The Way of Kings

by Brandon Sanderson

  “I haven’t faith in people any longer, old friend,” Nohadon said. “Put two men together, and they will find something to argue about. Gather them into groups, and one group will find reason to oppress or attack another. Now this. How do I protect them? How do I stop this from happening again?”

  “You dictate a book,” Dalinar said eagerly. “A grand book to give people hope, to explain your philosophy on leadership and how lives should be lived!”

  “A book? Me. Write a book?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s a fantastically stupid idea.”

  Dalinar’s jaw dropped.

  “The world as we know it has quite nearly been destroyed,” Nohadon said. “Barely a family exists that hasn’t lost half its members! Our best men are corpses on that field, and we haven’t food to last more than two or three months at best. And I’m to spend my time writing a book? Who would scribe it for me? All of my wordsmen were slaughtered when Yelignar broke into the chancery. You’re the only man of letters I know of who’s still alive.”

  A man of letters? This was an odd time. “I could write it, then.”

  “With one arm? Have you learned to write left-handed, then?”

  Dalinar looked down. He had both of his arms, though apparently the man Nohadon saw was missing his right.

  “No, we need to rebuild,” Nohadon said. “I just wish there were a way to convince the kings—the ones still alive—not to seek advantage over one another.” Nohadon tapped the balcony. “So this is my decision. Step down, or do what is needed. This isn’t a time for writing. It’s a time for action. And then, unfortunately, a time for the sword.”

  The sword? Dalinar thought. From you, Nohadon?

  It wouldn’t happen. This man would become a great philosopher; he would teach peace and reverence for others, and would not force men to do as he wished. He would guide them to acting with honor.

  Nohadon turned to Dalinar. “I apologize, Karm. I should not dismiss your suggestions right after asking for them. I’m on edge, as I imagine that we all are. At times, it seems to me that to be human is to want that which we cannot have. For some, this is power. For me, it is peace.”

  Nohadon turned, walking back down the balcony. Though his pace was slow, his posture indicated that he wished to be alone. Dalinar let him go.

  “He goes on to become one of the most influential writers Roshar has ever known,” Dalinar said.

  There was silence, save for the calls of the people working below, gathering the corpses.

  “I know you’re there,” Dalinar said.

  Silence.

  “What does he decide?” Dalinar asked. “Did he unite them, as he wanted?”

  The voice that often spoke in his visions did not come. Dalinar received no answer to his questions. He sighed, turning to look out over the fields of dead.

  “You are right about one thing, at least, Nohadon. To be human is to want that which we cannot have.”

  The landscape darkened, the sun setting. That darkness enveloped him, and he closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was back in his rooms, standing with his hands on the back of a chair. He turned to Adolin and Renarin, who stood nearby, anxious, prepared to grab him if he got violent.

  “Well,” Dalinar said, “that was meaningless. I learned nothing. Blast! I’m doing a poor job of—”

  “Dalinar,” Navani said curtly, still scribbling with a reed at her paper. “The last thing you said before the vision ended. What was it?”

  Dalinar frowned. “The last…”

  “Yes,” Navani said, urgent. “The very last words you spoke.”

  “I was quoting the man I’d been speaking with. ‘To be human is to want that which we cannot have.’ Why?”

  She ignored him, writing furiously. Once done, she slid off the high-legged chair, hurrying to his bookshelf. “Do you have a copy of… Yes, I thought you might. These are Jasnah’s books, aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” Dalinar said. “She wanted them cared for until she returned.”

  Navani pulled a volume off the shelf. “Corvana’s Analectics.” She set the volume on the writing desk and leafed through the pages.

  Dalinar joined her, though—of course—he couldn’t make sense of the page. “What does it matter?”

  “Here,” Navani said. She looked up at Dalinar. “When you go into these visions of yours, you know that you speak.”

  “Gibberish. Yes, my sons have told me.”

  “Anak malah kaf, del makian habin yah,” Navani said. “Sound familiar?”

  Dalinar shook his head, baffled.

  “It sounds a lot like what father was saying,” Renarin said. “When he was in the vision.”

  “Not ‘a lot like’ Renarin,” Navani said, looking smug. “It’s exactly the same phrase. That is the last thing you said before coming out of your trance. I wrote down everything—as best I could—that you babbled today.”

  “For what purpose?” Dalinar asked.

  “Because,” Navani said “I thought it might be helpful. And it was. The same phrase is in the Analectics, almost exactly.”

  “What?” Dalinar asked, incredulous. “How?”

  “It’s a line from a song,” Navani said. “A chant by the Vanrial, an order of artists who live on the slopes of the Silent Mount in Jah Keved. Year after year, century after century, they’ve sung these same words—songs they claim were written in the Dawnchant by the Heralds themselves. They have the words of those songs, written in an ancient script. But the meanings have been lost. They’re just sounds, now. Some scholars believe that the script—and the songs themselves—may indeed be in the Dawnchant.”

  “And I…” Dalinar said.

  “You just spoke a line from one of them,” Navani said. “Beyond that, if the phrase you just gave me is correct, you translated it. This could prove the Vanrial Hypothesis! One sentence isn’t much, but it could give us the key to translating the entire script. It has been itching at me for a while, listening to these visions. I thought the things you were saying had too much order to be gibberish.” She looked at Dalinar, smiling deeply. “Dalinar, you might just have cracked one of the most perplexing—and ancient— mysteries of all time.”

  “Wait,” Adolin said. “What are you saying?”

  “What I’m saying, nephew,” Navani said, looking directly at him, “is that we have your proof.”

  “But,” Adolin said. “I mean, he could have heard that one phrase…”

  “And extrapolated an entire language from it?” Navani said, holding up a sheet full of writings. “This is not gibberish, but it’s no language that people now speak. I suspect it is what it seems, the Dawnchant. So unless you can think of another way your father learned to speak a dead language, Adolin, the visions are most certainly real.”

  The room fell silent. Navani herself looked stunned by what she had said. She shook it off quickly. “Now, Dalinar,” she said, “I want you to describe this vision as accurately as possible. I need the exact words you spoke, if you can recall them. Every bit we gather will help my scholars sort through this….”

  “In the storm I awaken, falling, spinning, grieving.”

  —Dated Kakanev, 1173, 13 seconds pre-death. Subject was a city guardsman.

  “How can you be so sure it was him, Dalinar?” Navani asked softly.

  Dalinar shook his head. “I just am. That was Nohadon.”

  It had been several hours since the end of the vision. Navani had left her writing table to sit in a more comfortable chair near Dalinar. Renarin sat across from him, accompanying them for propriety’s sake. Adolin had left to get the highstorm damage report. The lad had seemed very disturbed by the discovery that the visions were real.

  “But the man you saw never spoke his name,” Navani said.

  “It was him, Navani.” Dalinar stared toward the wall over Renarin’s head, looking at the smooth brown Soulcast rock. “There was an aura of command about him, the weight of great responsibilities. A
regality.”

  “It could have been some other king,” she said. “After all, he discarded your suggestion that he write a book.”

  “It just wasn’t the time for him to write it yet. So much death… He was cast down by some great loss. Stormfather! Nine out of ten people dead in war. Can you imagine such a thing?”

  “The Desolations,” Navani said.

  Unite the people…. The True Desolation comes….

  “Do you know of any references to the Desolations?” Dalinar asked. “Not the tales ardents tell. Historical references?”

  Navani held a cup of warmed violet wine in her hand, beads of condensation on the rim of the glass. “Yes, but I am the wrong one to ask. Jasnah is the historian.”

  “I think I saw the aftermath of one. I… I may have seen corpses of Voidbringers. Could that give us more proof?”

  “Nothing nearly as good as the linguistics.” Navani took a sip of her wine. “The Desolations are matters of ancient lore. It could be argued that you imagined what you expected to see. But those words—if we can translate them, nobody will be able to dispute that you are seeing something real.” Her writing board lay on the low table between them, reed and ink set carefully across the paper.

  “You intend to tell others?” Dalinar asked. “Of my visions?”

  “How else will we explain what is happening to you?”

  Dalinar hesitated. How could he explain? On one hand, it was relieving to know that he was not mad. But what if some force were trying to mislead him with these visions, using images of Nohadon and the Radiants because he would find them trustworthy?

  The Knights Radiant fell, Dalinar reminded himself. They abandoned us. Some of the other orders may have turned against us, as the legends say. There was an unsettling edge to all of that. He had another stone in rebuilding the foundation of who he was, but the most important point still remained undecided. Did he trust his visions or not? He couldn’t go back to believing them unquestioningly, not now that Adolin’s challenges had raised real worries in his head.

  Until he knew their source, he felt he shouldn’t spread knowledge of them.

  “Dalinar,” Navani said, leaning forward. “The warcamps speak of your episodes. Even the wives of your officers are uncomfortable. They think you fear the storms, or that you have some disease of the mind. This will vindicate you.”

  “How? By making me into some kind of mystic? Many will think that the breeze of these visions blows too close to prophecy.”

  “You see the past, Father,” Renarin said. “That is not forbidden. And if the Almighty sends them, then how could men question?”

  “Adolin and I both spoke with ardents,” Dalinar replied. “They said it was very unlikely that this would come from the Almighty. If we do decide the visions are to be trusted, many will disagree with me.”

  Navani settled back, sipping her wine, safehand lying across her lap. “Dalinar, your sons told me that you once sought the Old Magic. Why? What did you ask of the Nightwatcher, and what curse did she give you in return?”

  “I told them that shame is my own,” Dalinar said. “And I will not share it.”

  The room fell silent. The flurries of rain following the highstorm had ceased falling on the roof. “It might be important,” Navani finally said.

  “It was long ago. Long before the visions began. I don’t think it’s related.”

  “But it could be.”

  “Yes,” he admitted. Would that day never stop haunting him? Was not losing all memory of his wife enough?

  What did Renarin think? Would he condemn his father for such an egregious sin? Dalinar forced himself to look up and meet his son’s bespectacled eyes.

  Curiously, Renarin didn’t seem bothered. Just thoughtful.

  “I’m sorry you had to discover my shame,” Dalinar said, looking to Navani.

  She waved indifferently. “Soliciting the Old Magic is offensive to the devotaries, but their punishments for the act are never severe. I assume that you didn’t have to do much to be cleansed.”

  “The ardents asked for spheres to give the poor,” Dalinar said. “And I had to commission a series of prayers. None of that removed the effects or my sense of guilt.”

  “I think you’d be surprised at how many devout lighteyes turn to the Old Magic at one point in their lives or another. The ones who can make their way to the Valley, at least. But I do wonder if this is related.”

  “Aunt,” Renarin said, turning to her. “I have recently asked for a number of readings about the Old Magic. I agree with his assessment. This does not feel like the work of the Nightwatcher. She gives curses in exchange for granting small desires. Always one curse and one desire. Father, I assume you know what both of those things are?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I know exactly what my curse was, and it does not relate to this.”

  “Then it is unlikely that the Old Magic is to blame.”

  “Yes,” Dalinar said. “But your aunt is right to question. The truth is, we don’t have any proof that this came from the Almighty either. Something wants me to know of the Desolations and the Knights Radiant. Perhaps we should start asking ourselves why that is.”

  “What were the Desolations, Aunt?” Renarin asked. “The ardents talk of the Voidbringers. Of mankind, and the Radiants, and of fighting. But what were they really? Do we know anything specific?”

  “There are folklorists among your father’s clerks who would serve you better in this matter.”

  “Perhaps,” Dalinar added, “but I’m not sure which of them I can trust.”

  Navani paused. “Fair enough. Well, from what I understand, there are no primary accounts remaining. This was long, long ago. I do recall that the myth of Parasaphi and Nadris mentions the Desolations.”

  “Parasaphi,” Renarin said. “She’s the one who searched out the seedstones.”

  “Yes,” Navani replied. “In order to repopulate her fallen people, she climbed the peaks of Dara—the myth changes, listing different modern mountain ranges as the true peaks of Dara—to find stones touched by the Heralds themselves. She brought them to Nadris on his deathbed and harvested his seed to bring life to the stones. They hatched forth ten children, which she used to found a new nation. Marnah, I believe it was called.”

  “Origin of the Makabaki,” Renarin said. “Mother told me that story when I was a child.”

  Dalinar shook his head. “Born from rocks?” The old stories rarely made much sense to him, although the devotaries had canonized many of them.

  “The story mentions the Desolations at the beginning,” Navani said. “Giving them credit for having wiped out Parasaphi’s people.”

  “But what were they?”

  “Wars.” Navani took a sip of wine. “The Voidbringers came again and again, trying to force mankind off Roshar and into Damnation. Just as they once forced mankind—and the Heralds—out of the Tranquiline Halls.”

  “When were the Knights Radiant founded?” Dalinar asked.

  Navani shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps they were some military group from a specific kingdom, or perhaps they were originally a mercenary band. That would make it easy to see how they could eventually become tyrants.”

  “My visions don’t imply that they were tyrants,” he said. “Perhaps that is the true purpose of the visions. To make me believe lies about the Radiants. Making me trust them, perhaps trying to lead me to mimic their downfall and betrayal.”

  “I don’t know,” Navani said, sounding skeptical. “I don’t think you’ve seen anything untrue about the Radiants. The legends tend to agree that the Radiants weren’t always so bad. As much as the legends agree on anything, at least.”

  Dalinar stood and took her nearly empty cup, then walked over to the serving table and refilled it. Discovering that he was not mad should have helped clear things up, but instead left him more disturbed. What if the Voidbringers were behind the visions? Some stories he heard said that they could possess the bodies of men and make the
m do evil. Or, if they were from the Almighty, what was their purpose?

  “I need to think on all of this,” he said. “It has been a long day. Please, if I could be left to my own thoughts now.”

  Renarin rose and bowed his head in respect before heading to the door. Navani rose more slowly, sleek dress rustling as she set her cup on the table, then walked over to fetch her pain-drinking fabrial. Renarin left, and Dalinar walked to the doorway, waiting as Navani approached. He didn’t intend to let her trap him alone again. He looked out the doorway. His soldiers were there, and he could see them. Good.

  “Aren’t you pleased at all?” Navani asked, lingering beside the doorway near him, one hand on the frame.

  “Pleased?”

  “You aren’t going mad.”

  “And we don’t know if I’m being manipulated or not,” he said. “In a way, we have more questions now than we had before.”

  “The visions are a blessing,” Navani said, laying her freehand on his arm. “I feel it, Dalinar. Don’t you see how wonderful this is?”

  Dalinar met her eyes, light violet, beautiful. She was so thoughtful, so clever. How he wished he could trust her completely.

  She has shown me nothing but honor, he thought. Never speaking a word to anyone else of my intention to abdicate. She hasn’t so much as tried to use my visions against me. He felt ashamed that he’d once worried that she might.

  She was a wonderful woman, Navani Kholin. A wonderful, amazing, dangerous woman.

  “I see more worries,” he said. “And more danger.”

  “But Dalinar, you’re having experiences scholars, historians, and folklorists could only dream about! I envy you, although you claim to have seen no fabrials of note.”

  “The ancients didn’t have fabrials, Navani. I’m certain of it.”

  “And that changes everything we thought we understood about them.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Stonefalls, Dalinar,” she said, sighing. “Does nothing bring you to passion any longer?”

  Dalinar took a deep breath. “Too many things, Navani. My insides feel like a mass of eels, emotions squirming over one another. The truth of these visions is unsettling.”