“Why would a corpse have blood in its veins?”
“Fine. It’s not dead. It’s sleepin’ and we are its stormin’ blood. All right?”
“I should think,” Wyndle said, “these air vents are much more like intestines. So the allegory would make you more akin to … um … well, feces I guess.”
“Wyndle?” she said, pulling through.
“Yes, mistress?”
“Maybe stop tryin’ to help with my deevy metaphors.”
“Yes, all right.”
“Storming lamespren,” she muttered, finally reaching a section of larger air vents. She did like this tower. There were a lot of places to hide and to explore. Up here in this network of stone ventilation shafts, she found the occasional mink or other scavenger, but it was actually her domain. The adults were too big, and the other children too frightened. Plus she could glow—when properly fed—and her awesomeness could get her through tight squeezes.
A year ago, there hadn’t been nearly as many of those as there were now.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
They eventually reached her nest, a large opening where four tall ventilation shafts met. Here she’d piled up blankets, food stores, and some treasures. One of Dalinar’s knives she was absolutely sure he hadn’t wanted her to steal. Some interesting shells. An old flute that Wyndle said looked strange.
They were near a well where she could get all the water she wanted—but far enough away from people that she could talk freely. Her previous nest had let her listen in on the echoes of people nearby—but they’d also been able to hear her.
She’d heard them talking about the echoing. The spirit of the tower, they’d called her. That had been nifty at first, but then they’d started leaving stuff out for her, like she was the stormin’ Nightwatcher. And she’d started feeling guilty. You can’t be taking stuff from people who don’t have much. That was the first rule of not being a total-and-utter-useless-piece-of-chull-dung.
She munched on more of the “stolen” food from her basket, then sighed and got up. She stepped up to a side wall, putting her back to the stone. “Come on,” she said. “Do it.”
Wyndle moved up the wall. As always, he left a trail of vines behind him. They would crumble and decay soon after, but could be used to mark something for a short time. He moved across the wall atop her head, then she turned around and marked the line with a more permanent one out of chalk.
“That’s almost a full inch since last time,” she said.
“I’m sorry, mistress.”
She flopped down in her nest of blankets, wanting to curl up and cry. “I’ll stop eating,” she said. “That’ll stunt my growth.”
“You?” Wyndle said. “Stop eating.”
Storming spren. She pulled off her shirt, redid the wrap tighter—although it pinched her skin—then replaced her shirt. After that, she lay and stared up at the marks on the wall, which showed the progress of her height over the last year.
“Mistress,” Wyndle said, curling up like an eel and raising a vine head beside her. He was getting better at making faces, and this one was one of her favorites—it had vines that looked like little mustaches. “Don’t you think it’s time you told me what exactly it was you asked the Nightwatcher?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “It was all lies. The boon. The promises. Lies, lies, lies.”
“I have met the Nightwatcher,” Wyndle said. “She does not … think the same way the rest of us do. Cultivation created her to be apart, separated from humankind, un-Connected. Mortal perception of the Nightwatcher does not influence her like it does other spren. Mother wanted a daughter whose shape and personality would grow organically.
“This makes the Nightwatcher less … well, human … than a spren like me. Still, I don’t believe her capable of lying. It isn’t something she could conceive of, I believe.”
“She’s not the liar,” Lift said, closing her eyes. Storms. She’d made the wrap too tight. She could barely breathe. “It’s the other one. The one with a dress like leaves, merging into the underbrush. Hair like twigs. Skin the color of deep brown stone.”
“So you did see Cultivation herself. Both you and Dalinar … Mother has been intervening far more than we assumed, but behind a cloud of subterfuge. She uses tales of the Old Magic to distract, and to make it less obvious the specific ones she is drawing to her.…”
Lift shrugged.
“I had suspected it was true. Your … situation is unique. Why, seeing into the Cognitive Realm—even a little—is an uncommon feature in a human! And turning food into Light. Why … if Mother is involved … perhaps this isn’t Stormlight you use at all. Hmm … You realize how special you are, Lift.”
“I didn’t want to be special.”
“Says the girl who was comparing herself so dramatically to a shadow earlier.”
“I just wanted what I asked for.”
“Which was?” Wyndle asked.
“Not important now.”
“I rather think it is.”
“I asked not to change,” Lift whispered, opening her eyes. “I said, when everything else is going wrong, I want to be the same. I want to stay me. Not become someone else.”
“Those are the exact words?” Wyndle asked.
“Best I can remember.”
“Hmm…” Wyndle said, snuggling down into his vines. “I believe that is too vague.”
“I wasn’t! I told her. Make me so I don’t grow up.”
“That is not what you said, mistress. And if I might be so bold—having spent a great deal of time around you—you are not an easy person to understand.”
“I asked not to change! So why am I changing?”
“You’re still you. Merely a bigger version.”
She squeezed her eyes shut again.
“Mistress,” Wyndle said. “Lift. Will you tell me why this bothers you so much? Everyone grows. Everyone changes.”
“But I’m … I’m her little girl.”
“Whose little girl?” he asked gently. “Your mother’s?”
Lift nodded. Stupid. It sounded stupid and she was stupid. Mother was dead. That was that.
Why hadn’t she said the correct words? Why hadn’t Cultivation just understood? Cultivation was supposed to be some sort of starvin’ god. It was her fault if a little girl came and begged for a promise, and the god deliberately misinterpreted and …
And Lift liked who she was. Who she had been. She wouldn’t be the same when she got older.
Crawl through dark tunnels? Sure. Fight against Fused? Eh, why not.
But feel your own body changing you into someone else, and not be able to stop it?
Every human being lived with a terrible terror, and they all ignored it. Their own bodies mutated, and elongated, and started bleeding, and became all wrong. Nobody talked about it? Nobody was scared of it? What was wrong with them?
The last time things felt right, Lift thought, I was with her. Before she got sick. And I was her little girl.
If she saw me now, she wouldn’t recognize me.
A few strange spren, like faces mocking her, faded in nearby. Wyndle slowly wrapped his vines around her. Gentle, like an embrace. Though others could barely feel the touch of their spren, Wyndle felt solid to her. He wasn’t warm. But … it was comforting when he rested his vine head on her shoulder. For once he didn’t ruin the sentiment by saying something dumb.
And then he perked up in a suspicious-like way.
Lift wiped her eyes. “What?” she demanded.
“I don’t know,” Wyndle said. “Something just happened. In the tower. I feel … a darkness resting on me like a blanket. I think I felt the tower stir.”
“You said the tower’s spren was dead.”
“Dead spren can stir, Lift,” Wyndle said. “Something is wrong. Something is very wrong.”
Lift grabbed a large piece of flatbread and stuffed it in her mouth. Then she scurried through the tunnels, Wyndle following. She tried to use Storm
light to make her body slick to get through a particularly tight squeeze, but it didn’t work. She frowned, tried again, then finally forced herself through without it.
What on Roshar?
She came out above an empty room at the perimeter of the tower. She dropped from the opening in the ceiling, then trotted to the window. It was nearing evening, and the Everstorm had passed. Nothing looked wrong about the tower from her vantage; just an average day up in the mountains.
“Something’s wrong with my powers,” she whispered as Wyndle lowered himself from the top of the windowsill. “I couldn’t become awesome.”
“Look, down there.”
Some people had gathered on the Oathgate platform to the Shattered Plains. Several figures who seemed to have fallen to the ground. Blue uniforms.
“Windrunners,” she said, squinting. “Somethin’s wrong with them. Maybe they broke the Oathgates?”
“Maybe.”
Lift searched out across the snowy landscape, trying to listen. Listen. The Sleepless had told her, Always listen.
She heard screams. But not human ones.
“There,” she said, pointing. “What’s that?”
A bright red something was flying through the air in a desperate loop—being chased by something else that was green. Faster, more dangerous. The two collided in midair, and when the red something tore away, it dropped feathers in the sky.
Chickens. Flying chickens. She didn’t need to be told to instinctively understand that the green one was the predator, while the red one was prey. It gave a few beleaguered flaps toward the tower, seeming barely able to stay in the air.
“Come on,” Lift said, swinging out the window. “I need handholds.”
“Oh, mistress!” Wyndle said, moving onto the outside of the tower. He wove back and forth to make a ladder of vines clinging to the stone, which she climbed. “We are far too high up for this! What if I drop!”
“You’re a stormin’ spren. You’d be fine.”
“We don’t know that!” he said. “I could fall hundreds of feet!”
“Cowardspren.”
“Wisdomspren, if anything!” he said, but kept weaving as she scrambled upward.
The red chicken barely dodged another attack in the sky before darting in toward a balcony above and vanishing from her sight. The green chicken rounded, and she got a good look at it. Wicked talons, a sharp knifelike beak. She’d always thought chickens looked silly, but this one was different.
She reached the balcony and found the red one on the floor, bleeding from one wing, trying weakly to right itself. It was bigger than she’d thought, at least a foot tall, with a vivid red body and head. It had bright blue wings that went red at the ends, like fire. It chirped weakly as it saw her.
She perched on the rim of the balcony and turned to see the green one coming in. “Wyndle, I need you,” she said, holding her hand to the side to make him into a weapon. Not a sword. She hated those things. A rod she could swing at the nightmare chicken.
Nothing happened.
“I can’t become a weapon, mistress!” Wyndle cried. “I don’t know why! It’s something about the wrongness in the tower!”
Fine. She didn’t need a weapon anyway. The green chicken came swooping toward her, claws extended. It seemed to expect her to flinch. So she didn’t. She took the hit directly in the face and grabbed the chicken as it tried to rake her with its claws.
Then she bit it. Right on the wing.
Its startled scream seemed more confused than pained, but it tore out of her grip and fluttered away, crying as if it thought Lift wasn’t playing fair.
She spat out a feather as Stormlight healed the cuts to her face. Well, at least that part of her abilities was still working. She hopped down and scooped up the wounded red-feathered chicken. It gave her a timid bite on the arm, and she glared at it.
“You ain’t in any position to complain,” she said, then tried to heal it. She pressed her Light into the body, and it resisted. The healing didn’t work either. Damnation.
The chicken calmed as she hurried into the room beyond, where a young lighteyed man had been walking to the balcony to see what the fuss was.
“Sorry,” Lift said. “Important Radiant business.” As he leaped back, startled, she snatched a limafruit off his table, then hurried out into the hallway beyond.
Let’s see … fifth floor …
She found her way to one of the ventilation openings, and Wyndle made a ladder for her to climb up—the red chicken under her arm complaining softly about the treatment. Inside, safely around a few corners, she put the chicken on the floor, then pressed her hand to it again.
She pushed harder. When she’d tried to become awesome earlier, nothing had happened. But when she’d tried to heal, she’d felt something different—a resistance. So this time she pushed it, growling softly until … it worked. Stormlight left her, and the chicken’s wing healed. Her powers didn’t regrow the lost feathers, but in a moment the thing had rolled over and was picking at the bare skin on its side with a tentative beak. Finally, it looked at her and released a confused squawk.
“It’s kind of what I do,” she said, and shrugged. “I’m ’posed to listen too. Damnation take me if I can figure out how that applies to chickens though.”
The chicken squawked. She tried to summon her awesomeness, but that power didn’t merely resist. It seemed to not exist. As she tried again, she heard something odd. People shouting?
“Wyndle?” she asked.
He moved away as a vine. People could sometimes notice the remnants of those vines when they disintegrated, but he himself was invisible.
The chicken began walking away down the tunnel. It had a funny stride, like it was indignant about being forced to use its feet.
Lift hurried forward and blocked it off. “Where do you think you’re going?”
It squawked insistently, then squeezed past her.
“At least wait for Wyndle,” she said, blocking it off again. It let out a more threatening squawk, but soon Wyndle returned.
“Radiants are dropping unconscious!” he said. “Oh, mistress. This seems very bad!”
The chicken, uncaring, pushed past her and continued along the tunnel. Together she and Wyndle followed, the spren growing increasingly worried—particularly after the bird fluttered down into a corridor, then stared at the ground and chirped in an annoyed way.
It turned toward her, plaintive.
“You need to go down lower,” she said, “but you don’t know how? What are you following?”
It squawked.
“Mistress,” Wyndle said, “chickens are not intelligent. Talking to one would make me question your intelligence, if I hadn’t seen you talk to cremlings sometimes.”
“Never can tell if one of those is reporting back to someone or not,” she muttered, then climbed down and picked up the chicken. It seemed to have trouble flying without all its feathers, so she carried it as they used the stairs to descend several levels, following the chicken’s body language. It would stretch out its head, then cock it, looking at the floor with one eye. When they got to the second level, it leveled out its head, staring insistently along a corridor, and made a kind of hooting noise.
Something distant rumbled from one of the corridors behind them. Lift spun, and Wyndle whimpered.
“That was thunder,” she said. “There are stormforms in the tower.”
“Oh, mistress!” Wyndle cried. “We should do something! Like hide! Or run away and then hide!”
Instead she followed the chicken’s gaze. She was supposed to listen. It was one of her stormin’ oaths, or something. She hurried through a side passage as the chicken started to squawk louder.
“Mistress?” Wyndle said. “Why are we…”
He trailed off as they stumbled across the corpse.
It was an old Alethi man in robes. He’d been killed with some kind of knife wound to the chest, and lay—his eyes open—on the ground. Blood on his lips.
The chicken let out an angry screech, fluttering out of her hands to the man. Then—in perhaps the most heart-wrenching thing she’d ever seen—it began to nuzzle the corpse and chirp softly. It climbed into the crook of his dead arm and pushed its head against his side, chirping again, more worried this time.
“I’m sorry,” Lift said, squatting down. “How did you know he was here?”
It chirped.
“You could feel him, couldn’t you?” she asked. “Or … you could feel where he’d been. You’re no ordinary chicken. Are you a Voidbringer chicken?”
“Why,” Wyndle said, “do you insist on using that word? It’s horribly inaccurate.”
“Shut it, Voidbringer,” she muttered at him. She reached over and carefully picked up the chicken, who had begun to let out pained chirps almost like words. Eerily similar to them, in fact.
“Who was he?” she asked. “Wyndle, do you recognize him?”
“I believe I’ve seen him before. A minor Alethi functionary, though his eyes are different now. Curious. Look at his fingers—tan skin with bands of lighter skin. He was wearing jewelry once.”
Yes … thinking about it, she thought she recognized him. One of the old people in the tower. Retired, once an important official in the palace. She’d gone and talked to him because nobody paid attention to old people. They smelled.
“Robbed,” she said. Back-alley killings still happened in this tower, though the Kholins tried to make the place safe. “I’ll remember you. I promise. I—”
Something moved in the darkness nearby. A kind of scraping sound, like … feathers. Lift went alert and stood, holding out a sphere for light. It had come from farther down the corridor, where her light didn’t reach.
Something flowed from that darkness. A man, tall with scarred features. He wore an Alethi uniform, but she swore she’d never seen him before. She would recognize a man this dangerous. Those eyes seemed to be part of the darkness—deep in shadow as he stepped into the light.
On his shoulder sat the green chicken from before, its wicked claws gripping a patch of leather affixed to the uniform.
“Little Radiant,” the man said. “I’ll admit, I’ve always wanted an excuse to hunt you.”
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