Oathbringer: Book Three of the Stormlight Archive

Many of the living Veden troops were barracked in storm bunkers right inside the city walls. From reports he’d heard earlier, the civil war had brought incredible losses. Even baffling ones. Many armies would break after suffering ten percent casualties, but here—reportedly—the Vedens had continued fighting after losing more than half their numbers.

Perhaps they’d been driven mad by the persistent crashing of those waves. And … what else did he hear?

More phantom weeping. Taln’s palms! Dalinar drew a deep breath, but smelled only smoke.

Why must I have these memories? he thought, angry. Why did they suddenly return?

Mixing with those emotions was a growing fear for Adolin and Elhokar. Why hadn’t they sent word? If they’d escaped, wouldn’t they have flown to safety—or at the very least, found a spanreed? It seemed ridiculous to assume multiple Radiants and Shardbearers were trapped in the city, unable to flee. But the alternative was to worry that they hadn’t survived. That he’d sent them to die.

Dalinar tried to stand, straight-backed and at attention, beneath the weight of it all. Unfortunately, he knew too well that if you locked your knees and stood too straight, you risked fainting. Why was it that trying to stand tall should make you so much more likely to fall?

His guards at the base of the stone hill parted to let Taravangian—in his characteristic orange robes—shuffle through. The old man carried an enormous diamond-shaped kite shield, large enough to cover his entire left side. He climbed up to the gazebo, then sat down on one of the benches, panting.

“Did you want to see one of these, Dalinar?” he asked after a moment, holding out the shield.

Glad for the distraction, Dalinar took the shield, hefting it. “Half-shard?” he said, noting a steel box—with a gemstone inside—fastened to the inner surface.

“Indeed,” Taravangian said. “Crude devices. There are legends of metal that can block a Shardblade. A metal that falls from the sky. Silver, but somehow lighter. I should like to see that, but for now we can use these.”

Dalinar grunted.

“You know how they make fabrials, don’t you?” Taravangian asked. “Enslaved spren?”

“Spren can’t be ‘enslaved’ any more than a chull can.”

The Stormfather rumbled distantly in his mind.

“That gemstone,” Taravangian said, “imprisons the kind of spren that gives things substance, the kind that holds the world together. We have entrapped in that shield something that, at another time, might have blessed a Knight Radiant.”

Storms. He couldn’t deal with a philosophical problem like this today. He tried to change the topic. “You seem to be feeling better.”

“It’s a good day for me. I feel better than I have recently, but that can be dangerous. I’m prone to thinking about mistakes I’ve made.” Taravangian smiled in his kindly way. “I try to tell myself that at the very least, I made the best choice I could, with the information I had.”

“Unfortunately, I’m certain I didn’t make the best choices I could,” Dalinar said.

“But you wouldn’t change them. If you did, you’d be a different person.”

I did change them, Dalinar thought. I erased them. And I did become a different person. Dalinar set the shield beside the old man.

“Tell me, Dalinar,” Taravangian said. “You’ve spoken of your disregard for your ancestor, the Sunmaker. You called him a tyrant.”

Like me.

“Let us say,” Taravangian continued, “you could snap your fingers and change history. Would you make it so that the Sunmaker lived longer and accomplished his desire, uniting all of Roshar under a single banner?”

“Turn him into more of a despot?” Dalinar said. “That would have meant him slaughtering his way all across Azir and into Iri. Of course I wouldn’t wish that.”

“But what if it left you, today, in command of a completely unified people? What if his slaughter let you save Roshar from the Voidbringer invasion?”

“I … You’d be asking me to consign millions of innocents to the pyre!”

“Those people are long dead,” Taravangian whispered. “What are they to you? Numbers in a scribe’s footnote. Yes, the Sunmaker was a monster. However, the current trade routes between Herdaz, Jah Keved, and Azir were forged by his tyranny. He brought culture and science back to Alethkar. Your modern Alethi cultural eruption can be traced directly back to what he did. Morality and law are built upon the bodies of the slain.”

“I can’t do anything about that.”

“No, no. Of course you can’t.” Taravangian tapped the half-shard shield. “Do you know how we capture spren for fabrials, Dalinar? From spanreeds to heatrials, it’s all the same. You lure the spren with something it loves. You give it something familiar to draw it in, something it knows deeply. In that moment, it becomes your slave.”

I … I really can’t think about this right now. “Excuse me,” Dalinar said, “I need to go check on Navani.”

He strode from the gazebo and down the steps, bustling past Rial and his other guards. They followed, towed in his wake like leaves after a strong gust of wind. He entered the city, but didn’t go looking for Navani. Perhaps he could visit the troops.

He walked back along the street, trying to ignore the destruction. Even without it though, this city felt off to him. The architecture was very like Alethi architecture, nothing like the flowery designs of Kharbranth or Thaylenah—but many buildings had plants draping and dangling from every window. It was strange to walk along streets full of people who looked Alethi but spoke a foreign tongue.

Eventually Dalinar reached the large stormshelters right inside the city walls. Soldiers had set up tent cities next to them, temporary bivouacs they could tear down and carry into one of the loaflike bunkers for storms. Dalinar found himself growing calmer as he walked among them. This was familiar; this was the peace of soldiers at work.

The officers here welcomed him, and generals took him on tours of the bunkers. They were impressed by his ability to speak their language—something he’d gained early in his visit to the city, using his Bondsmith abilities.

All Dalinar did was nod and ask the occasional question, but somehow he felt like he was accomplishing something. At the end, he entered a breezy tent near the city gates, where he met with a group of wounded soldiers. Each had survived when his entire platoon had fallen. Heroes, but not the conventional type. It took being a soldier to understand the heroism of simply being willing to continue after all your friends had died.

The last in line was an elderly veteran who wore a clean uniform and a patch for a defunct platoon. His right arm was missing, his jacket sleeve tied off, and a younger soldier led him up to Dalinar. “Look, Geved. The Blackthorn himself! Didn’t you always say you wanted to meet him?”

The older man had one of those stares that made him seem like he could see right through you. “Brightlord,” he said, and saluted. “I fought your army at Slickrock, sir. Brightlord Nalanar’s second infantry. Storming fine battle that was, sir.”

“Storming fine indeed,” Dalinar said, saluting him back. “I figured your forces had us at three different points.”