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July 1 - July 30, 2019
Familiarity, he thought. I need to know these abilities as well as I know my spear. That meant practice. Lots of practice. Unfortunately, the best way to practice was to find someone who matched or bested you in skill, strength, and capacity. Considering what he could now do, that was going to be a tall order.
They weren’t traitors. They just weren’t. But everyone is sure they betrayed us, and you’re not going to change minds quickly. Not unless you can Surgebind to quiet them.”
Step by step, storm by storm, depression claimed her people—the listeners, as they called their race. “Parshendi” was a human term.
Eshonai had discovered similar ruins in her explorations, such as the one she’d been on when her people had first encountered humans. Only seven years ago, but also an eternity. She had loved those days, exploring a wide world that felt infinite. And now . . . Now she spent her life trapped on this one plateau. The wilderness called to her, sang that she should gather up what things she could carry and strike out. Unfortunately, that was no longer her destiny.
Kill the man. Kill him, and risk destruction. For if he had lived to do what he told them that night, all would have been lost. The others who had made that decision with her were dead now.
“Well,” the creature said, “don’t ask about the soul of their god. They don’t like to speak of that, it turns out. Must be spectacular, to let the beasts grow this large. Beyond even the spren who inhabit the bodies of ordinary greatshells. Hmmm . . .” He seemed very pleased by something.
“Why we came here,” Vstim said. “The thing we trade for, a treasure that very few know still exists. They were supposed to have died with Aimia, you see. I came here with all of these goods in tow because Talik sent to me to say they had the corpse of one to trade. Kings pay fortunes for them.” He leaned down. “I have never seen one alive before. I was given the corpse I wanted in trade. This one has been given to you.” “By the Reshi?” Rysn asked, mind still clouded. She didn’t know what to make of any of this. “The Reshi could not command one of the larkin,” Vstim said, standing. “This was
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He’d never thought it appropriate—not because he didn’t think the Blade deserved a name, but because he figured he didn’t know the right one. This weapon had belonged to one of the Knights Radiant, long ago. That man had named the weapon, undoubtedly. To call it something else seemed presumptuous. Adolin had felt that way even before he’d started thinking of the Radiants in a good light, as his father did. This Blade would continue after Adolin died. He didn’t own it. He was borrowing it for a time.
You still seeing those spren about?” “Red lightning?” she asked. “I think so. They’re hard to spot. You haven’t seen them?”
“You don’t like anyone who carries Shards.” “Exactly.” “You called the Blades abominations before,” Kaladin said. “But the Radiants carried them. So were the Radiants wrong to do so?” “Of course not,” she said, sounding like he was saying something completely stupid. “The Shards weren’t abominations back then.” “What changed?” “The knights,” Syl said, growing quiet. “The knights changed.”
Those eyes seemed old somehow, but the man’s skin didn’t seem wrinkled enough to match them. He could have been thirty-five. Or he could have been seventy.
“He thinks you’re a god. You shouldn’t encourage him.” “Why not? I am a god.” He turned his head, looking at her flatly as she sat on his shoulder. “Syl . . .” “What? I am!” She grinned and held up her fingers, as if pinching something very small. “A little piece of one. Very, very little. You have permission to bow to me now.”
He buzzed with an annoyed sound, quick and high pitched. “I will learn what I can of you before you kill me.” “You think . . . You think I’m going to kill you?” “It happened to the others,” Pattern said, his voice softer now. “It will happen to me. It is . . . a pattern.” “This has to do with the Knights Radiant,”
“Yes,” Pattern said. “The knights killed their spren.” “How? Why?” “Their oaths,” Pattern said. “It is all I know. My kind, those who were unbonded, we retreated, and many kept our minds. Even still, it is hard to think apart from my kind, unless . . .” “Unless?” “Unless we have a person.” “So that’s what you get out of it,” Shallan said, untangling her hair with her fingers. “Symbiosis. I get access to Surgebinding, you get thought.” “Sapience,” Pattern said. “Thought. Life. These are of humans. We are ideas. Ideas that wish to live.”
Life before death . . . The words drifted toward her from the shadows of her past. A past she would not think of.
Kaladin nodded his chin at it. “What’s that on the Blade?” “Nobody’s sure,” Zahel said, swiping with the Blade. “Fit it to the edges of a Blade, and it will adapt to the shape of the weapon and make it safely blunt. Off the weapons, they break surprisingly easily. Useless in a fight on their own. Perfect for training, though.”
The flat sides of the blade were etched with the ten fundamental glyphs. It was a handspan wide and easily six feet long, yet Zahel held it with one hand and didn’t seem off balance.
“You spoke of one Surge, earlier,” Pattern said. “Lightweaving, the power of light. But you have something else. The power of transformation.” “Soulcasting?” Shallan said. “I didn’t Soulcast anyone.” “Mmmm. And yet, you transformed them. And yet. Mmmm.”
Elhokar was ranting that nobody took his safety seriously, that nobody listened, that they should be looking for the things he saw over his shoulder in the mirror, whatever that meant. The tirade sounded like the whining of a spoiled child.
“Your truth is what you see,” Pattern said, sounding confused. “What else could it be? That is the truth that you spoke to me, the truth that brings power.”
“Voidbringers,” Shallan said, cold. “Yes. I do not think that my kind would live in a world with only them. They have their own spren.” Shallan sat up sharply. “Their own spren?”
“Spren are . . . power . . . shattered power. Power given thought by the perceptions of men. Honor, Cultivation, and . . . and another. Fragments broken off.”
Shallan wrote furiously. Odium. Hatred. A type of spren? Perhaps a large unique one, like Cusicesh from Iri or the Nightwatcher. Hatredspren. She’d never heard of such a thing.
“You’re starting to sound a lot like my mother.” “Captivating?” Syl said. “Amazing, witty, meaningful?” “Repetitive.” “Captivating?” Syl said. “Amazing, witty, meaningful?” “Very funny.”
Almost looks man-made, Adolin thought idly, considering the shape.
Adolin patted Sureblood’s neck, and the horse pranced a bit as they started moving. He often did that when Adolin was feeling annoyed, as if trying to improve his master’s mood.
“You’re different, you mean,” Renarin said, eyes forward. He wasn’t wearing his spectacles. Why was that? Didn’t he need them?
“I need to be ready,” Renarin said. “Something is coming.”
And the glowing strongbox. It was hidden behind a painting of a storm at sea that did nothing to dim the powerful white glow. Right through the canvas, she saw the outline of the strongbox blazing like a fire. She stumbled, pulling to a stop.
’Tis said it was warm in the land far away When Voidbringers entered our songs. We brought them home to stay And then those homes became their own, It happened gradually. And years ahead ’twil still be said ’tis how it has to be. —From the Listener Song of Histories, 12th stanza
paused, noticing what she’d drawn: a rocky shore near the ocean, with distinctive cliffs rising behind. The perspective was distant; on the rocky shore, several shadowy figures helped one another out of the water. She swore one of them was Yalb.
He felt as if he were standing above the void itself, Damnation, known as Braize in the old songs. Home to demons and monsters.
Calm, Shallan told herself. Be calm! Ten heartbeats. But for her, it didn’t have to be ten, did it? No. It must be. Time, I need time!
Someone was near. Zahel awoke, snapping his eyes open, knowing instantly that someone was approaching his room.
Oh, right. One of those storms had come, Invested to the hilt and looking for a place to stick it all. Cursed things.
“Good,” Zahel said, settling down on the bed. “And don’t be green from the ground.” The boy paused by the door. “Don’t be . . . Huh?” Stupid language, Zahel thought, climbing into his cot. No proper metaphors at all. “Just leave your attitude and come to learn. I hate beating up people younger than me. It makes me feel like a bully.”
He expected a voice to speak in his mind as he drifted off. Of course, there wasn’t one. Hadn’t been one in years.
One of the ardents glanced at Adolin. Stormfather—that gaze wasn’t completely human, not any longer. Prolonged use of the Soulcaster had transformed the eyes so that they sparkled like gemstones themselves. The woman’s skin had hardened to something like stone, smooth, with fine cracks. It was as if the person were a living statue.
