Words of Radiance

by Brandon Sanderson

  So she fell asleep.

  This act of great villainy went beyond the impudence which had hitherto been ascribed to the orders; as the fighting was particularly intense at this time, many attributed this act to a sense of inherent betrayal; and after they withdrew, about two thousand made assault upon them, destroying much of the membership; but this was only nine of the ten, as one said they would not abandon their arms and flee, but instead entertained great subterfuge at the expense of the other nine.

  —From Words of Radiance, chapter 38, page 20

  Kaladin rested his fingers on the chasm wall as Bridge Seventeen formed up behind him.

  He remembered being frightened of these chasms when he first descended into them. He had feared that heavy rains would cause a flash flood while his men were scavenging. He was a little surprised Gaz hadn’t found a way to “accidentally” get Bridge Four assigned to chasm duty on the day of a highstorm.

  Bridge Four had embraced its punishment, claiming these pits. Kaladin was startled to realize that coming down here felt more like coming home than returning to Hearthstone and his parents would have. The chasms were his.

  “The lads are ready, sir,” Teft said, stepping up beside him.

  “Where were you the other night?” Kaladin asked, looking up toward the crack of open sky above.

  “I was off duty, sir,” Teft said. “Went to see what I could find in the market. Do I need to report every little thing I do?”

  “You went to the market,” Kaladin said, “in a highstorm?”

  “Time may have gotten away from me for a breath or two . . .” Teft said, looking away.

  Kaladin wanted to press further, but Teft was entitled to his privacy. They’re not bridgemen anymore. They don’t have to spend all of their time together. They’ll start having lives again.

  He wanted to encourage that. Still, it was disturbing. If he didn’t know where they all were, how could he make sure they were all safe?

  He turned around to regard Bridge Seventeen—a motley crew. Some had been slaves, purchased for the bridges. Others had been criminals, though the crimes punishable by bridge duty in Sadeas’s army could be practically anything. Falling into debt, insulting an officer, fighting.

  “You,” Kaladin said to the men, “are Bridge Seventeen, under the command of Sergeant Pitt. You are not soldiers. You may wear the uniforms, but they don’t fit you yet. You’re playing dress-up. We’re going to change that.”

  The men shuffled and looked about. Though Teft had been working with them and the other crews for weeks now, these didn’t yet see themselves as soldiers. As long as that was true, they’d hold those spears at awkward angles, look around lazily when being addressed, and shuffle in line.

  “The chasms are mine,” Kaladin said. “I give you leave to practice here. Sergeant Pitt!”

  “Yes, sir!” Pitt said, standing at attention.

  “This is a sloppy mess of stormleavings you’ve got to work with, but I’ve seen worse.”

  “I find that hard to believe, sir!”

  “Believe it,” Kaladin said, looking over the men. “I was in Bridge Four. Lieutenant Teft, they’re yours. Make them sweat.”

  “Aye, sir,” Teft said. He began to call out orders as Kaladin picked up his spear and made his way farther down the chasms. It would be slow going, getting all twenty crews into shape, but at least Teft had successfully trained the sergeants. Heralds send that the same training worked on the common men.

  Kaladin wished he could explain, even to himself, why he felt so anxious about getting these men ready. He felt he was racing toward something. Though what, he didn’t know. That writing on the wall . . . Storms, it had him on edge. Thirty-seven days.

  He passed Syl sitting on the frond of a frillbloom growing from the wall. It pulled closed at Kaladin’s approach. She didn’t notice, but remained sitting in the air.

  “What is it that you want, Kaladin?” she asked.

  “To keep my men alive,” he said immediately.

  “No,” Syl said, “that was what you wanted.”

  “You’re saying I don’t want them to be safe?”

  She slid down onto his shoulder, moving like a stiff breeze had blown her. She crossed her legs, sitting ladylike, skirt rippling as he walked.

  “In Bridge Four, you dedicated everything you had to saving them,” Syl said. “Well, they’re saved. You can’t go about protecting every one like a . . . um . . . Like a . . .”

  “Father kurl watches over his eggs?”

  “Exactly!” She paused. “What’s a kurl?”

  “A crustacean,” Kaladin said, “about the size of a small axehound. Looks kind of like a cross between a crab and a tortoise.”

  “Ooooo . . .” Syl said. “I wanna see one!”

  “They don’t live out here.”

  Kaladin walked with his eyes forward, so she poked him in the neck until he looked at her. Then she rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. “So you admit that your men are relatively safe,” she said. “That means you haven’t really answered my question. What do you want?”

  He passed piles of bones and wood, overgrown with moss. On one pile, rotspren and lifespren spun about one another, little motes of red and green glowing around the vines that sprouted incongruously from the mass of death.

  “I want to beat that assassin,” Kaladin said, surprised by how vehemently he felt it.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s my job to protect Dalinar.”

  Syl shook her head. “That’s not it.”

  “What? You think you’ve gotten that good at reading human intentions?”

  “Not all humans. Just you.”

  Kaladin grunted, stepping carefully around the edge of a dark pool. He’d rather not spend the rest of the day with soaked boots. These new ones didn’t hold out the water as well as they should.

  “Maybe,” he said, “I want to beat that assassin because this is all his fault. If he hadn’t killed Gavilar, Tien wouldn’t have been drafted, and I wouldn’t have followed him. Tien wouldn’t have died.”

  “And you don’t think Roshone would have found another way of getting back at your father?”

  Roshone was the citylord of Kaladin’s hometown back in Alethkar. Sending Tien into the army had been an act of petty vengeance on his part, a way to get back at Kaladin’s father for not being a good enough surgeon to save Roshone’s son.

  “He probably would have done something else,” Kaladin admitted. “Still, that assassin deserves to die.”

  He heard the others before he reached them, their voices echoing down the cavernous chasm bottom.

  “What I’m trying to explain,” one said, “is that nobody seems to be asking the right questions.” Sigzil’s voice, with his elevated Azish accent. “We call the Parshendi savages, and everyone says they hadn’t ever met people until that day they encountered the Alethi expedition. If those things are true, then what storm brought them a Shin assassin? A Shin assassin who can Surgebind, no less.”

  Kaladin stepped into the light of their spheres sprinkled about on the floor of the chasm, which had been cleared of debris since the last time Kaladin had been here. Sigzil, Rock, and Lopen sat on boulders, waiting for him.

  “Are you implying that the Assassin in White never really worked for the Parshendi?” Kaladin asked. “Or are you implying that the Parshendi lied about being as isolated as they claimed?”

  “I’m not implying anything,” Sigzil said, turning toward Kaladin. “My master trained me to ask questions, so I’m asking them. Something doesn’t make sense about this whole matter. The Shin are extremely xenophobic. They rarely leave their lands, and you never find them working as mercenaries. Now this one goes about assassinating kings? With a Shardblade? Is he still working for the Parshendi? If so, why did they wait so long to unleash him against us again?”

  “Does it matter who he’s working for?” Kaladin asked, sucking in Stormlight.

  “Of course it does,” Sigzil said
.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s a question,” he said, as if offended. “Besides, discovering his true employer might give us a clue to their goal, and knowing that might help us defeat him.”

  Kaladin smiled, then tried to run up the wall.

  After falling to the ground, ending up flat on his back, he sighed.

  Rock’s head leaned in over him. “Is fun to watch,” he said. “But this thing, you are certain she can work?”

  “The assassin walked on the ceiling,” Kaladin said.

  “Are you sure he wasn’t just doing what we did?” Sigzil asked skeptically. “Using the Stormlight to stick one object to another? He could have sprayed the ceiling with Stormlight, then jumped up into it to stick there.”

  “No,” Kaladin said, Stormlight escaping his lips. “He jumped up and landed on the ceiling. Then he ran down the wall and sent Adolin to the ceiling somehow. The prince didn’t stick there, he fell that way.” Kaladin watched his Stormlight rise and evaporate. “At the end of it all, the assassin . . . he flew away.”

  “Ha!” Lopen said from his rock perch. “I knew it. When we have this figured out, the king of all Herdaz, he will say to me, ‘Lopen, you are glowing, and this is impressive. But you can also fly. For this, you may marry my daughter.’”

  “The king of Herdaz doesn’t have a daughter,” Sigzil said.

  “He doesn’t? I have been lied to all this time!”

  “You don’t know your royal family?” Kaladin asked, sitting up.

  “Gon, I haven’t been to Herdaz since I was a baby. There are as many Herdazians in Alethkar and Jah Keved these days as there are in our homeland. Flick my sparks, I’m practically an Alethi! Only not so tall and not so grouchy.”

  Rock gave Kaladin a hand and pulled him to his feet. Syl had taken a perch on the wall.

  “Do you know how this works?” Kaladin asked her.

  She shook her head.

  “But the assassin is a Windrunner,” Kaladin said.

  “I think?” Syl said. “Something like you? Maybe?” She shrugged.

  Sigzil followed the direction that Kaladin was looking. “I wish I could see it,” he mumbled. “It would be a— Gah!” He jumped backward, pointing. “It looks like a little person!”

  Kaladin raised an eyebrow toward Syl.

  “I like him,” she said. “Also, Sigzil, I’m a ‘she’ and not an ‘it,’ thank you very much.”

  “Spren have genders?” Sigzil asked, amazed.

  “Of course,” she said. “Though, technically, it probably has something to do with the way people view us. Personification of the forces of nature or some similar gobbletyblarthy.”

  “Doesn’t that bother you?” Kaladin asked. “That you might be a creation of human perception?”

  “You’re a creation of your parents. Who cares how we were born? I can think. That’s good enough.” She grinned in a mischievous way, then zipped down as a ribbon of light toward Sigzil, who had settled down on a rock with a stunned expression. She stopped right in front of him, returned to the form of a young woman, then leaned in and made her face look exactly like his.

  “Gah!” Sigzil cried again, scrambling away, making her giggle and change her face back.

  Sigzil looked toward Kaladin. “She talks . . . She talks like a real person.” He raised a hand to his head. “The stories say the Nightwatcher might be capable of that. . . . Powerful spren. Vast spren.”

  “Is he calling me vast?” Syl said, cocking her head to the side. “Not sure what I think of that.”

  “Sigzil,” Kaladin said, “could the Windrunners fly?”

  The man gingerly sat back down, still staring at Syl. “Stories and lore aren’t my specialty,” he said. “I tell of different places, to make the world smaller and to help men understand each other. I’ve heard legends speak of people dancing on the clouds, but who is to say what is fancy and what is truth, from stories so old?”

  “We’ve got to figure this out,” Kaladin said. “The assassin will return.”

  “So,” Rock said, “jump at wall some more. I will not laugh much.” He settled down on a boulder and plucked a small crab off the ground beside him. He inspected it, then popped it into his mouth and began chewing.

  “Ew,” Sigzil said.

  “Tastes good,” Rock said, speaking with his mouth full. “But better with salt and oil.”

  Kaladin regarded the wall, then closed his eyes and drew in more Stormlight. He felt it inside of him, beating against the walls of his veins and arteries, trying to escape. Daring him forward. To jump, to move, to do.

  “So,” Sigzil said to the others, “are we assuming that the Assassin in White was the one who sabotaged the king’s railing?”

  “Bah,” Rock said. “Why would he do this thing? He could kill more easily.”

  “Yeah,” Lopen agreed. “Maybe the railing was done by one of the other highprinces.”

  Kaladin opened his eyes and looked at his arm, palm against the slick wall of the chasm, elbow straight. Stormlight rose from his skin. Curling wisps of Light that vaporized in the air.

  Rock nodded. “All highprinces want the king dead, though they will not speak of this. One of them sent saboteur.”

  “So how did this saboteur get to the balcony?” Sigzil asked. “It must have taken some time to cut through the railing. It was metal. Unless . . . How smooth was that cut, Kaladin?”

  Kaladin narrowed his eyes, watching that Stormlight rise. It was raw power. No. “Power” was the wrong term. It was a force, like the Surges that ruled the universe. They made fire burn, made rocks fall, made light glow. These wisps, they were the Surges reduced to some primal form.

  He could use it. Use it to . . .

  “Kal?” Sigzil’s voice asked, though it seemed distant. Like an unimportant buzzing. “How smooth was the cut to the railing? Could it have been a Shardblade?”

  The voice faded. For a moment, Kaladin thought he saw shadows of a world that was not, shadows of another place. And in that place, a distant sky with a sun enclosed, almost as if by a corridor of clouds.

  There.

  He made the direction of the wall become down.

  Suddenly, his arm was all that was supporting him. He fell forward into the wall, grunting. His awareness of his surroundings returned in a crash—only, his perspective was bizarre. He scrambled to his feet, and found himself standing on the wall.

  He backed up a few paces—walking up the side of the chasm. To him, that wall was the floor, and the other three bridgemen stood on the actual floor, which looked like the wall. . . .

  This, Kaladin thought, is going to get confusing.

  “Wow,” Lopen said, standing up excitedly. “Yeah, this is really going to be fun. Run up the wall, gancho!”

  Kaladin hesitated, then turned and started running. It was like he was in a cave, the two walls of the chasm the top and bottom. Those slowly squeezed together as he moved toward the sky.

  Feeling the rush of the Stormlight within him, Kaladin grinned. Syl streaked along beside him, laughing. The closer they got to the top, the narrower the chasm became. Kaladin slowed, then stopped.

  Syl streaked out in front of him, zipping out of the chasm as if leaping from the mouth of the cave. She turned about, a ribbon of light.

  “Come on!” she called to him. “Out onto the plateau! Into the sunlight!”

  “There are scouts out there,” he said, “watching for gemhearts.”

  “Come out anyway. Stop hiding, Kaladin. Be.”

  Lopen and Rock whooped below in excitement. Kaladin stared outward at the blue sky. “I have to know,” he whispered.

  “Know?”

  “You ask me why I protect Dalinar. I have to know if he really is what he seems, Syl. I have to know if one of them lives up to his reputation. That will tell me—”

  “Tell you?” she asked, becoming the image of a full-size young woman standing on the wall before him. She was nearly as tall as he was, her dress
fading to mist. “Tell you what?”

  “If honor is dead,” Kaladin whispered.

  “He is,” Syl said. “But he lives on in men. And in me.”

  Kaladin frowned.

  “Dalinar Kholin is a good man,” Syl said.

  “He is friends with Amaram. He could be the same, inside.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “I have to know, Syl,” he said, stepping forward. He tried to take her arm as he would a human’s, but she was too insubstantial. His hand passed through. “I can’t just believe it. I need to know it. You asked what I want. Well, that’s it. I want to know if I can trust Dalinar. And if I can . . .”

  He nodded toward the light of the day outside the chasm.

  “If I can, I’ll tell him what I can do. I will believe that at least one lighteyes won’t try to take everything from me. Like Roshone did. Like Amaram did. Like Sadeas did.”

  “And that is what it will take?” she asked.

  “I warned you that I was broken, Syl.”

  “No. You’ve been reforged. It can happen to men.”

  “To other men, yes,” Kaladin said, raising his hand, feeling the scars on his forehead. Why had the Stormlight never healed those? “I’m not certain about myself yet. But I will protect Dalinar Kholin with everything I have. I will learn who he is, who he really is. Then, maybe . . . we’ll give him his Knights Radiant.”

  “And Amaram? What of him?”

  Pain. Tien. “Him I’m going to kill.”

  “Kaladin,” she said, hands clasped before her, “don’t let this destroy you.”

  “It can’t,” he said, Stormlight running out. His uniform coat began to fall backward, toward the ground, as did his hair. “Amaram already took care of that.”

  The ground below fully reasserted itself, and Kaladin fell backward away from her. He sucked in Stormlight, twisting in the air as his veins flared back to life. He landed feet-first in a rush of power and Light.

  The other three remained silent for a few moments as he stood up straight.

  “That,” Rock said, “was very fast way to get down. Ha! But it did not include falling on face, which would be fun. So you get only soft clap.” He proceeded to clap. It was indeed soft. Lopen, however, cheered and Sigzil nodded with a wide grin.