Shallan rushed into the room as the storms crashed together outside.
What was she doing? There wasn’t time. Even if she could open a portal, those storms were here. She wouldn’t have time to get people through.
They were dead. All of them. Thousands had probably already been swept to their deaths by the stormwall.
She ran to the last lamp anyway, infusing its spheres.
The floor started to glow.
Ardents jumped to their feet in surprise and Inadara yelped. Adolin stumbled in through the doorway, a crashing wind and a spray of angry rain trailing him.
Beneath them, the intricate design shone from within. It looked almost like stained glass. Gesturing frantically for Adolin to join her, Shallan ran across to the lock on the wall.
“Sword,” she shouted at Adolin over the sounds of storms outside. “In there!” Renarin had long since dismissed his.
Adolin obeyed, scrambling forward, summoning his Shardblade. He rammed it into the slot, which again flowed to fit the weapon.
Nothing happened.
“It’s not working,” Adolin shouted.
Only one answer.
Shallan grabbed the hilt of his sword and whipped it out—ignoring the scream in her mind that came from touching it—then tossed it aside. Adolin’s sword vanished to mist.
A deep truth.
“There is something wrong with your Blade, and with all Blades.” She hesitated for just a second. “All but mine. Pattern!”
He formed in her hands, the Blade she’d used to kill. The hidden soul. Shallan rammed it into the slot, and the weapon vibrated in her hands and glowed. Something deep within the plateau unlocked.
Outside, lightning fell and men screamed.
Now the mechanism’s operation became clear to her. Shallan threw her weight against the sword, pushing it before her like the spoke on a mill. The inner wall of the building was like a ring inside a tube—it could rotate, while the outer wall remained in place. The sword moved the inner wall as she pushed on it, though it stuck at first, the fallen blocks of the cut doorway getting in the way. Adolin threw his weight against the sword with her, and together they pushed it around the circle until they were above the picture of Urithiru, half the circumference from Natanatan where she’d begun. She pulled her Blade free.
The ten lamps faded like closing eyes.
* * *
Kaladin followed Szeth into the storm, diving into the blackness, falling amid the churning winds and the blasting lightning. Wind attacked him, tossing him about, and no Lashings could prevent this. He might be master of the winds, but storms were another thing.
Take care, Syl sent. My father hates you. This is his domain. And it is mixed with something even more terrible, another storm. Their storm.
Nevertheless, the highstorms were the source of Stormlight—and being in here energized Kaladin. His reserves of Stormlight burst alight, as they obviously did for Szeth. The assassin suddenly reappeared as a stark white explosion that zoomed through the maelstrom toward the plateaus.
Kaladin growled, Lashing himself after Szeth. Lightning of a dozen colors flashed around him, red, violet, white, yellow. Rain soaked him. Rocks spun past him, some colliding, but the Stormlight healed him as quickly as the debris did damage.
Szeth moved along the plateaus, coursing just above them, and Kaladin followed with difficulty. This churning wind was tough to navigate, and the darkness was near absolute. Flashes lit the Plains in fitful bursts. Fortunately, Szeth’s glow could not be hidden, and Kaladin kept his attention on that blazing beacon.
Faster.
Just as Zahel had taught weeks ago, Szeth didn’t need to defeat Kaladin to win. He just had to get to those Kaladin protected.
Faster.
A burst of lightning illuminated the battle plateaus. And beyond them, Kaladin caught a glimpse of the army. Thousands of men huddled on the large circular plateau. Many hunkered down. Others panicked.
The lightning was gone in a moment, and the land became dark again, though Kaladin had seen enough to know this was a disaster. A cataclysm. Men being blown off the edge, others crushed by falling rocks. In minutes, the army would be gone. Storms, Kaladin wasn’t even certain if he could survive this nexus of destruction.
Szeth crashed down among them, a glowing light amid the blackness. As Kaladin Lashed himself down in that direction, lightning struck again.
Its light revealed Szeth standing on an empty plateau, baffled. The army was gone.
* * *
The sounds of the raging storm outside vanished. Shallan shivered, wet and cold.
“Almighty above . . .” Adolin breathed. “I’m almost scared of what we’ll find.”
Rotating the inside wall of the building had moved their doorway opposite hardened crem. Perhaps there had been a natural doorway here before; Adolin summoned his Blade to cut a hole.
Pattern . . . her Shardblade . . . vanished back to mist, and the room’s mechanisms settled down. She didn’t hear anything outside, no crashing of winds, no thunder.
Emotions fought inside of her. She’d saved herself and Adolin, it appeared. But the rest of the army . . . Adolin cut a doorway; sunlight spilled through it. Shallan walked to the opening, nervous, passing Inadara, who sat in the corner, looking overwhelmed.
At the doorway, Shallan looked out at the same plateau as before, only now it was sunlit and calm. Four armies’ worth of men and women crouched, soggy and wet, many holding their heads and hunkering down against wind that no longer blew. Nearby, two figures stood beside a massive Ryshadium stallion. Dalinar and Navani, who had apparently been on their way to the central building.
Beyond them spread the peaks of an unfamiliar mountain range. It was the same plateau, and here was in a ring with nine others. To Shallan’s left, an enormous ribbed tower—shaped like cups of increasingly smaller sizes stacked atop one another—broke the peaks. Urithiru.
The plateau hadn’t contained the portal.
The plateau was the portal.
* * *
Szeth screamed words at Kaladin, but those were lost in the tempest. Rocks crashed down around them, ripped from somewhere distant. Kaladin was sure he heard terrible screams over the winds, as red spren he’d never seen before—like small meteors, trailing light behind them—zipped around him.
Szeth screamed again. Kaladin caught the word this time. “How!”
Kaladin’s answer was to strike with his Blade. Szeth parried violently, and they clashed, two glowing figures in the blackness.
“I know this column!” Szeth screamed. “I have seen its like before! They went to the city, didn’t they!”
The assassin launched himself into the air. Kaladin was all too eager to follow. He wanted out of this tempest.
Szeth screamed away, heading westward, away from the storm with the red lightning—following the path of the common highstorm. That alone was dangerous enough.
Kaladin gave chase, but that proved difficult in the buffeting winds. It wasn’t that they served Szeth more than Kaladin; the tempest was simply unpredictable. They’d shove him one way and Szeth another.
What happened if Szeth lost him?
He knows where Dalinar went, Kaladin thought, gritting his teeth as a flash of sudden whiteness blinded him from one side. I don’t.
He couldn’t protect Dalinar if he couldn’t find the man. Unfortunately, a chase through this darkness favored the person who was trying to escape. Slowly, Szeth pulled ahead.
Kaladin tried to follow, but a surge of wind drove him in the wrong direction. Lashings didn’t really let him fly. He couldn’t resist such unpredictable winds; they controlled him.
No! Szeth’s glowing form dwindled. Kaladin shouted into the darkness, blinking eyes against the rain. He’d almost lost sight . . .
Syl spun into the air in front of him. But he was still carrying the spear. What?
Another one, then another. Ribbons of light, occasionally taking the shapes of young women or men, laughing. Windspren. A dozen or more spun around him, leaving trails of light, their laughter somehow strong over the sounds of the storm.
There! Kaladin thought.
Szeth was ahead. Kaladin Lashed himself through the tempest toward him, jerking one way, then the other. Dodging blitzes of lightning, ducking under hurled boulders, blinking away the sheets of driven rain.
A whirlwind of chaos. And ahead . . . light?
The stormwall.
Szeth burst free of the storm’s very front. Through the mess of water and debris, Kaladin could just barely make out the assassin turning around to look backward, his posture confident.
He thinks he’s lost me.
Kaladin exploded out of the stormwall, surrounded by windspren that spiraled away in a pattern of light. He shouted, driving his spear toward Szeth, who parried hastily, his eyes wide. “Impossible!”
Kaladin spun around and slashed his spear—which became a sword—through Szeth’s foot.
The assassin lurched away along the length of the stormwall. Both Szeth and Kaladin continued to fall westward, just in front of the wall of water and debris.
Beneath them, the land passed in a blur. The two storms had finally separated, and the highstorm was moving along its normal path, east to west. The Shattered Plains were soon left behind, giving way to rolling hills.
As Kaladin chased, Szeth spun and fell backward, attacking, though Syl became a shield to block. Kaladin swung down and a hammer appeared in his hand, crashing against Szeth’s shoulder, breaking bones. As Stormlight tried to heal the assassin, Kaladin pulled in close and slammed his hand against Szeth’s stomach, a knife appearing there and digging deeply into the skin. He sought the spine.
Szeth gasped and frantically Lashed himself farther backward, pulling out of Kaladin’s grip.
Kaladin followed. Boulders churned in the stormwall—which was now the ground from Kaladin’s perspective. He had to repeatedly adjust his Lashing to stay in the right place, just ahead of the storm.
Kaladin leaped on churning boulders as they appeared, pursuing Szeth, who fell wildly, his clothing flapping. Windspren formed a halo around Kaladin, zipping in and out, spiraling, spinning around his arms and legs. The proximity of the storm kept his Stormlight stoked, never letting it grow dim.
Szeth slowed, his wounds healing. He hung in front of the crashing stormwall, holding his sword before him. He took a breath, meeting Kaladin’s eyes.
An ending, then.
Kaladin drove forward, Syl forming a spear in his fingers, the most familiar weapon.
Szeth attacked in a sequence, a relentless blur of strikes.
Kaladin blocked each one. He ended with his spear against the hilt of Szeth’s Blade, pressing the two together, mere inches from the assassin’s face.
“It is actually true,” Szeth whispered.
“Yes.”
Szeth nodded, and the edge of tension seemed to fade from him, replaced by an emptiness in his eyes. “Then I was right all along. I was never Truthless. I could have stopped the murders at any time.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Kaladin said. “But you never had to kill.”
“My orders—”
“Excuses! If that was why you murdered, then you’re not the evil man I assumed. You’re a coward instead.”
Szeth looked him in the eyes, then nodded. He pushed Kaladin back, then moved to swing.
Kaladin drove his hands forward, forming Syl into a sword. He expected a parry. The move was intended to draw Szeth out of his attack pattern.
Szeth did not parry. He just closed his eyes.
Kaladin drove his Blade into the assassin’s chest right below the neck, severing the spine. Smoke burned out from beneath his eyelids, and his Blade slipped from his fingers. It did not vanish.
Get that! Syl sent him, a mental shout. Grab it, Kaladin. Don’t lose it!
Kaladin dove after the Blade, dropping Szeth’s corpse, letting it fall backward into the stormwall. It vanished among the wind, the rain, and the lightning, trailing faint wisps of Stormlight.
Kaladin grabbed the Blade just before the storm consumed it. Then he Lashed himself back upward, passing along the stormwall, the windspren he’d attracted spiraling about him and laughing with pure joy. As he crested the top of the storm, they burst around him and zipped away, moving off to dance in front of the still-advancing storm.
That left him with only one. Syl—in the form of a young woman in a fluttering dress, full-sized this time—hovered before him. She smiled as the storm moved beneath them.
“That was very nicely done,” she said. “Perhaps I’ll keep you around this time.”
“Thank you.”
“You almost killed me, you realize.”
“I realize. I thought I had.”
“And?”
“And . . . um . . . you are intelligent and articulate?”
“You forgot the compliment.”
“But I just said—”
“Those were simple statements of fact.”
“You’re wonderful,” he said. “Truly, Syl. You are.”
“Also a fact,” she said, grinning. “But I’ll let it slide so long as you’re willing to present me with a sufficiently sincere smile.”
He did.
And it felt very, very good.