The Way of Kings

by Brandon Sanderson

  “We are,” Jasnah said. “We’re gathering facts, making certain we know what we think we know.”

  “And how many facts do we need?”

  “More. Many more.” Jasnah glanced at the books. “There are some things about the histories I don’t yet understand. Tales of creatures fighting alongside the parshmen, beasts of stone that might be some kind of greatshell, and other oddities that I think may have truth to them. But we’ve exhausted what Kharbranth can offer. Are you still certain you want to delve into this? It is a heavy burden we will bear. You won’t be returning to your estates for some time.”

  Shallan bit her lip, thinking of her brothers. “You’d let me go now, after what I know?”

  “I won’t have you serving me while thinking of ways to escape.” Jasnah sounded exhausted.

  “I can’t just abandon my brothers.” Shallan’s insides twisted again. “But this is bigger than them. Damnation—it’s bigger than me or you or any of us. I have to help, Jasnah. I can’t walk out on this. I’ll find some other way to help my family.”

  “Good. Then go pack our things. We’re leaving tomorrow on that ship I chartered for you.”

  “We’re going to Jah Keved?”

  “No. We need to get to the center of it all.” She looked at Shallan. “We’re going to the Shattered Plains. We need to find out if the Parshendi were ever ordinary parshmen, and if so, what set them off. Perhaps I am wrong about this, but if I am right, then the Parshendi could hold the key to turning ordinary parshmen into soldiers.” Then, grimly, she continued. “And we need to do it before someone else does, then uses it against us.”

  “Someone else?” Shallan asked, feeling a sharp stab of panic. “There are others looking for this?”

  “Of course there are. Who do you think went to so much trouble trying to have me assassinated?” She reached into a stack of papers on her desk. “I don’t know much about them. For all I know, there are many groups searching for these secrets. I know of one for certain, however. They call themselves the Ghostbloods.” She pulled out a sheet. “Your friend Kabsal was one. We found their symbol tattooed on the inside of his arm.”

  She set the sheet down. On it was a symbol of three diamonds in a pattern, overlapping one another.

  It was the same symbol that Nan Balat had shown her weeks ago. The symbol worn by Luesh, her father’s steward, the man who had known how to use the Soulcaster. The symbol worn by the men who had come, pressuring her family to return it. The men who had been financing Shallan’s father in his bid to become highprince.

  “Almighty above,” Shallan whispered. She looked up. “Jasnah, I think… I think my father might have been a member of this group.”

  The highstorm winds began to blow against Dalinar’s complex, powerful enough to make rocks groan. Navani huddled close to Dalinar, holding to him. She smelled wonderful. It felt… humbling to know how terrified she’d been for him.

  Her joy at having him back was enough to dampen, for now, her fury at him for how he’d treated Elhokar. She would come around. It had needed to be done.

  As the highstorm hit in force, Dalinar felt the vision coming on. He closed his eyes, letting it take him. He had a decision to make, a responsibility. What to do? These visions had lied to him, or had at least misled him. It seemed that he couldn’t trust them, at least not as explicitly as he once had.

  He took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and found himself in a place of smoke.

  He turned about, wary. The sky was dark and he stood on a field of dull, bone-white rock, jagged and rough, extending in all directions. Off into eternity. Amorphous shapes made of curling grey smoke rose from the ground. Like smoke rings, only in other shapes. Here a chair. There a rockbud, with vines extended, curling to the sides and vanishing. Beside him appeared the figure of a man in uniform, silent and vaporous, rising lethargically toward the sky, mouth open. The shapes melted and distorted as they climbed higher, though they seemed to hold their forms longer than they should. It was unnerving, standing on the eternal plain, pure darkness above, smoke figures rising all around.

  It wasn’t like any vision he’d seen before. It was…

  No, wait. He frowned, stepping back as the figure of a tree burst from the ground close to him. I have seen this place before. In the first of my visions, so many months ago. It was fuzzy in his mind. He’d been disoriented, the vision vague, as if his mind hadn’t learned to accept what it was seeing. In fact, the only thing he remembered distinctly was—

  “You must unite them,” a strong voice boomed.

  —was the voice. Speaking to him from all around, causing the smoke figures to fuzz and distort.

  “Why did you lie to me?” Dalinar demanded of the open darkness. “I did what you said, and I was betrayed!”

  “Unite them. The sun approaches the horizon. The Everstorm comes. The True Desolation. The Night of Sorrows.”

  “I need answers!” Dalinar said. “I don’t trust you any longer. If you want me to listen to you, you’ll need to—”

  The vision changed. He spun about, finding that he was still on an open plain of rock, but the normal sun was in the sky. The stone field looked like an ordinary one on Roshar.

  It was very odd for one of the visions to set him in a place without others to talk to and interact with. Though, for once, he wore his own clothing. The sharp blue Kholin uniform.

  Had this happened before, the other time he’d been in that place of smoke? Yes… it had. This was the first time he’d been taken to a place where he’d been before. Why?

  He carefully scanned the scenery. Since the voice didn’t speak to him again, he began to walk, passing cracked boulders and broken bits of shale, pebbles and rocks. There were no plants, not even rockbuds. Just an empty landscape filled with broken stones.

  Eventually, he spotted a ridge. Getting to high ground felt like a good idea, though the hike seemed to take hours. The vision did not end. Time was often odd in these visions. He continued to hike up the side of the rock formation, wishing he had his Shardplate to strengthen him. Finally at the top, he walked over to the edge to look down below.

  And there he saw Kholinar, his home, the capital city of Alethkar.

  It had been destroyed.

  The beautiful buildings had been shattered. The windblades were cast down. There were no bodies, just broken stone. This wasn’t like the vision he had seen before, with Nohadon. That wasn’t the Kholinar of the distant past; he could see the rubble of his own palace. But there was no rock formation like the one he stood on near Kholinar in the real world. Always before, these visions had shown him the past. Was this now a vision of the future?

  “I cannot fight him any longer,” the voice said.

  Dalinar jumped, glancing to the side. A man stood there. He had dark skin and pure white hair. Tall, thick of chest but not massive, he wore exotic clothing of a strange cut: loose, billowing trousers and a coat that came down only to his waist. Both seemed made of gold.

  Yes… this very thing had happened before, in his very first vision. Dalinar could remember it now. “Who are you?” Dalinar demanded. “Why are you showing me these visions?”

  “You can see it there,” the figure said, pointing. “If you look closely. It begins in the distance.”

  Dalinar glanced in that direction, annoyed. He couldn’t make out anything specific. “Storm it,” Dalinar said. “Won’t you answer my questions for once? What is the good of all of this if you just speak in riddles?”

  The man didn’t answer. He just kept pointing. And… yes, something was happening. There was a shadow in the air, approaching. A wall of darkness. Like a highstorm, only wrong.

  “At least tell me this,” Dalinar said. “What time are we seeing? Is this the past, the future, or something else entirely?”

  The figure didn’t answer immediately. Then he said, “You’re probably wondering if this is a vision of the future.”

  Dalinar started. “I just… I just asked…”
r />   This was familiar. Too familiar.

  He said that exact thing last time, Dalinar realized, feeling a chill. This all happened. I’m seeing the same vision again.

  The figure squinted at the horizon. “I cannot see the future completely. Cultivation, she is better at it than I. It’s as if the future is a shattering window. The further you look, the more pieces that window breaks into. The near future can be anticipated, but the distant future… I can only guess.”

  “You can’t hear me, can you?” Dalinar asked, feeling a horror as he finally began to understand. “You never could.”

  Blood of my fathers… he’s not ignoring me. He can’t see me! He doesn’t speak in riddles. It just seems that way because I took his responses as cryptic answers to my questions.

  He didn’t tell me to trust Sadeas. I… I just assumed…

  Everything seemed to shake around Dalinar. His preconceptions, what he’d thought he’d known. The ground itself.

  “That is what could happen,” the figure said, nodding into the distance. “It’s what I fear will happen. It’s what he wants. The True Desolation.”

  No, that wall in the air wasn’t a highstorm. It wasn’t rain making that enormous shadow, but blowing dust. He remembered this vision in full, now. It had ended here, with him confused, staring out at that oncoming wall of dust. This time, however, the vision continued.

  The figure turned to him. “I am sorry to do this to you. By now I hope that what you’ve seen has given you a foundation to understand. But I can’t know for certain. I don’t know who you are, or how you have found your way here.”

  “I…” What to say? Did it matter?

  “Most of what I show you are scenes I have seen directly,” the figure said. “But some, such as this one, are born out of my fears. If I fear it, then you should too.”

  The land was trembling. The wall of dust was being caused by something. Something approaching.

  The ground was falling away.

  Dalinar gasped. The very rocks ahead were shattering, breaking apart, becoming dust. He backed away as everything began to shake, a massive earthquake accompanied by a terrible roar of dying rocks. He fell to the ground.

  There was an awful, grinding, terrifying moment of nightmare. The shaking, the destruction, the sounds of the land itself seeming to die.

  Then it was past. Dalinar breathed in and out before rising on unsteady legs. He and the figure stood on a solitary pinnacle of rock. A little section that—for some reason—had been protected. It was like a stone pillar a few paces wide, rising high into the air.

  Around it, the land was gone. Kholinar was gone. It had all fallen away into unplumbed darkness below. He felt vertigo, standing on the tiny bit of rock that—impossibly—remained.

  “What is this?” Dalinar demanded, though he knew that the being couldn’t hear him.

  The figure looked about, sorrowful. “I can’t leave much. Just these few images, given to you. Whoever you are.”

  “These visions… they’re like a journal, aren’t they? A history you wrote, a book you left behind, except I don’t read it, I see it.”

  The figure looked into the sky. “I don’t even know if anyone will ever see this. I am gone, you see.”

  Dalinar didn’t respond. He looked over the sheer pinnacle, down at a void, horrified.

  “This isn’t just about you either,” the figure said, raising his hand into the air. A light winked out in the sky, one that Dalinar hadn’t realized was there. Then another winked out as well. The sun seemed to be growing dimmer.

  “It’s about all of them,” the figure said. “I should have realized he’d come for me.”

  “Who are you?” Dalinar asked, voicing the words to himself.

  The figure still stared into the sky. “I leave this, because there must be something. A hope to discover. A chance that someone will find what to do. Do you wish to fight him?”

  “Yes,” Dalinar found himself saying, despite knowing that it didn’t matter. “I don’t know who he is, but if he wants to do this, then I will fight him.”

  “Someone must lead them.”

  “I will do it,” Dalinar said. The words just came out.

  “Someone must unite them.”

  “I will do it.”

  “Someone must protect them.”

  “I will do it!”

  The figure was silent for a moment. Then he spoke in a clear, crisp voice. “Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination. Speak again the ancient oaths and return to men the Shards they once bore.” He turned to Dalinar, meeting his eyes. “The Knights Radiant must stand again.”

  “I cannot comprehend how that can be done,” Dalinar said softly. “But I will try.”

  “Men must face them together,” the figure said, stepping up to Dalinar, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You cannot squabble as in times past. He’s realized that you, given time, will become your own enemies. That he doesn’t need to fight you. Not if he can make you forget, make you turn against one another. Your legends say that you won. But the truth is that we lost. And we are losing.”

  “Who are you?” Dalinar asked again, voice softer.

  “I wish I could do more,” repeated the figure in gold. “You might be able to get him to choose a champion. He is bound by some rules. All of us are. A champion could work well for you, but it is not certain. And… without the Dawnshards… Well, I have done what I can. It is a terrible, terrible thing to leave you alone.”

  “Who are you?” Dalinar asked again. And yet, he thought he knew.

  “I am… I was… God. The one you call the Almighty, the creator of mankind.” The figure closed his eyes. “And now I am dead. Odium has killed me. I am sorry.”

  “Can you feel it?” Wit asked of the open night. “Something just changed. I believe that’s the sound the world makes when it pisses itself.”

  Three guards stood just inside the thick wooden city gates of Kholinar. The men regarded Wit with worry.

  The gates were closed, and these men were of the night watch, a somewhat inappropriate title. They didn’t spend time “watching” so much as chatting, yawning, gambling, or—in tonight’s case—standing uncomfortably and listening to a crazy man.

  That crazy man happened to have blue eyes, which let him get away with all kinds of trouble. Perhaps Wit should have been bemused by the stock these people put in something as simple as eye color, but he had been many places and seen many methods of rule. This didn’t seem any more ridiculous than most others.

  And, of course, there was a reason the people did what they did. Well, there was usually a reason. In this case, it just happened to be a good one.

  “Brightlord?” one of the guards asked, looking at where Wit sat on his boxes. They’d been piled there and left by a merchant who had tipped the night watchmen to make certain nothing was stolen. To Wit, they simply made a convenient perch. His pack sat beside him, and on his knees he was tuning his enthir, a square, stringed instrument. You played it from above, plucking at strings with it sitting on your lap.

  “Brightlord?” the guard repeated. “What are you doing up there?”

  “Waiting,” Wit said. He looked up, glancing eastward. “Waiting for the storm to arrive.”

  That made the guards more uncomfortable. A highstorm was not predicted this night.

  Wit began playing the enthir. “Let us have a conversation to pass the time. Tell me. What is it that men value in others?”

  The music played toward an audience of silent buildings, alleys, and worn cobblestones. The guards didn’t respond to him. They didn’t seem to know what to make of a black-clad, lighteyed man who entered the city just before evening fell, then sat on boxes beside the gates playing music.

  “Well?” Wit asked, pausing the music. “What do you think? If a man or woman were to have a talent, which would be the most revered, best regarded, considered of the most worth?”

  “Er… music?” one of the men finall
y said.

  “Yes, a common answer,” Wit said, plucking at a few low notes. “I once asked this question of some very wise scholars. What do men consider the most valuable of talents? One mentioned artistic ability, as you so keenly guessed. Another chose great intellect. The final chose the talent to invent, the ability to design and create great devices.”

  He didn’t play a specific tune on the enthir, just plucks here and there, an occasional scale or fifth. Like chitchat in string form.

  “Aesthetic genius,” Wit said, “invention, acumen, creativity. Noble ideals indeed. Most men would pick one of those, if given the choice, and name them the greatest of talents.” He plucked a string. “What beautiful liars we are.”

  The guards glanced at each other; the torches burning in brackets on the wall painted them with orange light.

  “You think I’m a cynic,” Wit said. “You think I’m going to tell you that men claim to value these ideals, but secretly prefer base talents. The ability to gather coin or to charm women. Well, I am a cynic, but in this case, I actually think those scholars were honest. Their answers speak for the souls of men. In our hearts, we want to believe in—and would choose— great accomplishment and virtue. That’s why our lies, particularly to ourselves, are so beautiful.”

  He began to play a real song. A simple melody at first, soft, subdued. A song for a silent night when the entire world changed.

  One of the soldiers cleared his throat. “So what is the most valuable talent a man can have?” He sounded genuinely curious.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Wit said. “Fortunately, that wasn’t the question. I didn’t ask what was most valuable, I asked what men value most. The difference between those questions is both tiny and as vast as the world itself all at once.”

  He kept plucking his song. One did not strum an enthir. It just wasn’t done, at least not by people with any sense of propriety.

  “In this,” Wit said, “as in all things, our actions give us away. If an artist creates a work of powerful beauty—using new and innovative techniques—she will be lauded as a master, and will launch a new movement in aesthetics. Yet what if another, working independently with that exact level of skill, were to make the same accomplishments the very next month? Would she find similar acclaim? No. She’d be called derivative.