The Way of Kings, Part 1 (The Stormlight Archive #1.1)

She felt a growing chill, a rising terror. She had to know. She scrambled to pull out the charcoal, then blinked and began to sketch her room.

Ceiling first. Four straight lines. Down the walls. Lines at the corners. Her fingers kept moving, drawing, depicting the pad itself, held before her, safehand shrouded and bracing the pad from behind. And then on. To the beings standing around her—twisted symbols unconnected to their uneven shoulders. Those not-heads had unreal angles, surfaces that melded in weird, impossible ways.

The creature at the front was reaching too-smooth fingers toward Shallan. Just inches from the right side of the sketchpad.

Oh, Stormfather … Shallan thought, charcoal pencil falling still. The room was empty, yet depicted right in front of her was an image of it crowded full of sleek figures. They were close enough that she should be able to feel them breathing, if they breathed.

Was there a chill in the room? Hesitantly—terrified but unable to stop herself—Shallan dropped her pencil and raised her freehand to the right.

And felt something.

She screamed then, jumping to her feet on her bed, dropping the pad, backing against the wall. Before she could consciously think of what she was doing, she was struggling with her sleeve, trying to get the Soulcaster out. It was the only thing she had resembling a weapon. No, that was stupid. She didn’t know how to use it. She was helpless.

Except …

Storms! she thought, frantic. I can’t use that. I promised myself.

She began the process anyway. Ten heartbeats, to bring forth the fruit of her sin, the proceeds of her most horrific act. She was interrupted midway through by a voice, uncanny yet distinct:

What are you?

She clutched her hand to her chest, losing her balance on the soft bed, falling to her knees on the rumpled blanket. She put one hand to the side, steadying herself on the nightstand, fingers brushing the large glass goblet that sat there.

“What am I?” she whispered. “I’m terrified.”

This is true.

The bedroom transformed around her.

The bed, the nightstand, her sketchpad, the walls, the ceiling—everything seemed to pop, forming into tiny, dark glass spheres. She found herself in a place with a black sky and a strange, small white sun that hung on the horizon, too far away.

Shallan screamed as she found herself in midair, falling backward in a shower of beads. Flames hovered nearby, dozens of them, perhaps hundreds. Like the tips of candles floating in the air and moving in the wind.

She hit something. An endless dark sea, except it wasn’t wet. It was made of the small beads, an entire ocean of tiny glass spheres. They surged around her, moving in an undulating swell. She gasped, flailing, trying to stay afloat.

You want me to change? a warm voice said in her mind, distinct and different from the cold whisper she had heard earlier. It was deep and hollow and conveyed a sense of great age. It seemed to come from her hand, and she realized she was grasping something there. One of the beads.

The movement of the ocean of glass threatened to tow her down; she kicked frantically, somehow managing to stay afloat.

I’ve been as I am for a great long time, the warm voice said. I sleep so much. I will change. Give me what you have.

“I don’t know what you mean! Please, help me!”

I will change.

She felt suddenly cold, as if the warmth were being drawn from her. She screamed as the bead in her fingers flared to sudden warmth. She dropped it just as a shift in the ocean swell towed her under, beads rolling over one another with a soft clatter.

She fell back and hit her bed, back in her room. Beside her, the goblet on her nightstand melted, the glass becoming red liquid, dropping the three spheres inside to the nightstand’s flooded top. The red liquid poured over the sides of the nightstand, splashing to the floor. Shallan pulled back, horrified.

The goblet had been changed into blood.

Her shocked motion thumped the nightstand, shaking it. An empty glass water pitcher had been sitting beside the goblet. Her motion knocked it over, toppling it to the ground. It shattered on the stone floor, splashing the blood.

That was a Soulcasting! she thought. She’d changed the goblet into blood, which was one of the Ten Essences. She raised her hand to her head, staring at the red liquid expanding in a pool on her floor. There seemed to be quite a lot of it.

She was so bewildered. The voice, the creatures, the sea of glass beads and the dark, cold sky. It had all come upon her so quickly.

I Soulcast, she realized again. I did it!

Did it have something to do with the creatures? But she’d begun seeing them in her drawings before she’d ever stolen the Soulcaster. How … what … ? She looked down at her safehand and the Soulcaster hidden in the pouch inside her sleeve.

I didn’t put it on, she thought. Yet I used it anyway.

“Shallan?”

It was Jasnah’s voice. Just outside Shallan’s room. The princess must have followed her. Shallan felt a spike of terror as she saw a line of blood leaking toward the doorway. It was almost there, and would pass underneath in a heartbeat.

Why did it have to be blood? Nauseated, she leaped to her feet, slippers soaking up the red liquid.

“Shallan?” Jasnah said, voice closer. “What was that sound?”

Shallan looked frantically at the blood, then at the sketchpad, filled with pictures of the strange creatures. What if they did have something to do with the Soulcasting? Jasnah would recognize them. There was a shadow under the door.

She panicked, tucking the sketchpad away in her trunk. But the blood, it would condemn her. There was enough that only a life-threatening wound could have created it. Jasnah would see. She’d know. Blood where there should be none? One of the Ten Essences?

Jasnah was going to know what Shallan had done!

A thought struck Shallan. It wasn’t a brilliant thought, but it was a way out, and it was the only thing that occurred to her. She went to her knees and grabbed a shard of the broken glass pitcher in her safehand, through the fabric of her sleeve. She took a breath and pulled up her right sleeve, then used the glass to cut a shallow gash in her skin. In the panic of the moment, it barely even hurt. Blood welled out.

As the doorknob turned and the door opened, Shallan dropped the glass shard and lay on her side. She closed her eyes, feigning unconsciousness. The door swung open.

Jasnah gasped, immediately calling for help. She rushed to Shallan’s side, grabbing her arm and putting pressure on the wound. Shallan mumbled, as if she were barely conscious, gripping her safepouch—and the Soulcaster inside—with her safehand. They wouldn’t open it, would they? She pulled her arm closer to her chest, cowering silently as more footsteps and calls sounded, servants and parshmen running into the room, Jasnah shouting for more help.

This, Shallan thought, will not end well.