A nightmare. Another nightmare.
“Kaladin?” Syl asked. She sat on the floor in front of him. He blinked, glancing sharply one way, then the other. The room seemed to settle into place. Teft sleeping on the stone bench. A few chips set out for light. Fearspren, like globs of goo, undulating in the corners.
“I…” He swallowed, his mouth dry. “I had a nightmare.”
“I know.”
He carefully relaxed his posture, embarrassed at how he must appear huddled up by the wall. Like a child frightened of the dark. He couldn’t afford to be a child. Too much depended on him. He stood up, his clothing sweaty. “What time is it?”
“Midday,” she said.
“My schedule is completely off.” He tried to pull himself together as he stepped over to get a drink, but he stumbled and caught himself on the ledge. He had to grip it tightly as the nightmare threatened to resurface. Stormfather. This was the most oppressive one yet.
“Kaladin…” Syl said.
He took a long drink, then froze.
His spear was gone from beside the door.
“What happened?” he demanded, slamming the tin cup down harder than he’d intended. “Where is my spear!”
“The Sibling contacted us,” she said, still sitting on the floor. “That’s why Dabbid tried to wake you. Another node has been found—inside the well in the market. The enemy is there already.”
“Storms!” Kaladin said. “We need to go.” He reached for Navani’s fabrial and his pouch of gems. He found the latter, but the fabrial was gone.
“Dabbid?” Kaladin demanded.
“You were huddled there muttering,” Syl said, finally lifting into the air. “And you didn’t seem to be able to see me. The Sibling is terrified. I could hear them while sitting on Dabbid’s shoulder. And so…”
Kaladin grabbed the bag of gems and dashed out of the room, Syl following as a ribbon of light. He caught up with Dabbid at the first stairwell—just two hallways over. The shorter bridgeman stood with the spear and fabrial held close to his chest, staring down with a panicked expression.
He jumped as he saw Kaladin, then let out a loud relieved sigh. Kaladin took the fabrial.
“You were going to go try to stop the Fused,” Kaladin said. “Because I didn’t get up.”
Dabbid nodded.
“Dabbid, you barely know how to use a spear,” Kaladin said, quickly strapping on the fabrial. He’d had only four days of practice with the device. It would have to be enough.
Dabbid didn’t respond, of course. He helped Kaladin strap the fabrial on, then held out the spear.
Kaladin took it, then gave the Bridge Four salute.
Dabbid returned it. Then, remarkably, said something, in a voice soft and gravelly. “Life. Before. Death.”
Storms. Those were the first words Kaladin had ever heard from the man. He grinned, gripping Dabbid by the shoulder. “Life before death, Dabbid.”
Dabbid nodded. There wasn’t time for more; Kaladin turned away from the stairwell and began running again. Screams from the nightmare echoed in his head, but he didn’t have time for weakness. He had to stop the corruption of that gemstone—and barring that, he had to destroy the node. That was the only way to buy Navani the time she needed.
He had to get there quickly, which meant he couldn’t use the stairs. He’d have to go straight down through the atrium.
* * *
“I need to see the Lady of Wishes immediately!” Navani proclaimed to the guard. “I’ve made a discovery of incalculable value! It cannot wait for—”
The guard—a Regal stormform—simply started walking and gestured for her to follow. He didn’t even need the full explanation.
“Excellent,” Navani said, joining him in the hallway. “I’m glad you see the urgency.”
The guard walked her to the large stairwell that led up to the ground floor. A Deepest One stood here, her fingers laced before her. “What is it?” she asked in heavily accented Alethi. “A sudden illness?”
“No,” Navani said, taken aback. “A discovery. I think I’ve found what the Lady of Wishes was searching for.”
“But of course you can’t share it with anyone but Raboniel herself,” the Fused said, a faintly amused rhythm to her voice.
“Well, I mean…” Navani trailed off.
“I’ll see if I can reach her via spanreed,” the Fused said. “I’ll tell her it is most urgent.”
Storms. They were expecting an attempted distraction from Navani. That thought was reinforced as the Fused glided to a cabinet that had been set up by the wall. She carefully, but slowly, selected a spanreed from the collection stored there.
It was a reverse distraction. They’d known Navani would attempt something like this. But how had they known that she would know that …
She stepped back, her eyes widening as the terrible implications struck her. Kaladin was in serious danger.
* * *
Barefoot and armed with a spear, Kaladin burst out onto the walkway around the atrium, then hurled himself out into the open space eleven stories in the air. Full of Stormlight—hoping it would save him in case this didn’t work—he pointed his hand directly beneath him and engaged Navani’s fabrial.
As soon as it was activated, he lurched to a halt in the air, hovering—his muscles straining as he was basically doing a handstand with one hand. But as long as the counterweight in the distant shaft was held motionless, Kaladin would be as well.
He gripped the bar across his left hand and began to fall downward, almost as if he were Lashed. In fact, he was counting on it seeming like nothing was wrong with his powers—that he was a full Windrunner ready for battle. He wouldn’t be able to keep up such a facade for long, but perhaps it would gain him an advantage.
His descent—at a speed a notch below insane—gave him a view out the enormous atrium window, running all the way up the wall to his right. Strangely, it was dark outside, though Syl had said it was midday. He didn’t have to ask for clarification, as a flash of lightning bespoke the truth. A highstorm. He still found it incredible that he could be so deep within a tower that one could be going on without him realizing it. Even in the best stormshelters, you usually felt the rumbles of thunder or the anger of the wind.
His fall certainly drew attention. Heavenly Ones dressed in long robes turned from their midair meditations. Shouts rose from Regals or singers along the various levels. He wasn’t certain if Leshwi was among them or not, as he passed too quickly.
Using the fabrial, he slowed himself before he hit the ground, then deactivated the device entirely and fell the last five feet or so. Stormlight absorbed that drop, and he startled dozens of people—many of them human—who hadn’t heard the disturbance above. Commerce was now allowed and encouraged by the Fused, and the atrium floor had become a secondary market—though a more transient one than the Breakaway a short distance off. That was where he would find the well.
Kaladin’s luminescence would be starkly visible against the dark window, lit in flashes. The shouts of alarm above were swallowed in the voluminous atrium as Kaladin oriented himself, then ran for a stack of crates. He took a few steps up them to launch into the air some ten feet high, then he pointed his left hand and engaged Navani’s device.
He flew like a Windrunner, his body upright, left arm held at chest height, elbow bent. It might look like he was using Lashings. Though Windrunners sometimes dove and flew headfirst like they were swimming, just as often they would fly “standing” up straight—like he did now.
He did tuck his legs up as he went soaring over the heads of the people, who ducked. Syl zipped along beside him, imitating a stormcloud. People cried out, surprised—but also excited—and Kaladin worried about what he was showing them. He didn’t want to inspire a revolt that would get hundreds killed.
The best he could hope for was to get in, destroy the fabrial, and get out alive. That goal whispered of a much larger problem. Navani had said there were four nodes. Today,
he’d try to destroy the third. At this rate, the last one would fall in a few days, and then what?
He pushed that thought out of his mind as he flew along the top of a corridor, inches from the textured stone ceiling. He didn’t have time for second-guessing, or for dwelling on the crippling darkness and anxiety that continued to scratch at his mind. He had to ignore that, then deal with the effects later. Exactly as he’d been doing far too long now.
“Watch for an ambush,” he told Syl as they burst from the corridor and into the Breakaway market. This large room, truly cavernous, was four stories high and packed with shops along the ground. Many were along roadways that Navani—reluctantly adapting to the will of the people—had laid out in the way they wanted. Other parts were snarls of tents and semipermanent wooden structures.
Central to the layout was the enormous well. Kaladin wasn’t high enough to see over the buildings and make it out, but he knew the location. The Edgedancer clinic was nearby, though it was now staffed by ordinary surgeons. He hoped his parents and little brother had made it safely there, where the other surgeons would hide them. They’d checked a few days back and found his father’s clinic empty.
Storms. If he lost his family …
“The Pursuer!” Syl said. “He was waiting by the other entrance.”
Kaladin reacted just in time, deactivating the fabrial and dropping to the ground, where he tucked and rolled. The relentless Fused appeared from his ribbon of light and dropped to the ground too, but Kaladin rolled to his feet out of the creature’s reach.
“Your death,” the creature growled, crouched among terrified marketgoers, “is growing tedious, Windrunner. How is it you recovered all of your Lashings?”
Kaladin launched himself into the air, activating the device and shooting upward. It jerked his arm painfully, but he’d grown used to that—and Stormlight worked to heal the soreness. He’d also practiced his old one-handed spear grips. Hopefully that training would serve him today.
He wasn’t nearly as maneuverable with this device as he was with Lashings. Indeed, as the Pursuer gave chase as a ribbon, Kaladin’s only real recourse was to cut the device and drop past him. Near the ground, Kaladin pointed his hand to the side and reengaged the device, then went shooting out across the crowd in the general direction of the well. Maybe—
He lurched to a stop as the first of the device’s weights bottomed out. A heartbeat later the Pursuer slammed into him, grabbing him around the neck and hanging on.
“Kaladin!” Syl shouted. “Heavenly Ones! Over a dozen of them! They’re streaming in through the tunnels.”
“Good,” Kaladin said with a grunt, dropping his spear and grappling against the Pursuer with the hand he could move.
“Good?” she asked.
He couldn’t both grapple and twist the dial on his fabrial—the one that would activate the second weight. But he could deactivate the device using one hand, so he did that, dropping them ten feet to the ground. The Pursuer hit first with a grunt. He hung on though, rolling Kaladin to try to pin him.
“Turn … the dial,” Kaladin said to Syl, using both hands to struggle with the Pursuer.
“When you die,” the creature said in his ear, “I will find the next Radiant your spren bonds and kill them too. As payment for the trouble you have given me.”
Syl zipped down to his left wrist and took the shape of an eel, pushing against the raised section at the center of the dial. She could turn a page, lift a leaf. Would she be strong enough to—
Click.
Kaladin twisted in the Pursuer’s grip, barely managing to press his left hand to the creature’s armored chest. Activating the device sent them both moving upward—but slowly. Storms, Kaladin hadn’t thought this through. He’d only be able to lift as much as the counterweight. Apparently he and the Pursuer together were about that heavy.
Fortunately, rather than taking advantage of the slow movement, the Pursuer paused and glanced at Kaladin’s hand, trying to figure out what was happening. So, as they inched upward, Kaladin was able to rip his right hand free. He reached for the scalpel he’d affixed in a makeshift sheath at his belt, then brought it up and rammed it into the Pursuer’s wrist, slicing the tendons there.
The creature immediately let go, vanishing, leaving a husk behind. Once that dropped off of Kaladin, he immediately went darting up into the sky, pulled by his hand in an awkward motion that nearly ripped his arm from its socket.
“This … isn’t that effective, is it?” Syl asked.
“No,” Kaladin said, slowing himself by relaxing his grip. He went to draw in more Stormlight, but realized he still had plenty raging in his veins. That was one advantage of the fabrial; he didn’t use up Light nearly as quickly.
The Heavenly Ones circled him in the air, but kept their distance. Kaladin searched for the Pursuer—the creature had used two bodies. He had a third one to waste before the fight became dangerous for him, so he wouldn’t retreat yet.
There, Kaladin thought, noting the red ribbon weaving between Heavenly Ones. The motions looked timid, uncommitted, and Kaladin took a moment to figure out why. The Pursuer was trying to delay Kaladin; each moment wasted was another one that might lead to the Sibling being corrupted.
Below, the market streets were quickly emptying of people. Kaladin’s fears about them revolting weren’t being realized, fortunately—but he couldn’t spend forever in a standoff with the Pursuer. So he disengaged the device and started falling.
This finally made the Pursuer dart for him, and Kaladin quickly reengaged the device—lurching to a halt. He twisted—though he couldn’t move his left arm—and prepared his knife. This sudden motion made the Pursuer back off, however. Could the creature … be afraid? That seemed implausible.
Kaladin didn’t have time to reflect, as he needed to engage the Pursuer a third time for his plan to work. So he turned away, inviting the attack—and receiving it as the Pursuer committed, darting in and forming a body that grabbed for Kaladin. Despite trying to speed away, Kaladin wasn’t quite able to evade the creature’s grip.
Kaladin was forced to let the Pursuer grab him around the neck as he stabbed the creature in the arm between two plates of carapace, trying to sever the tendons. The monster grunted, his arm around Kaladin’s throat. They continued to soar about thirty feet off the ground. Kaladin ignored the tight grip and maneuvered the scalpel. Perhaps if he could force the Pursuer to waste Voidlight healing …
Yes. Cut enough times to be worried, the Pursuer let go and flew away, seeking a place to recover. Panting, Kaladin used the device to drop to the ground. He landed on an empty street between two tents. People huddled inside both, crowding them.
Kaladin forced himself to jog to where he’d dropped his spear. Heavenly Ones circled above, preparing to attack. Syl moved up beside him, watching them. Two dozen now. Kaladin searched them, hoping …
There. He raised his spear toward Leshwi, who hovered apart from the others, wearing clothing too long for practical battle—even in the air. This event had caught her unaware.
Please, he thought. Accept the fight.
That was his best hope. He couldn’t fight them all at once; he could barely face the Pursuer. If he wanted any chance of getting to the node, he’d need to fight a single opponent—one who wasn’t as relentless as the Pursuer.
He worried he’d already wasted too much time. But if he could get Leshwi to agree to a duel …
She raised her spear toward him.
“Syl,” he said, “go to the well and find the fabrial of the node. It’s probably a sapphire, and should have a glass sphere nearby like the one we saw before.”
“Right,” she said. “It will probably be underwater. That’s what the Sibling said. Near the pump mechanisms. Can … can you swim?”
“Won’t need to, with Stormlight to sustain me and the fabrial to move me,” Kaladin said, lifting his hand and rising into the air above the market. “But the well is likely under heavy guard. Our best chan
ce to destroy the fabrial will be for me to break from this fight and fly straight down to it, then hit the device in one blow before anyone realizes what I’m doing. I’ll need you to guide me.”
“Sounds good.” She hesitated, looking toward him.
“I’ll be all right,” he promised.
She flew off to do as he requested. He might be too late already. He could feel something changing. A greater oppression, a heaviness, was settling upon him. He could only assume it was the result of the Fused corrupting the Sibling.
Well, he couldn’t move in that direction until Syl had the way prepared for him, so this would have to do. He leveled out in the air opposite Leshwi, his hand still held upward above him. The pose made him look overly dramatic, but he tried to appear confident anyway.
Leshwi wore the same body as last time, muscular, tall, wrapped in flowing black and white clothing. Her lance was shorter than normal, perhaps intended for indoor fighting.
Right. Well, he hoped to give a good showing in this fight, long enough to give Syl time to scout for him. So he cut the fabrial and dropped in the air, spinning and giving himself a few seconds of free fall. He felt almost like a real Windrunner—which was dangerous, as he almost tried to sculpt his fall with his hands in the wind. Fortunately, he remembered to engage the device as he neared the rooftops.
He lurched to a stop with a painful jolt, his arm bent, his elbow held close to his side. He had the most stability this way, his muscles keeping him as if he were standing upright with his left arm tucked in to keep his center of gravity close and tight.
He gripped the device’s bar and his left hand tugged him forward, zooming over the roofs of the shops. It made for a pitiful approximation of a true Windrunner maneuver, but Leshwi dove after him anyway, echoing their previous contests.
Eyes watering from the pain in his arm, Kaladin dropped to a rooftop and spun to raise his spear toward Leshwi, gripping it firmly in his right hand—a classic formation grip, with the spear up beside his head. Heal! he thought at his arm as Leshwi slowed above, holding her lance in one hand and hovering.
Rhythm of War (9781429952040) Page 99