Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Brandon Sanderson

  Taravangian had decided not to give up.

  I find this format most comfortable, as it is how I’ve collaborated in the past. I have never done it in this way, and with this kind of partner.

  —From Rhythm of War, page 1

  Kaladin jogged through the dark tunnels of Urithiru, Teft across his shoulders, feeling as if he could hear his life crumbling underfoot with each step. A phantom cracking, like glass shattering.

  Each painful step took him farther from his family, farther from peace. Farther into the darkness. He’d made his decision. He would not leave his friend to the whims of enemy captivity. But though he’d finally thought to take off his bloodied shoes—and now carried them with the laces looped around his neck—he still felt as if he were leaving stained tracks behind him.

  Storms. What did he think he could accomplish by himself? He was effectively disobeying the queen’s order to surrender.

  He tried his best to banish such thoughts and keep moving. He would have time later to ruminate on what he’d done. For now, he needed to find a safe place to hide. The tower was no longer home, but an enemy fortress.

  Syl zipped out in front of him, checking each intersection before he arrived. Stormlight kept him moving, but he worried what would happen when it ran out. Would his strength fail him? Would he collapse in the center of the corridor?

  Why hadn’t he collected more spheres from his parents or Laral before leaving? He hadn’t even thought to take the stormform’s axe. That left him unarmed, save for a scalpel. He was too used to having Syl as his Shardspear, but if she couldn’t transform—

  No, he thought to himself. No thoughts. Thoughts are dangerous. Just move.

  He pushed forward, relying on Syl, who sped toward a stairwell. The easiest way to lose themselves would be to find a hiding place on the uninhabited floors, perhaps somewhere on eleven or twelve. He took the stairs two at a time, propelled by the pulsing Light in his veins. His glow was enough to see by. Teft began muttering quietly, perhaps responding to the jostling.

  They reached the seventh floor, then started straight up toward the eighth. Here, Syl led him farther inward. Try as he might to ignore them, Kaladin continued to hear the echoes of his failure. His father’s shouts. His own tears …

  He’d been so close. So close.

  He lost track of their location in the endless tunnels. The floor here wasn’t painted to give directions, so he trusted in Syl. She zipped ahead to an intersection, spun around in a circle a few times, then shot to the right. He kept pace with her, though he was feeling Teft’s weight more and more.

  “Just a second,” he whispered to her at the next intersection, then rested against the wall—Teft still weighing heavily on his shoulders—and fished a chip from his pouch. The small topaz was barely enough to see by, but he needed it as the Stormlight he was holding finally gave out. And he didn’t have many spheres left.

  He grunted under the weight of his friend, then pushed himself to stand up straight, clinging tightly to Teft with both hands while gripping the sphere between two fingers. He nodded to Syl, then continued after her, pleased that his strength was holding. He could manage Teft without Light. Despite Kaladin’s last few weeks spent as a surgeon, his body was still that of a soldier.

  “We should go higher,” Syl said, floating alongside his head as a ribbon of light. “Can you manage?”

  “Get us to floor ten at least,” Kaladin said.

  “I’ll have to take us up stairwells as I see them. I don’t really know this section of the tower.…”

  He let himself sink into an old familiar mindset as they continued. Teft’s weight across his shoulders wasn’t that different from carrying a bridge. It brought him back to those days. Running bridges. Eating stew.

  Watching his friends die … feeling terror anew each day …

  Those memories offered no comfort. But the rhythm of steps, carrying a burden, working his body on an extended march … it was at least familiar.

  He followed Syl up one set of steps, then another. Then across another long tunnel, the strata here waving vigorously like ripples in a churning pond. Kaladin kept moving.

  Until suddenly he came alert.

  He couldn’t pinpoint what alarmed him, but he moved on instinct to immediately cover his sphere and duck into a side passage. He stepped into a nook and knelt to slide Teft off his shoulders. He pressed his hand against the unconscious man’s mouth to silence his mumbling.

  Syl darted over a moment later. He could see her in the darkness, but she didn’t illuminate things around her. He shoved his other hand in his pocket, tightly holding the sphere so it couldn’t give off any betraying illumination.

  “What?” Syl asked.

  Kaladin shook his head. He didn’t know, but didn’t want to speak. He huddled there—hoping Teft wouldn’t mutter or shift too loudly—his own heartbeat thumping in his ears.

  Then, faint red light crept into the hallway he’d left. Syl immediately zipped to hide her light behind Kaladin’s dark form.

  The light approached, revealing a single ruby along with a pair of glowing red eyes. Those illuminated a terrible face. Pure black, with hints of marbled red under the eyes. Long dark hair, which appeared woven into his simple wrap of clothing. It was the creature Kaladin had fought in Hearthstone, the one he’d killed in the burning room of the mansion. Though the Fused had been reborn into a new body, Kaladin knew from the skin patterns that it was the same individual. Come for revenge.

  The Fused didn’t seem to spot Kaladin hiding in the darkness, though he did pause at the intersection for an extended period of time. He moved on, thankfully, going deeper along the path Kaladin had been taking.

  Storms … Kaladin had defeated the thing last time without any Stormlight, but he had done so by playing on its arrogance. Kaladin doubted it would let him get such an easy kill again.

  Those singers in the clinic … one of them mentioned that a Fused was looking for me. They called him the Pursuer. This thing … it had come to the tower specifically to find Kaladin.

  “Follow it,” he mouthed, turning to Syl, counting on her to understand his meaning. “I’ll find someplace more secluded to hide.”

  She wove her line of light into a brief luminescent representation of a kejeh glyph—meaning “affirmative”—then zipped after the Pursuer. She couldn’t get too far from Kaladin anymore, but she should be able to follow for a while. Hopefully she could do so circumspectly, as some of the Fused could see spren.

  Kaladin hauled Teft back up onto his shoulders, then struck out into the darkness, barely allowing himself any light. There was always something oppressive about being deep in the tower, feeling so far away from the sky and the wind—but it was worse in the darkness. He could all too easily imagine himself trapped in here without spheres, left to wander forever in a tomb of stone.

  He wove through a few more turns, hoping to find a stairwell up to another floor. Unfortunately, Teft started muttering again. Gritting his teeth, Kaladin ducked into the first room he found—a place with a narrow doorway. Here he set Teft down, then tried to stifle his noises.

  Syl darted into the room a moment later, which made Kaladin jump.

  “He’s coming,” she hissed. “He went only a short distance down the wrong hallway before he stopped, inspected the ground, then doubled back. I don’t think he saw me. I followed long enough to see him stop at the place where you hid a bit ago. He found a little smear of blood on the wall there. I hurried ahead of him, but he knows you’re nearby.”

  Storms. Kaladin glanced at his bloody clothing, then at Teft—who was muttering despite Kaladin’s attempts to quiet him.

  “We need to lead the Pursuer away,” Kaladin whispered. “Be ready to distract him.”

  She made another affirmative signal. Kaladin left his friend as a restless lump in the darkness, then backtracked a little. He pulled up near an intersection, gripping his scalpel. He allowed no light other than Syl’s, his few remaining infu
sed spheres tucked away in his black pouch.

  He took a few deep breaths, then mouthed his plan to Syl. She sailed farther away through the black corridor, leaving Kaladin in total darkness.

  He’d never been able to find the pure emptiness of mind that some soldiers claimed to adopt in battle. He wasn’t certain he’d ever want something like that. However, he did compose himself, making his breathing shallow, and came fully alert, listening.

  Loose, relaxed, but ready to come alight. Like tinder waiting for the spark. He was ready to breathe in his last spheres of Stormlight, but wouldn’t until the last moment.

  Footsteps scraped the corridor to Kaladin’s right, and the walls slowly bled with red light. Kaladin held his breath, ready, his back to the wall.

  The Pursuer froze just before reaching the intersection, and Kaladin knew the creature had spotted Syl, who would have zipped past in the distance. A heartbeat later, scraping noises announced the Pursuer dropping his body as a husk—and a red ribbon of light rushed after Syl. The distraction had worked. Syl would lead him away.

  As far as they knew, the Fused couldn’t harm spren naturally—the only way to do so was with a Shardblade. Even that was temporary; cut spren with a Shardblade, even rip them to pieces, and they eventually re-formed in the Cognitive Realm. Experiments had proven that the only way to keep them divided was to store separate halves in gemstones.

  Kaladin gave it ten heartbeats, then brought out a small sphere for light and dashed into the corridor—sparing a brief glance at the Pursuer’s discarded body—before running for the room where he’d put Teft.

  It was amazing what a jolt of energy came from being so close to a fight. He heaved Teft on his shoulders without trouble, then was jogging away in moments—almost as if he were infused with Stormlight again. Using the light of the sphere, he soon found a stairwell. He almost rushed up it, but a faint light from above made him stop fast.

  Voices speaking to rhythms echoed from above. And from below, he realized. He left that stairwell, but two hallways over he saw distant lights and shadows. He pulled into a side corridor, sweating in streams, fearspren—like globs of goo—writhing up through the stone beneath him.

  He knew this feeling. Scurrying through the darkness. People with lights searching in a pattern, hunting him. Breathing heavily, he hauled Teft through a different side passage, but soon spotted lights in that direction as well.

  The enemy was forming a noose, slowly tightening around his position. That knowledge sent him into flashbacks of the night when he’d failed Nalma and the others. A night when, like so many other times, he’d survived when everyone else had died. Kaladin wasn’t a runaway slave anymore, but the sensation was the same.

  “Kaladin!” Syl said, zipping up to him. “I was leading him toward the edge of the level, but we ran into some regular soldiers and he turned back. He seemed to figure out I was trying to distract him.”

  “There are multiple squads up here,” Kaladin said, pulling into the darkness. “Maybe a full company. Storms. The Pursuer must have repurposed the entire force sent to go through homes on the sixth floor.”

  He was shocked at the speed with which they’d set up the trap. He had to admit that was likely the result of him letting a soldier run and tell the others.

  Well, he doubted the enemy had found the time to appropriate one of Navani’s maps of this level. They couldn’t have managed to place people in every hallway or stairwell. The net closing around him had to have gaps.

  He began searching. Down a side corridor, he found shadowy figures approaching. And in the next stairwell. They were relentless, and everywhere. Plus, he didn’t know this area any better than they did. He twisted around through a group of corridors until he reached a dead end. A quick search of the nearby rooms showed no other exits, and he looked over his shoulder, hearing voices calling to one another. They spoke Azish, he thought—and to the rhythms.

  Feeling a sense of growing dread, he set Teft down, counted his few spheres, and took out his scalpel once more. Right. He’d … he’d need to take a weapon from the first soldier he killed. A spear, hopefully. Something with reach if he was going to survive a fight in these corridors.

  Syl landed on his shoulder and took the shape of a young woman, seated with her hands in her lap.

  “We have to try to punch through,” Kaladin whispered. “There’s a chance they’ll send only a couple men this direction. We kill them, then slip out of the noose and run.”

  She nodded.

  It didn’t sound like a “couple men” though. And he was reasonably certain he caught a harsher, louder voice among them. The Pursuer was still tracking him, possibly by the faint marks of blood smeared on the walls or floor.

  Kaladin pulled Teft into one of the rooms, then positioned himself in the doorway to wait. Not calm, but prepared. He gripped his scalpel in a reverse grip—a hacking grip—for ramming into the space between carapace and neck. Standing there, he felt the weight of it all pressing down on him. The darkness, both inside and out. The fatigue. The dread. Gloomspren like tattered pieces of cloth faded in, as if banners attached to the walls.

  “Kaladin,” Syl said softly, “could we surrender?”

  “That Fused isn’t here to take me captive, Syl,” he said.

  “If you die I’ll be alone again.”

  “We’ve slipped out of tighter problems than this.…” He trailed off as he glanced at her, sitting on his shoulder, seeming far smaller than usual. He couldn’t force the rest of the words out. He couldn’t lie.

  Light began to illuminate the corridor, coming toward him.

  Kaladin gripped his knife more tightly. A part of him seemed to have always known it would come to this. Alone in the darkness, standing with his back to the wall, facing overwhelming numbers. A glorious way to die, but Kaladin didn’t want glory. He’d given up on that foolish dream as a child.

  “Kaladin!” Syl said. “What’s that? On the floor?”

  A faint violet light had appeared in the crook of the rightmost corner. Almost invisible, even in the darkness. Frowning, Kaladin left his post by the door, inspecting the light. There was a garnet vein in the stone here, and a small portion of it was glowing. As he tried to figure out why, the glow moved—running along the crystal vein. He followed it to the doorway, then watched it cross the hallway to the room on the other side.

  He hesitated only briefly before putting away his weapon and hauling Teft onto his shoulders once again. He stumbled across the hallway outside—and one of the approaching people said something in Azish. It sounded hesitant, as if they hadn’t caught more than a glimpse of him.

  Storms. What was he doing? Chasing phantom lights, like starspren in the sky? In this small chamber, the light moved across the floor and up the wall, revealing what appeared to be a gemstone embedded deeply in the stone.

  “A fabrial?” Syl said. “Infuse it!”

  Kaladin breathed in some of his Stormlight, then glanced over his shoulder. Voices outside, and shadows. Rather than hold his Stormlight for that fight, however, he did as Syl told him—pressing the Light into the gemstone. He had maybe two or three chips’ worth left after that. He was practically defenseless.

  The wall split down the center. He gaped as the stones moved, but with a silence that defied explanation. They cracked open just wide enough to admit a person. Carrying Teft, he entered a hidden corridor. Behind him, the doorway smoothly slid shut, and the light in the gemstone went out.

  Kaladin held his breath as he heard voices in the room behind. Then he pressed his ear against the wall, listening. He couldn’t make out much—an argument that seemed to involve the Pursuer. Kaladin worried they had spotted the door closing, but he heard no scraping or pounding. They would spot the spren he’d drawn though, and would know he was close.

  Kaladin needed to keep moving. The little violet light on the floor twinkled and moved, so he lugged Teft after it through another series of corridors. Eventually they reached a hidden stair
well that—blessedly—was undefended.

  He climbed that, though each footfall was slower than the one before it and exhaustionspren hounded him. He kept moving somehow, as the light led him to the eleventh floor, and then into another dark room. The oppressive silence told him he’d reached a portion of the tower the enemy wasn’t searching. He wanted to collapse, but the light pulsed insistently on the wall—and Syl encouraged him to look.

  Another embedded gemstone, barely visible. He used the last of his Stormlight to infuse it, and slipped through the door that opened. In absolute darkness, Kaladin set Teft down, feeling the door closing behind.

  He didn’t have the strength to inspect his surroundings. He instead slid to the cold stone floor, trembling.

  There, he finally let himself drift to sleep.

  NINE YEARS AGO

  Eshonai had been told that mapping the world removed its mystery. Some of the other listeners insisted the wilderness should be left uncharted—the domain of the spren and the greatshells—and that by trying to confine it to paper, she risked stealing its secrets.

  She found this to be flat-out ridiculous. She attuned Awe as she entered the forest, the trees bobbing with lifespren, bright green balls with white spines poking out. Closer to the Shattered Plains, most everything was flat, grown over by only the occasional rockbud. Yet here, not so far away, plants thrived in abundance.

  Her people made frequent trips to the forest to get lumber and mushrooms. However, they always took the exact same route. Up the river a day’s walk inward, gather there, then return. This time she’d insisted on leaving the party—much to their concern. She’d promised to meet them again at their normal camp, after scouting the outer perimeter of the forest all the way around.

  After hiking around the trees for several days, she’d encountered the river on the other side. Now she could cut back through the heart of the forest and reach her family’s camp from that direction. She’d bear with her a new map that revealed exactly how large the forest was, at least on one side.