Ten thousand Alethi in green uniforms gripped their weapons, their eyes glowing a deep, dangerous red.
“Go,” Odium whispered. “Kholin would have sacrificed you! Manifest your anger! Kill the Blackthorn, who murdered your highprince. Set your Passion free! Give me your pain, and seize this city in my name!”
The army turned and—led by a Shardbearer in gleaming Plate—attacked Thaylen City.
We took them in, as commanded by the gods. What else could we do? They were a people forlorn, without a home. Our pity destroyed us. For their betrayal extended even to our gods: to spren, stone, and wind.
—From the Eila Stele
Kaladin thought he could hear the wind as he stepped from beneath the obsidian trees. Syl said this place had no wind. Yet was that the tinkling of glass leaves as they quivered? Was that the sigh of cool, fresh air coursing around him?
He’d come far in the last half year. He seemed a man distant from the one who carried bridges against Parshendi arrows. That man had welcomed death, but now—even on the bad days, when everything was cast in greys—he defied death. It could not have him, for while life was painful, life was also sweet.
He had Syl. He had the men of Bridge Four. And most importantly, he had purpose.
Today, Kaladin would protect Dalinar Kholin.
He strode toward the sea of souls that marked the existence of Thaylen City on the other side. Many of those souls’ flames, in ranks, had turned sharply red. He shivered to think what that meant. He stepped up onto the bridge, beads churning below, and reached the highest point in its arc before the enemy noticed him.
Six Fused turned and rose into the air, arraying to regard him. They raised long spears, then looked to the sides, seeming shocked.
One man, alone?
Kaladin set one foot back—gently scraping the tip of his boot against the white marble bridge—and fell into a combat posture. He hooked the harpoon in a one-handed underarm grip, letting out a long breath.
Then he drew in all of his Stormlight, and burst alight.
Within the power’s embrace, a lifetime’s worth of moments seemed to snap into place. Throwing Gaz to the ground in the rain. Screaming in defiance while charging at the front of a bridge. Coming awake in the practice grounds during the Weeping. Fighting the assassin on the stormwall.
The Fused leaped for him, trailing long cloaks and robes. Kaladin Lashed himself straight upward, and took to the sky for the first time in what had been far, far too long.
* * *
Dalinar stumbled as the ground shook again. A second sequence of cracks sounded outside. He was too low down in the city now to see past the city wall, but he feared he knew what that breaking stone must signify. A second thunderclast.
Violet fearspren sprouted from the streets all around as civilians shouted and screamed. Dalinar had made his way down through the central section of the city—the part called the Ancient Ward—and had just entered the Low Ward, the bottom portion nearest the city wall. The steps behind him were filling with people who fled upward, toward the Oathgate.
As the trembling subsided, Dalinar grabbed the arm of a young mother who was pounding frantically on the door of a building. He sent her running up the steps with her child in her arms. He needed these people off the streets, preferably taking shelter at Urithiru, so they wouldn’t get caught between clashing armies.
Dalinar felt his age as he jogged past the next row of buildings, still clutching The Way of Kings under his arm. He had barely any spheres on him, an oversight, but neither did he have Plate or Blade. This would be his first battle in many, many years without Shards. He’d insisted on stepping out of those boots, and would have to let Amaram and other Shardbearers command the field.
How was Amaram faring? Last Dalinar had seen, the highprince had been arranging his archers—but from this low in the city, Dalinar couldn’t see the troops outside.
A sudden feeling slammed into him.
It was focus and passion. An eager energy, a warmth, a promise of strength.
Glory.
Life.
To Dalinar, this thirst for the battle felt like the attentions of a lover you’d turned away long ago. The Thrill was here. His old, dear friend.
“No,” he whispered, sagging against a wall. The emotion struck him harder than the earthquake had. “No.”
The taste was so, so appealing. It whispered that he could save this city all on his own. Let the Thrill in, and the Blackthorn could return. He didn’t need Shards. He only needed this passion. Sweeter than any wine.
No.
He shoved the Thrill aside, scrambling to his feet. As he did, however, a shadow moved beyond the wall. A monster of stone, one of the beasts from his visions, standing some thirty feet tall—looming over the twenty-foot city wall. The thunderclast clasped its hands together, then swung them low, crashing them through the city wall, flinging out chunks of stone.
Dalinar leaped toward cover, but a falling boulder pounded into him, crushing him into a wall.
Blackness.
Falling.
Power.
He gasped, and Stormlight flooded into him—he shook awake to find his arm pinned by the boulder, rocks and dust falling on a rubble-strewn street before him. And … not just rubble. He coughed, realizing some of those lumps were bodies coated in dust, lying motionless.
He struggled to pull his arm from under the boulder. Nearby, the thunderclast kicked at the broken wall, opening a hole. Then it stepped through, footfalls shaking the ground, approaching the shelf that made up the front of the Ancient Ward.
A massive stone foot thumped to the ground by Dalinar. Storms! Dalinar hauled on his arm, heedless of the pain or the damage to his body, and finally got it free. The Stormlight healed him as he crawled away, ducking as the monster ripped the roof off a building at the front of the Ancient Ward and sent debris raining down.
The Gemstone Reserve? The monster cast the roof aside, and several Fused that he’d missed before—they were riding on its shoulders—slipped down into the building. Dalinar was torn between heading for the battlefield outside, and investigating whatever was going on here.
Any idea what they’re after? he asked the Stormfather.
No. This is odd behavior.
In a flash decision, Dalinar yanked his book out from under some rubble nearby, then went running back up the now-empty steps to the Ancient Ward, dangerously close to the thunderclast.
The monster released a sudden piercing roar, like a thunderclap. The shock wave almost knocked Dalinar off his feet again. In a fit of rage, the titanic creature attacked the Gemstone Reserve, ripping apart its walls and innards, tossing chunks backward. A million sparkling bits of glass caught the sunlight as they fell over the city, the wall, and beyond.
Spheres and gemstones, Dalinar realized. All the wealth of Thaylenah. Scattered like leaves.
The thing seemed increasingly angry as it pounded the area around the reserve. Dalinar put his back to a wall as two Fused darted past, led by what appeared to be a glowing yellow spren. These two Fused didn’t seem to be able to fly, but there was a startling grace to their motion. They slid along the stone street with no apparent effort, as if the ground were greased.
Dalinar gave chase, squeezing past a group of scribes huddled in the street, but before he could catch up, the Fused attacked one palanquin among the many trying to move through the crowds. They knocked it over, shoving aside the porters, and dug inside.
The Fused ignored Dalinar’s shouts. They soon streaked away—one tucking a large object under its arm. Dalinar drew in Stormlight from some fleeing merchants, then ran the rest of the distance to the palanquin. Amid the wreckage he found a young Thaylen woman alongside an elderly man who appeared to have been previously wounded, judging by the bandages.
Dalinar helped the dazed young woman to a sitting position. “What did they want?”
“Brightlord?” she said in Thaylen. She blinked, then seized his arm. “The Kin
g’s Drop … a ruby. They tried to steal it before, and now, now they’ve taken it!”
A ruby? A simple gemstone? The porters attended to the old man, who was barely conscious.
Dalinar looked over his shoulder at the retreating thunderclast. The enemy had ignored the wealth of the Gemstone Reserve. Why would they want a specific ruby? He was about to press for more details when something else drew his attention. From this higher vantage, he could see through the hole the thunderclast had broken in the wall.
Figures outside with glowing red eyes arrayed themselves on the battlefield—but they weren’t parshmen.
Those were Sadeas uniforms.
* * *
Jasnah moved into the temple, gripping her Shardblade, stepping on slippered feet. The red spren rising from Renarin—like a snowflake made of crystal and light—seemed to sense her and panicked, disappearing into Renarin with a puff.
A spren is, Ivory said. The wrong spren is.
Renarin Kholin was a liar. He was no Truthwatcher.
That is a spren of Odium, Ivory said. Corrupted spren. But … a human, bonded to one? This thing is not.
“It is,” Jasnah whispered. “Somehow.”
She was now close enough to hear Renarin whispering. “No … Not Father. No, please…”
* * *
Shallan wove Light.
A simple illusion, recalled from the pages of her sketchpad: some soldiers from the army, people from Urithiru, and some of the spren she’d sketched on her trip. Around twenty individuals in total.
“Taln’s nails,” Adolin said as Kaladin shot upward through the sky. “The bridgeboy is really into it.”
Kaladin drew away four of the Fused, but two remained behind. Shallan added an illusion of Azure to her group, then some of the Reachers she’d drawn. She hated using up so much Stormlight—what if she didn’t have enough left to get through the Oathgate?
“Good luck,” she whispered to Adolin. “Remember, I won’t be controlling these directly. They will make only rudimentary motions.”
“We’ll be fine.” Adolin glanced at Pattern, Syl, and the spren of his sword. “Right, guys?”
“Mmmm,” Pattern said. “I do not like being stabbed.”
“Wise words, friend. Wise words.” Adolin gave Shallan a kiss, then they took off running toward the bridge. Syl, Pattern, and the deadeye followed—as did the illusions, which were bound to Adolin.
This force drew the attention of the last two Fused. As those were distracted, Shallan slipped over to the base of the bridge, then eased herself down into the beads. She crossed silently beneath the bridge, using precious Stormlight to make herself a safe walking platform with one of the beads she’d found while on Honor’s Path.
She made her way across to the small island platform that represented the Oathgate on this side. Two enormous spren stood above it.
Judging by the shouting on the bridge, Adolin and the others were doing their job. But could Shallan do hers? She stepped up beneath the two sentinels, which stood tall as buildings, reminiscent of statues in armor.
One mother-of-pearl, the other black with a variegated oily shimmer. Did they guard the Oathgate, or did they—somehow—facilitate its workings?
At a loss for what else to do, Shallan simply waved her hand. “Um, hello?”
Steadily, two heads turned down toward her.
* * *
The air around Venli—once crowded by the spirits of the dead—was now empty save for the single black figure of swirling smoke. She’d missed that one at first, as it was the size of a normal person. It stood near Odium, and she did not know what it represented.
The second thunderclast dragged arms as long as its body, with hands like hooks. It crossed the field eastward, toward the city walls and the human army of turncoats. Just behind Venli, to the west, the common singers stood arrayed before their ships. They stayed far from the red mist of the Unmade coating the north side of the battlefield.
Odium stood beside Venli, a glowing force of burning gold. The first thunderclast left the city and placed something down on the ground: two of the Fused—gods with lithe bodies and little armor. They skirted the turncoat army, sliding along the rock with an uncanny grace.
“What is that they carry?” Venli asked. “A gemstone? Is that why we came here? A rock?”
“No,” Odium said. “That is merely a precaution, a last-minute addition I made to prevent a potential disaster. The prize I claim today is far greater—even more grand than the city itself. The conduit of my freedom. The bane of Roshar. Forward, child. To the gap in the wall. I may need you to speak for me.”
She swallowed, then started hiking toward the city. The dark spirit followed, the one of swirling mists, the last who had yet to inhabit a body.
* * *
Kaladin soared through this place of black heavens, haunted clouds, and a distant sun. Only four of the Fused had chosen to take off after him. Adolin would have to deal with the other two.
The four flew with precision. They used Lashings like Kaladin did, though they didn’t seem to be able to vary their speed as much as he could. It took them longer to build up to greater Lashings, which should have made it easy to stay ahead of them.
But storms, the way they flew! So graceful. They didn’t jerk this way or that, but flowed lithely from one motion to the next. They used their entire bodies to sculpt the wind of their passing and control their flight. Even the Assassin in White hadn’t been so fluid as these, so like the winds themselves.
Kaladin had claimed the skies, but storms, it looked like he’d moved into territory where someone had a prior entitlement.
I don’t have to fight them, he thought. I only have to keep them busy long enough for Shallan to figure out how to activate the portal.
Kaladin Lashed himself upward, toward those strange, too-flat clouds. He twisted in the air, and found one of the Fused almost upon him—a male with pale white skin swirled through with a single marbling of red, like smoke blown across the cheeks. The creature stabbed its long spear at him, but Kaladin Lashed himself to the side just in time.
Lashing wasn’t flying, and that was part of its strength. Kaladin didn’t have to be facing any specific direction to move in the air. He fell up and slightly to the north, but fought while facing downward, battering away the enemy lance with his harpoon. The Fused’s weapon was far longer, with sharpened sides rather than a single fine point. Kaladin’s harpoon was at a severe disadvantage.
Right. Time to change that.
As the Fused rammed the lance upward again, Kaladin reached out with both hands on his harpoon’s haft, holding it sideways. He let the enemy spear pass into the opening between his arms, chest, and harpoon.
He Lashed his own weapon downward with multiple Lashings. Then he dropped it.
It slid along the length of the lance and smacked into the Fused’s arms. The creature shouted in pain, letting go of his weapon. At the same moment Kaladin dove, canceling all upward Lashings and binding himself downward instead.
The sudden, jarring change made his stomach lurch and his vision go black. Even with Stormlight, this was almost too much. His ears ringing, he gritted his teeth, riding the momentary loss of sight until—blessedly—his vision returned. He spun in the air, then pulled up and snatched the falling lance as it dropped past him.
The four Fused swooped after him, more cautious. The wind of his passing chilled the sweat on his face from his near blackout.
Let’s … not try that again, Kaladin thought, hefting his new weapon. He’d practiced with things like this in pike walls, but they were normally too long to maneuver in one-on-one combat. Flying would negate that.
The Fused he’d disarmed swooped down to fetch the harpoon. Kaladin waved his hand toward the others palm upward, then took off toward some nearby dark obsidian mountains, forested on the sides—the direction he and the others had come. Down below, he could see Shallan’s illusions engaging the two Fused on the bridge.
&nb
sp; Eyes forward, Kaladin thought as the four others chased after him. He belonged in the skies with these creatures.
Time to prove it.
* * *
Prime Aqasix Yanagawn the First, emperor of all Makabak, paced in the cabin of his ship.
He was actually starting to feel like an emperor. He wasn’t embarrassed talking to the viziers and scions any longer. He understood much of what they discussed now, and didn’t jump when someone called him “Your Majesty.” Remarkably, he was starting to forget that he’d ever been a frightened thief sneaking through the palace.
But then, even an emperor had limits to his rule.
He paced back the other way. Regal robes—of Azish patterns—weighed him down, along with the Imperial Yuanazixin: a fancy hat with sweeping sides. He’d have taken the thing off, but he felt he needed its authority when talking to his three most important advisors.
“Lift thinks we should have stayed,” he said. “War is coming to Thaylen City.”
“We’re merely protecting our fleet from the storm,” Noura said.
“Pardon, Vizier, but that’s a load of chull dung, and you know it. We left because you’re worried that Kholin is being manipulated by the enemy.”
“That is not the only reason,” Scion Unoqua said. He was an old man with a full paunch. “We have always been skeptical of the Lost Radiants. The powers that Dalinar Kholin wishes to harness are extremely dangerous, as now proven by the translations of an ancient record!”
“Lift says—” Yanagawn said.
“Lift?” Noura said. “You listen to her far too much, Your Imperial Majesty.”
“She’s smart.”
“She once tried to eat your cummerbund.”
“She … thought it sounded like a type of dessert.” Yanagawn took a deep breath. “Besides, she’s not that kind of smart. She’s the other kind.”
“What other kind, Your Imperial Majesty?” Vizier Dalksi asked. Her hair was powder white, peeking out beneath her formal headdress.
“The kind that knows when it’s wrong to betray a friend. I think we should go back. Am I emperor or not?”