Oathbringer

by Brandon Sanderson

“And the rebels? Their brightlord?”

  “You spared that boy’s life once before.”

  “An obvious mistake.”

  “A sign of humanity, Dalinar. You asked what I want. It is foolish, and I can see there is trouble here, that you have a duty. But … I do not wish to see you kill. Do not feed it.”

  He rested his hand on hers. Eventually the carriage slowed again, and Dalinar stepped out to survey an open area not clogged by rockbuds. The vanguard waited there, five thousand strong, assembled in perfect ranks. Teleb did like to put on a good show.

  Across the field, outside of bowshot, a wall broke the landscape with—seemingly—nothing to protect. The city was hidden in the rift in the stone. From the southwest, a breeze off the lake brought the fecund scent of weeds and crem.

  Teleb strode up, wearing his Plate. Well, Adolin’s Plate.

  Evi’s Plate.

  “Brightlord,” Teleb said, “a short time ago, a large guarded caravan left the Rift. We hadn’t the men to besiege the city, and you had ordered us not to engage. So I sent a scout team to tail them, men who know the area, but otherwise let the caravan escape.”

  “You did well,” Dalinar said, taking his horse from a groom. “Though I’d have liked to know who was bringing supplies to the Rift, that might have been an attempt to draw you away into a skirmish. However, gather the vanguard now and bring them in behind me. Pass the word to the rest of the men. Have them form ranks, just in case.”

  “Sir?” Teleb asked, shocked. “You don’t want to rest the army before attacking?”

  Dalinar swung into the saddle and rode past him at a trot, heading toward the Rift. Teleb—usually so unflappable—cursed and shouted orders, then hurried to the vanguard, gathering them and marching them hastily behind Dalinar.

  Dalinar made sure not to get too far ahead. Soon he approached the walls of Rathalas, where the rebels had gathered, primarily archers. They wouldn’t be expecting an attack so soon, but of course Dalinar wouldn’t camp for long outside either, not exposed to the storms.

  Do not feed it.

  Did she know that he considered this hunger inside of him, the bloodlust, to be something strangely external? A companion. Many of his officers felt the same. It was natural. You went to war, and the Thrill was your reward.

  Dalinar’s armorers arrived, and he climbed out of the saddle and stepped into the boots they provided, then held out his arms, letting them quickly strap on his breastplate and other sections of armor.

  “Wait here,” he told his men, then climbed back onto his horse and set his helm on his pommel. He walked his horse out onto the killing field, summoning his Shardblade and resting it on his shoulder, reins in the other hand.

  Years had passed since his last assault on the Rift. He imagined Gavilar racing ahead of him, Sadeas cursing from behind them and demanding “prudence.” Dalinar picked his way forward until he was about halfway to the gates. Any closer and those archers were likely to start shooting; he was already well within their range. He stilled his horse and waited.

  There was some discussion on the walls; he could see the agitation among the soldiers. After about thirty minutes of him sitting there, his horse calmly licking the ground and nibbling at the grass that peeked out, the gates finally creaked open. A company of infantrymen poured out, accompanying two men on horseback. Dalinar dismissed the bald one with the purple birthmark across half his face; he was too old to be the boy Dalinar had spared.

  It had to be the younger man riding the white steed, cape streaming behind him. Yes, he had an eagerness to him, his horse threatening to outstrip his guards. And the way he stared daggers at Dalinar … this was Brightlord Tanalan, son of the old Tanalan, whom Dalinar had bested after falling down into the Rift itself. That furious fight across wooden bridges and then in a garden suspended from the side of the chasm.

  The group stopped about fifty feet from Dalinar.

  “Have you come to parley?” called the man with the birthmark on his face.

  Dalinar walked his horse closer so he wouldn’t have to shout. Tanalan’s guards raised shields and spears.

  Dalinar inspected them, then the fortifications. “You’ve done well here. Polemen on the walls to push me off, should I come in alone. Netting draped down at the top, which you can cut free to entangle me.”

  “What do you want, tyrant?” Tanalan snapped. His voice had the typical nasal accent of the Rifters.

  Dalinar dismissed his Blade and swung free of his horse, Plate grinding on stone as he hit the ground. “Walk with me a moment, Brightlord. I promise not to harm you unless I’m attacked first.”

  “I’m supposed to take your word?”

  “What did I do, the last time we were together?” Dalinar asked. “When I had you in my hand, how did I act?”

  “You robbed me.”

  “And?” Dalinar asked, meeting the younger man’s violet eyes.

  Tanalan measured him, tapping one finger against his saddle. Finally he dismounted. The man with the birthmark put a hand on his shoulder, but the youthful brightlord pulled free.

  “I don’t see what you hope to accomplish here, Blackthorn,” Tanalan said, joining Dalinar. “We have nothing to say to one another.”

  “What do I want to accomplish?” Dalinar said, musing. “I’m not certain. My brother is normally the talker.” He started walking along the corridor between the two hostile armies. Tanalan lingered, then jogged to catch up.

  “Your troops look good,” Dalinar said. “Brave. Arrayed against a stronger force, yet determined.”

  “They have strong motivation, Blackthorn. You murdered many of their fathers.”

  “It will be a pity to destroy them in turn.”

  “Assuming you can.”

  Dalinar stopped and turned to regard the shorter man. They stood on a too-quiet field, where even the rockbuds and the grass had the sense to withdraw. “Have I ever lost a battle, Tanalan?” Dalinar asked softly. “You know my reputation. Do you think it exaggerated?”

  The younger man shifted, looking over his shoulder toward where he had left his guards and advisors. When he looked back, he was more resolved. “Better to die trying to bring you down than to surrender.”

  “You’d better be sure of that,” Dalinar said. “Because if I win here, I’m going to have to make an example. I’ll break you, Tanalan. Your sorry, weeping city will be held up before all who would defy my brother. Be absolutely certain you want to fight me, because once this starts, I will be forced to leave only widows and corpses to populate the Rift.”

  The young nobleman’s jaw slowly dropped. “I…”

  “My brother attempted words and politics to bring you into line,” Dalinar said. “Well, I’m good at only one thing. He builds. I destroy. But because of the tears of a good woman, I have come—against my better judgment—to offer you an alternative. Let’s find an accommodation that will spare your city.”

  “An accommodation? You killed my father.”

  “And someday a man will kill me,” Dalinar said. “My sons will curse his name as you curse mine. I hope they don’t throw away thousands of lives in a hopeless battle because of that grudge. You want vengeance. Fine. Let’s duel. Me and you. I’ll lend you a Blade and Plate, and we’ll face each other on equal grounds. I win, and your people surrender.”

  “And if I beat you, will your armies leave?”

  “Hardly,” Dalinar said. “I suspect they’ll fight harder. But they won’t have me, and you’ll have won your father’s Blade back. Who knows? Maybe you’ll defeat the army. You’ll have a better storming chance, at least.”

  Tanalan frowned at Dalinar. “You aren’t the man I thought you were.”

  “I’m the same man I’ve always been. But today … today that man doesn’t want to kill anyone.”

  A sudden fire inside him raged against those words. Was he really going to such lengths to avoid the conflict he’d been so anticipating?

  “One of your own is working against
you,” Tanalan suddenly said. “The loyal highprinces? There’s a traitor among them.”

  “I’d be surprised if there weren’t several,” Dalinar said. “But yes, we know that one has been working with you.”

  “A pity,” Tanalan said. “His men were here not an hour ago. A little earlier and you’d have caught them. Maybe they’d have been forced to join me, and their master would have been pulled into the war.” He shook his head, then turned and walked back toward his advisors.

  Dalinar sighed in frustration. A dismissal. Well, there had never been much of a chance that this would work. He walked back to his horse and pulled himself up into the saddle.

  Tanalan mounted as well. Before riding back to his city, the man gave Dalinar a salute. “This is unfortunate,” he said. “But I see no other way. I cannot defeat you in a duel, Blackthorn. To try would be foolish. But your offer is … appreciated.”

  Dalinar grunted, pulled on his helm, then turned his horse.

  “Unless…” Tanalan said.

  “Unless?”

  “Unless, of course, this was really a ruse all along, a scheme arranged by your brother, you, and me,” Tanalan said. “A … false rebellion. Intended to trick disloyal highprinces into revealing themselves.”

  Dalinar raised his faceplate and turned back.

  “Perhaps my outrage was feigned,” Tanalan said. “Perhaps we have been in touch since your attack here, all those years ago. You did spare my life, after all.”

  “Yes,” Dalinar said, feeling a sudden surge of excitement. “That would explain why Gavilar didn’t immediately send our armies against you. We were in collusion all along.”

  “What better proof, than the fact that we just had this strange battlefield conversation?” Tanalan looked over his shoulder at the body of his men on the wall. “My men must be thinking it very odd. It will make sense when they hear the truth—that I was telling you about the envoy that had been here, delivering weapons and supplies to us from one of your secret enemies.”

  “Your reward, of course,” Dalinar said, “would be legitimacy as a highlord in the kingdom. Perhaps that highprince’s place.”

  “And no fighting today,” Tanalan said. “No deaths.”

  “No deaths. Except perhaps for the actual traitors.”

  Tanalan looked to his advisors. The man with the birthmark nodded slowly.

  “They headed east, toward the Unclaimed Hills,” Tanalan said, pointing. “A hundred soldiers and caravaneers. I think they were planning to stay for the night in the waystop at a town called Vedelliar.”

  “Who was it?” Dalinar asked. “Which highprince?”

  “It might be best if you find out for yourself, as—”

  “Who?” Dalinar demanded.

  “Brightlord Torol Sadeas.”

  Sadeas? “Impossible!”

  “As I said,” Tanalan noted. “Best if you see for yourself. But I will testify before the king, assuming you keep your side of our … accord.”

  “Open your gates to my men,” Dalinar said, pointing. “Stand down your soldiers. You have my word of honor for your safety.”

  With that, he turned and trotted back toward his forces, passing into a corridor of men. As he did, Teleb ran up to meet him. “Brightlord!” he said. “My scouts have returned from surveying that caravan. Sir, it—”

  “Was from a highprince?”

  “Undoubtedly,” Teleb said. “They couldn’t determine which one, but they claim to have seen someone in Shardplate among them.”

  Shardplate? That made no sense.

  Unless that is how he’s planning to see that we lose, Dalinar thought. That might not have been a simple supply caravan—it could be a flanking force in disguise.

  A single Shardbearer hitting the back of his army while it was distracted could do incredible damage. Dalinar didn’t believe Tanalan, not completely. But … storms, if Sadeas secretly had sent one of his Shardbearers to the battlefield, Dalinar couldn’t just send a simple team of soldiers to deal with him.

  “You have command,” he said to Teleb. “Tanalan is going to stand down; have the vanguard join the locals on the fortifications, but do not displace them. Camp the rest of the army back in the field, and keep our officers out of Rathalas. This isn’t a surrender. We’re going to pretend that he was on our side all along, so he can save face and preserve his title. Horinar, I want a company of a hundred elites, our fastest, ready to march with me immediately.”

  They obeyed, asking no questions. Runners dashed with messages, and the entire area became a hive of motion, men and women hastening in all directions.

  One person stood still in the midst of it, hands clasped hopefully at her breast. “What happened?” Evi asked as he trotted his horse toward her.

  “Go back to our camp and compose a message to my brother saying that we may have brought the Rift to our side without bloodshed.” He paused, then added, “Tell him not to trust anyone. One of our closest allies may have betrayed us. I’m going to go find out.”

  The Edgedancers are too busy relocating the tower’s servants and farmers to send a representative to record their thoughts in these gemstones.

  I’ll do it for them, then. They are the ones who will be most displaced by this decision. The Radiants will be taken in by nations, but what of all these people now without homes?

  —From drawer 4-17, second topaz

  This city had a heartbeat, and Veil felt she could hear it when she closed her eyes.

  She crouched in a dim room, hands touching the smooth stone floor, which had been eroded by thousands upon thousands of footfalls. If stone met a man, stone might win—but if stone met humanity, then no force could preserve it.

  The city’s heartbeat was deep within these stones, old and slow. It had yet to realize something dark had moved in. A spren as ancient as it was. An urban disease. People didn’t speak of it; they avoided the palace, mentioned the queen only to complain about the ardent who had been killed. It was like standing in a highstorm and griping that your shoes were too tight.

  A soft whistling drew Veil’s attention. She looked up and scanned the small loading dock around her, occupied only by herself, Vathah, and their wagon. “Let’s go.”

  Veil eased the door open and entered the mansion proper. She and Vathah wore new faces. Hers was a version of Veil with too large a nose and dimpled cheeks.

  His was the face of a brutish man Shallan had seen in the market. Red’s whistle meant the coast was clear, so they strode down the hallway without hesitation.

  This extravagant stone mansion had been built around a square, skylit atrium, where manicured shalebark and rockbuds flourished, bobbing with lifespren. The atrium went up four stories, with walkways around each level. Red was on the second, whistling as he leaned on the balustrade.

  The real showpiece of the mansion, however, wasn’t the garden, but waterfalls. Because not a single one of them was actually water.

  They had been, once. But sometime long ago, someone had mixed far too much wealth with far too much imagination. They had hired Soulcasters to transform large fountains of water that had been poured from the top level, four stories up. They’d been Soulcast into other materials right as the water splashed to the floor.

  Veil’s path took her along rooms to her left, with an overhang of the first floor’s atrium balcony overhead. A former waterfall spilled down to her right, now made of crystal. The shape of flowing water crashed forever onto the stone floor, where it blossomed outward in a wave, brilliant and glistening. The mansion had changed hands dozens of times, and people called it Rockfall—despite the newest owner’s attempt over the last decade to rename it the incredibly boring Hadinal Keep.

  Veil and Vathah hurried along, accompanied by Red’s reassuring whistling. The next waterfall was similar in shape, but made instead from polished dark stumpweight wood. It looked strangely natural, almost like a tree could have grown in that shape, poured from above and running down in an undulating column, splash
ing outward at the base.

  They soon passed a room to their left, where Ishnah was talking with the current mistress of Rockfall. Each time the Everstorm struck, it left destruction—but in an oddly distinct way from a highstorm. Everstorm lightning had proven its greatest danger. The strange red lightning didn’t merely set fires or scorch the ground; it could break through rock, causing blasts of fragmenting stone.

  One such strike had broken a gaping hole in the side of this ancient, celebrated mansion. It had been patched with an unsightly wooden wall that would be covered with crem, then finally bricked over. Brightness Nananav—a middle-aged Alethi woman with a bun of hair practically as tall as she was—gestured at the boarded-up hole, and then at the floor.

  “You’ll make them match the others,” Nananav said to Ishnah, who wore the guise of a rug merchant. “I won’t stand for them to be even a shade off. When you return with the repaired rugs, I’m going to set them beside the ones in other rooms to check!”

  “Yes, Brightness,” Ishnah said. “But the damage is much worse than I—”

  “These rugs were woven in Shinovar. They were made by a blind man who trained thirty years with a master weaver before being allowed to produce his own rugs! He died after finishing my commission, so there are no others like these.”

  “I’m well aware, as you’ve told me three times now.…”

  Veil took a Memory of the woman; then she and Vathah slipped past the room, continuing along the atrium. They were supposedly part of Ishnah’s staff, and wouldn’t be suffered to wander about freely. Red—noting that they were on their way—started to head back to rejoin Ishnah. He’d have been excused to visit the privy, but would be missed if he was gone too long.

  His tune cut off.

  Veil opened a door and pulled Vathah inside, heart thrumming as—right outside—a pair of guards walked down the stairwell from the second level.

  “I still say we should be doing this at night,” Vathah whispered.

  “They have this place guarded like a fort at night.”

  The change of the guard was in midmorning, so Veil and the others had come just before that. Theoretically, this meant the guards would be tired and bored after an uneventful night.