Isles of the Emberdark

by Brandon Sanderson

He let out a long breath. Seemed like he was forgiven. Really, he should have known better than to punch a senator. Important people had underlings you punched on their behalf, and he should have found one of those.

Vathi took the hand, though Dusk—personally—would rather have handled a deadly asp. It seemed worse to him, somehow, that the Ones Above were human. An alien monster, with features like something from the deepest part of the ocean, would be more understandable than these smiling humans. Familiar features should not cover such alien motives and ideas.

She was also a company type, as removed from his experience as a person could get. Soldiers, craftsmen, even chiefs he could understand. But these soft-spoken scribes who had quietly conquered the world with a sword of commerce, they baffled him.

And a strange land with a black sky, and no sun. Endless darkness beyond.

“It…does sound like the stories,” one of the senators said. “I think the trapper might have a point.” He made a mental note never to punch her.

“No,” Dusk said, looking through the pages. “No, I’ve seen this place. It does seem endless…and it’s where we came from. So if we crossed this long ago, we can do so again.”

One could revere the past without pretending everything about it had been better.

“Even if that rival is the one who killed you?” Vathi asked. “The traps you set, the ways you try to interfere with one another…” “It is our way.” “That is an awful excuse.” She was right.

“They may spur it,” Vathi said. “Someday we will sail the stars like they do. But change would have happened even without them. The world is progressing. One man cannot slow it, no matter how determined he is.” He stopped in the path.

He’d thought, when younger, that living on Patji would make him strong enough to never fear anything else. Then he’d left, and discovered there were ideas far more frightening than any deathant. Ideas like realizing you had no future.

So she had seen. Of course she had. She was a seeker, a learner. A questioner. Why must men ask so many questions?

“Yes.” “This changes everything, Dusk. Everything.” “Yes.” Of the Dusk. Born during that dusk, or bringer of it? What had he done?

“No,” she said. “Dusk, we’re each a new person every day. The world changes, and is new each day, and we must change with it. That’s the blessing the gods give us. The blessing to be able to become someone new.”

Patji! Dusk looked toward Cakoban’s fingers. I need to stop the men and their device. I know it! Why? Why do you hunt me? Perhaps it was because Dusk knew so much. Too much. More than any man had known. For he had asked questions. Men. And their questions.

The human ability to sense direction was a liar straight from Gofi, the trickster island. People grew up in familiar environs, which led them to falsely trust instincts they didn’t actually have—for memory was different from navigational sense. Without landmarks, people were helpless. His uncle had drilled that into him, teaching Dusk to watch the stars and read the waves. Teaching him how to not get lost in the jungle, where his “natural” senses would send him in circles.

This was a useful machine, this engine. Another reminder that progress wasn’t all bad. Machetes replaced obsidian or stone knives. Motors replaced paddles. Except one day, that march of progress had turned him into the thing that was no longer needed. Progress was a wave. It first caught you in it and carried you, but the moment you slipped off the crest, you went crashing into the surf and maybe never came back up. Progress had no use for men who didn’t ask questions. But…if he was being honest with himself, such questions had always—at least in part—driven him. He, the man who had brought a non-Aviar fledgling to the pool and given her worms. He’d always pretended that he hated change, but he had been a part of it from the beginning. Technology was a wave, yes, and it came in a flood. It wouldn’t just drown him, but his entire people, unless they built higher and higher houses to survive it. Up, up, up into the stars.

Reports exist of those birds on Roshar, in the past. This means some of them had to have gotten offworld before the modern era.”

LIFT'S CHICKEN

Who cared if the cosmere was big? The ocean was big, and Dusk couldn’t even comprehend that.

didn’t necessarily want to visit these places, though. Seemed like strangers from another world coming to visit wouldn’t be good for them, any more than the Ones Above visiting had been good for his people. Except it was good, in some ways, he thought. We have new medicines, new technology. If only there had been a way to acquire such advances without reaching into a nest of asps to snare them.

Was there a word for a person without a home, because his home had evolved into something new? A person without a future, because the future had no use for him?

She seemed, again, genuine. Dusk finally felt like he got Starling. She wasn’t here to exploit him—she really wasn’t. She wanted to save him instead. Which was almost as insulting.

Games beyond games. Ever it was with these Scadrians. They loved their secrets.

Always another one, eh?

The soldiers quickly dipped the ends of the harpoons into a glowing liquid.

Dor?