Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Brandon Sanderson

  To warm up, she spent time creating weapons that wouldn’t look like weapons. Traps she could use, if she grew truly desperate, to defend her room or the pillar room. She wasn’t certain how she would deploy them—or if she would need to. For now, it was something scholarly to do, something familiar, and she threw herself wholeheartedly into the work.

  She hid painrials inside other fabrials, constructed to appear innocuous. She made alarms to distract, using technology they’d discovered from the gemstones left by the old Radiants in Urithiru. She used conjoined rubies to make spring traps that would release spikes.

  She put Voidlight spheres in her fabrial traps, then set them to be armed by a simple trick. A magnet against the side of the cube, in precisely the right place, would move a metal lever and arm the traps. This way they wouldn’t activate until she needed them. She had these boxes stored out in the hallway, as if they were half-completed experiments she intended to return to in a few days. The space was already lined with boxes from the other scholars, so Navani’s additions didn’t feel out of place.

  Afterward, she had Raboniel help her make more Warlight for experiments. Navani couldn’t create it by herself, unfortunately. No combination of tuning forks or instruments replicated Raboniel’s presence—but so far as Navani could tell, the Fused also couldn’t create it without a human’s help.

  Navani got better at humming the tone, mastering the rhythm. In those moments, she felt as if she could hear the very soul of Roshar speaking to her. She’d never been particularly interested in music, but—like her growing obsession with Light—she found it increasingly fascinating. Waves, sounds, and what they meant for science.

  Underlying all the work she did was a singular question: How would one make the opposite of Voidlight? What had been in that sphere of Gavilar’s?

  In Vorinism, pure things were said to be symmetrical. And all things had an opposite. It was easy to see why Raboniel had assumed the dark Light of the Void would be the opposite of Stormlight, but darkness wasn’t truly an opposite of light. It was simply the absence of light.

  She needed some way to measure Investiture, the power in a gemstone. And she needed some kind of model, a form of energy that she knew had an opposite. What things in nature had a provable, measurable opposite?

  “Magnets,” she said, pushing aside her chair and standing up from her notes. She walked up to the guard at her chamber door. “I need more magnets. Stronger ones this time. We kept some in the chemical supplies storehouse on the second floor.”

  The guard hummed a tone, and accompanied it with a long-suffering sigh for Navani’s benefit. He glanced around for support, but the only other singer nearby was Raboniel’s daughter, who sat outside the room with her back to the wall, holding a sword across her lap and staring off into the distance while humming. It wasn’t a rhythm, Navani realized, but a tune she recognized—a human one sung sometimes at taverns. How did the Fused know it?

  “I suppose I can see it done,” the guard said to Navani. “Though some of our people are growing annoyed by your persistent demands.”

  “Take it up with Raboniel,” Navani said, walking to her seat. “Oh, and the Fused use some kind of weapon that draws Stormlight out of Radiants they stab. Get me some of that metal.”

  “I’ll need the Lady of Wishes to approve that,” the guard said.

  “Then ask her. Go on. I’m not going to run off. Where do you think I’d go?”

  The guard—a stormform Regal—grumbled and moved off to do as she asked. Navani had teased out a few things about him during her incarceration. He’d been a parshman slave in the palace at Kholinar. He thought she should recognize him, and … well, perhaps she should. Parshmen had always been so invisible though.

  She tried a different experiment while she waited. She had two halves of a conjoined ruby on the desk. That meant a split gemstone—and a split spren, divided right through the center. She was trying to see if she could use the tuning fork method to draw out the halves of the spren and rejoin them in a larger ruby. She thought that might please the Sibling, who still wouldn’t talk to her.

  She put a magnifying lens on one half of the gemstone and watched as the spren within reacted to the tuning fork. This was a corrupted flamespren; that shouldn’t change the nature of the experiment, or so she hoped.

  It was moving in there, trying to reach the sound. It pressed against the wall of the gemstone, but couldn’t escape. Stormlight can leak through micro-holes in the structure, Navani thought. But the spren is too large.

  A short time later, someone stepped up to the doorway; Navani noticed the darkening light of someone moving in front of the lamp. “My magnets?” Navani asked, holding out her hand while still peering at the spren. “Bring them here.”

  “Not the magnets,” Raboniel said.

  “Lady of Wishes,” Navani said, turning and bowing from her seat. “I apologize for not recognizing you.”

  Raboniel hummed a rhythm Navani couldn’t distinguish, then walked over to inspect the experiment.

  “I’m trying to rejoin a split spren,” Navani explained. “Past experience shows that breaking a gemstone in half lets the flamespren go—but in that case, the two halves grow into separate flamespren. I’m trying to see if I can merge them back together.”

  Raboniel placed something on the desk—a small dagger, ornate, with an intricately carved wooden handle and a large ruby set at the base. Navani picked it up, noting that the center of the blade—running like a vein from tip to hilt—was a different kind of metal than the rest.

  “We use these for collecting the souls of Heralds,” Raboniel noted. “Or that was the plan. We’ve taken a single one so far, and … there have been complications with that capture. I had hoped to harvest the two you reportedly had here, but they left with your expeditionary force.”

  Navani flipped the weapon over, feeling cold.

  “We’ve used this metal for several Returns to drain Stormlight from Radiants,” Raboniel said. “It conducts Investiture, drawing it from a source and pulling it inward. We used it to fill gemstones, but didn’t realize until the fall of Ba-Ado-Mishram that capturing spren in gemstones was possible. It was then that one of us—She Who Dreams—realized it might be possible to trap a Herald’s soul in the same way.”

  Navani licked her lips. So it was true. Shalash had told them Jezerezeh’Elin had fallen. They hadn’t realized how. This was better than absolute destruction though. Could he be recovered this way?

  “What will you do with their souls?” Navani asked. “Once you have them?”

  “Same thing you’ve done with the soul of Nergaoul,” Raboniel said. “Put them somewhere safe, so they can never be released again. Why did you want this metal? The guard told me you’d asked after it.”

  “I thought,” Navani said, “this might be a better way to conduct Stormlight and Voidlight—to transfer it out of gemstones.”

  “It would work,” Raboniel said. “But it isn’t terribly practical. Raysium is exceptionally difficult to obtain.” She nodded to the dagger she’d given Navani. “That specific weapon, you should know, contains only a small amount of the metal—not enough to harvest a Herald’s soul. It would not, therefore, be of any danger to me—should you consider trying such an act.”

  “Understood, Ancient One,” Navani said. “I want it only for my experiments. Thank you.” She touched the tip of the dagger—with the white-gold metal—to one half of the divided ruby. Nothing happened.

  “Generally, you need to stab someone with it for it to work,” Raboniel said. “You need to touch the soul.”

  Navani nodded absently, resetting her equipment with the tuning fork and the magnifying lens, then watching the spren inside move to the sound. She set the tip of the dagger against it again, watching for any different behavior.

  “You seem to be enjoying yourself,” Raboniel noted.

  “I would enjoy myself more if my people were free, Lady of Wishes,” Navani said. “But I intend t
o use this time to some advantage.”

  Their defense of the tower, frail though it was, had utterly collapsed. She couldn’t reach Kaladin, hear the Sibling, or plan with her scholars. There was only one node left to protect the heart of the tower from corruption.

  Navani had a solitary hope remaining: that she could imitate a scholar well enough to build a new weapon. A weapon to kill a god.

  In her experiment, nothing happened. The spren couldn’t get out of the ruby, even with the tone calling it. The spren was vivid blue, as it was corrupted, and appeared as half a spren: one arm, one leg. Why continue to manifest that way? Flamespren often changed forms—and they were infamous for noticing they were being watched. Navani had read some very interesting essays on the topic.

  She picked up a small jeweler’s hammer. Carefully, she cracked the half ruby, letting the spren escape. It sprang free, but was immediately captured by the dagger. Light traveled along the blade, then the ruby at the base began to glow. Navani confirmed that the half spren was inside.

  Interesting, Navani thought. So, what if I break the other half of the ruby and capture that half in the same gemstone? Excited, she reached to grab the other half of the ruby—but when she moved it, the dagger skidded across the table.

  Navani froze. The two halves of the spren were still conjoined? She’d expected that to end once the original imprisonment did. Curious, she moved the dagger. The other half of the ruby flew out several feet toward the center of the room.

  Too far. Much too far. She’d moved the dagger half a foot, while the paired ruby had moved three times as far. Navani stared at the hovering ruby, her eyes wide.

  Raboniel hummed a loud rhythm, looking just as startled. “How?” she asked. “Is it because the spren is corrupted?”

  “Possibly,” Navani said. “Though I’ve been experimenting with conjoined spren, and corrupted ones seem to generally behave the same as uncorrupted ones.” She eyed the dagger. “The gemstone on the dagger is larger than the one it was in before. Always before, you had to split a gemstone in two equal halves to conjoin them. Perhaps by moving one half to a larger gemstone, I have created something new.…”

  “Force multiplication?” Raboniel asked. “Move a large gemstone a short distance, and cause the small gemstone to go a very long one?”

  “Energy will be conserved, if our understanding of fabrial laws is correct,” Navani said. “Greater Light will be required, and moving the larger gemstone will be more difficult in equivalency to the work done by the smaller gemstone. But storms … the implications…”

  “Write this down,” Raboniel said. “Record your observations. I will do the same.”

  “Why?” Navani asked.

  “The Rhythm of War, Navani,” Raboniel said as an explanation—though it didn’t seem one to Navani. “Do it. And continue your experiments.”

  “I will,” she said. “But Lady of Wishes, I’m running into another problem. I need a way to measure the strength of Stormlight in a gemstone.”

  Raboniel didn’t press for details. “There is sand that does this,” she said.

  “Sand?”

  “It is black naturally, but turns white in the presence of Stormlight. It can, therefore, be used to measure the strength of Investiture—the more powerful the source of power nearby, the quicker the sand changes. I will get some for you.” She hummed loudly. “This is amazing, Navani. I don’t think I’ve known a scholar so capable, not in many Returns.”

  “I’m not a…” Navani trailed off. “Thank you,” she said instead.

  Why would I want to remember?

  Dabbid had been different all his life.

  That was the word his mother had used. “Different.” He liked that word. It didn’t try to pretend. Something was different about him. He had been six when he started talking. He still couldn’t do adding in his head. He could follow instructions, but he forgot steps if they were too long.

  He was different.

  The surgeons hadn’t been able to say the reason. They said some people are just different. He was always going to be like this. The midwife, when she heard about him later, said the cord was wrapped around his neck when he was born. Maybe that was why.

  When he’d been young, Dabbid had tried putting a rope around his neck to see how it felt. He hadn’t jumped off a ledge. He hadn’t tied the other end to anything. He hadn’t tried to die. He’d just tightened it a little, so he could know what baby Dabbid had felt.

  When someone saw, everyone had panicked. They called him stupid. They took ropes away from him for years. They thought he was too dumb to know it would hurt him. He often got into trouble like that. Doing things others wouldn’t do. Not understanding it would make people panic. He had to be very careful not to make regular people frightened. They liked to be scared of him. He did not know why. He was different. But not scary different.

  It had gotten worse when his mother died. People had become meaner on that day. It wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t even been there. But suddenly, everyone was meaner. He ended up at war, serving a lighteyes. Washing his clothing.

  When a darkeyed baby was born to the man’s wife, everyone had gotten angry at Dabbid. He’d explained that they were wrong. Everybody was wrong sometimes.

  It hadn’t been until much later that he’d realized the brightlady had lied. To punish someone other than her secret lover. He could understand things, if he had time to think about them. Sometimes.

  He’d ended up running bridges. Dabbid didn’t remember much from that time. He’d lost track of the days. He’d barely spoken back then. He had been confused. He had been frightened. He had been angry. But he didn’t let people know he was angry. People got scared and hurt him when he was angry.

  He’d done his job, terrified more each day, certain he would die. In fact, he’d figured he must already be dead. So when a horse—from one of Sadeas’s own soldiers—had all but trampled him, shoving him and hurling him to the ground, his arm broken, he’d curled up and waited to die.

  Then … Kaladin. Kaladin Stormblessed. He hadn’t cared that Dabbid was different. He hadn’t cared that Dabbid had given up. Kaladin hauled him out of Damnation and gave him another family.

  Dabbid couldn’t quite recall when he’d started to come out of his battle shock. He hadn’t ever really lost it. Who could? People clapping sounded like bowstrings snapping. Footfalls sounded like hooves. Or he’d hear singing, like the Parshendi, and he was there again. Dying.

  Still, he had started to feel better. Somewhere along the way, he’d started to feel like his old self. Except he’d had a new family. He’d had friends.

  And none of them had known he was different.

  Well, they thought he was another kind of different. They thought he had been hurt by the battle, like all of them. He was one of them. They hadn’t known about his mind. How he’d been born.

  He didn’t like it when people used the word “stupid” for the way he was. People called one another stupid when they made mistakes. Dabbid wasn’t a mistake. He could make mistakes. Then he was stupid. But not always. He couldn’t think fast like others. But that made him different, not stupid. Stupid was a choice.

  In the past, his speech had told people he was different. He’d figured that out when he was moving from job to job after his mother died. When he’d spoken, they’d known. So … with Bridge Four … he’d just kept on not speaking.

  That way they wouldn’t know. That way they wouldn’t realize he was Dabbid different. He could just be Bridge Four different.

  Then everyone had started getting spren. Except him. And then the tower had started talking to him. And … he still wasn’t certain if he’d done something stupid or not. But going to Rlain, that hadn’t been stupid. He was certain of it.

  So today, he tried not to think about his mistakes. He tried not to think about how if he’d been stronger, he could have helped Kaladin fight. He tried not to think about how he’d lied to the others by pretending he couldn’t speak
. He tried to focus on what he could do to help.

  He led Rlain up through the tunnels. They met singers a couple of times. Rlain talked, his voice calm with rhythms, and the singers let them go. They went up and up, and Dabbid showed him a hidden stairwell. They snuck past the guard patrols on the sixth floor.

  Up and up. Dabbid’s heart thumped. Worrying. Would Lift meet them, like she’d promised? Lift knew the tower better than they did. She said she could make it on her own. But would she run away?

  When they reached the meeting place on the tenth floor, they found her waiting. She sat on the ground, eating some curry and bread.

  “Where did you get that?” Rlain asked.

  “Fused,” she said, gesturing. “Funny. They need to eat. Suppose that means they poop, right?”

  “I suppose,” Rlain said, sounding disapproving.

  “Ain’t that a kick in the bits?” Lift asked. “You get made immortal; you can live through the centuries. You can fly, or walk through rock, or something like that. But you still gotta piss like everyone else.”

  “I don’t see the point of this conversation,” Rlain said. “Hurry. We need to get to Kaladin.”

  Lift rolled her eyes in an exaggerated way, then stood up and handed Dabbid some flatbread. He nodded in thanks and tucked it away for later.

  “When didya start talkin’?” Lift asked him.

  “I was six,” he said. “Mom said.”

  “No, I mean…” She gestured at him.

  Dabbid felt himself blush, and he looked at his feet. “I could for a long time. Just didn’t.”

  “Didn’t want to talk? I’ve never felt like that. Except this once, when I ate the queen’s dinner, but it had been sitting out, see, and she didn’t put it away like she should have. It’s her fault, I told her, because it’s like leavin’ a sword out where a baby could step on it and cut up her foot or somethin’.”

  “Can we please keep moving?” Rlain demanded.