Words of Radiance Read online

  “We’ll do it, Jasnah,” Shallan said. “We’ll travel to the Shattered Plains and we’ll find Urithiru. We’ll get the evidence and convince everyone to listen.”

  “Ah, the optimism of youth,” Jasnah said. “That is nice to hear on occasion too.” She handed the book to Shallan. “Among the Knights Radiant, there was an order known as the Lightweavers. I know precious little about them, but of all the sources I’ve read, this one has the most information.”

  Shallan took the volume eagerly. Words of Radiance, the title read.

  “Go,” Jasnah said. “Read.”

  Shallan glanced at her.

  “I will sleep,” Jasnah promised, a smile creeping to her lips. “And stop trying to mother me. I don’t even let Navani do that.”

  Shallan sighed, nodding, and left Jasnah’s quarters. Pattern tagged along behind; he’d spent the entire conversation silent. As she entered her cabin, she found herself much heavier of heart than when she’d left it. She couldn’t banish the image of terror in Jasnah’s eyes. Jasnah Kholin shouldn’t fear anything, should she?

  Shallan crawled onto her cot with the book she’d been given and the pouch of spheres. Part of her was eager to begin, but she was exhausted, her eyelids drooping. It really had gotten late. If she started the book now . . .

  Perhaps better to get a good night’s sleep, then dig refreshed into a new day’s studies. She set the book on the small table beside her bed, curled up, and let the rocking of the boat coax her to sleep.

  She awoke to screams, shouts, and smoke.

  I was unprepared for the grief my loss brought—like an unexpected rain—breaking from a clear sky and crashing down upon me. Gavilar’s death years ago was overwhelming, but this . . . this nearly crushed me.

  —From the journal of Navani Kholin, Jesesach 1174

  Still half asleep, Shallan panicked. She scrambled off her cot, accidentally slapping the goblet of mostly drained spheres. Though she used wax to keep it in place, the swat knocked it free and sent spheres tumbling across her cabin.

  The scent of smoke was powerful. She ran to her door, disheveled, heart thumping. At least she’d fallen asleep in her clothing. She threw open the door.

  Three men crowded in the passageway outside, holding aloft torches, their backs to her.

  Torches, sparking with flamespren dancing about the fires. Who brought open flame onto a ship? Shallan stopped in numb confusion.

  The shouts came from the deck above, and it seemed that the ship wasn’t on fire. But who were these men? They carried axes, and were focused on Jasnah’s cabin, which was open.

  Figures moved inside. In a frozen moment of horror, one threw something to the floor before the others, who stepped aside to make way.

  A body in a thin nightgown, eyes staring sightlessly, blood blossoming from the breast. Jasnah.

  “Be sure,” one of the men said.

  The other one knelt and rammed a long, thin knife right into Jasnah’s chest. Shallan heard it hit the wood of the floor beneath the body.

  Shallan screamed.

  One of the men spun toward her. “Hey!” It was the blunt-faced, tall fellow that Yalb had called the “new kid.” She didn’t recognize the other men.

  Somehow fighting through the terror and disbelief, Shallan slammed her door and threw the bolt with trembling fingers.

  Stormfather! Stormfather! She backed away from the door as something heavy hit the other side. They wouldn’t need the axes. A few determined smashes of shoulder to door would bring it down.

  Shallan stumbled back against her cot, nearly slipping on the spheres rolling to and fro with the ship’s motion. The narrow window near the ceiling—far too small to fit through—revealed only the dark of night outside. Shouts continued above, feet thumping on wood.

  Shallan trembled, still numb. Jasnah. . . .

  “Sword,” a voice said. Pattern, hanging on the wall beside her. “Mmmm . . . The sword . . .”

  “No!” Shallan screamed, hands to the sides of her head, fingers in her hair. Stormfather! She was trembling.

  Nightmare. It was a nightmare! It couldn’t be—

  “Mmmm . . . Fight . . .”

  “No!” Shallan found herself hyperventilating as the men outside continued to ram their shoulders against her door. She was not ready for this. She was not prepared.

  “Mmmm . . .” Pattern said, sounding dissatisfied. “Lies.”

  “I don’t know how to use the lies!” Shallan said. “I haven’t practiced.”

  “Yes. Yes . . . remember . . . the time before . . .”

  The door crunched. Dared she remember? Could she remember? A child, playing with a shimmering pattern of light . . .

  “What do I do?” she asked.

  “You need the Light,” Pattern said.

  It sparked something deep within her memory, something prickled with barbs she dared not touch. She needed Stormlight to fuel the Surgebinding.

  Shallan fell to her knees beside her cot and, without knowing exactly what she was doing, breathed in sharply. Stormlight left the spheres around her, pouring into her body, becoming a storm that raged in her veins. The cabin went dark, black as a cavern deep beneath the earth.

  Then Light began to rise from her skin like vapors off boiling water. It lit the cabin with swimming shadows.

  “Now what?” she demanded.

  “Shape the lie.”

  What did that mean? The door crunched again, cracking, a large split opening down the center.

  Panicked, Shallan let out a breath. Stormlight streamed from her in a cloud; she almost felt as if she could touch it. She could feel its potential.

  “How!” she demanded.

  “Make the truth.”

  “That makes no sense!”

  Shallan screamed as the door broke open. New light entered the cabin, torchlight—red and yellow, hostile.

  The cloud of Light leaped from Shallan, more Stormlight streaming from her body to join it. It formed a vague upright shape. An illuminated blur. It washed past the men through the doorway, waving appendages that could have been arms. Shallan herself, kneeling by the bed, fell into shadow.

  The men’s eyes were drawn to the glowing shape. Then, blessedly, they turned and gave chase.

  Shallan huddled against the wall, shaking. The cabin was utterly dark. Above, men screamed.

  “Shallan . . .” Pattern buzzed somewhere in the darkness.

  “Go and look,” she said. “Tell me what is happening up on deck.”

  She didn’t know if he obeyed, as he made no sound when he moved. After a few deep breaths, Shallan stood up. Her legs shook, but she stood.

  She collected herself somewhat. This was terrible, this was awful, but nothing, nothing, could compare to what she’d had to do the night her father died. She had survived that. She could survive this.

  These men, they would be of the same group Kabsal had been from—the assassins Jasnah feared. They had finally gotten her.

  Oh, Jasnah . . .

  Jasnah was dead.

  Grieve later. What was Shallan going to do about armed men taking over the ship? How would she find a way out?

  She felt her way out into the passageway. There was a little light here, from torches above on the deck. The yells she heard there grew more panicked.

  “Killing,” a voice suddenly said.

  She jumped, though of course it was only Pattern.

  “What?” Shallan hissed.

  “Dark men killing,” Pattern said. “Sailors tied in ropes. One dead, bleeding red. I . . . I do not understand. . . .”

  Oh, Stormfather . . . Above, the shouting heightened, but there was no scramble of boots on the deck, no clanging of weapons. The sailors had been captured. At least one had been killed.

  In the darkness, Shallan saw shaking, wiggling forms creep up from the wood around her. Fearspren.

  “What of the men who chased after my image?” she asked.

  “Looking in water,” Pattern said.


  So they thought she’d jumped overboard. Heart thumping, Shallan felt her way to Jasnah’s cabin, expecting at any moment to trip over the woman’s corpse on the floor. She didn’t. Had the men dragged it above?

  Shallan entered Jasnah’s cabin and closed the door. It wouldn’t latch shut, so she pulled a box over to block it.

  She had to do something. She felt her way to one of Jasnah’s trunks, which had been thrown open by the men, its contents—clothing—scattered about. In the bottom, Shallan found the hidden drawer and pulled it open. Light suddenly bathed the cabin. The spheres were so bright they blinded Shallan for a moment, and she had to look away.

  Pattern vibrated on the floor beside her, form shaking in worry. Shallan looked about. The small cabin was a shambles, clothing on the floor, papers strewn everywhere. The trunk with Jasnah’s books was gone. Too fresh to have soaked in, blood was pooled on the bed. Shallan quickly looked away.

  A shout suddenly sounded above, followed by a thump. The screaming grew louder. She heard Tozbek bellow for the men to spare his wife.

  Almighty above . . . the assassins were executing the sailors one at a time. Shallan had to do something. Anything.

  Shallan looked back at the spheres in their false bottom, lined with black cloth. “Pattern,” she said, “we’re going to Soulcast the bottom of the ship and sink it.”

  “What!” His vibrating increased, a buzz of sound. “Humans . . . Humans . . . Eat water?”

  “We drink it,” Shallan said, “but we cannot breathe it.”

  “Mmmm . . . Confused . . .” Pattern said.

  “The captain and the others are captured and being executed. The best chance I can give them is chaos.” Shallan placed her hands on the spheres and drew in the Light with a sharp breath. She felt afire with it inside of her, as if she were going to burst. The Light was a living thing, trying to press out through the pores of her skin.

  “Show me!” she shouted, far more loudly than she’d intended. That Stormlight urged her to action. “I’ve Soulcast before. I must do it again!” Stormlight puffed from her mouth as she spoke, like breath on a cold day.

  “Mmmmm . . .” Pattern said anxiously. “I will intercede. See.”

  “See what?”

  “See!”

  Shadesmar. The last time she’d gone to that place, she’d nearly gotten herself killed. Only, it wasn’t a place. Or was it? Did it matter?

  She reached back through recent memory to the time when she’d last Soulcast and accidentally turned a goblet into blood. “I need a truth.”

  “You have given enough,” Pattern said. “Now. See.”

  The ship vanished.

  Everything . . . popped. The walls, the furniture, it all shattered into little globes of black glass. Shallan prepared herself to fall into the ocean of those glass beads, but instead she dropped onto solid ground.

  She stood in a place with a black sky and a tiny, distant sun. The ground beneath her reflected light. Obsidian? Each way she turned, the ground was made of that same blackness. Nearby, the spheres—like those that would hold Stormlight, but dark and small—bounced to a rest on the ground.

  Trees, like growing crystal, clustered here and there. The limbs were spiky and glassy, without leaves. Nearby, little lights hung in the air, flames without their candles. People, she realized. Those are each a person’s mind, reflected here in the Cognitive Realm. Smaller ones were scattered about her feet, dozens upon dozens, but so small she almost couldn’t make them out. The minds of fish?

  She turned around and came face-to-face with a creature that had a symbol for a head. Startled, she screamed and jumped back. These things . . . they had haunted her . . . they . . .

  It was Pattern. He stood tall and willowy, but slightly indistinct, translucent. The complex pattern of his head, with its sharp lines and impossible geometries, seemed to have no eyes. He stood with hands behind his back, wearing a robe that seemed too stiff to be cloth.

  “Go,” he said. “Choose.”

  “Choose what?” she said, Stormlight escaping her lips.

  “Your ship.”

  He did not have eyes, but she thought she could follow his gaze toward one of the little spheres on the glassy ground. She snatched it, and suddenly was given the impression of a ship.

  The Wind’s Pleasure. A ship that had been cared for, loved. It had carried its passengers well for years and years, owned by Tozbek and his father before him. An old ship, but not ancient, still reliable. A proud ship. It manifested here as a sphere.

  It could actually think. The ship could think. Or . . . well, it reflected the thoughts of the people who served on it, knew it, thought about it.

  “I need you to change,” Shallan whispered to it, cradling the bead in her hands. It was too heavy for its size, as if the entire weight of the ship had been compressed to this singular bead.

  “No,” the reply came, though it was Pattern who spoke. “No, I cannot. I must serve. I am happy.”

  Shallan looked to him.

  “I will intercede,” Pattern repeated. “. . . Translate. You are not ready.”

  Shallan looked back to the bead in her hands. “I have Stormlight. Lots of it. I will give it to you.”

  “No!” the reply seemed angry. “I serve.”

  It really wanted to stay a ship. She could feel it, the pride it took, the reinforcement of years of service.

  “They are dying,” she whispered.

  “No!”

  “You can feel them dying. Their blood on your deck. One by one, the people you serve will be cut down.”

  She could feel it herself, could see it in the ship. They were being executed. Nearby, one of the floating candle flames vanished. Three of the eight captives dead, though she did not know which ones.

  “There is only one chance to save them,” Shallan said. “And that is to change.”

  “Change,” Pattern whispered for the ship.

  “If you change, they might escape the evil men who kill,” Shallan whispered. “It is uncertain, but they will have a chance to swim. To do something. You can do them a last service, Wind’s Pleasure. Change for them.”

  Silence.

  “I . . .”

  Another light vanished.

  “I will change.”

  It happened in a hectic second; the Stormlight ripped from Shallan. She heard distant cracks from the physical world as she withdrew so much Light from the nearby gemstones that they shattered.

  Shadesmar vanished.

  She was back in Jasnah’s cabin.

  The floor, walls, and ceiling melted into water.

  Shallan was plunged into the icy black depths. She thrashed in the water, dress hampering her movements. All around her, objects sank, the common artifacts of human life.

  Frantic, she searched for the surface. Originally, she’d had some vague idea of swimming out and helping untie the sailors, if they were bound. Now, however, she found herself desperately even trying to find the way up.

  As if the darkness itself had come alive, something wrapped around her.

  It pulled her farther into the deep.

  I seek not to use my grief as an excuse, but it is an explanation. People act strangely soon after encountering an unexpected loss. Though Jasnah had been away for some time, her loss was unexpected. I, like many, assumed her to be immortal.

  —From the journal of Navani Kholin, Jesesach 1174

  The familiar scraping of wood as a bridge slid into place. The stomping of feet in unison, first a flat sound on stone, then the ringing thump of boots on wood. The distant calls of scouts, shouting back the all-clear.

  The sounds of a plateau run were familiar to Dalinar. Once, he had craved these sounds. He’d been impatient between runs, longing for the chance to strike down Parshendi with his Blade, to win wealth and recognition.

  That Dalinar had been seeking to cover up his shame—the shame of lying slumped in a drunken stupor while his brother fought an assassin.

&n
bsp; The setting of a plateau run was uniform: bare, jagged rocks, mostly the same dull color as the stone surface they sat on, broken only by the occasional cluster of closed rockbuds. Even those, as their name implied, could be mistaken for more rocks. There was nothing but more of the same from here where you stood, all the way out to the far horizon; and everything you’d brought with you, everything human, was dwarfed by the vastness of these endless, fractured plains and deadly chasms.

  Over the years, this activity had become rote. Marching beneath that white sun like molten steel. Crossing gap after gap. Eventually, plateau runs had become less something to anticipate and more a dogged obligation. For Gavilar and glory, yes, but mainly because they—and the enemy—were here. This was what you did.

  The scents of a plateau run were the scents of a great stillness: baked stone, dried crem, long-traveled winds.

  Most recently, Dalinar was coming to detest plateau runs. They were a frivolity, a waste of life. They weren’t about fulfilling the Vengeance Pact, but about greed. Many gemhearts appeared on the near plateaus, convenient to reach. Those didn’t sate the Alethi. They had to reach farther, toward assaults that cost dearly.

  Ahead, Highprince Aladar’s men fought on a plateau. They had arrived before Dalinar’s army, and the conflict told a familiar story. Men against Parshendi, fighting in a sinuous line, each army trying to shove the other back. The humans could field far more men than the Parshendi, but the Parshendi could reach plateaus faster and secure them quickly.

  The scattered bodies of bridgemen on the staging plateau, leading up to the chasm, attested to the danger of charging an entrenched foe. Dalinar did not miss the dark expressions on his bodyguards’ faces as they surveyed the dead. Aladar, like most of the other highprinces, used Sadeas’s philosophy on bridge runs. Quick, brutal assaults that treated manpower as an expendable resource. It hadn’t always been this way. In the past, bridges had been carried by armored troops, but success bred imitation.

  The warcamps needed a constant influx of cheap slaves to feed the monster. That meant a growing plague of slavers and bandits roaming the Unclaimed Hills, trading in flesh. Another thing I’ll have to change, Dalinar thought.