Isles of the Emberdark

by Brandon Sanderson

Frost saw the best in people, and people became their best because of it.

“We live dual lives,” he said. “And there is a reason we spend thirty years in human form before reaching the age of transformation. This is Adonalsium’s wisdom.”

“I try, but I…don’t understand mortals. They live such hurried lives, and they are so fragile, but they don’t seem to care. I try, but I don’t understand.”

“You have no idea how lucky you are,” he said, “to be able to look at these safely.

Dusk groaned and glanced back at the terrarium containing one of the deadliest creatures in all of creation. And he felt…sorry. These insects had once terrified even the most skilled trapper. Now they were just bugs in a jar.

“Was it really as terrible as people say?” Tuka asked. “On the island, I mean.” “Yes,” Dusk said. “And wonderful.” “Terrible…and wonderful?” Tuka frowned. “Wonderful because it was terrible.”

“One might think the loremothers and the trappers to be enemies, for you wield silence while we wield sound. I wish I knew what was happening in that mind of yours.”

What were those odd pieces of metal stuck to their cheeks? Ribbed, like ripples of waves, those didn’t seem like armor. More ornamental.

Its ability to fly baffled explanation; the only thing Dusk’s people knew about the process was that the Ones Above had requested the courtyard launchpad be made entirely of steel.

But when he spoke, they grew quiet. Words had their own economics, as sure as precious metals did. The ones in short supply were the ones that, secretly, everyone wanted.

Everyone fell silent, thinking—as he wished they’d do more often.

This creature stood seven feet tall, and was encased entirely in steel. Armor, thick and bulky, with smooth, rounded edges—and a smoky grey light glowing at the joints. The helmet likewise glowed from a slit-like visor that appeared to have glass behind it. An arcane symbol—reminding Dusk vaguely of a bird in flight—was etched into the front of the breastplate.

“Tell me. Is there a place on your planet where people vanish unexpectedly? A place, perhaps, where an odd pool collects something that is not quite water?”

If you do not accept my protection, you will become a vassal of the Scadrians, these ‘Ones Above.’ Your planet will become a farming station, like many others, used to feed their expansion efforts. Your birds will be stripped from you the moment it becomes possible to do so.”

Mistborn, Sunlit Man

The alien thrust out his armored hand, and smoke—or mist—coalesced there out of nowhere. It formed into a gun, longer than a pistol, shorter than a rifle. Wicked in shape, with flowing metal along the sides like wings, it was to Saplings’s pistol what a shadowy deep beast of the ocean was to a minnow. The alien raised his other hand, snapping a small box—perhaps a power supply—to the side of the rifle, causing it to glow ominously.

“You have been thrust into a conflict you do not understand. But like a child who has found himself in the middle of a war zone, you will have to decide which direction to run.”

“You don’t know Cakoban? Called Tenth the Navigator? First trapper of Patji?”

I’ve met a lot of trappers, Dusk. None of them had one of those.”

The company is determined to hold Patji against other interests.

“The dusk has passed. This is the night. You will presume to find a new dawn, and do what you must to guide us there.”

“You are stronger than anyone I know,” he said. “But you are just one person. I learned five years ago that sometimes one person cannot stand before the tide.”

“Vathi,” he said softly, “have you considered that we discovered the very thing this armored stranger mentioned?” “The pool?” “Yes,” he said. “More importantly, what’s on the other side.” He paused. “The endless night, Vathi. It’s real. And we must tame it.”

But modernization of Patji was going to happen someday; it’s inevitable. The islands will be tamed. The Aviar are too valuable to leave in the hands of a couple hundred eccentric woodsmen.”

“We have barely harnessed steamships. But the Ones Above…they can sail the stars themselves.”

“They know,” he said, looking through the images, “that this portal leads somewhere important. They’re trying to reach it.”

“You brought a mainlander chick to the Pantheon,” Vathi whispered. “And it gained a talent.”

“Progress is always sad,” he said. “There is no new life without death.”

“I gave up Patji for the planet, Vathi, but I will not give up the planet to those people from the stars.”

“My job has always been to protect the Aviar. Here, I am nothing. But there, in the darkness, I see a chance to help. A slim, nearly impossible chance. Still a chance.”

Never move without asking yourself, is this too easy?”

“We carry these,” Dusk said, fishing out his medallion, “as a similar warning. Each one comes from the body of a fallen trapper.

“My mother did not name me for the time of day. I was named because my mother saw the dusk of our people. The sun will soon set on us, she often told me.”

And then, something new. An impression. Something out there liked what he was planning.

He was in another place. Another world. A land with a dark black sky, no sun to be seen. Streams of soft blue made lines in the air—like smoke flowing in an unseen and unfelt current.

However, the only other natural features of note in this place were little floating lights in the shape of fishhooks. Those glowed like the wick of a lantern and hovered in the air, held aloft by some unknown power. They tended to come in pairs, the hooks intertwined.

“Every bird from every island. In their youth, they must come here.”

“It’s not the birds. It never has been… It’s a parasite. They carry a parasite that bestows talents! That’s why those raised away from the islands cannot gain the abilities, and why a mainland bird you brought here could.”

Of the Dusk. Born during that dusk, or bringer of it?

While submerged in that frigid water, Dusk thought he saw something…glowing butterflies… And an impression. Like words. Well done.

“The Ones Above have rules. They can’t conquer us unless we’re advanced enough. Just like a man can’t, in good conscience, attack a child. So they have left their machines for us to discover. When we poke and prod at it, we will find explanations inside of how the device works, left as if carelessly. And at some point in the near future, we will build something like one of their machines. We will have grown more quickly than we should have. We will be childlike still, ignorant, but the laws from Above will let these visitors conquer us.”

“They will not have us,” Dusk said. “We will see through their traps, and we will not fall for their tricks. For we have been trained by the Father himself for this very day.”

Instead, he kept paddling. One man. Two birds. Three kinds of infinity. And an entire world that, remarkably, still needed him.

Besides, the cosmere really was a wondrous place.

She paused by one of the portholes, looking out at the bleak darkness of Shadesmar—an endless, empty black plane. Really, wasn’t it the darkness that reminded one how wonderful the light was?

the emberdark, people sometimes called that vast emptiness—the Rosharan term for the unexplored parts of Shadesmar.

“You were trained by one of the most obtuse, crass men in all of the cosmere, Star. You don’t know the meaning of the word ‘polite.’”

“Tell her,” Nazh said, “she can order me a hundred lashings. I’m fond of them. They tickle.”

and a stack of large barrels, marked with symbols of various aethers.

Rosharan antigrav technology, aether spores from the Dhatrian planetary network for thrust and engine power, a Scadrian composite metal hull. Never mind that all three technological strains produced their own viable starships without the others. The Dynamic, like her crew, had picked up a little here and a little there. All it was missing was an Awakened metalmind, but those were expensive—and Starling had never trusted them anyway.

“You can only afford older spores, which tend to be drowsy. I wake them up, that’s all…”