Oathbringer Read online

  Syl zipped up to him as he shaded his eyes from the rain. The glyphs and simple map on the stone marker would indicate the distance to the next town—but he didn’t need that. He could make it out as a smudge in the gloom. A fairly large town, by local standards.

  “Come on,” he said, starting down the hillside.

  “I think,” Syl said, landing on his shoulder and becoming a young woman, “I would make a wonderful mother.”

  “And what inspired this topic?”

  “You’re the one who brought it up.”

  In comparing Syl to his mother for nagging him? “Are you even capable of having children? Baby spren?”

  “I have no idea,” Syl proclaimed.

  “You call the Stormfather … well, Father. Right? So he birthed you?”

  “Maybe? I think so? Helped shape me, is more like it. Helped us find our voices.” She cocked her head. “Yes. He made some of us. Made me.”

  “So maybe you could do that,” Kaladin said. “Find little, uh, bits of the wind? Or of Honor? Shape them?”

  He used a Lashing to leap over a snarl of rockbuds and vines, and startled a pack of cremlings as he landed, sending them scuttling away from a nearly clean mink skeleton. Probably the leavings of a larger predator.

  “Hmmm,” Syl said. “I would be an excellent mother. I’d teach the little spren to fly, to coast the winds, to harass you.…”

  Kaladin smiled. “You’d get distracted by an interesting beetle and fly off, leaving them in a drawer somewhere.”

  “Nonsense! Why would I leave my babies in a drawer? Far too boring. A highprince’s shoe though…”

  He flew the remaining distance to the village, and the sight of broken buildings at the western edge dampened his mood. Though the destruction continued to be less than he’d feared, every town or village had lost people to the winds or the terrible lightning.

  This village—Hornhollow, the map called it—was in what once would have been considered an ideal location. The land here dipped into a depression, and a hill to the east cut the brunt of the highstorms. It held about two dozen structures, including two large storm sanctuaries where travelers could stay—but there were also many outer buildings. This was the highprince’s land, and an industrious darkeyes of high enough nahn could get a commission to work an unused hill out by itself, then keep a portion of the crop.

  A few sphere lanterns gave light to the square, where people had gathered for a town meeting. That was convenient. Kaladin dropped toward the lights and held his hand to the side. Syl formed there by unspoken command, taking the shape of a Shardblade: a sleek, beautiful sword with the symbol of the Windrunners prominent on the center, with lines sweeping off it toward the hilt—grooves in the metal that looked like flowing tresses of hair. Though Kaladin preferred a spear, the Blade was a symbol.

  Kaladin hit the ground in the center of the village, near its large central cistern, used to catch rainwater and filter away the crem. He rested the Sylblade on his shoulder and stretched out his other hand, preparing his speech. People of Hornhollow. I am Kaladin, of the Knights Radiant. I have come—

  “Lord Radiant!” A portly lighteyed man stumbled out of the crowd, wearing a long raincloak and a wide-brimmed hat. He looked ridiculous, but it was the Weeping. Constant rain didn’t exactly encourage heights of fashion.

  The man clapped his hands in an energetic motion, and a pair of ardents stumbled up beside him, bearing goblets full of glowing spheres. Around the perimeter of the square, people hissed and whispered, anticipationspren flapping in an unseen wind. Several men held up small children to get a better look.

  “Great,” Kaladin said softly. “I’ve become a menagerie act.”

  In his mind, he heard Syl giggle.

  Well, best to put on a good show of it. He lifted the Sylblade high overhead, prompting a cheer from the crowd. He would have bet that most of the people in this square used to curse the name of the Radiants, but none of that was manifest now in the people’s enthusiasm. It was hard to believe that centuries of mistrust and vilification would be forgotten so quickly. But with the sky breaking and the land in turmoil, people would look to a symbol.

  Kaladin lowered his Blade. He knew all too well the danger of symbols. Amaram had been one to him, long ago.

  “You knew of my coming,” Kaladin said to the citylord and the ardents. “You’ve been in contact with your neighbors. Have they told you what I’ve been saying?”

  “Yes, Brightlord,” the lighteyed man said, gesturing eagerly for him to take the spheres. As he did so—replacing them with spent ones he’d traded for previously—the man’s expression fell noticeably.

  Expected me to pay two for one as I did at the first few towns, did you? Kaladin thought with amusement. Well, he dropped a few extra dun spheres in. He’d rather be known as generous, particularly if it helped word spread, but he couldn’t halve his spheres each time he went through them.

  “This is good,” Kaladin said, fishing out a few small gemstones. “I can’t visit every holding in the area. I need you to send messages to each nearby village, carrying words of comfort and command from the king. I will pay for the time of your runners.”

  He looked out at the sea of eager faces, and couldn’t help but remember a similar day in Hearthstone where he and the rest of the townspeople had waited, eager to catch a glimpse of their new citylord.

  “Of course, Brightlord,” the lighteyed man said. “Would you wish to rest now, and take a meal? Or would you rather visit the location of the attack immediately?”

  “Attack?” Kaladin said, feeling a spike of alarm.

  “Yes, Brightlord,” the portly lighteyes said. “Isn’t that why you’re here? To see where the rogue parshmen assaulted us?”

  Finally! “Take me there. Now.”

  * * *

  They’d attacked a grain storage just outside town. Squashed between two hills and shaped like a dome, it had weathered the Everstorm without so much as a loosed stone. That made it a particular shame that the Voidbringers had ripped open the door and pillaged what was inside.

  Kaladin knelt within, flipping over a broken hinge. The building smelled of dust and tallew, but was too wet. Townspeople who would suffer a dozen leaks in their bedroom would go to great expense to keep their grain dry.

  It felt odd to not have the rain on his head, though he could still hear it pattering outside.

  “May I continue, Brightlord?” the ardent asked him. She was young, pretty, and nervous. Obviously she didn’t know where he fit into the scheme of her religion. The Knights Radiant had been founded by the Heralds, but they were also traitors. So … he was either a divine being of myth or a cretin one step above a Voidbringer.

  “Yes, please,” Kaladin said.

  “Of the five eyewitnesses,” the ardent said, “four, um, independently counted the number of attackers at … fifty or so? Anyway, it’s safe to say that they’ve got large numbers, considering how many sacks of grain they were able to carry away in such a short time. They, um, didn’t look exactly like parshmen. Too tall, and wearing armor. The sketch I made … Um…”

  She tried showing him her sketch again. It wasn’t much better than a child’s drawing: a bunch of scribbles in vaguely humanoid shapes.

  “Anyway,” the young ardent continued, oblivious to the fact that Syl had landed on her shoulder and was inspecting her face. “They attacked right after first moonset. They had the grain out by middle of second moon, um, and we didn’t hear anything until the change of guard happened. Sot raised the alarm, and that chased the creatures off. They only left four sacks, which we moved.”

  Kaladin took a crude wooden cudgel off the table next to the ardent. The ardent glanced at him, then quickly looked back to her paper, blushing. The room, lit by oil lamps, was depressingly hollow. This grain should have gotten the village to the next harvest.

  To a man from a farming village, nothing was more distressing than an empty silo at planting time.

 
“The men who were attacked?” Kaladin said, inspecting the cudgel, which the Voidbringers had dropped while fleeing.

  “They’ve both recovered, Brightlord,” the ardent said. “Though Khem has a ringing in his ear he says won’t go away.”

  Fifty parshmen in warform—which was what the descriptions sounded most like to him—could easily have overrun this town and its handful of militia guards. They could have slaughtered everyone and taken whatever they wished; instead, they’d made a surgical raid.

  “The red lights,” Kaladin said. “Describe them again.”

  The ardent started; she’d been looking at him. “Um, all five witnesses mentioned the lights, Brightlord. There were several small glowing red lights in the darkness.”

  “Their eyes.”

  “Maybe?” the ardent said. “If those were eyes, it was only a few. I went and asked, and none of the witnesses specifically saw eyes glowing—and Khem got a look right in one of the parshmen’s faces as they struck him.”

  Kaladin dropped the cudgel and dusted off his palms. He took the sheet with the picture on it out of the young ardent’s hands and inspected it, just for show, then nodded to her. “You did well. Thank you for the report.”

  She sighed, grinning stupidly.

  “Oh!” Syl said, still on the ardent’s shoulder. “She thinks you’re pretty!”

  Kaladin drew his lips to a line. He nodded to the woman and left her, striking back into the rain toward the center of town.

  Syl zipped up to his shoulder. “Wow. She must be desperate living out here. I mean, look at you. Hair that hasn’t been combed since you flew across the continent, uniform stained with crem, and that beard.”

  “Thank you for the boost of confidence.”

  “I guess when there’s nobody about but farmers, your standards really drop.”

  “She’s an ardent,” Kaladin said. “She’d have to marry another ardent.”

  “I don’t think she was thinking about marriage, Kaladin…” Syl said, turning and looking backward over her shoulder. “I know you’ve been busy lately fighting guys in white clothing and stuff, but I’ve been doing research. People lock their doors, but there’s plenty of room to get in underneath. I figured, since you don’t seem inclined to do any learning yourself, I should study. So if you have questions…”

  “I’m well aware of what is involved.”

  “You sure?” Syl asked. “Maybe we could have that ardent draw you a picture. She seems like she’d be really eager.”

  “Syl…”

  “I just want you to be happy, Kaladin,” she said, zipping off his shoulder and running a few rings around him as a ribbon of light. “People in relationships are happier.”

  “That,” Kaladin said, “is demonstrably false. Some might be. I know a lot who aren’t.”

  “Come on,” Syl said. “What about that Lightweaver? You seemed to like her.”

  The words struck uncomfortably close to the truth. “Shallan is engaged to Dalinar’s son.”

  “So? You’re better than him. I don’t trust him one bit.”

  “You don’t trust anyone who carries a Shardblade, Syl,” Kaladin said with a sigh. “We’ve been over this. It’s not a mark of bad character to have bonded one of the weapons.”

  “Yes, well, let’s have someone swing around the corpse of your sisters by the feet, and we’ll see whether you consider it a ‘mark of bad character’ or not. This is a distraction. Like that Lightweaver could be for you…”

  “Shallan’s a lighteyes,” Kaladin said. “That’s the end of the conversation.”

  “But—”

  “End,” he said, stepping into the home of the village lighteyes. Then he added under his breath, “And stop spying on people when they’re being intimate. It’s creepy.”

  The way she spoke, she expected to be there when Kaladin … Well, he’d never considered that before, though she went with him everywhere else. Could he convince her to wait outside? She’d still listen, if not sneak in to watch. Stormfather. His life just kept getting stranger. He tried—unsuccessfully—to banish the image of lying in bed with a woman, Syl sitting on the headboard and shouting out encouragement and advice.…

  “Lord Radiant?” the citylord asked from inside the front room of the small home. “Are you well?”

  “Painful memory,” Kaladin said. “Your scouts are certain of the direction the parshmen went?”

  The citylord looked over his shoulder at a scraggly man in leathers, bow on his back, standing by the boarded-up window. Trapper, with a writ from the local highlord to catch mink on his lands. “Followed them half a day out, Brightlord. They never deviated. Straight toward Kholinar, I’d swear to Kelek himself.”

  “Then that’s where I’m going as well,” Kaladin said.

  “You want me to lead you, Brightlord Radiant?” the trapper asked.

  Kaladin drew in Stormlight. “Afraid you’d just slow me down.” He nodded to the men, then stepped out and Lashed himself upward. People clogged the road and cheered from rooftops as he left the town behind.

  * * *

  The scents of horses reminded Adolin of his youth. Sweat, and manure, and hay. Good scents. Real scents.

  He’d spent many of those days, before he was fully a man, on campaign with his father during border skirmishes with Jah Keved. Adolin had been afraid of horses back then, though he’d never have admitted it. So much faster, more intelligent, than chulls.

  So alien. Creatures all covered in hair—which made him shiver to touch—with big glassy eyes. And those hadn’t even been real horses. For all their pedigree breeding, the horses they’d rode on campaign had just been ordinary Shin Thoroughbreds. Expensive, yes. But by definition, therefore, not priceless.

  Not like the creature before him now.

  They were housing the Kholin livestock in the far northwest section of the tower, on the ground floor, near where winds from outside blew along the mountains. Some clever constructions in the hallways by the royal engineers had ventilated the scents away from the inner corridors, though that left the region quite chilly.

  Gumfrems and hogs clogged some rooms, while conventional horses stabled in others. Several even contained Bashin’s axehounds, animals who never got to go on hunts anymore.

  Such accommodations weren’t good enough for the Blackthorn’s horse. No, the massive black Ryshadium stallion had been given his own field. Large enough to serve as a pasture, it was open to the sky and in an enviable spot, if you discounted the scents of the other animals.

  As Adolin emerged from the tower, the black monster of a horse came galloping over. Big enough to carry a Shardbearer without looking small, Ryshadium were often called the “third Shard.” Blade, Plate, and Mount.

  That didn’t do them justice. You couldn’t earn a Ryshadium simply by defeating someone in combat. They chose their riders.

  But, Adolin thought as Gallant nuzzled his hand, I suppose that was how it used to be with Blades too. They were spren who chose their bearers.

  “Hey,” Adolin said, scratching the Ryshadium’s snout with his left hand. “A little lonely out here, isn’t it? I’m sorry about that. Wish you weren’t alone any—” He cut off as his voice caught in his throat.

  Gallant stepped closer, towering over him, but somehow still gentle. The horse nuzzled Adolin’s neck, then blew out sharply.

  “Ugh,” Adolin said, turning the horse’s head. “That’s a scent I could do without.” He patted Gallant’s neck, then reached with his right hand into his shoulder pack—before a sharp pain from his wrist reminded him yet again of his wound. He reached in with the other hand and took out some sugar lumps, which Gallant consumed eagerly.

  “You’re as bad as Aunt Navani,” Adolin noted. “That’s why you came running, isn’t it? You smelled treats.”

  The horse turned his head, looking at Adolin with one watery blue eye, rectangular pupil at the center. He almost seemed … offended.

  Adolin often had felt he could read
his own Ryshadium’s emotions. There had been a … bond between him and Sureblood. More delicate and indefinable than the bond between man and sword, but still there.

  Of course, Adolin was the one who talked to his sword sometimes, so he had a habit of this sort of thing.

  “I’m sorry,” Adolin said. “I know the two of you liked to run together. And … I don’t know if Father will be able to get down as much to see you. He’d already been withdrawing from battle before he got all these new responsibilities. I thought I’d stop by once in a while.”

  The horse snorted loudly.

  “Not to ride you,” Adolin said, reading indignation in the Ryshadium’s motions. “I just thought it might be nice for both of us.”

  The horse poked his snout at Adolin’s satchel until he dug out another sugar cube. It seemed like agreement to Adolin, who fed the horse, then leaned back against the wall and watched him gallop through the pasture.

  Showing off, Adolin thought with amusement as Gallant pranced past him. Maybe Gallant would let him brush his coat. That would feel good, like the evenings he’d spent with Sureblood in the dark calm of the stables. At least, that was what he’d done before everything had gotten busy, with Shallan and the duels and everything else.

  He’d ignored the horse right up until he’d needed Sureblood in battle. And then, in a flash of light, he was gone.

  Adolin took a deep breath. Everything seemed insane these days. Not just Sureblood, but what he’d done to Sadeas, and now the investigation …

  Watching Gallant seemed to help a little. Adolin was still there, leaning against the wall, when Renarin arrived. The younger Kholin poked his head through the doorway, looking around. He didn’t shy away when Gallant galloped past, but he did regard the stallion with wariness.

  “Hey,” Adolin said from the side.

  “Hey. Bashin said you were down here.”

  “Just checking on Gallant,” Adolin said. “Because Father’s been so busy lately.”

  Renarin approached. “You could ask Shallan to draw Sureblood,” Renarin said. “I bet, um, she’d be able to do a good job. To remember.”