“No,” Dalinar said. “This seems too much like a lecture hall. I don’t want the monarchs to feel as if they’re being preached to.”
“And … when will they come?” Taravangian asked, hopeful. “I am looking forward to meeting the others. The king of Azir … didn’t you tell me there was a new one, Adrotagia? I know Queen Fen—she’s very nice. Will we be inviting the Shin? So mysterious. Do they even have a king? Don’t they live in tribes or something? Like Marati barbarians?”
Adrotagia tapped his arm fondly, but looked to Dalinar, obviously curious about the other monarchs.
Dalinar cleared his throat, but Navani spoke.
“So far, Your Majesty,” she said, “you are the only one who has heeded our warning call.”
Silence followed.
“Thaylenah?” Adrotagia asked hopefully.
“We’ve exchanged communications on five separate occasions,” Navani said. “In each one, the queen has dodged our requests. Azir has been even more stubborn.”
“Iri dismissed us almost outright,” Dalinar said with a sigh. “Neither Marabethia nor Rira would respond to the initial request. There’s no real government in the Reshi Isles or some of the middle states. Babatharnam’s Most Ancient has been coy, and most of the Makabaki states imply that they’re waiting for Azir to make a decision. The Shin sent only a quick reply to congratulate us, whatever that means.”
“Hateful people,” Taravangian said. “Murdering so many worthy monarchs!”
“Um, yes,” Dalinar said, uncomfortable at the king’s sudden change in attitude. “Our primary focus has been on places with Oathgates, for strategic reasons. Azir, Thaylen City, and Iri seem most essential. However, we’ve made overtures to everyone who will listen, Oathgate or no. New Natanan is being coy so far, and the Herdazians think I’m trying to trick them. The Tukari scribes keep claiming they will bring my words to their god-king.”
Navani cleared her throat. “We actually got a reply from him, just a bit ago. Teshav’s ward was monitoring the spanreeds. It’s not exactly encouraging.”
“I’d like to hear it anyway.”
She nodded, and went to collect it from Teshav. Adrotagia gave him a questioning glance, but he didn’t dismiss the two of them. He wanted them to feel they were part of an alliance, and perhaps they would have insights that would prove helpful.
Navani returned with a single sheet of paper. Dalinar couldn’t read the script on it, but the lines seemed sweeping and grand—imperious.
“ ‘A warning,’ ” Navani read, “ ‘from Tezim the Great, last and first man, Herald of Heralds and bearer of the Oathpact. His grandness, immortality, and power be praised. Lift up your heads and hear, men of the east, of your God’s proclamation.
“ ‘None are Radiant but him. His fury is ignited by your pitiful claims, and your unlawful capture of his holy city is an act of rebellion, depravity, and wickedness. Open your gates, men of the east, to his righteous soldiers and deliver unto him your spoils.
“ ‘Renounce your foolish claims and swear yourselves to him. The judgment of the final storm has come to destroy all men, and only his path will lead to deliverance. He deigns to send you this single mandate, and will not speak it again. Even this is far above what your carnal natures deserve.’ ”
She lowered the paper.
“Wow,” Adrotagia said. “Well, at least it’s clear.”
Taravangian scratched at his head, brow furrowed, as if he didn’t agree with that statement at all.
“I guess,” Dalinar said, “we can cross the Tukari off our list of possible allies.”
“I’d rather have the Emuli anyway,” Navani said. “Their soldiers might be less capable, but they’re also … well, not crazy.”
“So … we are alone?” Taravangian said, looking from Dalinar to Adrotagia, uncertain.
“We are alone, Your Majesty,” Dalinar said. “The end of the world has come, and still nobody will listen.”
Taravangian nodded to himself. “Where do we attack first? Herdaz? My aides say it is the traditional first step for an Alethi aggression, but they also point out that if you could somehow take Thaylenah, you’d completely control the Straits and even the Depths.”
Dalinar listened to the words with dismay. It was the obvious assumption. So clear that even simpleminded Taravangian saw it. What else to make of Alethkar proposing a union? Alethkar, the great conquerors? Led by the Blackthorn, the man who had united his own kingdom by the sword?
It was the suspicion that had tainted every conversation with the other monarchs. Storms, he thought. Taravangian didn’t come because he believed in my grand alliance. He assumed that if he didn’t, I wouldn’t send my armies to Herdaz or Thaylenah—I’d send them to Jah Keved. To him.
“We’re not going to attack anyone,” Dalinar said. “Our focus is on the Voidbringers, the true enemy. We will win the other kingdoms with diplomacy.”
Taravangian frowned. “But—”
Adrotagia, however, touched him on the arm and quieted him. “Of course, Brightlord,” she said to Dalinar. “We understand.”
She thought he was lying.
And are you?
What would he do if nobody listened? How would he save Roshar without the Oathgates? Without resources?
If our plan to reclaim Kholinar works, he thought, wouldn’t it make sense to take the other gates the same way? Nobody would be able to fight both us and the Voidbringers. We could seize their capitals and force them—for their own good—to join our unified war effort.
He’d been willing to conquer Alethkar for its own good. He’d been willing to seize the kingship in all but name, again for the good of his people.
How far would he go for the good of all Roshar? How far would he go to prepare them for the coming of that enemy? A champion with nine shadows.
I will unite instead of divide.
He found himself standing at that window beside Taravangian, staring out over the mountains, his memories of Evi carrying with them a fresh and dangerous perspective.
I will confess my murders before you. Most painfully, I have killed someone who loved me dearly.
—From Oathbringer, preface
The tower of Urithiru was a skeleton, and these strata beneath Shallan’s fingers were veins that wrapped the bones, dividing and spreading across the entire body. But what did those veins carry? Not blood.
She slid through the corridors on the third level, in the bowels, away from civilization, passing through doorways without doors and rooms without occupants.
Men had locked themselves in with their light, telling themselves that they’d conquered this ancient behemoth. But all they had were outposts in the darkness. Eternal, waiting darkness. These hallways had never seen the sun. Storms that raged through Roshar never touched here. This was a place of eternal stillness, and men could no more conquer it than cremlings could claim to have conquered the boulder they hid beneath.
She defied Dalinar’s orders that all were to travel in pairs. She didn’t worry about that. Her satchel and safepouch were stuffed with new spheres recharged in the highstorm. She felt gluttonous carrying so many, breathing in the Light whenever she wished. She was as safe as a person could be, so long as she had that Light.
She wore Veil’s clothing, but not yet her face. She wasn’t truly exploring, though she did make a mental map. She just wanted to be in this place, sensing it. It could not be comprehended, but perhaps it could be felt.
Jasnah had spent years hunting for this mythical city and the information she’d assumed it would hold. Navani spoke of the ancient technology she was sure this place must contain. So far, she’d been disappointed. She’d cooed over the Oathgates, had been impressed by the system of lifts. That was it. No majestic fabrials from the past, no diagrams explaining lost technology. No books or writings at all. Just dust.
And darkness, Shallan thought, pausing in a circular chamber with corridors splitting out in seven different directions. She had felt
the wrongness Mraize spoke of. She’d felt it the moment she’d tried to draw this place. Urithiru was like the impossible geometries of Pattern’s shape. Invisible, yet grating, like a discordant sound.
She picked a direction at random and continued, finding herself in a corridor narrow enough that she could brush both walls with her fingers. The strata had an emerald cast here, an alien color for stone. A hundred shades of wrongness.
She passed several small rooms before entering a much larger chamber. She stepped into it, holding a diamond broam high for light, revealing that she was on a raised portion at the front of a large room with curving walls and rows of stone … benches?
It’s a theater, she thought. And I’ve walked out onto the stage. Yes, she could make out a balcony above. Rooms like this struck her with their humanity. Everything else about this place was so empty and arid. Endless rooms, corridors, and caverns. Floors strewn with only the occasional bit of civilization’s detritus, like rusted hinges or an old boot’s buckle. Decayspren huddled like barnacles on ancient doors.
A theater was more real. More alive, despite the span of the epochs. She stepped into the center and twirled about, letting Veil’s coat flare around her. “I always imagined being up on one of these. When I was a child, becoming a player seemed the grandest job. To get away from home, travel to new places.” To not have to be myself for at least a brief time each day.
Pattern hummed, pushing out from her coat to hover above the stage in three dimensions. “What is it?”
“It’s a stage for concerts or plays.”
“Plays?”
“Oh, you’d like them,” she said. “People in a group each pretend to be someone different, and tell a story together.” She strode down the steps at the side, walking among the benches. “The audience out here watches.”
Pattern hovered in the center of the stage, like a soloist. “Ah…” he said. “A group lie?”
“A wonderful, wonderful lie,” Shallan said, settling onto a bench, Veil’s satchel beside her. “A time when people all imagine together.”
“I wish I could see one,” Pattern said. “I could understand people … mmmm … through the lies they want to be told.”
Shallan closed her eyes, smiling, remembering the last time she’d seen a play at her father’s. A traveling children’s troupe come to entertain her. She’d taken Memories for her collection—but of course, that was now lost at the bottom of the ocean.
“The Girl Who Looked Up,” she whispered.
“What?” Pattern asked.
Shallan opened her eyes and breathed out Stormlight. She hadn’t sketched this particular scene, so she used what she had handy: a drawing she’d done of a young child in the market. Bright and happy, too young to cover her safehand. The girl appeared from the Stormlight and scampered up the steps, then bowed to Pattern.
“There was a girl,” Shallan said. “This was before storms, before memories, and before legends—but there was still a girl. She wore a long scarf to blow in the wind.”
A vibrant red scarf grew around the girl’s neck, twin tails extending far behind her and flapping in a phantom wind. The players had made the scarf hang behind the girl using strings from above. It had seemed so real.
“The girl in the scarf played and danced, as girls do today,” Shallan said, making the child prance around Pattern. “In fact, most things were the same then as they are today. Except for one big difference. The wall.”
Shallan drained an indulgent number of spheres from her satchel, then sprinkled the floor of the stage with grass and vines like from her homeland. Across the back of the stage, a wall grew as Shallan had imagined it. A high, terrible wall stretching toward the moons. Blocking the sky, throwing everything around the girl into shadow.
The girl stepped toward it, looking up, straining to see the top.
“You see, in those days, a wall kept out the storms,” Shallan said. “It had existed for so long, nobody knew how it had been built. That did not bother them. Why wonder when the mountains began or why the sky was high? Like these things were, so the wall was.”
The girl danced in its shadow, and other people sprang up from Shallan’s Light. Each was a person from one of her sketches. Vathah, Gaz, Palona, Sebarial. They worked as farmers or washwomen, doing their duties with heads bowed. Only the girl looked up at that wall, her twin scarf tails streaming behind her.
She approached a man standing behind a small cart of fruit, wearing Kaladin Stormblessed’s face.
“Why is there a wall?” she asked the man selling fruit, speaking with her own voice.
“To keep the bad things out,” he replied.
“What bad things?”
“Very bad things. There is a wall. Do not go beyond it, or you shall die.”
The fruit seller picked up his cart and moved away. And still, the girl looked up at the wall. Pattern hovered beside her and hummed happily to himself.
“Why is there a wall?” she asked the woman suckling her child. The woman had Palona’s face.
“To protect us,” the woman said.
“To protect us from what?”
“Very bad things. There is a wall. Do not go beyond it, or you shall die.”
The woman took her child and left.
The girl climbed a tree, peeking out the top, her scarf streaming behind her. “Why is there a wall?” she called to the boy sleeping lazily in the nook of a branch.
“What wall?” the boy asked.
The girl thrust her finger pointedly toward the wall.
“That’s not a wall,” the boy said, drowsy. Shallan had given him the face of one of the bridgemen, a Herdazian. “That’s just the way the sky is over there.”
“It’s a wall,” the girl said. “A giant wall.”
“It must be there for a purpose,” the boy said. “Yes, it is a wall. Don’t go beyond it, or you’ll probably die.”
“Well,” Shallan continued, speaking from the audience, “these answers did not satisfy the girl who looked up. She reasoned to herself, if the wall kept evil things out, then the space on this side of it should be safe.
“So, one night while the others of the village slept, she sneaked from her home with a bundle of supplies. She walked toward the wall, and indeed the land was safe. But it was also dark. Always in the shadow of that wall. No sunlight, ever, directly reached the people.”
Shallan made the illusion roll, like scenery on a scroll as the players had used. Only far, far more realistic. She had painted the ceiling with light, and looking up, you seemed to be looking only at an infinite sky—dominated by that wall.
This is … this is far more extensive than I’ve done before, she thought, surprised. Creationspren had started to appear around her on the benches, in the form of old latches or doorknobs, rolling about or moving end over end.
Well, Dalinar had told her to practice.…
“The girl traveled far,” Shallan said, looking back toward the stage. “No predators hunted her, and no storms assaulted her. The only wind was the pleasant one that played with her scarf, and the only creatures she saw were the cremlings that clicked at her as she walked.
“At long last, the girl in the scarves stood before the wall. It was truly expansive, running as far as she could see in either direction. And its height! It reached almost to the Tranquiline Halls!”
Shallan stood and walked onto the stage, passing into a different land—an image of fertility, vines, trees, and grass, dominated by that terrible wall. It grew spikes from its front in bristling patches.
I didn’t draw this scene out. At least … not recently.
She’d drawn it as a youth, in detail, putting her imagined fancies down on paper.
“What happened?” Pattern said. “Shallan? I must know what happened. Did she turn back?”
“Of course she didn’t turn back,” Shallan said. “She climbed. There were outcroppings in the wall, things like these spikes or hunched, ugly statues. She had climbed the highest tr
ees all through her youth. She could do this.”
The girl started climbing. Had her hair been white when she’d started? Shallan frowned.
Shallan made the base of the wall sink into the stage, so although the girl got higher, she remained chest-height to Shallan and Pattern.
“The climb took days,” Shallan said, hand to her head. “At night, the girl who looked up would tie herself a hammock out of her scarf and sleep there. She picked out her village at one point, remarking on how small it seemed, now that she was high.
“As she neared the top, she finally began to fear what she would find on the other side. Unfortunately, this fear did not stop her. She was young, and questions bothered her more than fear. So it was that she finally struggled to the very top and stood to see the other side. The hidden side…”
Shallan choked up. She remembered sitting at the edge of her seat, listening to this story. As a child, when moments like watching the players had been the only bright spots in life.
Too many memories of her father, and of her mother, who had loved telling her stories. She tried to banish those memories, but they wouldn’t go.
Shallan turned. Her Stormlight … she’d used up almost everything she’d pulled from her satchel. Out in the seats, a crowd of dark figures watched. Eyeless, just shadows, people from her memories. The outline of her father, her mother, her brothers and a dozen others. She couldn’t create them, because she hadn’t drawn them properly. Not since she’d lost her collection …
Next to Shallan, the girl stood triumphantly on the wall’s top, her scarves and white hair streaming out behind her in a sudden wind. Pattern buzzed beside Shallan.
“… and on that side of the wall,” Shallan whispered, “the girl saw steps.”
The back side of the wall was crisscrossed with enormous sets of steps leading down to the ground, so distant.
“What … what does it mean?” Pattern said.
“The girl stared at those steps,” Shallan whispered, remembering, “and suddenly the gruesome statues on her side of the wall made sense. The spears. The way it cast everything into shadow. The wall did indeed hide something evil, something frightening. It was the people, like the girl and her village.”