Dawnshard Read online

  “What if in running, we encourage it to move out and attack the ship?”

  “We’ll just have to deal with that if it happens, all right? Huio and I will distract it; the rest of you prepare to retreat up to the fallen city.”

  Kstled hesitated, then nodded. Lopen Lashed himself into the air and shot toward the thing. Maybe if he could get in close while it was focused on Huio, he could stab it real good. He also needed to give Huio some more Stormlight. Lopen had plenty, sure, in his pouches.

  He flew around behind the thing, but it seemed ready for this. It kept shifting, keeping one of its beady jet-black eyes toward Lopen while it slammed its arms toward Huio.

  Huio shouted at it, fortunately drawing its attention. There! Lopen thought, preparing his spear. He got in closer. When it glanced toward him again, he’d Lash the spear directly into its eye.

  Lopen felt a sudden chill.

  A coldness began at his back, right between his shoulder blades, then washed through him. Cold enough that it made him jerk upright, stunned. Unable to move as he felt something leeched from him.

  His Stormlight.

  He managed to spin in the air, trying to swing his spear and attack. But it was too late. He glimpsed a swarm of small cremlings flying behind him—different from the one Rysn had as a pet. Smaller—maybe the size of his fist—and more bulbous, the two dozen creatures barely managed to hang in the air. But their feeding had been enough to drain him.

  As he dropped through the air, he felt panic. They’d gotten his pouches too. There was nothing left to suck in. He—

  He hit. Hard. Something snapped in his leg.

  The monster undulated toward him, opening its awful maw and glaring with those terrible eyes. It seemed eager as it raised its arms to smash him.

  “You were there when I met Navani Kholin,” Rysn said to Nikli. “You know she isn’t the type to be easily dissuaded.”

  “The Mother of Machines,” Nikli said it like a distinctive title. “Yes. We are . . . aware.”

  “You tried to scare away her Windrunners when they investigated this island,” Rysn said, “so she sent a ship. What do you think will happen if that ship vanishes mysteriously? You think she’ll give up? You’ll see a fleet next.”

  Nikli sighed, then met her eyes. “You assume we don’t have plans in place, Rysn,” he said. He seemed genuine. Though he was made up of monsters inside, he appeared to be the person she’d come to know during their travels.

  “Your plans so far haven’t worked,” Rysn said. “Why would you assume one to scare off the Radiants will?”

  “I . . . I wish you’d taken our bait,” he said. “Some of us wanted to sink your ship as soon as it breached the storm. But we persuaded them. We told them you’d be happy with the gemhearts. You were supposed to also locate a little stash of maps and writings from long ago; we would have made sure you found it before leaving.

  “Once you returned to Queen Navani, you’d have discovered that the gemhearts were fake. The writings would prove to be the remnants of an old pirate scheme, from the days before this place was surrounded with a storm. You’d have learned those pirates used legends of treasure to lure people to Akinah—that they’d spread fake gemstones on the beaches to draw their marks in and distract them before attacking.

  “It would have been so neat, so easy. With those stories in hand, everyone would dismiss the legends about riches on Akinah. They’d leave us alone. No one would have to die. Except . . .”

  “Except there’s an Oathgate here,” Rysn said. “They’ll never leave it alone, Nikli.”

  “They will think it destroyed,” Nikli said. “After . . . what must regrettably be done here to you and your crew . . . some of us will imitate sailors. Your ship will limp back to port, and we will tell the story. A storm that cost too many lives while getting through it. A fight with a strange greatshell. A destroyed Oathgate. Fake gemhearts. Everyone will leave us alone after that.”

  Damnation. That might work.

  But Vstim’s calm voice seemed to whisper to her from across the ocean. This was her moment. The most important deal of her life. What did they want? What did they say they wanted?

  Storms, I’m not ready for something like this, she thought.

  You’ll have to do it anyway.

  She took a deep breath. “You truly think you can imitate my ship’s sailors well enough to fool people who knew them? You use a body with tattoos, I assume to hide the seams in your skin. You don’t quite know how to act Thaylen, so you imitate a foreigner. You actually think this subterfuge will work? Or will it instead spread more mystery?”

  Nikli met her eyes, but didn’t reply.

  “That’s been your problem all along,” Rysn said. “Each lie you spin makes the mystery more entrancing. You want to protect this place. What if I could help you?”

  Rysn’s mouth had gone dry. But she continued holding the creature’s eyes. No, Nikli’s eyes. She had to see him as the person she knew. That was someone she could talk to, persuade.

  He might be some nightmare from the depths, but he was still a person. And people had needs.

  They were interrupted by footsteps at the door. Cord stepped in wearing the breastplate, which she’d apparently managed to power. Indeed, her fist glowed with gemstones she’d found.

  On one hand, she looked somewhat comical wearing only half of the armor. Her exposed head and arms seemed child-size with the rest of the Plate in place and functioning. Yet her solemn expression, the way she slammed the butt of a spear down beside her . . . Rysn found herself bolstered by the young woman’s determination.

  Cord said something loudly in her own language.

  “We may speak in Veden,” Nikli said, “so Rysn may understand.”

  “Very well,” Cord said. “I challenge you! You must duel me now to the death!”

  “I think you’ll find I cannot be defeated by a mortal,” Nikli said. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “Is that a yes?” Cord bellowed.

  “If you insist.”

  “Ha!” she said. “You have been tricked, god! I am Hualinam’lunanaki’akilu, the daughter of Numuhukumakiaki’aialunamor, the Fal’ala’liki’nor, he who drew the Bow of Hours at the dawn of the new millennium, heralding the years of change! If you were to kill me, you would be violating the ancient pact of the Seven Peaks, and so must now forfeit the battle!”

  Nikli blinked in what seemed like a very human show of utter confusion. “I . . . have no idea what any of that means,” he said.

  “. . . You don’t?” Cord asked.

  “No.”

  “Excuse me.” She hurried over to Rysn, each footstep clanking on the stone. She knelt. “Are you well?”

  “Well as I can be,” Rysn said. “Cord . . . I think they’re going to kill everyone to keep their secret.”

  “They don’t seem to know about the ancient treaties,” Cord whispered. “And in truth, those treaties were made with other gods. I had hoped the Gods Who Sleep Not would be similarly bound, but now I am not certain.” She looked down. “I am no warrior, Rysn. I wish to be one, and have claimed this Plate, but I haven’t trained to fight. I don’t know if these gods can even be fought. In the stories, you must always trick them.”

  “I would rather,” Rysn said, her voice loud enough for Nikli to hear, “simply reach an agreement. Surely they can be persuaded.”

  “Perhaps,” Cord said. “The Gods Who Sleep Not are guardians of life. They seek to prevent its end. Use that.”

  Rysn studied Nikli. He and the others could have killed her by now. But they waited; they were willing to talk. They said there was no solution. But if that were the case, why was she still alive?

  “Is Cord right?” Rysn said. “Are you protectors of life?”

  “We . . .” Nikli said. “We have seen the end of worlds, and vowed never to let such an awful event happen again. But we will kill the few to protect the many, if we must.”

  “What if I coul
d provide you with another option that didn’t involve murdering any more people?”

  “We tried,” Nikli said. “We did everything we could to frighten you away.” His skin split along the seams, as if in agitation. “The storm has protected this place for centuries. It is only recently that it weakened enough to let people through. But . . . we are committed, Rysn. By now we’ve killed hundreds.”

  “And you’ve never wondered whether your method is flawed? Yes, you could create another fabrication. But will it work? Or will more of the truth seep out? Will you end up with people swarming this island? Coming ever closer to the real secrets? The ones you hide in these caves?

  “You say you wish to protect life. But if you continue on your current course, you’re going to have to kill Cord and me. You are going to kill Knights Radiant. If you truly are sorry you have to take such desperate actions, don’t you owe it to yourself—and the cosmere—to sit and at least see if there is another way?”

  She turned her hands up, again signaling her desire to begin a deal.

  Nikli glanced at his two companions. One barely made an effort to appear human; her skin split at wide seams, and cremlings crawled up and down her body. Neither gave a response Rysn could understand, though the unnerving buzzing surrounding them grew louder.

  Finally, Nikli stepped forward and—to Rysn’s immense relief—sat at the table.

  Lopen managed—barely—to roll out of the way of the arm that speared down at him. But his foot screamed in pain and flopped awkwardly on the end of his leg, causing him to see stars and blink away tears. So many painspren crawled around him that he could have started a storming parade.

  “Please, gods of the ancient Herdazians,” Lopen whispered. “Don’t let me get killed by a monster that looks so stupid. Please.”

  The sailors shouted, throwing spears that bounced off the creature, trying to distract it from him. Lopen attempted to push himself up onto one leg to maybe hop away, but it was way too painful. He could barely crawl. And storms, he didn’t know any one-legged Herdazian jokes.

  He flopped to the stones as the thing roared and turned fully toward him. Somehow it knew that a Radiant was a better feast than those sailors. Either that or it was captivated by Lopen’s majesty. His lying-on-the-ground-crying-his-eyes-out-all-bloody majesty. So maybe not.

  Rua tried to urge Lopen on by taking the shape of an axehound. He bounced around, worried. Huio dropped out of the sky directly in front of Lopen, spear in hand, but his glow faded. Had the things drained him too, or had he run out normally?

  Lopen waved for him to go, to run for it with the sailors. But he stayed firm. Stupid chull-brain—he stepped squarely between the monster and Lopen. As it reared to swing, Huio looked right at Lopen, then turned toward the oncoming spear-leg and set himself.

  “Huio!” Lopen cried.

  His cousin exploded with light. A blast of something frigid washed over Lopen, and he found himself disturbing a large frost pattern on the ground in the shape of a glyph.

  As the creature’s arm reached Huio, mist appeared in the man’s hand—forming the biggest, most awesome Shardhammer Lopen had ever seen. Huio slammed it with all his might against the monster’s arm, and the carapace cracked and split, spraying violet goo across the stones.

  Nikli winced.

  “What?” Rysn asked.

  “Your friends fight very well,” he said.

  “They’re still alive? You haven’t killed them?”

  “We have the captain and the crew on the ship held captive,” Nikli said. “I persuaded the others to wait to put them down until I’d spoken to you.” He held out his hands. “How does this usually proceed?”

  “I am the one initiating the trade,” Rysn said. “So it is upon me to make an offer.”

  “You have nothing that we want.”

  “You want to find a way to avoid killing,” Rysn said, keeping her voice steady. “I can help you.”

  “Wrong,” Nikli said. “We wish to avoid losing control of a force that could destroy the cosmere. That is what we want, though we do desire to accomplish it with as little suffering as is reasonable.”

  “Then I can help you,” Rysn said. “You want to create a fabrication that others will believe? I will be far better at that than you would be. Both Queen Navani and the Thaylen council will respond better to me telling them that Akinah was a trap than they would to someone like you.”

  “Except that requires me to trust you with a secret too dangerous to let escape,” Nikli said. “Besides, the crew that remains on the ship saw my kind. The sailors will have to die, even if we come up with an accommodation between us.”

  “No,” Rysn said.

  “You have no position from which to—”

  “I will not give up the lives of the captain or any of my crew. That is not negotiable. They are my responsibility.”

  Nikli lifted his hands to the sides as if to say, “I told you there was no accommodation to be made.” It was unnerving how—in the gesture—each of his fingers came free a little, revealing the insectile legs beneath.

  Rysn couldn’t help staring. “What . . . what are you?” she found herself whispering, though she probably should have stayed on task.

  “I am like you,” Nikli said. “Your body is made up of tiny individual pieces called cells. My body is made up of pieces as well.”

  “Cremlings,” she said.

  “As I and my kind are not native to this planet, we prefer the term ‘hordelings.’ ”

  “And one of them is your brain?” she asked.

  “Many of them. We store memories in specialized hordelings bred for the purpose. Cognitive facilities are shared across many different members of the swarm.”

  He waved his fingers, and again the different little cremlings—no, hordelings—separated. “It took my people three hundred years of selective breeding to achieve hordelings capable of imitating human fingers. And still, most of us are terrible at pretending to be humans. We don’t have the mannerisms, the thoughts.

  “I’m younger than the others, but am more . . . skilled at using these things.” He regarded her. “I have come to understand humans a little, Rysn. I like talking to you, being with you. Though I love your kind, even I am persuaded as to what must be done. Our impasse cannot be resolved.”

  “No,” Rysn said. “There is a way.” She forcibly made herself use the careful, reasonable tone her babsk had drilled into her. “You say that the sailors have seen you—this can work to our advantage. The best fabrications are mostly true, and having many witnesses corroborate what I say will help.”

  Nikli shook his head. “Rysn, there are forces in the cosmere that we can barely identify, let alone track. Evil forces, who would end worlds if they could. They are hunting this place. Now that the Ancient Guardians of Akinah are all but extinct, we Sleepless must protect it. For if our enemies locate it, they could cause the deaths of billions.” He waved toward the mural. “The Dawnshard is . . .”

  He stopped. Then he squinted. Then he leaped to his feet. Winged hordelings crawled out of his skull and flew through the air to land on the mural. They scrambled across it, and were joined by hordelings sent by the other two.

  “What have you done?” Nikli bellowed. It was unnerving to watch him speak with his head split in two, one of his eyes crawling across the side of his face. “What have you done?”

  “I— All I did was look at it and—”

  Nikli moved suddenly, all conversation abandoned. He reached across the table and grabbed Rysn by the front of her vest. Cord cried out and tried to strike at him, but his body split into pieces before the blow and individual hordelings began crawling up her arms, into her armor.

  Others swarmed over Rysn as the man became the monster. He was going to kill her. She didn’t know what she’d done, but it clearly meant the end of the negotiations and the beginning of her execution.

  In the midst of this, a low, rumbling roar shook the cavern.

  19
<
br />   Lopen was so stunned by Huio’s transformation, he was able to ignore the pain for a short time.

  Huio. Huio had beaten him to the Third Ideal?

  Storm it! Rua was cheering, and . . . well, Lopen was happy for Huio and his spren too. But storm it! His cousin didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed as he dodged the next leg, then hefted his Shardhammer—which obligingly became a spear—and hurled it. It flew straight and true, like a silvery line of light, and struck the creature in the head. Not in the eye, but with a Shardweapon that didn’t matter so much. It went right through the thick carapace and sliced out the other side.

  The giant grublike monster teetered, then collapsed with a cracking sound that reminded Lopen how hungry he was. Nothing like crab legs after a hard day of being beaten up.

  Huio puffed in and out, then stared at his hands in awe as his Shardhammer re-formed. He turned with a stupid grin on his face. Then he rushed over to help Lopen sit up.

  That gave both of them a great view of the bay, which started to bubble and churn. Six more of those monsters began to rise.

  “Damnation,” Huio muttered. “You have any more Stormlight, cousin?”

  “No. You?”

  “No. I got a burst when I said the Ideal, but that ran out fast.”

  “I see,” Lopen said. “Tell me. What are your thoughts on, say, carrying your wonderful cousin on your back as you run for safety?”

  The roar was so loud that chips fell from the ceiling of the chamber. The hordelings swarming over Rysn and Cord stopped. Nikli had only a semblance of humanity left, his face and chest split open, skin hanging from the backs of the various pieces with twitching legs, his insides squirming and buzzing. But many of the hordelings turned toward the sound.

  The door to the side blew open farther, revealing the larger hall with the skulls of dead greatshells. Rysn could have sworn that they’d turned to stare in toward the smaller chamber. Six of them lined the hall, which narrowed as it extended, letting each set of dead eyes look past the ones in front.