The Stormlight Archive, Books 1-3: The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Oathbringer

by Brandon Sanderson

“Spren have genders?” Sigzil asked, amazed. “Of course,” she said. “Though, technically, it probably has something to do with the way people view us. Personification of the forces of nature or some similar 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.”

“Come out anyway. Stop hiding, Kaladin. Be.”

The cheering men sat on crude benches with others crowded around. A glimpse between bodies showed two small axehounds. There were no spren. When people crowded about like this, spren were rare, even though the emotions seemed to be very high.

“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?” “Why does that matter?” Shallan asked. “Because it is a word,” the messenger replied. “A simple word with a world embedded inside, like a bud waiting to open.”

“Oh! I assumed he’d sent you here. I mean, that coming to us was your primary purpose.” “Turns out that it was. Tell me, young one. Do spren speak to you?” The lights going out, life drained from them. Twisted symbols the eye should not see. Her mother’s soul in a box. “I . . .” she said. “No. Why would a spren speak to me?” “No voices?” the man said, leaning forward. “Do spheres go dark when you are near?”

Wisps of Light rose before her. The messenger had gotten out a handful of spheres and held them toward her while staring into her eyes. The steamy Stormlight rose between them. Shallan lifted her fingers, the image of her ideal life wrapped around her like a comforter. No. She drew back. The misty light faded. “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.”

They didn’t seem to want to be soldiers. Why had they taken Dalinar’s offer then, instead of leaving? Because they don’t want to make choices anymore, he thought. Choices can be hard. He knew how that felt. Storms, but he did. He remembered sitting and staring at a blank wall, too morose to even get up and go kill himself. He shivered. Those were not days he wanted to remember.

“I’ve spent my life being judged for my eyes, Shen. I won’t do something similar to you because of your skin.”

“Lunu’anaki,” Rock said, “is god of travel and mischief. Very powerful god. He came from depths of peak ocean, from realm of gods.” “What did he look like?” Lopen asked, eyes wide. “Like person,” Rock said. “Maybe Alethi, though skin was lighter. Very angular face. Handsome, perhaps. With white hair.” Sigzil looked up sharply. “White hair?” “Yes,” Rock said. “Not grey, like old man, but white—yet he is young man. He spoke with me on shore. Ha! Made mockery of my beard. Asked what year it was, by Horneater calendar. Thought my name was funny. Very powerful god.”

They were high enough here to look out over the warcamps. The perspective was eastward, toward the Origin. What an unnatural arrangement; it made her feel exposed. Shallan was accustomed to balconies, gardens, and patios all facing away from the storms. True, nobody was likely to be out here when a highstorm was expected, but it just felt off to her.

“Well, she wanted me to get married too,” Shallan said. “So I wouldn’t call her sexist. Merely . . . Jasnah-ist?” She paused. “Jasnagynistic? No, drat. It would have to be Misjasnahistic, and that doesn’t work nearly as well, does it?”

“What if you need to poop?” she asked instead. “Well, I put my back to the chasm and laid about me with my sword, intending to . . . Wait. What did you say?” “Poop,” Shallan said. “You’re out there on the battlefield, encased in metal like a crab in its shell. What do you do if nature calls?” “I . . . er . . .” Adolin frowned at her. “That is not something any woman has ever asked me before.” “Yay for originality!” Shallan said, though she blushed as she said it. Jasnah would have been displeased. Couldn’t Shallan mind her tongue for a single conversation? She’d gotten him talking about something he liked; everything had been going well. Now this. “Well,” Adolin said slowly, “every battle has breaks in the flow, and men rotate in and out of the front lines. For every five minutes you’re fighting, you often have almost as many resting. When a Shardbearer pulls back, men inspect his armor for cracks, give him something to drink or eat, and help him with . . . what you just mentioned.

“So yes, I, Adolin Kholin—cousin to the king, heir to the Kholin princedom—have shat myself in my Shardplate. Three times, all on purpose.” He downed the rest of his wine. “You are a very strange woman.”

Shallan was barely listening. A Blade with the back edge ridged like flowing waves. Or perhaps tongues of fire. Etchings all along its surface. Curved, sinuous. She knew this Blade. It belonged to her brother Helaran.

“You realize that I didn’t choose you,” he said, a face appearing in the vines as they moved. His speaking left a strange effect, the trail behind him clotted with a sequence of frozen faces. The mouth seemed to move because it was growing so quickly beside her. “I wanted to pick a distinguished Iriali matron. A grandmother, an accomplished gardener. But no, the Ring said we should choose you. ‘She has visited the Old Magic,’ they said. ‘Our mother has blessed her,’ they said. ‘She will be young, and we can mold her,’ they said.

Lift pressed her hand against the seeds, then summoned her awesomeness. She wasn’t sure how she did it. She just did.

“They can’t see me,” Wyndle said, growing up beside her to create another line of handholds, “because I exist mostly in the Cognitive Realm, even though I’ve moved my consciousness to this Realm. I can make myself visible to anyone, should I desire, though it’s not easy for me. Other spren are more skilled at it, while some have the opposite trouble. Of course, no matter how I manifest, nobody can touch me, as I barely have any substance in this Realm.”

Fortunately, she’d guessed right, unfortunately.

“‘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.’”

Jasnah had once defined a fool as a person who ignored information because it disagreed with desired results.

Kaladin stood in the rain. “Do you know where the King’s Wit is?” “That fool, Dust? Not here, blessedly. Why?”

But who is the wanderer, the wild piece, the one who makes no sense? I glimpse at his implications, and the world opens to me. I shy back. Impossible. Is it? —From the Diagram, West Wall Psalm of Wonders: paragraph 8 (Note by Adrotagia: Could this refer to Mraize?)

“I have brought a replacement Shardblade for you. One that is a perfect match for your task and temperament.” He tossed his large sword to the ground. It skidded on stone and came to a rest before Szeth. He had not seen a sword with a metal sheath before. And who sheathed a Shardblade? And the Blade itself . . . was it black? An inch or so of it had emerged from the sheath as it slid on the rocks. Szeth swore he could see a small trail of black smoke coming off the metal. Like Stormlight, only dark. Hello, a cheerful voice said in his mind. Would you like to destroy some evil today?