Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Sanderson, Brandon

  Dabbid led them the rest of the way. He felt more anxious now. Was he too late? Had Kaladin died while he was gone? Was he too slow to help? Too different to have realized earlier what he should have done?

  Dabbid led them to the place on the eleventh floor, but the door had stopped working. It had been too long since Kaladin infused it. They had Lift though, and when she pressed her hand to the gemstone, the door opened.

  It smelled of sweat and blood in there. Dabbid hurried past the place where Teft lay unconscious, reaching Kaladin. On the floor, wrapped in blankets. Thrashing. Still alive.

  Still alive.

  “Storms,” Lift said, stepping over. Kaladin’s face was coated in sweat. His teeth were gritted, his eyes squeezed shut. He flailed in his blankets, growling softly. Dabbid had cut off his shirt to look for wounds. While there were scabs all along Kaladin’s side, the worst part was the infection. It spread across the skin from the cut. A violent redness. Hateful, covered in little rotspren.

  Lift stepped back, wrapping her arms around herself. “Storms.”

  “I’ve … never seen a fever like that,” Rlain said, towering over the two of them. Did he know how large he was in warform? “Have you?”

  Lift shook her head.

  “Please,” Dabbid said. “Please help.”

  Lift held out her hand, palm forward, and burst alight with power. Stormlight rose from her skin like white smoke, and she knelt. She shied away as Kaladin thrashed again, then she lunged forward and pressed her hand to his chest.

  The redness immediately retreated, and the rotspren fled, as if they couldn’t stand the presence of her touch. Kaladin’s back arched. He was hurting!

  Then he collapsed into the blankets. Lift pressed her other hand against his side, and the wound continued to heal, the redness fleeing. She furrowed her brow and bit her lip. Dabbid did the same. Maybe it would help.

  She pushed so much Stormlight into Kaladin he started glowing himself. When she sat back, the scabs flaked off his side, leaving smooth new skin.

  “That … was hard,” she whispered. “Even harder than when I saved Gawx.” She wiped her brow. “I’m sweating.”

  “Thank you,” Dabbid said, taking her hand.

  “Ew,” she said. Oh. It was the hand she’d just used to wipe her head.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She shrugged. “My awesomeness—the slippery part—doesn’t work anymore. But this does. Wonder why.”

  Rlain went to close the door. Dabbid tried to make Kaladin comfortable, bunching up a blanket to make a pillow. His friend was still unconscious, but sleeping peacefully now.

  “I have a lot of questions, Dabbid,” Rlain said. “First off, why have you been keeping quiet when you could speak?”

  “I…”

  “He don’t gotta say nothin’ if he don’t wanna,” Lift said. She’d found their rations already, and was eating. Wow.

  “He’s Bridge Four,” Rlain said. “We’re family. Family doesn’t lie to one another.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dabbid said softly. “I just … didn’t want you to know I’m … different.”

  “We’re all different,” Rlain said, folding his arms. Storms, he was so frightening in carapace armor.

  “I’m more different,” Dabbid said. “I … I was born different.”

  “You mean born … you know … an idiot?” Rlain said.

  Dabbid winced. He hated that word, though Rlain didn’t use it hatefully. It was just a word to him.

  “Touched,” Lift said. “I’ve known lotsa kids like him on the street. They don’t think the same way as everyone else. It happens.”

  “It happens,” Dabbid agreed. “It happened to me. But you didn’t know. So you couldn’t treat me like I was … wrong. You know about being extra different, right Rlain?”

  “I guess I do,” he said. “You shouldn’t feel that you have to hide what you are though.”

  “I will be fixed,” Dabbid said, “when I get a spren. Becoming Radiant will heal me, because my brain isn’t supposed to be like this. I was hurt after I was born. The tower said so.”

  “The tower?” Rlain asked.

  “The tower can talk,” Lift said. “It’s a spren.”

  “And it promised to heal you, Dabbid?”

  He nodded. Though it hadn’t said that in so many words. He wondered now if it had been lying.

  The queen hadn’t been pleased by how he’d snuck around, doing tasks for the Sibling. Maybe he should be more suspicious. Even of spren.

  But someday … when he was Radiant …

  Rlain dug out a new set of blankets for Kaladin from the pile. Dabbid had washed those earlier, as he’d wanted something to do. They got Kaladin untangled from the sweaty ones, then wrapped him in—

  “What in storming Damnation are you fools doing?” a gruff voice said from behind them.

  Dabbid froze. Then turned around slowly. Lift was perched on the end of Teft’s shelf, absently munching on a ration bar—Soulcast grain, cooked and pressed. She was pulling her hand back from Teft’s exposed foot, Stormlight curling off her body.

  Teft, in turn, was pushing himself up to sit.

  Teft was awake.

  Dabbid let out a whoop and leaped up. Rlain just started humming like he did sometimes.

  “What?” Lift said. “Wasn’t I supposed to heal the stinky one too?”

  “Stinky?” Teft said, looking under his blanket. “Where in Damnation are my clothes? What happened to me? We were at the tavern, right? Storms, my head.”

  “You can wake the Radiants?” Rlain asked, rushing over and seizing Lift by the arms. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Huh?” she said. “Look, shellhead, I’ve been in a stormin’ cage. My spren vanished, said he was going to try to get help, and I ain’t heard from him since. Bet he joined the Voidbringers, storming traitor. I don’t know what’s been goin’ on in the tower. What’s wrong with the others?”

  “In a cage?” Teft said. “Why? And where are my storming clothes?”

  “There’s a lot to explain, Teft,” Rlain said. “The tower is occupied by the enemy and…” He stopped, then frowned, glancing toward Kaladin.

  Kaladin … Kaladin was stirring. They all hushed. Even Teft. Kaladin blinked and opened his eyes. He grew tense, then saw Rlain and Dabbid and relaxed, taking a deep breath.

  “Is this a dream?” he whispered. “Or am I finally awake?”

  “You’re awake, Kal,” Rlain said, kneeling to take Kaladin by the shoulder. “Thank the purest tones. You’re awake. It worked.”

  Dabbid stepped back as Teft said something, causing Kaladin to sit up—then laugh in joy. It had worked.

  Dabbid wasn’t Radiant. He wasn’t brave. He wasn’t smart. But today he hadn’t been stupid either.

  Once, Kaladin had pulled Dabbid out of Damnation itself. It felt good to return that act of heroism with a small one of his own.

  A YEAR AND A HALF AGO

  As the war with the humans progressed, Venli became increasingly certain she’d made the correct decision.

  How could her people, after generations of stagnation, hope to stand by themselves in the world? If recent reports were true, the humans had Surgebinders again, like those spoken of in the songs. Ulim was right. A bigger war than this was coming. Venli’s people needed to be prepared.

  Venli stood with folded arms, attuned to Confidence as she watched a listener warband return from a raid. Eshonai and her soldiers had won the day, and they brought a large gemheart with them. Eshonai herself delivered it up to Denshil, their head of farming.

  Her warriors didn’t look like victors. Bloody, wounded, their ancient weapons sagging in their grips as if weighted by groundspren. More than a few of the soldiers walked alone. Warpairs who had lost a member.

  Venli watched with hidden glee. Surely they were close to breaking. If she could bring them a form of power … would they accept it? Venli remembered her hesitance, and weakness, when she’d s
tarted along this path years ago. She’d been technically a youth then, though fully grown. Now she was an adult. She saw as an adult did.

  She turned and cut through a side street of the ancient city, passing large crem-covered walls like tall ridges of natural stone. You’d have to cut deep with a Shardblade to find the worked stone at the heart.

  This was the more direct way, so she was waiting as Denshil walked past with the gemstone. He was scrawny even when wearing workform, and had a pattern of black and red skin that looked like true marblework, all rough and coarse. He jumped as he saw Venli.

  “What are you doing,” he hissed to Anxiety as she walked along beside him.

  “Acting naturally,” she said. “I’m head of our scholars. It’s normal for me to visit our farmers and see how their work is progressing.”

  He still acted nervous, but at least he attuned Peace as they walked. It didn’t matter. They passed few listeners on the streets. All who weren’t absolutely needed as farmers, caretakers, or other essential workers had joined Eshonai.

  In a perfect bit of poetry, this ensured that the bravest of the listeners—those most likely to resist Venli when she brought them stormform—fought on the front lines each day, dying. Each corpse brought Venli one step closer to her goal.

  She’d stopped pretending this was only about protecting her people. As she’d grown into herself and become more confident, she’d decided what she truly wanted. True freedom—with the power to make certain she’d never have to be dependent upon anyone else, listener or spren. True freedom couldn’t exist while someone else had power over you.

  So yes, her work was about helping her people, in part. But deep within her—where the rhythms began—Venli promised herself that she would be the one who obtained the most freedom.

  “How goes your work?” Venli asked to Confidence.

  Denshil’s rhythm slipped to Anxiety again. Foolish farmer. He’d better not give them away.

  “The others believe me,” he said softly, “and they should. I’m not saying anything that’s a lie, really. If we cut these gemhearts like the humans do, they hold more Stormlight. But I don’t mention the extra bits I cut off before delivering the faceted stone to the fields.…”

  “How much have you saved?”

  “Several hundred gemstones.”

  “I need more,” Venli said.

  He blatantly attuned Irritation. “More? What crazy rhythm are you listening to?”

  “We need one for every listener in the city.”

  “I can’t,” he said. “If you—”

  “You can,” Venli said to Reprimand. “And you will. Cut the gemstones smaller. Give less to the fields.”

  “And if we end up starving because of it? Gemstones break, you know, when you sing to them. We will run out.”

  “We won’t live long enough to starve, Denshil. Not if the humans get here. Not if they find your children and take away their songs…”

  The malen attuned Longing immediately. The listeners had few children these days. Most had stopped taking mateform years ago, and they had never been as fecund a people as the humans apparently were.

  “Think how you could improve,” Venli said. “For them, Denshil. For your daughter.”

  “We should bring this to the Five,” he said.

  “We will. You can watch me bring the proposal to them. This will be done properly—you and I are simply preparing the way.”

  He nodded, and Venli let him rush on ahead to the ancient building where he practiced gem cutting—an art Ulim had taught him.

  Say a name on the breeze and it will return, she thought, noting a red light glowing from within an old abandoned building. They’d had to cut the window out to get to the structure inside. She strolled over, and Ulim stepped out onto the windowsill—invisible to everyone but those he chose.

  “You’ve learned to lie very well,” he said to Subservience.

  “I have,” she said. “Are we ready?”

  “Close,” he said. “I feel the storm on the other side. I think it’s nearly here.”

  “You think?” Venli demanded.

  “I can’t see into Shadesmar,” he snapped to Derision.

  She didn’t quite understand his explanations of what was happening. But she knew a storm was mounting in Shadesmar. In fact, the storm had been building for generations—growing in fury, intensity. It barred the way to Damnation.

  That storm was where Ulim had originally come from. There were also thousands of another kind of spren in the storm: stormspren. Mindless things like windspren or flamespren.

  Venli had to find a way to pull those stormspren across and capture them. To that end, a large portion of the roiling storm had been broken off by the god of gods, the ancient one called Odium. This storm was his strength, his essence. Over painful months, he’d moved the storm across the landscape—unseen—until it arrived here. Kind of. Almost.

  “What will happen,” Venli asked to Curiosity, “when my storm comes to this world?”

  “Your storm?”

  “I am the one who summons it, spren,” she said. “It is mine.”

  “Sure, sure,” he said. A little too quickly, and with too many hand gestures. He had grown obsequious over the last few years—and liked to pretend that his betrayal of her in the Kholinar palace had never happened.

  “When this storm comes, you will serve me,” Venli said.

  “I serve you now.”

  “Barely. Promise it. You’ll serve me.”

  “I will serve,” he said. “I promise it, Venli. But we have to bring the stormspren to this side first. And persuade the listeners to take the forms.”

  “The second will not be a problem.”

  “You’re too certain about that,” he said. “Remember, they killed the Alethi king to prevent this from happening. Traitors.”

  He got hung up on that idea. Though he’d been the one to whisper about the location of the slave with the Honorblade—and he’d agreed to help start a war to make her people desperate—he could not get over the reasoning her people had used. Ulim hadn’t found out about Eshonai’s experience with King Gavilar until weeks later, and he’d been livid. How dare the listeners do exactly what he wanted, but for the wrong reason!

  Foolish little spren. Venli attuned Skepticism—and almost felt something different, something more. A better rhythm. Right outside her reach.

  “Focus less on that,” Venli said. “And more on your duties.”

  “Yes, Venli,” he said, voice cooing as he spoke to Subservience. “You’re going to be amazed by the power you get from stormform. And the massive storm you’ll bring through? It will be unlike anything the world has ever seen. Odium’s raw power, blowing across the world in the wrong direction. It will devastate the humans, leave them broken and easily conquered. Ripe for your domination, Venli.”

  “Enough,” she said. “Don’t sell it so hard, Ulim. I’m not the child you found when you first arrived here. Do your job, and get the storm into position. I’ll capture the stormspren.”

  “How, though?”

  How. “They are the spren of storms, right?”

  “Well, a storm,” Ulim said. “In the past, they mostly spent their time inside gemhearts. Odium would directly bless the singer, making them a kind of royalty. They didn’t really wander about much.”

  Royalty? She liked the sound of that. She smiled, imagining how Eshonai would act toward her then.

  “My scholars are confident,” Venli said. “From what you’ve told them, and the experiments we’ve done with other kinds of spren, we think if we can gather a small collection of stormspren in gemstones, others will get pulled through more easily.”

  “But we need that initial seed!” Ulim said. “How?”

  She nodded to the sky, where her imaginings had brought forth a gloryspren. An enormous brilliant sphere, with wings along the sides. “Those pop in when we think the proper thoughts. Feel the right things. So, what brings stormspren?”
<
br />   “A storm…” Ulim said. “It might work. Worth trying.”

  They’d have to experiment. Even with his help, it had taken several tries to figure out nimbleform—and that was a relatively easy form. Still, she was pleased with their progress. Yes, it had taken far, far longer than she’d anticipated. But over those many years, she’d become the person she was now. Confident, like her younger self had never been.

  She turned to make her way toward where her scholars studied the songs, written in the script she’d devised. Unfortunately, she soon spotted a tall, armored figure heading her direction. Venli immediately turned down a side road, but Eshonai called to her. Venli attuned Irritation. Eshonai would follow her if she hurried on, so she slowed and turned.

  Venli’s sister looked so strange in Shardplate. It … well, it fit her. It supernaturally molded to her form, making space for her carapace, shaping itself to her figure, but it was more than that. To Venli, some of the warforms seemed like they were playing pretend—their faces didn’t match their new shape. Not Eshonai. Eshonai looked like a soldier, with a wider neck, powerful jaw and head, and enormous hands.

  Venli regretted encouraging Eshonai to visit the former Shardbearer. She hadn’t expected that years later, she’d feel dwarfed by her sister. Though much about Venli’s life was enviable now—she had position, friends, and responsibility—there was a part of her that wished she’d been able to obtain this without Eshonai also gaining high station.

  “What?” Venli asked to Irritation. “I have work to do today, Eshonai, and—”

  “It’s Mother,” Eshonai said.

  Venli immediately attuned the Terrors. “What about her? What’s wrong?”

  Eshonai attuned Resolve and led Venli quietly to their mother’s home on the outskirts of town. A small structure, but solitary, with plenty of room for gardening projects.

  Their mother wasn’t in the garden, working on her shalebark. She was inside lying on a hard cot, her head wrapped in a bandage. One of Venli’s scholars—Mikaim, who was their surgeon—stepped away from the cot. “It’s not bad,” she said. “Head wounds can be frightful, but it was little more than a scrape. The bigger worry is how afraid she was. I gave her something to help her sleep.”