Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Brandon Sanderson

  “I told you!” Design said happily. “Dogs can’t be dragons!”

  “Who cares?” Kaladin said, stalking back and forth. “By looking up at the dragon, and by trying to become better, he outgrew the other dogs. He achieved something truly special.” Kaladin stopped, then narrowed his eyes at Wit, feeling his anger turn to annoyance. “This story is about me, isn’t it? I said I’m not good enough. You think I have impossible goals, and I’m intentionally ignoring the things I’ve accomplished.”

  Wit pointed with his spoon. “I told you this story has no meaning. You promised not to assign it one.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Design said, “you didn’t give him a chance to promise! You simply kept talking.”

  Wit glared at her.

  “Blah blah blah blah blah!” she said, rocking her pattern head back and forth at each word.

  “Your stories always have a point,” Kaladin said.

  “I am an artist,” Wit said. “I should thank you not to demean me by insisting my art must be trying to accomplish something. In fact, you shouldn’t enjoy art. You should simply admit that it exists, then move on. Anything else is patronizing.”

  Kaladin folded his arms, then sat. Wit, playing games again. Couldn’t he ever be clear? Couldn’t he ever say what he meant?

  “Any meaning,” Wit said softly, “is for you to assign, Kaladin. I merely tell the stories. Have you finished your stew?”

  Kaladin realized he had—he’d eaten the entire bowl while listening.

  “I can’t keep this bubble up much longer, I’m afraid,” Wit said. “He’ll notice if I do—and then he’ll destroy me. I have violated our agreement, which exposes me to his direct action. I’d rather not be killed, as I have seven more people I wanted to insult today.”

  Kaladin nodded, standing up again. He realized that somehow, the story fired him up. He felt stronger, less for the words and more for how annoyed he’d grown at Wit.

  A little light, a little warmth, a little fire and he felt ready to walk out into the winds again. Yet he knew the darkness would return. It always did.

  “Can you tell me the real ending?” Kaladin asked, his voice small. “Before I go back out?”

  Wit stood and stepped over, then put his hand on Kaladin’s back and leaned in. “That night,” he said, “the little dog snuggled into a warm bed beside the fire, hugged by the farmer’s children, his belly full. And as he did, the dog thought to himself, ‘I doubt any dragon ever had it so good anyway.’”

  He smiled and met Kaladin’s eyes.

  “It won’t be like that for me,” Kaladin said. “You told me it would get worse.”

  “It will,” Wit said, “but then it will get better. Then it will get worse again. Then better. This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. That is truth. I promise you, Kaladin: You will be warm again.”

  Kaladin nodded in thanks, then turned to the hateful winds. He felt a push against his back as Wit sent him forward—then the light vanished, along with all it contained.

  SEVEN YEARS AGO

  Eshonai tipped her head back, feeling water stream off her carapace skullplate. Returning to warform after so long in workform felt like revisiting a familiar clearing hidden in the trees, rarely encountered but always waiting for her. She did like this form. She would not see it as a prison.

  She met Thude and Rlain as they emerged from hollows in the stone where they too had returned to this form. Many of her friends had never left it. Warform was convenient for many reasons, though Eshonai didn’t like it quite as well as workform. There was something about the aggression this form provoked in her. She worried she would seek excuses to fight.

  Thude stretched, humming to Joy. “Feels good,” he said. “I feel alive in this form.”

  “Too alive,” Rlain said. “Do the rhythms sound louder to you?”

  “Not to me,” Thude said.

  Eshonai shook her head. She didn’t hear the rhythms any differently. Indeed, she’d been wondering if—upon adopting this form again—she’d hear the pure tone of Roshar as she did the first time. She hadn’t.

  “Shall we?” she asked, gesturing toward the spreading plateaus. Rlain started toward one of the bridges, but Thude sang loudly to Amusement and charged the nearby chasm, leaping and soaring over it with an incredible bound.

  Eshonai dashed after him to do the same. Each form brought with it a certain level of instinctual understanding. When she reached the edge, her body knew what to do. She sprang in a powerful leap, the air whistling through the grooves in her carapace and flapping the loose robe she’d worn into the storm.

  She landed with a solid crunch, her feet grinding stone as she slid to a stop. The Rhythm of Confidence thrummed in her ears, and she found herself grinning. She had missed that. Rlain landed next to her, a hulking figure with black and red skin patterns forming an intricate marbling. He hummed to Confidence as well.

  “Come on!” Thude shouted from nearby. He leaped another chasm.

  Attuning Joy, Eshonai ran after him. Together the three of them chased and dashed, climbed and soared—spanning chasms, climbing up and over rock formations, sprinting across plateaus. The Shattered Plains felt like a playground.

  This must be what islands and oceans are like, she thought as she surveyed the Plains from up high. She’d heard about them in songs, and she’d always imagined an ocean as a huge network of streams moving between sections of land.

  But no, she’d seen Gavilar’s map. In that painting, the bodies of water had seemed as wide as countries. Water … with nothing to see but more water. She attuned Anxiety. And Awe. Complementary emotions, in her experience.

  She dropped from the rock formation and landed on the plateau, then bounded after Thude. How far would she have to travel to find those oceans? Judging by the map, only a few weeks to the east. Once such a distance would have been daunting, but now she’d made the trek all the way to Kholinar and back. The trip to the Alethi capital had been one of the sweetest and most exhilarating experiences of her life. So many new places. So many wonderful people. So many strange plants, strange sights, strange foods to taste.

  When they’d fled, the same wonders had become threats overnight. The entire trip home had been a blur of marching, sleeping, and foraging in human fields.

  Eshonai reached another chasm and leaped, trying to recapture her excitement. She increased her pace, coming up even with Thude and eventually passing him—before the two of them pulled to a halt to wait for Rlain, who had slowed a few plateaus back. He had always been a careful one, and he seemed better able to control the inclinations of the new form.

  Her heart racing, Eshonai reached out of habit to wipe her brow—but this form didn’t have sweat on her forehead to drip into her eyes. Instead, the carapace armor trapped air from her forward motion, then pushed it up underneath to cool her skin.

  The awesome energy of the form meant she could probably have kept running for hours before feeling any real strain. Perhaps longer. Indeed, the warforms during their flight from Alethkar had carried food for the others and still moved faster than the workforms.

  At the same time, Eshonai was getting hungry. She remembered well how much food this form required at each meal.

  Thude leaned against a high rock formation as they waited, watching some windspren play in the air. Eshonai wished she’d brought her book for drawing maps of the Plains. She’d found it in the human market of Kholinar—such a small, simple thing. It had been expensive by Alethi standards, but oh so cheap by her standards. An entire book of papers? All for a few little bits of emerald?

  She’d seen steel weapons there too. Sitting in the market. For sale. The listeners protected, polished, and revered each weapon they’d found on the Plains—keeping them for generations, passed down from parent to child. The humans had entire stalls of them.

  “This is going to go poorly for us, isn’t it
?” Thude asked.

  Eshonai realized she’d been humming to the Lost. She stopped, but met his eyes and knew that he knew. Together they walked around the stone formation and looked westward, toward the cities that had for centuries been listener homes. Dark smoke filled the air—the Alethi burning wood as they set up enormous cookfires and settled into their camps.

  They’d arrived in force. Tens of thousands of them. Swarms of soldiers, with dozens of Shardbearers. Come to exterminate her people.

  “Maybe not,” Eshonai said. “In warform, we’re stronger than they are. They have equipment and skill, but we have strength and endurance. If we have to fight them, this terrain will heavily favor us.”

  “Did you really have to do it though?” Thude asked to Pleading. “Did you need to have him killed?”

  She’d answered this before, but she didn’t avoid the responsibility. She had voted for Gavilar to die. And she’d been the reason for the vote in the first place.

  “He was going to bring them back, Thude,” Eshonai said to Reprimand. “Our ancient gods. I heard him say it. He thought I’d be happy to hear of it.”

  “So you killed him?” Thude asked, to Agony. “Now they’ll kill us, Eshonai. How is this any better?”

  She attuned Tension. Thude, in turn, attuned Reconciliation. He seemed to recognize that bringing this up again and again was accomplishing nothing.

  “It is done,” Eshonai said. “So now, we need to hold out. We might not even have to fight them. We can harvest gemstones from the greatshells and speed crop growth. The humans can’t leap these chasms, and so they’ll have trouble ever getting to us. We’ll be safe.”

  “We’ll be trapped,” Thude said. “In the center of these Plains. For months, perhaps years. You’re fine with that, Eshonai?”

  Rlain finally caught up to them, jogging over and humming to Amusement—perhaps he thought the two of them silly for speeding ahead.

  Eshonai looked away from Thude and stared out across the Plains—not toward the humans, but toward the ocean, the Origin. Places she could have gone. Places she’d planned to go. Thude knew her too well. He understood how much it hurt to be trapped here.

  They will strike inward, she thought. The humans won’t come all this way to turn around because of a few chasms. They have resources we can only imagine, and there are so many of them. They’ll find a way to get to us.

  Escaping out the other side of the Plains wasn’t an option either. If the chasmfiends there didn’t get them, the humans eventually would. To flee would be to abandon the natural fortification of the Plains.

  “I’ll do what I have to, Thude,” Eshonai said to Determination. “I’ll do what is right whatever the cost. To us. To me.”

  “They have fought wars,” Thude said. “They have generals. Great military thinkers. We’ve had warform for only a year.”

  “We’ll learn,” Eshonai said, “and create our own generals. Our ancestors paid with their very minds to bring us freedom. If the humans find a way to come for us in here, we will fight. Until we persuade the humans that the cost is too high. Until they realize we won’t go meekly to slavery, like the poor beings they use as servants. Until they learn they cannot have us, our Blades, or our souls. We are a free people. Forever.”

  * * *

  Venli gathered her friends around, humming softly to Craving as she revealed the gemstones in her hands. Voidspren. Five of them, trapped as Ulim had been when first brought to her.

  Inside her gemheart, he hummed words of encouragement. Ever since the events at the human city, he’d treated her with far more respect. And he’d never again abandoned her. The longer he remained, the better she could hear the new rhythms. The rhythms of power.

  She had claimed this section of Narak—the city at the center of the Plains—for her scholars. Friends who she and Ulim had determined, after careful discussion, shared her hunger for a better world. Trustworthy enough, she hoped. Once they had Voidspren in their gemhearts, she’d be far more confident in their discretion.

  “What are they?” Demid asked, his hand resting on Venli’s shoulder. He’d been the first and most eager to listen. He didn’t know everything, naturally, but she was glad to have him. She felt stronger when he was around. Braver than Eshonai. After all, could Eshonai have ever taken this step?

  “These hold spren,” Venli explained. “When you accept one into your gemheart, they’ll hold your current spren with them, keeping you in your current form—but you’ll have a secret companion to help you. Guide you. Together, we’re going to solve the greatest challenge our people have ever known.”

  “Which is?” Tusa asked to Skepticism.

  “Our world is connected to another,” Venli explained, handing one gemstone to each of her friends. “A place called Shadesmar. Hundreds of spren exist there who can grant us the ability to harness the power of the storms. They’ve traveled a long way, as part of a great storm. They’ve gone as far as they can on their own, however. Getting gemstones like these to our side takes enormous effort, and is impossible on a large scale.

  “So we need another way to bring those spren across. We’re going to figure it out, then we’re going to persuade the rest of the listeners to join with us in adopting forms of power. We’ll be smart; we won’t be ruled by the spren this time around. We’ll rule them.

  “Eshonai and the others have foolishly thrown everyone into an unwanted war. So we have to take this step. We will be remembered as the ones who saved our people.”

  Oh … Father … Seven thousand years.

  “How could you not tell me this?” Radiant demanded as she knelt and shouted at the cube on the floor. “Restares is not only the honorspren’s High Judge, he’s one of the storming Heralds!”

  “You didn’t require the information at that time,” Mraize’s voice said. “Be Veil. She will understand.”

  “Veil is even more angry at you, Mraize,” Radiant said, standing up. “You sent us into a dangerous situation without proper preparation! Withholding this information wasted weeks while the three of us searched the fortress like an idiot.”

  “We didn’t want you asking after a Herald,” Mraize said, his voice frustratingly calm. “That might have alerted him. So far as we’re aware, he hasn’t figured out that we know his true identity. Gavilar may have known, but no others in the Sons of Honor had an inkling that they served one of the very beings they were seeking—in their naive ignorance—to restore to Roshar. The irony is quite poetic.”

  “Mmm…” Pattern said from beside the door, where he was watching for Adolin.

  “What?” Radiant asked him. “You like irony now too?”

  “Irony tastes good. Like sausage.”

  “And have you ever tasted sausage?”

  “I don’t believe I have a sense of taste,” Pattern said. “So irony tastes like what I imagine sausage would taste like when I’m imagining tastes.”

  Radiant rubbed her forehead, looking back at the cube. So unfair. She was accustomed to being able to stare down her troops, but one could not properly glare at a man who talked to you out of a box.

  “You told us we’d know what to do when we found Restares,” Radiant told Mraize. “Well, we are here now and we have no idea how to proceed.”

  “What did you do the moment you found out?” Mraize said.

  “Cursed your name.”

  “Then?”

  “Contacted you directly to curse at you some more.”

  “Which was the correct choice. See, you knew exactly what to do.”

  Radiant folded her arms, warm with anger. Frustration. And … admittedly … embarrassment. She bled into being Veil, and the anger returned.

  “The time has come,” she said, “for us to deal, Mraize.”

  “Deal? The deal has already been set. You do as I have requested, and you will receive the offered reward—in addition to the practice and training you are receiving under my hand.”

  “That is interesting,” Veil said. “Becau
se I see this differently. I have come all this way, through great hardship. Because of Adolin’s sacrifice, I’ve gained access to one of the most remote fortresses on Roshar. I have succeeded where you explicitly told me your other agents have failed.

  “Now that I’m here, instead of receiving ‘training’ or ‘practice’ as you say, I find that you’ve been withholding vital information from me. From my perspective, there is no incentive to continue this arrangement, as the promised reward is of little interest to me. Even Shallan is questioning its value.

  “Your refusal to give me important information makes me question what else you held back. Now I’m questioning if what I’m to do here is possibly against my interests, and the interests of those I love. So let me ask plainly. Why am I really here? Why are you so interested in Kelek? And why—explicitly—should I continue on this path?”

  Mraize did not respond immediately. “Hello, Veil,” he finally said. “I’m glad you came out to speak with me.”

  “Answer my questions, Mraize.”

  “First, it is time to open the cube,” Mraize said.

  Veil frowned. “The communication cube? I thought you said that would ruin the thing.”

  “If you break into it, you will ruin it. Pick it up. Heft it. Listen for the side where my voice is weakest as I hum.”

  She knelt beside the cube again and picked it up, listening to Mraize’s humming voice. Yes … the sound was weaker from one direction.

  “I’ve found it,” she said.

  “Good,” Mraize said. “Put your hand on that plane of the cube and twist it to the right.”

  She felt it click as she touched it. She suspected Mraize had done something to unlock the device from wherever he was. When she twisted that plane of the cube, it turned easily and came off, revealing a small compartment that contained an intricate metal dagger with a gemstone on the end of the grip.

  “So you do want me to kill him,” she said.