Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Brandon Sanderson

  Adolin had an unrealistic view of Dalinar. The Blackthorn had an enviable reputation, yes, but he’d clearly suffered his own failures—not the least of which had been letting his brother be assassinated. He’d certainly done less to help in that attack than Adolin had in trying to get Elhokar out of Kholinar as it fell.

  Arguing was, of course, useless. Adolin should know his father’s failings better than anyone. He wasn’t going to suddenly recognize them because Veil said something now.

  “Any luck getting Shallan to come out?” he asked her.

  “I got a thought from her a little earlier,” Veil said. “But other than that … no. I even did a sketch of you. A terrible one, I’ll note. I particularly liked the buck teeth.”

  Adolin grunted. And together they continued their walk. He led the way through a hollow in the obsidian, where the strange rock mimicked a rolling wave. The constant sound of clacking beads became a quiet hum as they moved farther from the shore, and Shallan stirred again. The landscape here was so interesting.

  Plants grew like frost here, coating much of the obsidian—and they crackled wherever she and Adolin stepped, breaking and tinkling to dust. Larger plants grew like cones, with spirals of color in their translucent skin, as if crafted by a master glassblower. She touched one, expecting it to be fragile like many other Shadesmar plants, but it was sturdy and thick.

  Tiny spren watched them from beneath the leaves of small clumping trees. Jagged lightning branches made of something that wasn’t quite glass—for it was too rough to the touch—sprouted silvery leaves that felt metallic and cold. The spren hopped from one branch to another, little more than shadows of swirling smoke with large eyes.

  And they move a little like smoke too, Shallan thought. Curling in the vectors of heat above a fire, alive like the soul of a flame long extinguished remembering its former light …

  Veil normally reviled such poetic nonsense, but sometimes she could see the world as Shallan did. And it became a brighter place. As they passed a larger stand of the trees, Adolin reached down to take her hand and help her up onto a ridge. Touching her freehand to his skin made something spark.

  His touch is a flame never extinguished. Bright and alive, and the only smoke is in his eyes …

  They walked along the ridge, and she could pick out the camp below, where the others were packing up their things. Was anyone lingering near her trunk?

  Thinking of that almost pushed Shallan away to hide again. Veil, however, had a thought. They needed to leave the device unguarded in a non-suspicious way, then catch who used it. Out here in the caravan, rather than cooped up on the barge, she should be able to make the opportunity extremely appealing. She could perhaps pretend to get drunk. As she had the evening before the last time she knew for certain the spy had moved the device.

  “I saw you in there, Shallan,” Adolin said, gripping her hand as they stood on the ridge. “Just now. I’m sure of it.”

  Veil glanced away. Feeling like she was intruding.

  He squeezed her hand. “I know it’s still you, Shallan. That they’re all you. I’m worried though. We’re worried. Veil says you feel like you need to hide from me. But you don’t. I won’t leave, no matter what you’ve done.”

  “Shallan is weak,” Shallan whispered. “She needs Veil to protect her.”

  “Was Shallan too weak to save her brothers?” Adolin asked. “To protect her family against her own parents?”

  She squeezed her eyes closed.

  He pulled her closer. “I don’t know the perfect words, Shallan. I just want you to know that I’m here, and I’m trying.” Then he gestured, leading her farther along the ridge.

  “Where are we going?” she asked. “This isn’t some casual stroll, is it?”

  “Ua’pam has walked this caravan route before,” Adolin replied. “He mentioned the view up along here is gorgeous.”

  Veil narrowed her eyes, but really, was she going to be suspicious of Adolin? She forced her attention back to the spy problem as she followed him, but storms, he was right. The view up here was breathtaking. The endless sea of beads reflected distant sunlight from a million different spheres. They caught the light, and for a moment she thought the entire ocean had caught fire.

  Her hand twitched on the strap of her satchel, to reach for her sketchbook, but she remained firm and left it alone. Instead she walked with Adolin to the end of the ridge where the obsidian rose in a low spire, overgrown with a type of delicate plant. Flowering blooms that looked almost fungal, though they glowed with their own inner light, red like molten rock.

  I should sketch those.…

  Then, overhead, the strange Shadesmar clouds began to churn. She gasped as something emerged from them high above: an incredible beast with an ashen carapace and a long neck. It resembled a greatshell, faintly echoing the sinuous look of a chasmfiend, but flew somehow on enormous insect wings—seven sets of them. It trailed clouds behind it, emerging as if from a shroud of dust. Others clung to its chin, giving it a beard made of clouds.

  She stared as it passed directly overhead, and she noticed sparkling lights along its wings and legs. They glowed beneath its skin or shell—like they were points on a constellation, marking its joints and outline.

  “Ash’s brush of endless paint…” Shallan said. “Adolin, it’s a starspren. That’s a starspren!”

  He grinned, taking in its majesty.

  “Holy halls!” Shallan said, scrambling to get out her sketchbook. “I have to draw it. Hold this.” She handed him her satchel and pulled out the sketchbook and charcoal. She could take a Memory—she took several as it passed—but she wanted to capture the moment, the grace, the majesty.

  “You knew,” she said, sitting to better brace the sketchbook.

  “Ua’pam told me,” Adolin said. “There are certain places where you can see them emerge. From other angles they’re invisible. This place is … a little weird.”

  “A little? Adolin dear, I’m a little weird. This place is downright bizarre.”

  “Wonderful, isn’t it?”

  Shallan grinned, getting down some sweeping lines of the thing as it landed on a different section of clouds above. A few creationspren peeked out of her satchel, little swirling bits of color. When had those hidden in there?

  Storms … she felt as if she could see the starspren’s every detail, though it was distant. As it reclined on the cloud, it leaned over—as if looking straight at her. Then it threw its head back, arching its neck, and held the position.

  “Storms!” she said. “It’s posing. Vainglorious spren monster. Here, hand me that smaller charcoal pencil. I need to do some detail.”

  He handed it to her, then settled on the ground beside her. “It’s good to see you drawing.”

  “You knew what this would do to me,” she said. “You deliberately put me in a position where I’d have to start sketching. And here I was thinking how ingenuous you are.”

  “I only wanted to see you enjoy yourself,” he said. “You’ve been so serious these last few weeks.”

  She sketched by instinct, absorbing the sight and bleeding it out on the paper. It wasn’t a completely automatic process, but it did leave her mind free.

  What she found, with barely any effort, left her feeling embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just … I’m dealing with some difficult things.”

  He nodded and didn’t push her. Wonderful man.

  “Veil is really coming around to you lately,” she noted. “And Radiant always liked you.”

  “That’s great,” he said. “I still worry you’ve been … odd these last few weeks. And uncommonly unlike yourself.”

  “Veil is part of my self, Adolin. So is Radiant. We have a balance.”

  “Are you sure that’s the right word?”

  She didn’t particularly want to argue. She’d been Veil more lately because there was more for Veil to do. In Urithiru, she was Shallan or Radiant a much larger portion of the time.

  Neverth
eless, it was good to … let go. Maybe she ought to break out the last of the wine and force some relaxation into their stomach. The way Adolin had been pacing so much, he could probably use a nice diverting evening in her arms.

  “I feel like he’s watching me,” Adolin said, gazing up at the majestic starspren.

  “That’s because it is,” Shallan said. “Spren notice when they’re being watched. Recent scholarly reports indicate spren will change based on direct individual perception. Like, you can be in another room and think about the spren, and it will respond.”

  “Now that’s bizarre,” Adolin said.

  “And somehow normal at the same time,” Shallan said.

  “Like you?” Adolin said.

  She glanced at him and caught a grin on his face, then found herself smiling in return. “Like every person, I think. We’re all strangely normal. Or normally strange.”

  “Not my father.”

  “Oh, especially your father. Do you think it’s normal for a person to look as if their parentage involved an anvil and an uncommonly stern stormcloud?”

  “So … what are you saying about me?”

  “That you take after your mother, obviously.” She drew a bold stroke, finishing off her sketch. She sprayed lacquer on it, then set it aside and started another one immediately. This was not a one-sketch experience.

  As soon as she put charcoal to paper, however, she found herself drawing Adolin as he stared up at the sky.

  “How in the world,” she said, “did I get lucky enough to grab you, Adolin Kholin? Someone should have snatched you up years ago.”

  He grinned. “They tried. I ruined it quite spectacularly each time.”

  “At least your first crush didn’t try to kill you.”

  “I recall you saying he tried to avoid killing you, but failed. Something about jam.”

  “Mmm…” she said. “I’m sick enough of rations, I’d probably eat some jam on Thaylen bread even if it was poisoned.”

  “My first crush didn’t try to kill me,” Adolin said, “but I probably could have died of embarrassment from the interaction.”

  She leaned forward immediately, opening her eyes wide. “Oooh…”

  He glanced at her, then blushed. “Storms. I really shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Can’t stop now,” she said, poking him in the side with her foot. “Go on. Talk.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Tough.” She poked him again. “I can keep going. I’m a storming Knight Radiant. I have legendary endurance for annoying people. If I have to use up every last gemstone on this fight, I’ll—”

  “Ow,” he said. “Look, it’s not even that good a story. There was this girl, Idani, a cousin to the Khal boys. She was … uncommonly well put together for a fourteen-year-old. She was a bit older than I was, and let’s just say she understood the world better than I did.”

  Shallan cocked her head. “What?”

  “Well, she kept talking about how she loved swords. And how I was supposed to have a great sword. And how she wanted to see me wield my sword. And…”

  “And what?”

  “I bought her a sword,” he said, shrugging. “As a gift.”

  “Oh Adolin.”

  “I was fourteen!” he said. “What fourteen-year-old understands innuendo? I thought she actually wanted a sword!”

  “What is a girl going to do with a sword? A real one, mind you. This conversation could quickly get off track.…”

  “I don’t know!” he said. “I figured she thought they were nifty. Who doesn’t think they’re nifty?” He rubbed his side, where Shallan had been poking him. “It was a really nifty sword, too. Classic antique ulius, the style used in lighteyed challenges of honor during the Sunmaker’s reign. Had a little nick in it from the Velinar/Gulastis duel.”

  “I assume you told poor Idani about all this, at length?”

  “I went on for like an hour,” Adolin admitted. “She finally grew bored and drifted off. Didn’t even take her storming gift.” He glanced at Shallan, then grinned. “I got to keep the sword though. Still have it.”

  “Did you ever figure it out? What she was saying?”

  “Eventually,” he said. “But by then … things had changed.”

  She cocked her head, pausing in her sketch.

  “I overheard her making fun of Renarin to her friends,” Adolin said. “She said some … nasty things. That ruined something in me. She was gorgeous, Shallan. At the time, my little mind figured she must be the most divine thing that ever walked the land.

  “Then I heard her saying those things. I don’t think I’d ever realized, until that moment, that a person could be beautiful and ugly at the same time. When you’re a teenage boy, you want the beautiful people to be truly beautiful. It’s hard to see otherwise, stupid as it sounds. I guess I owe her for that.”

  “It’s a lesson a lot of people never learn, Adolin.”

  “I suppose. Thing is, there’s more to it. She was newly moved into the city, and was desperate to find a place. So her joking about Renarin was crass, yes, but she was trying so hard to find acceptance. I don’t see an evil child in her now. The others were unkind to Renarin, and she figured she could bond by doing likewise.”

  “Doesn’t excuse that kind of behavior.”

  “You used to think he was weird too,” Adolin noted.

  “Maybe,” Shallan said, as it was uncomfortably true. “But I came around, and I never gossiped about him. It merely took you showing me that while he was weird, it was the good kind. As an expert on weird, I’m uniquely qualified to know.” She returned to her sketch of Adolin, focusing on his eyes. There was so much in his eyes.

  “I don’t excuse the things Idani said,” Adolin said. “I simply feel it’s important to recognize that she might have had reasons. We all have reasons why we fail to live up to what we should be.…”

  Shallan froze, pencil hovering above the sketchbook page. So. That was what he was about. “You don’t have to live up to what your father wants you to be, Adolin.”

  “No one ever accomplished anything by being content with who they were, Shallan,” Adolin said. “We accomplish great things by reaching toward who we could become.”

  “As long as it’s what you want to become. Not what someone else thinks you should become.”

  He continued staring at the sky, stretched out, somehow making it seem comfortable to be lying with his head on a rock. Wonderfully messy hair, blond peppered black, impeccable uniform. And that face in between. Not messy, not impeccable, just … him.

  “It wasn’t long ago,” Adolin said, “that all I wanted was for everyone to respect my father again. We thought he was aging, losing his senses. I wanted everyone else to see him as I did. How did I lose that, Shallan? I mean, I’m proud of him. He’s becoming someone who deserves love, and not merely respect.

  “But storms, these days I can’t stand to be around him. He’s become everything I wanted him to be, and that transformation shoved us apart.”

  “It wasn’t what you found out he’d done? To … her?”

  “That’s part of it,” Adolin admitted. “It hurts. I love him, but can’t yet forgive him. I think I will, with time. There’s more though. Straining our relationship. He has this misguided notion that I’ve always been better than him.

  “To Father, I’m some pristine remnant of my mother—this noble little statue who got all of her goodness and none of his coarseness. He doesn’t want me to be me, or even him. He wants me to be this imagined perfect child who was born better than he ever could be.”

  “And that makes you not a person,” Shallan said, nodding. “It erases your ability to make choices or mistakes. Because you’re perfect. You were born to be perfect. So you can never earn anything on your own.”

  He reached over, putting his hand on her knee, and met her gaze—almost teary-eyed. Because she understood. And storms, she did. She rested her hand on his, then pulled him closer. Feeling his breath
on her neck as he drew close. She kissed him then, and as she did, she caught a glimpse of the sky. The majestic spren had started to fade into the cloud—perhaps feeling ignored now that her attention was on someone else.

  Well, it wasn’t the spren’s fault.

  It simply couldn’t compete.

  You say that the power itself must be treated as separate in our minds from the Vessel who controls it.

  Adolin walked a little easier, knowing he could get through to Shallan. So, after returning from seeing the starspren, he gave Ua’pam a thumbs-up. It had been an excellent suggestion, and the alone time had been exactly what they needed.

  Shallan gave him a fond hug and a squeeze of the arms before hurrying off to gather her things. It made sense, he supposed, that she’d been nervous lately. A spy had infiltrated their quest here. Perhaps he hadn’t devoted enough thought to that particular problem.

  That was Shallan’s area of expertise though. Illusions, lies, art, and fiction. Politics was supposed to be his. He’d been raised as second in line for the throne—eventually third, following little Gav’s birth. Though Adolin had turned down that very throne when it had been offered to him, he should make a competent emissary to a foreign nation.

  Appeal to their honor, he thought, remembering Arshqqam’s suggestion.

  He sought out Gallant and took him from the grooms to load the horse’s burden himself: the swords in their sheaths, the box of other weapons, then the trunk of clothing on the opposite side. He stared into Gallant’s blue eyes. Adolin often felt he could see some kind of light deep within them.

  “Must be nice,” Adolin said, patting the horse, “to not have to worry about things like politics or relationships.”

  The horse snorted in a way that Adolin thought was distinctly dismissive. Well, perhaps there was more to complicate a horse’s life than a man could ever see.

  Malli, Felt’s wife, led Maya over. Adolin had asked the scribe to look after Maya while he went on his walk. He gestured toward the Ryshadium. “Shall we?”

  It was hard to get any kind of acknowledgment out of Maya, but he did prefer to ask. Indeed, he thought he got a nod out of her. He took it as permission, so he helped her up onto the horse. The first few times getting her mounted had been a difficult process, involving stepping on some boxes and pulling her awkwardly into the saddle. Now she knew what to do, though—and only needed a hand over the saddle to help her into place.