Words of Radiance

by Brandon Sanderson

“I am not doing nude sketches for you.”

  She had made the mistake of mentioning that many of the great artists had trained themselves this way. After much pleading back home, she’d gotten several of the maids to pose for her, so long as she promised to destroy the sketches. Which she had. She’d never sketched men that way. Storms, that would be embarrassing!

  She didn’t let herself linger in the bath. A quarter hour later—by the clock—she stood dressed and combing her damp hair before the mirror.

  How would she ever go back to Jah Keved and a placid, rural life again? The answer was simple. She probably would never return. Once, that thought would have horrified her. Now it thrilled her—though she was determined to bring her brothers to the Shattered Plains. They would be far safer here than at her father’s estates, and what would they be leaving behind? Barely anything at all. She’d begun to think it was a far better solution than anything else, and let them dodge the issue of the missing Soulcaster, to an extent.

  She’d gone to one of the information stations connected to Tashikk—there was one in every warcamp—and paid to have a letter, along with a spanreed, sent by messenger from Valath to her brothers. It would take weeks to arrive, unfortunately. If it even did. The merchant she’d talked to at the information station had warned her that moving through Jah Keved was difficult these days, with the succession war. To be careful, she’d sent a second letter from Northgrip, which was as far from the battlefields as one could get. Hopefully at least one of the two would arrive safely.

  When she established contact again, she’d make a single argument to her brothers. Abandon the Davar estates. Take the money Jasnah had sent and flee to the Shattered Plains. For now, she’d done what she could.

  She rushed through the room, hopping on one foot as she pulled on a slipper, and passed the maps. I’ll deal with you later.

  It was time to go woo her betrothed. Somehow. The novels she’d read made it seem easy. A batting of eyelashes, blushes at appropriate times. Well, she had that last one down in good measure. Except maybe the appropriate part. She buttoned up the sleeve over her safehand, then paused at the door as she looked back and saw her sketchbook and pencil lying on the table.

  She didn’t want to leave without those ever again. She tucked both in her satchel and rushed out. On the way through the white-marbled house, she passed Palona and Sebarial in a room with enormous glass windows, facing leeward over the gardens. Palona lay facedown, getting a massage—completely bare-backed—while Sebarial reclined and ate sweets. A young woman stood at a lectern in the corner, reciting poetry to them.

  Shallan had a difficult time judging those two. Sebarial. Was he a clever civil planner or an indolent glutton? Both? Palona certainly did like the luxuries of wealth, but she didn’t seem the least bit arrogant. Shallan had spent the last three days poring over Sebarial’s house ledgers, and had found them an absolute mess. He seemed so smart in some areas. How could he have let his ledgers get so overgrown?

  Shallan wasn’t especially good with numbers, not compared to her art, but she did enjoy math on occasion and was determined to tackle those ledgers.

  Gaz and Vathah waited for her outside the doors. They followed her toward Sebarial’s coach, which waited for her to use, along with one of her slaves to act as footman. En said he’d done the job before, and he smiled at her as she stepped up. That was good to see. She couldn’t remember any of the five smiling on their trip out, even when she’d released them from the cage.

  “You are being treated well, En?” she asked as he opened the coach door for her.

  “Yes, mistress.”

  “You’d tell me if you weren’t?”

  “Er, yes, mistress.”

  “And you, Vathah?” she asked, turning to him. “How are you finding your accommodations?”

  He grunted.

  “I assume that means they’re accommodating?” she asked.

  Gaz chuckled. The short man had an ear for wordplay.

  “You’ve kept your bargain,” Vathah said. “I’ll give you that. The men are happy.”

  “And you?”

  “Bored. All we do every day is sit around, collect what you pay us, and go drinking.”

  “Most men would consider that an ideal profession.” She smiled at En, then climbed into the coach.

  Vathah shut the door for her, then looked in the window. “Most men are idiots.”

  “Nonsense,” Shallan said, smiling. “By the law of averages, only half of them are.”

  He grunted. She was learning to interpret those, which was essential to speaking Vathahese. This one roughly meant, “I’m not going to acknowledge that joke because it would spoil my reputation as a complete and utter dunnard.”

  “I suppose,” he said, “we have to ride up top.”

  “Thank you for offering,” Shallan said, then pulled down the window shade. Outside, Gaz chuckled again. The two climbed into the guard positions on the top back of the carriage, and En joined the coachman up front. It was a true proper coach, pulled by horses and everything. Shallan had originally felt bad about asking to use it, but Palona had laughed. “Take the thing whenever you want! I have my own, and if Turi’s coach is gone, he’ll have an excuse to not go when people ask him to visit. He loves that.”

  Shallan closed the other window shade as the coachman started the vehicle rolling, then got out her sketchbook. Pattern waited on the first blank white page. “We are going to find out,” Shallan whispered, “just what we can do.”

  “Exciting!” Pattern said.

  She got out her pouch of spheres and breathed in some of the Stormlight. Then, she puffed it out in front of her, trying to shape it, meld it.

  Nothing.

  Next, she tried holding a very specific image in her head—herself, with one small change: black hair instead of red. She puffed out the Stormlight, and this time it shifted around her and hung for a moment. Then it too vanished.

  “This is silly,” Shallan said softly, Stormlight trailing from her lips. She did a quick sketch of herself with dark hair. “What does it matter if I draw it first or not? The pencils don’t even show color.”

  “It shouldn’t matter,” Pattern said. “But it matters to you. I do not know why.”

  She finished the sketch. It was very simple—it didn’t show her features, only really her hair, everything else indistinct. Yet when she used Stormlight this time, the image took and her hair darkened to black.

  Shallan sighed, Stormlight leaking from her lips. “So, how do I make the illusion vanish?”

  “Stop feeding it.”

  “How?”

  “I am supposed to know this?” Pattern asked. “You are the expert on feeding.”

  Shallan gathered all of her spheres—several were now dun—and set them on the seat across from her, out of reach. That wasn’t far enough, for as her Stormlight ran out, she breathed in using instincts she hadn’t realized she had. Light streamed from across the carriage and into her.

  “I’m quite good at that,” Shallan said sourly, “considering how short a time I’ve been doing it.”

  “Short time?” Pattern said. “But we first . . .”

  She stopped listening until he was done.

  “I really need to find another copy of Words of Radiance,” Shallan said, starting another sketch. “Maybe it talks about how to dismiss the illusions.”

  She continued to work on her next sketch, a picture of Sebarial. She’d taken a Memory of him while dining the night before, just after returning from a session scouting Amaram’s compound. She wanted to get the details of this sketch right for her collection, so it took some time. Fortunately, the level roadway meant no big bumps. It wasn’t ideal, but she seemed to have less and less time these days, with her research, her work for Sebarial, infiltrating the Ghostbloods, and meetings with Adolin Kholin. She’d had so much more time when she was younger. She couldn’t help thinking she’d wasted much of it.

  She let the work consume her. Th
e familiar sound of pencil on paper, the focus of creation. Beauty was out there, all around. To create art was not to capture it, but to participate in it.

  When she finished, a glance out the window showed them approaching the Pinnacle. She held up the sketch, studying it, then nodded to herself. Satisfactory.

  Next she tried using Stormlight to create an image. She breathed out a lot of it, and it formed immediately, snapping into an image of Sebarial sitting across from her in the carriage. He held the same position as he did in her sketch, hands out to slice food that was not included in her image.

  Shallan smiled. The detail was perfect. Folds in skin, individual hairs. She hadn’t drawn those—no sketch could capture all the hairs on a head, all the pores in skin. Her image had these things, so it didn’t create exactly what she drew, but the drawing was a focus. A model that the image built from.

  “Mmm,” Pattern said, sounding satisfied. “One of your most truthful lies. Wonderful.”

  “He doesn’t move,” Shallan said. “Nobody would mistake this for something living, never mind the unnatural pose. The eyes are lifeless; the chest doesn’t rise and fall with breath. The muscles don’t shift. It’s detailed—but like a statue can be detailed yet still dead.”

  “A statue of light.”

  “I didn’t say it isn’t impressive,” Shallan said. “But the images will be much harder to use unless I can give them life.” How strange that she should feel that her sketches were alive, but this thing—which was so much more realistic—was dead.

  She reached out to wave her hand through the image. If she touched it slowly, the disturbance was minor. Waving her hand disturbed it like smoke. She noticed something else. While her hand was in the image . . .

  Yes. She sucked in a breath and the image dissolved to glowing smoke, drawn into her skin. She could reclaim Stormlight from the illusion. One question answered, she thought, settling back and making notes about the experience in the back of the notebook.

  She began packing up her satchel as the carriage arrived at the Outer Market, where Adolin would be waiting for her. They’d gone on their promised walk the day before, and she felt things were going well. But she also knew she needed to impress him. Her efforts with Highlady Navani had not been fruitful so far, and she really did need an alliance with the Kholin house.

  That made her consider. Her hair had dried, but she tended to keep it long and straight down her back, with only its natural curl to give it body. The Alethi women favored intricate braids instead.

  Her skin was pale and dusted lightly with freckles, and her body was nowhere near curvaceous enough to inspire envy. She could change all of this with an illusion. An augmentation. Since Adolin had seen her without, she couldn’t change anything dramatic—but she could enhance herself. It would be like wearing makeup.

  She hesitated. If Adolin came to agree to the marriage, would it be because of her, or the lies?

  Foolish girl, Shallan thought. You were willing to change your appearance to get Vathah to follow you and to gain a place with Sebarial, but not now?

  But capturing Adolin’s attention with illusions would lead her down a difficult path. She couldn’t wear an illusion always, could she? In married life? Better to see what she could do without one, she thought as she climbed out of the carriage. She’d have to rely, instead, upon her feminine wiles.

  She wished she knew if she had any.

  THREE YEARS AGO

  “These are really good, Shallan,” Balat said, leafing through pages of her sketches. The two of them sat in the gardens, accompanied by Wikim, who sat on the ground tossing a cloth-wrapped ball for his axehound Sakisa to catch.

  “My anatomy is off,” Shallan said with a blush. “I can’t get the proportions right.” She needed models to pose for her so she could work on that.

  “You’re better than Mother ever was,” Balat said, flipping to another page, where she had sketched Balat on the sparring grounds with his swordsmanship tutor. He tipped it toward Wikim, who raised an eyebrow.

  Her middle brother was looking better and better these last four months. Less scrawny, more solid. He almost constantly had mathematical problems with him. Father had once railed at him for that, claiming it was feminine and unseemly—but, in a rare show of dissension, Father’s ardents had approached him and told him to calm himself, and that the Almighty approved of Wikim’s interest. They hoped Wikim might find his way into their ranks.

  “I heard that you got another letter from Eylita,” Shallan said, trying to distract Balat from the sketchbook. She couldn’t keep herself from blushing as he turned page after page. Those weren’t meant for others to look at. They weren’t any good.

  “Yeah,” he said, grinning.

  “You going to have Shallan read it to you?” Wikim asked, throwing the ball.

  Balat coughed. “I had Malise do it. Shallan was busy.”

  “You’re embarrassed!” Wikim said, pointing. “What is in those letters?”

  “Things my fourteen-year-old sister doesn’t need to know about!” Balat said.

  “That racy, eh?” Wikim asked. “I wouldn’t have figured that for the Tavinar girl. She seems too proper.”

  “No!” Balat blushed further. “They aren’t racy; they are merely private.”

  “Private like your—”

  “Wikim,” Shallan cut in.

  He looked up, and then noticed that angerspren were pooling underneath Balat’s feet. “Storms, Balat. You are getting so touchy about that girl.”

  “Love makes us all fools,” Shallan said, distracting the two.

  “Love?” Balat asked, glancing at her. “Shallan, you’re barely old enough to pin up your safehand. What do you know about love?”

  She blushed. “I . . . never mind.”

  “Oh, look at that,” Wikim said. “She’s thought up something clever. You’re going to have to say it now, Shallan.”

  “No use keeping something like that inside,” Balat agreed.

  “Ministara says I speak my mind too much. That it’s not a feminine attribute.”

  Wikim laughed. “That hasn’t seemed to stop any women I’ve known.”

  “Yeah, Shallan,” Balat said. “If you can’t say the things you think of to us, then who can you say them to?”

  “Trees,” she said, “rocks, shrubs. Basically anything that can’t get me in trouble with my tutors.”

  “You don’t have to worry about Balat, then,” Wikim said. “He couldn’t manage something clever even in repetition.”

  “Hey!” Balat said. Though, unfortunately, it wasn’t far from the truth.

  “Love,” Shallan said, though partially just to distract them, “is like a pile of chull dung.”

  “Smelly?” Balat asked.

  “No,” Shallan said, “for even as we try to avoid both, we end up stepping in them anyway.”

  “Deep words for a girl who hit her teens precisely fifteen months ago,” Wikim said with a chuckle.

  “Love is like the sun,” Balat said, sighing.

  “Blinding?” Shallan asked. “White, warm, powerful—but also capable of burning you?”

  “Perhaps,” Balat said, nodding.

  “Love is like a Herdazian surgeon,” Wikim said, looking at her.

  “And how is that?” Shallan asked.

  “You tell me,” Wikim said. “I’m seeing what you can make of it.”

  “Um . . . Both leave you uncomfortable?” Shallan said. “No. Ooh! The only reason you’d want one was if you’d taken a sharp blow to the head!”

  “Ha! Love is like spoiled food.”

  “Necessary for life on one hand,” Shallan said, “but also expressly nauseating.”

  “Father’s snoring.”

  She shuddered. “You have to experience it to believe just how distracting it can be.”

  Wikim chuckled. Storms, but it was good to see him doing that.

  “Stop it, you two,” Balat said. “That kind of talk is disrespectful. Love . . .
love is like a classical melody.”

  Shallan grinned. “If you end your performance too quickly, your audience is disappointed?”

  “Shallan!” Balat said.

  Wikim, however, was rolling on the ground. After a moment, Balat shook his head, and gave an agreeable chuckle. For her own part, Shallan was blushing. Did I really just say that? That last one had actually been somewhat witty, far better than the others. It had also been improper.

  She got a guilty thrill from it. Balat looked embarrassed, and he blushed at the double meaning, collecting shamespren. Sturdy Balat. He wanted so much to lead them. So far as she knew, he’d given up his habit of killing cremlings for fun. Being in love strengthened him, changed him.

  The sound of wheels on stone announced a carriage arriving at the house. No hoofbeats—father owned horses, but few other people in the area did. Their carriages were pulled by chulls or parshmen.

  Balat rose to go see who had come, and Sakisa followed after, trumping in excitement. Shallan picked up her sketchpad. Father had recently forbidden her from drawing the manor’s parshmen or darkeyes—he found it unseemly. That made it hard for her to find practice figures.

  “Shallan?”

  She started, realizing that Wikim hadn’t followed Balat. “Yes.”

  “I was wrong,” Wikim said, handing her something. A small pouch. “About what you’re doing. I see through it. And . . . and still it’s working. Damnation, but it’s working. Thank you.”

  She moved to open the pouch he’d given her.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “Blackbane,” Wikim said. “A plant, the leaves at least. If you eat them, they paralyze you. Your breathing stops too.”

  Disturbed, she pulled the top tight. She didn’t even want to know how Wikim could recognize a deadly plant like this.

  “I’ve carried those for the better part of a year,” Wikim said softly. “The longer you have them, the more potent the leaves are supposed to become. I don’t feel like I need them any longer. You can burn them, or whatever. I just thought you should have them.”

  She smiled, though she felt unsettled. Wikim had been carrying this poison around? He felt he needed to give it to her?