“You are emperor,” Noura said. “But, Your Majesty, remember your lessons. The thing that separates us from the monarchies of the east—and the chaos they suffer—is that our emperor is held in check. Azir can, and will, withstand a change in dynasty. Your power is absolute, but you do not exercise it all. You must not.”
“You were chosen,” Unoqua said, “by Yaezir himself to lead—”
“I was chosen,” Yanagawn cut in, “because nobody would shed a tear if the Assassin in White came for me! Let’s not play games, all right?”
“You performed a miracle,” Unoqua said.
“Lift performed a miracle. Using powers you now say are too dangerous to trust!”
The three—two viziers, one scion—looked to each other. Unoqua was their religious leader, but Noura had most seniority by year of passing the tests for master office, which she’d done—remarkably—at age twelve.
Yanagawn stopped by the cabin window. Outside, waves chopped, churning, rocking their ship. His smaller ship had met up with the main fleet, then joined them in taking shelter in Vtlar Cove, along the Thaylen coast. But reports via spanreed said that the Everstorm had stopped near Thaylen City.
A knock came at the door. Yanagawn let Dalksi—least senior, despite her age—call admittance. Yanagawn settled in his regal chair as a guardsman with light brown skin entered. Yanagawn thought he recognized the man, who held a cloth to the side of his face and winced as he gave the formal bow of admittance to the emperor.
“Vono?” Noura asked. “What happened to your charge? You were to keep her busy and distracted, yes?”
“I was, Your Grace,” Vono said. “Until she kicked me in my spheres and stuffed me under the bed. Um, Your Grace. Don’t right know how she moved me. She’s not real big, that one.…”
Lift? Yanagawn thought. He almost cried out, demanding answers, but that would have shamed this man. Yanagawn held himself back with difficulty, and Noura nodded to him in appreciation of a lesson learned.
“When was this?” Noura asked.
“Right before we left,” the guard said. “Sorry, Your Grace. I’ve been down since then, only now recovered.”
Yanagawn turned toward Noura. Surely now she would see the importance of returning. The storm had yet to advance. They could go back if …
Another figure approached the door, a woman in the robes and pattern of a second-level scribe, seventh circle. She entered and quickly gave the formal bows to Yanagawn, so hasty she forgot the third gesture of subservient obedience.
“Viziers,” she said, bowing in turn to them, then to Unoqua. “News from the city!”
“Good news?” Noura asked hopefully.
“The Alethi have turned against the Thaylens, and now seek to conquer them! They’ve been allied with the parshmen all along. Your Grace, by fleeing, we have narrowly avoided a trap!”
“Quickly,” Noura said. “Separate our ships from any that bear Alethi troops. We must not be caught unaware!”
They left, abandoning Yanagawn to the care of a dozen young scribes who were next in line for basking in his presence. He settled into his seat, worried and afraid, feeling a sickness in his gut. The Alethi, traitors?
Lift had been wrong. He had been wrong.
Yaezir bless them. This really was the end of days.
* * *
We are the gatekeepers, the two enormous spren said to Shallan, speaking with voices that overlapped, as if one. Though their mouths did not move, the voices reverberated through Shallan. Lightweaver, you have no permission to use this portal.
“But I need to get through,” Shallan cried up to them. “I have Stormlight to pay!”
Your payment will be refused. We are locked by the word of the parent.
“Your parent? Who?”
The parent is dead now.
“So…”
We are locked. Travel to and from Shadesmar was prohibited during the parent’s last days. We are bound to obey.
Behind Shallan, on the bridge, Adolin had devised a clever tactic. He acted like an illusion.
Her false people had instructions to act like they were fighting—though without her direct attention, that meant they just stood around and slashed at the air. To avoid revealing himself, Adolin had chosen to do the same, slashing about with his harpoon randomly. Pattern and Syl did likewise, while the two Fused hovered overhead. One held her arm, which had been hit—but now seemed to be healing. They knew someone in that mass was real, but they couldn’t ascertain who.
Shallan’s time was short. She looked back up at the gatekeepers. “Please. The other Oathgate—the one at Kholinar—let me through.”
Impossible, they said. We are bound by Honor, by rules spren cannot break. This portal is closed.
“Then why did you let those others through? The army that stood around here earlier?”
The souls of the dead? They did not need our portal. They were called by the enemy, pulled along ancient paths to waiting hosts. You living cannot do the same. You must seek the perpendicularity to transfer. The enormous spren cocked their heads in concert. We are apologetic. We have been … alone very long. We would enjoy granting passage to men again. But we cannot do that which was forbidden.
* * *
Szeth of the Skybreakers hovered far above the battlefield.
“The Alethi have changed sides, aboshi?” Szeth asked.
“They have seen the truth,” Nin said, hovering beside him. Only the two of them watched; Szeth did not know where the rest of the Skybreakers had gone.
Nearby, the Everstorm rumbled its discontent. Red lightning rippled across the surface, passing from one cloud to the next.
“All along,” Szeth said, “this world belonged to the parshmen. My people watched not for the return of an invading enemy, but for the masters of the house.”
“Yes,” Nin said.
“And you sought to stop them.”
“I knew what must happen if they returned.” Nin turned toward him. “Who has jurisdiction over this land, Szeth-son-Neturo? A man can rule his home until the citylord demands his taxes. The citylord controls his lands until the highlord, in turn, comes to him for payment. But the highlord must answer to the highprince, when war is called in his lands. And the king? He … must answer to God.”
“You said God was dead.”
“A god is dead. Another won the war by right of conquest. The original masters of this land have returned, as you so aptly made metaphor, with the keys to the house. So tell me, Szeth-son-Neturo—he who is about to swear the Third Ideal—whose law should the Skybreakers follow? That of humans, or that of the real owners of this land?”
There seemed to be no choice. Nin’s logic was sound. No choice at all …
Don’t be stupid, the sword said. Let’s go fight those guys.
“The parshmen? They are the rightful rulers of the land,” Szeth said.
Rightful? Who has a right to land? Humans are always claiming things. But nobody asks the things, now do they? Well, nobody owns me. Vivenna told me. I’m my own sword.
“I have no choice.”
Really? Didn’t you tell me you spent a thousand years following the instructions of a rock?
“More than seven years, sword-nimi. And I didn’t follow the rock, but the words of the one who held it. I…”
… Had no choice?
But it had always been nothing more than a rock.
* * *
Kaladin swooped downward and passed above the treetops, rattling the glass leaves, sending a spray of broken shards behind himself. He turned upward with the slope of the mountain, adding another Lashing to his speed, then another.
When he passed the tree line, he Lashed himself closer to the rock, skimming with obsidian only inches from his face. He used his arms to sculpt the wind around himself, angling toward a crack through the glossy black rock where two mountains met.
Alive with Light and wind, he didn’t care if the Fused were gaining on him or not.
Let them watch.
His angle was wrong to get through the crack, so Kaladin Lashed himself back away from the mountain slope in an enormous loop, continuously changing his Lashings one after another. He made a circle in the air, then darted past the Fused and straight through the crack, close enough to the walls that he could feel them pass.
He broke out the other side, exhilarated. Should he have run out of Stormlight by now? He didn’t use it up as quickly as he had during his early months training.
Kaladin dove along the slopes as three Fused popped out of the crack to follow him. He led them around the base of the obsidian mountain, then wound back toward the Oathgate to check on Shallan and the others. As he approached, he let himself drop among the trees, still moving at incredible speed. He oriented himself as if he were diving through the chasms. Dodging these trees wasn’t so different from that.
He wove between them, using his body more than Lashings to control his direction. His wake caused a melody of breaking glass. He exploded free of the forest, and found the fourth Fused—the one with his harpoon—waiting. The creature attacked, but Kaladin dodged and tore across the ground until he was passing over the sea of beads.
A quick glance showed him Shallan on the platform, waving her hands over her head—the prearranged signal that she needed more time.
Kaladin continued out over the sea, and beads reacted to his Stormlight, rattling and surging like a wave behind him. The last Fused slowed to hover in place, and the other three slowly emerged from the forest.
Kaladin spun in another loop, beads rising in the air behind him like a column of water. He curved in an arc and came in toward the harpoon-wielding Fused. Kaladin slapped the parshman’s weapon aside, then swung the butt of his own lance up, catching the harpoon on the haft while he kicked his enemy in the chest.
The harpoon went upward. The Fused went backward.
The creature pulled himself to a stop in the air with a Lashing, then looked down at his hands, dumbfounded as Kaladin caught the harpoon in his free hand. The disarmed enemy barked something, then shook his head and took out his sword. He glided backward to join the other three, who approached with fluttering robes.
One of these—the male with the white face swirled with red—moved forward alone, then pointed at Kaladin with his lance and said something.
“I don’t speak your language,” Kaladin called back. “But if that was a challenge, you against me, I accept. Gladly.”
At that moment, his Stormlight ran out.
* * *
Navani finally got the rock unwedged, and shoved it out of the remnants of the doorway. Other stones fell around it, opening a path out onto the wall.
What was left of it.
About fifteen feet from where she stood, the wall ended in a ragged, broken gap. She coughed, then tucked back a lock of hair that had escaped her braid. They’d run for cover inside one of the stone guard towers along the wall, but one side had collapsed in the shaking.
It had fallen on the three soldiers who had come to protect the queen. The poor souls. Behind, Fen led her consort—who nursed a cut scalp—out over the rubble. Two other scribes had taken shelter with Navani and the queen, but most of the admirals had run in the other direction, taking shelter in the next guard tower along.
That tower was now missing. The monster had swept it away. Now the creature stomped across the plain outside, though Navani couldn’t see what had drawn its attention.
“The stairway,” Fen said, pointing. “Looks like it survived.”
The stairway down was fully enclosed in stone, and would lead into a small guard chamber at the bottom. Maybe they could find soldiers to help the wounded and search the rubble for survivors. Navani pulled open the door, letting Fen and Kmakl head down first. Navani moved to follow, but hesitated.
Damnation, that sight beyond the wall was mesmerizing. The red lightning storm. The two monsters of stone. And the boiling, churning red mist along the right coast. It had no distinct shape, but somehow gave the impression of charging horses with the flesh ripped away.
One of the Unmade, certainly. An ancient spren of Odium. A thing beyond time and history. Here.
A company of soldiers had just finished pouring into the city through the gap. Another formed up outside to enter next. Navani felt a growing chill as she looked at them.
Red eyes.
Gasping softly, she left the stairwell and stumbled along the wall, reaching the broken stone edge. Oh, dear Almighty, no …
The ranks outside split, making way for a single parshwoman. Navani squinted, trying to see what was so special about her. One of the Fused? Behind her, the red mist surged, sending tendrils to weave among the men—including one wearing Shardplate, riding a brilliant white stallion. Amaram had changed sides.
He joined an overwhelming force of Voidbringers in all shapes and sizes. How could they fight this?
How could anyone ever fight this?
Navani fell to her knees above the broken edge of the wall. And then she noticed something else. Something incongruous, something her mind refused—at first—to accept. A solitary figure had somehow gotten around the troops who had already entered the city. He now picked his way across the rubble, wearing a blue uniform, carrying a book tucked under his arm.
Unaided and defenseless, Dalinar Kholin stepped into the gap in the broken wall, and there faced the nightmare alone.
Beware the otherworlders. The traitors. Those with tongues of sweetness, but with minds that lust for blood. Do not take them in. Do not give them succor. Well were they named Voidbringers, for they brought the void. The empty pit that sucks in emotion. A new god. Their god.
—From the Eila Stele
Dalinar stepped onto the rubble, boots scraping stone. The air felt too still out here near the red storm. Stagnant. How could the air be so motionless?
Amaram’s army hesitated outside the gap. Some men had already gotten in, but the bulk had been forming up to wait their turn. When you rushed a city like this, you wanted to be careful not to push your own forces too hard from behind, lest you crush them up against the enemy.
These kept uneven ranks, snarling, eyes red. More telling, they ignored the wealth at their feet. A field of spheres and gemstones—all dun—that had been thrown out onto this plain by the thunderclast that destroyed the reserve.
They wanted blood instead. Dalinar could taste their lust for the fight, the challenge. What held them back?
Twin thunderclasts stomped toward the wall. A red haze drifted among the men. Images of war and death. A deadly storm. Dalinar faced it alone. One man. All that remained of a broken dream.
“So…” a sudden voice said from his right. “What’s the plan?”
Dalinar frowned, then looked down to find a Reshi girl with long hair, dressed in a simple shirt and trousers.
“Lift?” Dalinar asked in Azish. “Didn’t you leave?”
“Sure did. What’s wrong with your army?”
“They’re his now.”
“Did you forget to feed them?”
Dalinar glanced at the soldiers, standing in ranks that felt more like packs than they did true battle formations. “Perhaps I didn’t try hard enough.”
“Were you … thinkin’ you’d fight them all on your own?” Lift said. “With a book?”
“There is someone else for me to fight here.”
“… With a book?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “Sure, all right. Why not? What do you want me to do?”
The girl didn’t match the conventional ideal of a Knight Radiant. Not even five feet tall, thin and wiry, she looked more urchin than soldier.
She was also all he had.
“Do you have a weapon?” he asked.
“Nope. Can’t read.”
“Can’t…” Dalinar looked down at his book. “I meant a real weapon, Lift.”
“Oh! Yeah, I’ve got one a those.” She thrust her hand to the side. Mist formed i
nto a small, glittering Shardblade.
… Or no, it was just a pole. A silver pole with a rudimentary crossguard.
Lift shrugged. “Wyndle doesn’t like hurting people.”
Doesn’t like … Dalinar blinked. What kind of world did he live in where swords didn’t like hurting people?
“A Fused escaped from this city a short time ago,” Dalinar said, “carrying an enormous ruby. I don’t know why they wanted it, and I’d rather not find out. Can you steal it back?”
“Sure. Easy.”
“You’ll find it with a Fused who can move with a power similar to your own. A woman.”
“Like I said. Easy.”
“Easy? I think you might find—”
“Relax, grandpa. Steal the rock. I can do that.” She took a deep breath, then exploded with Stormlight. Her eyes turned a pearly, glowing white. “It’s just us two, then?”
“Yes.”
“Right. Good luck with the army.”
Dalinar looked back at the soldiers, where a figure materialized, wearing gold, holding a scepter like a cane.
“It’s not the army that worries me,” Dalinar said. But Lift had already scampered away, hugging the wall and running quickly to round the outside of the army.
Odium strolled up to Dalinar, trailed by a handful of Fused—plus the woman Dalinar had sucked into his visions—and a shadowy spren that looked like it was made of twisting smoke. What was that?
Odium didn’t address Dalinar at first, but instead turned to his Fused. “Tell Yushah I want her to stay out here and guard the prison. Kai-garnis did well destroying the wall; tell her to return to the city and climb toward the Oathgate. If the Tisark can’t secure it, she is to destroy the device and recover its gemstones. We can rebuild it as long as the spren aren’t compromised.”
Two Fused left, each running toward one of the towering thunderclasts. Odium placed both hands on the top of his scepter and smiled at Dalinar. “Well, my friend. Here we are, and the time has arrived. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” Dalinar said.
“Good, good. Let us begin.”
* * *
The two Fused hovered near Adolin, out of easy reach, admiring Shallan’s illusory handiwork. He did his best to blend in, waving his harpoon around crazily. He wasn’t sure where Syl had gone, but Pattern seemed to be enjoying himself, humming pleasantly and swinging a glass branch.