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August 2 - August 6, 2025
“These women were supposed to be scholars! Instead of recording facts, they wrote opinions and presented them as truth. They seem to take great pains to contradict one another, and they dance around topics of import like spren around a fire—never providing heat themselves, just making a show of it.”
“Spren are . . . power . . . shattered power. Power given thought by the perceptions of men. Honor, Cultivation, and . . . and another. Fragments broken off.” “Another?” Shallan prodded. Pattern’s buzz became a whine, going so high pitched she almost couldn’t hear it. “Odium.” He spoke the word as if needing to force it out.
“I’ve learned to accept the world as it is, Amaram,” Sadeas said, turning his horse. “That’s something very few people are willing to do. They stumble along, hoping, dreaming, pretending. That doesn’t change a single storming thing in life. You have to stare the world in the eyes, in all its grimy brutality. You have to acknowledge its depravities. Live with them. It’s the only way to accomplish anything meaningful.”
“He’s coming.” “Who? The storm?” “The one who hates,” she whispered. “The darkness inside. Kaladin, he’s watching. Something’s going to happen. Something bad.”
“Same thing you are,” Kaladin said. He felt a wave of nausea, but forced himself to appear firm. “Windrunner.” “You can’t be.” Kaladin held up the knife, the few wisps of remaining Light steaming from his skin. Rain sprinkled him. The assassin scrambled backward, eyes as wide as if Kaladin had turned into a chasmfiend. “They told me I was a liar!” the assassin screamed. “They told me I was wrong! Szeth-son-son-Vallano . . . Truthless. They named me Truthless!”
She wasn’t yet completely certain who that woman was, but she knew who that woman was not. She was not the same frightened girl who had suffered the storms of a broken home. She was not the same naive woman who had tried to steal from Jasnah Kholin. She was not the same woman who had been deceived by Kabsal and then Tyn.
“But, I don’t have ears,” he said. “Ah yes. A metaphor? Such delicious lies. I will remember that idiom.”
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.
“Shallan Davar?” he asked. “Um . . .” Was she? Oh, right. She took the wine. “Yes?” “Adolin Kholin,” he said.
Shallan picked at her own food, listening to her father boast about his new axehound breeding stud. He spoke of their prosperity. Lies.
gobbletyblarthy.” “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.”
Shallan stifled a blush.
Not sure that is possible?
The darkeyed men in history who had won Shardblades were praised in song and story. Evod Markmaker, Lanacin, Raninor of the Fields . . . These men were revered. But modern darkeyes, well, they were told not to think beyond their station. Or else.
Be better. Why shouldn’t men like him be expected to dream big dreams? None of it seemed to fit. Society and religion, they just flat-out contradicted each other.
Don’t get revenge upon the king for ordering the death of your grandparents. But do get revenge on the Parshendi for ordering the death of someone you never met.
“I have wondered,” the messenger said, “if any of you find the term odd. You know what an axe is. But what is a hound?”
“I see,” the messenger said softly. “You do not yet understand the nature of lies. I had that trouble myself, long ago. The Shards here are very strict. You will have to see the truth, child, before you can expand upon it. Just as a man should know the law before he breaks it.”
“No. Not now. You aren’t ready, for one, and I have work to be about. Another day. Keep cutting at those thorns, strong one, and make a path for the light. The things you fight aren’t completely natural.” He stood up, then bowed to her.
“You are not as good with patterns,” he said, sounding smug. “You are abstract. You think in lies and tell them to yourselves. That is fascinating, but it is not good for patterns.”
“I’m quite good at that,” Shallan said sourly, “considering how short a time I’ve been doing it.” “Short time?” Pattern said. “But we first . . .” She stopped listening until he was done.
“Simple, but of aluminum, which can only be made by Soulcasting,”
She knew this Blade. It belonged to her brother Helaran.
“I don’t like how you get,” she said, seeming small, “when you think about him. You stop being you. You stop thinking. Please.” “He killed Tien,” Kaladin said. “I will end him, Syl.” “But tonight?” Syl asked. “After what you just discovered, after what you just did?”
I have learned much. My name is not Shen. It is Rlain.” “May the winds treat you well, Rlain.” “The winds are not what I fear,” Rlain said. He patted Kaladin’s shoulder, then took a deep breath as if anticipating something difficult, and stepped from the chamber.
Kaladin retrieved his spear from the back of the carriage, then jogged to catch up, eventually falling in a few steps behind them. He listened to them both laughing, and wanted to punch them in the face.
“It’s a metaphor. And I can imagine it.
If Syl is honorspren and the opposite of Pattern would she use metaphors?
“I can’t affect the Physical Realm except in minor ways,” Wyndle said. “This means that you will need to use Investiture to—” Lift yawned. “Use Investiture to—” She yawned wider. Starvin’ Voidbringers never could catch a hint. Wyndle sighed. “Spread the seeds on the frame.”
Well then, Gaw. I don’t talk to myself because I’m crazy.” “No?” “I do it because I’m awesome.”
“I’m gonna eat their food,” she said. “Rich folk have the best food.” “But . . . there might be spheres in the vizier quarters. . . .” “Eh,” she said. “I’d just spend ’em on food.” 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.
“Keep all spheres from her,” Darkness said. “She must not be allowed to Invest.”
Dignity was for rich folk who had time to make up games to play with one another.
They’d barely just met, and he’d been a fool. She’d told him to go back. But this was who she was, who she had to be. I will remember those who have been forgotten.
“It appears that you are an Edgedancer,” Darkness said, steering her down the corridor as the crowd moved in around Gawx, chattering. She stumbled, but he held her upright. “I had wondered which of the two you would be.”
You chose me instead. Why?” “Others may be detestable, but they do not dabble in arts that could return Desolation to this world.” His words were so cold. “What you are must be stopped.”
Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, sat atop the highest tower in the world and contemplated the End of All Things.
They whispered to him. If he drew close, they screamed. They also screamed when he shut his eyes. He had taken to blinking as little as possible. His eyes felt dry in his skull. It was what any . . . sane man would do.
The Voidbringers are no more, they had told him. The spirits of the stones themselves promised it. The powers of old are no more. The Knights Radiant are fallen. We are all that remains. All that remains. . . . Truthless.
“What does it mean if the Shamanate are wrong? What does it mean if they banished me in error?” It meant the End of All Things. The end of truth. It would mean that nothing made sense, and that his oath was meaningless. It would mean he had killed for no reason.
It would take days to get where he was going, but he would find answers. Or, barring that, someone to kill. Of his own choice, this time.
It was time to speak to them and deliver the lies she’d prepared. That the Five would be reinstated once the humans were dealt with, that there was no reason to worry. That everything was just fine.
Wit stared at him, instrument still in his lap. The man didn’t seem angry. “So you do know this story,” Wit said. “What? I thought you were making it up.” “No, you were.” “Then what is there to know?” Wit smiled. “All stories told have been told before. We tell them to ourselves, as did all men who ever were. And all men who ever will be. The only things new are the names.”
“For glory lit, and life alive, for goals unreached and aims to strive. All men must try, the wind did see. It is the test, it is the dream.” Kaladin stepped slowly up to the bars. Even with eyes open, he could see it. Imagine it. “So in that land of dirt and soil, our hero stopped the storm itself. And while the rain came down like tears, our Fleet refused to end this race. His body dead, but not his will, within those winds his soul did rise. “It flew upon the day’s last song, to win the race and claim the dawn. Past the sea and past the waves, our Fleet no longer lost his breath. Forever
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That was the real Shallan. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name. The person she had become instead was a lie, one she had fabricated in the name of survival. To remember herself as a child, discovering Light in the gardens, Patterns in the stonework, and dreams that became real
“If I go,” Malise whispered, “and Balat with me, who will he hate? Who will he hit? Maybe you, finally? The one who actually deserves it?” “Maybe,” Shallan whispered, then left.
“You loathe their excess,” she said, “and you are close to applying that emotion to them as well. They live the lives they have known, the lives that society has taught them are proper. You won’t change them with contempt.
“‘As I fear not a child with a weapon he cannot lift, I will never fear the mind of a man who does not think.’” Navani frowned at him. “It’s from The Way of Kings,”
“What you did tonight was clever,” Wit said. “You turned an attack into a promise. The wisest of men know that to render an insult powerless, you often need only to embrace it.” “Thank you,” Dalinar said.
Wit smiled. “I am but a man, Dalinar, so much as I wish it were not true at times. I am no Radiant. And while I am your friend, please understand that our goals do not completely align. You must not trust yourself with me. If I have to watch this world crumble and burn to get what I need, I will do so. With tears, yes, but I would let it happen.” Dalinar frowned. “I will do what I can to help,” Wit said, “and for that reason, I must go. I cannot risk too much, because if he finds me, then I become nothing—a soul shredded and broken into pieces that cannot be reassembled. What I do here is more
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She felt foolish for revealing her skill. Veil would have had words with her. It was too bad Veil wasn’t down here, actually. She would be better at this whole surviving-in-the-wilderness thing.
He saw it in her eyes. The anguish, the frustration. The terrible nothing that clawed inside and sought to smother her. She knew. It was there, inside. She had been broken. Then she smiled. Oh, storms. She smiled anyway. It was the single most beautiful thing he’d seen in his entire life.
