Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Brandon Sanderson

She’d considered that. She wasn’t exactly in the most rational state of mind, however. “I have to do something, Rlain,” she whispered. “I need to see them with my own eyes, even if I have to walk there.”

  “I agree, we should do that as soon as it’s reasonable,” Rlain said. He glanced toward the curtains, then spoke more quietly. “But now isn’t the time. We have to save the Radiants.”

  “Do you really want me there when you do, Rlain? Do you want me around?”

  He fell silent, then hummed to Betrayal.

  “Smart,” she said.

  “I don’t want you around right now, Venli,” he said. “But storm me, we need you. And I think you’re trustworthy. You told me this, after all. And who knows how much of what you did was influenced by your forms or those Voidspren?

  “For now, let’s work on saving the Radiants. If you’re truly sorry for what you did, then this is the best way to prove it. After that, we can seek out our people without leading the Fused to them.”

  She looked away, then hummed to Betrayal herself. “No. This isn’t my fight, Rlain. It never was. I have to go see if this map is true. I have to.”

  “Fine,” he snapped. He stood to leave, then paused. “You know, all those months running bridges—then training with Kal and the others—I wondered. I wondered deep down if I was a traitor. I now realize I didn’t have the first notes of understanding what it meant to be a traitor.”

  He ducked out between the curtains. Venli quietly tucked the map of the Shattered Plains into its case, then put it under her arm. It was time for her to go.

  She found both Dul and Mazish caring for the fallen Radiants. Venli pulled them aside, and whispered, “The time has come. Are we ready to leave?”

  “Finally,” Dul said to Excitement. “We’ve siphoned away rations, canteens of water, blankets, and some extra clothing from what we were given to care for the Radiants. Harel has it all ready in packs, hidden among the other supplies in the storage room we were given.”

  “The people are ready,” Mazish said. “Eager. We think we can survive in the cold up here for months.”

  “We’ll need those supplies,” Venli said, “but we might not have to survive in the mountains. Look.” She showed them the writ of authority Raboniel had given her. “With this, we can get through the Oathgates, no questions asked.”

  “Maybe,” Dul said to Appreciation. “So we go to Kholinar, but then what? We’re back where we began.”

  “We take the supplies, and we use this writ to leave the city,” Venli explained. “We hike out to the east and disappear into the wilderness to the east of Alethkar, like my ancestors did so many generations ago.”

  Then we make our way to the Shattered Plains, she thought. But … that would take too long. Could Venli find a way to scout ahead, using the aid of the Heavenly Ones? Perhaps get dropped off nearer the Unclaimed Hills, without revealing what she was truly seeking?

  It seemed a lot to demand of this one writ. Plus, Raboniel knew about the listeners who had survived. Surely she’d eventually tell the other Fused.

  For the moment, Venli didn’t care. “Gather the others,” she whispered. “The humans are going to attempt to rescue the Radiants here soon. The chaos should cover our escape. I want us to leave in the next day or two.”

  The other two attuned Resolve; they trusted her. More than she trusted herself. Venli doubted she would find redemption among the listeners who had escaped the Fused. In fact, she expected accusation, condemnation.

  But … Venli had to try to reach them. For when they’d escaped, they’d taken her mother with them. Jaxlim might be dead—and if not, her mind would still be lost to age.

  But she was also the last person—the only person—who might still love Venli, despite it all.

  As one who has suffered for so many centuries … as one whom it broke … please find Mishram and release her. Not just for her own good. For the good of all spren.

  For I believe that in confining her, we have caused a greater wound to Roshar than any ever realized.

  Navani entered a feverish kind of study—a frantic near madness—as the work consumed her. Before, she had organized. Now she merely fed the beast. She barely slept.

  The answer was here. The answer meant something. She couldn’t explain why, but she needed this secret.

  Food became a distraction. Time stopped mattering. She put her clocks away so they wouldn’t remind her of human constructs like minutes and hours. She was searching for something deeper. More important.

  These actions horrified a part of her. She was still herself, the type of woman who put her socks in the drawer so they all faced the same direction. She loved patterns, she loved order. But in this quest for meaning, she found she could appreciate something else entirely. The raw, disorganized chaos of a brain making connections paired with the single-minded order of a quest for one all-consuming answer.

  Could she find the opposite to Voidlight?

  Stormlight and Voidlight had their own kind of polarity. They were attracted to tones like iron shavings to a magnet. Therefore, she needed a tone that would push light away. She needed an opposite sound.

  She wanted fluid tones, so she had a slide whistle delivered, along with a brass horn with a movable tube. However, she liked the sound of the plates best. They were difficult to increment, but she could order new ones cut and crafted quickly.

  Her study morphed from music theory—where some philosophers said that the true opposite of sound was silence—to mathematics. Mathematics taught that there were numbers associated with tones—frequencies, wavelengths.

  Music, at its most fundamental level, was math.

  She played the tone that represented the sound of Voidlight again and again, embedding it into her mind. She dreamed it when she slept. She played it first thing when she arose, watching the patterns of sand it made on a metal plate. Dancing grains, bouncing up and down, settling into peaks and troughs.

  The opposite of most numbers was a negative number. Could a tone be negative? Could there be a negative wavelength? Many such ideas couldn’t exist in the real world, like negative numbers were an artificial construct. But those peaks and troughs … could she make a tone that produced the opposite pattern? Peaks where there were troughs, troughs where there were peaks?

  During her feverish study into sound theory, she discovered the answer to this. A wave could be negated, its opposite created and presented in a way that nullified the original. Canceling it out. They called it destructive interference. Strangely, the theories said that a sound and its opposite sounded exactly the same.

  This stumped her. She played the plates she’d created, indulging in their resonant tones. She put Voidlight spheres into her arm sheath and listened until she could hum that tone. She was delighted when—after hours of concerted practice—she could draw Voidlight out with a touch, like the Fused could do.

  Humans could sing the correct tones. Humans could hear the music of Roshar. Her ancestors might have been aliens to this world, but she was its child.

  That didn’t solve the question though. If a tone and its destructive interference sounded the same, how could she sing one and not the other?

  She played the tone on a plate, humming along. She next played a tuning fork, listened to the tones of the gemstones, then came back to the plate. It was wrong. Barely off. Even though the tones matched.

  She asked for, and was given, a file. She tried to measure the notes the plate made, but eventually had to rely on her own ear. She worked on the plate, filing off small sections of the metal and then pulling the bow across it, getting the plate closer and closer.

  She could hear the tone she wanted, she thought. Or was it madness? This desire to create an anti-sound?

  It took hours. Maybe days. When it finally happened, she knelt bleary-eyed on the stone floor at some unholy hour. Holding a bow, testing her newest version of the plate. When she played this particular tone—bow on steel—something happened. Voidlight wa
s shoved out of the sphere attached to the plate. It was pushed away from the source of the sound.

  She tested it again, then a third time to be sure. Though she should have wanted to shout for joy, she simply sat there staring. She ran her hand through her hair, which she hadn’t put up today. Then she laughed.

  It worked.

  * * *

  The next day—washed and feeling slightly less insane—Navani incremented. She tested how loud the tone needed to be to produce the desired effect. She measured the tone on different sizes of gemstones and on a stream of Voidlight leaving a sphere to flow toward a tuning fork.

  She did all of this in a way that—best she could—hid what she was doing from her watching guard. Hunched over her workspace, she was relatively certain the Regal there wouldn’t be able to tell she’d made a breakthrough. The one last night hadn’t watched keenly; he’d been dozing through much of it.

  Confident that her tone worked, she began training herself to hum the tone the plate made. It did sound the same, but somehow it wasn’t the same. As when measuring spren—which reacted to your thoughts about them—this tone needed Intent to be created. You had to know what you were trying to do.

  Incredibly, it mattered that she wanted to hum the opposite tone to Odium’s song. It sounded crazy, but it worked. It was repeatable and quantifiable. Inside the madness of these last few days, science still worked.

  She had found Voidlight’s opposite tone. But how could she create Light that expressed this tone? For answers, she looked to nature. A magnet could be made to change its polarity with some captive lightning, and another magnet could realign the pole. But Raboniel had mentioned they could magnetize an ordinary piece of metal that way too.

  So were they really changing the polarity of the magnet? Or were they blanking the existing polarity—then rewriting it with something new? The idea intrigued her, and she made a few key requests of her jailers—some objects that would have to be fetched from one of the labs near the top of the tower.

  Soon after, Raboniel came to check on her. Navani braced herself. She’d been planning for this.

  “Navani?” the Fused asked. “This latest request is quite odd. I don’t know what to make of it.”

  “It’s just some esoteric lab equipment,” Navani said from the desk. “Nothing of any real note, though it would be fun to use in some experiments. No bother if you can’t find it.”

  “I authorized the request,” Raboniel said. “If it is there, you shall have it.”

  That was a rhythm to express curiosity. She made a note in her book; she was trying to list them all.

  “What are you working on?” Raboniel asked. “The guard tells me of a terrible sound you have been making, something discordant.”

  Damnation. The new tone didn’t sound the same to a Regal. Could she explain it away? “I’m testing how atonal sounds influence Voidlight, if at all.”

  Raboniel lingered, looking over Navani’s shoulder. Then she glanced at the floor, where a bucket of icy water, with snow from outside, held a submerged gemstone. It was an attempt to see if temperature could blank the tone of Voidlight.

  “What are you not telling me?” Raboniel said to a musing rhythm. “I find your behavior … intriguing.” She glanced to the side as her daughter trailed into the room.

  The younger Fused was drooling today. Raboniel had a servant periodically put a cloth against the side of her daughter’s mouth. It wasn’t that her face was paralyzed; more that she didn’t seem to notice or care that she was drooling.

  “You write about something called ‘axi’ in our notebook,” Navani said, trying to distract Raboniel. “What are these?”

  “An axon is the smallest division of matter,” Raboniel said. “Odium can see them. Theoretically, with a microscope powerful enough, we could see little balls of matter making up everything.”

  Navani had read many theories about such a smallest division of matter. It spoke to her state of mind that she barely considered it a curiosity to have such theories confirmed by a divine source.

  “Do these axi have a polarity?” Navani asked, as she monitored the temperature of her experiment.

  “They must,” Raboniel said. “We theorize that axial interconnection is what holds things together. Certain Surges influence this. The forces between axi are fundamental to the way the cosmere works.”

  Navani grunted, writing another notation from the thermometer.

  “What are you doing?” Raboniel asked.

  “Seeing if a colder temperature changes the vibrations in a gemstone,” Navani admitted. “Would you hold this one and tell me if the rhythm changes—or grows louder—as it warms up?”

  “I can do that,” Raboniel said, settling down on the floor beside the desk. Behind, her daughter mimicked her. The attendant—a singer in workform—knelt to dab at the daughter’s lips.

  Navani took the gemstone out with a pair of tongs and gave it to Raboniel. Though Navani could faintly hear the tones of gemstones if she pressed a lot of them to her skin, her skill wasn’t fine-tuned enough to detect small changes in volume. She needed a singer to finish this experiment. But how to keep Raboniel from figuring out what she’d discovered?

  Raboniel took the sphere and waited, her eyes closed. Finally she shook her head. “I can sense no change in the tone. Why does it matter?”

  “I’m trying to determine if anything alters the tone,” Navani said. “Creating Warlight requires a slight alteration of Odium’s and Honor’s tones, in order to put them into harmony. If I can find other things that alter Voidlight’s tone, I might be able to create other hybrids.”

  It was a plausible enough explanation. It should explain her requests for plates and other devices, even the ice.

  “A novel line of reasoning,” Raboniel said to her curiosity rhythm.

  “I had not thought you would take notice,” Navani said. “I assumed you were busy with your … work.” Unmaking the Sibling.

  “I still need to bring down the final node,” Raboniel said. “Last time I touched the Sibling, I thought I could sense it. Somewhere nearby … but it is very, very small. Smaller than the others…” She rose from the floor. “Let me know if you require further equipment.”

  “Thank you,” Navani said from her desk. Raboniel lingered as Navani recorded her notes about the ice water experiment.

  Navani managed to appear unconcerned right until she heard the plates being shifted. She turned to see Raboniel pulling out the new one, the one she’d hidden beneath several others. Damnation. How had she picked out that one? Perhaps it showed the most use.

  Raboniel looked to Navani, who forced herself to turn away as if it were nothing. Then Raboniel played it.

  Navani breathed out quietly, closing her eyes. She’d racked her mind for ways to hide what she was doing, taking every precaution she could … but she should have known. She was at such a severe disadvantage, watched at all times, with Raboniel always nearby. Navani opened her eyes and found Raboniel staring wide-eyed at the plate. She placed a sphere of Voidlight and played again, watching the Light eject from the sphere.

  Raboniel spoke to a reverential rhythm. “A tone that forces out Voidlight?”

  Navani kept her face impassive. Well, that answered one question. She’d wondered if the person playing the note needed the proper Intent to eject the Voidlight, but it seemed that creating the plate to align to her hummed tones was enough.

  “Navani,” Raboniel said, lowering the bow, “this is remarkable. And dangerous. I felt the Voidlight in my gemheart respond. It wasn’t ejected, but my very soul cringed at the sound. I’m shocked. And … and befuddled. How did you create this?”

  “Math,” Navani admitted. “And inspiration.”

  “This could lead to…” Raboniel hummed to herself, then glanced at the bucket of ice water. “You’re trying to find a way to dampen the vibrations of the Voidlight so you can rewrite it with a different tone. A different polarity. That’s why you asked about a
xi.” She hummed to an excited rhythm. And Damnation if a part of Navani wasn’t caught up in that sound. In the thrill of discovery. Of being so close.

  Careful, Navani, she reminded herself. She had to do her best to keep this knowledge from the enemy. There was a way, a plan she’d been making should Raboniel intrude as she had. A possible path to maintaining the secrets of anti-Voidlight.

  For now, she needed to seem amenable. “Yes,” Navani said. “I think what you wanted all along is possible, Raboniel. I have reason to believe there is an opposite Light to Voidlight.”

  “Have you written this down?”

  “No, I’ve merely been toying with random ideas.”

  “A lie you must tell,” Raboniel said. “I do not begrudge you it, Navani. But know that I will rip this room apart to find your notes, if I must.”

  Navani remained quiet, meeting Raboniel’s gaze.

  “Still you do not believe me,” Raboniel said. “That we are so much stronger when working together.”

  “How could I trust your word, Raboniel?” Navani said. “You’ve already broken promises to me, and each time I’ve asked to negotiate for the benefit of my people or the Sibling, you’ve refused.”

  “Yes, but haven’t I led you to a weapon?” she asked. “Haven’t I given you the secrets you needed to make it this far? Within reach of something that could kill a god? All because we worked together. Let’s take this last step as one.”

  Navani debated. She knew that Raboniel wasn’t lying; the Fused would rip this room apart to find Navani’s notes. Beyond that, she’d likely take away Navani’s ability to requisition supplies—halting her progress.

  And she was so close.

  With a sigh, Navani crossed the room and took her notebook—the one they’d named Rhythm of War—from a hidden spot under one of the shelves. Perhaps Navani should have kept all of her discoveries in her head, but she’d been unable to resist writing them down. She’d needed to see her ideas on the page, to use notes, to get as far as she had.

  Raboniel settled in to read, to learn what Navani had discovered about this new tone—humming a rhythm of curiosity to herself. A short time later, a servant arrived at the door carrying a large wooden box.