Dawnshard (The Stormlight Archive, #3.5)

by Brandon Sanderson

Arclomedarian crosses us again, said Yelamaiszin, the First. It meddles more and more. It has met with these new Radiants.

It hurts us to kill Radiants, let alone one of the Sighted, said Yelamaiszin, the First.

The others called him silly, but he thought the different colors tasted different.

They were expecting to lose people. Or at least they were prepared for it. Well, not on Lopen’s watch. You didn’t let your friends drown in nameless oceans during a frigid storm. That was, sure, basic friendship rules right there.

“I told you, you cannot,” Cord said. “Lunu’anaki—he is trickster god—warned of them during my grandmother’s time when she was the watcher of the pool.” “We had not expected to find one of the Sighted on this trip,” Nikli said in Veden. “You have long guarded Cultivation’s Perpendicularity. It is regrettable that you joined this expedition. We do not kill your people lightly, Hualinam’lunanaki’akilu.”

That mural . . . it was circular and—inlaid with golden foil—it seemed to glow with its own light. The writing on parts of it was unfamiliar to Rysn; she hadn’t seen the script during any of her travels. It wasn’t even the Dawnchant. The peculiar letters were art themselves, curling around the outside of the exploding sun—which was divided into mostly symmetrical pieces. Four of them, each in turn broken into four smaller sections.

You were brought here, she thought to herself, by one of the Guardians of Ancient Sins. Of course she had been. That made sense. Wait. Did it? Yes, she thought. You were. There are few of them left. And so the Sleepless take up the task.

Nikli laughed. “Mere words cannot explain. The Dawnshards are Commands, Rysn. The will of a god.”

“The most powerful forms of Surgebinding transcend traditional mortal understanding,” Nikli said. His body began to re-form, hordelings crawling back into place. “All their greatest applications require Intent and a Command. Demands on a level no person could ever manage alone. To make such Commands, one must have the reasoning—the breadth of understanding—of a deity. And so, the Dawnshards. The four primal Commands that created all things.” He paused. “And then eventually, they were used to undo Adonalsium itself. . . .” Cord whispered something in her own language. “So you do know,” Nikli said to her. “There are songs . . .” Cord said. “From long ago. Of when this . . . Command came through the pool.” She whispered again in her tongue, and it sounded like a prayer.

“Why . . . did you say she needed to return?” Rysn asked. “Will she grow sick again?” “Larger greatshells need to bond mandras—you call them luckspren—to keep from crushing themselves to death with their own weight. The mandras of this place are special. Smaller, yet more potent, than the common breeds. It is no simple thing to make a creature as heavy as a lancer—or larkin, as they are now called—fly. Chiri-Chiri will need to return every few years until she is fully grown.”

Storms. Was it her, or did this tea taste extra good? She inspected it, then glanced at the sunlight pouring through the porthole. Was it . . . brighter than usual? Why did the colors in her room look so exceptionally vivid all of a sudden?