The Way of Kings (Stormlight Archive, The)

by Brandon Sanderson

  “I am not a storyteller!” Sigzil repeated. “I speak of nations and peoples, not tavern stories. I—”

  “Is there a place where people live in gouges in the ground?” Kaladin said. “A city built in an enormous complex of lines, all set into the rock as if carved there?”

  “Sesemalex Dar,” Sigzil said, nodding, pulling off another boot. “Yes, it is the capital of the kingdom of Emul, and is one of the most ancient cities in the world. It is said that the city—and, indeed, the kingdom—were named by Jezrien himself.”

  “Jezrien?” Malop said, standing and scratching his head. “Who’s that?” Malop was a thick-haired fellow with a bushy black beard and a glyphward tattoo on each hand. He also wasn’t the brightest sphere in the goblet, so to speak.

  “You call him the Stormfather, here in Alethkar,” Sigzil said. “Or Jezerezeh’Elin. He was king of the Heralds. Master of the storms, bringer of water and life, known for his fury and his temper, but also for his mercy.”

  “Oh,” Malop said.

  “Tell me more of the city,” Kaladin said.

  “Sesemalex Dar. It is, indeed, built in giant troughs. The pattern is quite amazing. It protects against highstorms, as each trough has a lip at the side, keeping water from streaming in off the stone plain around it. That, mixed with a drainage system of cracks, protects the city from flooding.

  “The people there are known for their expert crem pottery; the city is a major waypoint in the southwest. The Emuli are a certain tribe of the Askarki people, and they’re ethnically Makabaki—dark-skinned, like myself. Their kingdom borders my own, and I visited there many times in my youth.

  “It is a wondrous place, filled with exotic travelers.” Sigzil grew more relaxed as he continued to talk. “Their legal system is very lenient toward foreigners. A man who is not of their nationality cannot own a home or shop, but when you visit, you are treated as a ‘relative who has traveled from afar, to be shown all kindness and leniency.’ A foreigner can take dinner at any residence he calls upon, assuming he is respectful and offers a gift of fruit. The people are most interested in exotic fruits. They worship Jezrien, though they don’t accept him as a figure from the Vorin religion. They name him the only god.”

  “The Heralds aren’t gods,” Teft scoffed.

  “To you they aren’t,” Sigzil said. “Others regard them differently. The Emuli have what your scholars like to call a splinter religion—containing some Vorin ideas. But to the Emuli, you would be the splinter religion.” Sigzil seemed to find that amusing, though Teft just scowled.

  Sigzil continued in more and more detail, talking of the flowing gowns and head-wraps of the Emuli women, the robes favored by the men. The taste of the food—salty—and the way of greeting an old friend—by holding the left forefinger to the forehead and bowing in respect. Sigzil knew an impressive amount about them. Kaladin noticed him smiling wistfully at times, probably recalling his travels.

  The details were interesting, but Kaladin was more taken aback by the fact that this city—which he had flown over in his dream weeks ago—was actually real. And he could no longer ignore the strange speed at which he recovered from wounds. Something odd was happening to him. Something supernatural. What if it was related to the fact that everyone around him always seemed to die?

  He knelt down to begin rifling the pockets of the dead men, a duty the other bridgemen avoided. Spheres, knives, and other useful objects were kept. Personal mementoes like unburned prayers were left with the bodies. He found a few zircon chips, which he added to the pouch.

  Maybe Moash was right. If they could get this money out, could they bribe their way free of the camp? That would certainly be safer than fighting. So why was he so insistent on teaching the bridgemen to fight? Why hadn’t he given any thought to sneaking the bridgemen out?

  He had lost Dallet and the others of his original squad in Amaram’s army. Did he think to compensate for that by training a new group of spearmen? Was this about saving men he’d grown to love, or was it just about proving something to himself?

  His experience told him that men who could not fight were at a severe disadvantage in this world of war and storms. Perhaps sneaking out would have been the better option, but he knew little of stealth. Besides, if they sneaked away, Sadeas would send troops after them. Trouble would track them down. Whatever their path, the bridgemen would have to kill to remain free.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, remembering one of his escape attempts, when he’d kept his fellow slaves free for an entire week, hiding in the wilderness. They’d finally been caught by their master’s hunters. That was when he’d lost Nalma. None of that has to do with saving them here and now, Kaladin told himself. I need these spheres.

  Sigzil was still talking about the Emuli. “To them,” the Worldsinger said, “the need to strike a man personally is crass. They wage war in the opposite way from you Alethi. The sword is not a weapon for a leader. A halberd is better, then a spear, and best of all a bow and arrow.”

  Kaladin pulled another handful of spheres—skychips—from a soldier’s pocket. They were stuck to an aged hunk of sow’s cheese, fragrant and moldy. He grimaced, picking the spheres out and washing them in a puddle.

  “Spears, used by lighteyes?” Drehy said. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Why?” Sigzil said, sounding offended. “I find the Emuli way to be interesting. In some countries, it is seen as displeasing to fight at all. To the Shin, for instance, if you must fight a man, then you have already failed. Killing is, at best, a brutish way of solving problems.”

  “You’re not going be like Rock and refuse to fight, are you?” Skar asked, shooting a barely-veiled glare at the Horneater. Rock sniffed and turned his back on the shorter man, kneeling down to shove boots into a large sack.

  “No,” Sigzil said. “I think we can all agree that other methods have failed. Perhaps if my master knew I still lived…but no. That is foolish. Yes, I will fight. And if I have to, the spear seems a favorable weapon, though I honestly would prefer to put more distance between myself and my enemies.”

  Kaladin frowned. “You mean with a bow?”

  Sigzil nodded. “Among my people, the bow is a noble weapon.”

  “Do you know how to use one?”

  “Alas, no,” Sigzil said. “I would have mentioned it before now if I had such proficiency.”

  Kaladin stood up, opening the pouch and depositing the spheres in with the others. “Were there any bows among the bodies?”

  The men glanced at each other, several of them shaking heads. Storm it, Kaladin thought. The seed of an idea had begun to sprout in his mind, but that killed it.

  “Gather up some of those spears,” he said. “Set them aside. We’ll need them for training.”

  “But we have to turn them in,” Malop said.

  “Not if we don’t take them with us up out of the chasm,” Kaladin said. “Each time we come scavenging, we’ll save a few spears and stash them down here. It shouldn’t take long to gather enough to practice with.”

  “How will we get them out when it’s time to escape?” Teft asked, rubbing his chin. “Spears left down here won’t do these lads much good once the real fighting starts.”

  “I’ll find a way to get them up,” Kaladin said.

  “You say things like that a lot,” Skar noted.

  “Leave off, Skar,” Moash said. “He knows what he’s doing.”

  Kaladin blinked. Had Moash just defended him?

  Skar flushed. “I didn’t mean it like that, Kaladin. I’m just asking, that’s all.”

  “I understand. It’s…” Kaladin trailed off as Syl flitted down into the chasm in the form of a curling ribbon.

  She landed on a rock outcropping on the wall, taking on her female form. “I found another group of bodies. They’re mostly Parshendi.”

  “Any bows?” Kaladin asked. Several of the bridgemen gawked at him until they saw him staring into the air. Then they nodded knowingly to one another.
r />   “I think so,” Syl said. “It’s just down this way. Not too far.”

  The bridgemen had mostly finished with these bodies. “Gather up the things,” Kaladin said. “I’ve found us another place to scavenge. We need to gather as much as we can, then stash some in a chasm where it has a good chance of not being washed away.”

  The bridgemen picked up their findings, slinging sacks over their shoulders and each man hefting a spear or two. Within moments, they headed down the dank chasm bottom, following Syl. They passed clefts in the ancient rock walls where old, storm-washed bones had gotten lodged, creating a mound of moss-covered femurs, tibia, skulls, and ribs. There wasn’t much salvage among them.

  After about a quarter-hour, they came to the place Syl had found. A scattered group of Parshendi dead lay in heaps, mixed with the occasional Alethi in blue. Kaladin knelt beside one of the human bodies. He recognized Dalinar Kholin’s stylized glyphpair sewn on the coat. Why had Dalinar’s army joined Sadeas’s in battle? What had changed?

  Kaladin pointed for the men to begin scavenging from the Alethi while he walked over to one of the Parshendi corpses. It was much fresher than Dalinar’s man. They didn’t find nearly as many Parshendi corpses as they did Alethi. Not only were there fewer of them in any given battle, but they were less likely to fall to their deaths into the chasms. Sigzil also guessed that their bodies were more dense than human ones, and didn’t float or wash away as easily.

  Kaladin rolled the body onto its side, and the action elicited a sudden hiss from the back of the group of bridgemen. Kaladin turned to see Shen pushing forward in an uncharacteristic display of passion.

  Teft moved quickly, grabbing Shen from behind, placing him in a choke hold. The other bridgemen stood, aghast, though several fell into their stances by reflex.

  Shen struggled weakly against Teft’s grip. The parshman looked different from his dead cousins; close together, the differences were much more obvious. Shen—like most parshmen—was short and a little plump. Stout, strong, but not threatening. The corpse at Kaladin’s feet, however, was muscled and built like a Horneater, easily as tall as Kaladin and far broader at the shoulders. While both had the marbled skin, the Parshendi had those strange, deep-red growths of armor on the head, chest, arms, and legs.

  “Let him go,” Kaladin said, curious.

  Teft glanced at him, then reluctantly did as commanded. Shen scrambled over the uneven ground and gently, but firmly, pushed Kaladin away from the corpse. Shen stood back, as if protecting it from Kaladin.

  “This thing,” Rock noted, stepping up beside Kaladin, “he has done it before. When Lopen and I take him scavenging.”

  “He’s protective of the Parshendi bodies, gancho,” Lopen added. “Like he’d stab you a hundred times for moving one, sure.”

  “They’re all like that,” Sigzil said from behind.

  Kaladin turned, raising an eyebrow.

  “Parshman workers,” Sigzil explained. “They’re allowed to care for their own dead; it’s one of the few things they seem passionate about. They grow irate if anyone else handles the bodies. They wrap them in linen and carry them out into the wilderness and leave them on slabs of stone.”

  Kaladin regarded Shen. I wonder….

  “Scavenge from the Parshendi,” Kaladin said to his men. “Teft, you’ll probably have to hold Shen the whole time. I can’t have him trying to stop us.”

  Teft shot Kaladin a suffering glance; he still thought they should set Shen at the front of the bridge and let him die. But he did as told, pushing Shen away and getting Moash’s help to hold him.

  “And men,” Kaladin noted. “be respectful of the dead.”

  “They’re Parshendi!” Leyten objected.

  “I know,” Kaladin said. “But it bothers Shen. He’s one of us, so let’s keep his irritation to a minimum.”

  The parshman lowered his arms reluctantly and let Teft and Moash pull him away. He seemed resigned. Parshmen were slow of thought. How much did Shen comprehend?

  “Didn’t you wish to find a bow?” Sigzil asked, kneeling and slipping a horned Parshendi shortbow out from underneath a body. “The bowstring is gone.”

  “There’s another in this fellow’s pouch,” Maps said, pulling something out of another Parshendi corpse’s belt pouch. “Might still be good.”

  Kaladin accepted the weapon and string. “Does anyone know how to use one of these?”

  The bridgemen glanced at one another. Bows were useless for hunting most shellbeasts; slings worked far better. The bow was really only good for killing other men. Kaladin glanced at Teft, who shook his head. He hadn’t been trained on a bow; neither had Kaladin.

  “Is simple,” Rock said, rolling over a Parshendi corpse, “put arrow on string. Point away from self. Pull very hard. Let go.”

  “I doubt it will be that easy,” Kaladin said.

  “We barely have time to train the lads in the spear, Kaladin,” Teft said. “You mean to teach some of them the bow as well? And without a teacher who can use one himself?”

  Kaladin didn’t respond. He tucked the bow and string away in his bag, added a few arrows, then helped the others. An hour later, they marched through the chasms toward the ladder, their torches sputtering, dusk approaching. The darker it grew, the more unpleasant the chasms became. Shadows deepened, and distant sounds—water dripping, rocks falling, wind calling—took on an ominous cast. Kaladin rounded a corner, and a group of many-legged cremlings scuttling along the wall and slipped into a fissure.

  Conversation was subdued, and Kaladin didn’t take part. Occasionally, he glanced over his shoulder toward Shen. The silent parshman walked head down. Robbing the Parshendi corpses had seriously disturbed him.

  I can use that, Kaladin thought. But dare I? It would be a risk. A great one. He had already been sentenced once for upsetting the balance of the chasm battles.

  First the spheres, he thought. Getting the spheres out would mean he might be able to get out other items. Eventually he saw a shadow above, spanning the chasm. They had reached the first of the permanent bridges. Kaladin walked with the others a little further, until they reached a place where the chasm floor was closer to the top of the plateaus above.

  He stopped here. The bridgemen gathered around him.

  “Sigzil,” Kaladin said, pointing. “You know something about bows. How hard do you think it would be to hit that bridge with an arrow?”

  “I’ve occasionally held a bow, Kaladin, but I would not call myself an expert. It shouldn’t be too hard, I’d imagine. The distance is what, fifty feet?”

  “What’s the point?” Moash asked.

  Kaladin pulled out the pouch full of spheres, then raised an eyebrow at them. “We tie the bag to the arrow, then launch it up so that it sticks to the bottom of the bridge. Then when we’re on a bridge run, Lopen and Dabbid can hang back to get a drink near that bridge up there. They reach under the wood and pull the arrow off. We get the spheres.”

  Teft whistled. “Clever.”

  “We could get all of the spheres,” Moash said eagerly. “Even the—”

  “No,” Kaladin said firmly. “The lesser ones will be dangerous enough; people might begin wondering where bridgemen are getting so much money.” He would have to buy his supplies from several different apothecaries to hide his influx of money.

  Moash looked crestfallen, but the other bridgemen were eager. “Who wants to try?” Kaladin asked. “Maybe we should shoot a few practice shots first, then try with the bag. Sigzil?”

  “I don’t know if I want this on me,” Sigzil said. “Maybe you should try, Teft.”

  Teft rubbed his chin. “Sure. I guess. How hard can it be?”

  “How hard?” Rock asked suddenly.

  Kaladin glanced to the side. Rock stood at the back of the group, though his height made him easy to see. He had his arms folded.

  “How hard, Teft?” Rock continued. “Fifty feet is not too far, but is not easy shot. And to do it with bag of heavy spheres tie
d to it? Ha! You also need to get arrow close to side of bridge, so Lopen can reach. If you miss with this thing, you could lose all spheres. And what if scouts near bridges above see arrow come from chasm? Will think it suspicious, eh?”

  Kaladin eyed the Horneater. Is simple, he’d said. Point away from self…let go…

  “Well,” Kaladin said, watching Rock from the corner of his eye. “I guess we’ll just have to take that chance. Without these spheres, the wounded die.”

  “We could wait until the next bridge run,” Teft said. “Tie a rope to the bridge and toss it over, then tie the bag to it next time….”

  “Fifty feet of rope?” Kaladin said flatly. “It would draw enough attention to buy something like that.”

  “Nah, gancho,” Lopen said. “I have a cousin who works in a place that sells rope. I could get some for you easy, with money.”

  “Perhaps,” Kaladin said. “But you’d still have to hide it in the litter, then hang it down into the chasm without anyone seeing. And to leave it dangling there for several days? It would be noticed.”

  The others nodded. Rock seemed very uncomfortable. Sighing, Kaladin took out the bow and several arrows. “We’ll just have to chance this. Teft, why don’t you…”

  “Oh, Kali’kalin’s ghost,” Rock muttered. “Here, give me bow.” He shoved his way through the bridgemen, taking the bow from Kaladin. Kaladin hid a smile.

  Rock glanced upward, judging the distance in the waning light. He strung the bowstring, then held out a hand. Kaladin handed him an arrow. He leveled the bow back down the chasm and launched. The arrow flew swiftly, clattering against chasm walls.

  Rock nodded to himself, then pointed at Kaladin’s pouch. “We take only five spheres,” Rock said. “Any more would be too heavy. Is crazy to try with even five. Airsick lowlanders.”

  Kaladin smiled, then counted out five sapphire marks—together about two and a half months’ worth of pay for a bridgeman—and placed them in a spare pouch. He handed that to Rock, who pulled out a knife and dug a notch into an arrow’s wood next to the arrowhead.

  Skar folded his arms and leaned against the mossy wall. “This is stealing, you know.”