Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Brandon Sanderson

  He didn’t need to make a face in the sky for her as he did for mortals. She could feel his attention like the sun’s own heat.

  CHILD. REBELLIOUS CHILD. YOU HAVE COME TO ME WISHING.

  “I want to understand him,” Syl said, revealing the thought she’d been holding—protecting—and sheltering. “Will you make me feel the darkness he does, so I can understand it? I can help him better if I know him better.”

  YOU GIVE TOO MUCH OF YOURSELF TO THAT HUMAN.

  “Isn’t that why we exist?”

  NO. YOU HAVE ALWAYS MISUNDERSTOOD THIS. YOU DO NOT EXIST FOR THEM. YOU EXIST FOR YOU. YOU EXIST TO CHOOSE.

  “And do you exist for you, Father?” she demanded, standing in blackness—insisting on holding her human form. She stared up at the deep eternity. “You never make choices. You merely blow as you always do.”

  I AM BUT THE STORM. YOU ARE MORE.

  “You avoid responsibility,” she said. “You claim you do only what a storm must, but then act like I’m somehow wrong for doing what I feel I must! You tell me I can make choices, then berate me when I make ones you do not like.”

  YOU REFUSE TO ADMIT THAT YOU ARE MORE THAN AN APPENDAGE TO A HUMAN. SPREN ONCE LET THEMSELVES BECOME CONSUMED BY THE NEEDS OF THE RADIANTS, AND THAT KILLED THEM. NOW, MANY OF MY CHILDREN HAVE FOLLOWED YOUR FOOLISH PATH, AND ARE IN GREAT DANGER.

  THIS IS OUR WORLD. IT BELONGS TO THE SPREN.

  “It belongs to everyone,” Syl said. “Spren, humans, even the singers. So we need to figure out how to live together.”

  THE ENEMY WILL NOT ALLOW IT.

  “The enemy is going to be defeated by Dalinar Kholin,” Syl said. “And so we need to have his champion ready.”

  YOU ARE SO CERTAIN THAT YOUR HUMAN IS THE CHAMPION, the Stormfather said. I DO NOT THINK THE WORLD WILL BEND TO YOUR WISHES.

  “Regardless, I need to understand him so I can help him,” Syl said. “Not because I’m going to be consumed by his desires, but because this is what I want to do. So I ask again. Will you make me capable of feeling what he does?”

  I CANNOT DO THIS THING, the Stormfather said. YOUR WISHES ARE NOT EVIL, SYLPHRENA, BUT THEY ARE DANGEROUS.

  “You cannot? Or you will not?”

  I HAVE THE POWER, BUT NOT THE ABILITY.

  The time between ended abruptly, dumping her back into the storm. Windspren spiraled around her, laughing and calling, mimicking the words, “You cannot, you cannot, you cannot!” Insufferable things. As bad as she was sometimes.

  Syl kept hold of the idea, cradling it, then let herself be otherwise distracted by the storm. She danced for its entire passing, though she couldn’t leave with it. She needed to stay within a few miles of Kaladin, or her Connection to the Physical Realm would start to fade and her mind would weaken.

  She enjoyed this time, an hour passing in moments. When the riddens finally approached, she stopped in eager anticipation, overjoyed. Up here in the mountains, the end of the storm made snow. By now, the storm had dropped all its crem-laced water, so the snow was white and pure. Each snowflake was so magnificent! She wished she could talk to objects like Shallan did, and hear each one’s story.

  She fell with the flakes, imitating them—and creating patterns unique to her. She could be herself, not only live for some human. The thing was, Kaladin wasn’t just some human. She’d picked him deliberately out of millions and millions. Her job was to help him. As powerful a duty as the Stormfather’s duty to drop water and crem to give life to Roshar.

  She soared back toward Urithiru, weaving between snowbanks, then shooting upward. This section to the west of the tower included deep valleys and frosted peaks. She dove through the former and crested the latter before looping around in circles outside the magnificent tower.

  She eventually reached the Bondsmith’s balcony. Dalinar was always awake for highstorms, regardless of the hour. She landed on his balcony, where he stood in the cold. The rock at his feet was slick with water; today the highstorm had been high enough to cover the lower stories of the tower. She’d never seen it get to the top, but she hoped it would someday. That would be different!

  She made herself visible to Dalinar, but he didn’t jump as humans sometimes did when she appeared. She didn’t understand why they did that—weren’t they used to spren fading in and out all the time around them? Humans were like storms, magnets for all kinds of spren.

  They seemed to find her more disturbing than a gloryspren. She supposed she’d take that as a compliment.

  “Did you enjoy your storm, Ancient Daughter?” Dalinar asked.

  “I enjoyed our storm,” she said. “Though Kaladin slept through the entire thing, the big lug.”

  “Good. He needs more rest.”

  She took a step toward Dalinar. “Thank you for what you did. In forcing him to change. He was stuck, doing what he felt he had to, but getting darker all the time.”

  “Every soldier reaches a point where he has to set down the sword. Part of a commander’s job is to watch for the signs.”

  “He’s different, isn’t he?” Syl said. “Worse, because his own mind fights against him.”

  “Different, yes,” Dalinar said, leaning on the railing next to her. “But who is to say what is worse or better? We each have our own Voidbringers to slay, Brightness Sylphrena. No man can judge another man’s heart or trials, for no man can truly know them.”

  “I want to try,” she said. “The Stormfather implied there was a way. Can you make me understand Kaladin’s emotions? Can you make me feel what he’s going through?”

  “I have no idea how to accomplish something like that,” Dalinar said.

  “He and I have a bond,” she said. “You should be able to use your powers to enhance that bond, strengthen it.”

  Dalinar clasped his hands on the stonework before him. He didn’t object to her request—he wasn’t the type to reject any idea out of hand.

  “What do you know of my powers?” Dalinar asked her.

  “Your abilities are what made the original Oathpact,” she said. “And they existed—and were named—long before the Knights Radiant were founded. A Bondsmith Connected the Heralds to Braize, made them immortal, and locked our enemies away. A Bondsmith bound other Surges and brought humans to Roshar, fleeing their dying world. A Bondsmith created—or at least discovered—the Nahel bond: the ability of spren and humans to join together into something better. You Connect things, Dalinar. Realms. Ideas. People.”

  He surveyed the frosted landscape, freshly painted with snow. She thought she knew his answer already, from the way he took a breath and set his jaw before speaking.

  “Even if I could do this,” he said, “it would not be right.”

  She became a small pile of leaves, disintegrating and stirring in the wind. “Then I’ll never be able to help him.”

  “You can help without knowing exactly what he’s feeling. You can be available for him to lean on.”

  “I try. Sometimes he doesn’t seem to want even me.”

  “That’s likely when he needs you most. We can never know another man’s heart, Brightness Sylphrena, but we all know what it is to live and have pain. That is the advice I’d have given to another. I do not know if it applies to you.”

  Syl looked upward, along the tower’s pointing finger, raised toward the sky. “I … had another knight once. We came here to the tower, when it was alive—though I don’t fully remember what that meant. I lost memories during the … pain.”

  “What pain?” Dalinar asked. “What pain does a spren feel?”

  “He died. My knight, Relador. He went to fight, despite his age. He shouldn’t have, and when he was killed, it hurt. I felt alone. So alone that I started to drift…”

  Dalinar nodded. “I suspect that Kaladin feels something similar, though from what I’ve been told about his ailment, it doesn’t have a specific cause. He will sometimes start to … drift, as you put it.”

  “The dark brain,” she said.

  “An apt designa
tion.”

  Maybe I can already understand Kaladin, she thought. I had a dark brain of my own, for a while.

  She had to remember what that had been like. She realized that her responsible brain and her child’s brain aligned in trying hard to forget that part of her life. But Syl was in control, not either of those brains. And maybe, if she remembered how she’d felt during those old dark days, she could help Kaladin with his current dark days.

  “Thank you,” she said to Dalinar as a group of windspren passed. She regarded them, and for once didn’t particularly feel like giving chase. “I think you have helped.”

  Sja-anat had been named Taker of Secrets long ago by a scholar no one remembered. She liked the name. It implied action. She didn’t simply hear secrets; she took them. She made them hers.

  And she kept them.

  From the other Unmade.

  From the Fused.

  From Odium himself.

  She flowed through the Kholinar palace, existing between the Physical and Cognitive Realms. Like many of the Unmade, she belonged to neither one fully. Odium trapped them in a halfway existence. Some would manifest in various forms if they resided too long in one place, or if they were pulled through by strong emotions.

  Not her.

  Sometimes Fused, or even common singers, would notice her. They’d grow stiff, look over their shoulders. They’d glimpse a shadow, a brief darkness, quickly missed. Actually seeing her required reflected light.

  It was similar in Shadesmar. She experienced that realm at the same time as she experienced the Physical Realm, though both were shadowy to her. She dreamed that somewhere a place existed that was completely right for her and her children.

  For now, she would live here.

  She flowed up steps in one realm, but barely moved in the other. Space was not entirely equal between the realms—it wasn’t that she had a foot in each realm; more, she was like two entities that shared a mind. In Shadesmar, she floated above the ocean of beads, her essence rippling. In the Physical Realm, she passed among singers who worked in the palace.

  Sja-anat did not consider herself the most clever of the Unmade. Certainly she was one of the more intelligent, but that was not the same. Some of the Unmade—such as Nergaoul, sometimes called the Thrill—were practically mindless, more like emotion spren. Others—such as Ba-Ado-Mishram, who had granted forms to the singers during the False Desolation—were crafty and conniving.

  Sja-anat was a little like both. During the long millennia before this Return, she’d mostly slumbered. Without her bond to Odium she had trouble thinking. The Everstorm appearing in Shadesmar—long before it had emerged into the Physical Realm—had revitalized her. Had let her begin planning again. But she knew she was not as smart as Odium was. She could keep only a few secrets from him, and she had to choose carefully, clouding them behind other secrets that she gave away.

  You sacrificed some of your children so others could live. It was a law of nature. Humans didn’t understand it. But she did. She …

  He was coming.

  God of passion.

  God of hatred.

  God of all adopted spren.

  Sja-anat flowed into the hallway of the palace and met with two of her children, touched windspren. Humans called them “corrupted,” but she hated this term. She did not corrupt. She Enlightened them, showing them that a different path was possible. Did not the humans revere Transformation—the ability of all beings to become someone new, someone better—as a core ideal of their religion? Yet they grew angry when she let spren change?

  Her children darted away to do her bidding, then one of her greater children manifested. A glowing and shimmering light, constantly changing. One of her most precious creations.

  I will go, Mother, he said. To the tower, to this man Mraize, as you have promised.

  Odium will see you, she replied. Odium will try to unmake you.

  I know. But Odium must be distracted from you, as we discussed. I must find my own way, my own bond.

  Go then, she said. But do not bond this human because of what I said. I merely promised to send a child to investigate options. There are other possibilities there. Choose for yourself, not because I desire it.

  Thank you, Mother, he said. Thank you for my eyes.

  He left, following the others. Sja-anat regretted that the smaller two—the Enlightened windspren—were essentially distractions. Odium would see them for certain.

  Protect some children.

  Sacrifice others.

  A choice only a god could make.

  A god like Sja-anat.

  She rose up, taking the form of a woman of streaming black smoke with pure white eyes. Shadows and mist, Odium’s pure essence. If he were to know the deepest secret parts of her soul, he would not be surprised. For she had come from him. Unmade by his hand.

  But as with all children, she had become more.

  His presence came upon her like the sun piercing the clouds. Powerful, vibrant, smothering. Some Fused in the hallway noticed it and looked around, though the common singers weren’t attuned enough to hear Odium’s song—like a rhythm but more resonant. One of the three pure tones of Roshar.

  She didn’t fully understand the laws that bound him. They were ancient, and related to compacts between the Shards, the high gods of the cosmere. Odium wasn’t simply the mind that controlled the power: the Vessel. Nor was he merely that power alone: the Shard. He was both, and at times it seemed the power had desires that were counter to the purposes of the Vessel.

  Sja-anat, a voice—infused with the tone of Odium—said to her. What are these spren you have sent away?

  “Those that do your bidding,” she whispered, prostrating herself by pooling down onto the floor. “Those that watch. Those that hear.”

  Have you been speaking to the humans again? To … corrupt them with lies?

  That was the fabrication she and Odium played at currently. She pretended that she had contacted the Radiant Shallan, and a few others, working on his behalf—anticipating his desires. He pretended he didn’t know she had done it against his will.

  Both knew she wanted more freedom than he would allow. Both knew that she wanted to be a god unto herself. But he didn’t know for certain she was taking actions to undermine him, like when she’d saved Shallan and her companions from death in Kholinar a year ago. She had played that off as accidental, and he couldn’t prove otherwise.

  If Odium caught her in a verifiable lie, he would unmake her again. Steal her memory. Rip her to pieces. But in so doing, he would lose a useful tool.

  Hence the game.

  Where have you sent them? he asked.

  “To the tower, Lord. To watch the humans, as we’ve discussed. We must prepare for the Bondsmith’s next move.”

  I will prepare, he said. You focus too much on the tower.

  “I am eager for the invasion,” she said. “I will very much like to see my cousin again. Perhaps they can be awakened? Persuaded?”

  Odium had likely planned to send her on this mission, but her eagerness now gave him pause. He would follow her children and see that they were indeed going to the tower; that would reinforce his decision. The one she hoped he would make right now …

  You will not go to the tower, Odium said. He hated how she referred to the Sibling—the slumbering child of Honor and Cultivation—as her cousin. But we are about to make a ploy with the betrayal of the man Taravangian. You will watch him.

  “I would be of much more use in the tower,” she said. “Better that I—”

  You question? Do not question.

  “I will not question.” However, she felt a surging to the power that moved within him. The mind did not like being questioned, but the power … It liked questions. It liked arguments. It was passion.

  There was a weakness here. In the division between the Vessel and the Shard.

  “I will go wherever you demand,” she said, “my god.”

  Very well. He moved on to speak with the
Nine. And Sja-anat planned her next steps. She had to pretend to sulk. Had to try to find a way out of going to Emul. She had to hope that she wasn’t successful.

  Odium suspected that she’d helped the Radiant Shallan. He was watching to see that she didn’t contact other Radiants. So she wouldn’t. Once he’d found her windspren, and unmade them to lose their minds and memories, he would hopefully be content—and not see the other child she’d sent.

  And Sja-anat herself? She would go with Taravangian and watch him as asked. And she would stay close.

  For Taravangian was a weapon.

  Taravangian had long suspected he would not get a funeral. The Diagram hadn’t indicated this specifically—but it hadn’t said otherwise. Besides, the farther they progressed, the less accurate the Diagram became.

  He had chosen this path, however, and knew it was not the sort that led to a peaceful death surrounded by family. This was the sort of path that led into the dark forest, full of perils. His goal had never been to emerge from the other side unscathed; it had always been to simply accomplish his goal before he was killed.

  And he had. His city, his family, his people—they would be safe. He had made a deal with the enemy that ensured Kharbranth would survive the coming destruction. That had always been his end. That alone.

  To tell himself otherwise was both foolish and dangerous.

  So it was that he arrived at this day: the day he sent his friends away. He’d had a fire built in his hearth, here in his rooms at Urithiru. A real hearth, with real wood, dancing with flamespren. His pyre.

  His friends gathered for the farewell. Recently they’d been spending more and more time away at Kharbranth, in order to make their eventual departure less suspicious. He’d made it seem as if they were needed to help rule that city now that Taravangian was focused on Jah Keved.

  But today … today they were all here. One last time. Adrotagia, of course, kept her composure as he hugged her. She’d always been the stronger one. Though Taravangian was moderately intelligent today, he was still overcome with emotion as they pulled apart.