I forgive you.
Dalinar opened his eyes, and knew what the parshwoman saw in him. Swirling clouds, glowing light, thunder and lightning.
“I am Unity.”
He slammed both hands together.
And combined three realms into one.
* * *
Shadesmar exploded with light.
Fused screamed as a wind blasted them away, though Kaladin felt nothing. Beads clattered and roared.
Kaladin shaded his eyes with his hand. The light faded, leaving a brilliant, glowing pillar in the middle of the sea. Beneath it, the beads locked together, turning into a highway of glass.
Kaladin blinked, taking Shallan’s hand as she helped him to his feet. Adolin had forced himself to sit up, holding his bloodied stomach. “What … what is it?”
“Honor’s Perpendicularity,” Syl whispered. “A well of power that pierces all three realms.” She looked to Kaladin. “A pathway home.”
* * *
Taln gripped Ash’s hand.
Ash looked at his fingers, thick and callused. Thousands of years could come and pass, and she could lose lifetimes to the dream, but those hands … she’d never forget those hands.
“Ash,” he said.
She looked up at him, then gasped and raised her fingers to her lips.
“How long?” he asked.
“Taln.” She gripped his hand in both of hers. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“How long?”
“They say it’s been four millennia. I don’t always … note the passing of time.…”
“Four thousand years?”
She held his hand tighter. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
He pulled his hand from hers and stood up, walking through the tent. She followed, apologizing again—but what good were words? They’d betrayed him.
Taln brushed aside the front drapes and stepped out. He looked up at the city expanding above them, at the sky, at the wall. Soldiers in breastplates and chain rushed past to join a fight farther along.
“Four thousand years?” Taln asked again. “Ash…”
“We couldn’t continue— I … we thought…”
“Ash.” He took her hand again. “What a wonderful thing.”
Wonderful? “We left you, Taln.”
“What a gift you gave them! Time to recover, for once, between Desolations. Time to progress. They never had a chance before. But this time … yes, maybe they do.”
“No, Taln. You can’t be like this.”
“A wonderful thing indeed, Ash.”
“You can’t be like this, Taln. You have to hate me! Hate me, please.”
He turned from her, but still held her hand, pulling her after him. “Come. He’s waiting.”
“Who?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
* * *
Teft gasped in the darkness.
“Can you see it, Teft?” the spren whispered. “Can you feel the Words?”
“I’m broken.”
“Who isn’t? Life breaks us, Teft. Then we fill the cracks with something stronger.”
“I make myself sick.”
“Teft,” she said, a glowing apparition in the darkness, “that’s what the Words are about.”
Oh, Kelek. The shouts. Fighting. His friends.
“I…”
Storm you! Be a man for once in your life!
Teft licked his lips, and spoke.
“I will protect those I hate. Even … even if the one I hate most … is … myself.”
* * *
Renarin fell to the last level of the city, the Low Ward. He stumbled to a stop there, his hand slipping from Jasnah’s. Soldiers marched through these streets, with eyes like embers.
“Jasnah!” he called. “Amaram’s soldiers changed sides. They serve Odium now! I saw it in vision!”
She ran right toward them.
“Jasnah!”
The first soldier swung his sword at her. Jasnah ducked the weapon, then shoved her hand against him, throwing him backward. He crystallized in the air, slamming into the next man, who caught the transformation like a disease. He slammed into another man, knocking him back, as if the full force of Jasnah’s shove had transferred to him. He crystallized a moment later.
Jasnah spun, a Shardblade forming in her gloved safehand, her skirt rippling as she sliced through six men in one sweep. The sword vanished as she slapped her hand into the wall of a building behind her, and that wall puffed away into smoke, causing the roof to crash down, blocking the alley between buildings, where other soldiers had been approaching.
She swept her hand upward, and air coalesced into stone, forming steps that she took—barely breaking her stride—to climb to the rooftop of the next building.
Renarin gaped. That— How—
It will be … great … vast … wonderful! Glys said from within Renarin’s heart. It will be beautiful, Renarin! Look!
A well blossomed inside of him. Power like he’d never before felt, an awesome, overwhelming strength. Stormlight unending. A source of it so vast, he was stunned.
“Jasnah?” he shouted, then belatedly ran up the steps she’d created, feeling so alive that he wanted to dance. Wouldn’t that be a sight? Renarin Kholin dancing on a rooftop while …
He slowed, gaping again as he looked through a gap in the wall and saw a column of light. Rising higher and higher, it stretched toward the clouds.
* * *
Fen and her consort backed away from the storm of light.
Navani exulted in it. She leaned out far over the side of the wall, laughing like a fool. Gloryspren streamed around her, brushing her hair, flowing toward the already impossible number that coursed around Dalinar in a pillar that stretched hundreds of feet into the air.
Then lights sparked to life in a wave across the field, the top of the wall, the street below. Gemstones that had been lying ignored, scattered from the broken bank, drank in Stormlight from Dalinar. They lit the ground with a thousand pinpricks of color.
* * *
“No!” Odium screamed. He stepped forward. “No, we killed you. WE KILLED YOU!”
Dalinar stood within a pillar of light and spinning gloryspren, one hand to each side, clutching the realms that made up reality.
Forgiven. The pain he’d so recently insisted that he would keep started to fade away on its own.
These Words … are accepted, the Stormfather said, sounding stunned. How? What have you done?
Odium stumbled back. “Kill him! Attack him!”
The parshwoman didn’t move, but Amaram lethargically lowered his hand from his face, then stepped forward, summoning his Shardblade.
Dalinar took his hand from the glowing pillar and held it out. “You can change,” he said. “You can become a better person. I did. Journey before destination.”
“No,” Amaram said. “No, he’ll never forgive me.”
“The bridgeman?”
“Not him.” Amaram tapped his chest. “Him. I’m sorry, Dalinar.”
He raised a familiar Shardblade. Dalinar’s Shardblade, Oathbringer. Passed from tyrant to tyrant to tyrant.
A portion of light split from Dalinar’s column.
Amaram swung Oathbringer with a shout, but the light met the Shardblade with an explosion of sparks, throwing Amaram backward—as if the strength of Shardplate were no more than that of a child. The light resolved into a man with shoulder-length wavy hair, a blue uniform, and a silvery spear in his hand.
A second glowing form split off into Shallan Davar, brilliant red hair streaming behind her, a long thin Shardblade with a slight curve forming in her hands.
And then, blessedly, Adolin appeared.
* * *
“Mistress!” Wyndle said. “Oh, mistress!”
For once, Lift didn’t have the will to tell him to shut up. She focused everything on those tendrils creeping up her arms, like deep, dark vines.
The assassin lay on the ground, staring upward, practic
ally covered in those vines. Lift held them at bay, teeth gritted. Her will against the darkness until …
Light.
Like a sudden detonation, a force of light flashed across the field. Gemstones on the ground flared up, capturing Stormlight, and the assassin screamed, drawing in Light like glowing mist.
The vines shriveled, as the sword’s thirst was slaked by the Stormlight. Lift fell back on the stone and pried her hands off Szeth’s head.
I knew I liked you, a voice said in Lift’s mind.
The sword. So it was a spren? “You almost ate him,” Lift said. “You almost starvin’ ate me!”
Oh, I wouldn’t do that, the voice said. She seemed completely baffled, voice growing slow, like she was drowsy. But … maybe I was just really, really hungry.…
Well, Lift supposed she couldn’t blame someone for that.
The assassin climbed unsteadily to his feet. His face was crisscrossed with lines where the vines had been. That somehow left his skin grey in streaks, the color of stone. Lift’s arms bore the same. Huh.
Szeth walked toward the glowing column of light, leaving an afterimage behind him. “Come,” he said.
* * *
Elhokar? Dalinar thought. But no one else came through the column of light. And he knew. Knew, somehow, that the king was not coming.
He closed his eyes, and accepted that grief. He had failed the king in many ways.
Stand up, he thought. And do better.
He opened his eyes, and slowly his column of gloryspren faded. The power within him withdrew, leaving him exhausted. Fortunately, the field was covered in glittering gemstones. Stormlight in plenty.
A direct conduit to the Spiritual Realm, the Stormfather said. You renew spheres, Dalinar?
“We are Connected.”
I was bonded to men before. This never happened then.
“Honor was alive then. We are something different. His remnants, your soul, my will.”
Kaladin Stormblessed stepped up beside Dalinar before the rubble of the wall, and Shallan Davar stood on the other side. Jasnah emerged from the city and surveyed the scene with a critical air, while Renarin popped out behind her, then cried out and ran for Adolin. He grabbed his older brother in an embrace, then gasped. Adolin was wounded?
Good lad, Dalinar thought as Renarin immediately set to healing his brother.
Two more people crossed the battlefield. Lift he had anticipated. But the assassin? Szeth scooped the silvery sheath off the ground and slammed his black Shardblade into it, before stepping up to join Dalinar.
Skybreaker, Dalinar thought, counting them off. Edgedancer. That was seven.
He would have expected three more.
There, the Stormfather said. Behind your niece.
Two more people appeared in the shadow of the wall. A large, powerful man with an impressive physique, and a woman with long, dark hair. Their dark skin marked them as Makabaki, perhaps Azish, but their eyes were wrong.
I know them, the Stormfather said, sounding surprised. I know them from long, long ago. Memories of days when I did not fully live.
Dalinar, you are in the presence of divinities.
“I’ve grown accustomed to it,” Dalinar said, turning back toward the field. Odium had retreated into nothingness, though his Fused remained, as did most of the troops, and one strange spren—the one like black smoke. Beyond it, of course, the Thrill still encompassed the north side of the landing, near the water.
Amaram had ten thousand men, and maybe half of those had made it into the city so far. They had wilted before Dalinar’s display, but now …
Wait.
Those two only make nine, he thought to the Stormfather. Something told him there should be one more.
I don’t know. Perhaps they haven’t been found yet. Regardless, even with the bond you are just one man. Radiants are not immortal. How do you face this army?
“Dalinar?” Kaladin said. “Orders, sir?”
The enemy ranks were recovering. They lifted weapons, eyes glowing deep red. Amaram stirred as well, some twenty feet away. The Thrill had Dalinar most worried, however. He knew what it could do.
He glanced down at his arm, and noticed something. The lightning that had struck him earlier, shredding The Way of Kings, had broken his arm fabrial. The clasp was undone, and Dalinar could see the tiny gemstones Navani had placed to power it.
“Sir?” Kaladin asked again.
“The enemy is trying to crush this city, Captain,” Dalinar said, lowering his arm. “We’re going to hold it against his forces.”
“Seven Radiants?” Jasnah said, skeptical. “Uncle, that seems a tall order, even if one of us is—apparently—the storming Assassin in White.”
“I serve Dalinar Kholin,” Szeth-son-son-Vallano whispered. His face, for some reason, was streaked with grey. “I cannot know truth, so I follow one who does.”
“Whatever we do,” Shallan said, “we should do it quickly. Before those soldiers—”
“Renarin!” Dalinar barked.
“Sir!” Renarin said, scrambling forward.
“We need to hold out until troops arrive from Urithiru. Fen doesn’t have the numbers to fight alone. Get to the Oathgate, stop that thunderclast up there from destroying it, and open the portal.”
“Sir!” Renarin saluted.
“Shallan, we don’t have an army yet,” Dalinar said. “Lightweave one up for us, and keep these soldiers busy. They’re consumed by a bloodlust that I suspect will make them easier to distract. Jasnah, the city we’re defending happens to have a big storming hole in its wall. Can you hold that hole and stop anyone who tries to get through?”
She nodded, thoughtful.
“What about me?” Kaladin asked.
Dalinar pointed at Amaram, who was climbing to his feet in his Shardplate. “He’s going to try to kill me for what I do next, and I could use a bodyguard. As I recall, you have a score to settle with the highlord.”
“You could say that.”
“Lift, I believe I already gave you an order. Take the assassin and get me that ruby. Together, we hold this city until Renarin returns with troops. Any questions?”
“Um…” Lift said. “Could you maybe … tell me where to get something to eat…?”
Dalinar glanced at her. Something to eat? “There … should be a supply dump just inside the wall.”
“Thanks!”
Dalinar sighed, then started walking toward the water.
“Sir!” Kaladin called. “Where are you going?”
“The enemy brought a very big stick to this battle, Captain. I’m going to take it away.”
If the journey itself is indeed the most important piece, rather than the destination itself, then I traveled not to avoid duty—but to seek it.
—From The Way of Kings, postscript
Kaladin rose into the sky, alive with Stormlight.
Below him, Dalinar walked toward the red mist. Though tendrils of it moved among the soldiers of Amaram’s army, the bulk of it swirled closer to the coast, to the right of the bay and the destroyed docks.
Storms, Kaladin felt good to be in the real world again. Even with the Everstorm dominating the sun, this place felt so much more bright than Shadesmar. A group of windspren dodged around him, though the air was relatively still. Perhaps they were the ones who had come to him on the other side, the ones he had failed.
Kaladin, Syl said. You don’t need another reason to berate yourself.
She was right. Storms, he could be down on himself sometimes. Was that the flaw that had prevented him from speaking the Words of the Fourth Ideal?
For some reason, Syl sighed. Oh, Kaladin.
“We’ll talk about it later,” he said.
For now, he’d been given a second chance to protect Dalinar Kholin. Stormlight raging inside of him, the Sylspear a comfortable weight in his hand, he Lashed himself downward and crashed to the stones near Amaram.
The highlord, in turn, fell to his knees.
&
nbsp; What? Kaladin thought. Amaram was coughing. He tipped his head back, faceplate up, and groaned.
Had he just swallowed something?
* * *
Adolin prodded at his stomach. Beneath the bloodstained rip, he felt only smooth, new skin. Not even a hint of an ache.
For a time, he’d been sure he would die.
He’d been there before. Months ago, he’d felt it when Sadeas had withdrawn, leaving the Kholin troops alone and surrounded on the Shattered Plains. This had been different. Staring up at that black sky and those unnatural clouds, feeling suddenly, appallingly fragile …
And then light. His father—the great man Adolin could never match—somehow embodying the Almighty himself. Adolin couldn’t help feeling that he hadn’t been worthy to step into that light.
Here he was anyway.
The Radiants broke apart to do Dalinar’s bidding, though Shallan knelt to check on Adolin. “How do you feel?”
“Do you realize how fond I was of this jacket?”
“Oh, Adolin.”
“Really, Shallan. Surgeons should take more care with the clothing they cut open. If a man’s going to live, he’ll want that shirt. And if he dies … well, he should at least be well dressed on his deathbed.”
She smiled, then glanced over her shoulder toward the troops with red eyes.
“Go,” he said. “I’ll be fine. Save the city. Be Radiant, Shallan.”
She kissed him, then turned and stood. That white clothing seemed to glow, the red hair a striking swatch, as Stormlight rose from her. Pattern appeared as a Shardblade with a faint, almost invisible latticework running up the length. She wove her power, and an army climbed from the ground around her.
In Urithiru, she’d made an army of a score to distract the Unmade. Now, hundreds of illusions rose around her: soldiers, shopkeepers, washwomen, scribes, all drawn from her pages. They glowed brilliantly, Light streaming from them—as if each were a Knight Radiant.
Adolin climbed to his feet, and came face-to-face with an illusion of himself wearing a Kholin uniform. The illusory Adolin glowed with Stormlight and floated a few inches off the ground. She’d made him a Windrunner.
I … I can’t take that. He turned toward the city. His father had been focused on the Radiants, and had neglected to give Adolin a specific duty. So maybe he could help the defenders inside.
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