Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Brandon Sanderson

  “Wait,” Adolin said. “What is this?”

  “They asked me to witness against you,” she said. “So a spren who is not an honorspren would have a chance to weigh in on this proceeding.”

  “But … you’re my tutor. Didn’t you volunteer to train me?”

  “I wanted you well-trained,” she said, “so the trial could be as fair as possible. This thing is. But my hatred of what your kind did also is.” She turned to Kelek. “Honored One, I was alive when men betrayed us. Unlike the honorspren, my kind were not so foolish as to assign all as Radiant spren. We lost over half our numbers, but some of us watched from outside.”

  She eyed Adolin. “We knew men as they were and are. Untrustworthy. Changeable. Spren find it difficult to break a bond. Some say it is impossible for us. Men, however, barely last a day without betraying some Ideal.

  “Why should we beings of innate honor have been surprised when the event happened? It is not the fault of men that they are as fickle as the falling rain. This thing is. They should not be trusted, and the shame of doing so is our fault. Never again should spren and men bond. It is unnatural.”

  “Unnatural?” Adolin said. “Spren and skyeels bond to fly. Spren and greatshells bond to grow. Spren and singers bond to create new forms. This is as natural as the changing seasons.”

  And thank you, Shallan, he thought, glancing at her, for your interest in all this.

  “Humans are not from this land,” Blended said. “You are invaders, and bonds with you are not natural. Be careful what you say—you will encourage us to return to the singers. They betrayed us long ago, but never on the scale of the humans. Perhaps the highspren have the correct idea in joining with the armies of the Fused.”

  “You’d side with them?” Adolin said. “Our enemies?”

  “Why not?” she said, strolling across the stage. “They are the rightful heirs of this land. They have been pushed to desperation by your kind, but they are no less reasonable or logical. Perhaps your kind would do better to acknowledge their rule.”

  “They serve Odium,” Adolin said, noticing many of the honorspren shifting in their seats, uncomfortable. “Men might be changeable, yes. We might be corrupt at times, and weak always. But I know evil when I see it. Odium is evil. I will never serve him.”

  Blended eyed the crowd, who nodded at Adolin’s words. She gave him a little nod herself, as if in acknowledgment of a point earned.

  “This tangent is irrelevant,” she said, turning to Kelek. “I can say, with some ease, that a good relationship between honorspren and inkspren is not. Any would acknowledge this. My testimony’s value is, then, of extra import.

  “I lived through the pain and chaos of the Recreance. I saw my siblings, beloved, dead. I saw families ripped apart, and pain flowing like blood. We might be enemies, but in one thing unification is. Men should never again be trusted with our bonds. If this one wishes to accept punishment for the thousands who escaped it, I say let him. Lock him away. Be done with him and any who, like him, wish to repeat the massacre of the past.” She looked directly at Adolin. “This truth is.”

  Adolin felt at a loss to say anything. What defense could he offer? “We are not the same as the ones before,” he said.

  “Can you promise you will be different,” she demanded. “Absolutely promise it? Promise that no further spren will be killed from bonds, if allowed to be?”

  “Of course not,” Adolin said.

  “Well, I can promise that none will die so long as no more bonds are made. The solution is easy.”

  She turned and walked back to her place.

  Adolin looked to Kelek. “There are no promises in life. Nothing is sure. She says spren won’t die without bonds, but can you say what will happen if Odium reigns?”

  “I find it most curious she’d prefer that possibility, young man,” Kelek said. He started writing in his notebook again. “But it is seriously damning of you that an inkspren would be willing to testify alongside an honorspren. Damning indeed…” Kelek took another bite of his fruit, leaving only the core, which he absently set on the table in front of him.

  Frustrated, Adolin forced himself to calm. The trial was proceeding well on at least one axis. The honorspren weren’t trying to force the actual sins of the Recreance on him; they were taking a more honorable approach of proving that men hadn’t changed, and bonds were too risky.

  Blended and he had decided this tactic was safer for Adolin; Kelek could very well decide that there was no reason to imprison him for things the ancients did. At the same time, Adolin was losing the hearts of the watching spren. What would it matter if he “won” the trial if the spren were even more strongly convinced they shouldn’t help in the conflict?

  He searched the crowd, but found mostly resentful expressions. Storms. Did he really think he could prove anything to them? Which of the ten fools was he for starting all this?

  No, I’m not a fool, he told himself. Just an optimist. How can they not see? How can they sit here and judge me, when men are dying and other spren fight?

  The same way, he realized, that the highprinces had spent so long playing games with the lives of soldiers on the Shattered Plains. The same way any man could turn his back on an atrocity if he could persuade himself it wasn’t his business.

  Men and spren were not different. Blended had tried to tell him this, and now he saw it firsthand.

  “The third and final witness,” the honorspren officiator said, “is Notum, once captain of the ship Honor’s Path.”

  Adolin felt his stomach turn as Notum—looking much improved from the last time Adolin had seen him—emerged from the top of the forum, where a group of standing honorspren had obscured him from Adolin’s view. Still, Adolin was shocked. Notum had been forbidden to enter Lasting Integrity despite his wounds, and had stayed with the others outside the walls—though the honorspren of the tower had delivered him some Stormlight to aid in his healing. Messages from Godeke had indicated that Notum had eventually returned to patrol.

  Now he was here—and in uniform, which was telling. He also wouldn’t meet Adolin’s eyes as he stepped down onto the floor of the forum. Spren might claim the moral high ground; they claimed to be made of honor. But they also defined honor for themselves. As men did.

  “Offered to end your exile, did they, Notum?” Adolin asked softly. “In exchange for a little backstabbing?”

  Notum continued to avoid his gaze, instead bowing to Kelek, then unfolding a sheet of paper from his pocket. He began to read. “I have been asked,” he said, “to relate the erratic behavior I witnessed in this man and his companions. As many of you know, I first encountered this group when they fled the Fused in Celebrant over one year ago. They used subterfuge to…”

  Notum trailed off and looked toward Adolin.

  Give him Father’s stare, Adolin thought. The stern one that made you want to shrivel up inside, thinking of everything you’d done wrong. A general’s stare.

  Adolin had never been good at that stare.

  “Go ahead,” he said instead. “We got you in trouble, Notum. It’s only fair that you get a chance to tell your side. I can’t ask anything of you other than honesty.”

  “I…” Notum met his eyes.

  “Go on.”

  Notum lowered his sheet, then said in a loud voice, “Honor is not dead so long as he lives in the hearts of men!”

  Adolin had never heard the statement before, but it seemed a trigger to the honorspren crowd, who began standing up and shouting in outrage—or even in support. Adolin stepped back, amazed by the sudden burst of emotion from the normally stoic spren.

  Several officials rushed the floor of the forum, pulling Notum away as he bellowed the words. “Honor is not dead so long as he lives in the hearts of men! Honor is not—”

  They dragged him out of the forum, but the commotion continued. Adolin put his hand on his sword, uncertain. Would this turn ugly?

  Kelek shrank down in his seat, looking panicked as he
put his hands to his ears. He let out a low whine, pathetic and piteous, and began to shake. The honorspren near him called for order among the crowd, shouting that they were causing pain to the Holy One.

  Many seemed outraged at Notum’s words, but a sizable number took up his cry—and these were pushed physically out of the forum. There was a tension to this society Adolin hadn’t seen before. The honorspren were no monolith; disagreement and tension swam in deep waters here—far below the surface, but still powerful.

  The officiators cleared the forum—even Shallan and Pattern were forced out. Everyone basically ignored Adolin. As the place finally settled down, and only a few officials remained, Adolin walked up the few forum steps to the High Judge’s seat. Kelek lounged in his seat, ignoring the fact that he’d been curled up on the floor trembling mere moments earlier.

  “What was that?” Adolin asked him.

  “Hmmm?” Kelek said. “Oh, nothing of note. An old spren argument. Your coming has opened centuries-old wounds, young man. Amusing, isn’t it?”

  “Amusing? That’s all?”

  Kelek started whistling as he wrote in his notebook.

  They’re all insane, Adolin thought. Ash said so. This is what thousands of years of torture does to a mind.

  Perhaps it was best not to push on the raw wound.

  “That went well for me today, wouldn’t you say?” Adolin asked him.

  “Hmm?” Kelek said.

  “One witness could not refute my point about my father,” Adolin said. “Another made my argument for me by pointing out that siding against the Radiants is practically serving Odium. Then Notum put his honor before his own well-being. It went well for me.”

  “Does it matter?” Kelek asked.

  “Of course it does. That’s why I’m here.”

  “I see,” Kelek said. “Did the ancient Radiants betray their spren, killing them?”

  “Well, yes,” Adolin said. “But that’s not the question. The question is whether modern humans can be blamed.”

  Kelek continued writing.

  “Honored One?” Adolin asked.

  “Do you know how old I am, young man?” Kelek looked up and met Adolin’s eyes, and there was something in them. A depth that made him, for the first time, seem distinctly inhuman. Those eyes seemed like eternal holes. Bored through time.

  “I,” Kelek said softly, “have known many, many men. I’ve known some of the best who ever lived. They are now broken or dead. The best of us inevitably cracked. Storms … I ran when the Return came this time, because I knew what it meant. Even Taln … Even Taln…”

  “He didn’t break,” Adolin said.

  “The enemy is here, so he did,” Kelek said firmly. He waved toward the honorspren. “They deserve better than you, son. They deserve better than me. I could never judge them for refusing to bond men. How could I? I could never order them back into that war, back into that hole. To do so would be to … to abandon what little honor I have left.…”

  Adolin took a deep breath. Then he nodded.

  “I just told you that your cause is hopeless,” Kelek said, turning to his writing. “You do not seem concerned.”

  “Well, Honored One,” Adolin said. “I agreed to this trial—even with Sekeir’s insistence I be blamed for what my ancestors did—because it was the only way to get a chance to talk to the honorspren. Maybe you will judge against me—but so long as I get a chance to have my say, then that will be enough. If I persuade even one or two to join the battle, I’ll have won.”

  “Optimism,” Kelek said. “Hope. I remember those things. But I don’t think you understand the stakes of this trial, child—nor do you understand what you’ve stumbled into. The things that inkspren said—about joining Odium’s side—are on the minds of many spren. Including many in this very fortress.”

  That hit Adolin like a gut punch. “Honorspren would join the enemy?” Adolin said. “That would make them no better than the highspren!”

  “Indeed; I suspect their dislike of highspren is part of why they hesitate. The honorspren in favor of joining the enemy worried how such a suggestion would be received. But here you are, giving them a chance to make their arguments, acting as a magnet for all of their frustration and hatred.

  “Many are listening. If honorspren start joining the enemy … well, many other varieties of spren would soon follow. I dare think they’d go in large numbers.” Kelek didn’t look up. “You came here to recruit. But I suspect you will end up tipping these finely balanced scales, and not in the direction you desire.”

  * * *

  About an hour after the first stage of the trial—an hour she’d spent consoling Adolin in his sudden terror that he would accidentally cause a mass defection of spren to the side of the enemy—Shallan climbed a tree.

  She stretched high, clinging to a branch near the top. It was a normal tree, one of the real ones the honorspren managed to grow here. It felt good to feel bark beneath her fingers.

  She reached with one arm into the open space above the tree, but couldn’t feel anything different. Had she hit the barrier yet? Maybe a little farther …

  She shimmied a little higher, then reached out, and thought she felt an oddity as she got exactly high enough. An invisible tugging on the tips of her fingers.

  Then her foot slipped.

  In a second she was tumbling through the air. She didn’t fall all the way to the base of the structure, merely to the floor of her plane. She hit with a loud crack, then lay dazed before letting out a loud groan.

  Lusintia the honorspren was at her side a moment later.

  As I suspected … Veil thought. She always seems to be nearby. She’d clearly been assigned to watch Shallan.

  “Human!” she said, her short hair hanging along the sides of her white-blue face. “Human, are you hurt?”

  Shallan groaned, blinking.

  “Mmm…” Pattern said, stepping over. “Rapid eye blinks. This is serious. She could die.”

  “Die?” Lusintia said. “I had no idea they were so fragile!”

  “That was a long fall,” Pattern said. “Ah, and she hit her head when she landed on the stones here. Not good, not good.”

  Other honorspren were gathering, muttering to themselves. Shallan groaned again, then tried to focus on Pattern and Lusintia, but let her eyes slip shut.

  “We must act quickly,” Pattern said. “Quickly!”

  “What do we do!” Lusintia said.

  “You have no hospital here?”

  “Of course we don’t have a hospital!” Lusintia said. “There are only a couple dozen humans here.”

  “Mmm … but you won’t let them come back in if they leave, so they are basically caged here. You should feel bad. Very bad. Yes.”

  Storms, Veil thought. Is that the best he can do? How did we ever let him fool us?

  “Tell me what to do!” Lusintia said. “Do we carry her out to that Edgedancer?”

  “It will take too long. She will die. Poor human whom I love very much. It will be tragic for her to die here, in the center of honorspren power and protection. Unless, of course, she were to be given Stormlight.”

  “Wait … Stormlight?”

  “Yes, she is Radiant,” Pattern said. “It would heal her.”

  Shallan suppressed a smile. Pattern was a tad transparent, but the honorspren here plainly had little experience with humans. They swallowed the bait without question, and soon Shallan was being carried by a team of four. She tucked away the piece of cloth-wrapped stone she’d used to smack the ground as she landed, giving the impression that she’d hit her head.

  In reality, her arm did ache. She had undoubtedly bruised it when she hit, though this wasn’t the worst self-inflicted wound she’d sustained in the name of science. At least this time her scheme hadn’t involved deliberately embarrassing herself in front of several attractive men.

  She made sure to groan occasionally, and Pattern kept exclaiming how worried he was. That kept Lusintia and the other honor
spren motivated as they hauled Shallan to a specific building, their footfalls echoing against enclosing stone.

  They had a hushed but urgent conversation with a guard. Shallan made a particularly poignant whimper of pain at exactly the right moment, and then she was in. Light surrounded her as she was brought someplace brilliant. They hadn’t let her in here last time, when they retrieved Stormlight for Adolin’s healing.

  She let her eyes flutter open and found that most of the Stormlight was contained in a large construction at the center of the room. A kind of vat, or tall jar. This was technology Shallan hadn’t heard of before coming to Shadesmar, and apparently not even the honorspren knew how it worked. They could be purchased from a group of strange traveling merchants called the Eyree.

  Shelves nearby held a collection of loose gemstones, each glowing brightly. The wealth of Lasting Integrity: gemstones—gathered over millennia—so flawless, so perfect, that they didn’t leak. She’d been told a gemstone like this could, with repeated exposures to storms, absorb far more Stormlight than its size should be able to contain.

  She tested this, reaching out with a weak hand toward one of them and sucking in a breath of Stormlight—which streamed to her as a glowing, misty white light.

  She immediately felt better: invigorated, alert. Storms, how she’d missed that. Simply holding Stormlight was stimulating. She grinned—not part of the act—then decided to leap to her feet. The ache in her arm vanished; she felt like dancing with joy.

  Instead she let Veil take over. This next part needed her—Shallan remained the better actress, but Veil was better at most other espionage skills.

  Veil made a show of touching her head where she’d been “wounded.” “What happened?” she asked. “I don’t remember. I was trying to see if I could reach the barrier where the gravity of the plane ran out.”

  “You were very foolish, human,” Lusintia said. “You are so fragile! How could you endanger yourself in such a manner? Do you not realize that mortals die if broken?”

  “It was in the name of science,” Veil said, reaching to her waist where she’d secured her notebook before climbing. She yanked it out and dropped it in a flurry. At the same time she swept her safehand to the side and dropped a dun emerald in place of a brightly glowing one.