“Read the first four names, Alaxia,” Roshone said, “and the last one.”
Alaxia looked down at her list, speaking with a dry voice. “Agil, son of Marf. Caull, son of Taleb.”
Kaladin looked up at Lirin with apprehension.
“He can’t take you,” Lirin said. “We’re of the second nahn and provide an essential function to the town-I as surgeon, you as my only apprentice. By the law, we are exempt from conscription. Roshone knows it.”
“Habrin, son of Arafik,” Alaxia continued. “Jorna, son of Loats.” She hesitated, then looked up. “Tien, son of Lirin.”
There was a stillness across the square. Even the rain seemed to hesitate for a moment. Then, all eyes turned toward Tien. The boy looked dumbfounded. Lirin was immune as town surgeon, Kaladin immune as his apprentice.
But not Tien. He was a carpenter’s third apprentice, not vital, not immune.
Hesina gripped Tien tightly. “No!”
Lirin stepped in front of them, defensive. Kaladin stood stunned, looking at Roshone. Smiling, self-satisfied Roshone.
We took his son, Kaladin realized, meeting those beady eyes. This is his revenge.
“I…” Tien said. “The military?” For once, he seemed to lose his confidence, his optimism. His eyes opened wide, and he grew very pale. He fainted when he saw blood. He hated fighting. He was still small and spindly despite his age.
“He’s too young,” Lirin declared. Their neighbors sidled away, leaving Lirin’s family to stand alone in the rain.
Amaram frowned. “In the cities, youths as young as eight and nine are accepted into the military.”
“Lighteyed sons!” Lirin said. “To be trained as officers. They aren’t sent into battle!”
Amaram frowned more deeply. He stepped out into the rain, walking up to the family. “How old are you, son?” he asked Tien.
“He’s thirteen,” Lirin said.
Amaram glanced at him. “The surgeon. I’ve heard of you.” He sighed, glancing back at Amaram. “I haven’t the time to engage in your petty, small-town politics, cousin. Isn’t there another boy that will do?”
“It is my choice!” Roshone insisted. “Given me by the dictates of law. I send those the town can spare-well, that boy is the first one we can spare.”
Lirin stepped forward, eyes full of anger. Highmarshal Amaram caught him by the arm. “Do not do something you would regret, darkborn. Roshone has acted according to the law.”
“You hid behind the law, sneering at me, surgeon,” Roshone called to Lirin. “Well, now it turns against you. Keep those spheres! The look on your face at this moment is worth the price of every one of them!”
“I…” Tien said again. Kaladin had never seen the boy so terrified.
Kaladin felt powerless. The crowd’s eyes were on Lirin, standing with his arm in the grip of the lighteyed general, locking his gaze with Roshone.
“I’ll make the lad a runner boy for a year or two,” Amaram promised. “He won’t be in combat. It is the best I can do. Every body is needed in these times.”
Lirin slumped, then bowed his head. Roshone laughed, motioning Laral toward the carriage. She didn’t glance at Kaladin as she climbed back in. Roshone followed, and though he was still laughing, his expression had grown hard. Lifeless. Like the dull clouds above. He had his revenge, but his son was still dead and he was still stuck in Hearthstone.
Amaram regarded the crowd. “The recruits may bring two changes of clothing and up to three stoneweights of other possessions. They will be weighed. Report to the army in two hours and ask for Sergeant Hav.” He turned and followed Roshone.
Tien stared after him, pale as a whitewashed building. Kaladin could see his terror at leaving his family. His brother, the one who always made him smile when it rained. It was physically painful for Kaladin to see him so scared. It wasn’t right. Tien should smile. That was who he was.
He felt the wooden horse in his pocket. Tien always brought him relief when he felt pained. Suddenly, it occurred to him that there was something he could do in turn. It’s time to stop hiding in the room when someone else holds up the globe of light, Kaladin thought. It’s time to be a man.
“Brightlord Amaram!” Kaladin yelled.
The general hesitated, standing on the stepstool into the carriage, one foot in the door. He glanced over his shoulder.
“I want to take Tien’s place,” Kaladin said.
“Not allowed!” Roshone said from inside the carriage. “The law says I may choose.”
Amaram nodded grimly.
“Then what if you take me as well,” Kaladin said. “Can I volunteer?” That way, at least, Tien wouldn’t be alone.
“Kaladin!” Hesina said, grabbing him on one arm.
“It is allowed,” Amaram said. “I will not turn away any soldier, son. If you want to join, you are welcome.”
“Kaladin, no,” Lirin said. “Don’t both of you go. Don’t-”
Kaladin looked at Tien, the boy’s face wet beneath his wide-brimmed hat. He shook his head, but his eyes seemed hopeful.
“I volunteer,” Kaladin said, turning back to Amaram. “I’ll go.”
“Then you have two hours,” Amaram said, climbing into the carriage. “Same possession allotment as the others.”
The carriage door shut, but not before Kaladin got a glimpse of an even more satisfied Roshone. Rattling, the vehicle splashed away, dropping a sheet of water from its roof.
“Why?” Lirin said, turning back to Kaladin, his voice ragged. “Why have you done this to me? After all of our plans!”
Kaladin turned to Tien. The boy took his arm. “Thank you,” Tien whispered. “Thank you, Kaladin. Thank you.”
“I’ve lost both of you,” Lirin said hoarsely, splashing away. “Storm it! Both of you.” He was crying. Kaladin’s mother was crying too. She clutched Tien again.
“Father!” Kaladin said, turning, amazed at how confident he felt.
Lirin paused, standing in the rain, one foot in a puddle where rainspren clustered. They inched away from him like vertical slugs.
“In four years, I will bring him home safely,” Kaladin said. “I promise it by the storms and the Almighty’s tenth name itself. I will bring him back.”
I promise….
45
Shadesmar
“Yelignar, called Blightwind, was one that could speak like a man, though often his voice was accompanied by the wails of those he consumed.”
— The Unmade were obviously fabrications of folklore. Curiously, most were not considered individuals, but instead personifications of kinds of destruction. This quote is from Traxil, line 33, considered a primary source, though I doubt its authenticity.
They are an oddly welcoming group, these wild parshmen, Shallan read. It was King Gavilar’s account again, recorded a year before his murder. It has now been nearly five months since our first meeting. Dalinar continues to pressure me to return to our homeland, insisting that the expedition has stretched too long.
The parshmen promise that they will lead me on a hunt for a great-shelled beast they call an ulo mas vara, which my scholars say translates roughly to “Monster of the Chasms.” If their descriptions are accurate, these creatures have large gemhearts, and one of their heads would make a truly impressive trophy. They also speak of their terrible gods, and we think they must be referring to several particularly large chasm greatshells.
We are amazed to find religion among these parshmen. The mounting evidence of a complete parshman society-with civilization, culture, and a unique language-is astounding. My stormwardens have begun calling this people “the Parshendi.” It is obvious this group is very different from our ordinary servant parshmen, and may not even be the same race, despite the skin patterns. Perhaps they are distant cousins, as different from ordinary parshmen as Alethi axehounds are from the Selay breed.
The Parshendi have seen our servants, and are confused by them. “Where is their music?” Klade will often ask me. I do not
know what he means. But our servants do not react to the Parshendi at all, showing no interest in emulating them. This is reassuring.
The question about music may have to do with the humming and chanting the Parshendi often do. They have an uncanny ability to make music together. I swear that I have left one Parshendi singing to himself, then soon passed another out of earshot of the first, yet singing the very same song-eerily near to the other in tempo, tune, and lyric.
Their favored instrument is the drum. They are crudely made, with handprints of paint marking the sides. This matches their simple buildings, which they construct of crem and stone. They build them in the craterlike rock formations here at the edge of the Shattered Plains. I ask Klade if they worry about highstorms, but he just laughs. “Why worry? If the buildings blow down, we can build them again, can we not?”
On the other side of the alcove, Jasnah’s book rustled as she turned a page. Shallan set aside her own volume, then picked through the books on the desk. Her philosophy training done for the time being, she had returned to her study of King Gavilar’s murder.
She slid a small volume out from the bottom of the stack: a record dictated by Stormwarden Matain, one of the scholars who had accompanied the king. Shallan flipped through the pages, searching for a specific passage. It was a description of the very first Parshendi hunting party they encountered.
It happened after we set up beside a deep river in a heavily wooded area. It was an ideal location for a long-term camp, as the dense cobwood trees would protect against highstorm winds, and the river’s gorge eliminated the risk of flooding. His Majesty wisely took my advice, sending scouting parties both upriver and down.
Highprince Dalinar’s scouting party was the first to encounter the strange, untamed parshmen. When he returned to camp with his story, I-like many others-refused to believe his claims. Surely Brightlord Dalinar had simply run across the parshman servants of another expedition like our own.
Once they visited our camp the next day, their reality could no longer be denied. There were ten of them-parshmen to be sure, but bigger than the familiar ones. Some had skin marbled black and red, and others were marbled white and red, as is more common in Alethkar. They carried magnificent weapons, the bright steel etched with complex decorations, but wore simple clothing of woven narbin cloth.
Before long, His Majesty became fascinated by these strange parshmen, insisting that I begin a study of their language and society. I’ll admit that my original intent was to expose them as a hoax of some kind. The more we learned, however, the more I came to realize how faulty my original assessment had been.
Shallan tapped the page, thinking. Then she pulled out a thick volume, titled King Gavilar Kholin, a Biography, published by Gavilar’s widow, Navani, two years before. Shallan flipped through pages, scanning for a particular paragraph.
My husband was an excellent king-an inspiring leader, an unparalleled duelist, and a genius of battlefield tactics. But he didn’t have a single scholarly finger on his left hand. He never showed an interest in the accounting of highstorms, was bored by talk of science, and ignored fabrials unless they had an obvious use in battle. He was a man built after the classical masculine ideal.
“Why was he so interested in them?” Shallan said out loud.
“Hmmm?” Jasnah asked.
“King Gavilar,” Shallan said. “Your mother insists in her biography that he wasn’t a scholar.”
“True.”
“But he was interested in the Parshendi,” Shallan said. “Even before he could have known about their Shardblades. According to Matain’s account, he wanted to know about their language, their society, and their music. Was that just embellishment, to make him sound more scholarly to future readers?”
“No,” Jasnah said, lowering her own book. “The longer he remained in the Unclaimed Hills, the more fascinated by the Parshendi he became.”
“So there’s a discrepancy. Why would a man with no prior interest in scholarship suddenly become so obsessed?”
“Yes,” Jasnah said. “I too have wondered about this. But sometimes, people change. When he returned, I was encouraged by his interest; we spent many evenings talking about his discoveries. It was one of the few times when I felt I really connected with my father.”
Shallan bit her lip. “Jasnah,” she finally asked. “Why did you assign me to research this event? You lived through this; you already know everything I’m ‘discovering.’”
“I feel a fresh perspective may be of value.” Jasnah put down her book, looking over at Shallan. “I don’t intend for you to find specific answers. Instead, I hope that you will notice details I’ve missed. You are coming to see how my father’s personality changed during those months, and that means you are digging deeply. Believe it or not, few others have caught the discrepancy you just did-though many do note his later changes, once he returned to Kholinar.”
“Even so, I feel a little odd studying it. Perhaps I’m still influenced by my tutors’ idea that only the classics are a proper realm of study for young ladies.”
“The classics do have their place, and I will send you to classical works on occasion, as I did with your study of morality. But I intend such tangents to be adjuncts to your current projects. Those must be the focus, not long-lost historical conundrums.”
Shallan nodded. “But Jasnah, aren’t you a historian? Aren’t those long-lost historical conundrums the meat of your field?”
“I’m a Veristitalian,” Jasnah said. “We search for answers in the past, reconstructing what truly happened. To many, writing a history is not about truth, but about presenting the most flattering picture of themselves and their motives. My sisters and I choose projects that we feel were misunderstood or misrepresented, and in studying them hope to better understand the present.”
Why, then, are you spending so much time studying folktales and looking for evil spirits? No, Jasnah was searching for something real. Something so important that it drew her away from the Shattered Plains and the fight to avenge her father. She intended to do something with those folktales, and Shallan’s research was part of it, somehow.
That excited her. It was the sort of thing she’d wanted since she’d been a child, looking through her father’s few books, frustrated that he’d chased off yet another tutor. Here, with Jasnah, Shallan was part of something-and, knowing Jasnah, it was something big.
And yet, she thought. Tozbek’s ship arrives tomorrow morning. I’ll be leaving.
I need to start complaining. I need to convince Jasnah that this was all so much harder than I anticipated, so that when I leave she won’t be surprised. I need to cry, break down, give up. I need to-
“What is Urithiru?” Shallan found herself asking instead.
To her surprise, Jasnah answered without hesitation. “Urithiru was said to be the center of the Silver Kingdoms, a city that held ten thrones, one for each king. It was the most majestic, most amazing, most important city in all the world.”
“Really? Why hadn’t I heard of it before?”
“Because it was abandoned even before the Lost Radiants turned against mankind. Most scholars consider it just a myth. The ardents refuse to speak of it, due to its association with the Radiants, and therefore with the first major failure of Vorinism. Much of what we know about the city comes from fragments of lost works quoted by classical scholars. Many of those classical works have, themselves, survived only in pieces. Indeed, the single complete work we have from early years is The Way of Kings, and that is only because of the Vanrial’s efforts.”
Shallan nodded slowly. “If there were ruins of a magnificent, ancient city hidden somewhere, Natanatan-unexplored, overgrown, wild-would be the natural place to find them.”
“Urithiru is not in Natanatan,” Jasnah said, smiling. “But it is a good guess, Shallan. Return to your studies.”
“The weapons,” Shallan said.
Jasnah raised an eyebrow.
“The Parshendi. They carried bea
utiful weapons of fine, etched steel. Yet they used skin drums with crude handprints on the sides and lived in huts of stone and crem. Doesn’t that strike you as incongruous?”
“Yes. I would certainly describe that as an oddity.”
“Then-”
“I assure you, Shallan,” Jasnah said. “The city is not there.”
“But you are interested in the Shattered Plains. You spoke of them with Brightlord Dalinar through the spanreed.”
“I did.”
“What were the Voidbringers?” Now that Jasnah was actually answering, perhaps she’d say. “What were they really?”
Jasnah studied her with a curious expression. “Nobody knows for sure. Most scholars consider them, like Urithiru, mere myths, while theologians accept them as counterparts of the Almighty-monsters that dwelled in the hearts of men, much as the Almighty once lived there.”
“But-”
“Return to your studies, child,” Jasnah said, raising her book. “Perhaps we will speak of this another time.”
There was an air of finality about that. Shallan bit her lip, keeping herself from saying something rude just to draw Jasnah back into conversation. She doesn’t trust me, she thought. Perhaps with good reason. You’re leaving, Shallan told herself again. Tomorrow. You’re sailing away from this.
But that meant she had only one day left. One more day in the grand Palanaeum. One more day with all of these books, all of this power and knowledge.
“I need a copy of Tifandor’s biography of your father,” Shallan said, poking through the books. “I keep seeing it referenced.”
“It’s on one of the bottom floors,” Jasnah said idly. “I might be able to dig out the index number.”
“No need,” Shallan said, standing. “I’ll look it up. I need the practice.”
“As you wish,” Jasnah said.
Shallan smiled. She knew exactly where the book was-but the pretense of searching for it would give her time away from Jasnah. And during that time, she’d see what she could discover about the Voidbringers on her own.
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