Oathbringer

  On his way out, he passed Taravangian, who had taken a seat by the wall. The old man looked distracted by something.

  “Taravangian?” Dalinar said. “We’ll leave troops in Jah Keved too, in case I’m wrong. Don’t worry.”

  The old man looked to Dalinar, then strangely wiped tears from his eyes.

  “Are … are you in pain?” Dalinar asked.

  “Yes. But it is nothing you can fix.” He hesitated. “You are a good man, Dalinar Kholin. I did not expect that.”

  Ashamed by that, Dalinar hurried from the room, followed by his guards. He felt tired, which seemed unfair, considering he’d just spent a week basically sleeping.

  Before seeking his stewards, Dalinar stopped on the fourth floor from the bottom. An extended walk from the lifts took him to the outer wall of the tower, where a small series of rooms smelled of incense. People lined the hallways, waiting for glyphwards or to speak with an ardent. More than he’d expected—but then, they didn’t have much else to do, did they?

  Is that how you think of them already? a part of him asked. Only here to seek spiritual welfare because they don’t have anything better to do?

  Dalinar kept his chin high, resisting the urge to shrink before their stares. He passed several ardents and stepped into a room lit and warmed by braziers, where he asked after Kadash.

  He was directed onto a garden balcony, where a small group of ardents was trying to farm. Some placed seed paste while others were trying to get some shalebark starters to take along the wall. An impressive project, and one he didn’t remember ordering them to begin.

  Kadash was quietly chipping crem off a planter box. Dalinar settled down beside him. The scarred ardent glanced at him and kept working.

  “It’s very late coming,” Dalinar said, “but I wanted to apologize to you for Rathalas.”

  “I don’t think I’m the one you need to apologize to,” Kadash said. “Those who could bear an apology are now in the Tranquiline Halls.”

  “Still, I made you part of something terrible.”

  “I chose to be in your army,” Kadash said. “I’ve found peace with what we did—found it among the ardents, where I no longer shed the blood of men. I suppose it would be foolish of me to suggest the same to you.”

  Dalinar took a deep breath. “I’m releasing you, and the other ardents, from my control. I won’t put you in a position where you have to serve a heretic. I’ll give you to Taravangian, who remains orthodox.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t believe you have the option to—”

  “Just listen for one storming moment, Dalinar,” Kadash snapped, then he sighed, forcibly calming himself. “You assume that because you’re a heretic, we don’t want anything to do with you.”

  “You proved that a few weeks ago, when we dueled.”

  “We don’t want to normalize what you’ve done or what you’re saying. That doesn’t mean we will abandon our posts. Your people need us, Dalinar, even if you believe you don’t.”

  Dalinar walked to the edge of the garden, where he rested his hands on the stone railing. Beyond him, clouds mustered at the base of the peaks, like a phalanx protecting its commander. From up here, it looked like the entire world was nothing more than an ocean of white broken by sharp peaks. His breath puffed in front of him. Cold as the Frostlands, though it didn’t seem as bad inside the tower.

  “Are any of those plants growing?” he asked softly.

  “No,” Kadash said from behind. “We aren’t sure if it’s the cold, or the fact that few storms reach this high.” He kept scraping. “What will it feel like when a storm goes high enough to engulf this entire tower?”

  “Like we’re surrounded by dark confusion,” Dalinar said. “The only light coming in flashes we can’t pinpoint or comprehend. Angry winds trying to tow us in a dozen different directions, or barring that, rip our limbs from our bodies.” He looked toward Kadash. “Like always.”

  “The Almighty was a constant light.”

  “And?”

  “And now you make us question. You make me question. Being an ardent is the only thing that lets me sleep at night, Dalinar. You want to take that from me too? If He’s gone, there’s only the storm.”

  “I think there must be something beyond. I asked you before, what did worship look like before Vorinism? What did—”

  “Dalinar. Please. Just … stop.” Kadash drew in a deep breath. “Release a statement. Don’t let everyone keep whispering about how you went into hiding. Say something pedantic like, ‘I’m pleased with the work the Vorin church does, and support my ardents, even if I myself no longer have the faith I once did.’ Give us permission to move on. Storms, this isn’t the time for confusion. We don’t even know what we’re fighting.…”

  Kadash didn’t want to know that Dalinar had met the thing they were fighting. Best not to speak of that.

  But Kadash’s question did leave him considering. Odium wouldn’t be commanding the day-to-day operations of his army, would he? Who did that? The Fused? The Voidspren?

  Dalinar strolled a short distance from Kadash, then looked toward the sky. “Stormfather?” he asked. “Do the enemy forces have a king or a highprince? Maybe a head ardent? Someone other than Odium?”

  The Stormfather rumbled. Again, I do not see as much as you think I do. I am the passing storm, the winds of the tempest. All of this is me. But I am not all of it, any more than you control each breath that leaves your mouth.

  Dalinar sighed. It had been worth the thought.

  There is one I have been watching, the Stormfather added. I can see her, when I don’t see others.

  “A leader?” Dalinar asked.

  Maybe. Men, both human and singer, are strange in what or whom they revere. Why do you ask?

  Dalinar had decided not to bring anyone else into one of the visions because he worried about what Odium would do to them. But that wouldn’t count for people already serving Odium, would it?

  “When is the next highstorm?”

  * * *

  Taravangian felt old.

  His age was more than the aches that no longer faded as the day proceeded. It was more than the weak muscles, which still surprised him when he tried to lift an object that should have seemed light.

  It was more than finding that he’d slept through yet another meeting, despite his best efforts to pay attention. It was even more than slowly seeing almost everyone he’d grown up with fade away and die.

  It was the urgency of knowing that tasks he started today, he wouldn’t finish.

  He stopped in the hallway back to his rooms, hand resting on the strata-lined wall. It was beautiful, mesmerizing, but he only found himself wishing for his gardens in Kharbranth. Other men and women got to live out their waning hours in comfort, or at least familiarity.

  He let Mrall take him by the arm and guide him to his rooms. Normally, Taravangian would have been bothered by the help; he did not like being treated like an invalid. Today though … well, today he would suffer the indignity. It was a lesser one than collapsing in the hallway.

  Inside the room, Adrotagia sat amid six different scribbling spanreeds, buying and trading information like a merchant at market. She looked at him, but knew him well enough not to comment on his exhausted face or slow steps. Today was a good day, of average intelligence. Perhaps a little on the stupid side, but he’d take that.

  He seemed to be having fewer and fewer intelligent days. And the ones he did have frightened him.

  Taravangian settled down in a plush, comfortable seat, and Maben went to get him some tea.

  “Well?” Adrotagia asked. She’d grown old too, with enormous bags around her green eyes, the persistent kind formed by drooping skin. She had liver spots and wispy hair. No man would look at her and see the mischievous child she’d once been. The trouble the two of them had gotten into …

  “Vargo?” Adrotagia asked.

  “My apologies,” he said. “Dalinar Kholin has recovered.”

&
nbsp; “A problem.”

  “An enormous one.” Taravangian took the tea from Maben. “More than you can guess, I should say, even with the Diagram before you. But please, give me time to consider. My mind is slow today. Have you reports?”

  Adrotagia flipped over a paper from one of her stacks. “Moelach seems to have settled in the Horneater Peaks. Joshor is on his way there now. We might again soon have access to the Death Rattles.”

  “Very well.”

  “We’ve found what happened to Graves,” Adrotagia continued. “Scavengers found the storm-blown wreckage of his wagon, and there was an intact spanreed inside.”

  “Graves is replaceable.”

  “And the Shards?”

  “Irrelevant,” Taravangian said. “We won’t win the prize through force of arms. I was reluctant to let him try his little coup in the first place.”

  He and Graves had disagreed about the Diagram’s instructions: to kill Dalinar or recruit him? And who was to be king of Alethkar?

  Well, Taravangian had been wrong about the Diagram himself many times. So he’d allowed Graves to move forward with his own plots, according to his own readings of the Diagram. While the man’s schemes had failed, so had Taravangian’s attempt to have Dalinar executed. So perhaps neither of them had read the Diagram correctly.

  He took some time to recover, frustrated that he should need to recover from a simple walk. A few minutes later, the guard admitted Malata. The Radiant wore her usual skirt and leggings, Thaylen style, with thick boots.

  She took a seat across from Taravangian at the low table, then sighed in a melodramatic way. “This place is awful. Every last idiot here is frozen, ears to toes.”

  Had she been this confident before bonding a spren? Taravangian hadn’t known her well then. Oh, he’d managed the project, full of eager recruits from the Diagram, but the individuals hadn’t mattered to him. Until now.

  “Your spren,” Adrotagia asked, getting out a sheet of paper. “Has she anything to report?”

  “No,” Malata said. “Only the tidbit from earlier, about other visions Dalinar hasn’t shared with everyone.”

  “And,” Taravangian asked, “has the spren expressed any … reservations? About the work you’ve given her?”

  “Damnation,” Malata said, rolling her eyes. “You’re as bad as Kholin’s scribes. Always poking.”

  “We need to be cautious, Malata,” Taravangian said. “We can’t be certain what your spren will do as her self-awareness grows. She will surely dislike working against the other orders.”

  “You’re as frozen as the lot of them,” Malata said. She started glowing, Stormlight rising from her skin. She reached forward, whipping off her glove—safehand no less—and pressing it against the table.

  Marks spread out from the point of contact, little swirls of blackness etching themselves into the wood. The scent of burning filled the air, but the flames didn’t persist if she didn’t will them to.

  The swirls and lines extended across the tabletop, a masterwork of engraving accomplished in moments. Malata blew off the ash. The Surge she used, Division, caused objects to degrade, burn, or turn to dust.

  It also worked on people.

  “Spark is fine with what we’re doing,” Malata said, pressing her finger down and adding another swirl to the table. “I told you, the rest of them are idiots. They assume all the spren are going to be on their side. Never mind what the Radiants did to Spark’s friends, never mind that organized devotion to Honor is what killed hundreds of ashspren in the first place.”

  “And Odium?” Taravangian asked, curious. The Diagram warned that the personalities of the Radiants would introduce great uncertainty to their plans.

  “Spark is game for whatever it takes to get vengeance. And what lets her break stuff.” Malata grinned. “Someone should have warned me how fun this would be. I’d have tried way harder to land the job.”

  “What we do is not fun,” Taravangian said. “It is necessary, but it is horrible. In a better world, Graves would have been right. We would be allies to Dalinar Kholin.”

  “You’re too fond of the Blackthorn, Vargo,” Adrotagia warned. “It will cloud your mind.”

  “No. But I do wish I hadn’t gotten to know him. That will make this difficult.” Taravangian leaned forward, holding his warm drink. Boiled ingo tea, with mint. Smells of home. With a start, he realized … he’d probably never live in that home again, would he? He’d thought perhaps he would return in a few years.

  He wouldn’t be alive in a few years.

  “Adro,” he continued, “Dalinar’s recovery convinces me we must take more drastic action. Are the secrets ready?”

  “Almost,” she said, moving some other papers. “My scholars in Jah Keved have translated the passages we need, and we have the information from Malata’s spying. But we need some way to disseminate the information without compromising ourselves.”

  “Assign it to Dova,” Taravangian said. “Have her write a scathing, anonymous essay, then leak it to Tashikk. Leak the translations from the Dawnchant the same day. I want it all to strike at once.” He set aside the tea. Suddenly, scents of Kharbranth made him hurt. “It would have been so, so much better for Dalinar to have died by the assassin’s blade. For now we must leave him to the enemy’s desires, and that will not be as kind as a quick death.”

  “Will it be enough?” Malata asked. “That old axehound is tough.”

  “It will be enough. Dalinar would be the first to tell you that when your opponent is getting back up, you must act quickly to crush his knees. Then he will bow, and present to you his skull.”

  Oh, Dalinar. You poor, poor man.

  Chemoarish, the Dustmother, has some of the most varied lore surrounding her. The wealth of it makes sorting lies from truths extremely difficult. I do believe she is not the Nightwatcher, contrary to what some stories claim.

  —From Hessi’s Mythica, page 231

  Shallan sketched in her notepad as she stood on the deck of the honorspren ship, the wind of its passing ruffling her hair. Next to her, Kaladin rested his arms on the ship’s railing, overlooking the ocean of beads.

  Their current vessel, Honor’s Path, was faster than Ico’s merchant ship. It had mandras rigged not only at the front, but also to winglike rails jutting from the sides. It had five decks—including three below for crew and storage—but those were mostly empty. It felt like a war vessel intended to carry troops, but which didn’t currently have a full complement.

  The main deck was similar to the top deck of human ships, but this craft also had a high deck running down its center from prow to stern. Narrower than the main deck, it was supported by broad white pillars, and probably offered an excellent view. Shallan could no more than guess, as only the crew was allowed up there.

  At least they’d been let out—Shallan and the others had spent their first week on board locked in the hold. The honorspren had given no explanation when, finally, the humans and Pattern had been released and allowed to move on deck, so long as they stayed off the high deck and did not make nuisances of themselves.

  Syl remained imprisoned.

  “Look here.” Shallan tipped her sketched map toward Kaladin. “Pattern says there’s an honorspren stronghold near Kharbranth in our world. They call it Unyielding Fidelity. We’ve got to be heading there. We went southwest after leaving Celebrant.”

  “While we were in the hold,” Kaladin said softly, “I saw a sea of tiny flames through the porthole. A town on our side?”

  “That was here,” Shallan said, pointing at her map. “See where the rivers meet, just southwest of the lake? There are towns there, on our side. The river peninsulas should have blocked our way, but the spren seem to have cut a canal through the stone. We wove east around the Icingway River, then swung west again.”

  “So you’re saying…”

  She pointed at a spot with her charcoal pencil. “We’re right about here, heading toward Kharbranth across the Frostlands.”

/>   Kaladin rubbed his chin. He glanced toward an honorspren passing above, and narrowed his eyes. He’d spent their first day of freedom arguing with the honorspren—which had ended with him locked up for another two days.

  “Kaladin…” Shallan said.

  “They need to let her out,” he said. “Prisons are terrible for me—they’ll be worse for her.”

  “Then help me figure out a way off this ship.”

  He looked back at her map and pointed. “Thaylen City,” he said. “If we continue this direction, we’ll eventually pass just north of it.”

  “ ‘Just north’ in this case meaning more than three hundred miles away from it, in the middle of a bead ocean.”

  “Far closer than we’ve been to any other Oathgate,” he said. “And if we can get the ship to swing south a little, we could maybe get to the coast of Longbrow’s Straits, which will be stone on this side. Or do you think we should still be trying for Azure’s phantom ‘perpendicularity’ in the Horneater Peaks?”

  “I…” He spoke with such authority, such a compelling sense of motion. “I don’t know, Kaladin.”

  “We’re heading in the right direction,” he said, firm. “I saw it, Shallan. We just need to continue with the ship a few more days, then find a way to escape. We can hike to the Oathgate on this side, and you can transfer us to Thaylen City.”

  It sounded reasonable. Well, except for the fact that the honorspren were watching them. And the fact that the Fused knew where they were now, and were probably gathering forces to give chase. And the fact that they had to somehow escape from a ship in the middle of a sea of beads, reach the shore, then hike two hundred miles to reach Thaylen City.

  All of that could fade before Kaladin’s passion. All but the worry that topped them all—could she even make the Oathgate work? She couldn’t help feeling that too much of this plan depended on her.