Oathbringer

  Syl was right. A platoon of enemy soldiers had formed up down the hall, holding halberds or crossbows, but seemed content to wait. Kaladin prepared Stormlight; he could paint the walls with a power that would cause crossbow bolts to veer aside in their flight, but it was far from a perfect art. It was the power he understood the least.

  “Do you not see me?” Elhokar bellowed. “Do you not know your monarch? Are you so far consumed by the touch of the spren that you would kill your own king?”

  Storms … those soldiers barely seemed to be breathing. At first they didn’t move—then a few looked backward, down the hallway. Was that a distant voice?

  The palace soldiers immediately broke formation and retreated. Elhokar set his jaw, then led the way after them. Each step made Kaladin more anxious. He didn’t have the troops to properly hold their retreat; all he could do was post a pair of men at each intersection, with instructions to yell if they saw someone coming down the cross hallways.

  They passed a corridor lined with statues of the Heralds. Nine of them, at least. One was missing. Kaladin sent Syl ahead to watch, but that left him feeling even more exposed. Everyone but him seemed to know the way, which made sense, but it made him feel carried along on some sort of tide.

  They finally reached the royal chambers, marked by a broad set of doors, open and inviting. Kaladin stopped his men thirty feet from the opening, near a corridor that split off to the left.

  Even from here, he could see that the chamber beyond the doors finally displayed some of the lavish ornamentation he had expected. Rich carpets, too much furniture, everything covered in embroidery or gilding.

  “There are soldiers down that smaller hallway to the left,” Syl said, zipping back to him. “There isn’t a single one in the room ahead, but … Kaladin, she’s in there. The queen.”

  “I can hear her,” Elhokar said. “That’s her voice, singing.”

  I know that tune, Kaladin thought. Something about her soft song was familiar. He wanted to advise caution, but the king was already hurrying forward, a worried squad of men following.

  Kaladin sighed, then arranged his remaining men; half stayed back to watch their retreat, and the other half formed up at the left hallway to stare down the Palace Guard. Storms. If this went wrong he’d have a bloodbath on his hands, with the king trapped in the middle.

  Still, this was why they’d come up here. He followed the queen’s song and entered the room.

  * * *

  Shallan stepped up to the dark heart. Even though she hadn’t studied human anatomy as much as she’d have liked—her father thought it unfeminine—in the sunlight, she could easily see that it was the wrong shape.

  This isn’t a human heart, she decided. Maybe it’s a parshman heart. Or, well, a giant, dark violet spren in the shape of one, growing over the Oathgate control building.

  “Shallan,” Adolin said. “We’re running out of time.”

  His voice brought to her an awareness of the city around her. Of soldiers skirmishing only one street over. Of distant drums going quiet, one at a time, as guard posts on the wall fell. Of smoke in the air, and a soft, high-pitched roar that seemed the echoes of thousands upon thousands of people shouting in the chaos of a city being conquered.

  She tried Pattern first, stabbing him into the heart as a Shardblade. The mass simply split around the Blade. She slashed with it, and the spren cut, then sealed up behind. So. Time to try what she’d done in Urithiru.

  Trembling, Shallan closed her eyes and pressed her hand against the heart. It felt real, like warm flesh. Like in Urithiru, touching the thing let her sense it. Feel it. Know it.

  It tried to sweep her away.

  * * *

  The queen sat at a vanity beside the wall.

  She was much as Kaladin had anticipated. Younger than Elhokar, with long dark Alethi hair, which she was combing. Her song had fallen away to a hum.

  “Aesudan?” Elhokar asked.

  She looked away from the mirror, then smiled broadly. She had a narrow face, with prim lips painted a deep red. She rose from the seat and glided to him. “Husband! So it was you I heard. You have returned at last? Victorious over our enemies, your father avenged?”

  “Yes,” Elhokar said, frowning. He moved to step toward her, but Kaladin grabbed him by the shoulder and held him back.

  The queen focused on Kaladin. “New bodyguard, dear one? Far too scruffy; you should have consulted me. You have an image to maintain.”

  “Where is Gav, Aesudan? Where is my son?”

  “He’s playing with friends.”

  Elhokar looked to Kaladin, and gestured to the side with his chin. See what you can find, it seemed to say.

  “Keep alert,” Kaladin whispered, then began picking through the room. He passed the remnants of lavish meals only partially eaten. Pieces of fruit each with a single bite taken out of them. Cakes and pastries. Candied meats on sticks. It looked like it should have rotted, based on the decayspren he noticed, but it hadn’t.

  “Dear one,” Elhokar said, keeping his distance from the queen, “we heard that the city has seen … trouble lately.”

  “One of my ardents tried to refound the Hierocracy. We really should keep better watch on who joins them; not every man or woman is proper for service.”

  “You had her executed.”

  “Of course. She tried to overthrow us.”

  Kaladin picked around a pile of musical instruments of the finest wood, sitting in a heap.

  Here, Syl’s voice said in his mind. Across the room. Behind the dressing screen.

  He passed the balcony to his left. If he remembered right—though the story had been told so often, he had heard a dozen differing versions—Gavilar and the assassin had fallen off that ledge during their struggles.

  “Aesudan,” Elhokar said, his voice pained. He stepped forward, extending his hand. “You’re not well. Please, come with me.”

  “Not well?”

  “There’s an evil influence in the palace.”

  “Evil? Husband, what a fool you are at times.”

  Kaladin joined Syl and glanced behind the dressing screen, which had been pushed back against the wall to section off a small cubby. Here a child—two or three years old—huddled and trembled, clutching a stuffed soldier. Several spren with soft red glows were picking at him like cremlings at a corpse. The boy tried to turn his head, and the spren pulled on the back of his hair until he looked up, while others hovered in front of his face and took horrific shapes, like horses with melting faces.

  Kaladin reacted with swift, immediate rage. He growled, seizing the Sylblade from the air, forming a small dagger from mist. He drove the dagger forward and caught one of the spren, pinning it to the wall’s wooden paneling. He had never known a Shardblade to cut a spren before, but this worked. The thing screamed in a soft voice, a hundred hands coming from its shape and scraping at the Blade, at the wall, until it seemed to rip into a thousand tiny pieces, then faded.

  The other three red spren streaked away in a panic. In his hands, Kaladin felt Syl tremble, then groan softly. He released her, and she took the shape of a small woman. “That was … that was terrible,” she whispered, floating over to land on his shoulder. “Did we … just kill a spren?”

  “The thing deserved it,” Kaladin said.

  Syl just huddled on his shoulder, wrapping her arms around herself.

  The child sniffled. He was dressed in a little uniform. Kaladin glanced back at the king and queen—he’d lost track of their conversation, but they spoke in hissing, furious tones.

  “Oh, Elhokar,” the queen was saying. “You were ever so oblivious. Your father had grand plans, but you … all you ever wanted to do was sit in his shadow. It was for the best that you went off to play war.”

  “So you could stay here and … and do this?” Elhokar said, waving toward the palace.

  “I continued your father’s work! I found the secret, Elhokar. Spren, ancient spren. You can bond with them!”
r />   “Bond…” Elhokar’s mouth worked, as if he couldn’t understand the very word he spoke.

  “Have you seen my Radiants?” Aesudan asked. She grinned. “The Queen’s Guard? I’ve done what your father could not. Oh, he found one of the ancient spren, but he could never discover how to bond it. But I, I have solved the riddle.”

  In the dim light of the royal chambers, Aesudan’s eyes glittered. Then started to glow a deep red.

  “Storms!” Elhokar said, stepping back.

  Time to go. Kaladin reached down to try to pick up the child, but the boy screamed and scrambled away from him. That, finally, drew the king’s attention. Elhokar rushed over, throwing aside the dressing screen. He gasped, then knelt beside his son.

  The child, Gavinor, scooted away from his father, crying.

  Kaladin looked back to the queen. “How long have you been planning this?”

  “Planning for my husband’s return?”

  “I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to the thing beyond you.”

  She laughed. “Yelig-nar serves me. Or do you speak of the Heart of the Revel? Ashertmarn has no will; he is merely a force of consumption, mindless, to be harnessed.”

  Elhokar whispered something to his son. Kaladin couldn’t hear the words, but the child stopped weeping. He looked up, blinked away tears, and finally let his father pick him up. Elhokar cradled the child, who in turn clutched his stuffed soldier. It wore blue armor.

  “Out,” Kaladin said.

  “But…” The king looked toward his wife.

  “Elhokar,” Kaladin said, gripping the king’s shoulder. “Be a hero to the one you can save.”

  The king met his eyes, then nodded, clutching the young child. He started toward the door, and Kaladin followed, keeping his eyes on the queen.

  She sighed loudly, stepping after them. “I feared this.”

  They rejoined their soldiers, then began to retreat down the hallway.

  Aesudan stopped in the doorway to the king’s chambers. “I have outgrown you, Elhokar. I have taken the gemstone into me, and have harnessed Yelig-nar’s power.” Something started to twist around her, a black smoke, blown as if from an unseen wind.

  “Double time,” Kaladin said to his men, drawing in Stormlight. He could feel it coming; he’d sensed where this would go the moment they’d started up the steps.

  It was almost a relief when, at last, Aesudan shouted for her soldiers to attack.

  * * *

  Give it all to me, the voices whispered in Shallan’s mind. Give me your passion, your hunger, your longing, your loss. Surrender it. You are what you feel.

  Shallan swam in it, lost, like in the depths of the ocean. The voices beset her from all sides. When one whispered that she was pain, Shallan became a weeping girl, singing as she twisted a chain tight around a thick neck. When another whispered that she was hunger, she became an urchin on the street, wearing rags for clothing.

  Passion. Fear. Enthusiasm. Boredom. Hatred. Lust.

  She became a new person with every heartbeat. The voices seemed thrilled by this. They assaulted her, growing to a frenzy. Shallan was a thousand people in a moment.

  But which one was her?

  All of them. A new voice. Wit’s?

  “Wit!” she screamed, surrounded by snapping eels in a dark place. “Wit! Please.”

  You’re all of them, Shallan. Why must you be only one emotion? One set of sensations? One role? One life?

  “They rule me, Wit. Veil and Radiant and all the others. They’re consuming me.”

  Then be ruled as a king is ruled by his subjects. Make Shallan so strong, the others must bow.

  “I don’t know if I can!”

  The darkness thrummed and surged.

  And then … withdrew?

  Shallan didn’t feel as if she’d changed anything, but still the darkness retreated. She found herself kneeling on the cold stones outside the control building. The enormous heart became sludge, then melted away, almost seeming to crawl, sending out runners of dark liquid before itself.

  “You did it!” Adolin said.

  I did?

  “Secure that building,” Azure commanded her soldiers. Drehy and Skar glowed nearby, looking grim, fresh blood on their clothing. They’d been fighting.

  Shallan stood up on shaky feet. The small, circular structure in front of her seemed insignificant compared to the other monastery buildings, but it was the key to everything.

  “This is going to be tricky, Azure,” Adolin said. “We’re going to have to fight back down into the city, push the enemy out. Storms, I hope my father has our armies ready.”

  Shallan blinked, dazed. She couldn’t help feeling she’d failed. That she hadn’t done anything.

  “The first transfer will be only the control building,” Adolin said. “After that, she’ll swap the entire platform—buildings and all. We’ll want to move our army back into the palace before that happens.” Adolin turned, surveying the path back. “What is taking the king so long?”

  Shallan stepped into the control building. It looked much as the one she’d discovered at the Shattered Plains—though better maintained, and its tile mosaics on the floor were of fanciful creatures. An enormous beast with claws, and fur like a mink. Something that looked like a giant fish. On the walls, lanterns shone with gemstones—and between them hung full-length mirrors.

  Shallan walked toward the keyhole control device, summoning Pattern as a Blade. She studied him, then looked up at herself in one of the mirrors hanging on the wall.

  Someone else stood in the mirror. A woman with black hair that fell to her waist. She wore archaic clothing, a sleeveless, flowing gown that was more of a tunic, with a simple belted waist. Shallan touched her face. Why had she put this illusion on?

  The reflection didn’t mimic her motions, but pressed forward, raising hands against the glass. The reflected room faded and the figure distorted, and became a jet-black shadow with white holes for eyes.

  Radiant, the thing said, mouthing the words. My name is Sja-anat. And I am not your enemy.

  * * *

  Kaladin’s men charged down the steps in their escape, though the back ranks bunched up in the hallway around the stairwell. Behind, the Queen’s Guard set up and lowered crossbows. Sylspear held high, Kaladin stepped between the two groups and pooled Stormlight into the ground, drawing the bolts downward. He was unpracticed with this power, and unfortunately, some of the bolts still slammed into shields, even heads.

  Kaladin growled, then drew in a deep breath of Stormlight, bursting alight—the glow of his skin shining on the walls and ceiling of the palace hallway. The queen’s soldiers shied back before the light as if it were something physical.

  Distantly, he heard the screaming spren react to what he’d done. He Lashed himself in precisely the right way to rise a few feet off the ground, then float there. The queen’s soldiers blinked against the light, as if it were somehow too strong for their eyes. At last, the captain of the rearguard called the final withdrawal, and the rest of Kaladin’s men rushed down the stairs. Only Noro’s squad lingered.

  Some of the queen’s soldiers began to test forward at him, so he dropped to the floor and started down the steps at a run. Beard and the rest of the squad joined him, followed by the queen’s soldiers, unnaturally silent.

  Unfortunately, Kaladin heard something else echoing up the stairwell from down below. The sounds of men clashing, and of familiar singing.

  Parshendi songs.

  “Rearguard!” Kaladin shouted. “Form up on the steps; orient toward the upper floor!”

  His soldiers obeyed, turning and leveling spears and shields at the descending enemy. Kaladin Lashed himself upward and twisted so that he hit the ceiling feet-first. He ducked and ran—passing over the heads of his men in the high stairwell—until he reached the ground floor.

  The first ranks of his soldiers clashed with parshman troops in the eastern gallery. But the enemy had penned them into the stairwell, so
most of his troops couldn’t get down to the fight.

  Kaladin released his Lashing, dropping and twisting to land in a tempest of light before the parshman ranks. Several of his men groaned and cried as they fell, bloodied, to the enemy spears. Kaladin felt his rage flare, and he lowered the Sylspear. It was time to begin the work of death.

  Then he saw the face of the parshman in front of him.

  It was Sah. Former slave. Cardplayer. Father.

  Kaladin’s friend.

  * * *

  Shallan regarded the figure in the mirror. It had spoken. “What are you?”

  They call me the Taker of Secrets, the figure said. Or they once did.

  “One of the Unmade. Our enemies.”

  We were made, then unmade, she agreed. But no, not an enemy! The figure turned humanlike again, though the eyes remained glowing white. It pressed its hands against the glass. Ask my son. Please.

  “You’re of him. Odium.”

  The figure glanced to the sides, as if frightened. No. I am of me. Now, only of me.

  Shallan considered, then looked at the keyhole. By using Pattern in that, she could initiate the Oathgate.

  Don’t do it, Sja-anat pled. Listen, Radiant. Listen to my plea. Ashertmarn fled on purpose. It is a trap. I was compelled to touch the spren of this device, so it will not function as you wish.

  * * *

  Kaladin’s will to fight evaporated.

  He’d been stoked with energy, ready to enter the battle and protect his men. But …

  Sah recognized him and gasped, then grabbed his companion—Khen, one of the others Kaladin knew—and pointed. The parshwoman cursed, and the group of them scrambled away from the steps—leaving dead human soldiers.

  In the opening provided, Kaladin’s men pushed down off the steps into the grand hall. They surged around Kaladin as—stunned—he lowered his spear.

  The large, pillared hall became a scene of utter chaos. Azure’s soldiers rushed in from the Sunwalk, meeting the parshmen who came up the stairs from the back of the palace—they’d likely broken in through the gardens there. The king held his son, standing amid a group of soldiers in the very center. Kaladin’s men managed to get down off the steps, and behind them rushed the Queen’s Guard.