“The world is about to change,” Dalinar said. He took a deep breath. “You give me hope, true hope, that we can change it in the right way.”
The approaching scouts saluted, and Bridge Four parted to allow their leader access to Dalinar. He was a portly man with a brown hat that reminded her of the one Veil wore, except it was wide-brimmed. The scout wore soldier’s trousers, but a leather jacket over them, and certainly didn’t seem in fighting shape.
“Bashin,” Dalinar said.
“Parshendi on that plateau next to us, sir,” Bashin said, pointing. “The Parshendi stumbled over one of my scouting teams. The lads raised the alarm quickly, but we lost all three men.”
Dalinar cursed softly, then turned toward Highlord Teleb, who had approached from the other direction, wearing his Shardplate, which he’d painted silver. “Wake the army, Teleb. Everyone on alert.”
“Yes, Brightlord,” Teleb said.
“Brightlord Dalinar,” Bashin said, “the lads took down one of those shellheads before being killed themselves. Sir . . . you need to see this. Something has changed.”
Shallan shivered, feeling sodden and cold. She’d brought clothing that would last well in the rain, of course, but that didn’t mean standing out here was comfortable. Though they wore coats, nobody else seemed to pay much heed. Likely, they took it for granted that during the Weeping, you were going to get soaked. That was something else for which her sheltered childhood had not prepared her.
Dalinar did not object as Shallan joined him in walking toward a nearby bridge—one of the more mobile ones run by Kaladin’s bridge teams, who wore raincoats and front-brimmed caps. A group of soldiers on the other side of the bridge dragged something across, pushing a little wave of water before it. A Parshendi corpse.
Shallan had only seen the one that she’d found with Kaladin in the chasm. She’d done a sketch of that earlier, and this one looked very different. It had hair—well, a kind of hair. Leaning down, she found that it was thicker than human hair, and felt too . . . slick. Was that the right word? The face was marbled, like that of a parshman, this one with prominent red streaks through the black. The body was lean and strong, and something seemed to grow under the skin of the exposed arms, peeking out. Shallan prodded at it, and found it hard and ridged, like a crab shell. In fact, the face was crusted with a kind of thin, bumpy carapace just above the cheeks and running back around the sides of the head.
“This isn’t a type we’ve seen before, sir,” Bashin said to Dalinar. “Look at those ridges. Sir . . . some of the lads that were killed, they had burn marks on them. In the rain. Shakiest thing I’ve ever seen . . .”
Shallan looked up at them. “What do you mean by a ‘type,’ Bashin?”
“Some Parshendi have hair,” the man said—he was a darkeyes, but clearly well respected, though he didn’t bear an obvious military rank. “Others have carapace. The ones we met with King Gavilar long ago, they were . . . shaped different from the ones we fight.”
“They have specialized subspecies?” Shallan said. Some cremlings were like that, working in a hive, with different specializations and varied forms.
“We might be depleting their numbers,” Dalinar said to Bashin. “Forcing them to send out their equivalent of lighteyes to fight.”
“And the burns, Dalinar?” Bashin said, scratching his head under his hat.
Shallan reached out to check the Parshendi’s eye color. Did they have lighteyes and dark, like humans? She lifted the eyelid.
The eye beneath was completely red.
She screamed, jumping back, pulling her hand up to her chest. The soldiers cursed, looking around, and Dalinar’s Shardblade appeared in his hand a few seconds later.
“Red eyes,” Shallan whispered. “It’s happening.”
“The red eyes are just a legend.”
“Jasnah had an entire notebook of references to this, Brightlord,” Shallan said, shivering. “The Voidbringers are here. Time is short.”
“Throw the body into the chasm,” Dalinar said to his men. “I doubt we’d be able to easily burn it. Keep everyone alert. Be prepared for an attack tonight. They—”
“Brightlord!”
Shallan spun as a hulking armored figure came up, rainwater trailing down his silvery Plate. “We’ve found another one, sir,” Teleb said.
“Dead?” Dalinar said.
“No, sir,” the Shardbearer said, pointing. “He walked right up to us, sir. He’s sitting on a rock over there.”
Dalinar looked to Shallan, who shrugged. Dalinar started off in the direction Teleb had pointed.
“Sir?” Teleb said, voice resonating inside his helm. “Should you . . .”
Dalinar ignored the warning, and Shallan hastened after him, collecting Vathah and his two guards.
“Should you head back?” Vathah said under his breath to her. Storms, but that face of his looked dangerous in the dim light, even if his voice was respectful. She couldn’t help but still see him as the man who had almost killed her, back in the Unclaimed Hills.
“I will be safe,” Shallan replied softly.
“You might have a Blade, Brightness, but you could still die to an arrow in the back.”
“Unlikely, in this rain,” she said.
He fell in behind her, offering no further objection. He was trying to do the job she had assigned him. Unfortunately, she was discovering that she didn’t much like being guarded.
They found the Parshendi after a hike through the rain. The rock he sat on was about as high as a man was tall. He seemed to have no weapons, and about a hundred Alethi soldiers stood around the base of his seat, spears pointed upward. Shallan couldn’t make out much more, as he sat across the chasm from them, a portable bridge in place to his plateau.
“Has he said anything?” Dalinar asked softly as Teleb stepped up.
“Not that I know of,” the Shardbearer said. “He just sits there.”
Shallan peered across the chasm toward the solitary Parshendi man. He stood up, and shaded his eyes against the rain. The soldiers below shuffled, spears rising into more threatening positions.
“Skar?” the Parshendi’s voice called. “Skar, is that you? And Leyten?”
Nearby, one of Dalinar’s bridgeman guards cursed. He ran across the bridge, and several other bridgemen followed.
They returned a moment later. Shallan crowded in closely to hear what their leader whispered to Dalinar.
“It’s him, sir,” Skar said. “He’s changed, but storm me for a fool if I’m wrong—it’s him. Shen. He ran bridges with us for months, then vanished. Now he’s here. He says he wants to surrender to you.”
Q: For what essential must we strive? A: The essential of preservation, to shelter a seed of humanity through the coming storm. Q: What cost must we bear? A: The cost is irrelevant. Mankind must survive. Our burden is that of the species, and all other considerations are but dust by comparison.
—From the Diagram, Catechism of the Back of the Flowered Painting: paragraph 1
Dalinar stood with hands behind his back, waiting in his command tent and listening to the patter of rain on the cloth. The floor of the tent was wet. You couldn’t avoid that, in the Weeping. He knew that from miserable experience—he’d been out on more than one military excursion during this time of year.
It was the day after they’d discovered the Parshendi on the Plains—both the dead one and the one the bridgemen called Shen, or Rlain, as he had said his name was. Dalinar himself had allowed the man to be armed.
Shallan claimed that all parshmen were Voidbringers in embryo. He had ample reason to believe her word, considering what she’d shown him. But what was he to do? The Radiants had returned, the Parshendi had manifested red eyes. Dalinar felt as if he were trying to stop a dam from breaking, all the while not knowing where the leaks were actually coming from.
The tent flaps parted and Adolin ducked in, escorting Navani. She hung her stormcoat on the rack beside the flap, and Adolin grabbed a towel and began drying his hair and face.
Adolin was betrothed to a member of the Knights Radiant. She says she’s not one yet, Dalinar reminded himself. That made sense. One could be a trained spearman without being a soldier. One implied skill, the other a position.
“They are bringing the Parshendi man?” Dalinar asked.
“Yes,” Navani said, sitting down in one of the room’s chairs. Adolin didn’t take his seat, but found a pitcher of filtered rainwater and poured himself a cup. He tapped the side of the tin cup as he drank.
They were restless, all of them, following the discovery of red-eyed Parshendi. After no attack had come that night, Dalinar had pushed the three armies into another day of marching.
Slowly, they approached the middle of the Plains, at least as Shallan’s projections indicated. They were already well beyond the regions that scouts had explored. Now, they had to rely on the young woman’s maps.
The flaps opened again, and Teleb marched in with the prisoner. Dalinar had put the highlord and his personal guard in charge of this “Rlain,” as he didn’t like how defensive the bridgemen were about him. He did invite their lieutenants—Skar and the Horneater cook they called Rock—to come to the interrogation, and those two entered after Teleb and his men. General Khal and Renarin were in another tent with Aladar and Roion, going over tactics for when they approached the Parshendi encampment.
Navani sat up, leaning forward, narrowing her eyes at the prisoner. Shallan had wanted to attend, but Dalinar had promised to have everything written down for her. The Stormfather had given her some sense, fortunately, and she hadn’t insisted. Having too many of them near this spy felt dangerous to Dalinar.
He had a vague recollection of the parshman guard who had occasionally joined the men of Bridge Four. Parshmen were practically invisible, but once this one had started carrying a spear, he had become instantly noticeable. Not that there had been anything else distinctive about him—same squat parshman body, marbled skin, dull eyes.
This creature before him was nothing like that. He was a full Parshendi warrior, complete with orange-red skullplate and armored carapace at the chest, thighs, and outer arms. He was as tall as an Alethi, and more muscular.
Though he carried no weapon, the guards still treated him as if he were the most dangerous thing on this plateau—and perhaps he was just that. As he stepped up, he saluted Dalinar, hand to chest. Like the other bridgemen. He bore their tattoo on his forehead, reaching up and blending into his skullplate.
“Sit,” Dalinar ordered, nodding toward a stool at the center of the room.
Rlain obeyed.
“I’m told,” Dalinar said, “that you refuse to tell us anything about the Parshendi plans.”
“I don’t know them,” Rlain said. He had the rhythmic intonations common to the Parshendi, but he spoke Alethi very well. Better than any parshman Dalinar had heard.
“You were a spy,” Dalinar said, hands clasped behind his back, trying to loom over the Parshendi—but staying far enough away that the man could not grab him without Adolin getting in the way first.
“Yes, sir.”
“For how long?”
“About three years,” Rlain said. “In various warcamps.”
Nearby, Teleb—faceplate up—turned and raised an eyebrow at Dalinar.
“You answer me when I ask,” Dalinar said. “But not the others. Why?”
“You’re my commanding officer,” Rlain said.
“You’re Parshendi.”
“I . . .” The man looked down at the ground, shoulders bowing. He raised a hand to his head, feeling at the ridge of skin just where his skullplate ended. “Something is very wrong, sir. Eshonai’s voice . . . on the plateau that day, when she came to meet with Prince Adolin . . .”
“Eshonai,” Dalinar prompted. “The Parshendi Shardbearer?” Nearby, Navani scribbled on a pad of paper, writing down each word spoken.
“Yes. She was my commander. But now . . .” He looked up, and despite the alien skin and the strange way of speaking, Dalinar recognized grief in this man’s face. Terrible grief. “Sir, I have reason to believe that everyone I know . . . everyone I loved . . . has been destroyed, monsters left in their place. The listeners, the Parshendi, may be no more. I have nothing left . . .”
“Yes you do,” Skar said from outside the ring of guards. “You’re Bridge Four.”
Rlain looked at him. “I’m a traitor.”
“Ha!” Rock said. “Is little problem. Can be fixed.”
Dalinar gestured to quiet the bridgemen. He glanced at Navani, who nodded for him to continue.
“Tell me,” Dalinar said, “how you hid among the parshmen.”
“I . . .”
“Soldier,” Dalinar barked. “That was an order.”
Rlain sat up. Amazingly, he seemed to want to obey—as if he needed something to lend him strength. “Sir,” Rlain said, “it’s just something my people can do. We choose a form based on what we need, the job required of us. Dullform, one of those forms, looks a lot like a parshman. Hiding among them is easy.”
“We account our parshmen with precision,” Navani said.
“Yes,” Rlain replied, “and we are noticed—but rarely questioned. Who questions when you find an extra sphere lying on the ground? It’s not something suspicious. It’s merely fortune.”
Dangerous territory, Dalinar thought, noticing the change in Rlain’s voice—the beat to which he was speaking. This man did not like how the parshmen were treated.
“You spoke of the Parshendi,” Dalinar said. “This has to do with the red eyes?”
Rlain nodded.
“What does it mean, soldier?” Dalinar asked.
“It means our gods have returned,” Rlain whispered.
“Who are your gods?”
“They are the souls of those ancient. Those who gave of themselves to destroy.” A different rhythm to his words this time, slow and reverent. He looked up at Dalinar. “They hate you and your kind, sir. This new form they have given my people . . . it is something terrible. It will bring something terrible.”
“Can you lead us to the Parshendi city?” Dalinar asked.
Rlain’s voice changed again. A different rhythm. “My people . . .”
“You said they are gone,” Dalinar said.
“They might be,” Rlain said. “I got close enough to see an army, tens of thousands. But surely they left some in other forms. The elderly? The young? Who watches our children?”
Dalinar stepped up to Rlain, waving back Adolin, who raised an anxious hand. He stooped down, laying an arm on the Parshendi man’s shoulder.
“Soldier,” Dalinar said, “if what you’re telling me is correct, then the most important thing you can do is lead us to your people. I will see that the noncombatants are protected, my word of honor on it. If something terrible is happening to your people, you need to help me stop it.”
“I . . .” Rlain took a deep breath. “Yes, sir,” he said to a different rhythm.
“Meet with Shallan Davar,” Dalinar said. “Describe the route to her, and get us a map. Teleb, you may release the prisoner into the custody of Bridge Four.”
The Oldblood Shardbearer nodded. As the group of them left, letting in a gust of rainy wind, Dalinar sighed and sat down beside Navani.
“You trust his word?”
“I don’t know,” Dalinar said. “But something did shake that man, Navani. Soundly.”
“He’s Parshendi,” she said. “You may be misreading his body language.”
Dalinar leaned forward, clasping his hands before him. “The countdown?” he asked.
“Three days away,” Navani said. “Three days before Lightday.”
So little time. “We hasten our pace,” he said.
Inward. Toward the center.
And destiny.