“Do you know about Stormlight growth?” he said, brushing past her and taking one of the pages he’d written earlier.
“Vargo…”
“Calculating the total surface area for farming at Urithiru,” he said, “and comparing it to the projected number of rooms that could be occupied, I have determined that even if food grew here naturally—as it would at the temperatures of your average fecund plain—it could not provide enough to sustain the entire tower.”
“Trade,” she said.
“I have trouble believing the Knights Radiant, always threatened with war, would build a fortress like this to be anything but self-sufficient. Have you read Golombi?”
“Of course I have, and you know it,” she said. “You think they enhanced the growth by use of Stormlight-infused gemstones, providing light to darkened places?”
“Nothing else makes sense, does it?”
“The tests are inconclusive,” she said. “Yes, spherelight inspires growth in a dark room, when candlelight cannot, but Golombi says that the results may have been compromised, and the efficiency is … Oh, bah! That’s a distraction, Vargo. We were discussing what you’ve done to circumvent the rules you yourself set out!”
“When I was stupid.”
“When you were normal.”
“Normal is stupid, Adro.” He took her by the shoulders and firmly pushed her from the room. “I won’t make policy decisions, and I’ll avoid ordering the murder of any further groups of melodic children. Fine? All right? Now leave me alone. You’re stinking up the place with an air of contented idiocy.”
He shut the door, and—deep down—felt a glimmer of shame. Had he called Adrotagia, of all people, an idiot?
Well. Nothing to do about it now. She would understand.
He set to work again, cutting out more of the Diagram, arranging it, searching for any mentions of the Blackthorn, as there was too much in the book to study today, and he had to be focused on their current problem.
Dalinar lived. He was building a coalition. So what did Taravangian do now? Another assassin?
What is the secret? he thought, holding up sheets from the Diagram, finding one where he could see the words on the other side through the paper. Could that have been intentional? What should I do? Please. Show me the way.
He scribbled words on a page. Light. Intelligence. Meaning. He hung them on the wall to inspire him, but he couldn’t help reading the surgeon’s words—the words of a master healer who had delivered Taravangian through a cut in his mother’s belly.
He had the cord wrapped around his neck, the surgeon had said. The queen will know the best course, but I regret to inform her that while he lives, your son may have diminished capacity. Perhaps this is one to keep on outer estates, in favor of other heirs.
The “diminished capacity” hadn’t appeared, but the reputation had chased Taravangian from childhood, so pervasive in people’s minds that not a one had seen through his recent act of stupidity, which they’d attributed to a stroke or to simple senility. Or maybe, some said, that was the way he’d always been.
He’d overcome that reputation in magnificent ways. Now he’d save the world. Well, the part of the world that mattered.
He worked for hours, pinning up more portions of the Diagram, then scribbling on them as connections came to him, using beauty and light to chase away the shadows of dullness and ignorance, giving him answers—they were here, he merely needed to interpret them.
His maid finally interrupted him; the annoying woman was always bustling around, trying to make him do this or that, as if he didn’t have more important concerns than soaking his feet.
“Idiot woman!” he shouted.
She didn’t flinch, but walked forward and put a tray of food down beside him.
“Can’t you see that my work here is important?” he demanded. “I haven’t time for food.”
She set out drink for him, then, infuriatingly, patted him on the shoulder. As she left, he noticed Adrotagia and Mrall standing right outside.
“I don’t suppose,” he said to Mrall, “you’d execute that maid if I demanded it?”
“We have decided,” the bodyguard said, “that you are not allowed to make such decisions today.”
“To Damnation with you then. I almost have the answers anyway. We must not assassinate Dalinar Kholin. The time has passed for that. Instead, we must support his coalition. Then we force him to step down, so that I can take his place at the head of the monarchs.”
Adrotagia walked in and inspected his work. “I doubt Dalinar will simply give leadership of the coalition to you.”
Taravangian rapped on a set of pages stuck to the wall. “Look here. It should be clear, even to you. I foresaw this.”
“You’ve made changes,” Mrall said, aghast. “To the Diagram.”
“Only little ones,” Taravangian said. “Look, see the original writing here? I didn’t change that, and it’s clear. Our task now is to make Dalinar withdraw from leadership, take his place.”
“We don’t kill him?” Mrall asked.
Taravangian eyed him, then turned and waved toward the other wall, with even more papers stuck to it. “Killing him now would only raise suspicion.”
“Yes,” Adrotagia said, “I see this interpretation of the headboard—we must push the Blackthorn so hard that he collapses. But we’ll need secrets to use against him.”
“Easy,” Taravangian said, pushing her toward another set of notations on the wall. “We send that Dustbringer’s spren to spy. Dalinar Kholin reeks of secrets. We can break him, and I can take his place—as the coalition will see me as nonthreatening—whereupon we’ll be in a position of power to negotiate with Odium—who will, by laws of spren and gods, be bound by the agreement made.”
“Can’t we … beat Odium instead?” Mrall asked.
Muscle-bound idiot. Taravangian rolled his eyes, but Adrotagia—more sentimental than he was—turned and explained. “The Diagram is clear, Mrall,” she said. “This is the purpose of its creation. We cannot beat the enemy; so instead, we save whatever we can.”
“The only way,” Taravangian agreed. Dalinar would never accept this fact. Only one man would be strong enough to make that sacrifice.
Taravangian felt a glimmer of … something. Memory.
Give me the capacity to save us.
“Take this,” he said to Adrotagia, pulling down a sheet he’d annotated. “This will work.”
She nodded, towing Mrall from the room as Taravangian knelt before the broken, ripped, sliced-up remnants of the Diagram.
Light and truth. Save what he could.
Abandon the rest.
Thankfully, he had been given that capacity.
Venli was determined to live worthy of power.
She presented herself with the others, a small group selected from the remaining listeners, and braced for the oncoming storm.
She didn’t know if Ulim—or his phantom masters, the ancient listener gods—could read her mind. But if they could, they’d find that she was loyal.
This was war, and Venli among its vanguard. She had discovered the first Voidspren. She had discovered stormform. She had redeemed her people. She was blessed.
Today would prove it. Nine of them had been selected from among the two thousand listener survivors, Venli included. Demid stood beside her with a wide grin on his face. He loved to learn new things, and the storm was another adventure. They’d been promised something great.
See, Eshonai? Venli thought. See what we can do, if you don’t hold us back?
“All right, yes, that’s it,” Ulim said, rippling across the ground as vibrant red energy. “Good, good. All in a line. Keep facing west.”
“Should we seek for cover before the storm, Envoy?” Melu asked to the Rhythm of Agony. “Or carry shields?”
Ulim took the form of a small person before them. “Don’t be silly. This is our storm. You have nothing to fear.”
“And it will bring us power,” Ve
nli said. “Power beyond even that of stormform?”
“Great power,” Ulim said. “You’ve been chosen. You’re special. But you must embrace this. Welcome it. You have to want it, or the powers will not be able to take a place in your gemhearts.”
Venli had suffered so much, but this was her reward. She was done with a life spent wasting away under human oppression. She would never again be trapped, impotent. With this new power, she would always, always be able to fight back.
The Everstorm appeared from the west, returning as it had before. A tiny village in the near distance fell into the storm’s shadow, then was illuminated by the striking of bright red lightning.
Venli stepped forward and hummed to Craving, holding her arms out to the sides. The storm wasn’t like the highstorms—no stormwall of blown debris and cremwater. This was far more elegant. It was a billowing cloud of smoke and darkness, lightning breaking out on all sides, coloring it crimson.
She tipped her head back to meet the boiling, churning clouds, and was consumed by the storm.
Angry, violent darkness overshadowed her. Flecks of burning ash streamed past her on all sides, and she felt no rain this time. Just the beat of thunder. The storm’s pulse.
Ash bit into her skin, and something crashed down beside her, rolling on the stones. A tree? Yes, a burning tree. Sand, shredded bark, and pebbles washed across her skin and carapace. She knelt down, eyes squeezed closed, arms protecting her face from the blown debris.
Something larger glanced off her arm, cracking her carapace. She gasped and dropped to the stone ground, curling up.
A pressure enveloped her, pushing at her mind, her soul. Let Me In.
With difficulty, she opened herself up to this force. This was just like adopting a new form, right?
Pain seared her insides, as if someone had set fire to her veins. She screamed, and sand bit her tongue. Tiny coals ripped at her clothing, singeing her skin.
And then, a voice.
WHAT IS THIS?
It was a warm voice. An ancient, paternal voice, kindly and enveloping.
“Please,” Venli said, gasping in breaths of smoky air. “Please.”
YES, the voice said. CHOOSE ANOTHER. THIS ONE IS MINE.
The force that had been pushing against her retreated, and the pain stopped. Something else—something smaller, less domineering—took its place. She accepted this spren gladly, then whimpered in relief, attuned to Agony.
An eternity seemed to pass as she lay huddled before the storm. Finally, the winds weakened. The lightning faded. The thunder moved into the distance.
She blinked the grit from her eyes. Bits of cremstone and broken bark streamed from her as she moved. She coughed, then stood, looking at her ruined clothing and singed skin.
She no longer bore stormform. She’d changed to … was this nimbleform? Her clothing felt large on her, and her body no longer bore its impressive musculature. She attuned the rhythms, and found they were still the new ones—the violent, angry rhythms that came with forms of power.
This wasn’t nimbleform, but it also wasn’t anything she recognized. She had breasts—though they were small, as with most forms outside of mateform—and long hairstrands. She turned about to see if the others were the same.
Demid stood nearby, and though his clothing was in tatters, his well-muscled body wasn’t scored. He stood tall—far taller than her—with a broad chest and powerful stance. He seemed more like a statue than a listener. He flexed, eyes glowing red, and his body pulsed with a dark violet power—a glow that somehow evoked both light and darkness at once. It retreated, but Demid seemed pleased by his ability to invoke it.
What form was that? So majestic, with ridges of carapace poking through his skin along the arms and at the corners of the face. “Demid?” she asked.
He turned toward Melu, who strode up in a similar form and said something in a language Venli didn’t recognize. The rhythms were there though, and this was to Derision.
“Demid?” Venli asked again. “How do you feel? What happened?”
He spoke again in that strange language, and his next words seemed to blur in her mind, somehow shifting until she understood them. “… Odium rides the very winds, like the enemy once did. Incredible. Aharat, is that you?”
“Yes,” Melu said. “This … this feels … good.”
“Feel,” Demid said. “It feels.” He took a long, deep breath. “It feels.”
Had they gone mad?
Nearby, Mrun pulled himself past a large boulder, which had not been there before. With horror, Venli realized that she could see a broken arm underneath it, blood leaking out. In direct defiance of Ulim’s promise of safety, one of them had been crushed.
Though Mrun had been blessed with a tall, imperious form like the others, he stumbled as he stepped away from the boulder. He grabbed the stone, then fell to his knees. His body coursing with that dark violet light, he groaned, muttering gibberish. Altoki approached from the other direction, standing low, teeth bared, her steps like those of a predator. When she drew closer, Venli could hear her whispering between bared teeth. “High sky. Dead winds. Blood rain.”
“Demid,” Venli said to Destruction. “Something has gone wrong. Sit down, wait. I will find the spren.”
Demid looked at her. “You knew this corpse?”
“This corpse? Demid, why—”
“Oh no. Oh no. Oh no!” Ulim coursed across the ground to her. “You— You aren’t— Oh, bad, bad.”
“Ulim!” Venli demanded, attuning Derision and gesturing at Demid. “Something is wrong with my companions. What have you brought upon us?”
“Don’t talk to them, Venli!” Ulim said, forming into the shape of a little man. “Don’t point at them!”
Nearby, Demid was pooling dark violet power in his hand somehow, studying her and Ulim. “It is you,” he said to Ulim. “The Envoy. You have my respect for your work, spren.”
Ulim bowed to Demid. “Please, grand of the Fused, see passion and forgive this child.”
“You should explain to her,” Demid said, “so she does not … aggravate me.”
Venli frowned. “What is—”
“Come with me,” Ulim said, rippling across the ground. Concerned, overwhelmed by her experience, Venli attuned Agony and followed. Behind, Demid and the others were gathering.
Ulim formed as a person again before her. “You’re lucky. He could have destroyed you.”
“Demid would never do that.”
“Unfortunately for you, your once-mate is gone. That’s Hariel—and he has one of the worst tempers of all the Fused.”
“Hariel? What do you mean by…” She trailed off as the others spoke softly to Demid. They stood so tall, so haughty, and their mannerisms—all wrong.
Each new form changed a listener, down to their ways of thinking, even their temperament. Despite that, you were always you. Even stormform hadn’t changed her into someone else. Perhaps … she had become less empathetic, more aggressive. But she’d still been herself.
This was different. Demid didn’t stand like her once-mate, or speak like him.
“No…” she whispered. “You said we were opening ourselves up to a new spren, a new form!”
“I said,” Ulim hissed, “that you were opening yourselves up. I didn’t say what would enter. Look, your gods need bodies. It’s like this every Return. You should be flattered.”
“Flattered to be killed?”
“Yeah, for the good of the race,” Ulim said. “Those are the Fused: ancient souls reborn. What you have, apparently, is just another form of power. A bond with a lesser Voidspren, which puts you above common listeners—who have normal forms—but a step below the Fused. A big step.”
She nodded, then started to walk back toward the group.
“Wait,” Ulim said, rippling across the ground before her. “What are you doing? What is wrong with you?”
“I’m going to send that soul out,” she said. “Bring Demid back. He needs t
o know the consequences before he can choose such a drastic—”
“Back?” Ulim said. “Back? He’s dead. As you should be. This is bad. What did you do? Resist, like that sister of yours?”
“Out of my way.”
“He’ll kill you. I warned of his temper—”
“Envoy,” Demid said to Destruction, turning toward them. It wasn’t his voice.
She attuned Agony. It wasn’t his voice.
“Let her pass,” the thing with Demid’s body said. “I will speak with her.”
Ulim sighed. “Bother.”
“You speak like a human, spren,” Demid said. “Your service here was grand, but you use their ways, their language. I find that displeasing.”
Ulim rippled away across the stones. Venli stepped up to the group of Fused. Two still had trouble moving. They lurched, stumbled, fell to their knees. A different two wore smiles, twisted and wrong.
The listener gods were not completely sane.
“I regret the death of your friend, good servant,” Demid said with a deep voice, fully in sync with the Rhythm of Command. “Though you are the children of traitors, your war here is to be commended. You faced our hereditary enemies and gave no quarter, even when doomed.”
“Please,” Venli said. “He was precious to me. Can you return him?”
“He has passed into the blindness beyond,” Demid said. “Unlike the witless Voidspren you bonded—which resides in your gemheart—my soul cannot share its dwelling. Nothing, not Regrowth or act of Odium, can restore him now.”
He reached out and took Venli by the chin, lifting her face, inspecting it. “You were to bear a soul I have fought beside for thousands of years. She was turned away, and you were reserved. Odium has a purpose for you. Revel in that, and mourn not your friend’s passing. Odium will bring vengeance at long last to those we fight.”
He let go of her, and she had to struggle to keep herself from collapsing. No. No, she would not show weakness.
But … Demid …
She put him out of her mind, like Eshonai before him. This was the path she had placed herself on from the moment she’d first listened to Ulim years ago, deciding that she would risk the return of her people’s gods.