Today she was going to see what it really meant to be on this path of Radiance.
She’d already selected an area in which to practice. During morning reports, Venli had learned the Pursuer’s scouts were carefully combing the fifteenth floor. The majority of Raboniel’s soldiers were busy watching the humans, and didn’t often venture to the higher floors. So Venli had chosen a place on the eighth floor—a place that the Pursuer had already searched, but that was far from population centers.
The tower up here was silent, and oddly reminded her of the chasms in the Shattered Plains. Those stone pits had also been a place where the sun was difficult to remember—and also a place resplendent with beautiful stone.
She ran her fingers across a wall, expecting to feel bumps from the vibrant strata lines, but it was smooth. Like the walls of the chasms, actually. Her mother had died in those pits. Likely terrified, unable to understand what was happening as the water rushed in and …
Venli attuned the Lost and put down her small sack of spheres. She took out a Stormlight one first, then glimpsed into Shadesmar. She hadn’t again seen the Voidspren she’d spotted near Rlain’s cell, though she’d watched carefully these last few days. She’d eventually put Rlain together with the surgeon and his wife, and delivered all three of them to help care for the fallen Radiants.
Shadesmar revealed no Voidspren hiding in cremlings, so she hesitantly returned her vision to the Physical Realm and drew in a breath of Stormlight. That she could do, as she’d practiced it together with Timbre over the months.
Stormlight didn’t work like Voidlight did. Rather than going into her gemheart, it infused her entire body. She could feel it raging—an odd feeling more than an unpleasant one.
She pressed her hand to the stone wall. “Do you remember how we did this last time?” she asked Timbre.
The little spren pulsed uncertainly. That had been many months ago, and had drawn the attention of secretspren, so they had stopped quickly. It seemed, though, that all Venli had needed to do was press her hand against the wall, and her powers had started activating.
Timbre pulsed. She wasn’t convinced it would work with Stormlight, not with the tower’s defenses in place. Indeed, as Venli tried to do … well, anything with the Stormlight, she felt as if there were some invisible wall blocking her.
She couldn’t push the Stormlight into her gemheart to store it there—not with the Voidspren trapped inside. So Venli let the Light burn off on its own, breathing out to hasten the process. Then she took out a Voidlight sphere. She could get these without too much trouble—but she didn’t dare sing the Song of Prayer to create them herself. She worried about drawing Odium’s attention; he seemed to be ignoring her these days, and she’d rather it remain that way.
Timbre pulsed encouragingly.
“You sure?” Venli said. “It doesn’t seem right, for some reason, to use his power to fuel our abilities.”
Timbre’s pulsed reply was pragmatic. Indeed, they used Voidlight every day—a little of it, stored in their gemheart—to power Venli’s translation abilities. She wasn’t certain if her ability to use Voidlight for Radiant powers came from the fact that she was Regal, or if any singer who managed a bond would be able to do the same.
Today, she drew the Voidlight in like Stormlight, and it infused her gemheart fully. The Voidlight didn’t push her to move or act, like the Stormlight had. Instead it enflamed her emotions, in this case making her more paranoid, so she checked Shadesmar again. Still nothing there to be alarmed about.
She pressed her hand to the wall again, and tried to feel the stone. Not with her fingers. With her soul.
The stone responded. It seemed to stir like a person awaking from a deep slumber. Hello, it said, though the sounds were drawn out. She didn’t hear the word so much as feel it. You are … familiar.
“I am Venli,” she said. “Of the listeners.”
The stones trembled. They spoke with one voice, but she felt as if it was also many voices overlapping. Not the voice of the tower, but the voices of the many different sections of stones around her. The walls, the ceiling, the floor.
Radiant, the stones said. We have … missed your touch, Radiant. But what is this? What is that sound, that tone?
“Voidlight,” Venli admitted.
That sound is familiar, the stones said. A child of the ancient ones. Our friend, you have returned to sing our song again?
“What song?” Venli asked.
The stone near her hand began to undulate, like ripples on the surface of a pond. A tone surged through her, then it began to pulse with the song of a rhythm she’d never heard, but somehow always known. A profound, sonorous rhythm, ancient as the core of Roshar.
The entire wall followed suit, then the ceiling and the floor, surrounding her with a beautiful rhythm set to a pure tone. Timbre, with glee, joined in—and so Venli’s body aligned with the rhythm, and she felt it humming through her, vibrating her from carapace to bones.
She gasped, then pressed her other hand to the rock, aching to feel the song against her skin. There was a rightness about this, a perfection.
Oh, storms, she thought. Oh, rhythms ancient and new. I belong here.
She belonged here.
So far, everything she’d done with Timbre had been accidental. There had been a momentum to it. She’d made choices along the way, but it had never felt like something she deserved. Rather, it was a path she had fallen into, and then taken because it was better than her other options.
But here … she belonged here.
Remember, the stones said. The ground in front of her stopped rippling and formed shapes. Little homes made of stone, with figures standing beside them. Shaping them. She heard them humming.
She saw them. Ancient people, the Dawnsingers, working the stone. Creating cities, tools. They didn’t need Soulcasting or forges. They’d dip lengths of wood into the stone, and come out with axes. They’d shape bowls with their fingers. All the while, the stone would sing to them.
Feel me, shaper. Create from me. We are one. The stone shapes your life as you shape the stone.
Welcome home, child of the ancients.
“How?” Venli asked. “Radiants didn’t exist then. Spren didn’t bond us … did they?”
Things are new, the stones hummed, but new things are made from old things, and old peoples give birth to new ones. Old stones remember.
The vibrations quieted, falling from powerful thrummings, to tiny ripples, to stillness. The homes and the people melted back to ordinary stone floor, though the strata of this place had changed. As if to echo the former vibrations.
Venli knelt. After several minutes, breathing in gasps, she realized she was completely out of Voidlight. She searched her sack, and found all of her spheres drained save for a single mark. She’d gone through those spheres with frightening speed. But that moment of song, that moment of connection, had certainly been worth the cost.
She drew in this mark, then hesitantly placed her hand to the wall again. She felt the stone, willing and pliable, encouraging her and calling her “shaper.” She drew out the Voidlight and it infused her hand, making it glow violet-on-black. When she pressed her thumb into the stone, the rock molded beneath her touch, as if it had become crem clay.
Venli pressed her entire hand into the stone, making a print there and feeling the soft—but still present—rhythm. Then she pulled off a piece of the rock and molded it in her fingers. She rolled it into a ball, and the viscosity seemed to match what she needed—for when she held her hand forward and imagined it doing so, the stone ball melted into a puddle. She dropped it then, and it clicked when it hit the ground—hard, but imprinted by her fingers.
She picked it up and pressed it back into the wall, where it melded with the stone there as if it had never been removed.
Once she was done, she considered. “I want this, Timbre,” she whispered, wiping her eyes. “I need this.”
Timbre thrummed excitedly.
&n
bsp; “What do you mean, ‘them’?” Venli asked. She looked up, noticing lights in the hallway. She attuned Anxiety, but then the lights drew closer. The three little spren were like Timbre: in the shape of comets with rings of light pulsing around them.
“This is dangerous,” Venli hissed to Reprimand. “They shouldn’t be here. If they’re seen, the Voidspren will destroy them.”
Timbre pulsed that spren couldn’t be destroyed. Cut them with a Shardblade, and they’d re-form. Venli, however, wasn’t so confident. Surely the Fused could do something. Trap them in a jar? Lock them away?
Timbre insisted they’d simply fade into Shadesmar in that case, and be free. Well, it was risky, no matter what she said. These spren seemed more … awake than she’d expected though. They hovered around her, curious.
“Didn’t you say spren like you need a bond to be aware in the Physical Realm? An anchor?”
Timbre’s explanation was slightly ashamed. These were eager to bond Venli’s friends, her squires. That had given these spren access to thoughts and stability in the Physical Realm. Venli was the anchor.
She nodded. “Tell them to get out of the tower for now. If my friends start suddenly manifesting Radiant powers—and the stone starts singing in a place others could see—we could find ourselves in serious trouble.”
Timbre pulsed, defiant. How long?
“Until I find a way out of this mess,” Venli said. She pressed her hand to the wall, listening to the soft, contented hum of the stones. “I’m like a baby taking her first steps. But this might be the answer we need. If I can sculpt us an exit through the collapsed tunnels below, I should be able to sneak us out. Maybe we can even make it seem like we died in a further cave-in, covering our escape.”
Timbre pulsed encouragingly.
“You’re correct,” Venli said. “We can do this. But we need to take it slowly, carefully. I rushed to find new forms, and that proved a disaster. This time we’ll do things the right way.”
EIGHT YEARS AGO
Eshonai accompanied her mother into the storm.
Together they struck out into the electric darkness, Eshonai carrying a large wooden shield to buffer the wind for her mother, who cradled the bright orange glowing gemstone. Powerful gusts tried to rip the shield out of Eshonai’s hand, and windspren soared past, giggling.
Eshonai and her mother passed others, notable for the similar gemstones they carried. Little bursts of light in the tempest. Like the souls of the dead said to wander the storms, searching for gemhearts to inhabit.
Eshonai attuned the Rhythm of the Terrors: sharp, each beat puncturing her mind. She wasn’t afraid for herself, but her mother had been so frail lately.
Though many of the others stood out in the open, Eshonai led her mother to the hollow she’d picked out earlier. Even here, the pelting rain felt like it was trying to burrow through her skin. Rainspren along the top of the ridge seemed to dance as they waved along with the furious tempest.
Eshonai huddled down beside her mother, unable to hear the rhythm the femalen was humming. The light of the gemstone, however, revealed a grin on Jaxlim’s face.
A grin?
“Reminds me of when your father and I came out together!” Jaxlim shouted at Eshonai over the stormwinds. “We’d decided not to leave it to fate, where one of us might be taken and the other not! I still remember the strange feelings of passion when I first changed. You’re too afraid of that, Eshonai! I do want grandchildren, you realize.”
“Do we have to talk about this now?” Eshonai asked. “Hold that stone. Adopt the new form! Think about it, not mateform.”
Wouldn’t that be an embarrassment.
“The lifespren aren’t interested in someone my age,” her mother said. “It simply feels nice to be out here again! I’d been beginning to think I would waste away!”
Together they huddled against the rock, Eshonai using her shield as an improvised roof to block the rain. She wasn’t certain how long it would take the transformation to begin. Eshonai herself had only adopted a new form once, as a child—when her father had helped her adopt workform, since the time of changes had come to her.
Children needed no form, and were vibrant without one—but if they didn’t adopt a form upon puberty in their seventh or eighth year, they would be trapped in dullform instead. That form was, essentially, an inferior version of mateform.
Today, the storm stretched long, and Eshonai’s arm began to ache from holding the shield in place. “Anything?” she asked of her mother.
“Not yet! I don’t know the proper mindset.”
“Attune a bold rhythm!” Eshonai said. That was what Venli had told them. “Confidence or Excitement!”
“I’m trying! I—”
Whatever else her mother said was lost in the sound of thunder washing across them, vibrating the very stones, making Eshonai’s teeth chatter. Or perhaps that was the cold. Normally chill weather didn’t bother her—workform was well suited to it—but the icy rainwater had leaked through her oiled coat, sneaking down along her spine.
She attuned Resolve, keeping the shield in place. She would protect her mother. Jaxlim often complained that Eshonai was unreliable, prone to fancy, but that wasn’t true. Her exploration was difficult work. It was valuable work. She wasn’t unreliable or lazy.
Let her mother see this. Eshonai holding her shield in defiance of the rain—in defiance of the Rider of Storms himself. Holding her mother close, warming her. Not weak. Solid. Dependable. Determined.
The gemstone in her mother’s hands began to glow brighter. Finally, Eshonai thought, shifting to give her mother more space to enact the transformation, the recasting of her soul, the ultimate connection between listener and Roshar itself.
Eshonai shouldn’t have been surprised when the light burst from the gemstone and was absorbed—like water rushing to fill an empty vessel—into her own gemheart. Yet she was. Eshonai gasped, the rhythms disrupting and vanishing—all but one, an overwhelming sound she’d never heard before. A stately, steady tone. Not a rhythm. A pure note.
Proud, louder than the thunder. The sound became everything to her as her previous spren—a tiny gravitationspren—was ejected from her gemheart.
The pure tone of Honor pounding in her ears, she dropped the shield—which flew away into the dark sky. She wasn’t supposed to have been taken, but in the moment she didn’t care. This transformation was wonderful. In it, a vital piece of the listeners returned to her.
They needed more than they had. They needed this.
This … this was right. She embraced the change.
While it happened, it seemed to her that all of Roshar paused to sing Honor’s long-lost note.
* * *
Eshonai came to, lying in a puddle of rainwater cloudy with crem. A single rainspren undulated beside her, its form rippling and its eye staring straight upward toward the clouds, little feet curling and uncurling.
She sat up and surveyed her tattered clothing. Her mother had left Eshonai at some point during the storm, shouting that she needed to get under cover. Eshonai had been too absorbed by the tone and the new transformation to go with her.
She held up her hand and found the fingers thick, meaty, with carapace as grand as human armor along the back of the hand and up the arm. It covered her entire body, from her feet up to her head. No hairstrands. Simply a solid piece of carapace.
The change had shredded her shirt and coat, leaving only her skirt—and that had snapped at the waist, so it barely hung on her body. She stood up, and even that simple act felt different than it had before. She was propelled to her feet by unexpected strength. She stumbled, then gasped, attuning Awe.
“Eshonai!” an unfamiliar voice said.
She frowned as a monstrous figure in reddish-orange carapace stepped over some rubble from the highstorm. He had tied his wrap on awkwardly, plainly having suffered a similar disrobing. She attuned Amusement, though it didn’t look silly. It seemed impossible that such a dynamic, muscul
ar figure could ever look silly. She wished there were a rhythm more majestic than Awe. Was that what she looked like too?
“Eshonai,” the malen said with his deep voice. “Can you believe this? I feel like I could leap up and touch the clouds!”
She didn’t recognize the voice … but that pattern of marbled skin was familiar. And the features, though now covered by a carapace skullcap, were reminiscent of …
“Thude?” she said, then gasped again. “My voice!”
“I know,” he said. “If you’ve ever wished to sing the low tones, Eshonai, it seems we’ve found the perfect form for it!”
She searched around to see several other listeners in powerful armor standing and attuning Awe. There were a good dozen of them. Though Venli had provided around two dozen gemstones, it seemed not all of the volunteers had taken to the new form. Unsurprising. It would take them time and practice to determine the proper mindset.
“Were you overwhelmed too?” Dianil said, striding over. Her voice was as deep as Eshonai’s now, but that curl of black marbling along her brow was distinctive. “I felt an overpowering need to stand in the storm basking in the tone.”
“There are songs of those who first adopted workform,” Eshonai said. “I believe they mention a similar experience: an outpouring of power, an amazing tone that belonged purely to Cultivation.”
“The tones of Roshar,” Thude said, “welcoming us home.”
The twelve of them gathered, and though she knew some better than others, there seemed to be an instant … connection between them. A comradery. They took turns jumping, seeing who could get the highest, singing to Joy, as silly as a bunch of children with a new toy. Eshonai hefted a rock and hurled it, then watched it soar an incredible distance. She even drew a gloryspren—with flowing tails and long wings.
As the others selected their own rocks to try beating her throw, she heard an incongruous sound. The drums? Yes, those were the battle drums. A raid was happening at the city.
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