Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Brandon Sanderson

  “All right, then. You ask why God is relevant when you’re considering teaching men to kill?”

  Kaladin inched carefully forward, his Blade held before him. “I don’t know what I believe. Navani still follows the Almighty. She burns glyphwards every morning. Dalinar says that the Almighty is dead, but he also claims there’s another true God somewhere in a place beyond Shadesmar. Jasnah says that a being having vast powers doesn’t make them God, and concludes—from the way the world works—that an omnipotent, loving deity cannot exist.”

  “I didn’t ask what they believe. I asked what you believe.”

  “I’m not confident anyone knows the answers. I figure I’ll let the people who care argue about it, and I’ll keep my head down and focus on my life right now.”

  Zahel nodded to him, as if that answer was acceptable. He waved Kaladin forward. Trying to keep his sword form in mind—he’d trained mostly on Smokestance—Kaladin tested forward. He feinted twice, then lunged.

  Zahel’s hands became a blur as he pushed the sword to the side with his stretched-out scarf, then twisted his hands around, neatly wrapping the scarf around the sword. That gave him leverage to push the sword farther away as he stepped into Kaladin’s lunge and slid his makeshift wrapping along the length of the Blade, coming in close.

  Here, he somehow twisted his cloths around to wrap Kaladin’s wrists as well. Kaladin tried a head-butt, but Zahel stepped into the move and raised one side of the scarf—letting Kaladin’s head go underneath it. With a twirl and a twist, Zahel completely tied Kaladin in the scarf. How long was that thing?

  The exchange left Kaladin with not only his hands tied tightly, but a scarf now holding his arms pinned to his sides, Zahel standing behind him. Kaladin couldn’t see what Zahel did next, but it involved sending a loop of scarf up over Kaladin’s head and around his neck. Zahel pulled tight, choking off Kaladin’s air.

  I think we’re losing, Syl said. To a guy wielding something he found in Adolin’s sock drawer.

  Kaladin grunted, but a part of him was excited. Frustrating as Zahel could be, he was an excellent fighter—and he tested Kaladin in ways he’d never seen before. That was the sort of training he needed in order to beat the Fused.

  As Zahel tried to choke him, Kaladin forced himself to remain calm. He changed Syl into a small dagger. A twist of the wrist cut the scarf, which unraveled the entire trap, leaving Kaladin free to spin and slash with his again-dulled knife.

  The ardent blocked the knife with his cloth-wrapped arm. He immediately caught Kaladin’s wrist with his other hand, so Kaladin dismissed Syl and summoned her again with his off hand—swinging to make Zahel dodge back.

  Zahel snatched a sheet off the fluttering lines, twisting it and wrapping it into a tight length, like a cord.

  Kaladin rubbed his neck. “I think … I think I have seen this style before. You fight like Azure does.”

  “She fights like me, boy.”

  “She’s hunting for you, I think.”

  “So Adolin has said. The fool woman will have to get through Cultivation’s Perpendicularity first, so I won’t hold my Breaths waiting for her to arrive.” He waved for Kaladin to come at him again.

  Kaladin slipped a throwing knife from his belt, then fell into a sword-and-knife stance. He waved for Zahel to come at him instead. The swordmaster smiled, then threw his sheet at Kaladin. It puffed out, spreading wide as if going for an embrace. By the time Kaladin had cut it down, Zahel was gone, ducking out into the rippling cloth forest.

  Kaladin dismissed Syl, then waved toward the ground. She nodded and dived to look under the sheets, searching for Zahel. She pointed in a direction for Kaladin, then dodged between two sheets as a ribbon of light.

  Kaladin followed carefully. He thought he caught a glimpse of Zahel through the sheets, a shadow across the cloth.

  “Do you believe?” Kaladin asked as he advanced. “In God, or the Almighty or whatever?”

  “I don’t have to believe,” the voice drifted back. “I know gods exist. I simply hate them.”

  Kaladin dodged between a pair of sheets. In that moment, sheets began ripping free of the lines. They sprang for Kaladin, six at once, and he swore he could see the outlines of faces and figures in them. He summoned Syl and—keeping his head—ignored the unnerving sight and found Zahel.

  Kaladin lunged. Zahel—moving with almost supernatural poise—raised two fingers and pressed them to the moving Blade, turning the point aside exactly enough that it missed.

  The wind swirled around Kaladin as he stepped into the rippling sheets. They flowed against him—insubstantial—but then entangled his legs. He tripped with a curse, falling to the hard stone.

  A second later Zahel had Kaladin’s own knife in hand, pressed to his forehead. Kaladin felt the point right among his scars.

  “You cheated,” Kaladin said. “You’re doing something with those sheets and that cloth.”

  “I couldn’t cheat,” Zahel said. “This wasn’t about winning or losing, boy. It was for me to see how you fought. I can tell more about a man when the odds are against him.”

  Zahel stood and dropped the knife with a clang. Kaladin recovered it, sitting up, and glanced at the fallen sheets. They lay on the ground—normal cloths, occasionally shifting in the breeze. In fact, another man might have dismissed their motions as a trick of the wind.

  But Kaladin knew the wind. That had not been the wind.

  “You can’t join the ardents,” Zahel said to him, kneeling and touching one of the cloths with his finger, then lifting it and pinning it onto the drying line. He did the same for the others, each in turn.

  “Why can’t I?” Kaladin asked. He wasn’t certain Zahel had the authority to forbid him, but he also wasn’t certain he wanted to take this path if Zahel—the one ardent he felt true respect for—was opposed. “Do you make everyone who wants to retire to the ardentia fight you for the privilege?”

  “It wasn’t a fight about winning or losing,” Zahel said. “You’re not unwelcome because you lost; you’re unwelcome because you don’t belong with us.” He whipped a sheet in the air, then pinned it in place. “You love the fight, Kaladin. Not with the Thrill that Dalinar once felt, or even with the anticipation of a dandy going to a duel.

  “You love it because it’s part of you. It’s your mistress, your passion, your lifeblood. You’d find the daily training unsatisfying. You’d thirst for something more. You’d eventually turn and leave, and that would put you in a worse position than if you’d never started.”

  He tossed his scarf at Kaladin’s feet. Though it must have been a different scarf, for the one he’d started with had been bright red, and this one was dull grey.

  “Return when you hate the fight,” Zahel said. “Truly hate it.” He walked off between the sheets.

  Kaladin picked up the fallen scarf, then glanced at Syl, who descended through the air near him on an invisible set of steps. She shrugged.

  Kaladin gripped the cloth, then strode around the sheets. The swordmaster had moved to sit at the rim of the plateau, legs over the edge, staring out across the nearby mountain range. Kaladin dropped the scarf on a pile of others—each of which was now grey.

  “What are you?” Kaladin asked. “Are you like Wit?” There had always been something about Zahel, something too knowing. Something distinct, set apart, different from the others.

  “No,” Zahel said. “I don’t think there’s anyone else quite like Hoid. I knew him by the name Dust when I was younger. I think he must have a thousand different names among a thousand different peoples.”

  “And you?” Kaladin settled down on the stone beside Zahel. “How many names do you have?”

  “A few,” Zahel said. “More than I normally share.” He leaned forward, elbows on thighs. Wind blew at the hem of his robe, dangling over a drop of thousands of feet. “You want to know what I am? Well, I’m a lot of things. Tired, mostly. But I’m also a Type Two Invested entity. Used to call myself a Type One, but I h
ad to throw the whole scale out, once I learned more. That’s the trouble with science. It’s never done. Always upending itself. Ruining perfect systems for the little inconvenience of them being wrong.”

  “I…” Kaladin swallowed. “I don’t know what any of that meant, but thanks for replying. Wit never gives me answers. At least not straight ones.”

  “That’s because Wit is an asshole,” Zahel said. He fished in his robe’s pocket and pulled something out—a small stone in the shape of a curling shell. “Ever seen one of these?”

  “Soulcast?” Kaladin asked, taking the small shell. It was surprisingly heavy. He turned it around, admiring the way it curled.

  “Similar. That’s a creature that died long, long ago. It settled into the mud, and slowly—over thousands upon thousands of years—minerals infused its body, replacing it axon by axon with stone. Eventually the entire thing was transformed.”

  “So … natural Soulcasting. Over time.”

  “A long time. A mind-numbingly long time. The place I come from, it didn’t have any of these. It’s too new. Your world might have some hidden deep, but I doubt it. That stone you hold is old. Older than Wit, or your Heralds, or the gods themselves.”

  Kaladin held it up, then—out of habit—used a few drops of water from his canteen to reveal its hidden colors and shades.

  “My soul,” Zahel said, “is like that fossil. Every part of my soul has been replaced with something new, though it happened in a flash for me. The soul I have now resembles the one I was born with, but it’s something else entirely.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m not surprised.” Zahel thought for a moment. “Imagine it this way. You know how you can make an imprint in crem, then let it dry, and fill the imprint with wax to create a copy of your original object? Well, that happened to my soul. When I died, I was drenched in power. So when my soul escaped, it left a duplicate. A kind of … fossil of a soul.”

  Kaladin hesitated. “You … died?”

  Zahel nodded. “Happened to your friend too. Up in the prison? The one with … that sword.”

  “Szeth. Not my friend.”

  “The Heralds too,” Zahel said. “When they died, they left an imprint behind. Power that remembered being them. You see, the power wants to be alive.” He gestured with his chin toward Syl, flying down beneath them as a ribbon of light. “She’s what I now call a Type One Invested entity. I decided that had to be the proper way to refer to them. Power that came alive on its own.”

  “You can see her!” Kaladin said.

  “See? No. Sense?” Zahel shrugged. “Cut off a bit of divinity and leave it alone. Eventually it comes alive. And if you let a man die with too Invested a soul—or Invest him right as he’s dying—he’ll leave behind a shadow you can nail back onto a body. His own, if you’re feeling charitable. Once done, you have this.” Zahel waved to himself. “Type Two Invested entity. Dead man walking.”

  What a … strange conversation. Kaladin frowned, trying to figure out why Zahel was telling him this. I suppose I did ask. So … Wait. Maybe there was another reason.

  “The Fused?” Kaladin asked. “That’s what they are?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Most of us stop aging when it happens, gaining a kind of immortality.”

  “Is there a … way to kill something like you? Permanently?”

  “Lots of ways. For the weaker ones, just kill the body again, make sure no one Invests the soul with more strength, and they’ll slip away in a few minutes. For stronger ones … well, you might be able to starve them. A lot of Type Twos feed on power. Keeps them going.

  “These enemies of yours though, I think they’re too strong for that. They’ve lasted thousands of years already, and seem Connected to Odium to feed directly on his power. You’ll have to find a way to disrupt their souls. You can’t just rip them apart; you need a weapon so strong, it unravels the soul.” He squinted, looking off into the distance. “I know through sorry experience those kinds of weapons are very dangerous to make, and never seem to work right.”

  “There’s another way,” Kaladin said. “We could convince the Fused to stop fighting. Instead of killing them, we could find a way to live with them.”

  “Grand ideals,” Zahel said. “Optimism. Yeah, you’d make a terrible swordmaster. Be wary of those Fused, kid. The longer one of us exists, the more like a spren we become. Consumed by a singular purpose, our minds bound and chained by our Intent. We’re spren masquerading as men. That’s why she takes our memories. She knows we aren’t the actual people who died, but something else given a corpse to inhabit.…”

  “She?” Kaladin asked.

  Zahel didn’t respond, though when Kaladin handed back the stone shell, Zahel took it. As Kaladin hiked off, the swordmaster cradled it to his chest, staring out toward the endless horizon.

  My final point of the evening is a discussion of Fused weapons. The Fused use a variety of fabrial devices to fight Radiants. It is obvious from how quickly they’ve fabricated and employed these countermeasures that they have used these in the past.

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

  Navani held up the dark sphere, closing one eye to inspect it closely. It was different from Voidlight. She held up a Voidlight sphere for comparison, a diamond infused with the strange Light gathered during the Everstorm.

  They still didn’t know how the enemy infused spheres with Voidlight; all they owned were stolen from the singers. Fortunately, Voidlight leaked far more slowly than Stormlight did. She probably had a few more days before this one went dun.

  The Voidlight sphere had a strange glow to it. A distinctive purple-on-black, which Rushu described as a hyperviolet—a color she claimed existed in theory, though Navani didn’t know how a color could be theoretical. Regardless, this was a purple-on-black, coexisting in such a way that both shades simultaneously occupied the same space.

  The strange sphere that Szeth had provided seemed exactly the same at first glance. Purple upon black, an impossible color. Like the ordinary Voidlight sphere, its blackness expanded, making the surrounding air dim.

  But there was an added effect with this sphere, one she hadn’t noticed right away. It warped the air around it. Looking at the sphere for too long was a distinctively disorienting sensation. It evoked a wrongness that she couldn’t define.

  Gavilar had possessed Voidlight spheres—she remembered seeing them—and that fact was befuddling enough. How had her husband obtained Voidlight years before the arrival of the Everstorm? But this other black sphere. What on Roshar was it?

  “Assassin,” Navani said. “Look at me.”

  Szeth, the Assassin in White, looked up from within his cell. Sixteen days had passed since Navani and Dalinar had returned from testing the Fourth Bridge in battle. Sixteen days spent catching up on mundane work in the tower, like overseeing planned expansions of the market and dealing with sanitation problems. Only now did she have a large chunk of time to dedicate to Voidlight and the nature of the tower.

  The strange individual who had contacted her via spanreed had not spoken to her again. Navani had decided not to worry about them—she didn’t even know if they were sane. She had plenty else to worry about, such as the man sitting in the prison cell in front of her.

  Szeth cradled his strange Shardblade in his lap, the one that leaked black smoke when unsheathed. When challenged about letting the prisoner remain armed, Dalinar had replied, “I believe the safest place to keep the thing is in his possession.”

  Navani questioned that wisdom. In her opinion, they should sink the strange Blade in the ocean, like they’d done with the gemstone that contained the Thrill. Szeth did not seem stable enough to be trusted with a Shard, particularly not one so dangerous as this. In fact, she wished the assassin had been executed as he deserved.

  Dalinar disagreed, and so they’d decided together to leave Szeth alive. Today, the Shin man sat on the
floor of his stone cell, eyes closed, wearing white clothing by his own request. He had been given what few amenities he asked for. A razor for shaving, a single blanket, a chance to bathe each day.

  And light. A great deal of light. Dozens of spheres to illuminate his small stone cell and banish all traces of shadow.

  They’d fitted the front of the room with bars, though those wouldn’t keep the assassin contained should he decide to escape. That Shardblade could reduce objects to smoke simply by nicking them.

  “Tell me again,” Navani said to him, “of the night you killed my husband.”

  “I was instructed by the Parshendi to execute him,” Szeth said softly.

  “Were you curious why they’d kill a man on the very night they were signing a peace treaty with him?”

  “I thought I was Truthless,” Szeth said. “That status required that I do as my master commanded. Without question.” His voice bore only the faintest hint of an accent.

  “Your master is now Dalinar.”

  “Yes. I have … found a better way. Throughout my Truthless existence, I followed the way of the Oathstone. I would obey anyone who held that stone. Now, I have realized I was never Truthless. I have sworn to an Ideal instead: the Blackthorn. Whatever he wishes, I will make reality.”

  “What if Dalinar dies?”

  “I … will seek another Ideal, I suppose. I had not considered it.”

  “How could you not think of that?”

  “I simply did not.”

  Storms, this is dangerous, Navani thought. Dalinar could speak of redemption and mending broken spirits, but this creature was a fire burning unchecked, ready to escape the hearth and consume any fuel it could find. Szeth had murdered kings and highprinces—over a dozen rulers all across Roshar. Yes, much of that blame fell on Taravangian, but Szeth was the tool employed to cause such destruction.

  “You didn’t finish your story,” Navani said. “The night you killed Gavilar. Tell me again what happened. The part with this sphere.”

  “We fell,” Szeth whispered, opening his eyes. “Gavilar was injured by the impact, his body fatally broken. In that moment he treated me not as an enemy, but as the last living man he would ever see. He made a request. A holy request, the last words of the dying.