I made the boulder roll there. Don’t make me do it again!’ “These men end up getting everyone else squished.” “Is there not a third type of person?” “There is, but they are oh so rare. These know they can’t stop the boulder. So they walk beside it, study it, and bide their time. Then they shove it—ever so slightly—to create a deviation in its path. “These are the men … well, these are the men who actually change the world. And they terrify me. For men never see as far as they think they do.”

Wit nodded. “A dangerous foe, Shallan. The cult reminds me of a group I knew long ago. Equally dangerous, equally foolish.”

She took a deep breath. “I am going to learn how to change the world, Wit.” “You already know how. Learn why.”

“Do you know anything about Wit?” she asked Pattern. “No,” Pattern said. “He feels like … mmm … one of us.”

“And you look like what the storm leaves behind,” Adolin said, passing by and patting Kaladin on the shoulder. “We like you anyway. Every boy has a favorite stick he found out in the yard after the rains.”

That wasn’t so uncommon a feeling for him. He felt good lots of days. Trouble was, on the bad days, that was hard to remember. At those times, for some reason, he felt like he had always been in darkness, and always would be. Why was it so hard to remember? Did he have to keep slipping back down? Why couldn’t he stay up here in the sunlight, where everyone else lived?