Warbreaker

by Brandon Sanderson

Nightblood, still mostly sheathed, had been rammed through the man’s chest. About an inch of a dark black blade was visible beneath the silver sheath. Vasher carefully slid the weapon fully back into its sheath. He did up the clasp. I did very well today, a voice said in his mind. Vasher didn’t respond to the sword. I killed them all, Nightblood continued. Aren’t you proud of me?

“Well?” Lightsong asked. “Well what, Your Grace?” “Petitions.” Llarimar shook his head. “You aren’t hearing petitions today, Your Grace. Remember?” “No. I have you to remember things like that for me.”

“I still must decline. I am far too lazy.” “Too lazy for sex?”

“I strive for nothing if not mediocrity,

The priests were right to be worried.

The sword couldn’t see. But with its powerful, twisted BioChroma, it could sense life and people. Both were things Nightblood had been created to protect.

It was strange, how easily and quickly protection could cause destruction. Sometimes, Vasher wondered if the two weren’t really the same thing. Protect a flower, destroy the pests who wanted to feed on it. Protect a building, destroy the plants that could have grown in the soil.

Unknowing ignorance is preferable to informed stupidity.” “I’ll try to remember that.” “Do so and you defeat the point.

“Well,” she said, “I should think it would do every man good to have a wife who isn’t as in awe of him as everyone else is. Somebody has to keep you humble.”

As usual, Nightblood refused to acknowledge Shashara’s death. She made me, you know, Nightblood said. Made me to destroy things that were evil. I’m rather good at it. I think she’d be proud of me. We should go talk to her. Show her how well I do my job.

“This is Hoid,” Lightsong said. “Master storyteller.

Hoid looked up, smiling. “I learned it many, many years ago from a man who didn’t know who he was, Your Majesty. It was a distant place where two lands meet and gods have died. But that is unimportant.”

He’s evil, Nightblood said. Vasher snorted. “You don’t even know what that is.” For once, Nightblood was silent.

A thousand Breaths. That was what it took to Awaken an object of steel and give it sentience. Even Shashara hadn’t fully understood the process, though she had first devised it. It took a person who had reached the Ninth Heightening to Awaken stone or steel. Even then, this process shouldn’t have worked. It should have created an Awakened object with no more of a mind than the tassels on his cloak. Nightblood should not be alive.

She’d learned to forge the Breath of a thousand people into a piece of steel, Awaken it to sentience, and give it a Command. That single Command took on immense power, providing a foundation for the personality of the object Awakened. With Nightblood, she and Vasher had spent much time in thought, then finally chosen a simple, yet elegant, Command. “Destroy evil.” It had seemed like such a perfect, logical choice. There was only one problem, something neither of them had foreseen. How was an object of steel—an object that was so removed from life that it would find the experience of living strange and alien—supposed to understand what “evil” was?

So much evil, Nightblood said, like a woman tisking as she cleaned cobwebs from her ceiling.

“The amazing thing is,” he said, “Lightsong did that twice.”