Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Brandon Sanderson

  As he dashed through the corridor, people who had been watching snapped their doors shut. Behind him, the Pursuer laughed. Yes, he understood this kind of fight. He enjoyed it. “Run!” he shouted. “Run, little human!”

  Ahead, garnet light flashed, then began moving down a side hallway. Kaladin scrambled that direction as Syl warned him the Pursuer was coming. The garnet light, fortunately, moved up a wall straight ahead, then flashed, revealing a gemstone hidden in the rock. Kaladin drew in the Light of one of his spheres and infused the gemstone, making the door begin to open. It was faster than previous ones, as he’d asked.

  Syl cried, “He’s almost here!”

  “As soon as I walk in,” Kaladin whispered to the tower’s spren, “start closing the door. Then lock it.”

  He glanced back, and saw the red light rapidly approaching. So, taking a deep breath, Kaladin ducked through the once-hidden doorway. As he’d asked, it immediately began to grind closed. Kaladin turned to face outward, anxious as he pulled free his scalpel. He made it look like he intended to stand and fight.

  Go for my back again, like you’ve done before. Please.

  The ribbon danced in over his head. Kaladin leaped forward, squeezing through the tight doorway as it closed, right as the Pursuer appeared in the room behind him.

  Kaladin fell forward and scrambled across the ground. Behind him, the door thumped closed. He waited, his heart thundering in his chest, as he turned and watched the doorway. Would the Pursuer’s ribbon be small enough to squeeze through? These hidden doors sealed so tightly they were almost impossible to see from the outside, and Syl had physical form as a ribbon. He assumed the same rules applied to the Pursuer.

  Syl flitted down beside him, taking the shape of a young woman in a Bridge Four uniform. She colored it a dark blue.

  Quiet. Followed by a yell of rage, muffled to near silence by the intervening stone. Kaladin grinned, picking himself up. He thought he heard the Pursuer yell, “Coward!”

  He gave the closed door a salute, then turned to jog back the way he had come. Again he had to hiss at people to close their doors and stay out of sight. Where was their sense of self-preservation?

  Their eyes were hopeful when they saw him. And in those expressions, he understood why they had to look, regardless of the danger. They thought everyone had been conquered and controlled, but here was a Radiant. Their hopes pressed on him as he finally reached the hidden tunnel. The femalen Fused with the topknot stood in a posture of concentration, her hand pressed against the sapphire.

  She didn’t seem to be corrupting it. Indeed, she had brought out a large diamond and was holding it up to the sapphire—drawing light from it. Stormlight, it seemed, although it was tinged faintly the wrong color.

  Kaladin scooped a piece of broken rubble from the floor. The sides of the rubble were smoothly cut. The work of a Shardblade.

  Kaladin leaped forward and shoved the Fused back, trying to knock her off the cliff. That caused her to exclaim and fall out of her trance, though she grabbed a protruding rock and prevented herself from falling.

  Before she could stop him, Kaladin slammed his rubble into the gemstone, cracking it. That was enough—cracked gemstones couldn’t hold Stormlight—but he slammed it a few more times to be certain, breaking the sapphire free of its housing and sending it tumbling into the void outside.

  It vanished into darkness, plummeting hundreds upon hundreds of feet down the sheer cliff toward the rocks far below. Kaladin felt something when it broke free. A faint sense that the darkness in the tower had grown stronger—or perhaps Kaladin was only now recognizing the results of the Fused’s recent attempt at corrupting the tower.

  He puffed out, the deed done, and backed away. In that moment though—his Stormlight running low, his energy deflating, the darkness growing stronger—he flagged. He reached out for the wall as his vision wavered, and the fatigue seemed to be almost too much.

  A shadow moved in front of him, and he forced himself alert—but not before the Fused in the topknot managed to ram a knife into his chest. He felt an immediate spike of pain and pulled out his scalpel, but the Fused jumped back before he could strike.

  Painspren wriggled up from the stone as Kaladin stumbled, bleeding. He drew in the last of his Stormlight and pressed his hand to the wound. Storms. His mind … was fuzzy. And the darkness seemed so strong.

  The Fused, however, didn’t seem interested in striking again. She tucked away her knife and laced her fingers before herself, watching him. Oddly, he noticed that the glass sphere that had been in the little stone alcove was gone. Where had the Fused put it?

  “You continue to heal,” she noted. “And I saw the use of Adhesion earlier. I assume from the way you move, confined to the ground, that Gravitation has abandoned you. Does your hybrid power work? The one your kind often uses to direct arrows in flight?”

  Kaladin didn’t respond. He gripped his scalpel, waiting to heal. The pain lingered. Was healing slower than usual? “What did you to do me?” he demanded, hoarse. “Was that blade poisoned?”

  “No,” she said. “I merely wanted to inspect your healing. It seems to be lethargic, does it not? Hmmm…”

  He didn’t like how she looked at him, so discerning and interested—like a surgeon inspecting a corpse before a dissection. She didn’t seem to care that he had destroyed her chance at corrupting the tower—perhaps because Kaladin’s attack had furthered her eventual goal of reaching the crystal pillar.

  He raised his scalpel, waiting for his storming wound to heal. It continued to do so. Languidly.

  “If you kill me,” the Fused noted, “I will simply be reborn. I will choose the most innocent among the singers of the tower. A mother perhaps, with a child precisely old enough to understand the pain of loss—but not old enough to understand why her mother now rejects her.”

  Kaladin growled despite himself, stepping forward.

  “Yes,” the femalen said. “A true Windrunner, all the way to your gemheart. Fascinating. You had no continuity of spren or traditions from the old ones, I’m led to believe. Yet the same attitudes, the same structures, arise naturally—like the lattice of a growing crystal.”

  Kaladin growled again, sliding to the side toward his discarded spear and shoes.

  “You should go,” the Fused said. “If you’ve killed the Pursuer again, it will make for quite the stir among my kind. I don’t believe that’s ever been accomplished. Regardless, I have Fused and Regals on their way to join us and finish his work. You might escape them, if you leave now.”

  Kaladin hesitated, uncertain. His instincts said he should do the opposite of whatever this femalen said, out of principle. But he thought better of it and fled into the corridors—his side aching—trusting in the tower spren and Syl to guide him out of danger and to a safe hiding place.

  Who is this person? You used no title, so I assume they are not a Fused. Who, then, is El?

  —From Rhythm of War, page 10 undertext

  Venli felt all rhythms freeze when she saw Rlain in the cell. Like the silence following a crescendo.

  In that silence, Venli finally believed what Mazish had told her. In that silence, all of Roshar changed. Venli was no longer the last. And in that silence, Venli thought she could hear something distant beyond the rhythms. A pure tone.

  Rlain looked up through the bars, then sneered at her.

  The moment of peace vanished. He’d picked up some human expressions, it seemed. Did he recognize her in this form? Her skin patterns were the same, but she and Rlain had never been close. He likely saw only an unfamiliar Regal.

  Venli retreated down the hallway, passing several empty cells with bars on the doors. It was the day after the incident with Stormblessed and the destruction of the node. Venli had been on her way to visit Rlain when the event had occurred, drawing her away to attend her master.

  Curiously, though Venli had assumed that Raboniel would be furious, instead she’d taken it in stride. She’d almost seemed amuse
d at what had occurred. She was hiding something about her motivations. She seemed to not want the corruption to happen too quickly.

  At any rate, dealing with the aftermath of the incident had involved Venli interpreting late into the night for various Fused. It hadn’t been until this morning that she’d been able to break away and come check on what Mazish had told her.

  Rlain. Alive.

  Near the door, Venli met with the head jailer: a direform Regal with a crest of spikes beginning on his head and running down his neck.

  “I didn’t realize we had a prison,” she said to him—softly, and to Indifference.

  “The humans built it,” he replied, also to Indifference. “I interviewed several of the workers here. They claim they were keeping the assassin in here.”

  “The assassin?”

  “Indeed. He vanished right before we arrived.”

  “He should have fallen unconscious.”

  “Well, he didn’t, and nobody has seen anything of him.”

  “You should have told me of this earlier,” Venli said. “The Lady thinks that certain Radiants might still be able to function in the tower. It’s possible this one is out there somewhere, preparing to kill.”

  The direform hummed to Abashment. “Well, we’ve been prepping this place in case we need to lock up a Regal with proper comforts. We’ve got a larger brig for human prisoners. Figured this would be a good place for your friend there, until official word arrived.”

  Venli glanced along the hall of empty cells, lit by topaz lanterns hanging from the ceiling. They gave the chamber a soft brown warmth, the color of cremstone.

  “Why did you lock him away?” she asked.

  “He’s an essai,” the direform said to Derision, using an ancient word they’d picked up from the Fused. It meant something along the lines of “human lover,” though her form told her it technically meant “hairy.”

  “He was a spy my people sent to watch them.”

  “Then he betrayed you,” the direform said. “He claims he’d been held by the humans against his will, but it didn’t take much asking around to find the truth. He was friendly with the Radiants—was their servant or something. Could have left at any time, but stayed. Wanted to keep being a slave, I guess.” He changed to the Rhythm of Executions—a rarely used rhythm.

  “I will speak with him,” Venli said. “Alone.”

  The direform studied her, humming to Destruction in challenge. She hummed it back—she outranked this one, so long as she was Raboniel’s Voice.

  “I will send again to the Lady of Wishes,” he finally said, “to inform her that you have done this.”

  “As you will,” Venli said, then waited pointedly until he stepped out and shut the door. Venli glanced into Shadesmar, as she’d grown into the habit of doing, though she’d learned Voidspren couldn’t hide in the tower. It was instinct by now. And she—

  Wait. There was a Voidspren here.

  It was hiding in the body of a cremling. Most spren could enter bodies, if they couldn’t pass through other solid objects. She wasn’t terribly familiar with all the varieties of Voidspren, but this one must have realized that it couldn’t hide in the tower as it once had, so used this method to remain unseen.

  She attuned Anxiety, and Timbre agreed. Was it watching her, or Rlain? Or was it simply here to patrol? Had she done anything recently that would give her away?

  She maintained her composure, pretending to think as she strolled in the prison chamber. Then she pretended to notice the cremling for the first time, then shooed it away. The thing scuttled down the wall and out under the door. She glanced into Shadesmar, and saw the Voidspren—through the hundreds of shimmering colors that made up the tower—retreating into the distance alongside the tiny speck of light that represented the cremling.

  That left her nervous enough that she paced a few times—and checked again—before finally she forced herself to return to the cell. “Rlain.”

  He looked up at her. Then he frowned and stood.

  “It’s me,” she said to Peace, speaking in the listener language for an extra measure of privacy. “Venli.”

  He stepped closer to the bars, and his eyes flickered to her face. He hummed to Remembrance. “I was under the impression they had killed all of the listeners.”

  “Only most of us. What are you doing here, Rlain? Last we knew, the humans had discovered you in the warcamps and executed you!”

  “I … wasn’t discovered,” he said. He spoke to Curiosity, but his body language—he had indeed picked up some human attitudes—betrayed his true emotions. He obviously didn’t trust her. “I was made an example, used as an experiment. They put me in the bridge crews. I don’t think anyone ever suspected I was a spy. They just thought I was too smart for a parshman.”

  “You’ve been living among them all this time? That guard says you’re an ess—a human sympathizer. I can’t believe you’re alive, and I’m not the … I mean…” Language failed her, and she ended up standing there, humming the Rhythm of the Lost and feeling like an idiot. Timbre chimed in, giving the same rhythm—and that helped somehow.

  Rlain studied her. He’d probably heard that forms of power changed a person’s personality—storms … they’d always known that. Known they were dangerous.

  “Rlain,” she said, her voice soft, “I’m me. Truly me. This form doesn’t … change me like stormform did for the others.”

  Timbre pulsed. Tell him the truth. Show him what you are.

  She locked up. No. She couldn’t.

  “The others?” he asked, hopeful. “Remala? Eshonai? She fought Adolin, we think, in battle. Do you know … if she is…”

  “I saw my sister’s corpse myself at the bottom of the chasms,” she said to Pain. “There aren’t any others left but me. He … Odium took them, made them into Fused. He saved me because he wanted me to tell stories about our people, use them to inspire the newly freed singers. But I think he was afraid of us, as a group. So he destroyed us.”

  She hummed to the Rhythm of the Lost again. Rlain eventually joined her and stepped forward until he was right beside the bars.

  “I’m sorry, Venli,” he eventually said. “That must have been awful.”

  He doesn’t know, she realized, that I caused all this. How could he? He was among the humans. To him, I’m simply … another survivor.

  She found that idea daunting.

  “You need to free me,” Rlain said. “I hoped they’d accept my story, but I’m too well known in the tower. You stand out when you’re the only ‘parshman’ anyone knows.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Venli said to Reconciliation. “The guard doesn’t trust me—a lot of them don’t—and talking to you will make that worse. If I do get you out, what are you going to do? You won’t get me into trouble, will you?”

  He frowned at her, then hummed to Irritation.

  “You are a human sympathizer,” Venli said.

  “They’re my friends,” he said. “My family, now. They aren’t perfect, Venli, but if we want to defeat Odium we’re going to need them. We’re going to need this tower.”

  “Do we want to defeat Odium?” Venli asked. “A lot of people like the way things are going, Rlain. We have a nation of our own—not a few shacks in a backwater countryside, but a real nation with cities, roads, infrastructure. Things—I might add—that were largely built by the efforts of enslaved singers. The humans don’t deserve our loyalty or even an alliance. Not after what they did.”

  Rlain didn’t object immediately. Instead he hummed to Tension. “We find ourselves caught, literally, between two storms,” he finally said. “But if I’m going to pick one to walk through, Venli, I’ll pick the highstorm. That was once our storm. The spren were our allies. And yes, the humans tried to exploit the listeners, then tried to destroy us—but the Fused are the ones who succeeded. Odium chose to destroy our people. I’m not going to serve him. I…”

  He trailed off, perhaps realizing what he was saying. H
e’d tried to start the conversation noncommittal, plainly worried she was an agent for Odium. Now he’d confirmed where he stood. He looked to her, and his humming fell silent. Waiting.

  “I don’t know if any good can be done by fighting him, Rlain,” she whispered. “But I … keep secrets from Odium myself. I’ve been trying to build something separate from his rule, a people I could … I don’t know, use to start a new group of listeners.”

  Trying, in her own pitiful way, to undo what she’d done.

  “How many?” Rlain asked, to Excitement.

  “A dozen so far,” Venli said. “I have them watching over the fallen Radiants. I have some authority in the tower, but I don’t know how far it will extend. It’s complicated. The various Fused have different motivations, and I’m wrapped up in the threads of it all. I helped save some humans who were going to be executed—but I’m not interested in allying with them in general.”

  “Who did you save? The queen?”

  “No, someone far less important,” Venli said. “A surgeon and his wife, who were—”

  “Lirin and Hesina?” he asked to Excitement. “The child too, I hope.”

  “Yes. How did you—”

  “You need to get me out, Venli,” Rlain said. “And get me to Hesina. I have something useful I could show her—and you, if you want to help.”

  “I’ve been trying to tell you,” Venli whispered, glancing over her shoulder at the door. “I have some authority, but there are many who distrust me. I don’t know if I can get you free. It might draw too much attention to me.”

  “Venli,” he said to Confidence, “look at me.”

  She met his gaze. Had he always been this intense? Eshonai had known him better than she had.

  “You need to do this,” Rlain said to her. “You need to use whatever influence you have and get me out.”

  “I don’t know if—”

  “Stop being so insufferably selfish! Do something against your own self-interest, for the greater good, for once in your storming life, Venli.”