Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Brandon Sanderson

  “I’m not sure about this, Brightness,” she said as the engineer and his assistants set up their instruments. “I worry that whoever is on the other side of that spanreed, they’ll learn more about us than we do about them.”

  Falilar wiped his shaved head with a handkerchief, then gestured for Navani to sit at the table.

  “Noted,” Navani said to Kalami, settling down. “We ready?”

  “Yes, Brightness,” Falilar said. “Judging by the weight of your pen once the conversation is engaged, we should be able to tell how far away the other pen is.”

  Spanreeds had a certain decay to them. The farther apart they were, the heavier the pens became after activation. In most cases, this was a slight—almost imperceptible—difference. Today, the spanreed board, with pen attached, had been placed on Falilar’s most precise scale. The pen was hooked by strings to other instruments as well. Navani carefully turned the ruby, indicating she was ready to communicate with her phantom correspondent. The six scholars and ardents, Kalami included, seemed to hold their collective breath.

  The pen started writing. Why have you ignored my instructions?

  Falilar gestured animatedly to the others, who began taking measurements—adding tiny weights to the balance and reading the tension in the pull of the string.

  She left them to their measurements, instead focusing on the conversation. I’m not sure what exactly you expected of me, she wrote. Please, explain further.

  You must stop your experiments with fabrials, the reed wrote. I made it explicitly clear that you needed to stop. You have not. You have only increased your heresies. What is this you do, putting fabrials in a pit and connecting them to the blowing of the storms? Do you make a weapon of the spren you have trapped? Do you kill? Humans always kill.

  “Heresies?” Kalami noted as the engineers worked. “Whoever it is seems to have a theological opposition to our actions.”

  “She references humans as a singer might,” Navani said, tapping the paper. “Either she’s one of them, or she wants us to think she is.”

  “Brightness,” Falilar said, “this can’t be correct. The decay is almost nonexistent.”

  “So they’re near to us,” Navani said.

  “Extremely near,” Falilar said. “Inside the tower. If we could figure out a way to make more precise scales … Regardless, a second measurement would help me with possible triangulation.”

  Navani nodded. Why do you call this a heresy? Navani wrote. The church sees no moral problem with fabrials. No more than they have a problem with hitching a chull to a cart.

  A chull hitched to a cart is not confined to a tiny space, the reply came, the pen moving furiously, animatedly. Spren are meant to be free. By capturing them, you trap nature itself. Can a storm survive if placed in a prison? Can a flower bloom with no sunlight? This is what you do. Your religion is incomplete.

  Let me think on this, Navani wrote. I will need a few minutes to speak with my theological advisor.

  Each moment you wait is a moment of pain brought to the spren you dominate, the pen wrote. I will not suffer it for much longer.

  Please wait, Navani wrote. I will use another spanreed for a moment, to talk to my theological advisor, but then will respond to you soon.

  No response came, but the pen continued to hover—the phantom was waiting.

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s get the second measurement.”

  The engineers moved with a flurry of activity, disjoining the spanreed so the link between the two pens was temporarily broken. They gathered the equipment and started running.

  Navani and Kalami hurried into the palanquin waiting for them outside the room. A group of six men hefted it and charged after the engineers and scribes as the entire group rushed through the tower. They eventually burst out onto the plateau in front of Urithiru. You couldn’t tell the direction of a second spanreed, not directly, even from the decay.

  However, because you could measure the decay—and therefore judge distance—you could triangulate from multiple measurements and get a rough idea of location. The team set up out here, on the plateau, among the coldspren.

  By the time she climbed free of the palanquin, Falilar and his team had the spanreed ready on the stone ground. Navani knelt and reengaged the device.

  They waited, Falilar dabbing at his head with his handkerchief, Kalami kneeling beside the paper and whispering, “Come on.” Falilar’s little apprentice—Isabi, daughter to one of the Windrunners—seemed ready to burst as she held her breath.

  The pen engaged, then wrote, Why did you move? What are you doing?

  I have spoken to my ardents, Navani wrote as the engineers again began taking measurements. They agree that our knowledge must be flawed. Can you explain how you know that this is evil? How is it you know what our ardents do not?

  “How does she know we moved?” Kalami asked.

  “She has a spy watching us,” Navani said. “Probably the same person who hid the spanreed ruby for me to find.”

  The person on the other end didn’t reply.

  I have many duties, Navani wrote. You interrupted me on my way to an important meeting. I have a few more minutes now to talk. Please. Tell us how you know what we don’t.

  The truth is evident to me, the pen wrote.

  It is not obvious to us, Navani wrote.

  Because you are human, it replied. Humans cannot be trusted. You do not know how to keep promises, and promises are what make the world function. We make the world function. You must release your captive spren. You must you must.

  “Ash’s mask…” Kalami said. “It’s a spren, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Navani said.

  “I have measurements,” Falilar said. “It is coming from the tower. I should be able to pin it down to a specific region. I must say, Brightness, you don’t seem surprised by any of this.”

  “I had my suspicions,” Navani said. “We found one ancient spren hiding in the tower. Is it such a stretch to assume a second has done the same?”

  “Another of the Unmade?” Kalami asked.

  Navani tapped her finger against the spanreed paper, thinking. “I doubt it,” she said. “A spren who wishes to free its kind? A liberationspren? Has anyone heard of such a thing?”

  The scholars collectively shook their heads. Navani reached to write further to the phantom, but the spanreed shut off, dropping to the paper, no longer actively conjoined.

  “So … what do we do?” Kalami asked. “Another of those things could be watching us from the darkness. Planning more murders.”

  “It’s not the same,” Navani said. “There’s something here.…” We make the world function.

  As they gathered up their things, a plan began budding in Navani’s mind. A touch reckless, particularly since she didn’t want to explain it to the others where the spren might be able to hear.

  She went ahead with the idea anyway. As they were walking to the tower proper, Navani stumbled and—trying to make it appear as accidental as possible—dropped the spanreed while walking. She cried out as she clumsily kicked it across the stone plateau—right over the edge. She rushed over, but it had already vanished, tumbling to the rocks thousands of feet below.

  “The spanreed!” Falilar said. “Oh, Brightness!”

  “Damnation,” she said. “That’s terrible.”

  Kalami eyed her, walking up. Navani smothered a smile.

  “Falilar,” Navani said. “Gather a team to see if they can recover that. I need to take better care.”

  “Yes, Brightness,” he said.

  Of course if they did find it, the team would have discreet directions to break the ruby as if from the fall. And of course they would be instructed to speak loudly of the tragedy of it among her scholars in the tower.

  Navani had a budding suspicion as to the identity of this spren who had contacted her. She wanted to make sure that it, and its agent, heard of the lost spanreed.

  Let’s see what you do now, Navani thou
ght, strolling back into the tower.

  I have begun searching for a pathway out of this conundrum by seeking the ideal person to act on my behalf. Someone who embodies both Preservation and Ruin. A … sword, you might say, who can both protect and kill.

  Adolin glanced up as he heard the call from the watchpost at the front of the barge. Land sighted.

  Finally, he thought, giving Gallant a firm pat on the neck. The animal nickered in anticipation.

  “Trust me,” he said to the Ryshadium, “I’m as happy to land as you are.” Adolin had always been fond of traveling—feeling the open breeze on your face, the welcoming sky overhead. Who knew what exotic tastes and fashions you’d find at your destination? Taking a ship, though, was excruciating. No space to run, no good sparring grounds. A ship was a cage without bars.

  He left Gallant and rushed up to the barge’s prow. A dark strip of obsidian broke the sea ahead, with quiet lights shimmering above. Not souls, but actual candles in the windows of small structures. In Shadesmar, spren could manifest the beads that represented the soul of a fire—and in so doing, create flames that provided light, but very little heat.

  Others gathered at the sides of the barge, and Godeke joined Adolin on the small upper deck. The lanky Edgedancer seemed as eager as Adolin to be off the boat; Adolin had seen Godeke pacing more than once these last few days.

  Unfortunately, the responsible side of Adolin—drilled into him over years with his father—made him call for caution. “We don’t know the situation in this town yet,” he said to the others. “Last time I was in Shadesmar, the first town we entered ended up being held by the Fused. We should send some of the Lightweavers in, wearing disguises, to scout.”

  “You will not find danger here,” Ua’pam promised, rubbing his knuckles together in a curious gesture, making a sound like two rocks grinding. “These are free lands. Neither honorspren nor Fused control this outpost.”

  “Still,” Adolin said, looking to the others. “Humans, under the tarp until we’ve done some basic scouting.”

  Grumbling, they gathered their horses and moved into the large “room” under the tarps. Shallan was resting here already; most of them had opted to place their bedrolls here, where the tall boxes of cargo had been stacked to make various nooks and cubbies.

  Adolin nudged her. “Shallan? You all right?”

  The dark lump that was his wife stirred. “Might have had a little too much to drink last night.”

  Adolin smiled. The trip had been genuinely relaxing, save for his worry about their destination. It had been good to spend time with Shallan—and he had enjoyed even the appearances of Veil and Radiant. The latter made an excellent sparring partner, and the former knew a seemingly infinite number of card games. Some of which were good Vorin games, and others … well, they had too much randomness for propriety, but were more fun than Adolin had expected.

  It had culminated with Shallan pulling out an excellent Thaylen violet, Kdisln vintage, last night. As usual, she’d had a few more cups than Adolin. Shallan had a strange relationship with drink, one that varied based on her persona. But since she could burn off the effects using Stormlight, she theoretically could never be drunk unless she wanted to be. It baffled him why she would sometimes go to sleep like she did, risking the morning hangover.

  “I want someone to scout the town before we go in,” Adolin said. “You want me to send—”

  “I’ll go,” she said, climbing out of her bedroll. “Give me a few minutes.”

  True to her word, she was ready a short time later, wearing a Lightweaving that made her look like a cultivationspren. She took Vathah in a similar disguise, and the two of them disembarked with Ua’pam and his cousin to walk through the town.

  The rest of them waited under the tarp. Godeke fished in his pockets and brought out a few spheres. His personal money seemed to mostly have been chips—which had gone dun by this point. They’d seen a highstorm several times—storms manifested here as shimmering lights in the sky—but the spheres hadn’t been recharged.

  “Even the broam I brought is starting to fade,” Godeke noted, holding up the amethyst to give light to the darkness under the tarp. “The larger gemstones we brought probably won’t last until we reach the fortress, Brightlord.”

  Adolin nodded. They’d gone over the Stormlight budget a dozen times leading up to leaving. No matter how they’d been able to spin it, there wasn’t a way to reach Lasting Integrity with any Stormlight remaining. So the gifts they’d brought were things Syl said would be appreciated: newly written books, puzzles made of iron that could engage the mind for hours, and some weapons.

  There was one way they might have brought Stormlight that lasted longer. The Thaylens owned gemstones that were—because of their near-perfect structures—capable of retaining Stormlight over long time periods. The best of those had been used a year ago to capture one of the Unmade, and Jasnah wanted the others for experiments.

  Jasnah had mentioned something else about these near-flawless gemstones that troubled her. She found it odd that the gemstones in circulation as spheres were always so flawed that they lost Light quickly. She said that they should vary, and more perfect ones should be found on occasion—but that wasn’t the case.

  Why was she concerned by that? He pondered the question as he waited for Shallan, and tried to trace Jasnah’s thoughts. What if someone had been in the know, while everyone else thought gemstones were all basically the same? If you knew the supreme value of gemstones that could hold Stormlight over long trips through Shadesmar, you could spend years gathering them.

  He frowned, considering it. Finally, he glanced at Godeke, who was holding up one of his fading broams.

  “When you’re free to go into the city,” Adolin told him, “take most of our remaining Stormlight and do as we discussed. Trade it for supplies to use on the next leg of our trip—then spend the remainder to load up the barge.”

  Ua’pam’s cousin would wait at the town to guard their supplies. Adolin’s group only needed to carry enough to get to and from Lasting Integrity.

  Assuming everything went well with Shallan’s investigation of the town. As they waited, Adolin found himself feeling increasingly anxious. He felt like something was going to drop on him. Had the trip here been too easy?

  He passed the time checking on his soldiers and scribe. As they were in good spirits, Adolin checked on Maya. She sat in a little nook at the rear of the room, and Adolin had to pull out a gemstone—a thick sapphire, big as his thumb—to get enough light to see her.

  Maya stared at it. Her eyes had been scratched out by the events of the Recreance, but she could still see. She’d been blinded without going blind, killed without dying. The ways of spren were strange.

  “Hey,” he said, crouching down. “We’ll soon be able to go ashore.”

  She didn’t respond, as usual—though as one of the peakspren passed outside the tarp awning, she snapped her head to stare in that direction.

  “Anxious too, eh?” Adolin said. “We both need to calm down. Here.” He moved to where his things had been stored and took out his longsword, then fell into a stance. The ceiling of the tarp was a good foot over his head, and most everyone had clustered on the other side, near Godeke and the spheres. So he had some space for a basic kata.

  Each day, Maya joined him in his morning stretching routines, where he did a centering kata that Zahel had taught him years ago. Would she follow a different kata, if he showed it to her? A longsword was a bad imitation of a Shardblade, but it was the closest he had.

  He placed his sapphire on the top of his closed sword trunk for light, then fell into a slow, careful kata meant to teach thrusting practice. Nothing flashy, no stupid twirls or spins of the blade. A basic exercise, but one he’d done hundreds of times with his Shardblade on the practice grounds. This particular portion imitated hallway fighting, where you couldn’t swing too high or too far to the sides, lest you hit stone. So it was perfect for this enclosed space.
>
  Maya watched him, her head cocked.

  “You know this one,” he told her. “Remember? Hallway fighting. Practice with thrusts and controlled swings?”

  He started over, but slower. One motion flowing into the other. Step, good two-handed grip, lunge forward with a thrust, then reset while turning the other direction. Back and forth, a rhythm, a song without music. A fight without an opponent.

  Maya hesitantly stood up, so he paused. She walked over to him, inspecting his sword with her head still cocked. The fine intertwining vines of her face looked like sinew, a human face with the skin removed. She traced the length of the sword with her gaze.

  Adolin reset again. Maya carefully did the same beside him—and her form was perfect. Even Zahel on his worst day wouldn’t have found reason to reset her stance. Adolin slowly moved through the kata, and she followed—holding nothing but empty air, but moving in lockstep with him as he thrust, then reset, then turned.

  Conversation on the other side of the enclosure died off, spren and soldiers alike watching. Soon they faded from Adolin’s attention. It was just him, the sword, and Maya. The relaxing repetition made his tension melt away. Katas were about more than training; they were a way to focus. That was something every young swordsman needed to learn, whether he intended to fight in duels or lead a battlefield charge. Adolin felt sorry for those who had never known the centering peace of training; it could turn aside even the mightiest of storms.

  After some time—Adolin didn’t notice how much—Shallan ducked under the tarp. She’d dismissed her Lightweaving, so plainly didn’t consider them to be in any danger. Ua’pam, however, stared at Maya, the cracks in his skin pouring a molten light over the deck and the bottom of the tarp.

  Adolin finally stopped, Maya pausing beside him. As he relaxed and wiped his brow, she settled back down in her little cubby.

  Ua’pam walked up to him, scratching at his head in a distinctly human gesture. “Another kata?” he asked. “This is more than simple training. Truly, you must tell me. How have you done this? Each day, your training of her proves more remarkable.”