Oathbringer Read online

  “The Soulcasters—”

  “Will run out of gemstones eventually,” Navani said. “And they can create only the basic necessities. Dalinar, we’re half frozen up here, broken and divided. Our command structure is in disarray, and it—”

  “Peace, Navani,” Dalinar said, rising. He pulled her to her feet. “I know. We have to fight anyway.”

  She embraced him. He held to her, feeling her warmth, smelling her perfume. She preferred a less floral scent than other women—a fragrance with spice to it, like the aroma of newly cut wood.

  “We can do this,” he told her. “My tenacity. Your brilliance. Together, we will convince the other kingdoms to join with us. They’ll see when the storm returns that our warnings were right, and they’ll unite against the enemy. We can use the Oathgates to move troops and to support each other.”

  The Oathgates. Ten portals, ancient fabrials, were gateways to Urithiru. When a Knight Radiant activated one of the devices, those people standing upon its surrounding platform were brought to Urithiru, appearing on a similar device here at the tower.

  They only had one pair of Oathgates active now—the ones that moved people back and forth between Urithiru and the Shattered Plains. Nine more could theoretically be made to work—but unfortunately, their research determined that a mechanism inside each of them had to be unlocked from both sides before they’d work.

  If he wanted to travel to Vedenar, Thaylen City, Azimir, or any of the other locations, they’d first need to get one of their Radiants to the city and unlock the device.

  “All right,” she said. “We’ll do it. Somehow we’ll make them listen—even if they’ve got their fingers planted firmly in their ears. Makes one wonder how they manage it, with their heads rammed up their own backsides.”

  He smiled, and suddenly thought himself foolish for idealizing her just earlier. Navani Kholin was not some timid, perfect ideal—she was a sour storm of a woman, set in her ways, stubborn as a boulder rolling down a mountain and increasingly impatient with things she considered foolish.

  He loved her the most for that. For being open and genuine in a society that prided itself on secrets. She’d been breaking taboos, and hearts, since their youth. At times, the idea that she loved him back seemed as surreal as one of his visions.

  A knock came at the door to his room, and Navani called for the person to enter. One of Dalinar’s scouts poked her head in through the door. Dalinar turned, frowning, noting the woman’s nervous posture and quick breathing.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “Sir,” the woman said, saluting, face pale. “There’s … been an incident. A corpse discovered in the corridors.”

  Dalinar felt something building, an energy in the air like the sensation of lightning about to strike. “Who?”

  “Highprince Torol Sadeas, sir,” the woman said. “He’s been murdered.”

  I needed to write it anyway.

  —From Oathbringer, preface

  “Stop! What do you think you’re doing?” Adolin Kholin strode over to a group of workers in crem-stained work outfits who were unloading boxes from the back of a wagon. Their chull twisted, trying to search out rockbuds to munch on. Fruitlessly. They were deep within the tower, for all the fact that this cavern was as large as a small town.

  The workers had the decency to look chagrined, though they probably didn’t know what for. A flock of scribes trailing Adolin checked the contents of the wagon. Oil lamps on the ground did little to push back the darkness of the enormous room, which had a ceiling that went up four stories.

  “Brightlord?” one of the workers asked, scratching at his hair beneath his cap. “I was just unloadin’. That’s what I think I was doin’.”

  “Manifest says beer,” Rushu—a young ardent—told Adolin.

  “Section two,” Adolin said, rapping the knuckles of his left hand against the wagon. “Taverns are being set up along the central corridor with the lifts, six crossroads inward. My aunt expressly told your highlords this.”

  The men just stared at him blankly.

  “I can have a scribe show you. Pick these boxes back up.”

  The men sighed, but started reloading their wagon. They knew better than to argue with the son of a highprince.

  Adolin turned to survey the deep cavern, which had become a dumping ground for both supplies and people. Children ran past in groups. Workers set up tents. Women gathered water at the well in the center. Soldiers carried torches or lanterns. Even axehounds raced this way and that. Four entire warcamps full of people had frantically crossed the Shattered Plains to Urithiru, and Navani had struggled to find the right spot for them all.

  For all the chaos, though, Adolin was glad to have these people. They were fresh; they hadn’t suffered the battle with the Parshendi, the attack of the Assassin in White, and the terrible clash of two storms.

  The Kholin soldiers were in terrible shape. Adolin’s own sword hand was wrapped and still throbbing, his wrist broken during the fighting. His face had a nasty bruise, and he was one of the more lucky ones.

  “Brightlord,” Rushu said, pointing at another wagon. “That looks like wines.”

  “Delightful,” Adolin said. Was nobody paying attention to Aunt Navani’s directives?

  He dealt with this wagon, then had to break up an argument among men who were angry they had been set to hauling water. They claimed that was parshman work, beneath their nahn. Unfortunately, there were no parshmen any longer.

  Adolin soothed them and suggested they could start a water haulers’ guild if forced to continue. Father would approve that for certain, though Adolin worried. Would they have the funds to pay all these people? Wages were based on a man’s rank, and you couldn’t just make slaves of men for no reason.

  Adolin was glad for the assignment, to distract him. Though he didn’t have to see to each wagon himself—he was here to supervise—he threw himself into the details of the work. He couldn’t exactly spar, not with his wrist in this shape, but if he sat alone too long he started thinking about what had happened the day before.

  Had he really done that?

  Had he really murdered Torol Sadeas?

  It was almost a relief when at long last a runner came for him, whispering that something had been discovered in the corridors of the third floor.

  Adolin was certain he knew what it was.

  * * *

  Dalinar heard the shouts long before he arrived. They echoed down the tunnels. He knew that tone. Conflict was near.

  He left Navani and broke into a run, sweating as he burst into a wide intersection between tunnels. Men in blue, lit by the harsh light of lanterns, faced off against others in forest green. Angerspren grew from the floor like pools of blood.

  A corpse with a green jacket draped over the face lay on the ground.

  “Stand down!” Dalinar bellowed, charging into the space between the two groups of soldiers. He pulled back a bridgeman who had gotten right up in the face of one of Sadeas’s soldiers. “Stand down, or I’ll have you all in the stockade, every man!”

  His voice hit the men like stormwinds, drawing eyes from both sides. He pushed the bridgeman toward his fellows, then shoved back one of Sadeas’s soldiers, praying the man would have the presence of mind to resist attacking a highprince.

  Navani and the scout stopped at the fringes of the conflict. The men from Bridge Four finally backed down one corridor, and Sadeas’s soldiers retreated up the one opposite. Just far enough that they could still glare at one another.

  “You’d better be ready for Damnation’s own thunder,” Sadeas’s officer shouted at Dalinar. “Your men murdered a highprince!”

  “We found him like this!” Teft of Bridge Four shouted back. “Probably tripped on his own knife. Serves him well, the storming bastard.”

  “Teft, stand down!” Dalinar shouted at him.

  The bridgeman looked abashed, then saluted with a stiff gesture.

  Dalinar knelt, pulling the jacket back from S
adeas’s face. “That blood is dried. He’s been lying here for some time.”

  “We’ve been looking for him,” said the officer in green.

  “Looking for him? You lost your highprince?”

  “The tunnels are confusing!” the man said. “They don’t go natural directions. We got turned about and…”

  “Thought he might have returned to another part of the tower,” a man said. “We spent last night searching for him there. Some people said they thought they’d seen him, but they were wrong, and…”

  And a highprince was left lying here in his own gore for half a day, Dalinar thought. Blood of my fathers.

  “We couldn’t find him,” the officer said, “because your men murdered him and moved the body—”

  “That blood has been pooling there for hours. Nobody moved the body.” Dalinar pointed. “Place the highprince in that side room there and send for Ialai, if you haven’t. I want to have a better look.”

  * * *

  Dalinar Kholin was a connoisseur of death.

  Even since his youth, the sight of dead men had been a familiar thing to him. You stay on the battlefield long enough, and you become familiar with its master.

  So Sadeas’s bloodied, ruined face didn’t shock him. The punctured eye, smashed up into the socket by a blade that had been rammed into the brain. Fluid and blood had leaked out, then dried.

  A knife through the eye was the sort of wound that killed an armored man wearing a full helm. It was a maneuver you practiced to use on the battlefield. But Sadeas had not been wearing armor and had not been on a battlefield.

  Dalinar leaned down, inspecting the body lit by flickering oil lanterns as it lay on the table.

  “Assassin,” Navani said, clicking her tongue and shaking her head. “Not good.”

  Behind him, Adolin and Renarin gathered with Shallan and a few of the bridgemen. Across from Dalinar stood Kalami; the thin, orange-eyed woman was one of his more senior scribes. They’d lost her husband, Teleb, in the battle against the Voidbringers. He hated to call upon her in her time of grief, but she insisted that she remain on duty.

  Storms, he had so few high officers left. Cael had fallen in the clash between Everstorm and highstorm, almost making it to safety. He’d lost Ilamar and Perethom to Sadeas’s betrayal at the Tower. The only highlord he had left was Khal, who was still recuperating from a wound he’d taken during the clash with the Voidbringers—one he’d kept to himself until everyone else was safe.

  Even Elhokar, the king, had been wounded by assassins in his palace while the armies were fighting at Narak. He’d been recuperating ever since. Dalinar wasn’t certain if he would come to see Sadeas’s body or not.

  Either way, Dalinar’s lack of officers explained the room’s other occupants: Highprince Sebarial and his mistress, Palona. Likable or not, Sebarial was one of the two living highprinces who had responded to Dalinar’s call to march for Narak. Dalinar had to rely on someone, and he didn’t trust most of the highprinces farther than the wind could blow them.

  Sebarial, along with Aladar—who had been summoned but had not yet arrived—would have to form the foundation of a new Alethkar. Almighty help them all.

  “Well!” said Palona, hands on hips as she regarded Sadeas’s corpse. “I guess that’s one problem solved!”

  Everyone in the room turned toward her.

  “What?” she said. “Don’t tell me you weren’t all thinking it.”

  “This is going to look bad, Brightlord,” Kalami said. “Everyone is going to act like those soldiers outside and assume you had him assassinated.”

  “Any sign of the Shardblade?” Dalinar asked.

  “No, sir,” one of the bridgemen said. “Whoever killed him probably took it.”

  Navani rubbed Dalinar on the shoulder. “I wouldn’t have put it as Palona did, but he did try to have you killed. Perhaps this is for the best.”

  “No,” Dalinar said, voice hoarse. “We needed him.”

  “I know you’re desperate, Dalinar,” Sebarial said. “My presence here is sufficient proof of that. But surely we haven’t sunk so far as to be better off with Sadeas among us. I agree with Palona. Good riddance.”

  Dalinar looked up, inspecting those in the room. Sebarial and Palona. Teft and Sigzil, the lieutenants from Bridge Four. A handful of other soldiers, including the young scout woman who had fetched him. His sons, steady Adolin and impenetrable Renarin. Navani, with her hand on his shoulder. Even the aging Kalami, hands clasped before her, meeting his eyes and nodding.

  “You all agree, don’t you?” Dalinar asked.

  Nobody objected. Yes, this murder was inconvenient for Dalinar’s reputation, and they certainly wouldn’t have gone so far as to kill Sadeas themselves. But now that he was gone … well, why shed any tears?

  Memories churned inside Dalinar’s head. Days spent with Sadeas, listening to Gavilar’s grand plans. The night before Dalinar’s wedding, when he’d shared wine with Sadeas at a rowdy feast that Sadeas had organized in his name.

  It was hard to reconcile that younger man, that friend, with the thicker, older face on the slab before him. The adult Sadeas had been a murderer whose treachery had caused the deaths of better men. For those men, abandoned during the battle at the Tower, Dalinar could feel only satisfaction at finally seeing Sadeas dead.

  That troubled him. He knew exactly how the others were feeling. “Come with me.”

  He left the body and strode out of the room. He passed Sadeas’s guards, who hurried back in. They would deal with the corpse; hopefully he’d defused the situation enough to prevent an impromptu clash between his forces and theirs. For now, the best thing to do was get Bridge Four away from here.

  Dalinar’s retinue followed him through the halls of the cavernous tower, bearing oil lamps. The walls were twisted with lines—natural strata of alternating earthy colors, like those made by crem drying in layers. He didn’t blame the soldiers for losing track of Sadeas; it was strikingly easy to get lost in this place, with its endless passageways all leading into darkness.

  Fortunately, he had an idea of where they were, and led his people to the outer rim of the tower. Here he strode through an empty chamber and stepped out onto a balcony, one of many similar ones that were like wide patios.

  Above him rose the enormous tower city of Urithiru, a strikingly high structure built up against the mountains. Created from a sequence of ten ringlike tiers—each containing eighteen levels—the tower city was adorned with aqueducts, windows, and balconies like this one.

  The bottom floor also had wide sections jutting out at the perimeter: large stone surfaces, each a plateau in its own right. They had stone railings at their edges, where the rock fell away into the depths of the chasms between mountain peaks. At first, these wide flat sections of stone had baffled them. But the furrows in the stone, and planter boxes on the inner edges, had revealed their purpose. Somehow, these were fields. Like the large spaces for gardens atop each tier of the tower, this area had been farmed, despite the cold. One of these fields extended below this balcony, two levels down.

  Dalinar strode up to the edge of the balcony and rested his hands on the smooth stone retaining wall. The others gathered behind him. Along the way they’d picked up Highprince Aladar, a distinguished bald Alethi with dark tan skin. He was accompanied by May, his daughter: a short, pretty woman in her twenties with tan eyes and a round face, her jet-black Alethi hair worn short and curving around her face. Navani whispered to them the details of Sadeas’s death.

  Dalinar swept his hand outward in the chill air, pointing away from the balcony. “What do you see?”

  The bridgemen gathered to look off the balcony. Their number included the Herdazian, who now had two arms after regrowing the one with Stormlight. Kaladin’s men had begun manifesting powers as Windrunners—though apparently they were merely “squires.” Navani said it was a type of apprentice Radiant that had once been common: men and women whose abilities were tied to their master, a f
ull Radiant.

  The men of Bridge Four had not bonded their own spren, and—though they had started manifesting powers—had lost their abilities when Kaladin had flown to Alethkar to warn his family of the Everstorm.

  “What do I see?” the Herdazian said. “I see clouds.”

  “Lots of clouds,” another bridgeman added.

  “Some mountains too,” another said. “They look like teeth.”

  “Nah, horns,” the Herdazian argued.

  “We,” Dalinar interrupted, “are above the storms. It’s going to be easy to forget the tempest the rest of the world is facing. The Everstorm will return, bringing the Voidbringers. We have to assume that this city—our armies—will soon be the only bastion of order left in the world. It is our calling, our duty, to take the lead.”

  “Order?” Aladar said. “Dalinar, have you seen our armies? They fought an impossible battle only six days ago, and despite being rescued, we technically lost. Roion’s son is woefully underprepared for dealing with the remnants of his princedom. Some of the strongest forces—those of Thanadal and Vamah—stayed behind in the warcamps!”

  “The ones who did come are already squabbling,” Palona added. “Old Torol’s death back there will only give them something else to dissent about.”

  Dalinar turned around, gripping the top of the stone wall with both hands, fingers cold. A chill wind blew against him, and a few windspren passed like little translucent people riding on the breeze.

  “Brightness Kalami,” Dalinar said. “What do you know of the Desolations?”

  “Brightlord?” she asked, hesitant.

  “The Desolations. You’ve done scholarly work on Vorin theory, yes? Can you tell us of the Desolations?”

  Kalami cleared her throat. “They were destruction made manifest, Brightlord. Each one was so profoundly devastating that humankind was left broken. Populations ruined, society crippled, scholars dead. Humankind was forced to spend generations rebuilding after each one. Songs tell of how the losses compounded upon one another, causing us to slide farther each time, until the Heralds left a people with swords and fabrials and returned to find them wielding sticks and stone axes.”