Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Brandon Sanderson

  He held up a miniature wooden horse, carved in exacting detail.

  Syl breathed out an awed sound.

  “I lost this before coming to the Shattered Plains,” Kaladin said. “I lost this in Alethkar. Tien gave it to me the day we were recruited into the army, and it was taken with my other things when I became a slave. How…”

  He clutched the horse close to his chest. He was so amazed that he walked off, and had to come running back to pay for what he’d taken. After that, he trotted back toward the tavern. He’d promised earlier that he would meet Dabbid, Noril, and the others he’d rescued from the monastery sick rooms, to decompress from yesterday’s events.

  Kaladin would do as Dalinar asked, and go to save the Herald Ishi. That was for tomorrow, however. Today, Kaladin had another promise to keep. After all, he’d told Teft he would join these meetings and start taking care of himself.

  * * *

  Dalinar felt energized as he smelled the crisp cool air of the mountains. He stood at the very top of the tower, drinking it in while holding Navani, her warmth pressed against him. The sun had set, and he’d had enough of reports for the day. He wanted time with his wife and to look at the stars.

  “I should have known you’d find a way out of it on your own,” he whispered to Navani as Nomon bathed them in light. “I should have seen your potential.”

  She squeezed his arms. “I didn’t see it either. I spent a long time refusing to do so.”

  Dalinar heard a rumbling in his mind. Not angry rumbling though. More … contemplative.

  “The Stormfather doesn’t know what to make of this,” Dalinar said. “I think he finds it strange. Apparently, his Bondsmith and the Nightwatcher’s Bondsmith sometimes had relationships, but the Sibling’s Bondsmith was always apart.”

  “The Sibling is … curious that way,” Navani said. “I’ll introduce you, once they are ready. It might take them time.”

  “As long as it’s within ten days,” Dalinar said. “I can’t guarantee what will happen after then.”

  “That deal you made…” she said.

  “I’m sorry. I had to make an agreement while I had him. It isn’t everything we wanted, but—”

  “It’s a good deal, Dalinar,” Navani said. “Inspired, even. We will have peace, even if we have to give up Alethkar. I think we’ve all been coming to realize that was a probability. Instead, this gives us a chance. I just wish … That last bit you agreed to. That worries me.”

  He nodded. “Yes,” he whispered. “I know.”

  This was his job though. To sacrifice himself, if need be, for everyone else. In that … In that Taravangian was right.

  It still felt so wrong for Taravangian to be dead. Dalinar would never have a chance to prove to Taravangian that Dalinar’s way was correct. Gone. Without a farewell. Burned away in another stupid plot to manipulate Szeth.

  “At least we can stop the bloodshed,” Navani said. “Tell our troops to hold position and wait for the contest.”

  “Yes,” Dalinar said.

  Unless … Should Dalinar have insisted the contest happen sooner? He didn’t feel ready. But would he ever?

  Something feels wrong, he thought. Something has changed. We need to be ready for these next ten days. He felt that truth like a twisting in his stomach.

  “I feel your tension,” Navani said.

  “I’m second-guessing what I’ve done,” Dalinar said.

  “The best information we have indicates this contest is our most reasonable hope of success,” Navani said. “And I doubt anyone the enemy presents can best Stormblessed.”

  “I’m … not going to pick Kaladin, gemheart.”

  “Why?” Navani asked. “He’s our best warrior.”

  “No,” Dalinar said. “He’s our best soldier. But even if he were in peak fighting shape, I don’t think he’d be our best warrior. Or our best killer.

  “Wit says the enemy can’t violate our agreement, and isn’t likely to try to misinterpret it—not intentionally. In fact, Wit seems to think the victory is already ours, but he got what he wanted. Odium will remain trapped either way. I’m worried though. There’s more I’m missing; I’m sure of it. At the very least, I think I left Odium too much room to continue fighting in the coming ten days.”

  “We’ll find the answers, Dalinar,” Navani said. “We have a goal now. If you can win this contest, that will be enough. We will find a way to live in this new world, with the singers in their lands, and humans in ours.”

  Navani squeezed his arm again, and he took a deep breath, intent on enjoying this moment. Storms, it felt good to be holding her. Beneath them, the tower’s lights shone brightly in the night—and down in the corridors, it was positively warm. He’d had to come all the way up here to smell mountain air.

  “I should have known,” Dalinar repeated. “About you.”

  “I don’t think so,” Navani said. “It was a remarkable stroke of luck that I figured it all out.”

  “Not luck,” Dalinar said. “Conviction. Brilliance. I was scared for you, but should have remembered when I was scared of you—and realized how much danger the Fused were in by trying to take your fabrials from you. You are incredible. You’ve always been incredible.”

  She breathed out a long, contented sigh.

  “What?” he said.

  “It’s good to hear someone say that.”

  He held her for an extended moment of peace. But eventually, their crowns came calling. People came looking for Navani to settle something regarding the tower, and she was forced to leave.

  Dalinar lingered on the top of the tower. He settled down on the edge, putting his legs over the side—the place where Kaladin had reportedly leapt into the darkness of the storm.

  You were wise to give the Windrunner more time during his fall, the Stormfather said, approaching Dalinar. You were wise to show … mercy.

  “It’s an important concept to learn,” Dalinar said to him. “The more you study it, the more human you will become.”

  I do not wish to become human, the Stormfather said. But perhaps I can learn. Perhaps I can change.

  “That’s all it takes,” Dalinar said. “A willingness.”

  You are wrong though. I do understand mercy. I have expressed it, on occasion.

  “Really?” Dalinar said, curious. “When?”

  FOURTEEN MONTHS AGO

  Eshonai hit the ground of the chasm in a furious splash. Above, the battle for Narak continued, and the rest of the listeners summoned the Everstorm.

  She should be leading them! She was foremost among them! She leaped to her feet and shouted to a dozen horrible rhythms in a row, her voice echoing in the chasm. It did no good. She had been defeated by the human Shardbearer, sent tumbling into the chasms.

  She needed to get out of here and find the fight again. She started trudging forward. Though the water came up to her waist, the flow was not swift. It was merely a constant, steady stream from the Weeping—and in Shardplate she was able to walk against the current. Her greaves flooded with chill water.

  Which way was which? The lack of light confused her, but after a moment of thinking, she realized she was being silly. She didn’t need to go either direction. She needed to go up. The fall must have dazed her more than she’d realized.

  She picked a rough-feeling section of wall and began clawing her way up. She managed to get halfway to the top—using the awesome gripping strength of Shardplate, the Rhythm of Conceit pounding in her ears. But then the way the chasm wall bulged presented a problem. In the darkness, she couldn’t find a proper handhold, and the flashes of lightning above were too brief to help.

  Lightning. Was that lightning too frequent, too bright, to be coming from other stormforms? Her own powers had been ruined by the water, naturally. She could barely feel any energy in her; it flooded out the moment it started to build.

  What was happening? That was the Everstorm coming, wasn’t it? Yes, she could feel its power, its energy, its beauty. But the
re was something else.

  Listening to the howling wind, she realized what it was. A second storm. A highstorm was coming as well.

  She attuned the Rhythm of Panic.

  The two storms clashed, making the very ground tremble.

  Clinging to the wall within the chasm, Eshonai felt the wind howling above. The lightning made her feel like she was blinking her eyes quickly, light and darkness alternating.

  Then she heard a roar. The terrible sound of water surging through the chasm, becoming an incredible wave. She braced herself, but when the water hit, it ripped her off the wall.

  It was here, within these highstorm rainwaters, that Eshonai’s first battle began: the fight for survival.

  She slammed into a rock, her helmet cracking. Escaping Stormlight lit the dark waters as they filled her helmet, suffocating her. She thrashed in the current and managed to grab something hard—an enormous boulder lodged into the center of the chasm.

  With a heave, she pulled herself out of the water. A few precious moments later her helmet emptied, letting her gasp for air.

  I’m going to die, she thought, the Rhythm of Destruction pounding in her ears. Water thundered around her, splashing her armor, and lightning spasmed in the sky above. I’m going to die … as a slave.

  No.

  An ember within Eshonai came alive. The part of herself she’d reserved, the part that would not be contained. The part that made her let Thude and the others escape. It was the core of who she was: a person who had insisted on leaving the camps to explore, a person who had always longed to see what was over the next hill.

  A person who would not be held captive.

  That was when her second battle began.

  Eshonai screamed, trying to banish the Rhythm of Destruction. If she was to die here, she would die as herself! It was a highstorm. In highstorms, transformations came upon all people, listeners and humans alike. Within a highstorm, death walked hand in hand with salvation, singing a harmony.

  Eshonai began summoning her Blade—but in a rumbling flash, her boulder shifted and she lost her grip. The Rhythm of Panic ruled her briefly as she was again submerged. Lightning flashing above made the water seem to glow as she was smashed into one chasm wall, then another.

  Not Panic. Not your rhythms.

  I reject you.

  My life. My death.

  I WILL BE FREE.

  Sunken deep in the water, Eshonai summoned her Blade and rammed it into the chasm wall. For some reason, she thought she could hear its voice, far away. Screaming?

  She clung to it anyway—holding steady before the current. She banished all rhythms, but she could not breathe. Darkness began to close in upon her. Her lungs stopped burning. As if … as if everything was going to be all right …

  There. A tone. The strange, haunting one she’d heard when taking warform. It seemed … one of the pure tones of Roshar. It began a stately rhythm. Then a second tone, chaotic and angry, appeared beside it. The two drew closer, closer, then snapped together.

  They melded into harmony, making a song of Honor and Odium both. A song for a singer who could fight, but also for a soldier who wanted to lay down her sword. She found this tone as, in the blackness, a small spren—shaped like a shooting star—appeared ahead of her.

  Eshonai strained, reaching, clawing.

  Her head came above water, and then her helm blessedly emptied. The rush of the river was slowing. She gasped sweet air, but then her hand slipped from her sword, and she slipped back under the water and was towed away—though with less force than before.

  She attuned the rhythm. The Rhythm of War, the rhythm of victories and losses. The rhythm of a life at its end. To its beats, she resummoned her Blade and rammed it into the ground, holding it tightly as the waters slowed further.

  She would not die. She would live. She was strong enough. Her journey was not at an end. Not. Yet.

  She held on, belligerent, until the water slowed. Until the weight of her Plate was enough to resist the current without her effort, and she slumped against the bottom of the chasm, her back to the wall, water streaming over her.

  She felt at her side, where the Plate had broken—as had her body. She bled from a deep gash here, her carapace ripped away. Each breath came as a ragged, sodden mess, and she tasted blood.

  But in her mind, she cycled through the rhythms of her childhood. Awe. Confidence. Mourning. Determination. Then Peace.

  She had lost the first battle.

  But she had won the second.

  And so, to the Rhythm of Victory, she closed her eyes. And found herself drifting in a place full of light.

  What is this? Eshonai thought.

  YOU WERE HIGHLY INVESTED WHEN YOU DIED, a voice said. It rumbled with the sound of a thousand storms, echoing through her. SO YOU PERSIST. FOR A SHORT TIME.

  Invested? Eshonai thought.

  YOU WERE RADIANT WHEN YOU DIED. YOU COULDN’T SAY THE WORDS, UNDER THE WATER, BUT I ACCEPTED THEM ANYWAY. HOW DO YOU THINK YOU SURVIVED THAT LONG WITHOUT BREATHING?

  She floated. So … this is my soul?

  SOME WOULD CALL IT THAT, said the Rider of Storms. SOME WOULD SAY IT IS A SPREN FORMED BY THE POWER YOU LEFT, IMPRINTED WITH YOUR MEMORIES. EITHER WAY, THIS IS THE END. YOU WILL PASS INTO ETERNITY SOON, AND EVEN I CANNOT SEE WHAT IS BEYOND.

  How long? Eshonai asked.

  MINUTES. NOT HOURS.

  She had no eyes to close, but she relaxed in the light. Floating. She could hear the rhythms. All of them at once, with accompanying songs.

  What did it mean, then? she asked as she waited. Life.

  MEANING IS A THING OF MORTALS, the Rider said. IT IS NOT A THING OF STORMS.

  That’s sad.

  IS IT? he asked. I SHOULD THINK IT ENCOURAGING. MORTALS SEARCH FOR MEANING, SO IT IS PROPER THEY SHOULD CREATE IT. YOU GET TO DECIDE WHAT IT MEANT, ESHONAI. WHAT YOU MEANT.

  If I decide, then I failed, she thought. I gave my people to the enemy. I died alone, defeated. I betrayed the gift of my ancestors. I am a shame to all previous listeners.

  I WOULD THINK THE OPPOSITE, the Rider said. IN THE END, YOU MADE THE SAME CHOICE AS YOUR ANCESTORS. YOU GAVE AWAY POWER FOR FREEDOM. YOU KNOW THOSE ANCIENT LISTENERS AS FEW EVER HAVE, OR EVER WILL.

  That gave her peace as she felt her essence begin to stretch. As if it were moving toward something distant.

  Thank you, she said to the Rider.

  I DID NOTHING. I WATCHED YOU FALL AND DID NOT STOP IT.

  The rain cannot stop the bloodshed, she said, fading. But it washes the world afterward anyway. Thank you.

  I COULD HAVE DONE MORE, the Rider replied. PERHAPS I SHOULD HAVE.

  It … is enough.…

  NO, he said. I CAN GIVE YOU ONE FINAL GIFT.

  Eshonai stopped stretching, and instead found herself pulled toward something powerful. She had no eyes, but she suddenly had an awareness—the storm. She had become the storm. She felt every rumble of thunder as her heartbeat.

  WATCH, the Rider said. YOU WANTED TO KNOW WHAT WAS BEYOND THE NEXT HILL. SEE THEM ALL.

  She soared with him, enveloping the land, flying above it. Her rain bathed each and every hill, and the Rider let her see the world with the eyes of a god. Everywhere the wind blew, she was. Everything the rain touched, she felt. Everything the lightning revealed, she knew.

  She flew for what felt like an eternity, sustained by the Rider’s own essence. She saw humans in infinite variety. She saw the captive parshmen—but saw the hope for their freedom. She saw creatures, plants, chasms, mountains, snows … she passed it all. Everything.

  The entire world. She saw it. Every little piece was a part of the rhythms. The world was the rhythms. And Eshonai, during that transcendent ride, understood how it fit together.

  It was wonderful.

  When the Rider finished his passage—exhausted and limping as he passed into the ocean beyond Shinovar—she felt him let go. She faded, but this time she felt her soul vibrating. She understood the rhythms as
no one ever could without having seen the world as she had.

  FAREWELL, ESHONAI, the Rider of Storms said. FAREWELL, RADIANT.

  Bursting with songs, Eshonai let herself pass into the eternities, excited to discover what lay on the other side.

  Wit strolled the hallways of Elhokar’s old palace on the Shattered Plains, searching for an audience. He flipped a coin in the air, then caught it before snapping his hand forward and spreading his fingers to show that the coin had vanished. But of course it was secretly in his other hand, palmed, hidden from sight.

  “Storytelling,” he said to the hallway, “is essentially about cheating.”

  He tucked the coin into his belt with a quick gesture, keeping up the flourishes of his other hand as a distraction. In a moment he could present both hands empty before him. He added to the theatrics by pushing back his sleeves.

  “The challenge,” he said, “is to make everyone believe you’ve lived a thousand lives. Make them feel the pain you have not felt, make them see the sights you have not seen, and make them know the truths that you have made up.”

  The coin appeared in his hand, though he’d simply slipped it out of his belt again. He rolled it across his knuckles, then made it split into two—because it had always been two coins stuck together. He tossed those up, caught them, and then made them appear to be four after adding the two he’d been palming in his other hand.

  “You use the same dirty tricks for storytelling,” Wit said, “as you do for fighting in an alley. Get someone looking the wrong direction so you can clock them across the face. Get them to anticipate a punch and brace themselves, so you can reposition. Always hit them where they aren’t prepared.”

  With a flourish, he presented both hands forward, empty again. On his coat, Design made a peppy humming sound. “I found one!” she said. “In your belt!”

  “Hush,” Wit said. “Let the audience be amazed.”

  “The audience?”

  Wit nodded to the side, where a few odd spren were following in the air. Almost invisible, and trailing red light. Windspren—but the wrong color. She was expanding her influence, that old one was. He was curious where it would lead. Also horrified. But the two emotions were not mutually exclusive.