“Please, Great Prince,” Amaram said, getting the Herald to his feet with some difficulty. The man was enormous, as tall as Amaram but built like a wall. The dark brown skin had surprised him the first time he’d seen the man—Amaram had, somewhat foolishly, expected that all of the Heralds would look Alethi.
The Herald’s dark eyes were, of course, some kind of disguise.
“The Desolation . . .” Talenelat whispered.
“Yes. It comes. And with it, your return to glory.” Amaram began to walk the Herald toward his opening. “We must get you to—”
The Herald’s hand snapped up in front of him.
Amaram started, freezing in place, as he saw something in the Herald’s fingers. A small dart, the tip dripping with some clear liquid.
Amaram glanced at the opening, which spilled sunlight into the room. A small figure there made a puffing sound, a blowgun held to lips beneath a half mask that covered the upper face.
The Herald’s other hand shot out, quick as an eyeblink, and snatched the dart from the air mere inches from Amaram’s face. The Ghostbloods. They weren’t trying to kill the Herald.
They were trying to kill Amaram.
He cried out, reaching his hand to the side, summoning his Blade. Too slow. The figure looked from him to the Herald, then scuttled away with a soft curse. Amaram chased after, leaping the rubble of the wall and breaking out into light, but the figure was moving too quickly.
Heart thumping in his chest, he looked back toward Talenelat, worried for the Herald’s safety. Amaram started as he found the Herald standing tall, straight-backed, head up. Dark brown eyes, startlingly lucid, reflected the light of the opening. Talenelat raised one dart before himself and inspected it.
Then he dropped both darts and sat back down on his bed. His strange, unchanging mantra started over again, muttered. Amaram felt a chill run down his spine, but when he returned to the Herald, he could not get the man to respond.
With effort, he made the Herald rise again and ushered him to the coach.
* * *
Szeth opened his eyes.
He immediately squeezed them closed again. “No. I died. I died!”
He felt rock beneath him. Blasphemy. He heard water dripping and felt the sun on his face. “Why am I not dead?” he whispered. “The Shardblade pierced me. I fell. Why didn’t I die?”
“You did die.”
Szeth opened his eyes again. He lay on an empty rock expanse, his clothing a wet mess. The Frostlands? He felt cold, despite the heat of the sun.
A man stood before him, wearing a crisp black and silver uniform. He had dark brown skin like a man from the Makabaki region, but had a pale mark on his right cheek in the shape of a small hooked crescent. He held one hand behind his back, while his other hand tucked something away into his coat pocket. A fabrial of some sort? Glowing brightly?
“I recognize you,” Szeth realized. “I’ve seen you somewhere before.”
“You have.”
Szeth struggled to rise. He managed to make it to his knees, then knelt back on them. “How?” he asked.
“I waited until you crashed to the ground,” the man said, “until you were broken and mangled, your soul cut through, dead for certain. Then, I restored you.”
“Impossible.”
“Not if it is done before the brain dies. Like a drowned man restored to life with the proper ministrations, you could be restored with the right fabrial. If I had waited seconds longer, of course, it would have been too late.”
He spoke the words calmly, without emotion.
“Who are you?” Szeth asked.
“You spend this long obeying the precepts of your people and religion, yet you fail to recognize one of your gods?”
“My gods are the spirits of the stones,” Szeth whispered. “The sun and the stars. Not men.”
“Nonsense. Your people revere the spren of stone, but you do not worship them.”
That crescent . . . He recognized it, didn’t he?
“You, Szeth,” the man said, “worship order, do you not? You follow the laws of your society to perfection. This attracted me, though I worry that emotion has clouded your ability to discern. Your ability to . . . judge.”
Judgment.
“Nin,” he whispered. “The one they call Nalan, or Nale, here. Herald of Justice.”
Nin nodded.
“Why save me?” Szeth said. “Is my torment not enough?”
“Those words are foolishness,” Nin said. “Unbecoming of one who would study beneath me.”
“I don’t want to study,” Szeth said, curling up on the stone. “I want to be dead.”
“Is that it? Truly, that is what you wish most? I will give it to you, if it is your honest desire.”
Szeth squeezed his eyes shut. The screams awaited him in that darkness. The screams of those he’d killed.
I was not wrong, he thought. I was never Truthless.
“No,” Szeth whispered. “The Voidbringers have returned. I was right, and my people . . . they were wrong.”
“You were banished by petty men with no vision. I will teach you the path of one uncorrupted by sentiment. You will bring this back to your people, and you will carry with you justice for the leaders of the Shin.”
Szeth opened his eyes and looked up. “I am not worthy.”
Nin cocked his head. “You? Not worthy? I watched you destroy yourself in the name of order, watched you obey your personal code when others would have fled or crumbled. Szeth-son-Neturo, I watched you keep your word with perfection. This is a thing lost to most people—it is the only genuine beauty in the world. I doubt I have ever found a man more worthy of the Skybreakers than you.”
The Skybreakers? But that was an order of the Knights Radiant.
“I have destroyed myself,” Szeth whispered.
“You did, and you died. Your bond to your Blade severed, all ties—both spiritual and physical—undone. You are reborn. Come along. It is time to visit your people. Your training begins immediately.” Nin began to walk away, revealing that the thing he held behind his back was a sheathed sword.
You are reborn. Could he . . . could Szeth be reborn? Could he make the screams in the shadows go away?
You are a coward, the Radiant had said, the man who owned the winds. A small piece of Szeth thought it true. But Nin offered more. Something different.
Still kneeling, Szeth looked up after the man. “My people have the other Honorblades, and have kept them safe for millennia. If I am to bring judgment to them, I will face enemies with Shards and with power.”
“This is not a problem,” Nin said, looking back. “I have brought a Shardblade for you. One that is a perfect match for your task and temperament.” He tossed his large sword to the ground. It skidded on stone and came to a rest before Szeth.
He had not seen a sword with a metal sheath before. And who sheathed a Shardblade? And the Blade itself . . . was it black? An inch or so of it had emerged from the sheath as it slid on the rocks.
Szeth swore he could see a small trail of black smoke coming off the metal. Like Stormlight, only dark.
Hello, a cheerful voice said in his mind. Would you like to destroy some evil today?
TherehastobeananswerWhatistheanswerStopTheParshendiOneofthemYestheyarethemissingpiecePushfortheAlethitodestroythemoutrightbeforethisoneobtainstheirpowerItwillformabridge
—From the Diagram, Floorboard 17: paragraph 2, every second letter starting with the second
Dalinar stood in darkness.
He turned about, trying to remember how he’d come to this place. In the shadows, he saw furniture. Tables, a rug, drapes from Azir with wild colors. His mother had always been proud of those drapes.
My home, he thought. As it was when I was a child. Back before conquest, back before Gavilar . . .
Gavilar . . . hadn’t Gavilar died? No, Dalinar could hear hi
s brother laughing in the next room. He was a child. They both were.
Dalinar crossed the shadowed room, feeling the fuzzy joy of familiarity. Of things being as they should be. He’d left his wooden swords out. He had a collection, each carved like a Shardblade. He was too old for those now, of course, but he still liked having them. As a collection.
He stepped to the balcony doors and pushed them open.
Warm light bathed him. A deep, enveloping, piercing warmth. A warmth that soaked down deep through his skin, into his very self. He stared at that light, and was not blinded. The source was distant, but he knew it. Knew it well.
He smiled.
Then he awoke. Alone in his new rooms in Urithiru, a temporary location for him to stay while they scouted the entire tower. A week had passed since they had arrived at this place, and the people of the warcamps had finally started to arrive, bearing spheres recharged during the unexpected highstorm. They needed those badly to make the Oathgate function.
Those from the warcamps arrived none too soon. The Everstorm had not yet returned, but if it moved like a regular highstorm, it should be striking any day now.
Dalinar sat in the darkness for a short time, contemplating that warmth he had felt. What had that been? It had been an odd time to get one of the visions. They always came during highstorms. Before, when he’d felt one coming on while sleeping, it had awakened him.
He checked with his guards. No highstorm was blowing. Contemplative, he started to dress. He wanted to see if he could get out onto the roof of the tower today.
* * *
As Adolin walked the dark halls of Urithiru, he tried not to show how overwhelmed he felt. The world had just shifted, like a door on its hinges. A few days ago, his causal betrothal had been that of a powerful man to a relatively minor scion of a distant house. Now, Shallan might be the most important person in the world, and he was . . .
What was he?
He raised his lantern, then made a few marks in chalk on the wall to indicate he’d been here. This tower was huge. How did the entire thing stay up? They could probably explore in here for months without opening every door. He had thrown himself into the duty of exploration because it seemed like something he could do. It also, unfortunately, gave him time to think. He didn’t like how few answers he came up with.
He turned around, realizing he’d gotten far from the rest of his scouting party. He was doing that more and more often. The first groups from the Shattered Plains had started arriving, and they needed to decide where to house everyone.
Were those voices ahead? Adolin frowned, then continued down the corridor, leaving his lantern behind so it wouldn’t give him away. He was surprised when he recognized one of the speakers down the hallway. Was that Sadeas?
It was. The highprince stood with a scouting party of his own. Silently, Adolin cursed the wind that had persuaded Sadeas—of all people—to heed the call to come to Urithiru. Everything would have been so much easier if he’d just stayed behind.
Sadeas gestured for a few of his soldiers to go down one branch of the tunnel-like corridor. His wife and a few of her scribes went the other way, two soldiers trailing. Adolin watched for a moment as the highprince himself raised a lantern, inspecting a faded painting on the wall. A fanciful picture, with animals from mythology. He recognized a few from children’s stories, like the enormous, minklike creature with the mane of hair that burst out around and behind its head. What was it called again?
Adolin turned to go, but his boot scraped stone.
Sadeas spun, raising his lantern. “Ah, Prince Adolin.” He wore white, which really didn’t help his complexion—the pale color made his ruddy features seem downright bloody by comparison.
“Sadeas,” Adolin said, turning back. “I wasn’t aware that you had arrived.” Storming man. He’d ignored Father all those months, and now he decided to obey?
The highprince strolled up the hallway, passing Adolin. “This place is remarkable. Remarkable indeed.”
“So you acknowledge that my father was right,” Adolin said. “That his visions are true. The Voidbringers have returned, and you are made a fool.”
“I will admit,” Sadeas said, “there is more fight left to your father than I’d once feared. A remarkable plan. Contacting the Parshendi, working out this deal with them. They put on quite a show, I hear. It certainly convinced Aladar.”
“You can’t possibly believe it was all a show.”
“Oh please. You deny that he had a Parshendi among his own guard? Isn’t it convenient that these new ‘Radiants’ include the head of Dalinar’s guard and your own betrothed?”
Sadeas smiled, and Adolin saw the truth. No, he didn’t believe this, but it was the lie he would tell. He would start the whisperings again, trying to undermine Dalinar.
“Why?” Adolin asked, stepping up to him. “Why are you like this, Sadeas?”
“Because,” Sadeas said with a sigh, “it has to happen. You can’t have an army with two generals, son. Your father and I, we’re two old whitespines who both want a kingdom. It’s him or me. We’ve been pointed that way since Gavilar died.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“It does. Your father will never trust me again, Adolin, and you know it.” Sadeas’s face darkened. “I will take this from him. This city, these discoveries. It’s just a setback.”
Adolin stood for a moment, staring Sadeas in the eyes, and then something finally snapped.
That’s it.
Adolin grabbed Sadeas by the throat with his unwounded hand, slamming the highprince back against the wall. The look of utter shock on Sadeas’s face amused a part of Adolin, the very small part that wasn’t completely, totally, and irrevocably enraged.
He squeezed, choking off a cry for help as he moved to pin Sadeas back against the wall, grabbing the man’s arm with his own. But Sadeas was a trained soldier. He tried to break the hold, taking Adolin by the arm and twisting.
Adolin kept hold, but lost his balance. The two of them fell in a jumble, twisting, rolling. This wasn’t the calculated intensity of the dueling grounds, or even the methodical butchery of the battlefield.
This was two sweating, straining men, both on the edge of panic. Adolin was younger, but he was still bruised from the fight with the Assassin in White.
He managed to come up on top, and as Sadeas struggled to yell, Adolin slammed the man’s head down against the stone floor to daze him. Breathing in gasps, Adolin grabbed his side knife. He plunged the knife toward Sadeas’s face, though the man managed to get his hands up to grab Adolin by the wrist.
Adolin grunted, forcing the knife closer, clutched in his off hand. He brought the right in anyway, the wrist flaring with pain, as he leaned it against the crossguard. Sweat prickled on Sadeas’s brow, the knife’s tip touching the end of his left nostril.
“My father,” Adolin said with a grunt, sweat from his nose dripping down onto the blade of the knife, “thinks I’m a better man than he is.” He strained, and felt Sadeas’s grip weaken. “Unfortunately for you, he’s wrong.”
Sadeas whimpered.
With a surge, Adolin forced the blade up past Sadeas’s nose and into the eye socket—piercing the eye like a ripe berry—then rammed it home into the brain.
Sadeas shook for a moment, blood pooling around the blade as Adolin worked it to be certain.
A second later, a Shardblade appeared beside Sadeas—his father’s Shardblade. Sadeas was dead.
Adolin stumbled back to not get blood on his clothing, though his cuffs were already stained. Storms. Had he just done that? Had he just murdered a highprince?
Dazed, he stared at that weapon. Neither man had summoned his Blade for the fight. The weapons might be worth a fortune, but they’d do less good than a rock in such a close-quarters fight.
Thoughts coming more clearly, Adolin picked up the weapon and stumbled away. He ditched the Blade out a window, dropping it down into one of the planterlike outcroppings of the te
rrace below. It might be safe there.
After that, he had the presence of mind to cut off his cuffs, remove his chalk mark on the wall by scraping it free with his own Blade, and walk as far away as he could before finding one of his scouting parties and pretending he’d been in that area all along.
* * *
Dalinar finally figured out the locking mechanism, then pushed on the metal door at the end of the stairwell. The door was set into the ceiling here, the steps running straight up to it.
The trapdoor refused to open, despite being unlocked. He’d oiled the parts. Why wasn’t it moving?
Crem, of course, he thought. He summoned his Shardblade and made a series of quick cuts around the trapdoor. Then, with an effort, he was able to force it to open. The ancient trapdoor swung upward and let him out onto the very top of the tower city.
He smiled, stepping onto the roof. Five days of exploration had sent Adolin and Navani into the depths of the city-tower. Dalinar, however, had been driven to seek the top.
For such an enormous tower, the roof was actually relatively small, and not that encrusted with crem. This high, less rain likely dropped during highstorms—and everyone knew crem was thicker in the east than it was in the west.
Storms, this place was high. His ears had popped several times while riding to the top, using the fabrial lift that Navani had discovered. She spoke of counterweights and conjoined gemstones, sounding awed by the technology of the ancients. All he knew was that her discovery had let him avoid climbing up some hundred flights of steps.
He stepped up to the edge and looked down. Below, each ring of the tower expanded out a little farther than the one above it. Shallan is right, he thought. They’re gardens. Each outer ring is dedicated to planting food. He did not know why the eastern face of the tower was straight and sheer, facing the Origin. No balconies along that side.
He leaned out. Distant, so far down it made him queasy, he picked out the ten pillars that held the Oathgates. The one to the Shattered Plains flashed, and a large group of people appeared on it. They flew Hatham’s flag. With the maps Dalinar’s scholars had sent, it had only taken Hatham and the others about a week of quick marching to reach the Oathgate. When Dalinar’s army had crossed that same distance, they’d done so very cautiously, wary of Parshendi attacks.