“She didn’t say if she could even open the pathway?” Dalinar asked as he stalked toward the command tent. Rain pummeled the ground around him, so dense that it was no longer possible to distinguish separate windblown sheets in the glare of Navani’s fabrial floodlights. It was long past when he should have found cover.
“No, Brightlord,” said Peet, the bridgeman. “But she was insistent that we couldn’t face what was coming at us. Two highstorms.”
“How could there be two?” Navani asked. She wore a stout cloak but was soaked clear through anyway, her umbrella having blown away long ago. Roion walked on Dalinar’s other side, his beard and mustache limp with water.
“I don’t know, Brightness,” Peet said. “But that’s what she said. A highstorm and something else. She called it an Everstorm. She expects they’re going to collide right here.”
Dalinar considered, frowning. The command tent was just ahead. Inside, he’d talk to his field commanders, and—
The command tent shuddered, then ripped free in a burst of wind. Trailing ropes and spikes, it blew right past Dalinar, almost close enough to touch. Dalinar cursed as the light of a dozen lanterns—once contained in the tent—spilled onto the plateau. Scribes and soldiers scrambled, trying to grab maps and sheets of paper as rain and wind claimed them.
“Storm it!” Dalinar said, turning his back to the powerful wind. “I need an update!”
“Sir!” Commander Cael, head of the field command, jogged over, his wife—Apara—following. Cael’s clothing was mostly dry, though that was quickly changing. “Aladar has won his plateau! Apara was just composing you a message.”
“Really?” Almighty bless that man. He’d done it.
“Yes, sir,” Cael said. He had to shout against the wind and rain. “Highprince Aladar said the singing Parshendi went right down, letting him slaughter them. The rest broke and fled. Even with Roion’s plateau fallen, we’ve won the day!”
“Doesn’t feel like it,” Dalinar shouted back. Just minutes ago, the rainfall had been light. The situation was degrading quickly. “Send orders immediately to Aladar, my son, and General Khal. There’s a plateau just to the southeast, perfectly round. I want all of our forces to move there to brace for an oncoming storm.”
“Yes, sir!” Cael said with a salute, fist to coat. With the other hand, however, he pointed over Dalinar’s shoulder. “Sir, have you seen that?”
He turned, looking back toward the west. Red light flashed, lightning coursing down in repeated blasts. The sky itself seemed to spasm as something built there, swirling in an enormous storm cell that was rapidly expanding outward.
“Almighty above . . .” Navani whispered.
Nearby another tent shook, its stakes coming undone. “Leave the tents, Cael,” Dalinar said. “Get everyone moving. Now. Navani, go to Brightness Shallan. Help her if you can.”
The officer leaped away and began shouting orders. Navani went with him, vanishing into the night, and a squad of soldiers chased after her to provide protection.
“And me, Dalinar?” Roion asked.
“We’ll need you to take command of your men and lead them to safety,” Dalinar said. “If such a thing can be found.”
That tent nearby shook again. Dalinar frowned. It didn’t seem to be moving along with the wind. And was that . . . shouting?
Adolin crashed through the tent’s fabric and skidded along the stones on his back, his armor leaking Light.
“Adolin!” Dalinar shouted, dashing to his son.
The young man was missing several segments of his armor. He looked up with gritted teeth, blood streaming from his nose. He said something, but it was lost to the wind. No helm, no left vambrace, the breastplate cracked just short of shattering, his right leg exposed. Who could have done such a thing to a Shardbearer?
Dalinar knew the answer immediately. He cradled Adolin, but looked up past the collapsed tent. It whipped in the storm and tore away as a man strode past it, glowing with spinning trails of Stormlight. Those foreign features, clothing all of white plastered to his body by the rain, a bowed, hairless head, shadows hiding eyes that glowed with Stormlight.
Gavilar’s murderer. Szeth, the Assassin in White.
* * *
Shallan worked through the inscriptions on the wall of the round chamber, frantically searching for some way to make the Oathgate function.
This had to work. It had to.
“This is all in the Dawnchant,” Inadara said. “I can’t make sense of any of it.”
The Knights Radiant are the key.
Shouldn’t Renarin’s sword have been enough? “What’s the pattern?” she whispered.
“Mmm . . .” Pattern said. “Perhaps you cannot see it because you are too close? Like the Shattered Plains?”
Shallan hesitated, then stood and walked to the center of the room, where the depictions of the Knights Radiant and their kingdoms met at a central point.
“Brightlord Renarin?” Inadara asked. “Is something wrong?” The young prince had fallen to his knees and was huddled next to the wall.
“I can see it,” Renarin answered feverishly, his voice echoing in the chamber. Ardents who had been studying part of the murals looked up at him. “I can see the future itself. Why? Why, Almighty? Why have you cursed me so?” He screamed a pleading cry, then stood and cracked something against the wall. A rock? Where had he gotten it? He gripped the thing in a gauntleted hand and began to write.
Shocked, Shallan took a step toward him. A sequence of numbers?
All zeros.
“It’s come,” Renarin whispered. “It’s come, it’s come, it’s come. We’re dead. We’re dead. We’re dead. . . .”
* * *
Dalinar knelt beneath a fracturing sky, holding his son. Rainwater washed the blood from Adolin’s face, and the boy blinked, dazed from his thrashing.
“Father . . .” Adolin said.
The assassin stepped forward quietly, with no apparent urgency. The man seemed to glide through the rain.
“When you take the princedom, son,” Dalinar said, “don’t let them corrupt you. Don’t play their games. Lead. Don’t follow.”
“Father!” Adolin said, his eyes focusing.
Dalinar stood up. Adolin lurched over onto all fours and tried to get to his feet, but the assassin had broken one of Adolin’s greaves, which made it almost impossible to rise. The boy slipped back into the pooling water.
“You’ve been taught well, Adolin,” Dalinar said, eyes on that assassin. “You’re a better man than I am. I was always a tyrant who had to learn to be something else. But you, you’ve been a good man from the start. Lead them, Adolin. Unite them.”
“Father!”
Dalinar walked away from Adolin. Nearby, scribes and attendants, captains and enlisted men all shouted and scrambled, trying to find order in the chaos of the storm. They followed Dalinar’s order to evacuate, and most had yet to notice the figure in white.
The assassin stopped ten paces from Dalinar. Roion, pale-faced and stammering, backed away from the two of them and began shouting. “Assassin! Assassin!”
The rainfall was actually letting up a little. That didn’t bring Dalinar much hope; not with that red lightning on the horizon. Was that . . . a stormwall building at the front of the new storm? His efforts to disrupt the Parshendi had fallen short.
The Shin man didn’t strike. He stood opposite Dalinar, motionless, expressionless, water dripping down his face. Unnaturally calm.
Dalinar was far taller and broader. This small man in white, with his pale skin, seemed almost a youth, a stripling by comparison.
Behind him, Roion’s cries were lost in the confusion. However, Bridge Four did run up to surround Dalinar, spears in hand. Dalinar waved them back. “There’s nothing you can do here, lads,” Dalinar said. “Let me face him.”
Ten heartbeats.
“Why?” Dalinar asked the assassin, who still stood there in the rain. “Why kill my brother? Did they explain the reasoning behind your orders?”
“I am Szeth-son-son-Vallano,” the man said. Harshly. “Truthless of Shinovar. I do as my masters demand, and I do not ask for explanations.”
Dalinar revised his assessment. This man was not calm. He seemed that way, but when he spoke, he did it through clenched teeth, his eyes open too wide.
He’s mad, Dalinar thought. Storms.
“You don’t have to do this,” Dalinar said. “If it’s about pay . . .”
“What I am owed,” the assassin shouted, rainwater spraying from his face and Stormlight rising from his lips, “will come to me eventually! Every bit of it. I will drown in it, stonewalker!”
Szeth put his hand to the side, Shardblade appearing. Then, with a curt, deprecatory motion—like he was merely trimming a bit of gristle from his meat—he strode forward and swung at Dalinar.
Dalinar caught the Blade with his own, which appeared in his hand as he raised it.
The assassin spared a glance for Dalinar’s weapon, then smiled, lips drawn thin, showing only a hint of teeth. That eager smile matched with haunted eyes was one of the most evil things Dalinar had ever seen.
“Thank you,” the assassin said, “for extending my agony by not dying easily.” He stepped back and burst afire with white light.
He came at Dalinar again, inhumanly quick.
* * *
Adolin cursed, shaking out of his daze. Storms, his head hurt. He’d smacked it something good when the assassin tossed him to the ground.
Father was fighting Szeth. Bless the man for listening to reason and bonding that madman’s Blade. Adolin gritted his teeth and struggled to get to his feet, something that was difficult with a broken greave. Though the rain was letting up, the sky remained dark. To the west, lightning plunged downward like red waterfalls, almost constant.
At the same time, wind gusted from the east. Something was building out there too, from the Origin. This was very bad.
Those things Father said to me . . .
Adolin stumbled, almost falling to the ground, but hands appeared to assist him. He glanced to the side to find those two bridgemen from before, Skar and Drehy, helping him to his feet.
“You two,” Adolin said, “are getting a storming raise. Help me get this armor off.” He frantically began removing sections of armor. The entire suit was so battered it was nearly useless.
Metal clanged nearby as Dalinar fought. If he could hold a little longer, Adolin would be able to help. He would not let that creature get the better of him again. Not again!
He spared a glance for what Dalinar was doing, and froze, hands on the straps for his breastplate.
His father . . . his father moved beautifully.
* * *
Dalinar did not fight for his life. His life hadn’t been his own for years.
He fought for Gavilar. He fought as he wished he had all those years ago, for the chance he had missed. In that moment between storms—when the rain stilled and the winds drew in their breaths to blow—he danced with the slayer of kings, and somehow held his own.
The assassin moved like a shadow. His step seemed too quick to be human. When he jumped, he soared into the air. He swung his Shardblade like flashes of lightning, and would occasionally stretch forward with his other hand, as if to grab Dalinar.
Recalling their previous encounter, Dalinar recognized that as the more dangerous of Szeth’s weapons. Each time, Dalinar managed to bring his Blade around and force the assassin away. The man attacked from different directions, but Dalinar didn’t think. Thoughts could get jumbled, the mind disoriented.
His instincts knew what to do.
Duck when Szeth leaped over Dalinar’s head. Step backward, avoiding a strike that should have severed his spine. Lash out, forcing the assassin away. Three quick steps backward, sword up wardingly, strike for the assassin’s palm as it tried to touch him.
It worked. For this brief time, he fought this creature. Bridge Four remained back, as he’d commanded. They’d only have interfered.
He survived.
But he did not win.
Finally, Dalinar twisted away from a strike but was unable to move quickly enough. The assassin rounded on him and thrust a fist into his side.
Dalinar’s ribs cracked. He grunted, stumbling, almost falling. He swung his Blade toward Szeth, warding the man back, but it didn’t matter. The damage was done. He sank to his knees, barely able to remain upright for the pain.
In that instant he knew a truth he should always have known.
If I’d been there, on that night, awake instead of drunk and asleep . . . Gavilar would still have died.
I couldn’t have beaten this creature. I can’t do it now, and I couldn’t have done it then.
I couldn’t have saved him.
It brought peace, and Dalinar finally set down that boulder, the one he’d been carrying for over six years.
The assassin stalked toward him, glowing with terrible Stormlight, but a figure lunged for him from behind.
Dalinar expected it to be Adolin, perhaps one of the bridgemen.
Instead, it was Roion.
* * *
Adolin tossed aside the last bit of armor and went running for his father. He wasn’t too late. Dalinar knelt before the assassin, defeated, but not dead.
Adolin shouted, drawing close, and an unexpected figure leapt out of the wreckage of a tent. Highprince Roion—incongruously holding a side sword and leading a small force of soldiers—rushed the assassin.
Rats had a better chance fighting a chasmfiend.
Adolin barely had time to shout as the assassin—moving at blinding speed—spun and cut the blade from the hilt of Roion’s sword. Szeth’s hand shot out and slammed against Roion’s chest.
Roion shot into the air, trailing a wisp of Stormlight. He screamed as the sky swallowed him.
He lasted longer than his men. The assassin swept between them, deftly avoiding spears, moving with uncanny grace. A dozen soldiers fell in an instant, eyes burning.
Adolin jumped over one of the bodies as it collapsed. Storms. He could still hear Roion screaming up above somewhere.
Adolin thrust at the assassin, but the creature twisted and slapped the Shardblade away. The assassin was grinning. He didn’t speak, though Stormlight leaked between his teeth.
Adolin tried Smokestance, attacking with a quick sequence of jabs. The assassin silently battered them away, unfazed. Adolin focused, dueling the best he could, but he was a child before this thing.
Roion, still screaming, plummeted from the sky and hit nearby with a sickening wet crunch. A quick glance at his corpse told Adolin that the highprince would never rise again.
Adolin cursed and lunged for the assassin, but a fluttering tarp—brushed by the assassin in passing—leaped toward Adolin. The monster could command inanimate objects! Adolin sliced through the tarp and then jumped forward to swing for the assassin.
He found nothing to fight.
Duck.
He threw himself to the ground as something passed over his head, the assassin flying through the air. Szeth’s hissing Shardblade missed Adolin’s head by inches.
Adolin rolled and came to his knees, puffing.
How . . . What could he do . . . ?
You can’t beat it, Adolin thought. Nothing can beat it.
The assassin landed lightly. Adolin climbed back to his feet, and found himself in company. A dozen of the bridgemen formed up around him. Skar, at their head, looked to Adolin and nodded. Good men. They’d seen Roion’s fall, and still they joined him. Adolin hefted his Shardblade and noticed that a short distance away, his father had managed to regain his feet. Another small group of bridgemen moved in around him, and he allowed it. He and Adolin had dueled and lost. Their only chance now was a mad rush.
Nearby, shouts arose. General Khal and a large strike force of soldiers, judging by the banner approaching. There wasn’t time. The assassin stood on the wet plateau between Dalinar’s small troop and Adolin’s, head bowed. Fallen blue lanterns gave light. The sky had gone as black as night, except when broken by that red lightning.
Charge and mob a Shardbearer. Hope for a lucky blow. It was the only way. Adolin nodded to Dalinar. His father nodded back, grim. He knew. He knew there was no beating this thing.
Lead them, Adolin.
Unite them.
Adolin screamed, charging forward, sword out, men running with him. Dalinar advanced too, more slowly, one arm across his chest. Storms, the man could barely walk.
Szeth snapped his head up, face devoid of all emotion. As they arrived, he leaped, shooting into the air.
Adolin’s eyes followed him up. Surely they hadn’t chased him off . . .
The assassin twisted in the air, then crashed back down to the ground, glowing like a comet. Adolin barely parried a blow from the Blade; the force of it was incredible. It tossed him backward. The assassin spun, and a pair of bridgemen fell with burning eyes. Others lost spearheads as they tried to stab at him.
The assassin ripped free from the press of bodies, trailing blood from a couple of wounds. Those wounds closed as Adolin watched, the blood stopping. It was as Kaladin had said. With a horrible sinking feeling, Adolin realized just how little a chance they’d ever had.
The assassin dashed for Dalinar, who brought up the rear of the attack. The aging soldier raised his Blade, as if in respect, then thrust once.
An attack. That was the way to go.
“Father . . .” Adolin whispered.
The assassin parried the thrust, then placed his hand against Dalinar’s chest.
The highprince, suddenly glowing, lurched up into the dark sky. He didn’t scream.
The plateau fell silent. Some bridgemen propped up wounded fellows. Others turned toward the assassin, pulling into a spear formation, looking frantic.
The assassin lowered his Blade, then started to walk away.
“Bastard!” Adolin spat, dashing after him. “Bastard!” He could barely see for the tears.
The assassin stopped, then leveled his weapon toward Adolin.
Adolin stumbled to a halt. Storms, his head hurt.
“It is finished,” the assassin whispered. “I am done.” He turned from Adolin and continued to walk away.
Like Damnation itself, you are! Adolin raised his Shardblade overhead.
The assassin spun and slapped the weapon so hard with his own Blade that Adolin distinctly heard something snap in his wrist. His Blade tumbled from his fingers, vanishing. The assassin’s hand slapped out, knuckles striking Adolin in the chest, and he gasped, his breath suddenly gone from his throat.
Stunned, he sank to his knees.
“I suppose,” the assassin snarled, “I can kill one more, on my own time.” Then he grinned, a terrible smile with teeth clenched, eyes wide. As if he were in enormous pain.
Gasping, Adolin awaited the blow. He looked toward the sky. Father, I’m sorry. I . . .
I . . .
What was that?
He blinked as he made out something glowing in the air, drifting down, like a leaf. A figure. A man.
Dalinar.
The highprince fell slowly, as if he were no more weighty than a cloud. White Light streamed from his body in glowing wisps. Nearby bridgemen murmured, soldiers shouted, pointing.
Adolin blinked, certain he was delusional. But no, that was Dalinar. Like . . . one of the Heralds themselves, coming down from the Tranquiline Halls.
The assassin looked, then stumbled back, mouth open in horror. “No . . . No!”
And then, like a falling star, a blazing fireball of light and motion shot down in front of Dalinar. It crashed into the ground, sending out a ring of Stormlight like white smoke. At the center, a figure in blue crouched with one hand on the stones, the other clutching a glowing Shardblade.
His eyes afire with a light that somehow made the assassin’s seem dull by comparison, he wore the uniform of a bridgeman, and bore the glyphs of slavery on his forehead.
The expanding ring of smoky light faded, save for a large glyph—a swordlike shape—which remained for a brief moment before puffing away.
“You sent him to the sky to die, assassin,” Kaladin said, Stormlight puffing from his lips, “but the sky and the winds are mine. I claim them, as I now claim your life.”