Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Brandon Sanderson

  Though, deep down, Dalinar admitted that was mostly an excuse. Seeing this man was painful. Perhaps he should have let Jasnah interrogate Taravangian, as she’d suggested. But that seemed the coward’s route.

  “Ah, certain tasks are accomplished, then?” the old man asked. “By now you’ve surely recovered from the betrayal of the Veden armies. You’ve clashed with Odium’s forces in Emul? I warned Odium that we should have moved earlier, but he was adamant, you see. This was the way he wanted it to happen.”

  The frankness of it felt like a boot directly to Dalinar’s gut. He steeled himself. “That stool is too uncomfortable for a man of your years. You should be given a chair. I thought they’d left the building furnished. Do you have a bed? And surely they gave you more than a single sphere for light.”

  “Dalinar, Dalinar,” Taravangian whispered. “If you wish me to have comfort, don’t ask after the chair or the light. Answer my questions and talk to me. I need that more than—”

  “Why?” Dalinar interrupted. He held Taravangian’s gaze, and was shocked at how much asking the question hurt. He’d known the betrayal was coming. He’d known what this man was. Nevertheless, the words were agonizing as they slipped from his lips again. “Why? Why did you do it?”

  “Because, Dalinar, you’re going to lose. I’m sorry, my friend. It is unavoidable.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “Yet I do.” He sagged in his seat, turning toward the corner and the glowing sphere. “Such a poor imitation of our comfortable sitting room in Urithiru. Even that was a poor imitation of a real hearth, crackling with true flames, alive and beautiful. An imitation of an imitation.

  “That’s what we are, Dalinar. A painting made from another painting of something great. Perhaps the ancient Radiants could have won this fight, when Honor lived. They didn’t. They barely survived. Now we face a god. Alone. There is no victory awaiting us.”

  Dalinar felt … cold. Not shocked. Not surprised. He supposed he could have figured out Taravangian’s reasoning; they’d talked often about what it meant to be a king. The discussions had grown more intense, more meaningful, once Dalinar had realized what Taravangian had done to acquire the throne of Jah Keved. Once he’d known that—instead of chatting with a kindly old man with strange ideals—he had been talking to another murderer. A man like Dalinar himself.

  Now he felt disappointed. Because in the end, Taravangian had let that side of him rule. No longer on the edge. His friend—yes, they were friends—had stepped off the cliff.

  “We can defeat him, Taravangian,” Dalinar said. “You are not nearly so smart as you think.”

  “I agree. I was once, though.” He clarified, perhaps noticing Dalinar’s confusion. “I visited the Old Magic, Dalinar. I saw her. Not just the Nightwatcher, I suspect, but the other one. The one you saw.”

  “Cultivation,” he said. “There is one who can face Odium. There were three gods.”

  “She won’t fight him,” Taravangian said. “She knows. How do you think I found out we’d lose?”

  “She told you that?” Dalinar strode forward, squatting down beside Taravangian, coming to eye level with the aged man. “She said Odium would win?”

  “I asked her for the capacity to stop what was coming,” Taravangian said. “And she made me brilliant, Dalinar. Transcendently brilliant, but just once. For a day. I vary, you know. Some days I’m smart, but my emotions seem stunted—I don’t feel anything but annoyance. Other days I’m stupid, but the tiniest bit of sentimentality sends me into tears. Most days I’m like I am today. Some shade of average.

  “Only one day of brilliance. One single day. I’ve often wished I’d get another, but I guess that was all that Cultivation wanted me to have. She wanted me to see for myself. There was no way to save Roshar.”

  “You saw no possible out?” Dalinar said. “Tell me honestly. Was there absolutely no way to win?”

  Taravangian fell silent.

  “Nobody can see the future perfectly,” Dalinar said. “Not even Odium. I find it impossible to believe that you, no matter how smart, could have been absolutely certain there was no path to victory.”

  “Let’s say you were in my place,” Taravangian said. “You saw a shadow of the future, the best anyone has ever seen it. Better, in fact, than any mortal could achieve. And you saw a path to saving Alethkar—everyone you love, everything you know. You saw a very plausible, very reasonable opportunity to accomplish this goal.

  “But you also saw that to do more—to save the world itself—you would have to rely on such wild bets as to be ludicrous. And if you failed at those very, very, very long odds, you’d lose everything. Tell me honestly, Dalinar. Would you not consider doing what I did, taking the rational choice of saving the few?” Taravangian’s eyes glistened. “Isn’t that the way of the soldier? Accept your losses, and do what you can?”

  “So you sold us out? You helped hasten our destruction?”

  “For a price, Dalinar,” Taravangian said, staring again at the ruby that was the room’s hearth. “I did preserve Kharbranth. I tried, I promise you, to protect more. But it is as the Radiants say. Life before death. I saved the lives of as many as I could—”

  “Don’t use that phrase,” Dalinar said. “Don’t sully it, Taravangian, with your crass justifications.”

  “Still standing on your high tower, Dalinar?” Taravangian asked. “Proud of how far you can see, when you won’t look past your own feet? Yes, you’re very noble. How wonderful you are, fighting until the end, dragging every human to death with you. They can all die knowing you never compromised.”

  “I made an oath,” Dalinar said, “to protect the people of Alethkar. It was my oath as a highprince. After that, a greater oath—the oath of a Radiant.”

  “And is that how you protected the Alethi years ago, Dalinar? When you burned them alive in their cities?”

  Dalinar drew in a sharp breath, but refused to rise to that barb. “I’m not that man any longer. I changed. I take the next step, Taravangian.”

  “I suppose that is true, and my statement was a useless gibe. I wish you were that man who would burn one city to preserve the kingdom. I could work with that man, Dalinar. Make him see.”

  “See that I should turn traitor?”

  “Yes. As you live now, protecting people isn’t your true ideal. If that were the case, you’d surrender. No, your true ideal is never giving up. No matter the cost. You realize the pride in that sentiment?”

  “I refuse to accept that we’ve lost,” Dalinar said. “That’s the problem with your worldview, Taravangian. You gave up before the battle started. You think you’re smart enough to know the future, but I repeat: Nobody knows for certain what will happen.”

  Strangely, the older man nodded. “Yes, yes perhaps. I could be wrong. That would be wonderful, wouldn’t it, Dalinar? I’d die happy, knowing I was wrong.”

  “Would you?” Dalinar said.

  Taravangian considered. Then he turned abruptly—a motion that caused Szeth to jump, stepping forward, hand on his sword. Taravangian, however, was just turning to point at a nearby stool for Dalinar to sit.

  Taravangian glanced at Szeth briefly and hesitated. Dalinar thought he caught a narrowing of the man’s eyes. Damnation. He’d figured it out.

  The moment was over in a second. “That stool,” Taravangian said, pointing again. “I carried it down from upstairs. In case you visited. Would you join me here, sitting as we once did? For old times’ sake?”

  Dalinar frowned. He didn’t want to take the seat out of principle, but that was prideful. He would sit with this man one last time. Taravangian was one of the few people who truly understood what it felt like to make the choices that Dalinar had. Dalinar pulled over the stool and settled down.

  “I would die happily,” Taravangian said, “if I could see that I was wrong. If you won.”

  “I don’t think you would. I don’t think you could stand not being the one who saved us.”

 
“How little you know me, despite it all.”

  “You didn’t come to me, or any of us,” Dalinar said. “You say you were extremely smart? You figured out what was going to happen? What was your response? It wasn’t to form a coalition; it wasn’t to refound the Radiants. It was to send out an assassin, then seize the throne of Jah Keved.”

  “So I would be in a position to negotiate with Odium.”

  “That argument is crem, Taravangian. You didn’t need to murder people—you didn’t need to be king of Jah Keved—to accomplish any of this. You wanted to be an emperor. You made a play for Alethkar too. You sent Szeth to kill me, instead of talking to me.”

  “Pardon, Blackthorn, but please remember the man you were when I began this. He would not have listened to me.”

  “You’re so smart you can predict who will win a war before it begins, but you couldn’t see that I was changing? You couldn’t see that I’d be more valuable as an ally than as a corpse?”

  “I thought you would fall, Dalinar. I predicted you would join Odium, if left alive. Either that or you would fight my every step. Odium thought the same.”

  “And you were both wrong,” Dalinar said. “So your grand plan, your masterful ‘vision’ of the future was simply wrong.”

  “I … I…” Taravangian rubbed his brow. “I don’t have the intelligence right now to explain it to you. Odium will arrange things so that no matter what choice you make, he will win. Knowing that, I made the difficult decision to save at least one city.”

  “I think you saw a chance to be an emperor, and you took it,” Dalinar said. “You wanted power, Taravangian—so you could give it up. You wanted to be the glorious king who sacrificed himself to protect everyone else. You have always seen yourself as the man who must bear the burden of leading.”

  “Because it’s true.”

  “Because you like it.”

  “If so, why did I let go? Why am I captured here?”

  “Because you want to be known as the one who saved us.”

  “No,” Taravangian said. “It’s because I knew my friends and family could escape if I let you take me. I knew that your wrath would come upon me, not Kharbranth. And as I’m sure you’ve discovered, those who knew what I was doing are no longer involved in the city’s government. If you were to attack Kharbranth, you would attack innocents.”

  “I’d never do that.”

  “Because you have me. Admit it.”

  Storm him, it was true—and it made Dalinar angry enough to draw a single boiling angerspren at his feet. He had no interest in retribution against Kharbranth. They, like the Vedens—like Dalinar himself—had all been pawns in Taravangian’s schemes.

  “I know it is difficult to accept,” Taravangian said. “But my goal has never been power. It has always only been about saving whomever I could save.”

  “I can’t debate that, as I don’t know your heart, Taravangian,” Dalinar said. “So instead I’ll tell you something I know for certain. It could have gone differently. You could have truly joined with us. Storms … I can imagine a world where you said the oaths. I imagine you as a better leader than I ever could have been. I feel like you were so close.”

  “No, my friend,” Taravangian said. “A monarch cannot make such oaths and expect to be able to keep them. He must realize that a greater need might arise at any time.”

  “If so, it’s impossible for a king to be a moral man.”

  “Or perhaps you can be moral and still break oaths.”

  “No,” Dalinar said. “No, oaths are part of what define morality, Taravangian. A good man must strive to accomplish the things he’s committed to do.”

  “Spoken like a true son of Tanavast,” Taravangian said, clasping his hands. “And I believe you, Dalinar. I believe you think exactly what you say. You are a man of Honor, raised to it through a life of his religion—which you might be upending, but it retains its grip on your mind.

  “I wish I could commend that. Perhaps there was another way out of this. Perhaps there was another solution. But it wouldn’t be found in your oaths, my friend. And it would not involve a coalition of noble leaders. It would involve the sort of business with which you were once so familiar.”

  “No,” Dalinar said. “There is a just way to victory. The methods must match the ideal to be obtained.”

  Taravangian nodded, as if this were the inevitable response. Dalinar sat back on his seat, and they sat in silence together for a time, watching the tiny ruby. He hated how this had gone, how the argument forced him into the most dogmatic version of his beliefs. He knew there was nuance in every position, yet …

  Aligning his methods and his goals was at the very soul of what he’d learned. What he was trying to become. He had to believe there was a way to lead while still being moral.

  He stared at that ruby, that glimmer of red light, reminiscent of an Everstorm’s lightning. Dalinar had come here expecting a fight, but was surprised to realize he felt more sorrow than he did anger. He felt Taravangian’s pain, his regret for what had occurred. What they had both lost.

  Dalinar finally stood up. “You always said that to be a king was to accept pain.”

  “To accept that you must do what others cannot,” Taravangian agreed. “To bear the agonies of the decisions you had to make, so that others may live pure lives. You should know that I have said my goodbyes and intentionally made myself worthless to Odium and my former compatriots. You will not be able to use my life to bargain with anyone.”

  “Why tell me this?” Dalinar said. “You would make it worthless to keep you prisoner. Do you want to be executed?”

  “I simply want to be clear with you,” Taravangian said. “There is no further reason for me to try to manipulate you, Dalinar. I have achieved what I wanted. You may kill me.”

  “No, Taravangian,” Dalinar said. “You have lived your convictions, however misguided they may be. Now I’m going to live mine. And at the end, when I face Odium and win, you will be there. I’ll give you this gift.”

  “The pain of knowing I was wrong?”

  “You told me earlier that you wished to be proven wrong. If you’re sincere—and this was never about being right or about gaining power—then on that day we can embrace, knowing it is all over. Old friend.”

  Taravangian looked at him, and there were tears in his eyes. “To that day, then,” he whispered. “And to that embrace.”

  Dalinar nodded and withdrew, collecting Szeth at the door. He paused briefly to tell the guards to bring Taravangian some more light and a comfortable chair.

  As they walked away, Szeth spoke from behind him. “Do not trust his lies. He pretends to be done plotting, but there is more to him. There is always more to that one.”

  Dalinar glanced at the stoic bodyguard. Szeth so rarely offered opinions.

  “I don’t trust him,” Dalinar said. “I can’t walk away from any conversation with that man, no matter how innocent, without going over and over what he said. That’s part of why I was so hesitant to go in there.”

  “You are wise,” Szeth said, and seemed to consider the conversation finished.

  Do not mourn for what has happened. This notebook was a dream we shared, which is itself a beautiful thing. Proof of the truth of my intent, even if the project was ultimately doomed.

  —From Rhythm of War, page 27

  Venli scrambled through the hallways of Urithiru. She shoved past a group of humans who were too slow to get out of the way, then pulled to a halt, breathing heavily as she looked out onto the balcony.

  That song … That song reminded her of her mother’s voice.

  But it wasn’t her, of course. The femalen who sat by the balcony—weaving a mat and singing to Peace—was not Jaxlim. Her red skin pattern was wrong, her hairstrands too short. Venli leaned against the stone doorway as others on the balcony noticed her, and the femalen’s voice cut off. She glanced toward Venli and began to hum to Anxiety.

  Venli turned and walked away, attuning Disappo
intment. Hopefully she hadn’t frightened the people. A Regal looking so wild must have given them a scare.

  Timbre pulsed inside her.

  “I keep hearing her songs,” Venli said. “In the voices of people I pass. I keep remembering those days when I sang with her. I miss those days, Timbre. Life was so simple then.”

  Timbre pulsed to the Lost.

  “She didn’t have much sense left when my betrayal came,” Venli explained to the spren’s question. “Part of me thinks that a mercy, as she never knew. About me … Anyway it was the storms that eventually killed her. She was with the group that escaped, but they fled into the chasms. And then … we did what we did. The flood that came upon the Plains that day … Timbre, she drowned down there. Dead by my hand as surely as if I’d stabbed her.”

  The little spren pulsed again, consoling. She felt Venli couldn’t completely be blamed for what she’d done, as the forms had influenced her mind. But Venli had chosen those forms.

  She often thought back to those early days, after releasing Ulim. Yes, her emotions had changed. She’d pursued her ambition more and more. But at the same time, she hadn’t responded like Eshonai, who had seemed to become a different person entirely when adopting a form of power. Venli seemed more resistant somehow. More herself, regardless of form.

  That should have made her attune Joy, for she could only guess this had helped her escape Odium’s grip. But it also made her responsible for what she’d done. She couldn’t blame it on spren or forms. She’d been there, giving those orders.

  Timbre pulsed. I helped. And … yes, she had. When she’d first appeared, Venli had grown stronger, more able to resist.

  “Thank you,” Venli said. “For that, and for what you continue to do. I’m not worthy of your faith. But thank you.”

  Timbre pulsed. Today was the day. Raboniel was spending all her time with Navani, and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the difficulty of manipulating the former queen. That left Venli free. She’d secured a small sack of gemstones, some with Voidlight, some with Stormlight.