Dawnshard Read online

  The light revealed Cord, her red hair plastered to her skin, holding to the rocks nearby. They were indeed in a cavern—well, a tunnel that ended in a small pool.

  Cord climbed up onto the rocks, then helped Rysn out. They sat for a moment, coughing, breathing deeply.

  “Are they still here?” Rysn eventually asked. “The luckspren?”

  “Apaliki’tokoa’a,” Cord said, pointing in the air, though Rysn saw nothing. “They appeared to you?”

  “Yes,” Rysn whispered. “Under the water.”

  “They guided us, sped us as we swam . . .” Cord said. “My father has always had the blessings of spren. They used to strengthen his arm, when he drew the Bow of Hours in the Peaks, but I’ve never known such blessings.” Her finger traced a path leading down the tunnel. “They are going this way.”

  “The creatures that came onto the ship,” Rysn said. “Nikli . . . whatever he is. They can swim. I doubt we’re safe down here.”

  “Perhaps there is a way out,” Cord said. “I will look?”

  Rysn nodded, though she didn’t have much hope. During her travels with her babsk, they’d visited the Purelake, where he’d made her read a book on the local people. There had been an entire chapter on how the place drained during storms, and though she hadn’t been able to make much sense of it, she was pretty certain a chamber this far down couldn’t have air unless there was no way for it to escape upward.

  That meant they were cornered. Rysn settled her back against a stone, her legs stretched in front of her. Cord hurried off, dripping water and carrying a sphere for light. Rysn fished in her pockets. What did she have of use? A few more spheres and some ruby fabrials?

  For a moment, she thought they were from spanreeds. But no, these were the rubies from her chair, secured in metal housings with straps to tie them into place. They were paired with a set on the anchor rigged to the mast of the ship.

  Strange, to think how optimistic she’d been only a short time ago. Before she’d led the entire crew to their doom. Would Radiants Lopen and Huio be able to save them, maybe?

  And so you’re helpless again? she thought. Just sitting around, waiting for someone else to come and take care of you?

  Vstim had put her in command for a reason. He trusted her. Couldn’t she do herself the same honor?

  “Rysn!” Cord called, her voice echoing in the tunnel. The Horneater woman appeared a short time later, panting, her eyes wide. Her figure threw crazy shadows across the walls as she waved the hand holding the sphere. “You must see!”

  “See what?” Rysn asked.

  “Treasure,” Cord said. “Plate, Rysn. Shardplate. The gods heard my prayers and have led me to him!” She stooped to heave Rysn over her shoulder again.

  “Wait,” Rysn said. “Let’s try these, maybe?” She held up a ruby and activated it with a twist of part of the housing. That left it hanging in the air.

  Cord ran off, then returned shortly with a small bench and an antiquated spear. That worked fairly well; using the leather straps on the fabrials, Rysn tied them to the legs of the small bench. When Cord lifted the bench and Rysn activated the fabrials, they made it hover. It did rise and fall slightly with the movements of the ship up above, but with the still ocean around here, that variation wasn’t much.

  A short time later, Rysn poled herself through the air with the spear, hovering alongside Cord. Though the place where they’d emerged had been unworked stone, the next section of the tunnel had been carved into a corridor. On its walls they found strange murals. People with hands forward, falling through what appeared to be portals, emerging into . . . light?

  Not far past these, they entered a small room. It was perhaps fifteen feet square, and Rysn’s eyes were immediately drawn to the incredible mural that dominated the far wall. It depicted a sun being shattered into pieces.

  Cord showed her the set of Shardplate, which had been carefully piled in one corner of the small chamber, along with some ornate weapons and clothing. None of those seemed to be Shardweapons, but . . . those were Soulcaster devices, arranged in little boxes by the wall. Four were on a bench identical to the one Rysn floated upon, and four were on the ground, probably moved by Cord.

  A metal door set into the stone at the left side of the room was cracked slightly open. Rysn poled herself over and peeked through to see an even larger corridor, this one with a vaulted ceiling and fine worked stone walls. Light shimmered somewhere farther along it, illuminating large carapace skulls with deep black eye sockets.

  Though she was tempted to continue exploring, something about the grand mural in the small room drew Rysn back. She poled over to it as Cord attempted to activate the Shardplate—not a bad idea, considering their situation. Cord asked her for gemstones, and Rysn absently handed over her sphere pouch.

  That mural . . . it was circular and—inlaid with golden foil—it seemed to glow with its own light. The writing on parts of it was unfamiliar to Rysn; she hadn’t seen the script during any of her travels. It wasn’t even the Dawnchant.

  The peculiar letters were art themselves, curling around the outside of the exploding sun—which was divided into mostly symmetrical pieces. Four of them, each in turn broken into four smaller sections.

  Her spear slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor. She swore she could feel the heat of that sun, burning, washing over her. It was not angry, though she knew it was being ripped apart like a person on some awful torture device.

  She felt something emanating from it. Resignation? Confidence? Understanding?

  This is the real treasure, she thought, although she didn’t know why. Those words. Burning on the wall.

  Who had created this? She had never experienced such grandeur. She traced the pieces of breaking sunlight with her eyes. Gold foil on the inside. Red foil tracing the outer lines to give them depth and definition. She counted the shards in her mind, over and over, feeling a reverence to the number. The sun held her.

  You were brought here, she thought to herself, by one of the Guardians of Ancient Sins.

  Of course she had been. That made sense.

  Wait. Did it?

  Yes, she thought. You were. There are few of them left. And so the Sleepless take up the task.

  Naturally. All that nonsense on the surface of the island? Distractions. Intended to keep anyone from looking for this.

  Rysn shook herself, tearing her eyes away from the mural. Those had felt like someone else’s thoughts intruding into her mind. What was happening to her? Why had she dropped her spear? After all that work to be able to move on her own, she’d simply let go?

  She reached down, but she was too far up in the air. As she leaned over, she felt a pressure on her mind. The mural. Calling to her.

  Nearby, Cord muttered softly. Rysn glanced over to find the Horneater woman had the Shardplate boots on, and was now trying to force the breastplate to take her spheres.

  “I think you need free gemstones, Cord,” Rysn said. “Not ones encased in glass.”

  “I don’t have enough of those,” Cord said.

  “We could use these.” Rysn gestured to the rubies under her bench.

  Cord hesitated.

  “It’s all right,” Rysn said. “If you can get that Plate working, you might be able to defend us.”

  Cord nodded, striding over to help Rysn down. She felt . . . regretful. Every time she had a taste of freedom, something happened to steal it away from her.

  Cord sat Rysn on the cold stones, then pried the four rubies from their housings. She hooked them into the greaves of the Plate, which she then attached to her legs. They tightened immediately, locking into place.

  She glanced at the breastplate. “We need more.”

  Rysn pointed to the cracked door on the other side of the room. “I saw light that direction, in the larger tunnel. Maybe gemstones?”

  Cord rushed over and pulled open the door, looking past the enormous carapace skulls toward the distant light. “There are spren,” Cord
said, then began walking that way, her metal boots clomping on the ground. She carried the breastplate with her, though it seemed extremely heavy.

  Rysn turned, trying not to look at the wall, which was growing even warmer. Unfortunately, she soon heard splashes coming from the direction of the pool. Their enemy had found them.

  Guardian of Ancient Sins, she thought. What did that mean? Why did the idea repeat over and over in her mind?

  She felt the mural looming. Overshadowing her. Slowly, she turned and gazed up at the exploding sun.

  Accept it.

  Know it.

  CHANGE.

  It stilled, waiting. Waiting for . . .

  “Yes,” Rysn whispered.

  Something slammed into her mind. It streamed from the mural through her eyes, searing her skull. It gripped her, held to her, joined with her. Light consumed Rysn entirely.

  A moment later, she found herself panting on the ground. She blinked, then felt at her eyes. Though tears leaked from the corners, her skin wasn’t on fire, and she hadn’t been blinded. She glanced up at the mural and noted it was unchanged. Except . . . she no longer felt warmth from it. It was only a mural. Beautiful, yes, but no longer . . .

  No longer what? What had changed?

  Scuttling sounds. Hundreds of little footsteps on the stone coming from behind. She twisted and grabbed the spear that she’d been using to move earlier, but she was no soldier.

  So what was she? Useless?

  No, she thought, determined never to sink into that self-pity again. I am far from useless.

  It was time to prove she deserved Vstim’s trust.

  17

  Lopen zipped straight toward the giant sea monster. It looked vaguely like an enormous grub with a wicked beak of a face. It had spindly arms running all the way along its body, and had reared up so it was mostly vertical, using its pointed limbs like spears to try to skewer the sailors beneath.

  Huio was literally inside the thing’s mouth, holding its mandibles apart with a spear, barely preventing himself from being crushed. So Lopen was able to soar up and grab Huio by the arm, then tow him out of the way. The thing snapped its mouth closed behind them, breaking the spear with an awful crack.

  Sailors huddled in the skulls on the beach, using the carapace as cover, clutching spears and cowering before the monster. It was as tall as a building, swarming with arrowhead luckspren. Lopen pulled to a stop in the air, holding Huio. The cousins met one another’s eyes.

  Then Huio groaned. “I’m never going to hear the end of this, am I?”

  “Ha!” Lopen said. “You were going to get eaten! You were going to be swallowed by a giant monster that looks like something you’d step on during worming season!”

  “Can we focus on the fight?”

  “Hey, have you heard about the time I saved Huio from being swallowed? Oh yes. He was going to get eaten. By a monster uglier than the women he courts. And I flew into the thing’s mouth to save him. Off the tongue. Then I was very humble about having done such a heroic deed.”

  “Leave that last part off,” Huio said. “It will make them easily discern that you are lying.” He breathed in, borrowing Stormlight from Lopen’s spheres. “Watch out. There are some cremlings around here that steal Stormlight.”

  “Is it the one the boss-lady had?”

  “No, smaller,” Huio said, Lashing himself so he hovered in the air. “And of a different breed. I didn’t get a good look, but I think they flew around in a little swarm.”

  Huio swooped down and snatched a new spear off the ground. Lopen raised his, glancing at Rua, who had changed shape to mimic that of the monster. He bounced around growling. The monster turned toward them and swiped with a spearlike limb, causing a rush of wind as Lopen ducked it.

  “You know,” Lopen said to Rua, “now would be an excellent time for you to decide that you’d like to be a Shardblade.”

  Rua wagged a crustacean finger at him. An annoyed gesture that conveyed, “You know you have to earn that.”

  “I will protect even those I hate,” Lopen said. “See? I can say it.” He dodged again. “It’s easy.”

  Rua-monster wagged another limb.

  “But I don’t hate anyone!” Lopen complained. “And nobody hates me. I’m The Lopen. How could they? These rules, sure, aren’t fair!”

  Rua-monster shrugged.

  “You used to be on my side on this one, naco,” Lopen grumbled. “This is Phendorana’s fault, isn’t it? You shouldn’t listen to her lectures.”

  This probably wasn’t the time for such a conversation. They had a monster to defeat. Spear in hand, Lopen swooped in to distract it as it tried to go after some of the sailors.

  Rysn arranged herself meticulously. She pulled over the bench she’d been sitting on earlier and placed it in front of her. It was a little too high and thin to be a Thaylen merchant’s deal table, but it was a reasonable approximation.

  If you wanted to deal in the traditional way, you sat on mats on the floor, opposite the table from one another. She managed to get her legs crossed, her back to the wall with the mural to help prop herself up.

  She put her hands palm down on the table in the formal dealing posture and tried to remember her lessons.

  The creatures came in along the walls and ceiling. They swarmed in that same nauseating way: heaps of cremlings snapping together into something that imitated a human, but with distressing lumps shifting under the “skin.”

  Soon Nikli stood in front of her.

  Rysn controlled her trembling as best she could, ignoring the fearspren, then turned her hands palm upward. “This,” she said, “is the traditional sign inviting the initiation of a trade deal between two Thaylen merchants. I’m not sure how much of our culture you picked up during your time imitating a human.”

  “I picked up enough,” Nikli said, stepping forward. Two other figures remained behind. One might have been imitating a male, the other a female, though it was hard to tell. Nikli picked up a robe draped across a few spears in the pile of armor, then pulled it on. “I’m young among my people, but I have lived quite a long time. I sailed with Longbrow, you know. I liked him, for all his boasting.”

  Storms. Longbrow was four hundred years dead. Rysn steeled herself. Oh, storms. She was swimming in water far over her head. And there was still that strange heat in the back of her mind. The pressure. The Command.

  She gestured toward the other side of the table. “Sit. Let us negotiate.”

  “There is nothing to negotiate, Rysn,” Nikli said. “I’m sorry. But I have a duty to the entire cosmere.”

  “Everyone wants something,” Rysn said, sweat trickling down the sides of her face. “Everyone has needs. It is my job to connect the needs to the people.”

  “And what is it you assume I need?” Nikli asked.

  She met the thing’s gaze. “You need someone to keep your secrets.”

  18

  “Hey, Huio,” Lopen shouted. “I was wrong about this monster resembling the women you court. It actually looks like you in the mornings, before you’ve had your ornachala!”

  A leg speared down near Lopen, tossing up chips of rock as it struck the ground.

  “Acts like you too!” Lopen said, Lashing himself backward. Mostly he was keeping the beast’s attention. He wanted it focused on him and Huio, not the sailors. Indeed, because of Huio’s efforts earlier, it looked like only one sailor had been seriously injured so far. Fimkn was trying to bind the man’s wounds while the rest had grabbed an extra stock of spears from the rowboats. The men proved adept with the weapons, throwing them to try to stick them in the creature’s eyes. One got close, bouncing off the carapace right near an eye.

  The thing roared and reared up, a giant pink-white tube of death covered in carapace. Though the dozen or so arms seemed spindly by comparison, they were thick as tree trunks. They alternated between trying to spear Lopen and trying to swat him from the sky.

  Lopen wiped his brow, then ordered the sailors t
o back up farther ashore. Unfortunately, while the creature seemed like it belonged in the water, it was mobile enough on the shore to be dangerous, using its legs to scoot along, sluglike.

  It turned toward the sailors again, so Lopen buzzed in close, Rua at his side, and drew its attention. He tried spearing the thing in the head near the neck, but his weapon bounced off. The monster was bulbous like a grub, but far better armored.

  Damnation. Lopen Lashed himself and wove between its swinging arms. Ha! At least it was slow-moving like a grub. The thing could barely—

  WHAM.

  Lopen ended up sprawled against a boulder, upside down, ribs screaming as they knit back together with Stormlight.

  “Radiant Lopen!” Kstled said, ducking in close. “Are you all right?”

  “Feel like a piece of snot,” Lopen said, groaning, “following a sneeze.” He peeled himself off the rock and flopped down next to Kstled. “My spear can’t get through that thing’s carapace.”

  “We need a Shardblade!” Kstled said. “Can’t you summon one?”

  “Afraid not,” Lopen said. “It’s political.” Nearby, Huio was drawing the thing’s attention, but his Stormlight was waning. “Don’t get eaten again!” Lopen called. “But if you do, try not to get sneezed out! It’s awful!”

  “Political?” Kstled asked.

  “You’ve got to say these words,” Lopen said, “and I said them, because they’re good words. But the Stormfather, sure, he has no sense of style.” He glanced up at the sky. “This would be a great time, O blustery one! I will protect those I hate! I’ve got it, you den gancho god thing!”

  No response.

  Lopen sighed, then shouldered his spear. “All right, so Huio and I will try to lead it farther inland. Then you and your sailors, sure, you grab those boats and try to get to the ship.”

  “We can’t let it follow us to the Wandersail!” Kstled said. “A greatshell like that could sink the ship!”

  “Yeah, well, then we need to all retreat and try to lead it inward. We can maybe take shelter in the buildings inland!”