Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Brandon Sanderson

  It felt like a rare attempt at levity. Dared Dalinar hope it was progress in the ancient spren?

  Below, Ishar’s large pavilion waited, flapping in the gentle wind. Dalinar had seen no sign of servants or soldiers peeking out.

  “Sir?” Sigzil said, floating over to Dalinar. “My troops need to rest.”

  “A few minutes longer,” Dalinar said, narrowing his eyes.

  “What are we waiting for, sir?”

  “To see if Ishar returns. He fled to Shadesmar. He could return at any moment. If he does, we’re leaving at speed. But if he doesn’t…” Ishar hadn’t been expecting to run. Szeth, and that strange Blade, had driven him away. “This could be a rare opportunity, Companylord. He was a scholar among Heralds; he might have written notes that give hints to applications of Bondsmith powers.”

  “Understood, sir,” Sigzil said.

  Dalinar glanced toward Szeth, who floated on his own away from the others, Lashed into the sky by his own power. Dalinar nodded toward him, and Sigzil—catching the meaning—gave Dalinar a brief Lashing that sent him over beside the assassin.

  Szeth was muttering to himself. “How did he know? How did the old fool know?”

  “Know what?” Dalinar said as he drifted near Szeth. “Ishar? How did he know about your people?”

  Szeth blinked, then focused on Dalinar. It was odd to see him looking like himself with that too-pale skin and those wide eyes. Dalinar had grown accustomed to his Alethi illusions.

  “I must begin preparing myself,” Szeth said. “My next Ideal is my quest, my pilgrimage. I must return to my people, Blackthorn. I must face them.”

  “As you wish,” Dalinar said. He wasn’t certain he wanted to unleash this man upon anyone, least of all the one neutral kingdom of note in this conflict. But Jasnah had indicated it would happen, and besides, he doubted he could stop Szeth from doing anything he truly wanted to. “Your people. They have all of the Honorblades?”

  “All but three,” Szeth said. “The Blade of the Windrunners was mine for years. The Blade of the Skybreakers was reclaimed by Nin long ago. And of course the Blade of the Stonewards was never ours to protect. So there were seven, but if Ishar has his Blade…”

  You don’t need those other swords, a perky voice said in Dalinar’s mind. I am as good as ten swords. Did you see how great I was?

  “I saw,” Dalinar said to the sword. “You … chipped a Shardblade. An Honorblade.”

  I did? Wow. I am a great sword. We destroyed a lot of evil, right?

  “You promised not to speak into the minds of others, sword-nimi,” Szeth said softly. “Do you not remember?”

  I remember. I just forgot.

  “I will send a team with you to Shinovar,” Dalinar said. “As soon as we return to our camp.”

  “No,” Szeth said. “No. I must go alone, but not yet. I must prepare. I have … something important to do. He knew. He should not have known.…”

  Storms. Dalinar wasn’t certain who was more insane: Szeth or the sword. The combination was particularly unnerving.

  Without them, you would be dead, the Stormfather said, and I’d be bonded against my will. This Shin man is dangerous, but I fear Ishar more.

  “Sigzil,” Dalinar called. “I don’t think he’s going to return anytime soon. Take us down. Let’s see if he left anything of value in that tent.”

  * * *

  Adin raised the spear he’d found in the atrium. People were crying, surrounded by fearspren, as the group of beleaguered humans and singers together made a circle around their wounded. They pushed the elderly and the children to the center, but Adin didn’t go with those. The spren watching would see that he wasn’t the type to hide. Even women had picked up weapons, including the surgeon’s wife, who had given her son to one of the young girls at the center to hold. War was a masculine art, but when you started attacking women, you’d stopped engaging in war. You deserved anything that happened to you after that point.

  Adin’s father was among the wounded. Alive, bless the Heralds, but bleeding badly. He’d fought for the Radiants, when Adin … Adin had hidden in the hallway.

  Storm him, he wasn’t going to be a coward again. He … he wasn’t. Adin fell into line beside a fearsome parshman in incredible carapace armor, then tried to position himself with his spear out, in that parshman’s same posture.

  The stormforms marched in, singing a terrible song. Adin found himself trembling, his hands slick on his spear.

  Oh, storms.

  In that moment, he didn’t want to earn a spren. He didn’t want to fight. He wanted to be home making plates, listening to his father hum. He didn’t want to be standing here, knowing that they were all … all going to …

  A hand took Adin by the shoulder and moved him backward. Not all the way back, but enough for the figure to stand in front of him. It was the quiet bridgeman, Dabbid. Adin didn’t complain, not after seeing those stormforms. Felt good to have someone in front of him, though the bridgeman’s spear shook. He was acting afraid to fool the enemy, right?

  The stormforms didn’t release lightning, which was good. The others had thought they might not, because of the marketplace. Their powers were too wild. Regardless, there seemed to be … be hundreds of them. A call came from somewhere behind, and they came charging in—rippling with red lightning that flashed when they touched something.

  In seconds, everything was chaos. Adin screamed, squeezing his eyes shut, holding out his spear and shaking.

  No, he had to fight. He had to—

  Something knocked into him from behind, throwing him forward. The strike dazed him, and he lost his spear. When he rolled over, a Voidbringer with red eyes stood above him. The creature casually speared downward.

  Adin didn’t even have time to scream before—

  Clink.

  Clink?

  The stormform cocked his head, humming an odd song. He stabbed at Adin’s chest, but the spear stopped short again. Adin looked at his body as he lay prone on the floor.

  His torso was surrounded by glittering blue armor. He raised his hands, and found them covered in gauntlets.

  He was in Shardplate.

  He was in SHARDPLATE.

  “Ha!” he shouted, and kicked at the stormform. The creature went flying, soaring twenty feet and slamming into a wall. Adin had barely felt any resistance. It was like he’d always imagined. It …

  The Shardplate vanished off him and turned into a group of windspren, which soared over to Dabbid, who was about to take an axe to the head.

  Clink.

  Both combatants—the human now shrouded in Shardplate, and the enemy who had hit him—froze in place, stunned. The enemy backed away, and the Plate flew off again, this time surrounding the lead Heavenly One. She’d been spearing at a stormform who released a flash of lightning that enveloped her.

  When Adin’s eyes cleared, he saw her floating in Shardplate, staring at her hands in obvious wonder. Confused, the stormforms began calling out, disengaging and re-forming into ranks.

  The armor burst apart, forming those strange windspren who flew into the air overhead before latching on to a figure hovering above the buildings.

  The Plate had fit everyone, but him it matched. A brilliant Knight Radiant in glowing armor, holding aloft an intricate Shardspear. He left the helmet off so they could all see. Kaladin Stormblessed, bright as the sun.

  “I bring word from the Sibling!” he shouted. “They don’t remember inviting you in. And considering that they aren’t merely the master of this house, they literally are this house, your actions are quite the insult.”

  Brilliant lights suddenly began running up the walls, making the very core of the stones glow as if molten in the center. Similar lights burst to life in the ceiling.

  The ground trembled, as if the entire mountain were shaking. Clanking sounds rang in the hallways, like distant machines, and wind began to blow in the vast chamber—which now was as bright as day. Most amazing, the lightning on the stor
mforms went out.

  Deepest Ones, who had been clawing out of the ground and grabbing at the feet of soldiers, began screaming and going limp, trapped in the stone. The Heavenly Ones who had been helping dropped to the ground suddenly, then collapsed, unconscious.

  Groans sounded from behind. The Radiants on the floor at the center of the circle began stirring. They were awake!

  “You may turn in your weapons,” Stormblessed said to the enemy. “And return to your kind unharmed, so long as you promise me one thing.” He smiled. “Tell him that I’m particularly going to enjoy hearing what he looked like when he found out what happened here today.”

  * * *

  A strange, unpleasant stench struck Dalinar as he stepped into Ishar’s pavilion.

  The odor was chemically harsh, and he felt a faint burning in his eyes. He blinked in the dim light, finding a large chamber filled with slab tables and sheets shrouding something atop them. Bodies? The Windrunners had gone in first, of course, but they were busy inspecting the recesses of the tent to check for an ambush.

  Dalinar walked up to one of the slabs and yanked off the shroud. He simply found a body underneath, an incision in its abdomen made with clean surgical precision. Male, with the clothing cut off and lying beside the body. Very pale skin and stark white hair—in death, the hair and skin seemed almost the same color. That skin had a blue cast to it; probably a Natan person.

  So Ishar was a butcher, a mad surgeon as well as a crazed theocrat. For some reason, that relieved Dalinar. It was disgusting, but this was an ordinary kind of evil. He’d expected something worse.

  “Sir?” Mela the Windrunner called from across the room. “You should see this.”

  Dalinar walked over to Mela, who stood beside one of the other slabs. Szeth remained in the doorway to the pavilion, seated on the ground, holding his sheathed sword across his lap. He seemed not to care about the investigation.

  Another corpse—half revealed by a drawn-back sheet—was on the slab in front of Mela, though this one was far stranger. The elongated body had a black shell covering most of it, from neck to feet. That had been cut free to open up the chest. Dalinar couldn’t make sense of the shell. It looked like clothing, kind of, but was hard like singer carapace—and had apparently been attached to the skin.

  The head was a soggy mass of black flesh, soft like intestines, with no visible eyes or features.

  “What on Roshar…” Dalinar said. “The hands seem human, if too long, but the rest of it…”

  “I have no idea,” Mela said. She glanced away and shivered. “It’s not human, sir. I don’t know what it is.”

  In the back of Dalinar’s mind, the Stormfather rumbled.

  This … the spren said. This is not possible.

  What? Dalinar asked.

  That is a Cryptic, he said. The Lightweaver spren. Only they don’t have bodies in this realm. They can’t.

  “Sir,” Lyn said from a nearby slab. The corpse she’d uncovered was a pile of vines vaguely shaped like a person.

  Cultivationspren … the Stormfather said. Return to that first body you saw. NOW.

  Dalinar did not object and walked toward the front of the pavilion. What he’d first dismissed as an ordinary body now seemed anything but. The white-blue hair, the pieces of clothing that were—he now recognized—the exact same color as the body. The Stormfather’s thunder grew distant.

  I knew him, the Stormfather said. I could not see it at first. I did not want to see it. This is Vespan. Honorspren.

  “So they’re not … some kind of attempt at making men into mimicries of spren,” Dalinar said. “These are actual spren corpses?”

  Spren don’t have corpses, the Stormfather said. Spren do not die like men. They are power that cannot be destroyed. They … This is IMPOSSIBLE.

  Dalinar searched through the chamber, where more and more drawn-back sheets revealed different strange corpses. Several just skeletons, others piles of rock.

  This place is evil, the Stormfather said. Beyond evil. What has been done here is an abomination.

  Sigzil jogged over, holding some ledgers he’d found in the rear. Dalinar couldn’t make sense of them, but Sigzil pointed at the Azish glyphs, reading them.

  “This is a list of experiments, I think,” the companylord said. “The first column is the name of a spren, the second column a date. The third is a time … maybe how long they lived? None seem to have survived longer than a few minutes.”

  “Blood of my fathers,” Dalinar said, his hands trembling. “And this last column?”

  “Notes, sir,” Sigzil said. “Here, the last entry. ‘Our first honorspren lived nearly fifteen minutes. A new record, and orders of magnitude longer than all previous attempts. Honorspren seem to have the most humanlike essences. When transferred, the organs and muscles form most naturally. We must capture more of them.

  “‘Cryptics and ashspren are impossible to bring over properly with our current knowledge. The process of creating bodies for them results in a physical form that collapses upon itself immediately. It appears their physiology works against the fundamental laws of the Physical Realm.’”

  “Storms,” Leyten said, running a hand through his short hair. “What does it mean?”

  Leave this place immediately, the Stormfather said. We must warn my children.

  “Agreed,” Dalinar said. “Grab anything you think might be useful and meet me outside. We’re leaving.”

  * * *

  Moash fled through the tower, using Lashing after Lashing, as he felt the structure rumble. Felt it come alive. Felt light begin to surround him.

  Her light. The queen’s light.

  And before that, a terrible sound. It had pushed away his Connection to Odium, forcing Moash to feel pain for the things he’d done—pain he didn’t want. Pain he’d given away.

  That pain seethed and spread inside him. He’d killed Teft.

  He’d. Killed. TEFT.

  Get out, get out, get out! he thought as he tore through a hallway, uncaring whether he hit people with his Shardblade as he passed over their heads. He needed it ready. In case Kaladin found him. In case he hadn’t broken.

  The walls were glowing, and the light seemed brighter to Moash than it should have. He wasn’t supposed to feel afraid! He’d given that away! He couldn’t be the man he needed to be if he was afraid, or … Or.

  The pain, the shame, the anger at himself was worse than the fear.

  Get out. Go. Go!

  The suffocating light surrounded him, burned him as he burst out the front gates of the tower. He felt more than saw what happened behind. Each level of the tower came alive, one at a time. The air warped with sudden warmth and pressure. So much light.

  So much light!

  Moash Lashed himself into the sky, darting out away from the tower. Soon after, however, he slammed into a hard surface. He dropped into something soft but cold, pained as his Stormlight kept him alive—barely. It ran out before it could fully heal him, so he lay there in the cold. Waiting for the numbness.

  He wasn’t supposed to have to feel anymore. That was what he’d been promised.

  He couldn’t blink. He didn’t seem to have eyelids anymore. He couldn’t see either—his vision had been burned away. He listened to distant cheers, distant sounds of exultation and joy, as he lay in the cold on the mountainside. The snow numbed his skin.

  But not his soul. Not his wretched soul.

  “Teft, I…” He couldn’t say it. The words wouldn’t form. He wasn’t sorry for what he’d done. He was only sorry for how his actions made him feel.

  He didn’t want this pain. He deserved it, yes, but he didn’t want it.

  He should have died, but they found him. A few Heavenly Ones who had been in the air when the tower was restored. They’d awoken, it seemed, after falling from the sky and leaving the tower’s protections. They gave him Stormlight, then lifted him, carrying him away.

  Odium’s gift returned, and Moash breathed easier. Blissfull
y without his guilt. His spine healed. He could walk by the time they dropped him among a camp of a few others who had managed to flee the tower.

  But he couldn’t see them. No matter how much Stormlight he was given, his eyes didn’t recover. He was blind.

  Roshar will be united in its service of the greater war.

  —Musings of El, on the first of the Final Ten Days

  Exhausted and confused, Dalinar and the Windrunners eventually landed back at their Emuli warcamp, mere minutes before a highstorm was scheduled to arrive. He felt the weight of failure pulling him down, strong as gravity. He sagged as he dismissed the Windrunners to go rest.

  He’d gone all that way for nothing. He was no closer to understanding his powers. No closer to doing something about the capture of Urithiru. No closer to rescuing Navani.

  He probably should have gone to Jasnah to explain what they’d found, but he was so tired. He plodded through the camp, towing his failure like a cart behind him, populated by swirling exhaustionspren.

  And that was when they found him: women running up with spanreeds to the tower that were suddenly working again. Messengers surrounded by gloryspren, bringing amazing news. Navani in contact, the tower and Oathgates functioning. Dalinar listened to it in a daze.

  Good news. Finally, good news.

  He wanted to immediately get flown to Azimir so he could go see Navani, but he recognized the foolishness in that. He needed at least a short rest before enduring another lengthy flight, and there was that imminent highstorm to worry about. He ordered a message sent to his wife, promising to come to her before the day was out. Then he asked Jasnah and the Prime if he could meet with them after the storm.

  After that, they left him to at last approach the small building he made his base. It felt like coming home. Of course, he’d lived enough of his life out on campaign that “home” had acquired a loose definition. Any place with a soft bed usually counted.

  Urithiru really is safe now, Dalinar, the Stormfather said in his mind. I was so distracted by the dead spren that I didn’t notice at first. The Sibling has fully awakened. Another Bondsmith? The implications of this …