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October 27, 2022 - January 17, 2023
This was a Basic Lashing, first of his three kinds of Lashings. It gave him the ability to manipulate whatever force, spren, or god it was that held men to the ground. With this Lashing, he could bind people or objects to different surfaces or in different directions.
As always, the Shardblade killed oddly; though it cut easily through stone, steel, or anything inanimate, the metal fuzzed when it touched living skin.
A Shardblade did not cut living flesh; it severed the soul itself.
A Full Lashing bound objects together, holding them fast until the Stormlight ran out. It took longer to create—and drained Stormlight far more quickly—than a Basic Lashing.
A Reverse Lashing required his constant touch, but took comparatively little Stormlight. During one, anything that approached him—particularly lighter objects—was instead pulled toward the Lashing itself.
According to legend, the Shardblades were first carried by the Knights Radiant uncounted ages ago. Gifts of their god, granted to allow them to fight horrors of rock and flame, dozens of feet tall, foes whose eyes burned with hatred. The Voidbringers. When your foe had skin as hard as stone itself, steel was useless.
But expectations were like fine pottery. The harder you held them, the more likely they were to crack.
well, the Palanaeum has the finest collection of tomes and scrolls on Roshar. More, even, than the Holy Enclave in Valath. At last count, there were over seven hundred thousand separate texts in our archive.”
For a few extended moments, Shallan was back in that hallway again, watching something that should not be: a heretic wielding one of the most sacred powers in all the world. The power of change itself, the power by which the Almighty had created Roshar. He had another name, allowed to pass
“Well, I myself find that respect is like manure. Use it where needed, and growth will flourish. Spread it on too thick, and things just start to smell.”
Sometimes we find it hardest to accept in others that which we cling to in ourselves.
The Alethi princedoms were like kingdoms unto themselves, still mostly autonomous despite having accepted Gavilar as king. Elhokar had inherited the throne, and Dalinar, by right, had taken the Kholin Princedom as his own. However, most of the highprinces gave only token nods to the paramount rule of the king.
He worries that his subjects see him as a coward because of how much he fears assassins, and so he finds ways to prove his courage. Foolish ways, sometimes—but he’s not the first man I’ve known who will face battle without fear, yet cower in terror about knives in the shadows. The hallmark of insecurity is bravado.
Brother, Gavilar had written. You must find the most important words a man can say. … A quote from the ancient text The Way of Kings.
I left my carriage that day and took up the stone, lifting it for the man. I believe my guards were embarrassed. One can ignore a poor shirtless wretch doing such labor, but none ignore a king sharing the load. Perhaps we should switch places more often. If a king is seen to assume the burden of the poorest of men, perhaps there will be those who will help him with his own load, so invisible, yet so daunting.
“Tradition is the blind witness they use to condemn us, Teft,” Kaladin said. “It’s the pretty box they use to wrap up their lies. It makes us serve them.”
“You should talk about food,” Teft said, scowling. “A Horneater?” Kaladin frowned. “Why do they call your people that, anyway?” “Because they eat the horns and shells of the things they catch,” Teft said. “The outsides.”
A man’s emotions are what define him, and control is the hallmark of true strength. To lack feeling is to be dead, but to act on every feeling is to be a child.”
Here, Nan Balat sent. I wanted to show you something. Have you ever seen this symbol? The sketch that followed was crude. Eylita wasn’t much of an artist. Fortunately, it was a simple picture—three diamond shapes in a curious pattern.
But you also cling to the idealism of youth. You feel there must be some single, all-defining Truth—and you think that once you find it, all that once confused you will suddenly make sense.”
‘Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.’
“An excuse is what you make after the deed is done, while a justification is what you offer before.”
Rather than bettering themselves, they take the easier road of jeering at us.”
“I began life as a thought, a concept, words on a page.
“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon. Too often, we forget that.”
‘And so, does the destination matter? Or is it the path we take? I declare that no accomplishment has substance nearly as great as the road used to achieve it. We are not creatures of destinations. It is the journey that shapes us. Our callused feet, our backs strong from carrying the weight of our travels, our eyes open with the fresh delight of experiences lived.
“Protesting simply draws attention to the issue,” Dalinar said. “The finest defense of character is correct action. Acquaint yourself with virtue, and you can expect proper treatment from those around you.”
“Strength before weakness. All men are weak at some time in their lives. The Radiant protects those who are weak, and uses his strength for others. Strength does not make one capable of rule; it makes one capable of service.”
An adult can take a principle and adapt it to his needs. But we’re not ready for that yet. We’re children. And when you’re teaching a child, you require him to do what is right until he grows old enough to make his own choices.
“Your words are like the hundred doves.” “Easy to release, difficult to keep,”
“So it’s not the beauty itself we admire. It’s not the force of intellect. It’s not invention, aesthetics, or capacity itself. The greatest talent that we think a man can have?” He plucked one final string. “Seems to me that it must be nothing more than novelty.”
“All things have three components: the soul, the body, and the mind. That place you saw, Shadesmar, is what we call the Cognitive Realm—the place of the mind.
Power is an illusion of perception.”
Well, six if one counted slaveform, the form with no spren, no soul, and no song. The form the humans were accustomed to, the ones they called parshmen. It wasn’t really a form at all, however, but a lack of any form.
The right way was to go into the highstorm with the proper attitude, singing the proper song to attract the proper spren. You bonded it in the fury of the raging storm and were reborn with a new body. People had been doing this from the arrival of the first winds. The listeners had learned that capturing spren was possible from the humans, then had figured out the process on their own. A captive spren made the transformation much more reliable. Before, there had always been an element of chance. You could go into the storm wanting to become a soldier, and come out a mate instead.
Progress was taking nature and putting a box around it.
Forms could not be commanded; every person was free to choose for themselves. Transformations could be cajoled and requested, but they could not be forced. Their gods had not allowed this freedom, so the listeners would have it, no matter what. These people could choose dullform if they wished.
During a coming highstorm, she would step into the winds and become something new. Something powerful. Something that would change the destiny of the listeners, and perhaps the humans, forever.
Expectation wasn’t just about what people expected of you. It was about what you expected of yourself.
“The Knights Radiant formed a bond with spren,” Shallan said, more to herself than to Pattern. “It was a symbiotic relationship, like a little cremling who lives in the shalebark. The cremling cleans off the lichen, getting food, but also keeping the shalebark clean.”
“The Surges—the forces that run the world—are more pliable to spren. Or . . . well . . . since spren are pieces of those Surges, maybe it’s that the spren are better at influencing one another. Our bond gives me the ability to manipulate one of the Surges. In this case, light, the power of Illumination.”
“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.”
“And don’t be green from the ground.”
“Started on the trip with me, Your Majesty. But on the second day, he declared that he needed a rock.” “A . . . rock.” “Yes, Your Majesty. He hopped out of the wagon and found one, then, er, he hit himself on the head with it, Your Majesty. Did it three or four times. Came right back to the wagon with an odd grin, and said . . . um . . .” “Yes?” “Well, he said that he’d needed, uh, I had this remembered for you. He said, ‘I needed an objective frame of reference by which to judge the experience of your company. Somewhere between four and five blows, I place it.’ I don’t rightly understand what
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“Kalak will teach you to cast bronze, if you have forgotten this. We will Soulcast blocks of metal directly for you. I wish we could teach you steel, but casting is so much easier than forging, and you must have something we can produce quickly. Your stone tools will not serve against what is to come.”
“Vedel can train your surgeons, and Jezrien . . . he will teach you leadership. So much is lost between Returns . .
This was the mark of humankind: to take the wild, unorganized world and make something logical of it. You could get so much more done when everything was in its place, when you could easily find what or whom you needed. Creativity required such things. Careful planning was, indeed, the water that nourished innovation.
For a moment, Kaladin thought he saw shadows of a world that was not, shadows of another place. And in that place, a distant sky with a sun enclosed, almost as if by a corridor of clouds.
“If I wanted to sneak a Shardbearer in, I’d bribe some servant to let down a rope.” Sigzil shrugged. “One could be smuggled out onto the railing easily, perhaps wrapped around the servant’s body under their clothing.
The short, tan-skinned person had some kind of carapace mask tied to his face, pulled tight. In fact, it looked like . . . like the skin had started to grow around the edges of the mask somehow.
