Oathbringer: Book Three of the Stormlight Archive

“Yet still, somehow, a naive one.” She drew in a deep, ragged breath. She had to stop this. She knew she had to get over the tantrum and go back to the tailor’s shop.

She’d do it. She’d shove all this into the back of her mind, with everything else she ignored. They could all fester together.

Wit settled back. “Have you heard the story of the Girl Who Looked Up?”

Shallan didn’t reply.

“It’s a story from long ago,” Wit said. He cupped his hands around the sphere on the floor. “Things were different in that time. A wall kept out the storms, but everyone ignored it. All but one girl, who looked up one day, and contemplated it.”

“Why is there a wall?” Shallan whispered.

“Oh, so you do know it? Good.” He leaned down, blowing at the crem dust on the floor. It swirled up, making a figure of a girl. It gave the brief impression of her standing before a wall, but then disintegrated back into dust. He tried again, and it swirled a little higher this time, but still fell back to dust.

“A little help?” he asked. He pushed a bag of spheres across the ground toward Shallan.

Shallan sighed, then picked up the bag and drew in the Stormlight. It started to rage within her, demanding to be used, so she stood up and breathed out, Weaving it into an illusion she’d done once before. A pristine village, and a young girl standing and looking upward, toward an impossibly tall wall in the distance.

The illusion made the room seem to vanish. Somehow, Shallan painted the walls and ceiling in precisely the right way, making them disappear into the landscape—become part of it. She hadn’t made them invisible; they were merely covered up in a way that made it seem Shallan and Wit were standing in another place.

This was … this was more than she’d ever done before. But was she really doing it? Shallan shook her head and stepped up beside the girl, who wore long scarves.

Wit stepped up on the other side. “Hmmm,” he said. “Not bad. But it’s not dark enough.”

“What?”

“I thought you knew the story,” Wit said, tapping the air. The color and light bled from her illusion, leaving them standing in the darkness of night, lit only by a frail set of stars. The wall was an enormous blot before them. “In these days, there was no light.”

“No light…”

“Of course, even without light, people still had to live, didn’t they? That’s what people do. I hasten to guess it’s the first thing they learn how to do. So they lived in the darkness, farmed in the darkness, ate in the darkness.” He waved behind him. People stumbled about in the village, feeling their way to different activities, barely able to see by the starlight.

In this context, strange though it seemed, some pieces of the story as she’d told it made sense. When the girl went up to people and asked, “Why is there a wall?” it was obvious why they found it so easy to ignore.

The illusion followed Wit’s words as the girl in the scarves asked several people about the wall. Don’t go beyond it, or you shall die.

“And so,” Wit said, “she decided that the only way she’d find answers would be to climb the wall herself.” He glanced at Shallan. “Was she stupid or bold?”

“How should I know?”

“Wrong answer. She was both.”

“It wasn’t stupid. If nobody asked questions, then we would never learn anything.”

“What of the wisdom of her elders?”

“They offered no explanation for why she shouldn’t ask about the wall! No rationalization, no justification. There’s a difference between listening to your elders and just being as frightened as everyone else.”

Wit smiled, the sphere in his hand lighting his face. “Funny, isn’t it, how so many of our stories start the same way, but have opposing endings? In half, the child ignores her parents, wanders out into the woods, and gets eaten. In the other half she discovers great wonders. There aren’t many stories about the kids who say, ‘Yes, I shall not go into the forest. I’m glad my parents explained that is where the monsters live.’ ”

“Is that what you’re trying to teach me, then?” Shallan snapped. “The fine distinction between choosing for yourself and ignoring good advice?”

“I’m a terrible teacher.” He waved his hand as the girl reached the wall after a long hike. She started to climb. “Fortunately, I am an artist, and not a teacher.”

“People learn things from art.”

“Blasphemy! Art is not art if it has a function.”

Shallan rolled her eyes.

“Take this fork,” Wit said. He waved his hand. Some of her Stormlight split off from her, spinning above his hand and making an image of a floating fork in the darkness. “It has a use. Eating. Now, if it were to be ornamented by a master artisan, would that change its function?” The fork grew intricate embossing in the form of growing leaves. “No, of course not. It has the same use, ornamented or not. The art is the part that serves no purpose.”

“It makes me happy, Wit. That’s a purpose.”

He grinned, and the fork disappeared.

“Weren’t we in the middle of a story about a girl climbing a wall?” Shallan asked.

“Yes, but that part takes forever,” he said. “I’m finding things to occupy us.”

“We could just skip the boring part.”

“Skip?” Wit said, aghast. “Skip part of a story?”

Shallan snapped her fingers, and the illusion shifted so that they stood atop the wall in the darkness. The girl in the scarves finally—after toiling many days—pulled herself up beside them.

“You wound me,” Wit said. “What happens next?”

“The girl finds steps,” Shallan said. “And the girl realizes that the wall wasn’t to keep something in, but to keep her and her people out.”

“Because?”

“Because we’re monsters.”

Wit stepped over to Shallan, then quietly folded his arms around her. She trembled, then twisted, burying her face in his shirt.

“You’re not a monster, Shallan,” Wit whispered. “Oh, child. The world is monstrous at times, and there are those who would have you believe that you are terrible by association.”

“I am.”

“No. For you see, it flows the other direction. You are not worse for your association with the world, but it is better for its association with you.”

She pressed against him, shivering. “What do I do, Wit?” she whispered. “I know … I know I shouldn’t be in so much pain. I had to…” She took a deep breath. “I had to kill them. I had to. But now I’ve said the words, and I can’t ignore it anymore. So I should … should just die too, for having done it.…”

Wit waved to the side, toward where the girl in the scarves still overlooked a new world. What was that long pack she had set down beside her?

“So you remember,” Wit said gently, “the rest of the story?”

“It’s not important. We found the moral already. The wall kept people out.”

“Why?”

“Because…” What had she told Pattern before, when she’d been showing him this story?

“Because,” Wit said, pointing, “beyond the wall was God’s Light.”