Words of Radiance

by Brandon Sanderson

  Her soldiers seated them all, prepared messengers to deliver her words to those not near enough to hear. As she waited for the preparations, she listened to reports regarding the population. Surprisingly, the majority of those who had dissented were workers. They were supposed to be obedient. Well, the greater number of them were elderly, the ones who had not fought in the war against the Alethi. Those who had not been forced to watch their friends be killed.

  She waited by the base of the pillar until everything was ready. She climbed the steps to begin her speech, but stopped as she noticed Varanis, one of her lieutenants, running toward her. He was one she had chosen for stormform.

  Suddenly alert, Eshonai attuned the Rhythm of Destruction.

  “General,” he said to Anxiety. “They’ve escaped!”

  “Who?”

  “The ones you had us set apart, the ones who did not want to transform. They’ve fled.”

  “Well, chase them down,” Eshonai said to Spite. “They can’t get far. The workers won’t be able to jump chasms; they can only go as far as the bridges allow.”

  “General! They cut down one of the bridges, then used the ropes to climb down into the chasm itself. They’ve fled through those.”

  “Then they’re dead anyway,” Eshonai said. “There is a storm in two days. They’ll be caught in the chasms and killed. Ignore them.”

  “What of their guards?” Venli demanded to Spite, shoving her way up beside Eshonai. “Why weren’t they being watched?”

  “The guards went with them,” Varanis said. “Eshonai, Thude was leading those—”

  “No matter,” Eshonai said. “You are dismissed.”

  Varanis retreated.

  “You aren’t surprised,” Venli said to Destruction. “Who are these guards that are willing to help their prisoners escape? What have you done, Eshonai?”

  “Do not challenge me.”

  “I—”

  “Do not challenge me,” Eshonai said, grabbing her sister by the neck with a gauntleted hand.

  “Kill me, and you’ll ruin everything,” Venli said, not a hint of fear in her voice. “They’ll never follow a woman who murdered her own sister in public, and only I can provide the spren you need for this transformation.”

  Eshonai hummed to the Rhythm of Derision, but let go. “I’m going to make my speech.” She turned her back on Venli and stepped up to address the people.

  I’ll address this letter to my “old friend,” as I have no idea what name you’re using currently.

  Kaladin had never been in prison before.

  Cages, yes. Pits. Pens. Under guard in a room. Never a proper prison.

  Perhaps that was because prisons were too nice. He had two blankets, a pillow, and a chamber pot that was changed regularly. They fed him far better than he’d ever been fed as a slave. The stone shelf wasn’t the most comfortable bed, but with the blankets, it wasn’t too bad. He didn’t have any windows, but at least he wasn’t out in the storms.

  All in all, the room was very nice. And he hated it.

  In the past, the only times he’d been stuck in a small space had been to weather a highstorm. Now, being enclosed here for hours on end, with nothing to do but lie on his back and think . . . Now he found himself restless, sweating, missing the open spaces. Missing the wind. The solitude didn’t bother him. Those walls, though. They felt like they were crushing him.

  On the third day of his imprisonment, he heard a disturbance from farther inside the prison, beyond his chamber. He stood up, ignoring Syl, who sat on an invisible bench on his wall. What was that shouting? It echoed in from the hallway.

  His little cell was in its own room. The only people he’d seen since being locked up were the guards and the servants. Spheres glowed on the walls, keeping the place well lit. Spheres in a room meant for criminals. Were they there to taunt the men locked away? Riches just beyond reach.

  He pressed against the cold bars, listening to the indistinct shouts. He imagined Bridge Four having come to break him out. Stormfather send they didn’t try something so foolish.

  He eyed one of the spheres in its setting on the wall.

  “What?” Syl asked him.

  “I might be able to get close enough to suck that Light out. It’s only a little farther than the Parshendi were when I drew the Light from their gemstones.”

  “Then what?” Syl asked, voice small.

  Good question. “Would you help me break out, if I wanted to?”

  “Do you want to?”

  “I’m not sure.” He turned around, still standing, and rested his back against the bars. “I might need to. Breaking out would be against the law, though.”

  She lifted her chin. “I’m no highspren. Laws don’t matter; what’s right matters.”

  “On that point, we agree.”

  “But you came willingly,” Syl said. “Why would you leave now?”

  “I won’t let them execute me.”

  “They’re not going to,” Syl said. “You heard Dalinar.”

  “Dalinar can go rot. He let this happen.”

  “He tried to—”

  “He let it happen!” Kaladin snapped, turning and slamming his hands against the bars. Another storming cage. He was right back where he’d begun! “He’s the same as the others,” Kaladin growled.

  Syl zipped over to him, coming to rest between the bars, hands on hips. “Say that again.”

  “He . . .” Kaladin turned away. Lying to her was hard. “All right, fine. He’s not. But the king is. Admit it, Syl. Elhokar is a terrible king. At first he lauded me for trying to protect him. Now, at the snap of his fingers, he’s willing to execute me. He’s a child.”

  “Kaladin, you’re scaring me.”

  “Am I? You told me to trust you, Syl. When I jumped down into the arena, you said this time things would be different. How is this different?”

  She looked away, seeming suddenly very small.

  “Even Dalinar admitted that the king had made a big mistake in letting Sadeas wiggle out of the challenge,” Kaladin said. “Moash and his friends are right. This kingdom would be better off without Elhokar.”

  Syl dropped to the floor, head bowed.

  Kaladin walked back to his bench, but was too stirred up to sit. He found himself pacing. How could a man be expected to live trapped in a little room, without fresh air to breathe? He wouldn’t let them leave him here.

  You’d better keep your word, Dalinar. Get me out. Soon.

  The disturbance, whatever it had been, quieted. Kaladin asked the servant about it when she came with his food, pushing it through the small opening at the bottom of the bars. She wouldn’t speak to him, and scurried off like a cremling before a storm.

  Kaladin sighed, retrieving the food—steamed vegetables, dribbled with a salty black sauce—and flopping back on his bench. They gave him food he could eat with his fingers. No forks or knives for him, just in case.

  “Nice place you have here, bridgeboy,” Wit said. “I considered moving in here myself on several occasions. The rent might be cheap, but the price of admission is quite steep.”

  Kaladin scrambled up to his feet. Wit sat on a bench by the far wall, outside the cell and under the spheres, tuning some kind of strange instrument on his lap made of taut strings and polished wood. He hadn’t been there a moment ago. Storms . . . had the bench even been there before?

  “How did you get in?” Kaladin asked.

  “Well, there are these things called doors . . .”

  “The guards let you?”

  “Technically?” Wit asked, plucking at a string, then leaning down to listen as he plucked another. “Yes.”

  Kaladin sat back down on the bench in his cell. Wit wore his black-on-black, his thin silver sword undone from his waist and sitting on the bench beside him. A brown sack slumped there as well. Wit leaned down to tune his instrument, one leg crossed over the other. He hummed softly to himself and nodded. “Perfect pitch,” Wit said, “makes this all so much easie
r than it once was. . . .”

  Kaladin sat, waiting, as Wit settled back against the wall. Then did nothing.

  “Well?” Kaladin asked.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “Are you going to play music for me?”

  “No. You wouldn’t appreciate it.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I like visiting people in prison. I can say whatever I want to them, and they can’t do anything about it.” He looked up at Kaladin, then rested his hands on his instrument, smiling. “I’ve come for a story.”

  “What story?”

  “The one you’re going to tell me.”

  “Bah,” Kaladin said, lying back down on his bench. “I’m in no mood for your games today, Wit.”

  Wit plucked a note on his instrument. “Everyone always says that—which, first off, makes it a cliche. I am led to wonder. Is anyone ever in the mood for my games? And if they are, would that not defeat the point of my type of game in the first place?”

  Kaladin sighed as Wit continued to pluck out notes. “If I play along today,” Kaladin asked, “will that get rid of you?”

  “I will leave as soon as the story is done.”

  “Fine. A man went to jail. He hated it there. The end.”

  “Ah . . .” Wit said. “So it’s a story about a child, then.”

  “No, it’s about—” Kaladin cut off.

  Me.

  “Perhaps a story for a child,” Wit said. “I will tell you one, to get you in the mood. A bunny rabbit and a chick went frolicking in the grass together on a sunny day.”

  “A chick . . . baby chicken?” Kaladin said. “And a what?”

  “Ah, forgot myself for a moment,” Wit said. “Sorry. Let me make it more appropriate for you. A piece of wet slime and a disgusting crab thing with seventeen legs slunk across the rocks together on an insufferably rainy day. Is that better?”

  “I suppose. Is the story over?”

  “It hasn’t started yet.”

  Wit abruptly slapped the strings, then began to play them with ferocious intent. A vibrant, energetic repetition. One punctuated note, then seven in a row, frenzied.

  The rhythm got inside of Kaladin. It seemed to shake the entire room.

  “What do you see?” Wit demanded.

  “I . . .”

  “Close your eyes, idiot!”

  Kaladin closed his eyes. This is stupid.

  “What do you see?” Wit repeated.

  Wit was playing with him. The man was said to do that. He was supposedly Sigzil’s old mentor. Shouldn’t Kaladin have earned a reprieve by helping out his apprentice?

  There was nothing of humor to those notes. Those powerful notes. Wit added a second melody, complementing the first. Was he playing that with his other hand? Both at the same time? How could one man, one instrument, produce so much music?

  Kaladin saw . . . in his mind . . .

  A race.

  “That’s the song of a man who is running,” Kaladin said.

  “In the driest part of the brightest day, the man set off from the eastern sea.” Wit said it perfectly to the beat of his music, a chant that was almost a song. “And where he went or why he ran, the answer comes from you to me.”

  “He ran from the storm,” Kaladin said softly.

  “The man was Fleet, whose name you know; he’s spoken of in song and lore. The fastest man e’er known to live. The surest feet e’er known to roam. In time long past, in times I’ve known, he raced the Herald Chan-a-rach. He won that race, as he did each one, but now the time for defeat had come.

  “For Fleet so sure, and Fleet the quick, to all that heard he yelled his goal: to beat the wind, and race a storm. A claim so brash, a claim too bold. To race the wind? It can’t be done. Undaunted, Fleet was set to run. So to the east, there went our Fleet. Upon the shore his mark was set.

  “The storm grew strong, the storm grew wild. Who was this man all set to dash? No man should tempt the God of Storms. No fool had ever been so rash.”

  How did Wit play this music with only two hands? Surely another hand had joined him. Should Kaladin look?

  In his mind’s eye, he saw the race. Fleet, a barefooted man. Wit claimed all knew of him, but Kaladin had never heard of such a story. Lanky, tall, with tied-back long hair that went to his waist. Fleet took his mark on the shore, leaning forward in a running posture, waiting as the stormwall thundered and crashed across the sea toward him. Kaladin jumped as Wit hit a burst of notes, signaling the race’s start.

  Fleet tore off just in front of an angry, violent wall of water, lightning, and wind-blown rocks.

  Wit did not speak again until Kaladin prompted him. “At first,” Kaladin said, “Fleet did well.”

  “O’er rock and grass, our Fleet did run! He leaped the stones and dodged the trees, his feet a blur, his soul a sun! The storm so grand, it raged and spun, but away from it our Fleet did run! The lead was his, the wind behind, did man now prove that storms could lose?

  “Through land he ran so quick and sure, and Alethkar he left behind. But now the test he saw ahead, for mountains he would have to climb. The storm surged on, released a howl; it saw its chance might now approach.

  “To the highest mounts and the coldest peaks, our hero Fleet did make his way. The slopes were steep and paths unsure. Would he maintain his mighty lead?”

  “Obviously not,” Kaladin said. “You can never stay ahead. Not for long.”

  “No! The storm grew close, ’til it chewed his heels. Upon his neck, Fleet felt its chill. Its breath of ice was all around, a mouth of night and wings of frost. Its voice was of the breaking rocks; its song was of the crashing rain.”

  Kaladin could feel it. Icy water seeping through his clothing. Wind buffeting his skin. A roar so loud that soon, he could hear nothing at all.

  He’d been there. He’d felt it.

  “Then the tip he reached! The point he found! Fleet climbed no more; he crossed the peak. And down the side, his speed returned! Outside the storm, Fleet found the sun. Azir’s plains were now his path. He sprinted west, more broad his stride.”

  “But he was growing weak,” Kaladin said. “No man can run that far without getting tired. Even Fleet.”

  “Yet soon the race its toll did claim. His feet like bricks, his legs like cloth. In gasps our runner drew his breath. The end approached, the storm outdone, but slowly did our hero run.”

  “More mountains,” Kaladin whispered. “Shinovar.”

  “A final challenge raised its head, a final shadow to his dread. The land did rise up once again, the Misted Mountains guarding Shin. To leave the storming winds behind, our Fleet again began to climb.”

  “The storm caught up.”

  “The storms again came to his back, the winds again did spin around! The time was short, the ending near, as through those mounts our Fleet did dash.”

  “It was right upon him. Even going down the other side of the mountains, he was unable to stay very far ahead.”

  “He crossed the peaks, but lost his lead. The last paths lay before his feet, but strength he’d spent and might he’d lost. Each step was toil, each breath in pain. A sunken land he crossed with grief, the grass so dead it did not move.

  “But here the storm, it too did wilt, with thunder lost and lightning spent. The drops slipped down, now weak as wet. For Shin is not a place for them.

  “Ahead the sea, the race’s end. Fleet stayed ahead, his muscles raw. Eyes barely saw, legs barely walked, but on he went to destiny. The end you know, the end will live, a shock for men to me you’ll give.”

  Music, but no words. Wit waited for Kaladin’s reply. Enough of this, Kaladin thought. “He died. He didn’t make it. The end.”

  The music stopped abruptly. Kaladin opened his eyes, looking toward Wit. Would he be mad that Kaladin had made such a poor conclusion to the story?

  Wit stared at him, instrument still in his lap. The man didn’t seem angry. “So you do know this story,” Wit said.

>   “What? I thought you were making it up.”

  “No, you were.”

  “Then what is there to know?”

  Wit smiled. “All stories told have been told before. We tell them to ourselves, as did all men who ever were. And all men who ever will be. The only things new are the names.”

  Kaladin sat up. He tapped one finger against his stone block of a bench. “So . . . Fleet. Was he real?”

  “As real as I am,” Wit said.

  “And he died?” Kaladin said. “Before he could finish the race?”

  “He died.” Wit smiled.

  “What?”

  Wit attacked the instrument. Music ripped through the small room. Kaladin rose to his feet as the notes reached new heights.

  “Upon that land of dirt and soil,” Wit shouted, “our hero fell and did not stir! His body spent, his strength undone, Fleet the hero was no more.

  “The storm approached and found him there. It stilled and stopped upon its course! The rains they fell, the winds they blew, but forward they could not progress.

  “For glory lit, and life alive, for goals unreached and aims to strive. All men must try, the wind did see. It is the test, it is the dream.”

  Kaladin stepped slowly up to the bars. Even with eyes open, he could see it. Imagine it.

  “So in that land of dirt and soil, our hero stopped the storm itself. And while the rain came down like tears, our Fleet refused to end this race. His body dead, but not his will, within those winds his soul did rise.

  “It flew upon the day’s last song, to win the race and claim the dawn. Past the sea and past the waves, our Fleet no longer lost his breath. Forever strong, forever fast, forever free to race the wind.”

  Kaladin rested his hands against the bars of his cage. The music rang in the room, then slowly died.

  Kaladin gave it a moment, Wit looking at his instrument, a proud smile on his lips. Finally, he tucked his instrument under his arm, took his bag and sword, and walked toward the doorway out.

  “What does it mean?” Kaladin whispered.