Words of Radiance Read online

  “Natural laws?” Syl said, finding the concept amusing. “Laws are of men, Kaladin. Nature doesn’t have them!”

  “If I toss something upward, it comes back down.”

  “Except when it doesn’t.”

  “It’s a law.”

  “No,” Syl said, looking upward. “It’s more like . . . more like an agreement among friends.”

  He looked at her, raising an eyebrow.

  “We have to be consistent,” she said, leaning in conspiratorially. “Or we’ll break your brains.”

  He snorted, walking around a clump of bones and sticks pierced by a spear. Cankered with rust, it looked like a monument.

  “Oh, come on,” Syl said, tossing her hair. “That was worth at least a chuckle.”

  Kaladin kept walking.

  “A snort is not a chuckle,” Syl said. “I know this because I am intelligent and articulate. You should compliment me now.”

  “Dalinar Kholin wants to refound the Knights Radiant.”

  “Yes,” Syl said loftily, hanging in the corner of his vision. “A brilliant idea. I wish I’d thought of it.” She grinned triumphantly, then scowled.

  “What?” he said, turning back to her.

  “Has it ever struck you as unfair,” she said, “that spren cannot attract spren? I should really have had some gloryspren of my own there.”

  “I have to protect Dalinar,” Kaladin said, ignoring her complaint. “Not just him, but his family, maybe the king himself. Even though I failed to keep someone from sneaking into Dalinar’s rooms.” He still couldn’t figure out how someone had managed to get in. Unless it hadn’t been a person. “Could a spren have made those glyphs on the wall?” Syl had carried a leaf once. She had some physical form, just not much.

  “I don’t know,” she said, glancing to the side. “I’ve seen . . .”

  “What?”

  “Spren like red lightning,” Syl said softly. “Dangerous spren. Spren I haven’t seen before. I catch them in the distance, on occasion. Stormspren? Something dangerous is coming. About that, the glyphs are right.”

  He chewed on that for a while, then finally stopped and looked at her. “Syl, are there others like me?”

  Her face grew solemn. “Oh.”

  “Oh?”

  “Oh, that question.”

  “You’ve been expecting it, then?”

  “Yeah. Sort of.”

  “So you’ve had plenty of time to think about a good answer,” Kaladin said, folding his arms and leaning back against a somewhat dry portion of the wall. “That makes me wonder if you’ve come up with a solid explanation or a solid lie.”

  “Lie?” Syl said, aghast. “Kaladin! What do you think I am? A Cryptic?”

  “And what is a Cryptic?”

  Syl, still perched as if on a seat, sat up straight and cocked her head. “I actually . . . I actually have no idea. Huh.”

  “Syl . . .”

  “I’m serious, Kaladin! I don’t know. I don’t remember.” She grabbed her hair, one clump of white translucence in each hand, and pulled sideways.

  He frowned, then pointed. “That . . .”

  “I saw a woman do it in the market,” Syl said, yanking her hair to the sides again. “It means I’m frustrated. I think it’s supposed to hurt. So . . . ow? Anyway, it’s not that I don’t want to tell you what I know. I do! I just . . . I don’t know what I know.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Well, imagine how frustrating it feels!”

  Kaladin sighed, then continued along the chasm, passing pools of stagnant water clotted with debris. A scattering of enterprising rockbuds grew stunted along one chasm wall. They must not get much light down here.

  He breathed in deeply the scents of overloaded life. Moss and mold. Most of the bodies here were mere bone, though he did steer clear of one patch of ground crawling with the red dots of rotspren. Just beside it, a group of frillblooms wafted their delicate fanlike fronds in the air, and those danced with green specks of lifespren. Life and death shook hands here in the chasms.

  He explored several of the chasm’s branching paths. It felt odd to not know this area; he’d learned the chasms closest to Sadeas’s camp better than the camp itself. As he walked, the chasm grew deeper and the area opened up. He made a few marks on the wall.

  Along one fork he found a round open area with little debris. He noted it, then walked back, marking the wall again before taking another branch. Eventually, they entered another place where the chasm opened up, widening into a roomy space.

  “Coming here was dangerous,” Syl said.

  “Into the chasms?” Kaladin asked. “There aren’t going to be any chasmfiends this close to the warcamps.”

  “No. I meant for me, coming into this realm before I found you. It was dangerous.”

  “Where were you before?”

  “Another place. With lots of spren. I can’t remember well . . . it had lights in the air. Living lights.”

  “Like lifespren.”

  “Yes. And no. Coming here risked death. Without you, without a mind born of this realm, I couldn’t think. Alone, I was just another windspren.”

  “But you’re not windspren,” Kaladin said, kneeling beside a large pool of water. “You’re honorspren.”

  “Yes,” Syl said.

  Kaladin closed his hand around his sphere, bringing near-darkness to the cavernous space. It was day above, but that crack of sky was distant, unreachable.

  Mounds of flood-borne refuse fell into shadows that seemed almost to give them flesh again. Heaps of bones took on the semblance of limp arms, of corpses piled high. In a moment, Kaladin remembered it. Charging with a yell toward lines of Parshendi archers. His friends dying on barren plateaus, thrashing in their own blood.

  The thunder of hooves on stone. The incongruous chanting of alien tongues. The cries of men both lighteyed and dark. A world that cared nothing for bridgemen. They were refuse. Sacrifices to be cast into the chasms and carried away by the cleansing floods.

  This was their true home, these rents in the earth, these places lower than any other. As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, the memories of death receded, though he would never be free of them. He would forever bear those scars upon his memory like the many upon his flesh. Like the ones on his forehead.

  The pool in front of him glowed a deep violet. He’d noticed it earlier, but in the light of his sphere it had been harder to see. Now, in the dimness, the pool could reveal its eerie radiance.

  Syl landed on the side of the pool, looking like a woman standing on an ocean’s shore. Kaladin frowned, leaning down to inspect her more closely. She seemed . . . different. Had her face changed shape?

  “There are others like you,” Syl whispered. “I do not know them, but I know that other spren are trying, in their own way, to reclaim what was lost.”

  She looked to him, and her face now had its familiar form. The fleeting change had been so subtle, Kaladin wasn’t sure if he’d imagined it.

  “I am the only honorspren who has come,” Syl said. “I . . .” She seemed to be stretching to remember. “I was forbidden. I came anyway. To find you.”

  “You knew me?”

  “No. But I knew I’d find you.” She smiled. “I spent the time with my cousins, searching.”

  “The windspren.”

  “Without the bond, I am basically one of them,” she said. “Though they don’t have the capacity to do what we do. And what we do is important. So important that I left everything, defying the Stormfather, to come. You saw him. In the storm.”

  The hair stood up on Kaladin’s arms. He had indeed seen a being in the storm. A face as vast as the sky itself. Whatever the thing was—spren, Herald, or god—it had not tempered its storms for Kaladin during that day he’d spent strung up.

  “We are needed, Kaladin,” Syl said softly. She waved for him, and he lowered his hand to the shore of the tiny violet ocean glowing softly in the chasm. She stepped onto his hand, and h
e stood up, lifting her.

  She walked up his fingers and he could actually feel a little weight, which was unusual. He turned his hand as she stepped up until she was perched on one finger, her hands clasped behind her back, meeting his eyes as he held that finger up before his face.

  “You,” Syl said. “You’re going to need to become what Dalinar Kholin is looking for. Don’t let him search in vain.”

  “They’ll take it from me, Syl,” Kaladin whispered. “They’ll find a way to take you from me.”

  “That’s foolishness. You know that it is.”

  “I know it is, but I feel it isn’t. They broke me, Syl. I’m not what you think I am. I’m no Radiant.”

  “That’s not what I saw,” Syl said. “On the battlefield after Sadeas’s betrayal, when men were trapped, abandoned. That day I saw a hero.”

  He looked into her eyes. She had pupils, though they were created only from the differing shades of white and blue, like the rest of her. She glowed more softly than the weakest of spheres, but it was enough to light his finger. She smiled, seeming utterly confident in him.

  At least one of them was.

  “I’ll try,” Kaladin whispered. A promise.

  “Kaladin?” The voice was Rock’s, with his distinctive Horneater accent. He pronounced the name “kal-ah-deen,” instead of the normal “kal-a-din.”

  Syl zipped off Kaladin’s finger, becoming a ribbon of light and flitting over to Rock. He showed respect to her in his Horneater way, touching his shoulders in turn with one hand, and then raising the hand to his forehead. She giggled; her profound solemnity had become girlish joy in moments. Syl might only be a cousin to windspren, but she obviously shared their impish nature.

  “Hey,” Kaladin said, nodding to Rock, and fishing in the pool. He came out with an amethyst broam and held it up. Somewhere up there on the Plains, a lighteyes had died with this in his pocket. “Riches, if we still were bridgemen.”

  “We are still bridgemen,” Rock said, coming over. He plucked the sphere from Kaladin’s fingers. “And this is still riches. Ha! Spices they have for us to requisition are tuma’alki! I have promised I will not fix dung for the men, but it is hard, with soldiers being accustomed to food that is not much better.” He held up the sphere. “I will use him to buy better, eh?”

  “Sure,” Kaladin said. Syl landed on Rock’s shoulder and became a young woman, then sat down.

  Rock eyed her and tried to bow to his own shoulder.

  “Stop tormenting him, Syl,” Kaladin said.

  “It’s so fun!”

  “You are to be praised for your aid of us, mafah’liki,” Rock said to her. “I will endure whatever you wish of me. And now that I am free, I can create a shrine fitting to you.”

  “A shrine?” Syl said, eyes widening. “Ooooh.”

  “Syl!” Kaladin said. “Stop it. Rock, I saw a good place for the men to practice. It’s back a couple of branches. I marked it on the walls.”

  “Yes, we saw this thing,” Rock said. “Teft has led the men there. It is strange. This place is frightening; it is a place that nobody comes, and yet the new recruits . . .”

  “They’re opening up,” Kaladin guessed.

  “Yes. How did you know this thing would happen?”

  “They were there,” Kaladin said, “in Sadeas’s warcamp, when we were assigned to exclusive duty in the chasms. They saw what we did, and have heard stories of our training here. By bringing them down here, we’re inviting them in, like an initiation.”

  Teft had been having problems getting the former bridgemen to show interest in his training. The old soldier was always sputtering at them in annoyance. They’d insisted on remaining with Kaladin rather than going free, so why wouldn’t they learn?

  They had needed to be invited. Not just with words.

  “Yes, well,” Rock said. “Sigzil sent me. He wishes to know if you are ready to practice your abilities.”

  Kaladin took a deep breath, glancing at Syl, then nodded. “Yes. Bring him. We can do it here.”

  “Ha! Finally. I will fetch him.”

  SIX YEARS AGO

  The world ended, and Shallan was to blame.

  “Pretend it never happened,” her father whispered. He wiped something wet from her cheek. His thumb came back red. “I’ll protect you.”

  Was the room shaking? No, that was Shallan. Trembling. She felt so small. Eleven had seemed old to her, once. But she was a child, still a child. So small.

  She looked up at her father with a shudder. She couldn’t blink; her eyes were frozen open.

  Father started to whisper, blinking tears. “Now go to sleep in chasms deep, with darkness all around you . . .”

  A familiar lullaby, one he always used to sing to her. In the room behind him, dark corpses stretched out on the floor. A red carpet once white.

  “Though rock and dread may be your bed, so sleep my baby dear.”

  Father gathered her into his arms, and she felt her skin squirming. No. No, this affection wasn’t right. A monster should not be held in love. A monster who killed, who murdered. No.

  She could not move.

  “Now comes the storm, but you’ll be warm, the wind will rock your basket . . .”

  Father carried Shallan over the body of a woman in white. Little blood there. It was the man who bled. Mother lay facedown, so Shallan couldn’t see the eyes. The horrible eyes.

  Almost, Shallan could imagine that the lullaby was the end to a nightmare. That it was night, that she had awakened screaming, and her father was singing her to sleep . . .

  “The crystals fine will glow sublime, so sleep my baby dear.”

  They passed Father’s strongbox set into the wall. It glowed brightly, light streaming from the cracks around the closed door. A monster was inside.

  “And with a song, it won’t be long, you’ll sleep my baby dear.”

  With Shallan in his arms, Father left the room and closed the door on the corpses.

  But, understandably, we were focused on Sadeas. His betrayal was still fresh, and I saw its signs each day as I passed empty barracks and grieving widows. We knew that Sadeas would not simply rest upon his slaughters in pride. More was coming.

  —From the journal of Navani Kholin, Jesesach 1174

  Shallan awoke mostly dry, lying on an uneven rock that rose from the ocean. Waves lapped at her toes, though she could barely feel them through the numbness. She groaned, lifting her cheek from the wet granite. There was land nearby, and the surf sounded against it with a low roar. In the other direction stretched only the endless blue sea.

  She was cold and her head throbbed as if she’d banged it repeatedly against a wall, but she was alive. Somehow. She raised her hand—rubbing at the itchy dried salt on her forehead—and hacked out a ragged cough. Her hair stuck to the sides of her face, and her dress was stained from the water and the seaweed on the rock.

  How . . . ?

  Then she saw it, a large brown shell in the water, almost invisible as it moved toward the horizon. The santhid.

  She stumbled to her feet, clinging to the pointy tip of her rock perch. Woozy, she watched the creature until it was gone.

  Something hummed beside her. Pattern formed his usual shape on the surface of the churning sea, translucent as if he were a small wave himself.

  “Did . . .” She coughed, clearing her voice, then groaned and sat down on the rock. “Did anyone else make it?”

  “Make?” Pattern asked.

  “Other people. The sailors. Did they escape?”

  “Uncertain,” Pattern said, in his humming voice. “Ship . . . Gone. Splashing. Nothing seen.”

  “The santhid. It rescued me.” How had it known what to do? Were they intelligent? Could she have somehow communicated with it? Had she missed an opportunity to—

  She almost started laughing as she realized the direction her thoughts were going. She’d nearly drowned, Jasnah was dead, the crew of the Wind’s Pleasure likely murdered or swallowed by the sea
! Instead of mourning them or marveling at her survival, Shallan was engaging in scholarly speculation?

  That’s what you do, a deeply buried part of herself accused her. You distract yourself. You refuse to think about things that bother you.

  But that was how she survived.

  Shallan wrapped her arms around herself for warmth on her stone perch and stared out over the ocean. She had to face the truth. Jasnah was dead.

  Jasnah was dead.

  Shallan felt like weeping. A woman so brilliant, so amazing, was just . . . gone. Jasnah had been trying to save everyone, protect the world itself. And they’d killed her for it. The suddenness of what had happened left Shallan stunned, and so she sat there, shivering and cold and just staring out at the ocean. Her mind felt as numb as her feet.

  Shelter. She’d need shelter . . . something. Thoughts of the sailors, of Jasnah’s research, those were of less immediate concern. Shallan was stranded on a stretch of coast that was almost completely uninhabited, in lands that froze at night. As she’d been sitting, the tide had slowly withdrawn, and the gap between herself and the shore was not nearly as wide as it had been. That was fortunate, as she couldn’t really swim.

  She forced herself to move, though lifting her limbs was like trying to budge fallen tree trunks. She gritted her teeth and slipped into the water. She could still feel its biting cold. Not completely numb, then.

  “Shallan?” Pattern asked.

  “We can’t sit out here forever,” Shallan said, clinging to the rock and getting all the way down into the water. Her feet brushed rock beneath, and so she dared let go, half swimming in a splashing mess as she made her way toward the land.

  She probably swallowed half the water in the bay as she fought through the frigid waves until she finally was able to walk. Dress and hair streaming, she coughed and stumbled up onto the sandy shore, then fell to her knees. The ground here was strewn with seaweed of a dozen different varieties that writhed beneath her feet, pulling away, slimy and slippery. Cremlings and larger crabs scuttled in every direction, some nearby making clicking sounds at her, as if to ward her off.

  She dully thought it a testament to her exhaustion that she hadn’t even considered—before leaving the rock—the sea predators she’d read about: a dozen different kinds of large crustaceans that were happy to have a leg to snip free and chew on. Fearspren suddenly began to wiggle out of the sand, purple and sluglike.