Oathbringer

  “Rlain,” Kaladin said, “why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”

  What if I don’t want special accommodation because you feel sorry for me?

  Kaladin squatted down beside Rlain. “Hey. You heard what Rock said. I know how you feel. We can help you shoulder this.”

  “Do you really?” Rlain said. “Do you actually know how I feel, Kaladin Stormblessed? Or is that simply a thing that men say?”

  “I guess it’s a thing men say,” Kaladin admitted, then pulled over an upside-down bucket for himself. “Can you tell me how it feels?”

  Did he really want to know? Rlain considered, then attuned Resolve. “I can try.”

  I am also made uncertain by your subterfuge. Why have you not made yourself known to me before this? How is it you can hide? Who are you truly, and how do you know so much about Adonalsium?

  Dalinar appeared in the courtyard of a strange fortress with a single towering wall of bloodred stones. It closed a large gap in a mountainous rock formation.

  Around him, men carried supplies or otherwise made themselves busy, passing in and out of buildings constructed against the natural stone walls. Winter air made Dalinar’s breath puff before him.

  He held Navani’s freehand on his left, and Jasnah’s on his right. It had worked. His control over these visions was increasing beyond even what the Stormfather assumed possible. Today, by holding their hands, he had brought Navani and Jasnah in without a highstorm.

  “Wonderful,” Navani said, squeezing his hand. “That wall is as majestic as you described. And the people. Bronze weapons again, very little steel.”

  “That armor is Soulcast,” Jasnah said, releasing his hand. “Look at the fingermarks on the metal. That’s burnished iron, not true steel, Soulcast from clay into that shape. I wonder … did access to Soulcasters retard their drive to learn smelting? Working steel is difficult. You can’t simply melt it over a fire, like you can bronze.”

  “So…” Dalinar asked, “when are we?”

  “Maybe two thousand years ago,” Jasnah said. “Those are Haravingian swords, and see those archways? Late classical architecture, but washed out faux blue on the cloaks, rather than true blue dyes. Mix that with the language you spoke in—which my mother recorded last time—and I’m fairly certain.” She glanced at the passing soldiers. “A multiethnic coalition here, like during the Desolations—but if I’m right, this is over two thousand years after Aharietiam.”

  “They’re fighting someone,” Dalinar said. “The Radiants retreat from a battle, then abandon their weapons on the field outside.”

  “Which places the Recreance a little more recently than Masha-daughter-Shaliv had it in her history,” Jasnah said, musing. “From my reading of your vision accounts, this is the last chronologically—though it’s difficult to place the one with you overlooking ruined Kholinar.”

  “Who could they be fighting?” Navani asked as men atop the wall raised the alarm. Horsemen galloped out of the keep, off to investigate. “This is well after the Voidbringers left.”

  “It could be the False Desolation,” Jasnah said.

  Dalinar and Navani both looked at her.

  “A legend,” Jasnah said. “Considered pseudohistorical. Dovcanti wrote an epic about it somewhere around fifteen hundred years ago. The claim is that some Voidbringers survived Aharietiam, and there were many clashes with them afterward. It’s considered unreliable, but that’s because many later ardents insist that no Voidbringers could have survived. I’m inclined to assume this is a clash with parshmen before they were somehow deprived of their ability to change forms.”

  She looked to Dalinar, eyes alight, and he nodded. She strode off to collect whatever historical tidbits she could.

  Navani took some instruments from her satchel. “One way or another, I’m going to figure out where this ‘Feverstone Keep’ is, even if I have to bully these people into drawing a map. Perhaps we could send scholars to this location and find clues about the Recreance.”

  Dalinar made his way over to the base of the wall. It was a truly majestic structure, typical of the strange contrasts of these visions: a classical people, without fabrials or even proper metallurgy, accompanied by wonders.

  A group of men piled down the steps from the top of the wall. They were trailed by His Excellency Yanagawn the First, Prime Aqasix of Azir. While Dalinar had brought Navani and Jasnah by touch, he had asked the Stormfather to bring in Yanagawn. The highstorm currently raged in Azir.

  The youth saw Dalinar and stopped. “Do I have to fight today, Blackthorn?”

  “Not today, Your Excellency.”

  “I’m getting really tired of these visions,” Yanagawn said, descending the last few steps.

  “That fatigue never leaves, Your Excellency. In fact, it has grown as I’ve begun to grasp the importance of what I have seen in vision, and the burden it puts upon me.”

  “That isn’t what I meant by tired.”

  Dalinar didn’t reply, hands clasped behind him as together they walked to the sally port, where Yanagawn watched events unfold outside. Radiants were crossing the open plain or flying down. They summoned their Blades, provoking concern from the watching soldiers.

  The knights drove their weapons into the ground, then abandoned them. They left their armor as well. Shards of incalculable value, renounced.

  The young emperor looked to be in no rush to confront them as Dalinar had been. Dalinar, therefore, took him by the arm and guided him out as the first soldiers opened the doors. He didn’t want the emperor to get caught in the flood that would soon come, as men dashed for those Blades, then started killing one another.

  As before in this vision, Dalinar felt as if he could hear the screaming deaths of the spren, the terrible sorrow of this field. It almost overwhelmed him.

  “Why?” Yanagawn asked. “Why did they just … give up?”

  “We don’t know, Your Excellency. This scene haunts me. There is so much I don’t understand. Ignorance has become the theme of my rule.”

  Yanagawn looked around, then scrambled for a tall boulder to climb, where he could better watch the Radiants. He seemed far more engaged by this than he had been by other visions. Dalinar could respect that. War was war, but this … this was something you never saw. Men willingly giving up their Shards?

  And that pain. It pervaded the air like a terrible stench.

  Yanagawn settled down on his boulder. “So why show me this? You don’t even know what it means.”

  “If you’re not going to join my coalition, I figure I should still give you as much knowledge as I can. Perhaps we will fall, and you will survive. Maybe your scholars can solve these puzzles when we cannot. And maybe you are the leader Roshar needs, while I am just an emissary.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “I don’t. I still want you to have these visions, just in case.”

  Yanagawn fidgeted, playing with the tassels on his leather breastplate. “I … don’t matter as much as you think I do.”

  “Pardon, Your Excellency, but you underestimate your importance. Azir’s Oathgate will be vital, and you are the strongest kingdom of the west. With Azir at our side, many other countries will join with us.”

  “I mean,” Yanagawn said, “that I don’t matter. Sure, Azir does. But I’m only a kid they put on the throne because they were afraid that assassin would come back.”

  “And the miracle they’re publishing? The proof from the Heralds that you were chosen?”

  “That was Lift, not me.” Yanagawn looked down at his feet, swinging beneath him. “They’re training me to act important, Kholin, but I’m not. Not yet. Maybe not ever.”

  This was a new face to Yanagawn. The vision today had shaken him, but not in the way Dalinar had hoped. He’s a youth, Dalinar reminded himself. Life at his age was challenging anyway, without adding to it the stress of an unexpected accession to power.

  “Whatever the reason,” Dalinar told the young emperor, “you are Prim
e. The viziers have published your miraculous elevation to the public. You do have some measure of authority.”

  He shrugged. “The viziers aren’t bad people. They feel guilty for putting me in this position. They give me education—kind of force it down my throat, honestly—and expect me to participate. But I’m not ruling the empire.

  “They’re scared of you. Very scared. More scared than they are of the assassin. He burned the emperors’ eyes, but emperors can be replaced. You represent something far more terrible. They think you could destroy our entire culture.”

  “No Alethi has to set foot on Azish stone,” Dalinar said. “But come to me, Your Excellency. Tell them you’ve seen visions, that the Heralds want you to at least visit Urithiru. Tell them that the opportunities far outweigh the danger of opening that Oathgate.”

  “And if this happens again?” Yanagawn asked, nodding toward the field of Shardblades. Hundreds of them sprouting from the ground, silvery, reflecting sunlight. Men were now pouring out of the keep, flooding toward those weapons.

  “We will see that it doesn’t. Somehow.” Dalinar narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know what caused the Recreance, but I can guess. They lost their vision, Your Excellency. They became embroiled in politics and let divisions creep among them. They forgot their purpose: protecting Roshar for its people.”

  Yanagawn looked to him, frowning. “That’s harsh. You always seemed so respectful of the Radiants before.”

  “I respect those who fought in the Desolations. These? I can sympathize. I too have on occasion let myself be distracted by small-minded pettiness. But respect? No.” He shivered. “They killed their spren. They betrayed their oaths! They may not be villains, as history paints them, but in this moment they failed to do what was right and just. They failed Roshar.”

  The Stormfather rumbled in the distance, agreeing with this sentiment.

  Yanagawn cocked his head.

  “What?” Dalinar asked.

  “Lift doesn’t trust you,” he said.

  Dalinar glanced about, expecting her to appear as she had in the previous two visions he’d shown Yanagawn. There was no sign of the young Reshi girl that the Stormfather detested so much.

  “It’s because,” Yanagawn continued, “you act so righteous. She says anyone who acts like you do is trying to hide something.”

  A soldier strode up and spoke to Yanagawn in the Almighty’s voice. “They are the first.”

  Dalinar stepped back, letting the young emperor listen as the Almighty gave his short speech for this vision. These events will go down in history. They will be infamous. You will have many names for what happened here …

  The Almighty said the same words he had to Dalinar.

  The Night of Sorrows will come, and the True Desolation. The Everstorm.

  The men on the field full of Shards started to fight over the weapons. For the first time in history, men started slaughtering one another with dead spren. Finally, Yanagawn faded, vanishing from the vision. Dalinar closed his eyes, feeling the Stormfather draw away. Everything now dissolved …

  Except it didn’t.

  Dalinar opened his eyes. He was still on the field before the looming, bloodred wall of Feverstone Keep. Men fought over Shardblades while some voices called for everyone to be patient.

  Those who claimed a Shard this day would become rulers. It bothered Dalinar that the best men, the ones calling for moderation or raising concerns, would be rare among their numbers. They weren’t aggressive enough to seize the advantage.

  Why was he still here? Last time, the vision had ended before this.

  “Stormfather?” he asked.

  No reply. Dalinar turned around.

  A man in white and gold stood there.

  Dalinar jumped, scrambling backward. The man was old, with a wide, furrowed face and bone-white hair that swept back from his head as if blown by wind. Thick mustaches with a hint of black in them blended into a short white beard. He seemed to be Shin, judging by his skin and eyes, and he wore a golden crown in his powdery hair.

  Those eyes … they were ancient, the skin surrounding them deeply creased, and they danced with joy as he smiled at Dalinar and rested a golden scepter on his shoulder.

  Suddenly overwhelmed, Dalinar fell to his knees. “I know you,” he whispered. “You’re … you’re Him. God.”

  “Yes,” the man said.

  “Where have you been?” Dalinar said.

  “I’ve always been here,” God said. “Always with you, Dalinar. Oh, I’ve watched you for a long, long time.”

  “Here? You’re … not the Almighty, are you?”

  “Honor? No, he truly is dead, as you’ve been told.” The old man’s smile deepened, genuine and kindly. “I’m the other one, Dalinar. They call me Odium.”

  If you would speak to me further, I request open honesty. Return to my lands, approach my servants, and I will see what I can do for your quest.

  Odium.

  Dalinar scrambled to his feet, lurching backward and seeking a weapon he didn’t possess.

  Odium. Standing in front of him.

  The Stormfather had grown distant, almost vanished—but Dalinar could sense a faint emotion from him. A whine, like he was straining against something heavy?

  No. No, that was a whimper.

  Odium rested his golden scepter against the palm of his hand, then turned to regard the men fighting over Shardblades.

  “I remember this day,” Odium said. “Such passion. And such loss. Terrible for many, but glorious for others. You are wrong about why the Radiants fell, Dalinar. There was infighting among them, true, but no more than in other eras. They were honest men and women, with different views at times, but unified in their desire to do what was best.”

  “What do you want of me?” Dalinar said, hand to his breast, breathing quickly. Storms. He wasn’t ready.

  Could he ever be ready for this moment?

  Odium strolled over to a small boulder and settled down. He sighed in relief, like a man releasing a heavy burden, then nodded to the space next to him.

  Dalinar made no move to sit.

  “You have been placed in a difficult position, my son,” Odium said. “You are the first to bond the Stormfather in his current state. Did you know that? You are deeply connected to the remnants of a god.”

  “Whom you killed.”

  “Yes. I’ll kill the other one too, eventually. She’s hidden herself somewhere, and I’m too … shackled.”

  “You’re a monster.”

  “Oh, Dalinar. This from you of all people? Tell me you’ve never found yourself in conflict with someone you respect. Tell me you’ve never killed a man because you had to, even if—in a better world—he shouldn’t deserve it?”

  Dalinar bit back a retort. Yes, he’d done that. Too many times.

  “I know you, Dalinar,” Odium said. He smiled again, a paternal expression. “Come sit down. I won’t devour you, or burn you away at a touch.”

  Dalinar hesitated. You need to hear what he says. Even this creature’s lies can tell you more than a world of common truths.

  He walked over, then stiffly sat down.

  “What do you know of us three?” Odium asked.

  “Honestly, I wasn’t even aware there were three of you.”

  “More, in fact,” Odium said absently. “But only three of relevance to you. Me. Honor. Cultivation. You speak of her, don’t you?”

  “I suppose,” Dalinar said. “Some people identify her with Roshar, the spren of the world itself.”

  “She’d like that,” Odium said. “I wish I could simply let her have this place.”

  “So do it. Leave us alone. Go away.”

  Odium turned to him so sharply that Dalinar jumped. “Is that,” Odium said quietly, “an offer to release me from my bonds, coming from the man holding the remnants of Honor’s name and power?”

  Dalinar stammered. Idiot. You’re not some raw recruit. Pull yourself together. “No,” he said firmly.


  “Ah, all right then,” Odium said. He smiled, a twinkle in his eyes. “Oh, don’t fret so. These things must be done properly. I will go if you release me, but only if you do it by Intent.”

  “And what are the consequences of my releasing you?”

  “Well, first I’d see to Cultivation’s death. There would be … other consequences, as you call them, as well.”

  Eyes burned as men swept about themselves with Shardblades, killing others who had mere moments before been their comrades. It was a frantic, insane brawl for power.

  “And you can’t just … leave?” Dalinar asked. “Without killing anyone?”

  “Well, let me ask you this in return. Why did you seize control of Alethkar from poor Elhokar?”

  “I…” Don’t reply. Don’t give him ammunition.

  “You knew it was for the best,” Odium said. “You knew that Elhokar was weak, and the kingdom would suffer without firm leadership. You took control for the greater good, and it has served Roshar well.”

  Nearby, a man stumbled toward them, limping out of the fray. His eyes burned as a Shardblade rammed through his back, protruding three feet out of his chest. He fell forward, eyes trailing twin lines of smoke.

  “A man cannot serve two gods at once, Dalinar,” Odium said. “And so, I cannot leave her behind. In fact, I cannot leave behind the Splinters of Honor, as I once thought I could. I can already see that going wrong. Once you release me, my transformation of this realm will be substantial.”

  “You think you’ll do better?” Dalinar wet his mouth, which had gone dry. “Do better than others would, for this land? You, a manifestation of hatred and pain?”

  “They call me Odium,” the old man said. “A good enough name. It does have a certain bite to it. But the word is too limiting to describe me, and you should know that it is not all I represent.”

  “Which is?”

  He looked to Dalinar. “Passion, Dalinar Kholin. I am emotion incarnate. I am the soul of the spren and of men. I am lust, joy, hatred, anger, and exultation. I am glory and I am vice. I am the very thing that makes men men.