Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Brandon Sanderson

  Thinking of that, she took in a little Stormlight and burned away the effects of the alcohol. Now wasn’t the time for a muddy head. Though most of the wines were ordinary, she did land on one she couldn’t place. It was a sweet wine, deep red, bloody in color. It didn’t taste like anything she’d had before. Fruity, yet robust, and perhaps a little bit … heavy. Was that the right word?

  “I’ve got some letters here,” Gaz said from the bedroom. “There are also some books that seem like she handwrote them.”

  “Gather it all,” Shallan said. “We’ll sort it out later. I need to go ask Adolin something.”

  She carried the carafe out to him. Several guards watched the door, and it didn’t seem anyone in the warcamp had noticed the attack. At least, no one had come knocking.

  Shallan pointedly ignored—then forced herself to look at—the body again. Adolin stepped over to meet her, speaking softly. “We should get going. A couple of the guards escaped. We might want to write for some Windrunners to meet us for quicker extraction. And … what happened to your shoes?”

  Shallan glanced at her bare feet, which poked out from under her dress. “They were impeding my ability to think.”

  “Your…” Adolin ran a hand through his delightfully messy hair, blond speckled with black. “Love, you’re deliciously weird sometimes.”

  “The rest of the time, I’m just tastelessly weird.” She held up the carafe. “Drink. It’s for science.”

  He frowned, but tried a sip, then grimaced.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Shin ‘wine.’ They have no idea how to ferment a proper alcohol. They make it all out of the same strange little berry.”

  “Exotic indeed…” Shallan said. “We can’t leave quite yet. Pattern and I have a secret to tease out.”

  “Mmm…” Pattern said from her skirt. “I wish I had shoes to take off so my brain would work right.” He paused. “Actually, I don’t think I have a brain.”

  “We’ll be back in a second,” she said, returning to the room with the wine hutch. Red had joined Gaz in the extremely tiny bedchamber. There were no windows, with barely enough room to stand. It held a mattress with no frame and a trunk that apparently stored the notes and letters Gaz had gathered.

  Ialai would expect those to be found. There might be secrets in them, but not what Shallan hunted. Ialai moved here after her palace burned down. She slept in a closet and refused to leave this fortress. And still Mraize got not one, but two people in to kill her.

  Shin wine. Was that the clue? Something about the hutch? She glanced it over, then got out her sketchpad.

  “Pattern,” she said, “search the room for patterns.”

  Pattern hummed and moved off her skirt—rippling the floor as he moved across it, as if he were somehow inside the stone, making the surface bulge. As he began searching, she did a sketch of the hutch.

  There was something about committing an object to memory, then freezing it into a drawing, that let her see better. She could judge the spaces between the drawers, the thickness of the wood—and she soon knew there was no room in the hutch for hidden compartments.

  She shooed away a couple of creationspren, then stood. Patterns, patterns, patterns. She scanned the carpet, then the painted designs on the upper trim of the room. Shinovar. Was the Shin wine truly important, or had she mistaken the clue?

  “Shallan,” Pattern said from across the room. “A pattern.”

  Shallan hurried to where he dimpled the rock of the wall, near the far northwest corner. Kneeling, she found that the stones did have a faint pattern to them. Carvings that—worn by time—she could barely feel beneath her fingers.

  “This building,” she said, “it’s not new. At least part of it was already standing when the Alethi arrived at the warcamps. They built the structure on an already-set foundation. What are the markings? I can barely make them out.”

  “Mmm. Ten items in a pattern, repeating,” he said.

  This one feels a little like a glyph.… she thought. These warcamps dated back to the shadowdays, when the Epoch Kingdoms had stood. Ten kingdoms of humankind. Ten glyphs? She wasn’t certain she could interpret ancient glyphs—even Jasnah might have had trouble with that—but maybe she didn’t have to.

  “These stones run around the base of the wall,” Shallan said. “Let’s see if any of the other carvings are easier to make out.”

  A few of the stones were indeed better preserved. They each bore a glyph—and what appeared to be a small map in the shape of one of the old kingdoms. Most were indistinct blobs, but the crescent shape of Shinovar’s mountains stood out.

  Shin wine. A map with the Shinovar mountains. “Find every block with this shape on it,” she told Pattern.

  He did so, every tenth block. She moved along to each one until, on the third try, the stone wiggled. “Here,” she said. “In the corner. I think this is right.”

  “Mmm…” he said. “A few degrees off, so technically acute.”

  She carefully slid the stone out. Inside, like the mythical gemstone cache from a bedtime tale, she found a small notebook. She glanced up and checked whether Gaz and Red were still in the other room. They were.

  Damnation, she has me distrusting my own agents, Shallan thought, slipping the notebook into her safepouch and replacing the stone. Maybe Ialai’s only plan had been to sow chaos, distrust. But … Shallan couldn’t entirely accept that theory, not with how haunted Ialai had seemed. It wasn’t hard to believe the Ghostbloods had been hunting her; Mraize had infiltrated Amaram and Ialai’s inner circle a year ago, but hadn’t gone with them when they’d fled Urithiru.

  Though Shallan itched to peek through the notebook, Gaz and Red emerged with a pillowcase full of notes and letters. “If there’s anything more in there,” Gaz said, thumbing over his shoulder, “we can’t find it.”

  “It will have to do,” Shallan said as Adolin waved her to join him. “Let’s get out of here.”

  * * *

  Kaladin hesitated, spear held toward Moash’s throat. He could end the man. Should end the man. Why did he hesitate?

  Moash … had been his friend. They’d spent hours by the fire, talking about their lives. Kaladin had opened his heart to this man, in ways he hadn’t to most of the others. He’d told Moash, like Teft and Rock, of Tien. Of Roshone. Of his fears.

  Moash wasn’t just a friend though. He was beyond that a member of Bridge Four. Kaladin had sworn to the storms and the heavens above—if anyone was there watching—that he’d protect those men.

  Kaladin had failed Moash. As soundly as he’d failed Dunny, Mart, and Jaks. And of them all, losing Moash hurt the most. Because in those callous eyes, Kaladin saw himself.

  “You bastard,” Kaladin hissed.

  “You deny that I was justified?” Moash kicked at Roshone’s body. “You know what he did. You know what he cost me.”

  “You killed Elhokar for that crime!”

  “Because he deserved it, like this one did.” Moash shook his head. “I did this for you too, Kal. You would let your brother’s soul cry into the storms, unavenged?”

  “Don’t you dare speak of Tien!” Kaladin shouted. He felt himself slipping, losing control. It happened whenever he thought of Moash, of King Elhokar dying, of failing the people of Kholinar and the men of the Wall Guard.

  “You claim justice?” Kaladin demanded, waving toward the corpses chained to the wall. “What about Jeber and that other man. You killed them for justice?”

  “For mercy,” Moash said. “Better a quick death than to leave them to die, forgotten.”

  “You could have set them free!” Kaladin’s hands were sweaty on his weapon, and his mind … his mind wouldn’t think straight. His Stormlight was running low, almost out.

  Kaladin, Syl said. Let’s leave.

  “We have to deal with him,” Kaladin whispered. “I have to … have to…”

  What? Kill Moash while he stood defenseless? This was a man Kaladin was supposed to protec
t. To save …

  “They’re going to die, you know,” Moash said softly.

  “Shut up.”

  “Everyone you love, everyone you think you can protect. They’re all going to die anyway. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “I said shut up!” Kaladin shouted.

  Moash stepped toward the spear, dropping his hands to his sides as he took a second step.

  Kaladin, strangely, felt himself shying away. He’d been so tired lately, and while he tried to ignore it—tried to keep going—his fatigue seemed a sudden weight. Kaladin had used a lot of his Stormlight fighting, then getting through the fire.

  It ran out right then, and he deflated. The numbness he’d been shoving down this entire battle flooded into him. The exhaustion.

  Beyond Moash, the distant fire crackled and snapped. Far off, a loud crashing crunch echoed through the tunnel: the kitchen ceiling finally collapsing. Bits of burning wood tumbled down the tunnel, the embers fading to darkness.

  “Do you remember the chasm, Kal?” Moash whispered. “In the rain that night? Standing there, looking down into the darkness, and knowing it was your sole release? You knew it then. You try to pretend you’ve forgotten. But you know. As sure as the storms will come. As sure as every lighteyes will lie. There is only one answer. One path. One result.”

  “No…” Kaladin whispered.

  “I’ve found the better way,” Moash said. “I feel no guilt. I’ve given it away, and in so doing became the person I could always have become—if I hadn’t been restrained.”

  “You’ve become a monster.”

  “I can take away the pain, Kal. Isn’t that what you want? An end to your suffering?”

  Kaladin felt like he was in a trance. Frozen, as he’d been when he watched … watched Elhokar die. A disconnect that had festered inside him ever since.

  No, it had been growing for longer. A seed that made him incapable of fighting, of deciding—paralyzing him while his friends died.

  His spear slipped from his fingers. Syl was talking, but … but he couldn’t hear her. Her voice was a distant breeze.…

  “There’s a simple path to freedom,” Moash said, reaching out and putting his hand on Kaladin’s shoulder. A comforting, familiar gesture. “You are my dearest friend, Kal. I want you to stop hurting. I want you to be free.”

  “No…”

  “The answer is to stop existing, Kal. You’ve always known it, haven’t you?”

  Kaladin blinked away tears, and the deepest part of him—the little boy who hated the rain and the darkness—withdrew into his soul and curled up. Because … he did want to stop hurting.

  He wanted it so badly.

  “I need one thing from you,” Moash said. “I need you to admit that I’m right. I need you to see. As they keep dying, remember. As you fail them, and the pain consumes you, remember there is a way out. Step back up to that cliff and jump into the darkness.”

  Syl was screaming, but it was only wind. A distant wind …

  “But I won’t fight you, Kal,” Moash whispered. “There is no fight to be won. We lost the moment we were born into this cursed life of suffering. The sole victory left to us is to choose to end it. I found my way. There is one open to you.”

  Oh, Stormfather, Kaladin thought. Oh, Almighty.

  I just … I just want to stop failing the people I love.…

  Light exploded into the room.

  Clean and white, like the light of the brightest diamond. The light of the sun. A brilliant, concentrated purity.

  Moash growled, spinning around, shading his eyes against the source of the light—which came from the doorway. The figure behind it wasn’t visible as anything more than a shadow.

  Moash shied away from the light—but a version of him, transparent and filmy, broke off and stepped toward the light instead. Like an afterimage. In it, Kaladin saw the same Moash—but somehow standing taller, wearing a brilliant blue uniform. This one raised a hand, confident, and although Kaladin couldn’t see them, he knew people gathered behind this Moash. Protected. Safe.

  The image of Moash burst alight as a Shardspear formed in his hands.

  “No!” the real Moash screamed. “No! Take it! Take my pain!” He stumbled away to the side of the room, furious, a Shardblade—the Blade of the Assassin in White—forming in his hands. He swung at the empty air. Finally he lowered his head—shadowing his face with his elbow—and shoved past the figure in the light and rushed back up the tunnel.

  Kaladin knelt, bathed in that warm light. Yes, warmth. Kaladin felt warm. Surely … if there truly was a deity … it watched him from within that light.

  The light faded, and a spindly young man with black and blond hair rushed forward to grab Kaladin.

  “Sir!” Renarin asked. “Kaladin, sir? Are you all right? Are you out of Stormlight?”

  “I…” Kaladin shook his head. “What…”

  “Come on,” Renarin said, getting under his arm to help lift him. “The Fused have retreated. The ship is ready to leave!”

  Kaladin nodded, numb, and let Renarin help him stand.

  A pewter cage will cause the spren of your fabrial to express its attribute in force—a flamespren, for example, will create heat. We call these augmenters. They tend to use Stormlight more quickly than other fabrials.

  —Lecture on fabrial mechanics presented by Navani Kholin to the coalition of monarchs, Urithiru, Jesevan, 1175

  By the time Kaladin started to come to himself, the Fourth Bridge had already begun lifting into the air. He stood near the railing, watching Hearthstone—now abandoned—shrinking beneath them. From this distance, the houses resembled a group of discarded crab shells, shed as the creature grew. Their function served, they were now scattered refuse.

  Once, he’d imagined returning to this place triumphant. Instead, that return had eventually brought the town’s end. It surprised him how little it hurt, knowing he’d probably visited his birthplace for the last time.

  Well, it hadn’t been home to him in years. Instinctively, he searched out the soldiers of Bridge Four. They were mingled among the other Windrunners and squires on the upper deck, crowding around, talking about something Kaladin couldn’t make out.

  The group was so big now. Hundreds of Windrunners—far too many to function as the tight-knit group he’d formed in Sadeas’s army. A groan escaped his lips, and he blamed it on his fatigue.

  He settled down on the deck and put his back to the railing. One of the ardents brought him a cup of something warm, which he took gratefully—until he realized the drinks were distributed to the townspeople and refugees, not the other soldiers. Did he look so bad?

  Yes, he thought, glancing down at his bloodied and burned uniform. He vaguely remembered stumbling up to the ship with Renarin’s help, then barking at the flood of Windrunners who came to fawn over him. They kept offering him Stormlight, but he had plenty. It surged in his veins now, but for once the extra energy it lent seemed … wan. Faded.

  Stop, he thought forcibly. You’ve held yourself together in rougher winds than this, Kaladin. Breathe deeply. It will pass. It always does.

  He sipped his drink, which turned out to be broth. He welcomed its warmth, especially as the ship gained elevation. Many of the townspeople gathered near the sides, awespren bursting around them. Kaladin forced out a smile as he closed his eyes and leaned his head back, trying to recapture the wondrous feeling of taking to the air those first few times.

  Instead, he found himself reliving other darker times. When Tien had died, and when he’d failed Elhokar. Foolish though it was, the second one hurt almost as much as the first. He hadn’t particularly liked the king. Yet somehow, seeing Elhokar die as he nearly spoke the first Radiant Ideal …

  Kaladin opened his eyes as Syl flew up in the form of a miniature Fourth Bridge. She often took the shape of natural things, but this one seemed extra odd. It didn’t belong in the sky. One might argue that Kaladin didn’t either.

  She re-formed
into the shape of a young woman, wearing her more stately dress, and landed at eye level. She waved toward the gathered Windrunners. “They’re congratulating Laran,” Syl explained. “She spoke the Third Ideal while we were in that burning building.”

  Kaladin grunted. “Good for her.”

  “Are you going to congratulate her?”

  “Later,” Kaladin said. “Don’t want to force my way through the crowd.” He sighed, pressing his head back against the railing again.

  Why didn’t I kill him? he thought. I’ll kill parshmen and Fused for existing, but when I face Moash, I lock up? Why?

  He felt so stupid. How had he been so easy to manipulate? Why hadn’t he simply rammed his spear into Moash’s too-confident face and saved the world a whole ton of hassle? At the least it would have shut the man up. Stopped the words that dripped from his mouth like sludge …

  They’re going to die … Everyone you love, everyone you think you can protect. They’re all going to die anyway. There’s nothing you can do about it.

  I can take away the pain.…

  Kaladin forced his eyes open and found Syl standing before him wearing her more usual dress—the flowing, girlish one that faded to mist around her knees. She seemed smaller than normal.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she said softly. “To help you.”

  He glanced down.

  “The darkness in you is better some times, worse others,” she said. “But lately … it’s grown into something different. You seem so tired.”

  “I just need some good rest,” Kaladin said. “You think I’m bad now? You should’ve seen me after Hav made me hike at double time across … across…”

  He turned away. Lying to himself was one thing. Lying to Syl was harder.

  “Moash did something to me,” he said. “Put me into some kind of trance.”

  “I don’t think he did, Kaladin,” she whispered. “How did he know about the Honor Chasm? And what you nearly did there?”

  “I told him a lot of things, back during better days. In Dalinar’s army, before Urithiru. Before…”

  Why couldn’t he remember those times, the warm times? Sitting at the fire with real friends?