—From the Diagram, Floorboard 17: paragraph 2, every second letter starting with the second
Dalinar stood in darkness.
He turned about, trying to remember how he’d come to this place. In the shadows, he saw furniture. Tables, a rug, drapes from Azir with wild colors. His mother had always been proud of those drapes.
My home, he thought. As it was when I was a child. Back before conquest, back before Gavilar . . .
Gavilar . . . hadn’t Gavilar died? No, Dalinar could hear his brother laughing in the next room. He was a child. They both were.
Dalinar crossed the shadowed room, feeling the fuzzy joy of familiarity. Of things being as they should be. He’d left his wooden swords out. He had a collection, each carved like a Shardblade. He was too old for those now, of course, but he still liked having them. As a collection.
He stepped to the balcony doors and pushed them open.
Warm light bathed him. A deep, enveloping, piercing warmth. A warmth that soaked down deep through his skin, into his very self. He stared at that light, and was not blinded. The source was distant, but he knew it. Knew it well.
He smiled.
Then he awoke. Alone in his new rooms in Urithiru, a temporary location for him to stay while they scouted the entire tower. A week had passed since they had arrived at this place, and the people of the warcamps had finally started to arrive, bearing spheres recharged during the unexpected highstorm. They needed those badly to make the Oathgate function.
Those from the warcamps arrived none too soon. The Everstorm had not yet returned, but if it moved like a regular highstorm, it should be striking any day now.
Dalinar sat in the darkness for a short time, contemplating that warmth he had felt. What had that been? It had been an odd time to get one of the visions. They always came during highstorms. Before, when he’d felt one coming on while sleeping, it had awakened him.
He checked with his guards. No highstorm was blowing. Contemplative, he started to dress. He wanted to see if he could get out onto the roof of the tower today.
* * *
As Adolin walked the dark halls of Urithiru, he tried not to show how overwhelmed he felt. The world had just shifted, like a door on its hinges. A few days ago, his causal betrothal had been that of a powerful man to a relatively minor scion of a distant house. Now, Shallan might be the most important person in the world, and he was . . .
What was he?
He raised his lantern, then made a few marks in chalk on the wall to indicate he’d been here. This tower was huge. How did the entire thing stay up? They could probably explore in here for months without opening every door. He had thrown himself into the duty of exploration because it seemed like something he could do. It also, unfortunately, gave him time to think. He didn’t like how few answers he came up with.
He turned around, realizing he’d gotten far from the rest of his scouting party. He was doing that more and more often. The first groups from the Shattered Plains had started arriving, and they needed to decide where to house everyone.
Were those voices ahead? Adolin frowned, then continued down the corridor, leaving his lantern behind so it wouldn’t give him away. He was surprised when he recognized one of the speakers down the hallway. Was that Sadeas?
It was. The highprince stood with a scouting party of his own. Silently, Adolin cursed the wind that had persuaded Sadeas—of all people—to heed the call to come to Urithiru. Everything would have been so much easier if he’d just stayed behind.
Sadeas gestured for a few of his soldiers to go down one branch of the tunnel-like corridor. His wife and a few of her scribes went the other way, two soldiers trailing. Adolin watched for a moment as the highprince himself raised a lantern, inspecting a faded painting on the wall. A fanciful picture, with animals from mythology. He recognized a few from children’s stories, like the enormous, minklike creature with the mane of hair that burst out around and behind its head. What was it called again?
Adolin turned to go, but his boot scraped stone.
Sadeas spun, raising his lantern. “Ah, Prince Adolin.” He wore white, which really didn’t help his complexion—the pale color made his ruddy features seem downright bloody by comparison.
“Sadeas,” Adolin said, turning back. “I wasn’t aware that you had arrived.” Storming man. He’d ignored Father all those months, and now he decided to obey?
The highprince strolled up the hallway, passing Adolin. “This place is remarkable. Remarkable indeed.”
“So you acknowledge that my father was right,” Adolin said. “That his visions are true. The Voidbringers have returned, and you are made a fool.”
“I will admit,” Sadeas said, “there is more fight left to your father than I’d once feared. A remarkable plan. Contacting the Parshendi, working out this deal with them. They put on quite a show, I hear. It certainly convinced Aladar.”
“You can’t possibly believe it was all a show.”
“Oh please. You deny that he had a Parshendi among his own guard? Isn’t it convenient that these new ‘Radiants’ include the head of Dalinar’s guard and your own betrothed?”
Sadeas smiled, and Adolin saw the truth. No, he didn’t believe this, but it was the lie he would tell. He would start the whisperings again, trying to undermine Dalinar.
“Why?” Adolin asked, stepping up to him. “Why are you like this, Sadeas?”
“Because,” Sadeas said with a sigh, “it has to happen. You can’t have an army with two generals, son. Your father and I, we’re two old whitespines who both want a kingdom. It’s him or me. We’ve been pointed that way since Gavilar died.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“It does. Your father will never trust me again, Adolin, and you know it.” Sadeas’s face darkened. “I will take this from him. This city, these discoveries. It’s just a setback.”
Adolin stood for a moment, staring Sadeas in the eyes, and then something finally snapped.
That’s it.
Adolin grabbed Sadeas by the throat with his unwounded hand, slamming the highprince back against the wall. The look of utter shock on Sadeas’s face amused a part of Adolin, the very small part that wasn’t completely, totally, and irrevocably enraged.
He squeezed, choking off a cry for help as he moved to pin Sadeas back against the wall, grabbing the man’s arm with his own. But Sadeas was a trained soldier. He tried to break the hold, taking Adolin by the arm and twisting.
Adolin kept hold, but lost his balance. The two of them fell in a jumble, twisting, rolling. This wasn’t the calculated intensity of the dueling grounds, or even the methodical butchery of the battlefield.
This was two sweating, straining men, both on the edge of panic. Adolin was younger, but he was still bruised from the fight with the Assassin in White.
He managed to come up on top, and as Sadeas struggled to yell, Adolin slammed the man’s head down against the stone floor to daze him. Breathing in gasps, Adolin grabbed his side knife. He plunged the knife toward Sadeas’s face, though the man managed to get his hands up to grab Adolin by the wrist.
Adolin grunted, forcing the knife closer, clutched in his off hand. He brought the right in anyway, the wrist flaring with pain, as he leaned it against the crossguard. Sweat prickled on Sadeas’s brow, the knife’s tip touching the end of his left nostril.
“My father,” Adolin said with a grunt, sweat from his nose dripping down onto the blade of the knife, “thinks I’m a better man than he is.” He strained, and felt Sadeas’s grip weaken. “Unfortunately for you, he’s wrong.”
Sadeas whimpered.
With a surge, Adolin forced the blade up past Sadeas’s nose and into the eye socket—piercing the eye like a ripe berry—then rammed it home into the brain.
Sadeas shook for a moment, blood pooling around the blade as Adolin worked it to be certain.
A second later, a Shardblade appeared beside Sadeas—his father’s Shardblade. Sadeas was dead.
Adolin stumbled back to not get blood on his clothing, though his cuffs were already stained. Storms. Had he just done that? Had he just murdered a highprince?
Dazed, he stared at that weapon. Neither man had summoned his Blade for the fight. The weapons might be worth a fortune, but they’d do less good than a rock in such a close-quarters fight.
Thoughts coming more clearly, Adolin picked up the weapon and stumbled away. He ditched the Blade out a window, dropping it down into one of the planterlike outcroppings of the terrace below. It might be safe there.
After that, he had the presence of mind to cut off his cuffs, remove his chalk mark on the wall by scraping it free with his own Blade, and walk as far away as he could before finding one of his scouting parties and pretending he’d been in that area all along.
* * *
Dalinar finally figured out the locking mechanism, then pushed on the metal door at the end of the stairwell. The door was set into the ceiling here, the steps running straight up to it.
The trapdoor refused to open, despite being unlocked. He’d oiled the parts. Why wasn’t it moving?
Crem, of course, he thought. He summoned his Shardblade and made a series of quick cuts around the trapdoor. Then, with an effort, he was able to force it to open. The ancient trapdoor swung upward and let him out onto the very top of the tower city.
He smiled, stepping onto the roof. Five days of exploration had sent Adolin and Navani into the depths of the city-tower. Dalinar, however, had been driven to seek the top.
For such an enormous tower, the roof was actually relatively small, and not that encrusted with crem. This high, less rain likely dropped during highstorms—and everyone knew crem was thicker in the east than it was in the west.
Storms, this place was high. His ears had popped several times while riding to the top, using the fabrial lift that Navani had discovered. She spoke of counterweights and conjoined gemstones, sounding awed by the technology of the ancients. All he knew was that her discovery had let him avoid climbing up some hundred flights of steps.
He stepped up to the edge and looked down. Below, each ring of the tower expanded out a little farther than the one above it. Shallan is right, he thought. They’re gardens. Each outer ring is dedicated to planting food. He did not know why the eastern face of the tower was straight and sheer, facing the Origin. No balconies along that side.
He leaned out. Distant, so far down it made him queasy, he picked out the ten pillars that held the Oathgates. The one to the Shattered Plains flashed, and a large group of people appeared on it. They flew Hatham’s flag. With the maps Dalinar’s scholars had sent, it had only taken Hatham and the others about a week of quick marching to reach the Oathgate. When Dalinar’s army had crossed that same distance, they’d done so very cautiously, wary of Parshendi attacks.
Now that he saw those pillars from this perspective, he recognized that there was one of them in Kholinar. It made up the dais upon which the palace and royal temple had been built. Shallan suspected that Jasnah had tried to open the Oathgate there; the woman’s notes said that Oathgates to each of the cities were locked tight. Only the one in the Shattered Plains had been left open.
Shallan hoped to figure out how to use the others, though their tests right now showed them to be locked somehow. If she managed to make them work, the world would become a much, much smaller place. Assuming there was anything left of it.
Dalinar turned and looked upward, regarding the sky. He took a deep breath. This was why he had come to the top.
“You sent that storm to destroy us!” he shouted toward the clouds. “You sent it to cover up what Shallan, and then Kaladin, were becoming! You tried to end this before it could begin!”
Silence.
“Why send me visions and tell me to prepare!” Dalinar shouted. “Then try to destroy us when we listen to them?”
I WAS REQUIRED TO SEND THOSE VISIONS ONCE THE TIME ARRIVED. THE ALMIGHTY DEMANDED IT OF ME. I COULD NO MORE DISOBEY THAN I COULD REFUSE TO BLOW THE WINDS.
Dalinar breathed in deeply. The Stormfather had replied. Blessedly, he had replied.
“The visions were his, then,” Dalinar said, “and you the vehicle for choosing who received them?”
YES.
“Why did you pick me?” Dalinar demanded.
IT DOES NOT MATTER. YOU WERE TOO SLOW. YOU FAILED. THE EVERSTORM IS HERE, AND THE SPREN OF THE ENEMY COME TO INHABIT THE ANCIENT ONES. IT IS OVER. YOU HAVE LOST.
“You said that you were a fragment of the Almighty.”
I AM HIS . . . SPREN, YOU MIGHT SAY. NOT HIS SOUL. I AM THE MEMORY MEN CREATE FOR HIM, NOW THAT HE IS GONE. THE PERSONIFICATION OF STORMS AND OF THE DIVINE. I AM NO GOD. I AM BUT A SHADOW OF ONE.
“I’ll take what I can get.”
HE WISHED FOR ME TO FIND YOU, BUT YOUR KIND HAVE BROUGHT ONLY DEATH TO MINE.
“What do you know of this storm that the Parshendi unleashed?”
THE EVERSTORM. IT IS A NEW THING, BUT OLD OF DESIGN. IT ROUNDS THE WORLD NOW, AND CARRIES WITH IT HIS SPREN. ANY OF THE OLD PEOPLE IT TOUCHES WILL TAKE ON THEIR NEW FORMS.
“Voidbringers.”
THAT IS ONE TERM FOR THEM.
“This Everstorm will come again, for certain?”
REGULARLY, LIKE HIGHSTORMS, THOUGH LESS FREQUENT. YOU ARE DOOMED.
“And it will transform the parshmen. Is there no way to stop it?”
NO.
Dalinar closed his eyes. It was as he had feared. His army had defeated the Parshendi, yes, but they were only a fraction of what was coming. Soon he would face hundreds of thousands of them.
The other lands weren’t listening. He’d managed to speak, via spanreed, with the emperor of Azir himself—a new emperor, as Szeth had visited the last one. There had been no succession war in Azir, of course. Those required too much paperwork.
The new emperor had invited Dalinar to visit, but obviously considered his words to be ravings. Dalinar hadn’t realized that rumors of his madness had traveled so far. Even without that, however, he suspected his warnings would be ignored, as the things he spoke of were insane. A storm that blew the wrong way? Parshmen turning into Voidbringers?
Only Taravangian of Kharbranth—and now, apparently, Jah Keved—had seemed willing to listen. Heralds bless that man; hopefully he could bring some peace to that tortured land. Dalinar had asked for more information about how he’d obtained that throne; initial reports indicated he’d stumbled into the position unexpectedly. But he was too new, and Jah Keved too broken, for him to be able to do much.
Beyond that, there were sudden and unexpected reports, coming via spanreed, of Kholinar rioting. No straight answers there yet, either. And what was this he heard of a plague in the Purelake? Storms, what a mess this all had become.
He would need to do something about it. All of it.
Dalinar looked to the sky again. “I have been commanded to refound the Knights Radiant. I will need to join their number if I am to lead them.”
Distant thunder rumbled in the sky, though there were no clouds.
“Life before death!” Dalinar shouted. “Strength before weakness! Journey before destination!”
I AM THE SLIVER OF THE ALMIGHTY HIMSELF! the voice said, sounding angry. I AM THE STORMFATHER. I WILL NOT LET MYSELF BE BOUND IN SUCH A WAY AS TO KILL ME!
“I need you,” Dalinar said. “Despite what you did. The bridgeman spoke of oaths given, and of each order of knights being different. The First Ideal is the same. After that, each order is unique, requiring different Words.”
The thunder rumbled. It sounded . . . like a challenge. Could Dalinar interpret thunder now?
This was a dangerous gambit. He confronted something primal, something unknowable. Something that had actively tried to murder him and his entire army.
“Fortunately,” Dalinar said, “I know the second oath I am to make. I don’t need to be told it. I will unite instead of divide, Stormfather. I will bring men together.”
The thunder silenced. Dalinar stood alone, staring at the sky, waiting.
VERY WELL, the Stormfather finally said. THESE WORDS ARE ACCEPTED.
Dalinar smiled.
I WILL NOT BE A SIMPLE SWORD TO YOU, the Stormfather warned. I WILL NOT COME AS YOU CALL, AND YOU WILL HAVE TO DIVEST YOURSELF OF THAT . . . MONSTROSITY THAT YOU CARRY. YOU WILL BE A RADIANT WITH NO SHARDS.
“It will be what it must,” Dalinar said, summoning his Shardblade. As soon as it appeared, screams sounded in his head. He dropped the weapon as if it were an eel that had snapped at him. The screams vanished immediately.
The Blade clanged to the ground. Unbonding a Shardblade was supposed to be a difficult process, requiring concentration and touching its stone. Yet this one was severed from him in an instant. He could feel it.
“What was the meaning of the last vision I received?” Dalinar said. “The one this morning, that came with no highstorm.”
NO VISION WAS SENT THIS MORNING.
“Yes it was. I saw light and warmth.”
A SIMPLE DREAM. NOT OF ME, NOR OF GODS.
Curious. Dalinar could have sworn it felt the same way as the visions, if not stronger.
GO, BONDSMITH, the Stormfather said. LEAD YOUR DYING PEOPLE TO FAILURE. ODIUM DESTROYED THE ALMIGHTY HIMSELF. YOU ARE NOTHING TO HIM.
“The Almighty could die,” Dalinar said. “If that is true, then this Odium can be killed. I will find a way to do it. The visions mentioned a challenge, a champion. Do you know anything of this?”
The sky gave no reply beyond a simple rumble. Well, there would be time for more questions later.
Dalinar walked down off the top of Urithiru and entered the stairwell again. The flight of steps opened into a room that encompassed nearly the entire top floor of the tower city, and it shone with light through glass windows. Glass with no shutters or support, some of it facing east. How it survived highstorms Dalinar did not know, though lines of crem did streak it in places.
Ten short pillars ringed this room, with another at the center. “Well?” Kaladin asked, turning away from an inspection of one of them. Shallan rounded another; she looked far less ragged than she had when they’d first come to the city. Though their days here in Urithiru had been frantic, some good nights’ sleep had served them all quite well.
In response to the question, Dalinar took a sphere from his pocket and held it up. Then he sucked in the Stormlight.
He knew to expect the feeling of a storm raging inside, as both Kaladin and Shallan had described it to him. It urged him to act, to move, to not stand still. It did not, however, feel like the Thrill of battle—which was what he had anticipated.
He felt his wounds healing in a familiar way. He’d done this before, he sensed. On the battlefield earlier? His arm felt fine now, and the cut on his side barely ached anymore.
“It’s horribly unfair you managed that on your first try,” Kaladin noted. “It took me forever.”
“I had instruction,” Dalinar said, walking into the room and tucking the sphere away. “The Stormfather called me Bondsmith.”
“It was the name of one of the orders,” Shallan said, resting her fingers on one of the pillars. “That makes three of us. Windrunner, Bondsmith, Lightweaver.”
“Four,” a voice said from the shadows of the stairwell. Renarin stepped up into the lit room. He looked at them, then shrank back.
“Son?” Dalinar asked.
Renarin remained in the darkness, looking down.
“No spectacles . . .” Dalinar whispered. “You stopped wearing them. I thought you were trying to look like a warrior, but no. Stormlight healed your eyes.”
Renarin nodded.
“And the Shardblade,” Dalinar said, stepping over and taking his son by the shoulder. “You hear screams. That’s what happened to you in the arena. You couldn’t fight because of those shouts in your head from summoning the Blade. Why? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I thought it was me,” Renarin whispered. “My mind. But Glys, he says . . .” Renarin blinked. “Truthwatcher.”
“Truthwatcher?” Kaladin said, glancing at Shallan. She shook her head. “I walk the winds. She weaves light. Brightlord Dalinar forges bonds. What do you do?”
Renarin met Kaladin’s eyes across the room. “I see.”
“Four orders,” Dalinar said, squeezing Renarin’s shoulder with pride. Storms, the lad was trembling. What made him so worried? Dalinar turned to the others. “The other orders must be returning as well. We need to find those whom the spren have chosen. Quickly, for the Everstorm is upon us, and it is worse than we feared.”
“How?” Shallan asked.
“It will change the parshmen,” Dalinar said. “The Stormfather confirmed it to me. When that storm hits it will bring back the Voidbringers.”
“Damnation,” Kaladin said. “I need to get to Alethkar, to Hearthstone.” He strode toward the exit.
“Soldier?” Dalinar called. “I’ve done what I can to warn our people.”
“My parents are back there,” Kaladin said. “And the citylord of my town has parshmen. I’m going.”
“How?” Shallan asked. “You’ll fly the entire distance?”
“Fall,” Kaladin said. “But yes.” He paused at the doorway out.
“How much Light will that take, son?” Dalinar asked.
“I don’t know,” Kaladin admitted. “A lot, probably.”
Shallan looked to Dalinar. They didn’t have Stormlight to spare. Though those from the warcamps brought recharged spheres, activating the Oathgate took a great deal of Stormlight, depending on how many people were brought. Lighting the lamps in the room at the center of the Oathgate was merely the minimum amount needed to start the device—bringing many people partially drained the infused gemstones they carried as well.
“I will get you what I can, lad,” Dalinar said. “Go with my blessing. Perhaps you will have enough left over to get to the capital afterward and help the people there.”
Kaladin nodded. “I’ll put together a pack. I need to leave within the hour.” He ducked from the room into the stairwell down.
Dalinar sucked in more Stormlight, and felt the last of his wounds retreat. This seemed a thing a man could easily grow accustomed to having.
He sent Renarin with orders to speak with the king and requisition some emerald broams that Kaladin could borrow for his trip. Elhokar had finally arrived, in the company of a group of Herdazians, of all things. One claiming his name needed to be added to the lists of Alethi kings . . .
Renarin went eagerly to obey the order. He seemed to want something he could do.
He’s one of the Knights Radiant, Dalinar thought, watching him go. I’ll probably need to stop sending him on errands.
Storms. It was really happening.
Shallan had walked to the windows. Dalinar stepped up beside her. This was the eastern face of the tower, the flat edge that looked directly toward the Origin.
“Kaladin will only have time to save a few,” Shallan said. “If that many. There are four of us, Brightlord. Only four against a storm full of destruction . . .”
“It is what it is.”
“So many will die.”
“And we will save the ones we can,” Dalinar said. He turned to her. “Life before death, Radiant. It is the task to which we are now sworn.”
She pursed her lips, still looking eastward, but nodded. “Life before death, Radiant.”