Oathbringer: Book Three of the Stormlight Archive

King Elhokar was at the front. They couldn’t bring their suits of Shardplate; Lashings didn’t work on those. Instead, the king wore thick clothing and a strange kind of glass-fronted mask to block the wind. Shallan had suggested those; they were apparently naval equipment. Adolin came next. Then two of Shallan’s soldiers—the sloppy deserters she’d collected like wounded axehound pups—and one maidservant. Kaladin didn’t understand why they’d brought those three, but the king had insisted.

Adolin and the others were bundled up as much as the king, which made Shallan look even more odd. She flew in only her blue havah—which she’d pinned to keep it from fluttering too much—with white leggings underneath. Stormlight surged from her skin, keeping her warm, sustaining her.

Her hair streamed behind her, a stark auburn red. She flew with arms outstretched and eyes closed, grinning. Kaladin had to keep adjusting her speed to keep her in line with the others, as she couldn’t resist reaching out to feel the wind between her freehand fingers, and waving to windspren as they passed.

How does she smile like that? Kaladin wondered. During their trip through the chasms together, he’d learned her secrets. The wounds she hid. And yet … she could simply ignore them somehow. Kaladin had never been able to do that. Even when he wasn’t feeling particularly grim, he felt weighed down by his duties or the people he needed to care for.

Her heedless joy made him want to show her how to really fly. She didn’t have Lashings, but could still use her body to sculpt the wind and dance in the air.…

He snapped himself back to the moment, banishing silly daydreams. Kaladin tucked his arms against himself, making a narrower profile for the wind. This made him move up the line of people, so he could renew their Stormlight each in turn. He didn’t use Stormlight to maneuver so much as the wind itself.

Skar and Drehy handled their own flight about twenty feet below the group, watching in case anyone dropped for some reason. Lashings renewed, Kaladin maneuvered himself into line between Shallan and King Elhokar. The king stared forward through the mask, as if oblivious to the wondrous storm beneath. Shallan drifted onto her back, beaming as she looked up at the sky, the hem of her pinned skirts rippling and fluttering.

Adolin was a different story. He glanced at Kaladin, then closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. At least he’d stopped flailing each time they hit a change in the winds.

They didn’t speak, as their voices would only be lost to the rushing wind. Kaladin’s instincts said he could probably lessen the force of the wind while flying—he’d done so before—but there were some abilities he had trouble deliberately reproducing.

Eventually, a line of light flitted from the storm below. It soon looped into a ribbon of light and spun up toward him. “We just passed the Windrunner River,” Syl said. The words were more of a mental impression than actual sound.

“We’re near Kholinar then,” he said.

“She clearly likes the sky,” Syl said, glancing at Shallan. “A natural. She almost seems like a spren, and I consider that high praise.”

He sighed, and did not look at Shallan.

“Come on…” Syl said, zipping around to his other side. “You need to be with people to be happy, Kaladin. I know you do.”

“I have my bridge crew,” he muttered, voice lost to the winds—but Syl would be able to hear, as he could hear her.

“Not the same. And you know it.”

“She brought her handmaid on a scouting mission. She couldn’t go a week without someone to do her hair. You think I’d be interested in that?”

“Think?” Syl said. She took the shape of a tiny young woman in a girlish dress, flying through the sky before him. “I know. Don’t think I don’t spot you stealing looks.” She smirked.

“Time to stop so we don’t overshoot Kholinar,” Kaladin said. “Go tell Skar and Drehy.”

Kaladin took his charges one at a time, canceling their Lashing forward, replacing it with a half Lashing upward. There was a strange effect to the Lashings that frustrated Sigzil’s scientific attempts at terminology. All of his numbers had assumed that once Lashed, a person would be under the influence of both the ground and the Lashing.

That wasn’t the case. Once you used a Basic Lashing on someone, their body completely forgot about the pull of the ground, and they fell in the direction you indicated. Partial Lashings worked by making part of the person’s weight forget the ground, though the rest continued to be pulled downward. So a half Lashing upward made a person weightless.

Kaladin situated the groups so he could speak to the king, Adolin, and Shallan. His bridgemen and Shallan’s attendants hovered a short distance off. Even Sigzil’s new explanations had trouble accounting for everything that Kaladin did. He’d somehow made a kind of … channel around the group, like in a river. A current, sweeping them along, keeping them closer together.

“It really is beautiful,” Shallan said, surveying the storm, which blanketed everything but the tips of some very distant peaks to their left. Probably the Sunmaker Mountains. “Like mixing paint—if dark paint could somehow spawn new colors and light within its swirls.”

“So long as I can continue to watch it from a safe distance,” Adolin said. He held Kaladin’s arm to keep from drifting away.

“We’re close to Kholinar,” Kaladin said. “Which is good, as we’re getting near the back edge of the storm, and I’ll soon lose access to its Stormlight.”

“What I feel like I’m about to lose,” Shallan said, looking down, “is my shoes.”

“Shoes?” Adolin said. “I lost my lunch back there.”

“I can’t help imagining something sliding off and dropping into it,” Shallan whispered. “Vanishing. Gone forever.” She glanced at Kaladin. “No wisecracks about missing boots?”

“I couldn’t think of anything funny.” He hesitated. “Though that hasn’t ever stopped you.”

Shallan grinned. “Have you ever considered, bridgeman, that bad art does more for the world than good art? Artists spend more of their lives making bad practice pieces than they do masterworks, particularly at the start. And even when an artist becomes a master, some pieces don’t work out. Still others are somehow just wrong until the last stroke.

“You learn more from bad art than you do from good art, as your mistakes are more important than your successes. Plus, good art usually evokes the same emotions in people—most good art is the same kind of good. But bad pieces can each be bad in their own unique way. So I’m glad we have bad art, and I’m sure the Almighty agrees.”

“All this,” Adolin said, amused, “to justify your sense of humor, Shallan?”

“My sense of humor? No, I’m merely trying to justify the creation of Captain Kaladin.”

Ignoring her, Kaladin squinted eastward. The clouds behind them were lightening from deep, brooding black and grey to a more general blandness, the color of Rock’s morning mush. The storm was near to ending; what arrived with a fanfare ended with an extended sigh, gales giving way to peaceful rain.

“Drehy, Skar,” Kaladin called. “Keep everyone in the air. I’m going to go scout below.”