The Way of Kings

by Brandon Sanderson

  Rock and Teft moved up beside Kaladin again, but he stared them down, forcing them back. Then he turned to Gaz and Lamaril. I’ll point out that Gaz told me to do this, he thought. He suggested I use a side carry on a bridge assault.

  But no. There were no witnesses. It would be his word against Gaz’s. That wouldn’t work—plus, that argument would leave Gaz and Lamaril with good reason to see Kaladin dead immediately, before he could speak to their superiors.

  Kaladin needed to do something else.

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Gaz sputtered as he grew near.

  “I’ve upended the army’s strategy,” Kaladin said, “throwing the entire assault force into chaos. You’ve come to punish me so that when your superiors come screaming to you for what happened, you can at least show that you acted quickly to deal with the one responsible.”

  Gaz paused, Lamaril and the spearmen stopping around him. The bridge sergeant looked surprised.

  “If it’s worth anything,” Kaladin said grimly, “I didn’t know this would happen. I was just trying to survive.”

  “Bridgemen aren’t supposed to survive,” Lamaril said curtly. He waved to a pair of his soldiers, then pointed at Kaladin.

  “If you leave me alive,” Kaladin said, “I promise I will tell your superiors that you had nothing to do with this. If you kill me, it will look like you were trying to hide something.”

  “Hide something?” Gaz said, glancing at the battle on the Tower. A stray arrow clattered across the rocks a short distance from him, shaft breaking. “What would we have to hide?”

  “Depends. This very well could look like it was your idea from the start. Brightlord Lamaril, you didn’t stop me. You could have, but you didn’t, and soldiers saw Gaz and you speaking when you saw what I did. If I can’t vouch for your ignorance of what I was going to do, then you’ll look very, very bad.”

  Lamaril’s soldiers looked to their leader. The lighteyed man scowled. “Beat him,” he said, “but don’t kill him.” He turned and marched back toward the Alethi reserve lines.

  The beefy spearmen walked up to Kaladin. They were darkeyed, but they might as well have been Parshendi for all the sympathy they would show him. Kaladin closed his eyes and steeled himself. He couldn’t fight them all off. Not and remain with Bridge Four.

  A spear butt to the gut knocked him to the ground, and he gasped as the soldiers began to kick. One booted foot tore open his belt pouch. His spheres—too precious to leave in the barrack—scattered across the stones. They had somehow lost their Stormlight, and were now dun, their life run out.

  The soldiers kept kicking.

  “They changed, even as we fought them. Like shadows they were, that can transform as the flame dances. Never underestimate them because of what you first see.”

  —Purports to be a scrap collected from Talatin, a Radiant of the Order of Stonewards. The source—Guvlow’s Incarnate—is generally held as reliable, though this is from a copied fragment of “The Poem of the Seventh Morning,” which has been lost.

  Sometimes, when Shallan walked into the Palanaeum proper—the grand storehouse of books, manuscripts, and scrolls beyond the study areas of the Veil—she grew so distracted by the beauty and scope of it that she forgot everything else.

  The Palanaeum was shaped like an inverted pyramid carved down into the rock. It had balcony walkways suspended around its perimeter. Slanted gently downward, they ran around all four walls to form a majestic square spiral, a giant staircase pointing toward the center of Roshar. A series of lifts provided a quicker method of descending.

  Standing at the top level’s railing, Shallan could see only halfway to the bottom. This place seemed too large, too grand, to have been shaped by the hands of men. How had the terraced levels been aligned so perfectly? Had Soulcasters been used to create the open spaces? How many gemstones would that have taken?

  The lighting was dim; there was no general illumination, only small emerald lamps focused to illuminate the walkway floors. Ardents from the Devotary of Insight periodically moved through the levels, changing the spheres. There had to be hundreds upon hundreds of the emeralds here; apparently, they made up the Kharbranthian royal treasury. What better place for them than the extremely secure Palanaeum? Here they could both be protected and serve to illuminate the enormous library.

  Shallan continued on her way. Her parshman servant carried a sphere lantern containing a trio of sapphire marks. The soft blue light reflected against the stone walls, portions of which had been Soulcast into quartz purely for ornamentation. The railings had been carved from wood, then transformed to marble. When she ran her fingers across one, she could feel the original wood’s grain. At the same time, it had the cold smoothness of stone. An oddity that seemed designed to confuse the senses.

  Her parshman carried a small basket of books full of drawings by famous natural scientists. Jasnah had begun allowing Shallan to spend some of her study time on topics of her own choosing. Just a single hour a day, but it was remarkable how precious that hour had become. Recently, she’d been digging through Myalmr’s Western Voyages.

  The world was a wondrous place. She hungered to learn more, wished to observe each and every one of its creatures, to have sketches of them in her books. To organize Roshar by capturing it in images. The books she read, though wonderful, all felt incomplete. Each author would be good with words or with drawings, but rarely both. And if the author was good with both, then her grasp of science would be poor.

  There were so many holes in their understanding. Holes that Shallan could fill.

  No, she told herself firmly as she walked. That’s not what I’m here to do.

  It was getting harder and harder to stay focused on the theft, though Jasnah—as Shallan had hoped—had begun using her as a bathing attendant. That might soon present the opportunity she needed. And yet, the more she studied, the more she hungered for knowledge.

  She led her parshman to one of the lifts. There, two other parshmen began lowering her. Shallan eyed the basket of books. She could spend her time on the lift reading, maybe finish that section of Western Voyages…

  She turned away from the basket. Stay focused. On the fifth level down, she stepped out into the smaller walkway that connected the lift to the sloping ramps set into the walls. Upon reaching the wall, she turned right and continued down a little farther. The wall was lined with doorways and, finding the one she wanted, she entered a large stone chamber filled with tall bookshelves. “Wait here,” she said to her parshman as she dug her drawing folio out of the basket. She tucked it under her arm, took the lantern, and hurried into the stacks.

  One could disappear for hours in the Palanaeum and never see another soul. Shallan rarely saw anyone while searching out an obscure book for Jasnah. There were ardents and servants to fetch volumes, of course, but Jasnah thought it important for Shallan to practice doing it herself. Apparently the Kharbranthian filing system was now standard for many of Roshar’s libraries and archives.

  At the back of the room, she found a small desk of cobwood. She set her lantern on one side and sat on the stool, getting out her portfolio. The room was silent and dark, her lantern light revealing the ends of bookshelves to her right and a smooth stone wall to her left. The air smelled of old paper and dust. Not wet. It was never damp in the Palanaeum. Perhaps the dryness had something to do with the long troughs of white powder at the ends of each room.

  She undid her portfolio’s leather ties. Inside, the top sheets were blank, and the next few contained drawings she’d done of people in the Palanaeum. More faces for her collection. Hidden in the middle was a far more important set of drawings: sketches of Jasnah performing Soulcastings.

  The princess used her Soulcaster infrequently; perhaps she hesitated to use it when Shallan was around. But Shallan had caught a handful of occasions, mostly when Jasnah had been distracted, and had apparently forgotten she wasn’t alone.

  Shallan held up one picture. Jasnah, sitting i
n the alcove, hand to the side and touching a crumpled piece of notepaper, a gem on her Soulcaster glowing. Shallan held up the next picture. It depicted the same scene just seconds later. The paper had become a ball of flames. It hadn’t burned. No, it had become fire. Tongues of flame coiling, a flash of heat in the air. What had been on it that Jasnah wished to hide?

  Another picture showed Jasnah Soulcasting the wine in her cup into a chunk of crystal to use as a paperweight, the goblet itself holding down another stack, on one of the rare occasions when they’d dined—and studied—on a patio outside the Conclave. There was also the one of Jasnah burning words after running out of ink. When Shallan had seen her burning letters into a page, she’d been amazed at the Soulcaster’s precision.

  It seemed that this Soulcaster was attuned to three Essences in particular: Vapor, Spark, and Lucentia. But it should be able to create any of the Ten Essences, from Zephyr to Talus. That last one was the most important to Shallan, as Talus included stone and earth. She could create new mineral deposits for her family to exploit. It would work; Soulcasters were very rare in Jah Keved, and her family’s marble, jade, and opal would sell at a premium. They couldn’t create actual gemstones with a Soulcaster—that was said to be impossible—but they could create other deposits of near equal value.

  Once those new deposits ran out, they’d have to move to less lucrative trades. That would be all right, though. By then, they’d have paid off their debts and compensated those to whom promises had been broken. House Davar would become unimportant again, but would not collapse.

  Shallan studied the pictures again. The Alethi princess seemed remarkably casual about Soulcasting. She held one of the most powerful artifacts in all of Roshar, and she used it to create paperweights? What else did she use the Soulcaster for, when Shallan wasn’t watching? Jasnah seemed to use it less frequently in her presence now than she had at first.

  Shallan fished in the safepouch inside her sleeve, bringing out her father’s broken Soulcaster. It had been sheared in two places: across one of the chains and through the setting that held one of the stones. She inspected it in the light, looking—not for the first time—for signs of that damage. The link in the chain had been replaced perfectly and the setting reforged equally well. Even knowing exactly where the cuts had been, she couldn’t find any flaw. Unfortunately, repairing only the outward defects hadn’t made it functional.

  She hefted the heavy construction of metal and chains. Then she put it on, looping chains around her thumb, small finger, and middle finger. There were no gemstones in the device at present. She compared the broken Soulcaster to the drawings, inspecting it from all sides. Yes, it looked identical. She’d worried about that.

  Shallan felt her heart flutter as she regarded the broken Soulcaster. Stealing from Jasnah had seemed acceptable when the princess had been a distant, unknown figure. A heretic, presumably ill-tempered and demanding. But what of the real Jasnah? A careful scholar, stern but fair, with a surprising level of wisdom and insight? Could Shallan really steal from her?

  She tried to still her heart. Even as a little child, she’d been this way. She could remember her tears at fights between her parents. She was not good with confrontation.

  But she’d do it. For Nan Balat, Tet Wikim, and Asha Jushu. Her brothers depended on her. She pressed her hands against her thighs to keep them from shaking, breathing in and out. After a few minutes, nerves under control, she took off the damaged Soulcaster and returned it to her safepouch. She gathered up her papers. They might be important in discovering how to use the Soulcaster. What was she going to do about that? Was there a way to ask Jasnah about using a Soulcaster without arousing suspicion?

  A light flickering through nearby bookcases startled her, and she tucked away her folio. It turned out to be just an old, berobed female ardent, shuffling with a lantern and followed by a parshman servant. She didn’t look in Shallan’s direction as she turned between two rows of shelves, her lantern’s light shining out through the spaces between the books. Lit that way—with her figure hidden but the light streaming between the shelves—it looked as if one of the Heralds themselves were walking through the stacks.

  Her heart racing again, Shallan raised her safehand to her breast. I make a terrible thief, she thought with a grimace. She finished gathering her things and moved through the stacks, lantern held before her. The head of each row was carved with symbols, indicating the date the books had entered the Palanaeum. That was how they were organized. There were enormous cabinets filled with indexes on the top level.

  Jasnah had sent Shallan to fetch—and then read—a copy of Dialogues, a famous historical work on political theory. However, this was also the room that contained Shadows Remembered—the book Jasnah was reading when the king had visited. Shallan had later looked it up in the index. It might have been reshelved by now.

  Suddenly curious, Shallan counted off the rows. She stepped in and counted shelves inward. Near the middle and at the bottom, she found a thin red volume with a red hogshide cover. Shadows Remembered. Shallan set her lantern on the ground and slipped the book free, feeling furtive as she flipped through the pages.

  She was confused by what she discovered. She hadn’t realized this was a book of children’s stories. There was no undertext commentary, just a collection of tales. Shallan sat down on the floor, reading through the first one. It was the story of a child who wandered away from his home at night and was chased by Voidbringers until he hid in a cavern beside a lake. He whittled a piece of wood into a roughly human shape and sent it floating across the lake, fooling the creatures into attacking and eating it instead.

  Shallan didn’t have much time—Jasnah would grow suspicious if she remained down here too long—but she skimmed the rest of the stories. They were all of a similar style, ghost stories about spirits or Voidbringers. The only commentary was at the back, explaining that the author had been curious about the folktales told by common darkeyes. She had spent years collecting and recording them.

  Shadows Remembered, Shallan thought, would have been better off forgotten.

  This was what Jasnah had been reading? Shallan had expected Shadows Remembered to be some kind of deep philosophical discussion of a hidden historical murder. Jasnah was a Veristitalian. She constructed the truth of what happened in the past. What kind of truth could she find in stories told to frighten disobedient darkeyed children?

  Shallan slid the volume back in place and hurried on her way.

  A short time later, Shallan returned to the alcove to discover that her haste had been unnecessary. Jasnah wasn’t there. Kabsal, however, was.

  The youthful ardent sat at the long desk, flipping through one of Shallan’s books on art. Shallan noticed him before he saw her, and she found herself smiling despite her troubles. She folded her arms and adopted a dubious expression. “Again?” she asked.

  Kabsal leaped up, slapping the book closed. “Shallan,” he said, his bald head reflecting the blue light of her parshman’s lantern. “I came looking for—”

  “For Jasnah,” Shallan said. “As always. And yet, she’s never here when you come.”

  “An unfortunate coincidence,” he said, raising a hand to his forehead. “I am a poor judge of timing, am I not?”

  “And is that a basket of bread at your feet?”

  “A gift for Brightness Jasnah,” he said. “From the Devotary of Insight.”

  “I doubt a bread basket is going to persuade her to renounce her heresy,” Shallan said. “Perhaps if you’d included jam.”

  The ardent smiled, picking up the basket and pulling out a small jar of red simberry jam.

  “Of course, I’ve told you that Jasnah doesn’t like jam,” Shallan said “And yet you bring it anyway, knowing jam to be among my favorite foods. And you’ve done this oh…a dozen times in the last few months?”

  “I’m growing a bit transparent, aren’t I?”

  “Just a tad,” she said, smiling. “It’s about my soul, isn’t it?
You’re worried about me because I’m apprenticed to a heretic.”

  “Er…well, yes, I’m afraid.”

  “I’d be insulted,” Shallan said. “But you did bring jam.” She smiled, waving for her parshman to deposit her books and then wait beside the doorway. Was it true that there were parshmen on the Shattered Plains who were fighting? That seemed hard to credit. She’d never known any parshman to as much as raise their voice. They didn’t seem bright enough for disobedience.

  Of course, some reports she’d heard—including those Jasnah had made her read when studying King Gavilar’s murder—indicated that the Parshendi weren’t like other parshmen. They were bigger, had odd armor that grew from their skin itself, and spoke far more frequently. Perhaps they weren’t parshmen at all, but some kind of distant cousin, a different race entirely.

  She sat down at the desk as Kabsal got out the bread, her parshman waiting at the doorway. A parshman wasn’t much of a chaperone, but Kabsal was an ardent, which meant technically she didn’t need one.

  The bread had been purchased from a Thaylen bakery, which meant it was fluffy and brown. And, since he was an ardent, it didn’t matter that jam was a feminine food—they could enjoy it together. She eyed him as he cut the bread. The ardents in her father’s employ had all been crusty men or women in their later years, stern-eyed and impatient with children. She’d never even considered that the devotaries would attract young men like Kabsal.

  During these last few weeks, she’d found herself thinking of him in ways that would better have been avoided.

  “Have you considered,” he noted, “what kind of person you declare yourself to be by preferring simberry jam?”

  “I wasn’t aware that my taste in jams could be that significant.”