Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection

by Brandon Sanderson

  It was a really, really big cistern. A cistern as big as several houses, to collect rain from the storms.

  “Ah,” Wyndle said. “Yes, separated from the rest of the city by a raised rim. Rainwater in the streets will flow outward, rather than toward this cistern, keeping it pure. In fact, it seems that most of the streets have a slope to them, to siphon water outward. Where does it go from there though?”

  Whatever. She inspected the big cistern, which did have a neat bridge running across it. The thing was so big that you needed a bridge, and people stood on it to lower buckets on ropes down into the water.

  Darkness didn’t take the path across the bridge; there was a ledge running around the outside of the cistern also, and there were fewer people on it. He obviously wanted to take the route that involved less jostling.

  Lift hesitated at the entrance into the place, fighting with her frustration, her sense of powerlessness. She earned a curse or two as she accidentally blocked traffic.

  Her name was Tiqqa, Lift thought. I will remember you, Tiqqa. Because few others will.

  Below, the large cistern pool rippled from the many people drawing water from it. If she followed Darkness around the ledge, she’d be in the open with nobody between them.

  Well, he didn’t look behind himself very often. She just had to risk it. She took a step along the path.

  “Don’t!” Wyndle said. “Mistress, stay hidden. He has eyes you cannot see.”

  Fine. She joined the flow of people moving down the steps. This was the shorter route, but there were a lot of people on the bridge. In the bustle, because of her shortness, she lost sight of Darkness.

  Sweat prickled on the back of her neck, cold. If she couldn’t see him, she felt certain—irrationally—that he was now watching her. She pictured again and again how he’d emerged from the market to grab the thief, a supernatural ease to his movements. Yes, he knew things about people like Lift. He’d spoken of her powers with familiarity.

  Lift drew upon her awesomeness. She didn’t make herself Slick, but she let the light suffuse her, pep her up. The power felt like it was alive sometimes. The essence of eagerness, a spren. It drove her forward as she dodged and squeezed through the crowd of people on the bridge.

  She reached the other side of the bridge, and saw no sign of Darkness on the ledge. Storms. She left through the archway on the other side, slipping back into the city proper and entering a large crossroads.

  Shiqua-wrapped Tashikkis passed in front of her, interrupted occasionally by Azish in colorful patterns. This was certainly a better part of town. Light from the rising sun sparkled off painted sections of the walls, here displaying a grand mural of Tashi and the Nine binding the world. Some of the people she passed had parshman slaves, their marbled skin black and red. She hadn’t seen many of those here, not as many as in Azir. Maybe she just hadn’t been in rich enough sections of the city.

  Lots of the buildings here had small trees or ornamental shrubs in front of them. They were bred and cultivated to be lazy, so their leaves didn’t pull in despite the near crowds.

  Read those crowds … Lift thought. The people. Where are the people being strange?

  She scrambled through the crossroads, intuiting the way. Something about how people stood, where they looked. There was a ripple here. The waves of a passing fish, silent but not still.

  She turned a corner, and caught a brief glimpse of Darkness striding up a set of stairs beside a row of small trees. He stepped into a building, then shut the door.

  Lift crept up beside the building Darkness had entered, her face brushing the leaves of the trees, causing them to pull in. They were lazy, but not so stupid that they wouldn’t move if touched.

  “What are these ‘eyes’ you say he has?” she asked as Wyndle wound up beside her. “The ones I can’t see.”

  “He will have a spren,” Wyndle said. “Like me. It’s likely invisible to you and anyone else but him. Most are, on this side, I think. I don’t remember all the rules.”

  “You sure are dumb some of the time, Voidbringer.”

  He sighed.

  “Don’t worry,” Lift said. “I’m dumb most of the time.” She scratched her head. The steps ended at a door. Did she dare open it and slip in? If she was going to learn anything about Darkness and what he was doing in the city, she’d have to do more than find out where he lived.

  “Mistress,” Wyndle said, “I might be stupid, but I can say with certainty that you’re not a match for that creature. There are many Words you haven’t spoken.”

  “Course I haven’t said those kinds of words,” Lift said. “Don’t you ever listen to me? I’m a sweet, innocent little girl. I ain’t going to talk about bollocks and jiggers and stuff. I’m not crass.”

  Wyndle sighed. “Not those kinds of words. Mistress, I—”

  “Oh, hush,” Lift said, squatting beside the trees lining the front of the building. “We have to get in there and see what he’s up to.”

  “Mistress, please don’t get yourself killed. It would be traumatic. Why, I think it would take me months and months to get over it!”

  “That’s faster than I’d get over it.” She scratched at her head. She couldn’t hang on the side of the building and listen at Darkness, like she had at the guard captain’s place. Not in a fancy part of town, and not in the middle of the day.

  Besides, she had loftier goals today than just eavesdropping. She had to actually break into this place to do what she needed to do here. But how? It wasn’t like these buildings had back doors. They were cut directly into the rock. She could maybe get in one of the front windows, but that sure would be suspicious.

  She glanced at the passing crowds. People in cities, they’d notice something like an urchin breaking in through a window. Something that looked like trouble. But other times they’d ignore the most obvious things in front of their own noses.

  Maybe … She did have awesomeness left from that fruit she’d eaten. She eyed a shuttered window about five or six feet up. That would be on the first story of the building, but it was up somewhat high, because everything was built up a ways in this city.

  Lift hunkered down and let some of her awesomeness out. The little tree beside her stretched and popped softly. Leaves budded, unfurled, and gave a good morning yawn. Branches reached toward the sky. Lift took her time, filling in the tree’s canopy, letting it get large enough to obscure the window. Around her feet, seeds from storm-blown rockbuds puffed up like little hot buns. Vines wrapped around her ankles.

  Nobody passing on the street noticed. They’d cuff an urchin for scratching her butt in a suspicious manner, but couldn’t be bothered with a miracle. Lift sighed, smiling. The tree would cover her as she broke in through that window, if she moved carefully. She let her awesomeness continue to trickle out, comforting the tree, making it even more lazy. Lifespren popped up, little glowing green motes that bobbed around her.

  She waited for a lull in the passing crowds, then hopped up and grabbed a branch, hauling herself into the tree. The tree, drinking of her awesomeness, didn’t pull its leaves back in. She felt safe here surrounded by the branches, which smelled rich and heady, like the spices used for broth. Vines wrapped around the tree branches, sprouting leaves, much as Wyndle did.

  Unfortunately, her power was almost out. A couple pieces of fruit didn’t provide much. She pressed her ear against the window’s thick stormshutters, and didn’t hear anything from the room beyond. Safe in the tree, she softly rattled the stormshutters with her palms, using the sound to pick out where the latch was.

  See. I can listen.

  But of course, this wasn’t the right kind of listening.

  The window was latched with some kind of long bar on the other side, probably fitted into slots across the back of the shutters. Fortunately, these stormshutters weren’t as tight as those in other towns; they probably didn’t need to be, down here safe in the trenches. She let the vines wind around the branches, drinking of her Stormlight,
then twist around her arms and squeeze through cracks in the shutters. The vines stretched up the inside of the shutters, pressing up the bar that held the shutters closed, and …

  And she was in. She used the last of her awesomeness to coat the hinges of the shutters, so they slid against one another without a hint of a sound. She slipped into a boxlike stone room, lifespren pouring in behind her, dancing in the air like glowing whispermill seeds.

  “Mistress!” Wyndle said, growing in onto the wall. “Oh, mistress. That was delightful! Why don’t we forget this entire mess with the Skybreakers, and go … why … why, go run a farm! Yes, a farm. A lovely farm. You could sculpt plants every day, and eat until you were ready to burst! And … Mistress?”

  Lift padded through the room, noting a rack of swords by the wall, sheathed and deadly. Sparring leathers on the floor near the corner. The smell of oil and sweat. There was no door in the doorway, and she peeked out into a dark hallway, listening.

  There was a three-way intersection here. Hallways lined with rooms led to her left and right, and then a longer hallway led straight forward, into darkness. Voices echoed from that direction.

  That hallway in front of her cut deeper into the stone, away from windows—and from exits. She glanced right instead, toward the building’s entrance. An old man sat in a chair there, near the door, wearing a white and black uniform of the type she’d only seen on Darkness and his men. He was mostly bald, except for a few wisps of hair, and had beady eyes and a pinched face—like a shriveled-up fruit that was trying to pass for human.

  He stood up and checked a little window in the door, watching the crowd outside with suspicion. Lift took the opportunity to scuttle into the hallway to her left, where she ducked into the next room over.

  This looked more promising. Though it was dim with the stormshutters closed, it seemed like some kind of workroom or den. Lift eased open the shutters for a little light, then did a quick search. Nothing obvious on the shelves full of maps. Nothing on the writing table but some books and a rack of spanreeds. There was a trunk by the wall, but it was locked. She was beginning to despair when she smelled something.

  She peeked out of the doorway. That guard had wandered off; she could hear him whistling somewhere, alongside the sound of a stream of liquid in a chamber pot.

  Lift slipped farther down the corridor to her left, away from the guard. The next room in line was a bedroom with a door that was cracked open. She slipped in and found a stiff coat hanging on a peg right inside—one with a circular fruit stain on the front. Darkness’s jacket for sure.

  Below it, sitting on the floor, was a tray with a metal covering—the type fancy people put over plates so they wouldn’t have to look at food while it got cold. Underneath, like the emerald treasures of the Tranquiline Halls, Lift found three plates of pancakes.

  Darkness’s breakfast. Mission accomplished.

  She started stuffing her face with a vengeful enthusiasm.

  Wyndle made a face from vines beside her. “Mistress? Was this all … was this all so you could steal his food?”

  “Yeph,” Lift said, then swallowed. “Course it is.” She took another bite. That’d show him.

  “Oh. Of course.” He sighed deeply. “I suppose this is … this is pleasant, then. Yes. No swinging about of innocent spren, stabbing them into people and the like. Just … just stealing some food.”

  “Darkness’s food.” She’d stolen from a palace, and the starvin’ emperor of Azir. She’d needed something interesting to try next.

  It felt good to finally get enough food to fill her stomach. One of the pancakes was salty, with chopped-up vegetables. Another tasted sweet. The third variety was fluffier, almost without any substance to it, though there was some kind of sauce to dip it in. She slurped that down—who had time for dipping?

  She ate every scrap, then settled back against the wall, smiling.

  “So, we came all this way,” Wyndle said, “and tracked the most dangerous man we’ve ever met, merely so you could steal his breakfast. We didn’t come here to do … to do anything more, then?”

  “Do you want to do something more?”

  “Storms, no!” Wyndle said. He twisted his little vine face around, looking toward the hallway. “I mean … every moment we spend in here is dangerous.”

  “Yup.”

  “We should run. Go found a farm, like I said. Leave him behind, though he’s likely tracking someone in this city. Someone like us, someone who can’t fight him. Someone he will murder before they even start to grasp their powers…”

  They sat in the room, empty tray beside them. Lift felt her awesomeness begin to stir within her again.

  “So,” she asked. “Guess we go spy on them, eh?”

  Wyndle whimpered, but—shockingly—nodded.

  9

  “JUST try not to die too violently, mistress,” Wyndle said as she crept closer to the sounds of people talking. “A nice rap on the head, rather than a disemboweling.”

  That voice was definitely Darkness. The sound of it gave her chills. When the man had confronted her in the Azish palace, he’d been dispassionate, even as he half apologized for what he was about to do.

  “I hear that suffocation is nice,” Wyndle said. “Though in such a case, don’t look at me as you expire. I’m not sure I could handle it.”

  Remember the girl in the market. Steady.

  Storms, her hands were trembling.

  “I’m not sure about falling to your death,” Wyndle added. “Seems like it might be messy, but at the same time at least there wouldn’t be any stabbing.”

  The hallway ended at a large chamber lit by diamonds that gave it a calm, easy light. Not chips, not even spheres. Larger, unset gemstones. Lift crouched by the half-open door, hidden in shadows.

  Darkness—wearing a stiff white shirt—paced before two underlings in uniforms in black and white, with swords at their waists. One was a Makabaki man with a round, goofish face. The other was a woman with skin a shade lighter—she looked like she might be Reshi, particularly with that long dark hair she kept in a tight braid. She had a square face, strong shoulders, and way too small a nose. Like she’d sold hers off to buy some new shoes, and was using one she’d dug out of the trash as a replacement.

  “Your excuses do not befit those who would join our order,” Darkness was saying. “If you would earn the trust of your spren, and take the step from initiate to Shardbearer, you must dedicate yourselves. You must prove your worth. Earlier today I followed a lead that each of you missed, and have discovered a second offender in the city.”

  “Sir!” the Reshi woman said. “I prevented an assault in an alleyway! A man was being accosted by thugs!”

  “While this is well,” Darkness said, still pacing back and forth in a calm, even stroll, “we must be careful not to be distracted by petty crimes. I realize that it can be difficult to remain focused when confronted by a fracture of the codes that bind society. Remember that greater matters, and greater crimes, must be our primary concern.”

  “Surgebinders,” the woman said.

  Surgebinders. People like Lift, people with awesomeness, who could do the impossible. She hadn’t been afraid to sneak into a palace, but huddled by that door—looking in at the man she had named Darkness—she found herself terrified.

  “But…” said the male initiate. “Is it really … I mean, shouldn’t we want them to return, so we won’t be the only order of Knights Radiant?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” Darkness said. “I once thought as you, but Ishar made the truth clear to me. If the bonds between men and spren are reignited, then men will naturally discover the greater power of the oaths. Without Honor to regulate this, there is a small chance that what comes next will allow the Voidbringers to again make the jump between worlds. That would cause a Desolation, and even a small chance that the world will be destroyed is a risk that we cannot take. Absolute fidelity to the mission Ishar gave us—the greater law of protecting Roshar—is required.�
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  “You’re wrong,” a voice whispered from the darkness. “You may be a god … but you’re still wrong.”

  Lift nearly jumped clear out of her own skin. Storms! There was a guy sitting just inside the doorway, right next to where she was hiding. She hadn’t seen him—she’d been too fixated on Darkness.

  He sat on the floor, wearing tattered white clothing. His hair was short, a brown fuzz, as if he’d kept it shaved until recently. He had pale, ghostly skin, and held a long sword in a silvery sheath, pommel resting against his shoulder, length stretching alongside his body and legs. He held his arms draped around the sheath, as if it were a child’s toy to hug.

  He shifted in his place, and … storms, he left a soft white afterimage behind him, like you get when staring at a bright gemstone for too long. It faded away in a moment.

  “They’re already back,” he whispered, speaking with a smooth, airy Shin accent. “The Voidbringers have already returned.”

  “You are mistaken,” Darkness said. “The Voidbringers are not back. What you saw on the Shattered Plains are simply remnants from millennia ago. Voidbringers who have been hiding among us all this time.”

  The man in white looked up, and Lift shied away. His movement left another afterimage that glowed briefly before fading. Storms. White clothing. Strange powers. Shin man with a bald head. Shardblade.

  This was the starvin’ Assassin in White!

  “I saw them return,” the assassin whispered. “The new storm, the red eyes. You are wrong, Nin-son-God. You are wrong.”

  “A fluke,” Darkness said, his voice firm. “I contacted Ishar, and he assured me it is so. What you saw are a few listeners who remain from the old days, ones free to use the old forms. They summoned a cluster of Voidspren. We’ve found remnants of them on Roshar before, hiding.”

  “The storm? The new storm, of red lightning?”

  “It means nothing,” Darkness said. He did not seem to mind being challenged. He didn’t seem to mind anything. His voice was perfectly even. “An oddity, to be sure.”