More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
July 22 - July 30, 2025
He’d been killed by hands like those before, and it hadn’t been pleasant.
Kalak nodded. Taln had a tendency to choose seemingly hopeless fights and win them. He also had a tendency to die in the process.
“And Taln?” Kalak asked. The flesh burning. The fires. The pain over and over and over … “Better that one man should suffer than ten,” Jezrien whispered. He seemed so cold. Like a shadow caused by heat and light falling on someone honorable and true, casting this black imitation behind.
“It has been decided, Kalak. We will go our ways, and we will not seek out one another. Our Blades must be left. The Oathpact ends now.” He lifted his sword and rammed it into the stone with the other seven.
“It’s simple,” Jezrien said, walking away. “We tell them that they finally won. It’s an easy enough lie. Who knows? Maybe it will turn out to be true.”
And yet, he could not help glancing back at the ring of swords and the single open spot. The place where the tenth sword should have gone. The one of them who was lost. The one they had abandoned. Forgive us, Kalak thought, then left.
Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king.
them, their stomachs proving to be inferior wineskins.
At first, the Alethi lighteyes had been hesitant. To them, drums were base instruments of the common, darkeyed people.
But wine was the great assassin of both tradition and propriety,
along with gems that glowed with Stormlight. Beautiful. Profane, but beautiful.
White clothing for a killer was a tradition among the Parshendi. Although Szeth had not asked, his masters had explained why. White to be bold. White to not blend into the night. White to give warning.
For if you were going to assassinate a man, he was entitled to see you coming.
But alliances could be shallow things indeed.
They carried spears; they weren’t lighteyes, and were therefore forbidden the sword.
Stormlight could be held for only a short time, a few minutes at most. It leaked away, the human body too porous a container.
He had heard that the Voidbringers could hold it in perfectly. But, then, did they even exist? His punishment declared that they didn’t. His honor demanded that they did.
“What am I?” Szeth whispered, a bit of Light leaking from his lips as he looked past the man down the long hallway. “I’m … sorry.”
To kill. It was the greatest of sins. And yet here Szeth stood, Truthless, profanely walking on stones used for building. And it would not end. As Truthless, there was only one life he was forbidden to take. And that was his own.
A Shardblade did not cut living flesh; it severed the soul 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. Something supernal was required.
Here, in Alethkar, men often spoke of the legends—of mankind’s hard-won victory over the Voidbringers. But when weapons created to fight nightmares were turned against common soldiers, the lives of men became cheap things indeed.
“The Parshendi? That makes no sense.” Gavilar coughed, hand quivering, reaching toward his chest and fumbling at a pocket. He pulled out a small crystalline sphere tied to a chain. “You must take this. They must not get it.” He seemed dazed. “Tell … tell my brother … he must find the most important words a man can say.
“Oh!” a soft, feminine voice said. “What’s that?”
Kharbranth, City of Bells, was not a place that Shallan had ever imagined she would visit.
“I can see you have a reply—I see it in your eyes, young miss! Spit it out. Words aren’t meant to be kept inside, you see. They are free creatures, and if locked away will unsettle the stomach.”
Like all Vorin women, she kept her left hand—her safehand—covered, exposing only her freehand. Common darkeyed women would wear a glove, but a woman of her rank was expected to show more modesty than that.
They weren’t pagans here, and writing was a feminine art; men learned only glyphs, leaving letters and reading to their wives and sisters. She hadn’t asked, but she was certain Captain Tozbek could read. She’d seen him holding books; it had made her uncomfortable. Reading was an unseemly trait in a man. At least, men who weren’t ardents.
“I don’t know. Why do men cry?” He smiled, closing his eyes. “Ask the Almighty why men cry, little spren. Not me.”
“I didn’t say Tvlakv isn’t a bastard. He’s just a likable bastard.” He hesitated, then grimaced. “Those are the worst kind. When you kill them, you end up feeling guilty for it.”
He would just keep living. They’d taken his freedom, his family, his friends, and—most dear of all—his dreams. They could do nothing more to him.
“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.
Yalb didn’t enter with her; she’d noticed that many men were uncomfortable around books and reading, even those who weren’t Vorin.
“My father used to say that there are two kinds of people in the world,” Kaladin whispered, voice raspy. “He said there are those who take lives. And there are those who save lives.”
He wasn’t a man; he was a thing, and things just did what they did.
“You have a gift from the Heralds themselves,” Lirin said, resting a hand on Kal’s shoulder. “You could be ten times the surgeon I am. Don’t dream the small dreams of other men. Our grandfathers bought and worked us to the second nahn so that we could have full citizenship and the right of travel. Don’t waste that on killing.”
To hide from the world. The world would find them anyway. It was good at these kinds of games.
Why was it that scientists were so excited to discover facts that farmers had known for generations and generations?
And now here he was. At the end of it all. Understanding so much more, but somehow feeling no wiser.
“What is one more try, then?” Her voice was soft, yet somehow stronger than the storm. “What could it hurt?” He paused.
I’m already dead. You can’t hurt me. Understand?”
But something had changed. Had they always looked that pathetic? Yes. They had. Kaladin was the one who had changed, not they.
Kaladin Stormblessed was dead, but Kaladin Bridgeman was of the same blood. A descendant with potential.
He visited each man, prodding or threatening until the man gave his name. They each resisted. It was as if their names were the last things they owned, and wouldn’t be given up cheaply, though they seemed surprised—perhaps even encouraged—that someone cared to ask. He clutched to these names, repeating each one in his head, holding them like precious gemstones. The names mattered. The men mattered. Perhaps Kaladin would die in the next bridge run, or perhaps he would break under the strain, and give Amaram one final victory. But as he settled down on the ground to plan, he felt that tiny
...more
It was the warmth of decisions made and purpose seized. It was responsibility.
The Purelake was life itself.
He didn’t bother wondering why they were looking for this Hoid, whoever he was.
“Today,” King Elhokar announced, riding beneath the bright open sky, “is an excellent day to slay a god. Wouldn’t you say?”
Dalinar Kholin was going mad. Whenever a highstorm came, he fell to the floor and began to shake.
