Oathbringer Read online

  “Old sergeant’s trick,” Kaladin whispered, turning and leaving the kitchens. The guard followed behind, barking an order that Kaladin ignored.

  Each step through this manor was like walking through a memory. There was the dining nook where he’d confronted Rillir and Laral on the night he’d discovered his father was a thief. This hallway beyond, hung with portraits of people he didn’t know, had been where he’d played as a child. Roshone hadn’t changed the portraits.

  He’d have to talk to his parents about Tien. It was why he hadn’t tried to contact them after being freed from slavery. Could he face them? Storms, he hoped they lived. But could he face them?

  He heard a moan. Soft, underneath the sounds of people talking, still he picked it out.

  “There were wounded?” he asked, turning on his guard.

  “Yeah,” the man said. “But—”

  Kaladin ignored him and strode down the hallway, Syl flying along beside his head. Kaladin shoved past people, following the sounds of the tormented, and eventually stumbled into the doorway of the parlor. It had been transformed into a surgeon’s triage room, with mats laid out on the floor bearing wounded.

  A figure knelt by one of the pallets carefully splinting a broken arm. Kaladin had known as soon as he’d heard those moans of pain where he’d find his father.

  Lirin glanced at him. Storms. Kaladin’s father looked weathered, bags underneath his dark brown eyes. The hair was greyer than Kaladin remembered, the face gaunter. But he was the same. Balding, diminutive, thin, bespectacled … and amazing.

  “What’s this?” Lirin asked, turning back to his work. “Did the highprince’s house send soldiers already? That was faster than expected. How many did you bring? We can certainly use…” Lirin hesitated, then looked back at Kaladin.

  Then his eyes opened wide.

  “Hello, Father,” Kaladin said.

  The guardsman finally caught up, shouldering past gawking townspeople and waving his mace toward Kaladin like a baton. Kaladin sidestepped absently, then pushed the man so he stumbled farther down the hallway.

  “It is you,” Lirin said. Then he scrambled over and caught Kaladin in an embrace. “Oh, Kal. My boy. My little boy. Hesina! HESINA!”

  Kaladin’s mother appeared in the doorway a moment later, bearing a tray of freshly boiled bandages. She probably thought that Lirin needed her help with a patient. Taller than her husband by a few fingers, she wore her hair tied back with a kerchief just as Kaladin remembered.

  She raised her gloved safehand to her lips, gaping, and the tray slipped down in her other hand, tumbling bandages to the floor. Shockspren, like pale yellow triangles breaking and re-forming, appeared behind her. She dropped the tray and reached to the side of Kaladin’s face with a soft touch. Syl zipped around in a ribbon of light, laughing.

  Kaladin couldn’t laugh. Not until it had been said. He took a deep breath, choked on it the first time, then finally forced it out.

  “I’m sorry, Father, Mother,” he whispered. “I joined the army to protect him, but I could barely protect myself.” He found himself shaking, and he put his back to the wall, letting himself sink down until he was seated. “I let Tien die. I’m sorry. It’s my fault.…”

  “Oh, Kaladin,” Hesina said, kneeling down beside him and pulling him into an embrace. “We got your letter, but over a year ago they told us you had died as well.”

  “I should have saved him,” Kaladin whispered.

  “You shouldn’t have gone in the first place,” Lirin said. “But now … Almighty, now you’re back.” Lirin stood up, tears leaking down his cheeks. “My son! My son is alive!”

  * * *

  A short time later, Kaladin sat among the wounded, holding a cup of warm soup in his hands. He hadn’t had a hot meal since … when?

  “That’s obviously a slave’s brand, Lirin,” a soldier said, speaking with Kaladin’s father near the doorway into the room. “Sas glyph, so it happened here in the princedom. They probably told you he’d died to save you the shame of the truth. And then the shash brand—you don’t get that for mere insubordination.”

  Kaladin sipped his soup. His mother knelt beside him, one hand on his shoulder, protective. The soup tasted of home. Boiled vegetable broth with steamed lavis stirred in, spiced as his mother always made it.

  He hadn’t spoken much in the half hour since he’d arrived. For now, he just wanted to be here with them.

  Strangely, his memories had turned fond. He remembered Tien laughing, brightening the dreariest of days. He remembered hours spent studying medicine with his father, or cleaning with his mother.

  Syl hovered before his mother, still wearing her little havah, invisible to everyone but Kaladin. The spren had a perplexed look on her face.

  “The wrong-way highstorm did break many of the town’s buildings,” Hesina explained to him softly. “But our home still stands. We had to dedicate your spot to something else, Kal, but we can make space for you.”

  Kaladin glanced at the soldier. Captain of Roshone’s guard; Kaladin thought he remembered the man. He almost seemed too pretty to be a soldier, but then, he was lighteyed.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Hesina said. “We’ll deal with it, whatever the … trouble is. With all these wounded pouring in from the villages around, Roshone will need your father’s skill. Roshone won’t go making a storm and risk Lirin’s discontent—and you won’t be taken from us again.”

  She talked to him as if he were a child.

  What a surreal sensation, being back here, being treated like he was still the boy who had left for war five years ago. Three men bearing their son’s name had lived and died in that time. The soldier who had been forged in Amaram’s army. The slave, so bitter and angry. His parents had never met Captain Kaladin, bodyguard to the most powerful man in Roshar.

  And then … there was the next man, the man he was becoming. A man who owned the skies and spoke ancient oaths. Five years had passed. And four lifetimes.

  “He’s a runaway slave,” the guard captain hissed. “We can’t just ignore that, surgeon. He probably stole the uniform. And even if for some reason he was allowed to hold a spear despite his brands, he’s a deserter. Look at those haunted eyes and tell me you don’t see a man who has done terrible things.”

  “He’s my son,” Lirin said. “I’ll buy his writ of slavery. You’re not taking him. Tell Roshone he can either let this slide, or he can go without a surgeon. Unless he assumes Mara can take over after just a few years of apprenticeship.”

  Did they think they were speaking softly enough that he couldn’t hear?

  Look at the wounded people in this room, Kaladin. You’re missing something.

  The wounded … they displayed fractures. Concussions. Very few lacerations. This was not the aftermath of a battle, but of a natural disaster. So what had happened to the Voidbringers? Who had fought them off?

  “Things have gotten better since you left,” Hesina promised Kaladin, squeezing his shoulder. “Roshone isn’t as bad as he once was. I think he feels guilty. We can rebuild, be a family again. And there’s something else you need to know about. We—”

  “Hesina,” Lirin said, throwing his hands into the air.

  “Yes?”

  “Write a letter to the highprince’s administrators,” Lirin said. “Explain the situation; see if we can get a forbearance, or at least an explanation.” He looked to the soldier. “Will that satisfy your master? We can wait upon a higher authority, and in the meantime I can have my son back.”

  “We’ll see,” the soldier said, folding his arms. “I’m not sure how much I like the idea of a shash-branded man running around my town.”

  Hesina rose to join Lirin. The two had a hushed exchange as the guard settled back against the doorway, pointedly keeping an eye on Kaladin. Did he know how little like a soldier he looked? He didn’t walk like a man acquainted with battle. He stepped too hard, and stood with his knees too straight. There were no dents in his breastplat
e, and his sword’s scabbard knocked against things as he turned.

  Kaladin sipped his soup. Was it any wonder that his parents still thought of him as a child? He’d come in looking ragged and abandoned, then had started sobbing about Tien’s death. Being home brought out the child in him, it seemed.

  Perhaps it was time, for once, to stop letting the rain dictate his mood. He couldn’t banish the seed of darkness inside him, but Stormfather, he didn’t need to let it rule him either.

  Syl walked up to him in the air. “They’re like I remember them.”

  “Remember them?” Kaladin whispered. “Syl, you never knew me when I lived here.”

  “That’s true,” she said.

  “So how can you remember them?” Kaladin said, frowning.

  “Because I do,” Syl said, flitting around him. “Everyone is connected, Kaladin. Everything is connected. I didn’t know you then, but the winds did, and I am of the winds.”

  “You’re honorspren.”

  “The winds are of Honor,” she said, laughing as if he’d said something ridiculous. “We are kindred blood.”

  “You don’t have blood.”

  “And you don’t have an imagination, it appears.” She landed in the air before him and became a young woman. “Besides, there was … another voice. Pure, with a song like tapped crystal, distant yet demanding…” She smiled, and zipped away.

  Well, the world might have been upended, but Syl was as impenetrable as ever. Kaladin set aside his soup and climbed to his feet. He stretched to one side, then the other, feeling satisfying pops from his joints. He walked toward his parents. Storms, but everyone in this town seemed smaller than he remembered. He hadn’t been that much shorter when he’d left Hearthstone, had he?

  A figure stood right outside the room, speaking with the guard with the rusty helmet. Roshone wore a lighteyes’ coat that was several seasons out of fashion—Adolin would have shaken his head at that. The citylord wore a wooden foot on his right leg, and had lost weight since Kaladin had last seen him. His skin drooped on his figure like melted wax, bunching up at his neck.

  That said, Roshone had the same imperious bearing, the same angry expression—his light yellow eyes seemed to blame everyone and everything in this insignificant town for his banishment. He’d once lived in Kholinar, but had been involved in the deaths of some citizens—Moash’s grandparents—and had been shipped out here as punishment.

  He turned toward Kaladin, lit by candles on the walls. “So, you’re alive. They didn’t teach you to keep yourself in the army, I see. Let me have a look at those brands of yours.” He reached over and held up the hair in front of Kaladin’s forehead. “Storms, boy. What did you do? Hit a lighteyes?”

  “Yes,” Kaladin said.

  Then punched him.

  He bashed Roshone right in the face. A solid hit, exactly like Hav had taught him. Thumb outside of his fist, he connected with the first two knuckles of his hand across Roshone’s cheekbone, then followed through to slide across the front of the face. Rarely had he delivered such a perfect punch. It barely even hurt his fist.

  Roshone dropped like a felled tree.

  “That,” Kaladin said, “was for my friend Moash.”

  I did not die.

  I experienced something worse.

  —From Oathbringer, preface

  “Kaladin!” Lirin exclaimed, grabbing him by the shoulder. “What are you doing, son?”

  Roshone sputtered on the ground, his nose bleeding. “Guards, take him! You hear me!”

  Syl landed on Kaladin’s shoulder, hands on her hips. She tapped her foot. “He probably deserved that.”

  The darkeyed guard scrambled to help Roshone to his feet while the captain leveled his sword at Kaladin. A third joined them, running in from another room.

  Kaladin stepped one foot back, falling into a guard position.

  “Well?” Roshone demanded, holding his handkerchief to his nose. “Strike him down!” Angerspren boiled up from the ground in pools.

  “Please, no,” Kaladin’s mother cried, clinging to Lirin. “He’s just distraught. He—”

  Kaladin held out a hand toward her, palm forward, in a quieting motion. “It’s all right, Mother. That was only payment for a little unsettled debt between Roshone and me.”

  He met the eyes of the guards, each in turn, and they shuffled uncertainly. Roshone blustered. Unexpectedly, Kaladin felt in complete control of the situation—and … well, more than a little embarrassed.

  Suddenly, the perspective of it crashed down on him. Since leaving Hearthstone, Kaladin had met true evil, and Roshone hardly compared. Hadn’t he sworn to protect even those he didn’t like? Wasn’t the whole point of what he had learned to keep him from doing things like this? He glanced at Syl, and she nodded to him.

  Do better.

  For a short time, it had been nice to just be Kal again. Fortunately, he wasn’t that youth any longer. He was a new person—and for the first time in a long, long while, he was happy with that person.

  “Stand down, men,” Kaladin said to the soldiers. “I promise not to hit your brightlord again. I apologize for that; I was momentarily distracted by our previous history. Something he and I both need to forget. Tell me, what happened to the parshmen? Did they not attack the town?”

  The soldiers shifted, glancing toward Roshone.

  “I said stand down,” Kaladin snapped. “For storm’s sake, man. You’re holding that sword like you’re going to chop a stumpweight. And you? Rust on your cap? I know Amaram recruited most of the able-bodied men in the region, but I’ve seen messenger boys with more battle poise than you.”

  The soldiers looked to one another. Then, red-faced, the lighteyed one slid his sword back into its sheath.

  “What are you doing?” Roshone demanded. “Attack him!”

  “Brightlord, sir,” the man said, eyes down. “I may not be the best soldier around, but … well, sir, trust me on this. We should just pretend that punch never happened.” The other two soldiers nodded their heads in agreement.

  Roshone sized Kaladin up, dabbing at his nose, which wasn’t bleeding badly. “So, they did make something out of you in the army, did they?”

  “You have no idea. We need to talk. Is there a room here that isn’t clogged full of people?”

  “Kal,” Lirin said. “You’re speaking foolishness. Don’t give orders to Brightlord Roshone!”

  Kaladin pushed past the soldiers and Roshone, walking farther down the hallway. “Well?” he barked. “Empty room?”

  “Up the stairs, sir,” one of the soldiers said. “Library is empty.”

  “Excellent.” Kaladin smiled to himself, noting the “sir.” “Join me up there, men.”

  Kaladin started toward the stairs. Unfortunately, an authoritative bearing could only take a man so far. Nobody followed, not even his parents.

  “I gave you people an order,” Kaladin said. “I’m not fond of repeating myself.”

  “And what,” Roshone said, “makes you think you can order anyone around, boy?”

  Kaladin turned back and swept his arm before him, summoning Syl. A bright, dew-covered Shardblade formed from mist into his hand. He spun the Blade and rammed her down into the floor in one smooth motion. He held the grip, feeling his eyes bleed to blue.

  Everything grew still. Townspeople froze, gaping. Roshone’s eyes bulged. Curiously, Kaladin’s father just lowered his head and closed his eyes.

  “Any other questions?” Kaladin asked.

  * * *

  “They were gone when we went back to check on them, um, Brightlord,” said Aric, the short guard with the rusty helm. “We’d locked the door, but the side was ripped clean open.”

  “They didn’t attack a soul?” Kaladin asked.

  “No, Brightlord.”

  Kaladin paced through the library. The room was small, but neatly organized with rows of shelves and a fine reading stand. Each book was exactly flush with the others; either the maids were extremely met
iculous, or the books were not often moved. Syl perched on one shelf, her back to a book, swinging her legs girlishly over the edge.

  Roshone sat on one side of the room, periodically pushing both hands along his flushed cheeks toward the back of his head in an odd nervous gesture. His nose had stopped bleeding, though he’d have a nice bruise. That was a fraction of the punishment the man deserved, but Kaladin found he had no passion for abusing Roshone. He had to be better than that.

  “What did the parshmen look like?” Kaladin asked of the guardsmen. “They changed, following the unusual storm?”

  “Sure did,” Aric said. “I peeked when I heard them break out, after the storm passed. They looked like Voidbringers, I tell you, with big bony bits jutting from their skin.”

  “They were taller,” the guard captain added. “Taller than me, easily as tall as you are, Brightlord. With legs thick as stumpweights and hands that could have strangled a whitespine, I tell you.”

  “Then why didn’t they attack?” Kaladin asked. They could have easily taken the manor; instead, they’d run off into the night. It spoke of a more disturbing goal. Perhaps Hearthstone was too small to be bothered with.

  “I don’t suppose you tracked their direction?” Kaladin said, looking toward the guards, then Roshone.

  “Um, no, Brightlord,” the captain said. “Honestly, we were just worried about surviving.”

  “Will you tell the king?” Aric asked. “That storm ripped away four of our silos. We’ll be starving afore too long, with all these refugees and no food. When the highstorms start coming again, we won’t have half as many homes as we need.”

  “I’ll tell Elhokar.” But Stormfather, the rest of the kingdom would be just as bad.

  He needed to focus on the Voidbringers. He couldn’t report back to Dalinar until he had the Stormlight to fly home, so for now it seemed his most useful task would be to find out where the enemy was gathering, if he could. What were the Voidbringers planning? Kaladin hadn’t experienced their strange powers himself, though he’d heard reports of the Battle of Narak. Parshendi with glowing eyes and lightning at their command, ruthless and terrible.