Mraize’s quarters were at the top of a staircase. He wasn’t there today—he appeared on occasion to drop off dirty clothing, then gallivanted off someplace to find new types of crem to stain his shirts. Mem and Pom went into his den first—he kept his evening jackets there.
Pom froze in the doorway.
“Stop dallying,” Mem reminded her, covering a smile. After stark, empty hallways and stairwells, this overstuffed den was a little overwhelming. She’d marveled too, her first time here. A mantel covered in curiosities, each in its own glass display. Deep rugs from Marat. Five paintings of the finest skill, each of a different Herald.
“You were right,” Pom said from behind.
“Of course I was right,” Mem said, setting down her basket in front of the corner wardrobe. “Mraize—remember, he doesn’t want to be called ‘master’—is of the finest and most refined taste. He employs only the best of—”
She was interrupted by a ripping sound.
It was a sound that inspired terror. The sound of a seam splitting, or of a delicate chemise tearing as it caught on part of a washtub. It was the sound of disaster incarnate. Mem turned to find her new assistant standing on a chair, attacking one of Mraize’s paintings with a knife.
A piece of Mem’s brain stopped working. A whine escaped from the back of her throat and her vision grew dark.
Pom was … she was destroying one of Mraize’s paintings.
“I’ve been looking for that,” Pom said, stepping back and putting hands on hips, still standing on the chair.
Two guards burst into the room, perhaps drawn by the noise. They looked at Pom and their jaws dropped. In turn, she flipped her knife about in her hand and pointed it threateningly at the men.
Then, horror of horrors, Mraize himself appeared behind the soldiers, wearing an evening jacket and slippers. “What is this ruckus?”
So refined. Yes, his face looked like it had seen the wrong side of a sword a couple of times. But he had exquisite taste in clothing and—of course—in garment-care professionals.
“Ah!” he said, noticing Pom. “Finally! The masterpiece of the Oilsworn was all it took, was it? Excellent!” Mraize shoved out the confused guards, then pulled the door shut. He didn’t even seem to notice Mem. “Ancient One, would you care for something to drink?”
Pom narrowed her eyes at him, then hopped off the chair. She walked quickly to Mraize and used one hand on his chest to push him aside. She pulled open the door.
“I know where Talenelat is,” Mraize said.
Pom froze.
“Yes … let’s have that drink, shall we?” Mraize asked. “My babsk has been eager to speak with you.” He glanced at Mem. “Is that my Azish cavalrylord’s suit?”
“Um … yes…”
“You got the aether out of it?”
“The … what?”
He strode over and pulled the red trousers out of the basket to inspect them. “Mem, you are an absolute genius. Not every hunter carries a spear, and this is proof indeed. Go to Condwish and tell him I approve a three-firemark bonus for you.”
“Th-thank you, Mraize.”
“Go collect your bonus, and leave,” Mraize said. “Note that you will need to find a new washgirl to help you, after today.”
Eshonai would have loved this, Venli thought as she flew hundreds of feet in the air. Rine and the other Fused carried her by means of linked harnesses. It made her feel like a sack of grain being hauled to market, but it gave her quite an amazing view.
Endless hills of stone. Patches of green, often in the shadows of hillsides. Thick forests snarled with undergrowth to present a unified front against the storms.
Eshonai would have been thrilled; she’d have begun drawing maps, talking about the places she could go.
Venli, on the other hand, spent most of these trips feeling sick to her stomach. Normally she didn’t have to suffer for long; towns were close together here in Alethkar. Yet today, her ancestors flew her past many occupied towns without stopping.
Eventually, what first appeared to be another ridge of stones resolved into the walls of a large city, easily twice the size of one of the domes at the Shattered Plains.
Stone buildings and reinforced towers. Marvels and wonders. It had been years since she’d seen Kholinar—only that once, when they’d executed King Gavilar. Now, smoke rose in patches throughout the city, and many of the guard towers had been shattered. The city gates lay broken. Kholinar, it seemed, had been conquered.
Rine and his companions zipped through the air, raising fists toward other Fused. They surveyed the city, then soared out beyond the wall and landed near a bunker outside the city. They waited as Venli undid her harness, then lifted into the air again just high enough that the bottoms of their long cloaks brushed the stones.
“Am I finished with my work, Ancient One?” Venli asked to Subservience. “Is that why you finally brought me here?”
“Done?” Rine said to Ridicule. “Child, you haven’t even begun. Those little villages were practice. Today, your true labor begins.”
“You have three choices,” the Herdazian general said.
He had dark brown skin the color of a weathered stone, and there was a hint of grey in the thin mustache on his upper lip. He stepped up to Sheler, then put his hands to his sides. Remarkably, some men affixed manacles to the general’s own wrists. What on Roshar?
“Pay attention,” the general said. “This is important.”
“To the manacles?” Sheler said in Herdazian. Life on the border had forced him to learn the language. “What is going on here? Do you realize the trouble you’re in for taking me captive?” Sheler started to stand, but one of the Herdazian soldiers forced him down so hard, his knees rapped against the hard stone floor of the tent.
“You have three choices.” The general’s manacles clinked as he twisted his hands in them. “First, you can choose the sword. Now, that might be a clean death. A good beheading rarely hurts. Unfortunately, it won’t be a headsman who gets the chance with you. We’ll give the sword to the women you abused. Each gets a hack, one after another. How long it goes on will depend on them.”
“This is outrageous!” Sheler said. “I’m a lighteyes of the fifth dahn! I’m cousin to the highlord himself, and—”
“Second option,” the general said, “is the hammer. We break your legs and arms, then hang you from the cliff by the ocean. You might last until the storm that way, but it will be miserable.”
Sheler struggled to no avail. Captured by Herdazians. Their general wasn’t even a lighteyes!
The general twisted his hands, then pulled them apart. The manacles clinked to the ground. Nearby, several of his officers grinned, while others groaned. A scribe had tapped off the time, and gave an accounting of the seconds the escape had taken.
The general accepted the applause of several men, then thumped another—a loser in the betting—on his back. Sheler almost seemed forgotten for a moment. Finally, the general turned back to him. “I wouldn’t take the hammer, if I were you. But there’s a third option: the hog.”
“I demand the right of ransom!” Sheler said. “You must contact my highprince and accept payment based on my rank!”
“Ransom is for men caught in battle,” the general said. “Not bastards caught robbing and murdering civilians.”
“My homeland is under invasion!” Sheler shouted. “I was gathering resources so we might mount a resistance!”
“A resistance is not what we caught you mounting.” The general kicked at the manacles by his feet. “Choose one of the three options. I don’t have all day.”
Sheler licked his lips. How had he ended up in this situation? His homeland gone crazy, the parshmen rampaging, his men scattered by flying monsters? Now this? The dirty Herdazians obviously weren’t going to listen to reason. They …
Wait.
“Did you say hog?” Sheler asked.
“It lives down by the shore,” the Herdazian general said. “That??
?s your third option. We grease you, and you wrestle the hog. It’s fun for the men to watch. They need sport now and then.”
“And if I do this, you won’t kill me?”
“No, but this isn’t as easy as you think. I’ve tried it myself, so I can speak with authority.”
Crazy Herdazians. “I choose the hog.”
“As you wish.” The general picked up the manacles and handed them to his officer.
“Thought you’d fail these ones for sure,” the officer said. “The merchant claimed they’re from the best Thaylen locksmiths.”
“Doesn’t matter how good the lock is, Jerono,” the general said with a grin, “if the cuffs are loose.” What a ridiculous little man—too-wide smile, a flat nose, a missing tooth. Why, Highlord Amaram would have—
Sheler was jerked to his feet by the chains, then pulled through the camp of Herdazian soldiers on the Alethi border. There were more refugees here than actual fighting men! Give Sheler a single company, and he could rout this entire force.
His insufferable captors led him down an incline, past the cliffs and toward the shore. Soldiers and refugees alike gathered above, jeering and calling. Obviously, the Herdazian general was too frightened to actually kill an Alethi officer. So they would humiliate him by making him wrestle a pig. They’d have a good laugh, then send him away smarting.
Idiots. He’d come back with an army.
One man locked Sheler’s chain to a metal loop on the stones. Another approached with a pitcher of oil. They poured it over Sheler’s head; he sputtered as the liquid ran down his face. “What is that stench?”
Above, someone blew a horn.
“I’d say ‘good luck,’ boss,” the Herdazian soldier told Sheler as his companion ran off, “but I’ve got three marks on you not lasting a full minute. Still, who knows. When the general was chained down here, he got out in less.”
The ocean started to churn.
“Of course,” the soldier said, “the general likes this kind of thing. He’s a little weird.”
The soldier dashed back up the bank, leaving Sheler locked in place, doused in pungent oil, and gaping as an enormous claw broke the surface of the ocean.
Perhaps “the hog” was more of a nickname.
Venli’s little spren—whom she’d named Timbre—peeked around the room, looking in each corner and shadowed place, like she did each time Venli let her out of the pouch.
Days had passed since Venli had first arrived at Kholinar. And, as Rine had warned, this was her true labor. Venli now gave her presentation a dozen times each day, speaking to groups of singers brought out of the city for the purpose. She wasn’t allowed into Kholinar herself. They kept her sequestered in this stormshelter outside, which they called the hermitage.
Venli hummed to Spite as she leaned against the window, annoyed by the incarceration. Even the window had only been installed—cut by a Shardblade and set with thick stormshutters—after her repeated requests. The city outside called to her. Majestic walls, beautiful buildings. It reminded her of Narak … which, actually, her people hadn’t built. In living there, the listeners had profited from the labors of ancient humans, as modern humans had profited from the enslaved singers.
Timbre floated over to her, then hovered by the window, as if to sneak out and look around outside.
“No,” Venli said.
Timbre pulsed to Resolve, then inched forward in the air.
“Stay inside,” Venli said to Command. “They’re watching for spren like you. Descriptions of your kind, and others, have been spread all through the city.”
The little spren backed away, pulsing to Annoyance, before settling in the air beside Venli.
Venli rested her head on her arms. “I feel like a relic,” she whispered. “Already I seem like a cast-off ruin from a nearly forgotten day. Are you the reason I feel like that, suddenly? I only get this way when I let you out.”
Timbre pulsed to Peace. Upon hearing that, something stirred deep within Venli: the Voidspren that occupied her gemheart. That spren couldn’t think, not like Ulim or the higher Voidspren. It was a thing of emotions and animal instincts, but the bond with it granted Venli her form of power.
She started to wonder. So many of the Fused were obviously unhinged; perhaps their inordinately long lives had taken a toll on their psyches. Wouldn’t Odium need new leaders for his people? If she proved herself, could she claim a place among them?
New Fused. New … gods?
Eshonai had always worried about Venli’s thirst for power, and had cautioned her to control her ambitions. Even Demid, at times, had been worried for her. And now … and now they were all dead.
Timbre pulsed to Peace, then to Pleading, then back to Peace.
“I can’t,” Venli said to Mourning. “I can’t.”
Pleading. More insistent. The Rhythm of the Lost, of Remembrance, and then Pleading.
“I’m the wrong one,” Venli said to Annoyance. “I can’t do this, Timbre. I can’t resist him.”
Pleading.
“I made this happen,” she said to Fury. “Don’t you realize that? I’m the one who caused all this. Don’t plead to me!”
The spren shrank, her light diminishing. Yet she still pulsed to Resolve. Idiot spren. Venli put a hand to her head. Why … why was she not more angry about what had happened to Demid, Eshonai, and the others? Could Venli really think about joining the Fused? Those monsters insisted her people were gone, and rebuffed her questions about the thousands of listeners who had survived the Battle of Narak. Were they all … all being turned into Fused? Shouldn’t Venli be thinking about that, not her ambitions?
A form changes the way you think, Venli. Everyone knew that. Eshonai had lectured—incessantly, as had been her way—about not letting the form dictate one’s actions. Control the form, don’t let it control you.
But then, Eshonai had been exemplary. A general and a hero. Eshonai had done her duty.
All Venli had ever wanted was power.
Timbre suddenly pulsed with a flash of light, and zipped away under the bed, terrified.
“Ah,” Venli said to Mourning, looking past the city at the sudden darkening of the sky. The Everstorm. It came about every nine days, and this was the second since her arrival. “So that’s why they didn’t bring an evening batch to listen to me.”
She folded her arms, took a deep breath, and hummed to Resolve until she lost track and shifted unconsciously to the Rhythm of Destruction. She didn’t close the window. He didn’t like that. Instead, she closed her eyes and listened to the thunder. Lightning flashed beyond her eyelids, red and garish. The spren in her leaped to feel it, and she grew excited, the Rhythm of Destruction swelling inside her.
Her people might be gone, but this … this power was worth it. How could she not embrace this?
How long can you keep being two people, Venli? She seemed to hear Eshonai’s voice. How long will you vacillate?
The storm hit, wind blasting through the window, lifting her … and she entered some kind of vision. The building vanished, and she was tossed about in the storm—but she knew that after it passed, she wouldn’t be hurt.
Venli eventually dropped onto a hard surface. She hummed to Destruction and opened her eyes, finding herself standing on a platform hanging high in the sky, far above Roshar, which was a blue and brown globe below. Behind her was a deep, black nothingness marred only by a tiny blip that could have been a single star.
That yellow-white star expanded toward her at an awesome speed, swelling, growing, until it overwhelmed her with an incredible flame. She felt her skin melting, her flesh burning away.
You are not telling the story well enough, Odium’s voice declared, speaking the ancient tongue. You grow restless. The Fused inform me of it. This will change or you will be destroyed.
“Y-yes … Lord.” Speaking burned away her tongue. She could no longer see; the fire had claimed her eyes. Pain. Agony. But she couldn’t bend to it, for the god before her demanded
all of her attention. The pain of her body being consumed was nothing compared to him.
You are mine. Remember this.
She was vaporized completely.
And woke on the floor of her hermitage, fingers bleeding from having clawed the stone again. The storm’s rumbling had grown distant—she’d been gone for hours. Had she burned the entire time?
Trembling, she squeezed her eyes shut. Her skin melting, her eyes, her tongue burning away …
The Rhythm of Peace pulled her out of it, and she knew Timbre hovered beside her. Venli rolled over and groaned, eyes still shut, seeking Peace in her own mind.
She couldn’t find it. Odium’s presence was too fresh; the spren inside her thrummed to Craving instead.
“I can’t do it,” she whispered to Derision. “You’ve got the wrong sister.”
The wrong sister had died. The wrong sister lived.
Venli had schemed to return their gods.
This was her reward.
EIGHT YEARS AGO
Gavilar was starting to look worn.
Dalinar stood at the back of the king’s den, listening with half an ear. The king spoke with the heirs of the highprinces, staying to safe topics, like Gavilar’s plans for various civic projects in Kholinar.
He’s looking so old, Dalinar thought. Grey before his time. He needs something to revitalize him. A hunt, maybe?
Dalinar didn’t need to participate in the meeting; his job was to loom. Occasionally, one of the younger men would glance toward the perimeter of the room, and see the Blackthorn there in shadow. Watching.
He saw fires reflected in their eyes, and heard the weeping of children in the back of his mind.
Don’t be weak, Dalinar thought. It’s been almost three years.