Words of Radiance

by Brandon Sanderson

  Neither form could create art. Not well, at least. Mateform was better, but came with a whole host of other problems. Keeping those types focused on anything productive was almost impossible. There were two other forms, though the first—dullform—was one they rarely used. It was a relic of the past, before they’d rediscovered something better.

  That left only nimbleform, a general form that was lithe and careful. They used it for nurturing young and doing the kind of work that required more dexterity than brawn. Few could be spared for that form, though it was more skilled at art.

  The old songs spoke of hundreds of forms. Now they knew of only five. Well, six if one counted slaveform, the form with no spren, no soul, and no song. The form the humans were accustomed to, the ones they called parshmen. It wasn’t really a form at all, however, but a lack of any form.

  Eshonai left the Hall of Art, helm under her arm, leg aching. She passed through the watering square, where nimbles had crafted a large pool from sculpted crem. It caught rain during the riddens of a storm, thick with nourishment. Here, workers carried buckets to fetch water. Their forms were strong, almost like that of warform, though with thinner fingers and no armor. Many nodded to her, though as a general she had no authority over them. She was their last Shardbearer.

  A group of three mateforms—two female, one male—played in the water, splashing at one another. Barely clothed, they dripped with what others would be drinking.

  “You three,” Eshonai snapped at them. “Shouldn’t you be doing something?”

  Plump and vapid, they grinned at Eshonai. “Come in!” one called. “It’s fun!”

  “Out,” Eshonai said, pointing.

  The three muttered to the Rhythm of Irritation as they climbed from the water. Nearby, several workers shook their heads as they passed, one singing to Praise in appreciation of Eshonai. Workers did not like confrontation.

  It was an excuse. Just as those who took on mateform used their form as an excuse for their inane activities. When a worker, Eshonai had trained herself to confront when necessary. She’d even been a mate once, and had proven to herself firsthand that one could indeed be productive as a mate, despite . . . distractions.

  Of course, the rest of her experiences as a mate had been an utter disaster.

  She spoke to Reprimand to the mateforms, her words so passionate that she actually attracted angerspren. She saw them coming from a ways off, drawn by her emotion, moving with an incredible speed—like lightning dancing toward her across the distant stone. The lightning pooled at her feet, turning the stones red.

  That put the fear of the gods into the mateforms, and they ran off to report to the Hall of Art. Hopefully, they wouldn’t end up in an alcove along the way, mating. Her stomach churned at the thought. She had never been able to fathom people who wanted to remain in mateform. Most couples, in order to have a child, would enter the form and sequester themselves away for a year—then would be out of the form as soon after the child’s birth as possible. After all, who would want to go out in public like that?

  The humans did it. That had baffled her during those early days, when she’d spent time learning their language, trading with them. Not only did humans not change forms, they were always ready to mate, always distracted by sexual urges.

  What she wouldn’t have given to be able to go among them unnoticed, to adopt their monochrome skin for a year and walk their highways, see their grand cities. Instead, she and the others had ordered the murder of the Alethi king in a desperate gambit to stop the listener gods from returning.

  Well, that had worked—the Alethi king hadn’t been able to put his plan into action. But now, her people were slowly being destroyed as a result.

  She finally reached the rock formation she called home: a small, collapsed dome. It reminded her of the ones on the edge of the Shattered Plains, actually—the enormous ones that the humans called warcamps. Her people had lived in those, before abandoning them for the security of the Shattered Plains, with its chasms the humans couldn’t jump.

  Her home was much, much smaller, of course. During the early days of living here, Venli had crafted a roof of greatshell carapace and built walls to divide the space into chambers. She’d covered it all over with crem, which had hardened with time, creating something that actually felt like a home instead of a shanty.

  Eshonai set her helm on a table just inside, but left the rest of her armor on. Shardplate just felt right to her. She liked the sensation of strength. It let her know that something was still reliable in the world. And with the power of Shardplate, she could mostly ignore the wound to her leg.

  She ducked through a few rooms, nodding to the people she passed. Venli’s associates were scholars, though no one knew the proper form for true scholarship. Nimbleform was their makeshift substitute for now. Eshonai found her sister beside the window of the farthest chamber. Demid, Venli’s once-mate, sat next to her. Venli had held nimbleform for three years, as long as they’d known of the form, though in Eshonai’s mind’s eye she still saw her sister as a worker, with thicker arms and a stouter torso.

  That was the past. Now, Venli was a slender woman with a thin face, her marblings delicate swirling patterns of red and white. Nimbleform grew long hairstrands, with no carapace helm to block them. Venli’s, a deep red, flowed down to her waist, where they were tied in three places. She wore a robe, drawn tight at the waist and showing a hint of breasts at the chest. This was not mateform, so they were small.

  Venli and her once-mate were close, though their time as mates had produced no children. If they’d gone to the battlefield, they’d have been a warpair. Instead, they were a researchpair, or something. The things they spent their days doing were very un-listener. That was the point. Eshonai’s people could not afford to be what they had been in the past. The days of lounging isolated on these plateaus—singing songs to one another, only occasionally fighting—were over.

  “So?” Venli asked to Curiosity.

  “We won,” Eshonai said, leaning back against the wall and folding her arms with a clink of Shardplate. “The gemheart is ours. We will continue to eat.”

  “That is well,” Venli said. “And your human?”

  “Dalinar Kholin. He did not come to this battle.”

  “He will not face you again,” Venli said. “You nearly killed him last time.” She said it to the Rhythm of Amusement as she rose, picking up a piece of paper—they made it from dried rockbud pulp following a harvest—which she handed to her once-mate. Looking it over, he nodded and began making notes on his own sheet.

  That paper required precious time and resources to make, but Venli insisted the reward would be worth the effort. She’d better be right.

  Venli regarded Eshonai. She had keen eyes—glassy and dark, like those of all listeners. Venli’s always seemed to have an extra depth of secret knowledge to them. In the right light, they had a violet cast.

  “What would you do, Sister?” Venli asked. “If you and this Kholin were actually able to stop trying to kill each other long enough to have a conversation?”

  “I’d sue for peace.”

  “We murdered his brother,” Venli said. “We slaughtered King Gavilar on a night when he’d invited us into his home. That is not something the Alethi will forget, or forgive.”

  Eshonai unfolded her arms and flexed a gauntleted hand. That night. A desperate plan, made between herself and five others. She had been part of it despite her youth, because of her knowledge of the humans. All had voted the same.

  Kill the man. Kill him, and risk destruction. For if he had lived to do what he told them that night, all would have been lost. The others who had made that decision with her were dead now.

  “I have discovered the secret of stormform,” Venli said.

  “What?” Eshonai stood up straight. “You were to be working on a form to help! A form for diplomats, or for scholars.”

  “Those will not save us,” Venli said to Amusement. “If we wish to deal with the hu
mans, we will need the ancient powers.”

  “Venli,” Eshonai said, grabbing her sister by the arm. “Our gods!”

  Venli didn’t flinch. “The humans have Surgebinders.”

  “Perhaps not. It could have been an Honorblade.”

  “You fought him. Was it an Honorblade that struck you, wounded your leg, sent you limping?”

  “I . . .” Her leg ached.

  “We don’t know which of the songs are true,” Venli said. Though she said it to Resolve, she sounded tired, and she drew exhaustionspren. They came with a sound like wind, blowing in through the windows and doors like jets of translucent vapor before becoming stronger, more visible, and spinning around her head like swirls of steam.

  My poor sister. She works herself as hard as the soldiers do.

  “If the Surgebinders have returned,” Venli continued, “we must strive for something meaningful, something that can ensure our freedom. The forms of power, Eshonai . . .” She glanced at Eshonai’s hand, still on her arm. “At least sit and listen. And stop looming like a mountain.”

  Eshonai removed her fingers, but did not sit. Her Shardplate’s weight would break a chair. Instead, she leaned forward, inspecting the table full of papers.

  Venli had invented the script herself. They’d learned that concept from the humans—memorizing songs was good, but not perfect, even when you had the rhythms to guide you. Information stored on pages was more practical, especially for research.

  Eshonai had taught herself the script, but reading was still difficult for her. She did not have much time to practice.

  “So . . . stormform?” Eshonai said.

  “Enough people of that form,” Venli said, “could control a highstorm, or even summon one.”

  “I remember the song that speaks of this form,” Eshonai said. “It was a thing of the gods.”

  “Most of the forms are related to them in some way,” Venli said. “Can we really trust the accuracy of words first sung so long ago? When those songs were memorized, our people were mostly dullform.”

  It was a form of low intelligence, low capacity. They used it now to spy on the humans. Once, it and mateform had been the only forms her people had known.

  Demid shuffled some of the pages, moving a stack. “Venli is right, Eshonai. This is a risk we must take.”

  “We could negotiate with the Alethi,” Eshonai said.

  “To what end?” Venli said, again to Skepticism, her exhaustionspren finally fading, the spren spinning away to search out more fresh sources of emotion. “Eshonai, you keep saying you want to negotiate. I think it is because you are fascinated by humans. You think they’ll let you go freely among them? A person they see as having the form of a rebellious slave?”

  “Centuries ago,” Demid said, “we escaped both our gods and the humans. Our ancestors left behind civilization, power, and might in order to secure freedom. I would not give that up, Eshonai. Stormform. With it, we can destroy the Alethi army.”

  “With them gone,” Venli said, “you can return to exploration. No responsibility—you could travel, make your maps, discover places no person has ever seen.”

  “What I want for myself is meaningless,” Eshonai said to Reprimand, “so long as we are all in danger of destruction.” She scanned the specks on the page, scribbles of songs. Songs without music, written out as they were. Their souls stripped away.

  Could the listeners’ salvation really be in something so terrible? Venli and her team had spent five years recording all of the songs, learning the nuances from the elderly, capturing them in these pages. Through collaboration, research, and deep thought, they had discovered nimbleform.

  “It is the only way,” Venli said to Peace. “We will bring this to the Five, Eshonai. I would have you on our side.”

  “I . . . I will consider.”

  Ym carefully trimmed the wood from the side of the small block. He held it up to the spherelight beside his bench, pinching his spectacles by the rim and holding them closer to his eyes.

  Such delightful inventions, spectacles. To live was to be a fragment of the cosmere that was experiencing itself. How could he properly experience if he couldn’t see? The Azish man who had first created these devices was long deceased, and Ym had submitted a proposal that he be considered one of the Honored Dead.

  Ym lowered the piece of wood and continued to carve it, carefully whittling off the front to form a curve. Some of his colleagues bought their lasts—the wooden forms around which a cobbler built his shoes—from carpenters, but Ym had been taught to make his own. That was the old way, the way it had been done for centuries. If something had been done one way for such a long time, he figured there was probably a good reason.

  Behind him stood the shadowed cubbies of a cobbler’s shop, the toes of dozens of shoes peeking out like the noses of eels in their holes. These were test shoes, used to judge size, choose materials, and decide styles so he could construct the perfect shoe to fit the foot and character of the individual. A fitting could take quite a while, assuming you did it properly.

  Something moved in the dimness to his right. Ym glanced in that direction, but didn’t change his posture. The spren had been coming more often lately—specks of light, like those from a piece of crystal suspended in a sunbeam. He did not know its type, as he had never seen one like it before.

  It moved across the surface of the workbench, slinking closer. When it stopped, light crept upward from it, like small plants growing or climbing from their burrows. When it moved again, those withdrew.

  Ym returned to his sculpting. “It will be for making a shoe.”

  The evening shop was quiet save for the scraping of his knife on wood.

  “Sh-shoe . . . ?” a voice asked. Like that of a young woman, soft, with a kind of chiming musicality to it.

  “Yes, my friend,” he said. “A shoe for young children. I find myself in need of those more and more these days.”

  “Shoe,” the spren said. “For ch-children. Little people.”

  Ym brushed wooden scraps off the bench for later sweeping, then set the last on the bench near the spren. It shied away, like a reflection off a mirror—translucent, really just a shimmer of light.

  He withdrew his hand and waited. The spren inched forward—tentative, like a cremling creeping out of its crack after a storm. It stopped, and light grew upward from it in the shape of tiny sprouts. Such an odd sight.

  “You are an interesting experience, my friend,” Ym said as the shimmer of light moved onto the last itself. “One in which I am honored to participate.”

  “I . . .” the spren said. “I . . .” The spren’s form shook suddenly, then grew more intense, like light being focused. “He comes.”

  Ym stood up, suddenly anxious. Something moved on the street outside. Was it that one? That watcher, in the military coat?

  But no, it was just a child, peering in through the open door. Ym smiled, opening his drawer of spheres and letting more light into the room. The child shied back, just as the spren had.

  The spren had vanished somewhere. It did that when others drew near.

  “No need to fear,” Ym said, settling back down on his stool. “Come in. Let me get a look at you.”

  The dirty young urchin peered back in. He wore only a ragged pair of trousers, no shirt, though that was common here in Iri, where both days and nights were usually warm.

  The poor child’s feet were dirty and scraped.

  “Now,” Ym said, “that won’t do. Come, young one, settle down. Let’s get something on those feet.” He moved out one of his smaller stools.

  “They say you don’t charge nothin’,” the boy said, not moving.

  “They are quite wrong,” Ym said. “But I think you will find my cost bearable.”

  “Don’t have no spheres.”

  “No spheres are needed. Your payment will be your story. Your experiences. I would hear them.”

  “They said you was strange,” the boy said, finally walking into
the shop.

  “They were right,” Ym said, patting the stool.

  The urchin stepped timidly up to the stool, walking with a limp he tried to hide. He was Iriali, though the grime darkened his skin and hair, both of which were golden. The skin less so—you needed the light to see it right—but the hair certainly. It was the mark of their people.

  Ym motioned for the child to raise his good foot, then got out a washcloth, wetted it, and cleaned away the grime. He wasn’t about to do a fitting on feet so dirty. Noticeably, the boy tucked back the foot he’d limped on, as if trying to hide that it had a rag wrapped around it.

  “So,” Ym said, “your story?”

  “You’re old,” the boy said. “Older than anyone I know. Grandpa old. You must know everythin’ already. Why do you want to hear from me?”

  “It is one of my quirks,” Ym said. “Come now. Let’s hear it.”

  The boy huffed, but talked. Briefly. That wasn’t uncommon. He wanted to hold his story to himself. Slowly, with careful questions, Ym pried the story free. The boy was the son of a whore, and had been kicked out as soon as he could fend for himself. That had been three years ago, the boy thought. He was probably eight now.

  As he listened, Ym cleaned the first foot, then clipped and filed the nails. Once done, he motioned for the other foot.

  The boy reluctantly lifted it up. Ym undid the rag, and found a nasty cut on the bottom of that foot. It was already infected, crawling with rotspren, tiny motes of red.

  Ym hesitated.

  “Needed to get some shoes,” the urchin said, looking the other way. “Can’t keep on without ’em.”

  The rip in the skin was jagged. Done climbing over a fence, perhaps? Ym thought.

  The boy looked at him, feigning nonchalance. A wound like this would slow an urchin down terribly, which on the streets could easily mean death. Ym knew that all too well.

  He looked up at the boy, noting the shadow of worry in those little eyes. The infection had spread up the leg.