“Our people are crumbling,” Eshonai said. “We’re being weathered away. We moved to Narak and chose a war of attrition. That has meant six years with steady losses. People are giving up.”
“That’s not good,” Mother said.
“But the alternative? Dabbling in things we shouldn’t, things that might bring the eyes of the Unmade upon us.”
“You’re not working,” Mother said, pointing. “Don’t be like your sister.”
Eshonai placed her hands in her lap. This wasn’t helping. Seeing Mother like this . . .
“Mother,” Eshonai said to Supplication, “why did we leave the dark home?”
“Ah, now that’s an old song, Eshonai,” Mother said. “A dark song, not for a child like you. Why, it’s not even your day of first transformation.”
“I’m old enough, Mother. Please?”
Mother blew on her shalebark. Had she forgotten, finally, this last part of what she had been? Eshonai’s heart sank.
“Long are the days since we knew the dark home,” Mother sang softly to one of the Rhythms of Remembrance. “The Last Legion, that was our name then. Warriors who had been set to fight in the farthest plains, this place that had once been a nation and was now rubble. Dead was the freedom of most people. The forms, unknown, were forced upon us. Forms of power, yes, but also forms of obedience. The gods commanded, and we did obey, always. Always.”
“Except for that day,” Eshonai said along with her mother, in rhythm.
“The day of the storm when the Last Legion fled,” Mother continued in song. “Difficult was the path chosen. Warriors, touched by the gods, our only choice to seek dullness of mind. A crippling that brought freedom.”
Mother’s calm, sonorous song danced with the wind. As frail as she seemed other times, when she sang the old songs, she seemed herself again. A parent who had at times conflicted with Eshonai, but a parent whom Eshonai had always respected.
“Daring was the challenge made,” Mother sang, “when the Last Legion abandoned thought and power in exchange for freedom. They risked forgetting all. And so songs they composed, a hundred stories to tell, to remember. I tell them to you, and you will tell them to your children, until the forms are again discovered.”
From there, Mother launched into one of the early songs, about how the people would make their home in the ruins of an abandoned kingdom. How they would spread out, act as simple tribes and refugees. It was their plan to remain hidden, or at least ignored.
The songs left out so much. The Last Legion hadn’t known how to transform into anything other than dullform and mateform, at least not without the help of the gods. How had they known the other forms were possible? Had these facts originally been recorded in the songs, and then lost over the years as words changed here and there?
Eshonai listened, and though her mother’s voice did help her attune Peace again, she found herself deeply troubled anyway. She had come here for answers. Once, that would have worked.
No longer.
Eshonai stood to leave her mother singing.
“I found some of your things,” Mother said, breaking the song, “when cleaning today. You should take them. They clutter the home, and I will be moving out soon.”
Eshonai hummed Mourning to herself, but went to see just what her mother had “discovered.” Another pile of rocks, in which she saw child’s playthings? Strips of cloth she imagined were clothing?
Eshonai found a small sack in front of the building. She opened it to find paper.
Paper made from local plants, not human paper. Rough paper, with varied color, made after the old listener way. Textured and full, not neat and sterile. The ink on it was beginning to fade, but Eshonai recognized the drawings.
My maps, she thought. From those early days.
Without meaning to, she attuned Remembrance. Days spent hiking across the wilderness of what the humans called Natanatan, passing through forests and jungles, drawing her own maps and expanding the world. She’d started alone, but her discoveries had excited an entire people. Soon, though still in her teenage years, she’d been leading entire expeditions to find new rivers, new ruins, new spren, new plants.
And humans. In a way, this was all her fault.
Her mother started singing again.
Looking through her old maps, Eshonai found a powerful longing within her. Once, she’d seen the world as something fresh and exciting. New, like a blossoming forest after a storm. She was dying slowly, as surely as her people were.
She packed up the maps and left her mother’s house, walking toward the center of town. Her mother’s song, still beautiful, echoed behind her. Eshonai attuned Peace. That let her know that she was nearly late for the meeting with the rest of the Five.
She did not hasten her pace. She let the steady, sweeping beats of the Rhythm of Peace carry her forward. Unless you concentrated on attuning a certain rhythm, your body would naturally choose the one that fit your mood. Therefore, it was always a conscious decision to listen to a rhythm that did not match how you felt. She did this now with Peace.
The listeners had made a decision centuries ago, a decision that set them back to primitive levels. Choosing to murder Gavilar Kholin had been an act to affirm that decision of their ancestors. Eshonai had not then been one of their leaders, but they had listened to her counsel and given her the right to vote among them.
The choice, horrible though it seemed, had been one of courage. They’d hoped that a long war would bore the Alethi.
Eshonai and the others had underestimated Alethi greed. The gemhearts had changed everything.
In the center of town, near the pool, was a tall tower that remained proudly erect in defiance of centuries’ worth of storms. Once, there had been steps within, but crem leaking in windows had filled the building up with rock. So workers had carved steps running around its outside.
Eshonai started up the steps, holding to the chain for safety. It was a long but familiar climb. Though her leg ached, warform had great endurance—though it required more food than any other form to keep it strong. She made it to the top with ease.
She found the other members of the Five waiting for her, one member wearing each known form. Eshonai for warform, Davim for workform, Abronai for mateform, Chivi for nimbleform, and the quiet Zuln for dullform. Venli waited as well, with her once-mate, though he was flushed from the difficult climb. Nimbleform, though good for many delicate activities, did not have great endurance.
Eshonai stepped up onto the flat top of the once-tower, wind blowing against her from the east. There were no chairs up here, and the Five sat on the bare rock itself.
Davim hummed to Annoyance. With the rhythms in one’s head, it was difficult to be late by accident. They rightly suspected that Eshonai had dallied.
She sat on the rock and took the spren-filled gemstone from her pocket, setting it on the ground in front of her. The violet stone glowed with Stormlight.
“I am worried about this test,” Eshonai said. “I do not think we should allow it to proceed.”
“What?” Venli said to Anxiety. “Sister, don’t be ridiculous. Our people need this.”
Davim leaned forward, arms on his knees. He was broad faced, his workform skin marbled mostly of black with tiny swirls of red here and there. “If this works, it will be an amazing advance. The first of the forms of ancient power, rediscovered.”
“Those forms are tied to the gods,” Eshonai said. “What if, in choosing this form, we invite them to return?”
Venli hummed Irritation. “In the old day, all forms came from the gods. We have found that nimbleform does not harm us. Why would stormform?”
“It is different,” Eshonai said. “Sing the song; hum it to yourself. ‘Its coming brings the gods their night.’ The ancient powers are dangerous.”
“Men have them,” Abronai said. He wore mateform, lush and plump, though he controlled its passions. Eshonai had never envied him the position; she knew, from private conversations, that he would have preferred to have another form. Unfortunately, others who held mateform either did so transiently—or did not possess the proper solemnity to join the Five.
“You yourself brought us the report, Eshonai,” Abronai continued. “You saw a warrior among the Alethi using ancient powers, and many others confirmed it to us. Surgebindings have returned to men. The spren again betray us.”
“If Surgebindings are back,” Davim said to Consideration, “then it might indicate that the gods are returning anyway. If so, we’d best be prepared to deal with them. Forms of power will help with that.”
“We don’t know they will come,” Eshonai said to Resolve. “We don’t know any of this. Who knows if men even have Surgebindings—it might be one of the Honorblades. We left one in Alethkar that night.”
Chivi hummed to Skepticism. Her nimbleform face had elongated features, her hairstrands tied back in a long tail. “We are fading as a people. I passed some today who had taken dullform, and not to remember our past. They did so because they worried that men would kill them otherwise! They prepare themselves to become slaves!”
“I saw them too,” Davim said to Resolve. “We must do something, Eshonai. Your soldiers are losing this war, beat by beat.”
“The next storm,” Venli said. She used the Rhythm of Pleading. “I can test this at the next storm.”
Eshonai closed her eyes. Pleading. It was a rhythm not often attuned. It was hard to deny her sister in this.
“We must be unified in this decision,” Davim said. “I will accept nothing else. Eshonai, do you insist on objecting? Will we need to spend hours here making this decision?”
She took a deep breath, coming to a decision that had been working its way through the back of her mind. The decision of an explorer. She glanced at the sack of maps she’d set on the floor beside her.
“I will agree to this test,” Eshonai said.
Nearby, Venli hummed to Appreciation.
“However,” Eshonai continued to Resolve, “I must be the one who tries the new form first.”
All humming stopped. The others of the Five gaped at her.
“What?” Venli said. “Sister, no! It is my right.”
“You are too valuable,” Eshonai said. “You know too much about the forms, and much of your research is held only in your head. I am simply a soldier. I can be spared if this goes wrong.”
“You are a Shardbearer,” Davim said. “Our last.”
“Thude has trained with my Blade and Plate,” Eshonai said. “I will leave both with him, just in case.”
The others of the Five hummed to Consideration.
“This is a good suggestion,” Abronai said. “Eshonai has both strength and experience.”
“It was my discovery!” Venli said to Irritation.
“And you are appreciated for it,” Davim said. “But Eshonai is right; you and your scholars are too important to our future.”
“More than that,” Abronai added. “You are too close to the project, Venli. The way you speak makes that clear. If Eshonai enters the storms and discovers that something is off about this form, she can halt the experiment and return to us.”
“This is a good compromise,” Chivi said, nodding. “Are we in agreement?”
“I believe so,” Abronai said, turning toward Zuln.
The representative of the dullforms rarely spoke. She wore the smock of a parshman, and had indicated that she considered it her duty to represent them—those with no songs—along with any dullforms among them.
Hers was as noble a sacrifice as Abronai holding to mateform. More so. Dullform was a difficult form to suffer, one that only a few ever experienced for longer than a stormpause or so.
“I agree to this,” Zuln said.
The others hummed to Appreciation. Only Venli did not join in the song. If this stormform turned out to be real, would they add another person to the Five? At first, the Five had all been dullforms, then all workers. It was only at the discovery of nimbleform that it had been decided that they would have one of each form.
A question for later. The others of the Five stood up, then began to make their way down the long flight of steps spiraling around the tower. Wind blew from the east, and Eshonai turned toward it, looking out over the broken Plains—toward the Origin of Storms.
During a coming highstorm, she would step into the winds and become something new. Something powerful. Something that would change the destiny of the listeners, and perhaps the humans, forever.
“I nearly had cause to hate you, Sister,” Venli said to Reprimand, idling beside where Eshonai sat.
“I did not forbid this test,” Eshonai said.
“Instead you take its glory.”
“If there is glory to be had,” Eshonai said to Reprimand, “it will be yours for discovering the form. That should not be a consideration. Only our future should matter.”
Venli hummed to Irritation. “They called you wise, experienced. It makes one wonder if they’ve forgotten who you were—that you went off recklessly into the wilds, ignoring your people, while I stayed home and memorized songs. When did everyone start believing you were the responsible one?”
It’s this cursed uniform, Eshonai thought, rising. “Why didn’t you tell us what you were researching? You let me believe your studies were to find artform or mediationform. Instead, you were looking for one of the forms of ancient power.”
“Does that matter?”
“Yes. It makes all the difference, Venli. I love you, but your ambition frightens me.”
“You don’t trust me,” Venli said to Betrayal.
Betrayal. That was a song rarely sung. It stung enough to make Eshonai wince.
“We’ll see what this form does,” Eshonai said, picking up her maps and the gemstone with the trapped spren. “Then we will talk further. I just want to be careful.”
“You want to do it yourself,” Venli said to Irritation. “You always want to be first. But enough. It is done. Come with me; I will need to train you in the proper mindset to help the form work. Then we will pick a highstorm for the transformation.”
Eshonai nodded. She would go through this training. In the meantime, she would consider. Perhaps there was another way. If she could get the Alethi to listen to her, find Dalinar Kholin, sue for peace . . .
Perhaps then, this would not be needed.