The Sunlit Man

by Brandon Sanderson

“Even if it’s beyond repair, salvaging this is easier than harvesting metal from the iron fields.” “Iron fields?” Nomad asked, crouching down. “Places where molten metal coats the surface each rotation,” she said, walking back. “One corridor north. We sneak in during the darkness and pry up some of it before the Cinder King’s forces arrive.” “And you use this how?” he asked, frowning. “Do you have full fabrication plants on your ships?” “Fabrication plants?” she asked, cocking her head. “We use the Chorus, obviously. The spirits, like the one that follows you, create the objects we need.” Ahhh, the knight intones. That sounds interesting.

He hesitated, seeing Rebeke holding to the towline she’d fetched, looking anywhere but at the corpse. Eyes downcast. He’d noticed, of course. It would be a bright day in the Weeping before Auxiliary read a human’s emotions better than he did. Empathy, though…well, he should feel ashamed that a creature that was both dead and inhuman did a better job of that.

The rocks here were dark and glasslike. Obsidian, maybe. It reminded him of another place, another world he’d once traveled. A place where he’d met Auxiliary.

“We came from another world,” she said around bites of her food. Odd, how they even ate with gloves on. “Chased by an ancient force known as the Evil.” “It’s still there,” he said. “On your homeworld. I’ve seen it. Well, the manifestations of it.” Wild, unchained Investiture, come to life with its own alien will—forming mountain-sized figures with impossible, unnerving features and unknowable motivations. Threnody was not a place one visited to relax.

“Strangely, the Chorus—who hold our history—don’t speak of our leaving because of the Evil,” she continued. “No, they say it was the quarreling. The infighting that sprang up among our people. Conflict, hatred. My ancestors wanted to escape that, for it was more pernicious than the Evil itself. Strife destroyed our people. “During our flight from the Evil, there was more bickering among the people. My group…we listened to the preaching of a man: the servant of Adonalsium and the original Lodestar. We left with him to a new land. We chose this.”

The king walked over to one of his cabinets, from which he removed a very small sunheart. Barely glowing. “You know what this is?” he asked. “It’s all that remains of your kinsman, the one who visited our planet, the one I slew. Your people make for terrible sunhearts, offworlder.” “I’m surprised you got anything,” he said. “The man you killed probably had Breath. And he was no kinsman of mine. From an entirely different country.” “Your planet shouldn’t have different countries. You should have conquered and unified it all.” “Conquest doesn’t remove countries,” Nomad said. “It removes

What about when we’d fly together in the past? Nomad froze. That had been different. He’d misspoken, of course. Not all motion was due to the factors he’d indicated. There were other kinds, like fundamental laws of attraction. One body to another. Forces that held all matter together, at the level of the axon. “That was different,” he admitted. I used to love that, Aux said. Before… Nomad breathed out heavily, squeezing his eyes shut. It wasn’t your fault. “I said yes to Hoid. And I bonded you.” You didn’t know what either would do. “I let the Dawnshard consume us, Auxiliary. I let it feed on you.” I salvaged a little. This bit of my mind. The last fragment of my soul. Wit’s fault as much as it was Nomad’s. Done ostensibly to protect the cosmere. Wit had asked him to carry something known as a Dawnshard, a well of unimaginable Investiture designed as a weapon. Nomad didn’t know the specifics. Only that the result of trying to help was a dead friend—reduced to a voice in his head—and entire armies trying to hunt him. He’d accepted that terrible weapon to hide it, and that power had warped his soul. Worse, he hadn’t known, hadn’t realized, that bonding Auxiliary would lead to such a tragedy.

They’d spent years together with the potential lurking there, unseen. Then, in a moment of need, he’d unconsciously reached out for any energy source he could access. The Dawnshard had found Auxiliary, a being of Investiture. It had turned Aux’s very substance into power to fuel Nomad’s abilities. The Dawnshard—the weapon—protected itself. No matter what. No matter who it killed. Nomad had barely been able to stop himself before burning the entirety of Auxiliary’s soul away in a moment of supercharged power.

It was random, of course, but he could swear that one section looked like a screaming face… Rebeke said this thing had been able to power a ship for months. That kind of power wasn’t part of most souls, not even Threnodite souls. Something else was happening. Power was being drawn from another place, with the soul acting as a kind of seed or starter. But why had the Rosharan sunheart the Cinder King showed him been so small? Why hadn’t it acted as a similar seed?

“When I adopted the Dawnshard from Wit, it created my Torment. Too much Investiture, taken in too quickly, warping my very being.” Why didn’t it warp Wit? “I think it did. He just hides it well. Either way, when I gave away the Dawnshard, it left me changed. With a kind of scar tissue on my soul. That’s the Torment. The strange Connection I have to all places at once, the ability to feed on Investiture, the ability to Skip from location to location—but also the curse of not being able to fight back.

“A Dawnshard is one of the primal forces of creation, and the one we carried is diametrically opposed to the concept of violence and harm. The scar tissue on my soul has that same Intent, that same requirement of its host: that I be unable to harm anyone at all for any reason.” It’s ironic, you know, the hero says. Because of the way the Dawnshards were used… “To kill God. Yes, I know.” He sat back, thoughtful, meeting Elegy’s glare. “She’s got something similar, I’m guessing. A canker on her soul. The Cinder King’s fire burned away her memories and personality, but there’s no reason that should make her so violent, so enraged. I can’t figure out how he controls creatures like her. It has to do with some kind of Connection or…well, scar tissue.” On the soul. That makes her violent, where yours makes you the opposite. “Basically yes,” he said. When you were following your oaths, your natural need to follow them pushed through the scar tissue, though. “It did, for a time,” he said. “But now I feel like the scar is getting worse, Aux.

Ideally he’d eventually clear it all away, severing his lingering Connection to the Dawnshard. So long as he retained that Connection, he was a link to whoever held it now. And so long as he could locate one of the most powerful weapons in all the cosmere, people would hunt him.

Investiture responded to human thought. It wasn’t technically energy or matter—but it could become either. Investiture, energy, and matter were all one, as per Khriss’s Second Law. It couldn’t be created or destroyed; it could only change from one state to another. However, Investiture responded differently from energy or matter. You could Command it. More precisely, the mindset you reached by speaking those Commands enabled you to enforce your will upon it. That was common across many of the flavors and varieties of power around the cosmere. Commands, oaths, incantations…any way to focus your will, your Intent, and project it to the Investiture.

He squatted down, and the lead engineer looked at him. Tan skinned with long black hair, she could almost have been Alethi—if not for her strikingly Threnodite name that he’d learned during the fabrication: Solemnity Divine.

He’d soon learned that, with their twisted arts, they could kill him and fashion a spike from his soul that would lead them to the person he had given the Dawnshard. To them, Nomad was a crucial link in a very important chain. And he was far more useful dead than alive.

What’s life about, if not growth? I don’t like the person I was back on Roshar either, before we knew each other.

When he’d first talked to the Cinder King in this room, he’d been shown the book carried by the person whose soul now lay in his hand. A person from Nomad’s homeworld. This soul…he shared a bond with it. Would that be enough? He whispered the words of the prayer in Alethi.

“Bridge Four.”

that right now. He watched the dome near completion, bringing darkness upon them, save for a hole at the far end. He’d leave through that, then seal it. “We will survive this,” Contemplation whispered. “Thank you. I knew you would come back.” “That’s odd,” he said, “because I didn’t.” “Adonalsium did,” she replied. “I prayed to him for this to happen.” He grimaced, and Contemplation regarded him, their faces visible by the light of the nearby sunheart. His armor was glowing too, though not in either of its customary shades of blue. Instead it glowed with the light of embers—the sunlight might have damaged it, because little flecks of red-orange light continued to burn all across it—and when he moved, he trailed smoke. “I’ve noticed your expression when we mention Adonalsium.” “Contemplation,” he said. “I don’t mean to be contrary, but Adonalsium? He—” “He’s dead?” she asked. “Yes, we know. Did you think we had no idea of the story? The Shattering? The Shards?” “I…yes. So I assumed. Since you still talk about him and…well, you know, pray.” “Our faith,” she said, “is that this is all part of some plan. It’s not about everything happening the way we want—but trusting that it is happening the way someone wants.”

“And yet,” the old woman said, “here you are. Saving us.” “That was because of Auxiliary,” he said. “My shield here, who gave up his last vestige of life so I could come to you in time.” “And what was Auxiliary?” “My spren. A…quantum of power, Investiture, come to life.” “And where did that being come from?” From…a Shard of Adonalsium. Storms.

The Admiral waited here. They had an admiral, despite being an army. It was their way. Tall, with short black hair and a full military uniform, she stood facing away from him, her hands stiff at her sides. The Admiral was…not the kind to rest. He didn’t think he’d ever walked in during a mission and found her sitting. “Report,” she said quietly, resting a hand on her Continuity Chain—the silver, whiplike weapon rolled up and hung at her hip.

She did not like hearing that their prey had slipped away again. Truth hustled to the main chamber.

Azure? Vivienna?