Oathbringer: Book Three of the Stormlight Archive

I am also made uncertain by your subterfuge. Why have you not made yourself known to me before this? How is it you can hide? Who are you truly, and how do you know so much about Adonalsium?

Dalinar appeared in the courtyard of a strange fortress with a single towering wall of bloodred stones. It closed a large gap in a mountainous rock formation.

Around him, men carried supplies or otherwise made themselves busy, passing in and out of buildings constructed against the natural stone walls. Winter air made Dalinar’s breath puff before him.

He held Navani’s freehand on his left, and Jasnah’s on his right. It had worked. His control over these visions was increasing beyond even what the Stormfather assumed possible. Today, by holding their hands, he had brought Navani and Jasnah in without a highstorm.

“Wonderful,” Navani said, squeezing his hand. “That wall is as majestic as you described. And the people. Bronze weapons again, very little steel.”

“That armor is Soulcast,” Jasnah said, releasing his hand. “Look at the fingermarks on the metal. That’s burnished iron, not true steel, Soulcast from clay into that shape. I wonder … did access to Soulcasters retard their drive to learn smelting? Working steel is difficult. You can’t simply melt it over a fire, like you can bronze.”

“So…” Dalinar asked, “when are we?”

“Maybe two thousand years ago,” Jasnah said. “Those are Haravingian swords, and see those archways? Late classical architecture, but washed out faux blue on the cloaks, rather than true blue dyes. Mix that with the language you spoke in—which my mother recorded last time—and I’m fairly certain.” She glanced at the passing soldiers. “A multiethnic coalition here, like during the Desolations—but if I’m right, this is over two thousand years after Aharietiam.”

“They’re fighting someone,” Dalinar said. “The Radiants retreat from a battle, then abandon their weapons on the field outside.”

“Which places the Recreance a little more recently than Masha-daughter-Shaliv had it in her history,” Jasnah said, musing. “From my reading of your vision accounts, this is the last chronologically—though it’s difficult to place the one with you overlooking ruined Kholinar.”

“Who could they be fighting?” Navani asked as men atop the wall raised the alarm. Horsemen galloped out of the keep, off to investigate. “This is well after the Voidbringers left.”

“It could be the False Desolation,” Jasnah said.

Dalinar and Navani both looked at her.

“A legend,” Jasnah said. “Considered pseudohistorical. Dovcanti wrote an epic about it somewhere around fifteen hundred years ago. The claim is that some Voidbringers survived Aharietiam, and there were many clashes with them afterward. It’s considered unreliable, but that’s because many later ardents insist that no Voidbringers could have survived. I’m inclined to assume this is a clash with parshmen before they were somehow deprived of their ability to change forms.”

She looked to Dalinar, eyes alight, and he nodded. She strode off to collect whatever historical tidbits she could.

Navani took some instruments from her satchel. “One way or another, I’m going to figure out where this ‘Feverstone Keep’ is, even if I have to bully these people into drawing a map. Perhaps we could send scholars to this location and find clues about the Recreance.”

Dalinar made his way over to the base of the wall. It was a truly majestic structure, typical of the strange contrasts of these visions: a classical people, without fabrials or even proper metallurgy, accompanied by wonders.

A group of men piled down the steps from the top of the wall. They were trailed by His Excellency Yanagawn the First, Prime Aqasix of Azir. While Dalinar had brought Navani and Jasnah by touch, he had asked the Stormfather to bring in Yanagawn. The highstorm currently raged in Azir.

The youth saw Dalinar and stopped. “Do I have to fight today, Blackthorn?”

“Not today, Your Excellency.”

“I’m getting really tired of these visions,” Yanagawn said, descending the last few steps.

“That fatigue never leaves, Your Excellency. In fact, it has grown as I’ve begun to grasp the importance of what I have seen in vision, and the burden it puts upon me.”

“That isn’t what I meant by tired.”

Dalinar didn’t reply, hands clasped behind him as together they walked to the sally port, where Yanagawn watched events unfold outside. Radiants were crossing the open plain or flying down. They summoned their Blades, provoking concern from the watching soldiers.

The knights drove their weapons into the ground, then abandoned them. They left their armor as well. Shards of incalculable value, renounced.

The young emperor looked to be in no rush to confront them as Dalinar had been. Dalinar, therefore, took him by the arm and guided him out as the first soldiers opened the doors. He didn’t want the emperor to get caught in the flood that would soon come, as men dashed for those Blades, then started killing one another.

As before in this vision, Dalinar felt as if he could hear the screaming deaths of the spren, the terrible sorrow of this field. It almost overwhelmed him.

“Why?” Yanagawn asked. “Why did they just … give up?”

“We don’t know, Your Excellency. This scene haunts me. There is so much I don’t understand. Ignorance has become the theme of my rule.”

Yanagawn looked around, then scrambled for a tall boulder to climb, where he could better watch the Radiants. He seemed far more engaged by this than he had been by other visions. Dalinar could respect that. War was war, but this … this was something you never saw. Men willingly giving up their Shards?

And that pain. It pervaded the air like a terrible stench.

Yanagawn settled down on his boulder. “So why show me this? You don’t even know what it means.”

“If you’re not going to join my coalition, I figure I should still give you as much knowledge as I can. Perhaps we will fall, and you will survive. Maybe your scholars can solve these puzzles when we cannot. And maybe you are the leader Roshar needs, while I am just an emissary.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“I don’t. I still want you to have these visions, just in case.”

Yanagawn fidgeted, playing with the tassels on his leather breastplate. “I … don’t matter as much as you think I do.”

“Pardon, Your Excellency, but you underestimate your importance. Azir’s Oathgate will be vital, and you are the strongest kingdom of the west. With Azir at our side, many other countries will join with us.”

“I mean,” Yanagawn said, “that I don’t matter. Sure, Azir does. But I’m only a kid they put on the throne because they were afraid that assassin would come back.”

“And the miracle they’re publishing? The proof from the Heralds that you were chosen?”