The Way of Kings sa-1

by Brandon Sanderson

  “This is philosophy in action, child,” Jasnah said. “Come with me.”

  Shallan hesitated at the mouth of the alleyway, her heart thumping, her thoughts muddled. The wind blew and bells rang, like frozen raindrops shattering against the stones. In a moment of decision, she rushed after Jasnah, preferring company, even in the dark, to being alone. The shrouded glimmer of the Soulcaster was barely enough to light their way, and Shallan followed in Jasnah’s shadow.

  Noise from behind. Shallan turned with a start to see several dark forms crowding into the alley. “Oh, Stormfather,” she whispered. Why? Why was Jasnah doing this?

  Shaking, Shallan grabbed at Jasnah’s dress with her freehand. Other shadows were moving in front of them, from the far side of the alley. They grew closer, grunting, splashing through foul, stagnant puddles. Chill water had already soaked Shallan’s slippers.

  Jasnah stopped moving. The frail light of her cloaked Soulcaster reflected off metal in the hands of their stalkers. Swords or knives.

  These men meant murder. You didn’t rob women like Shallan and Jasnah, women with powerful connections, then leave them alive as witnesses. Men like these were not the gentlemen bandits of romantic stories. They lived each day knowing that if they were caught, they would be hanged.

  Paralyzed by fear, Shallan couldn’t even scream.

  Stormfather, Stormfather, Stormfather!

  “And now,” Jasnah said, voice hard and grim, “the lesson.” She whipped off her glove.

  The sudden light was nearly blinding. Shallan raised a hand against it, stumbling back against the alley wall. There were four men around them. Not the men from the tavern entrance, but others. Men she hadn’t noticed watching them. She could see the knives now, and she could also see the murder in their eyes.

  Her scream finally broke free.

  The men grunted at the glare, but shoved their way forward. A thick-chested man with a dark beard came up to Jasnah, weapon raised. She calmly reached her hand out-fingers splayed-and pressed it against his chest as he swung a knife. Shallan’s breath caught in her throat.

  Jasnah’s hand sank into the man’s skin, and he froze. A second later he burned.

  No, he became fire. Transformed into flames in an eyeblink. Rising around Jasnah’s hand, they formed the outline of a man with head thrown back and mouth open. For just a moment, the blaze of the man’s death outshone Jasnah’s gemstones.

  Shallan’s scream trailed off. The figure of flames was strangely beautiful. It was gone in a moment, the fire dissipating into the night air, leaving an orange afterimage in Shallan’s eyes.

  The other three men began to curse, scrambling away, tripping over one another in their panic. One fell. Jasnah turned casually, brushing his shoulder with her fingers as he struggled to his knees. He became crystal, a figure of pure, flawless quartz-his clothing transformed along with him. The diamond in Jasnah’s Soulcaster faded, but there was still plenty of Stormlight left to send rainbow sparkles through the transformed corpse.

  The other two men fled in opposite directions. Jasnah took a deep breath, closing her eyes, lifting her hand above her head. Shallan held her safehand to her breast, stunned, confused. Terrified.

  Stormlight shot from Jasnah’s hand like twin bolts of lightning, symmetrical. One struck each of the footpads and they popped, puffing into smoke. Their empty clothing dropped to the ground. With a sharp snap, the smokestone crystal on Jasnah’s Soulcaster cracked, its light vanishing, leaving her with just the diamond and the ruby.

  The remains of the two footpads rose into the air, small billows of greasy vapor. Jasnah opened her eyes, looking eerily calm. She tugged her glove back on-using her safehand to hold it against her stomach and sliding her freehand fingers in. Then she calmly walked back the way they had come. She left the crystal corpse kneeling with hand upraised. Frozen forever.

  Shallan pried herself off the wall and hastened after Jasnah, sickened and amazed. Ardents were forbidden to use their Soulcasters on people. They rarely even used them in front of others. And how had Jasnah struck down two men at a distance? From everything Shallan had read-what little there was to find-Soulcasting required physical contact.

  Too overwhelmed to demand answers, she stood silent-freehand held to the side of her head, trying to control her trembling and her gasping breaths-as Jasnah called for a palanquin. One came eventually, and the two women climbed in.

  The bearers carried them toward the Ralinsa, their steps jostling Shallan and Jasnah, who sat across from one another in the palanquin. Jasnah idly popped the broken smokestone from her Soulcaster, then tucked it into a pocket. It could be sold to a gemsmith, who could cut smaller gemstones from the salvaged pieces.

  “That was horrible,” Shallan finally said, hand still held to her breast. “It was one of the most awful things I’ve ever experienced. You killed four men.”

  “Four men who were planning to beat, rob, kill, and possibly rape us.”

  “You tempted them into coming for us!”

  “Did I force them to commit any crimes?”

  “You showed off your gemstones.”

  “Can a woman not walk with her possessions down the street of a city?”

  “At night?” Shallan asked. “Through a rough area? Displaying wealth? You all but asked for what happened!”

  “Does that make it right?” Jasnah said, leaning forward. “Do you condone what the men were planning to do?”

  “Of course not. But that doesn’t make what you did right either!”

  “And yet, those men are off the street. The people of this city are that much safer. The issue that Taravangian has been so worried about has been solved, and no more theatergoers will fall to those thugs. How many lives did I just save?”

  “I know how many you just took,” Shallan said. “And through the power of something that should be holy!”

  “Philosophy in action. An important lesson for you.”

  “You did all this just to prove a point,” Shallan said softly. “You did this to prove to me that you could. Damnation, Jasnah, how could you do something like that?”

  Jasnah didn’t reply. Shallan stared at the woman, searching for emotion in those expressionless eyes. Stormfather. Did I ever really know this woman? Who is she, really?

  Jasnah leaned back, watching the city pass. “I did not do this just to prove a point, child. I have been feeling for some time that I took advantage of His Majesty’s hospitality. He doesn’t realize how much trouble he could face for allying himself with me. Besides, men like those…” There was something in her voice, an edge Shallan had never heard before.

  What was done to you? Shallan wondered with horror. And who did it?

  “Regardless,” Jasnah continued, “tonight’s actions came about because I chose this path, not because of anything I felt you needed to see. However, the opportunity also presented a chance for instruction, for questions. Am I a monster or am I a hero? Did I just slaughter four men, or did I stop four murderers from walking the streets? Does one deserve to have evil done to her by consequence of putting herself where evil can reach her? Did I have a right to defend myself? Or was I just looking for an excuse to end lives?”

  “I don’t know,” Shallan whispered.

  “You will spend the next week researching it and thinking on it. If you wish to be a scholar-a true scholar who changes the world-then you will need to face questions like this. There will be times when you must make decisions that churn your stomach, Shallan Davar. I’ll have you ready to make those decisions.”

  Jasnah fell silent, looking out the side as the palanquin bearers marched them up to the Conclave. Too troubled to say more, Shallan suffered the rest of the trip in silence. She followed Jasnah through the hushed hallways to their rooms, passing scholars on their way to the Palanaeum for some midnight study.

  Inside their rooms, Shallan helped Jasnah undress, though she hated touching the woman. She shouldn’t have felt that way. The men Jasnah had killed wer
e terrible creatures, and she had little doubt that they would have killed her. But it wasn’t the act itself so much as the cold callousness of it that bothered her.

  Still feeling numb, Shallan fetched Jasnah a sleeping robe as the woman removed her jewelry and set it on the dressing table. “You could have let the other three get away,” Shallan said, walking back toward Jasnah, who had sat down to brush her hair. “You only needed to kill one of them.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Jasnah said.

  “Why? They would have been too frightened to do something like that again.”

  “You don’t know that. I sincerely wanted those men gone. A careless barmaid walking home the wrong way cannot protect herself, but I can. And I will.”

  “You have no authority to do so, not in someone else’s city.”

  “True,” Jasnah said. “Another point to consider, I suppose.” She raised the brush to her hair, pointedly turning away from Shallan. She closed her eyes, as if to shut Shallan out.

  The Soulcaster sat on the dressing table beside Jasnah’s earrings. Shallan gritted her teeth, holding the soft, silken robe. Jasnah sat in her white underdress, brushing her hair.

  There will be times when you must make decisions that churn your stomach, Shallan Davar….

  I’ve faced them already.

  I’m facing one now.

  How dare Jasnah do this? How dare she make Shallan a part of it? How dare she use something beautiful and holy as a device for destruction?

  Jasnah didn’t deserve to own the Soulcaster.

  With a swift move of her hand, Shallan tucked the folded robe under her safearm, then shoved her hand into her safepouch and popped out the intact smokestone from her father’s Soulcaster. She stepped up to the dressing table, and-using the motion of placing the robe onto the table as a cover-made the exchange. She slid the working Soulcaster into her safehand within its sleeve, stepping back as Jasnah opened her eyes and glanced at the robe, which now sat innocently beside the nonfunctional Soulcaster.

  Shallan’s breath caught in her throat.

  Jasnah closed her eyes again, handing the brush toward Shallan. “Fifty strokes tonight, Shallan. It has been a fatiguing day.”

  Shallan moved by rote, brushing her mistress’s hair while clutching the stolen Soulcaster in her hidden safehand, panicked that Jasnah would notice the swap at any moment.

  She didn’t. Not when she put on her robe. Not when she tucked the broken Soulcaster away in her jewelry case and locked it with a key she wore around her neck as she slept.

  Shallan walked from the room stunned, in turmoil. Exhausted, sickened, confused.

  But undiscovered.

  37

  Sides

  FIVE AND A HALF YEARS AGO

  “Kaladin, look at this rock,” Tien said. “It changes colors when you look at it from different sides.”

  Kal looked away from the window, glancing at his brother. Now thirteen years of age, Tien had turned from an eager boy into an eager adolescent. Though he’d grown, he was still small for his age, and his mop of black and brown hair still refused all attempts at order. He was squatting beside the lacquered cobwood dinner table, eyes level with the glossy surface, looking at a small, lumpish rock.

  Kal sat on a stool peeling longroots with a short knife. The brown roots were dirty on the outside and sticky when he sliced into them, so working on them coated his fingers with a thick layer of crem. He finished a root and handed it up to his mother, who washed it off and sliced it into the stew pot.

  “Mother, look at this,” Tien said. Late-afternoon sunlight streamed through the leeside window, bathing the table. “From this side, the rock sparkles red, but from the other side, it’s green.”

  “Perhaps it’s magical,” Hesina said. Chunk after chunk of longroot plunked into the water, each splash with a slightly different note.

  “I think it must be,” Tien said. “Or it has a spren. Do spren live in rocks?”

  “Spren live in everything,” Hesina replied.

  “They can’t live in everything,” Kal said, dropping a peel into the pail at his feet. He glanced out the window, watching the road that led from the town to the citylord’s mansion.

  “They do,” Hesina said. “Spren appear when something changes-when fear appears, or when it begins to rain. They are the heart of change, and therefore the heart of all things.”

  “This longroot,” Kal said, holding it up skeptically.

  “Has a spren.”

  “And if you slice it up?”

  “Each bit has a spren. Only smaller.”

  Kal frowned, looking over the long tuber. They grew in cracks in the stone where water collected. They tasted faintly of minerals, but were easy to grow. His family needed food that didn’t cost much, these days.

  “So we eat spren,” Kal said flatly.

  “No,” she said, “we eat the roots.”

  “When we have to,” Tien added with a grimace.

  “And the spren?” Kal pressed.

  “They are freed. To return to wherever it is that spren live.”

  “Do I have a spren?” Tien said, looking down at his chest.

  “You have a soul, dear. You’re a person. But the pieces of your body may very well have spren living in them. Very small ones.”

  Tien pinched at his skin, as if trying to pry the tiny spren out.

  “Dung,” Kal said suddenly.

  “Kal!” Hesina snapped. “That’s not talk for mealtime.”

  “Dung,” Kal said stubbornly. “It has spren?”

  “I suppose it does.”

  “Dungspren,” Tien said, then snickered.

  His mother continued to chop. “Why all of these questions, suddenly?”

  Kal shrugged. “I just-I don’t know. Because.”

  He’d been thinking recently about the way the world worked, about what he was to do with his place in it. The other boys his age, they didn’t wonder about their place. Most knew what their future held. Working in the fields.

  Kal had a choice, though. Over the last several months, he’d finally made that choice. He would become a soldier. He was fifteen now, and could volunteer when the next recruiter came through town. He planned to do just that. No more wavering. He would learn to fight. That was the end of it. Wasn’t it?

  “I want to understand,” he said. “I just want everything to make sense.”

  His mother smiled at that, standing in her brown work dress, hair pulled back in a tail, the top hidden beneath her yellow kerchief.

  “What?” he demanded. “Why are you smiling?”

  “You just want everything to make sense?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well next time the ardents come through the town to burn prayers and Elevate people’s Callings, I’ll pass the message along.” She smiled. “Until then, keep peeling roots.”

  Kal sighed, but did as she told him. He checked out the window again, and nearly dropped the root in shock. The carriage. It was coming down the roadway from the mansion. He felt a flutter of nervous hesitation. He’d planned, he’d thought, but now that the time was upon him, he wanted to sit and keep peeling. There would be another opportunity, surely….

  No. He stood, trying to keep the anxiety from his voice. “I’m going to go rinse off.” He held up crem-covered fingers.

  “You should have washed the roots off first as I told you,” his mother noted.

  “I know,” Kal said. Did his sigh of regret sound fake? “Maybe I’ll just wash them all off now.”

  Hesina said nothing as he gathered up the remaining roots, crossed to the door, heart thumping, and stepped out into the evening light.

  “See,” Tien said from behind, “from this side it’s green. I don’t think it’s a spren, Mother. It’s the light. It makes the rock change….”

  The door swung closed. Kal set down the tubers and charged through the streets of Hearthstone, passing men chopping wood, women throwing out dishwater, and a group of grandfathers sitting on st
eps and looking at the sunset. He dunked his hands into a rain barrel, but didn’t stop as he shook the water free. He ran around Mabrow Pigherder’s house, up past the commonwater-the large hole cut into the rock at the center of the town to catch rain-and along the breakwall, the steep hillside against which the town was built to shield it from storms.

  Here, he found a small stand of stumpweight trees. Knobby and about as tall as a man, they grew leaves only on their leeward sides, running down the length of the tree like rungs on a ladder, waving in the cool breeze. As Kal got close, the large, bannerlike leaves snapped up close to the trunks, making a series of whipping sounds.

  Kal’s father stood on the other side, hands clasped behind his back. He was waiting where the road from the manor turned past Hearthstone. Lirin turned with a start, noticing Kal. He wore his finest clothing: a blue coat, buttoning up the sides, like a lighteyes’s coat. But it was over a pair of white trousers that showed wear. He studied Kal through his spectacles.

  “I’m going with you,” Kal blurted. “Up to the mansion.”

  “How did you know?

  “Everyone knows,” Kal said. “You think they wouldn’t talk if Brightlord Roshone invited you to dinner? You, of all people?”

  Lirin looked away. “I told your mother to keep you busy.”

  “She tried.” Kal grimaced. “I’ll probably hear a storm of it when she finds those longroots sitting outside the front door.”

  Lirin said nothing. The carriage rolled to a stop nearby, wheels grinding against the stone.

  “This will not be a pleasant, idle meal, Kal,” Lirin said.

  “I’m not a fool, Father.” When Hesina had been told there was no more need for her to work in the town…Well, there was a reason they’d been reduced to eating longroots. “If you’re going to confront him, then you should have someone to support you.”

  “And that someone is you?”

  “I’m pretty much all you have.”

  The coachman cleared his throat. He didn’t get down and open the door, the way he did for Brightlord Roshone.

  Lirin eyed Kal.