“Why do you care?” Wyndle asked again. He sounded curious. Not a challenge. An attempt to understand.
“Because someone has to.”
For once, Lift ignored what her gut was telling her and, instead, climbed through the window. She crossed the room in a dash.
Out into the upstairs hallway. Onto the steps. She soared down them, leaping most of the distance. Through a doorway. Turn left. Down the hallway. Left again.
A crowd in the rich corridor. Lift reached them, then wiggled through. She didn’t need her awesomeness for that. She’d been slipping through cracks in crowds since she started walking.
Gawx lay in a pool of blood that had darkened the fine carpet. The viziers and guards surrounded him, speaking in hushed tones.
Lift crawled up to him. His body was still warm, but the blood seemed to have stopped flowing. His eyes were closed.
“Too late?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” Wyndle said, curling up beside her.
“What do I do?”
“I . . . I’m not sure. Mistress, the transition to your side was difficult and left holes in my memory, even with the precautions my people took. I . . .”
She set Gawx on his back, face toward the sky. He wasn’t really anything to her, that was true. They’d barely just met, and he’d been a fool. She’d told him to go back.
But this was who she was, who she had to be.
I will remember those who have been forgotten.
Lift leaned forward, touched her forehead to his, and breathed out. A shimmering something left her lips, a little cloud of glowing light. It hung in front of Gawx’s lips.
Come on . . .
It stirred, then drew in through his mouth.
A hand took Lift by the shoulder, pulling her away from Gawx. She sagged, suddenly exhausted. Real exhausted, so much so that even standing was difficult.
Darkness pulled her by the shoulder away from the crowd. “Come,” he said.
Gawx stirred. The viziers gasped, their attention turning toward the youth as he groaned, then sat up.
“It appears that you are an Edgedancer,” Darkness said, steering her down the corridor as the crowd moved in around Gawx, chattering. She stumbled, but he held her upright. “I had wondered which of the two you would be.”
“Miracle!” one vizier said.
“Yaezir has spoken!” said one of the scions.
“Edgedancer,” Lift said. “I don’t know what that is.”
“They were once a glorious order,” Darkness said, walking her down the hallway. Everyone ignored them, focused instead on Gawx. “Where you blunder, they were elegant things of beauty. They could ride the thinnest rope at speed, dance across rooftops, move through a battlefield like a ribbon on the wind.”
“That sounds . . . amazing.”
“Yes. It is unfortunate they were always so concerned with small-minded things, while ignoring those of greater import. It appears you share their temperament. You have become one of them.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Lift said.
“I realize this.”
“Why . . . why do you hunt me?”
“In the name of justice.”
“There are tons of people who do wrong things,” she said. She had to force out every word. Talking was hard. Thinking was hard. So tired. “You . . . you coulda hunted big crime bosses, murderers. You chose me instead. Why?”
“Others may be detestable, but they do not dabble in arts that could return Desolation to this world.” His words were so cold. “What you are must be stopped.”
Lift felt numb. She tried to summon her awesomeness, but she’d used it all up. And then some, probably.
Darkness turned her and pushed her against the wall. She couldn’t stand, and slumped down, sitting. Wyndle moved up beside her, spreading out a starburst of creeping vines.
Darkness knelt next to her. He held out his hand.
“I saved him,” Lift said. “I did something good, didn’t I?”
“Goodness is irrelevant,” Darkness said. His Shardblade dropped into his fingers.
“You don’t even care, do you?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
“You should,” she said, exhausted. “You should . . . should try it, I mean. I wanted to be like you, once. Didn’t work out. Wasn’t . . . even like being alive . . .”
Darkness raised his Blade.
Lift closed her eyes.
“She is pardoned!”
Darkness’s grip on her shoulder tightened.
Feeling completely drained—like somebody had held her up by the toes and squeezed everything out of her—Lift forced her eyes to open. Gawx stumbled to a stop beside them, breathing heavily. Behind, the viziers and scions moved up as well.
Clothing bloodied, his eyes wide, Gawx clutched a piece of paper in his hand. He thrust this at Darkness. “I pardon this girl. Release her, constable!”
“Who are you,” Darkness said, “to do such a thing?”
“I am the Prime Aqasix,” Gawx declared. “Ruler of Azir!”
“Ridiculous.”
“The Kadasixes have spoken,” said one of the scions.
“The Heralds?” Darkness said. “They have done no such thing. You are mistaken.”
“We have voted,” said a vizier. “This young man’s application was the best.”
“What application?” Darkness said. “He is a thief!”
“He performed the miracle of Regrowth,” said one of the older scions. “He was dead and he returned. What better application could we ask for?”
“A sign has been given,” said the lead vizier. “We have a Prime who can survive the attacks of the One All White. Praise to Yaezir, Kadasix of Kings, may he lead in wisdom. This youth is Prime. He has been Prime always. We have only now realized it, and beg his forgiveness for not seeing the truth sooner.”
“As it always has been done,” the elderly scion said. “As it will be done again. Stand down, constable. You have been given an order.”
Darkness studied Lift.
She smiled tiredly. Show the starvin’ man some teeth. That was the right of it.
His Shardblade vanished to mist. He’d been bested, but he didn’t seem to care. Not a curse, not even a tightening of the eyes. He stood up and pulled on his gloves by the cuffs, first one, then the other. “Praise Yaezir,” he said. “Herald of Kings. May he lead in wisdom. If he ever stops drooling.”
Darkness bowed to the new Prime, then left with a sure step.
“Does anyone know the name of that constable?” one of the viziers asked. “When did we start letting officers of the law requisition Shardblades?”
Gawx knelt beside Lift.
“So you’re an emperor or something now,” she said, closing her eyes, settling back.
“Yeah. I’m still confused. It seems I performed a miracle or something.”
“Good for you,” Lift said. “Can I eat your dinner?”
Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, sat atop the highest tower in the world and contemplated the End of All Things.
The souls of the people he had murdered lurked in the shadows. They whispered to him. If he drew close, they screamed.
They also screamed when he shut his eyes. He had taken to blinking as little as possible. His eyes felt dry in his skull. It was what any . . . sane man would do.
The highest tower in the world, hidden in the tops of the mountains, was perfect for his contemplation. If he had not been bound to an Oathstone, if he had been another man entirely, he would have stayed here. The only place in the East where the stones were not cursed, where walking on them was allowed. This place was holy.
Bright sunlight shone down to banish the shadows, which kept those screams to a minimum. The screamers deserved their deaths, of course. They should have killed Szeth. I hate you. I hate . . . everyone. Glories within, what a strange emotion.
He did not look up. He would not meet the gaze of the God of Gods. B
ut it was good to be in the sunlight. There were no clouds here to bring the darkness. This place was above them all. Urithiru ruled even the clouds.
The massive tower was also empty; that was another reason he liked it. A hundred levels, built in ring shapes, each one beneath larger than the one above it to provide a sunlit balcony. The eastern side, however, was a sheer, flat edge that made the tower look from a distance as if that side had been sliced off by an enormous Shardblade. What a strange shape.
He sat on that edge, right at the top, feet swinging over a drop of a hundred massive stories and a plummet down the mountainside below. Glass sparkled on the smooth surface of the flat side there.
Glass windows. Facing east, toward the Origin. The first time he had visited this place—just after being exiled from his homeland—he hadn’t understood just how odd those windows were. Back then, he’d still been accustomed to gentle highstorms. Rain, wind, and meditation.
Things were different in these cursed lands of the stonewalkers. These hateful lands. These lands flowing with blood, death, and screams. And . . . And . . .
Breathe. He forced the air in and out and stood up on the rim of the parapet atop the tower.
He had fought an impossibility. A man with Stormlight, a man who knew the storm within. That meant . . . problems. Years ago, Szeth had been banished for raising the alarm. The false alarm, it had been said.
The Voidbringers are no more, they had told him.
The spirits of the stones themselves promised it.
The powers of old are no more.
The Knights Radiant are fallen.
We are all that remains.
All that remains. . . . Truthless.
“Have I not been faithful?” Szeth shouted, finally looking up to face the sun. His voice echoed against the mountains and their spirit-souls. “Have I not obeyed, kept my oath? Have I not done as you demanded of me?”
The killing, the murder. He blinked tired eyes.
SCREAMS.
“What does it mean if the Shamanate are wrong? What does it mean if they banished me in error?”
It meant the End of All Things. The end of truth. It would mean that nothing made sense, and that his oath was meaningless.
It would mean he had killed for no reason.
He dropped off the side of the tower, white clothing—now a symbol to him of many things—flapping in the wind. He filled himself with Stormlight and Lashed himself southward. His body lurched in that direction, falling across the sky. He could only travel this way for a short time; his Stormlight did not last long.
Too imperfect a body. The Knights Radiant . . . they’d been said . . . they’d been said to be better at this . . . like the Voidbringers.
He had just enough Light to free himself from the mountains and land in a village in the foothills. They often set out spheres for him there as an offering, considering him some kind of god. He would feed upon that Light, and it would let him go a farther distance until he found another city and more Stormlight.
It would take days to get where he was going, but he would find answers. Or, barring that, someone to kill.
Of his own choice, this time.
Eshonai waved her hand as she climbed the central spire of Narak, trying to shoo away the tiny spren. It danced around her head, shedding rings of light from its cometlike form. Horrid thing. Why would it not leave her alone?
Perhaps it could not stay away. She was experiencing something wonderfully new, after all. Something that had not been seen in centuries. Stormform. A form of true power.
A form given of the gods.
She continued up the steps, feet clinking in her Shardplate. It felt good on her.
She had held this form for fifteen days now, fifteen days of hearing new rhythms. At first, she had attuned those often, but this had made some people very nervous. She had backed off, and forced herself to attune the old, familiar ones when speaking.
It was difficult, for those old rhythms were so dull. Buried within those new rhythms, the names of which she intuited somehow, she could almost hear voices speaking to her. Advising her. If her people had received such guidance over the centuries, they surely would not have fallen so far.
Eshonai reached the top of the spire, where the other four awaited her. Again, her sister Venli was also there, and she wore the new form as well—with its spiking armor plates, its red eyes, its lithe danger. This meeting would proceed very differently from the previous one. Eshonai cycled through the new rhythms, careful not to hum them. The others weren’t ready yet.
She sat down, then gasped.
That rhythm! It sounded like . . . like her own voice yelling at her. Screaming in pain. What was that? She shook her head, and found that she had reflexively pulled her hand to her chest in anxiety. When she opened it, the cometlike spren shot out.
She attuned Irritation. The others of the Five regarded her with heads cocked, a couple humming to Curiosity. Why did she act as she did?
Eshonai settled herself, Shardplate grinding against stone. This close to the lull—the time called the Weeping by the humans—highstorms were growing more rare. That had created a small impediment in her march to see every listener given stormform. There had only been one storm since Eshonai’s own transformation, and during it, Venli and her scholars had taken stormform along with two hundred soldiers chosen by Eshonai. Not officers. Common soldiers. The type she was sure would obey.
The next highstorm was mere days away, and Venli had been gathering her spren. They had thousands ready. It was time.
Eshonai regarded the others of the Five. Today’s clear sky rained down white sunlight, and a few windspren approached on a breeze. They stopped when they grew near, then zipped away in the opposite direction.
“Why have you called this meeting?” Eshonai asked the others.
“You’ve been speaking of a plan,” Davim said, broad worker’s hands clasped before him. “You’ve been telling everyone of it. Shouldn’t you have brought it to the Five first?”
“I’m sorry,” Eshonai said. “I am merely excited. I believe, however, we should now be the Six.”
“That has not been decided,” Abronai said, weak and plump. Mateform was disgusting. “This moves too quickly.”
“We must move quickly,” Eshonai replied to Resolve. “We have only two highstorms before the lull. You know what the spies report. The humans are planning a final push toward us, toward Narak.”
“It is a pity,” Abronai said to Consideration, “that your meeting with them went so poorly.”
“They wanted to tell me of the destruction they planned to bring,” Eshonai lied. “They wanted to gloat. That was the only reason they met with me.”
“We need to be ready to fight them,” Davim said to Anxiety.
Eshonai laughed. A blatant use of emotion, but she truly felt it. “Fight them? Haven’t you been listening? I can summon a highstorm.”
“With help,” Chivi said to Curiosity. Nimbleform. Another weak form. They should expunge that one from their ranks. “You have said you cannot do it alone. How many others would you need? Certainly the two hundred you have now are enough.”
“No, that is not nearly enough,” Eshonai replied. “I feel that the more people we have in this form, the more likely we are to succeed. I would like, therefore, to move that we transform.”
“Yes,” Chivi said. “But how many of us?”
“All of us.”
Davim hummed to Amusement, thinking it must be a joke. He trailed off as the rest sat in silence.
“We will have just one chance,” Eshonai said to Resolve. “The humans will leave their warcamps together, in one large army that intends to reach Narak during the lull. They will be completely exposed on the plateaus, with no shelter. A highstorm at that time would destroy them.”
“We don’t even truly know if you can summon one,” Abronai said to Skepticism.
“That is why we need as many of us in stormform as possible,” Eshonai sai
d. “If we miss this opportunity, our children will sing us the songs of Cursing, assuming they even live long enough to do so. This is our chance, our one chance. Imagine the ten armies of men, isolated on the plateaus, buffeted and overwhelmed by a tempest they could never have expected! With stormform, we would be immune to its effects. If any survive, we could destroy them easily.”
“It is tempting,” Davim said.
“I do not like the look of those who have taken this form,” Chivi said. “I do not like how people clamor to be given it. Perhaps two hundred are enough.”
“Eshonai,” Davim said, “how does this form feel?”
He was asking more than he actually said. Each form changed a person in some ways. Warform made you more aggressive, mateform made you easy to distract, nimbleform encouraged focus, and workform made you obedient.
Eshonai attuned Peace.
No. That was the screaming voice. How had she spent weeks in this form and not noticed?
“I feel alive,” Eshonai said to Joy. “I feel strong, and I feel powerful. I feel a connection to the world that I should have always known. Davim, this is like the change from dullform to one of the other forms—it is that much of an upgrade. Now that I hold this strength, I realize I wasn’t fully alive before.”
She lifted her hand and made a fist. She could feel the energy coursing down her arm as the muscles flexed, though it was hidden beneath the Shardplate.
“Red eyes,” Abronai whispered. “Have we come to this?”
“If we decide to do this,” Chivi said. “Perhaps we four should assess it first, then say if the others should join us.” Venli opened her mouth to speak, but Chivi waved her hand, interrupting her. “You have had your say, Venli. We know what you wish.”
“We cannot wait, unfortunately,” Eshonai said. “If we want to trap the Alethi armies, we will need time to transform everyone before the Alethi leave to search for Narak.”
“I’m willing to try it,” Abronai said. “Perhaps we should propose a mass transformation to our people.”
“No.” Zuln spoke to Peace.
The dullform member of the Five sat slouched, looking at the ground before her. She almost never said anything.