Rhythm of War (9781429952040) Read online

  “Kaladin?” she asked.

  He’d felt a disconnect these last months. These last years … it was as if life for everyone continued, but Kaladin was separate from them, incapable of interacting. Like he was a painting hanging in a hallway, watching life stream past.

  “Fine,” Syl said. “I’ll do your part.” Her image fuzzed, and she became a perfect replica of Kaladin, sitting on his own shoulder. “Well well,” she said in a growling, low-pitched voice. “Grumble grumble. Get in line, men. Storming rain, ruining otherwise terrible weather. Also, I’m banning toes.”

  “Toes?”

  “People keep tripping!” she continued. “I can’t have you all hurting yourselves. So, no toes from now on. Next week we’ll try not having feet. Now, go off and get some food. Tomorrow we’re going to get up before dawn to practice scowling at one another.”

  “I’m not that bad,” Kaladin said, but couldn’t help smiling. “Also, your Kaladin voice sounds more like Teft.”

  She transformed back and sat primly—clearly pleased with herself. And he had to admit he felt more upbeat. Storms, he thought. Where would I be if I hadn’t found her?

  The answer was obvious. He’d be dead at the bottom of a chasm, having leaped into the darkness.

  As they approached Hearthstone, they found a scene of relative order. The refugees had been returned to a line, and the warform singers who had come with the Fused waited near Kaladin’s father and the new citylady, their weapons sheathed. Everyone seemed to understand that their next steps would depend greatly upon the results of Kaladin’s duel.

  He strode up and seized the air in front of him, the Sylspear forming as a majestic silver weapon. The singers drew their weapons, mostly swords.

  “You can fight a Radiant all on your own, if you’d like,” Kaladin said. “Alternatively, if you don’t feel like dying today, you can gather the singers in this town and retreat a half hour’s walk to the east. There’s a stormshelter out that way for people from the outer farms; I’m sure Abiajan can lead you to it. Stay inside until sunset.”

  The six soldiers rushed him.

  Kaladin sighed, drawing in a few more spheres’ worth of his Stormlight. The skirmish took about thirty seconds, and left one of the singers dead with her eyes burned out while the others retreated, their weapons shorn in half.

  Some would have seen bravery in this attack. For much of Alethi history, common soldiers had been encouraged to throw themselves at Shardbearers. Generals taught that the slightest chance of earning a Shard was worth the incredible risk.

  That was stupid enough, but Kaladin wouldn’t drop a Shard when killed. He was Radiant, and these soldiers knew it. From what he’d seen, the attitudes of the singer soldiers depended greatly upon the Fused they served. The fact that these had thrown their lives away so wantonly did not speak highly of their master.

  Fortunately, the remaining five listened to Abiajan and the other Hearthstone singers who—with some effort—persuaded them that despite fighting bravely, they were now defeated. A short time later, they all went trudging out through the quickly vanishing fog.

  Kaladin checked the sky again. Should be close now, he thought as he walked over to the checkpoint where his mother waited, a patterned kerchief over her shoulder-length unbraided hair. She gave Kaladin a side hug, holding little Oroden—who reached out his hands for Kaladin to take him.

  “You’re getting tall!” he said to the boy.

  “Gagadin!” the child said, then waved in the air, trying to catch Syl—who always chose to appear to Kaladin’s family. She did her usual trick, changing into the shapes of various animals and pouncing around in the air for the child.

  “So,” Kaladin’s mother said, “how is Lyn?”

  “Does that always have to be your first question?”

  “Mother’s prerogative,” Hesina said. “So?”

  “She broke up with him,” Syl said, shaped as a tiny glowing axehound. The words seemed odd coming from its mouth. “Right after our last visit.”

  “Oh, Kaladin,” his mother said, pulling him into another side hug. “How’s he taking it?”

  “He sulked for a good two weeks,” Syl said, “but I think he’s mostly over it.”

  “He’s right here,” Kaladin said.

  “And he doesn’t ever answer questions about his personal life,” Hesina said. “Forcing his poor mother to turn to other, more divine sources.”

  “See,” Syl said, now prancing around as a cremling. “She knows how to treat me. With the dignity and respect I deserve.”

  “Has he been disrespecting you again, Syl?”

  “It’s been at least a day since he mentioned how great I am.”

  “It’s demonstrably unfair that I have to deal with both of you at once,” Kaladin said. “Did that Herdazian general make it to town?”

  Hesina gestured toward a nearby building nestled between two homes, one of the wooden sheds for farming equipment. It didn’t appear terribly sturdy; some of the boards had been warped and blown loose by a recent storm.

  “I hid them in there once the fighting started,” Hesina explained.

  Kaladin handed Oroden to her, then started toward the shed. “Grab Laral and gather the townspeople. Something big is coming today, and I don’t want them to panic.”

  “Explain what you mean by ‘big,’ son.”

  “You’ll see,” he said.

  “Are you going to go talk to your father?”

  Kaladin hesitated, then glanced across the foggy field toward the refugees. Townspeople had started to drift out of their homes to see what all the ruckus was about. He couldn’t spot his father. “Where did he go?”

  “To check whether that parshman you sliced is actually dead.”

  “Of course he did,” Kaladin said with a sigh. “I’ll deal with Lirin later.”

  Inside the shed, several very touchy Herdazians pulled daggers on him as he opened the door. In response, he sucked in a little Stormlight, causing wisps of luminescent smoke to rise from his exposed skin.

  “By the Three Gods,” whispered one of them, a tall fellow with a ponytail. “It’s true. You’ve returned.”

  The reaction disturbed Kaladin. This man, as a freedom fighter in Herdaz, should have seen Radiants before now. In a perfect world, Dalinar’s coalition armies would have been supporting the Herdazian freedom effort for months now.

  Only, everyone had given up on Herdaz. The little country had seemed close to collapse, and Dalinar’s armies had been licking their wounds from the Battle of Thaylen Field. Then reports had trickled in of a resistance in Herdaz fighting back. Each report sounded like the Herdazians were nearly finished, and so resources were allocated to more winnable fronts. But each time, Herdaz stood strong, relentlessly harrying the enemy. Odium’s armies lost tens of thousands fighting in that small, strategically unimportant country.

  Though Herdaz had eventually fallen, the blood toll exacted on the enemy had been remarkably high.

  “Which of you is the Mink?” Kaladin asked, glowing Stormlight puffing out of his mouth as he spoke.

  The tall fellow gestured to the rear of the shed, to where a shadowed figure—shrouded in his cloak—had settled against the wall. Kaladin couldn’t make out his face beneath the hood.

  “I’m honored to meet the legend himself,” Kaladin said, stepping forward. “I’ve been told to extend you an official invitation to join the coalition army. We will do what we can for your country, but for now Brightlord Dalinar Kholin and Queen Jasnah Kholin are both very eager to meet the man who held against the enemy for so long.”

  The Mink didn’t move. He remained seated, his head bowed. Finally, one of his men moved over and shook the man’s shoulder.

  The cloak shifted and the body fell limp, exposing rolls of tarps assembled to appear like the figure of a person wearing the cloak. A dummy? What in the Stormfather’s unknown name?

  The soldiers seemed equally surprised, though the tall one merely sighed and gave
Kaladin a resigned look. “He does this sometimes, Brightlord.”

  “Does what? Turns into rags?”

  “He sneaks away,” the man explained. “He likes to see if he can do it without us noticing.”

  One of the other men cursed in Herdazian as he searched behind nearby barrels, eventually uncovering one of the loose boards. It opened into the shadowed alley between buildings.

  “We’ll find him in town somewhere, I’m sure,” the man told Kaladin. “Give us a few minutes to hunt for him.”

  “One would think he’d avoid playing games,” Kaladin said, “considering the dangerous situation.”

  “You … don’t know our gancho, Brightlord,” the man said. “This is exactly how he treats dangerous situations.”

  “He is no like being caught,” another said, shaking his head. “When in danger, he is to vanish.”

  “And abandon his men?” Kaladin asked, aghast.

  “You don’t survive like the Mink has without learning to wiggle out of situations others could never escape,” the tall Herdazian said. “If we were in danger, he’d try to come back for us. If he couldn’t … well, we’re his guards. Any of us would give our lives so he could escape.”

  “Is no like he needs us a lot,” another said. “The Ganlos Riera herself couldn’t catch him!”

  “Well, locate him if you can, and pass along my message,” Kaladin said. “We need to be out of this town quickly. I have reason to suspect a larger force of Fused is on its way here.”

  The Herdazians saluted him, though that wasn’t necessary for a member of another country’s military. People did odd things around Radiants.

  “Well done!” Syl said as he left the shed. “You barely scowled when they called you Brightlord.”

  “I am what I am,” Kaladin said, hiking out past his mother, who was now conferring with Laral and Brightlord Roshone. Kaladin spotted his father organizing some of Roshone’s former soldiers, who were trying to corral the refugees. Judging by the smaller line, a few seemed to have run off.

  Lirin spotted Kaladin approaching, and his lips tightened. The surgeon was a shorter man—Kaladin got his height from his mother. Lirin stepped away from the group and wiped the sweat from his face and balding head with a handkerchief, then took off his spectacles, polishing them quietly as Kaladin stepped up.

  “Father,” Kaladin said.

  “I had hoped,” Lirin said softly, “that our message would inspire you to approach covertly.”

  “I tried,” Kaladin said. “But the Fused have set up posts all through the land, watching the sky. The fog unexpectedly cleared up near one of those, and I was exposed. I’d hoped they hadn’t seen me, but…” He shrugged.

  Lirin put his spectacles back on, and both men knew what he was thinking. Lirin had warned that if Kaladin kept visiting, he would bring death to Hearthstone. Today it had come to the singer who had attacked him. Lirin had covered the corpse with a shroud.

  “I’m a soldier, Father,” Kaladin said. “I fight for these people.”

  “Any idiot with hands can hold a spear. I trained your hands for something better.”

  “I—” Kaladin stopped himself and took a long, deep breath. He heard a distinctive thumping sound in the distance. Finally.

  “We can discuss this later,” Kaladin said. “Go pack up any supplies you want to take. Quickly. We need to leave.”

  “Leave?” Lirin said. “I’ve told you already. The townspeople need me. I’m not going to abandon them.”

  “I know,” Kaladin said, waving toward the sky.

  “What are you…” Lirin trailed off as an enormous dark shadow emerged from the fog, a vehicle of incredible size flying slowly through the air. To either side, two dozen Windrunners—glowing bright with Stormlight—soared in formation.

  It wasn’t a ship so much as a gigantic floating platform. Awespren formed around Lirin anyway, like rings of blue smoke. Well, the first time Kaladin had seen Navani make the platform float, he’d gaped too.

  It passed in front of the sun, casting Kaladin and his father into shade.

  “You’ve made it quite clear,” Kaladin said, “that you and Mother won’t abandon the people of Hearthstone. So I arranged to bring them with us.”

  The final step in capturing spren is the most tricky, as you must remove the Stormlight from the gemstone. The specific techniques employed by each artifabrian guild are closely guarded secrets, entrusted only to their most senior members.

  The easiest method would be to use a larkin—a type of cremling that feasts on Stormlight. That would be wonderful and convenient if the creatures weren’t now almost entirely extinct. The wars in Aimia were in part over these seemingly innocent little creatures.

  —Lecture on fabrial mechanics presented by Navani Kholin to the coalition of monarchs, Urithiru, Jesevan, 1175

  Navani Kholin leaned out over the side of the flying platform and looked down hundreds of feet to the stones below. It said a lot about where she’d been living that she kept being surprised by how fertile Alethkar was. Rockbuds clustered on every surface, except where they’d been cleared for living or farming. Entire fields of wild grasses waved green in the wind, bobbing with lifespren. Trees formed bulwarks against the storms, with interlocking branches as tight as a phalanx.

  Here—as opposed to the Shattered Plains or Urithiru—things grew. It was the home of her childhood, but now it felt almost alien.

  “I do wish you wouldn’t crane like that, Brightness,” said Velat. The middle-aged scholar wore tight braids against the wind. She did try to mother everyone around her.

  Navani, naturally, leaned out farther. One would think that during more than fifty years of life, she would have found a way to rise above her natural impetuous streak. Instead she’d rather alarmingly found her way to enough power to simply do as she chose.

  Below, her flying platform made a satisfyingly geometric shadow on the stones. Townspeople clustered together, gawking upward as Kaladin and the other Windrunners backed them off to provide room for the landing.

  “Brightlord Dalinar,” Velat said, “can you talk sense into her, please? She’s going to drop right off, I swear it.”

  “It’s Navani’s ship, Velat,” Dalinar said from behind, his voice as steady as steel, as immutable as mathematics. She loved his voice. “I think she’d have me thrown off if I tried to prevent her from enjoying this moment.”

  “Can’t she enjoy it from the center of the platform? Perhaps nicely tethered to the deck? With two ropes?”

  Navani grinned as the wind tugged at her loose hair. She held the rail with her freehand. “This area is clear of people now. Send the order—a steady descent to the ground.”

  She’d started this design using old chasm-spanning bridges as a model. After all, this wasn’t a warship, but a transport intended to move large groups of people. The end construction was little more than a large wooden rectangle: over a hundred feet long, sixty feet wide, and around forty feet thick to support three decks.

  They had built high walls and a roof on the rear portion of the upper deck. The front third was exposed to the air, with a railing around the sides. For most of the trip, Navani’s engineers had maintained their command post in the sheltered portion. But with the need for delicate maneuvers today, they’d moved the tables out and bolted them to the deck in the right front corner of the platform.

  Right front, she thought. Should we be using nautical terms instead? But this isn’t the ocean. We’re flying.

  Flying. It had worked. Not just in maneuvers and tests on the Shattered Plains, but on a real mission, flying hundreds of miles.

  Behind her, over a dozen ardent engineers tended the open-air command station. Ka—a scribe from one of the Windrunner squads—sent the order to Urithiru via spanreed. When in motion, they couldn’t write full instructions—spanreeds had trouble with that. But they could send flashes of light that could be interpreted.

  In Urithiru, another group of engineers worked t
he complex mechanisms that kept this ship in the air. In fact, it used the very same technology that powered spanreeds. When one of them moved, the other moved in concert with it. Well, halves of a gemstone could also be paired so that when one was lowered, the other half—no matter where it was—would rise into the air.

  Force was transferred: if the distant half was underneath something heavy, you’d have trouble lowering yours. Unfortunately, there was some additional decay; the farther apart the two halves were, the more resistance you felt in moving them. But if you could move a pen, why not a guard tower? Why not a carriage? Why not an entire ship?

  So it was that hundreds of men and chulls worked a system of pulleys connected to a wide lattice of gemstones at Urithiru. When they let their lattice down along the side of the plateau outside the tower, Navani’s ship rose up into the sky.

  Another lattice, secured on the Shattered Plains and connected to chulls, could then be used to make the ship move forward or backward. The real advancement had come as they’d learned to use aluminum to isolate motion along a plane, and even change the vectors of force. The end result was chulls that could pull for a while, then be turned around—the gemstones temporarily disjoined—to march back the other direction, as all the while the airship continued in a straight line.

  Alternating between those two lattices—one to control altitude and a second to control horizontal movement—let Navani’s ship soar.

  Her ship. Her ship. She wished she could share it with Elhokar. Though most people remembered her son only as the man who had struggled to replace Gavilar as king, she’d known him as the curious, inquisitive boy who had adored her drawings. He had always enjoyed heights. How he’d have loved the view from this deck …

  Work on this vessel had helped sustain her during the months following his death. Of course, it hadn’t been her math that had finally made this ship a reality. They’d learned about the interactions between conjoined fabrials and aluminum during the expedition to Aimia. This wasn’t the direct result of her engineering schematics either; the ship was a fair bit more mundane in appearance than her original fanciful designs.