Oathbringer: Book Three of the Stormlight Archive

“Those were good times, Brightlord. Good times. Before everything went wrong…” His eyes glazed over.

“What was it like?” Dalinar asked softly. “The civil war, the battle here, at Vedenar?”

“It was a nightmare, sir.”

“Geved,” the younger man said. “Let’s go. They have food—”

“Didn’t you hear him?” Geved said, pulling his remaining arm out of the boy’s grip. “He asked. Everyone dances around me, ignoring it. Storms, sir. The civil war was a nightmare.”

“Fighting other Veden families,” Dalinar said, nodding.

“It wasn’t that,” Geved said. “Storms! We squabble as much as you do, sir. Pardon that. But I ain’t ever felt bad fighting my own. It’s what the Almighty wants, right? But that battle…” He shuddered. “Nobody would stop, Brightlord. Even when it should have been done. They just kept right on fighting. Killing because they felt like killing.”

“It burned in us,” another wounded man said from by the food table. The man wore an eye patch and looked like he hadn’t shaved since the battle. “You know it, Brightlord, don’t you? That river inside of you, pulling your blood all up into your head and making you love each swing. Making it so that you can’t stop, no matter how tired you are.”

The Thrill.

It started to glow inside Dalinar. So familiar, so warm, and so terrible. Dalinar felt it stir, like … like a favorite axehound, surprised to hear its master’s voice after so long.

He hadn’t felt it in what seemed like an eternity. Even back on the Shattered Plains, when he’d last felt it, it had seemed to be weakening. Suddenly that made sense. It wasn’t that he’d been learning to overcome the Thrill. Instead, it had left him.

To come here.

“Did others of you feel this?” Dalinar asked.

“We all did,” another of the men said, and Geved nodded. “The officers … they rode about with teeth clenched in rictus grins. Men shouted to keep the fight, maintain the momentum.”

It’s all about momentum.

Others agreed, talking about the remarkable haze that had covered the day.

Losing any sense of peace he’d gained from the inspections, Dalinar excused himself. His guards raced to keep up as he fled—moving even faster as a newly arrived messenger called to him, saying he was needed back at the gardens.

He wasn’t ready. He didn’t want to face Taravangian, or Navani, or especially Renarin. Instead, he climbed the city wall. Inspect … inspect the fortifications. That was why he’d come.

From the top, he could again see those large sections of the city, burned and broken in the war.

The Thrill called to him, distant and thin. No. No. Dalinar marched along the wall, passing soldiers. To his right, waves crashed against the rocks. Shadows moved in the shallows, beasts two or three times as big as a chull, their shells peeking from the depths between waves.

It seemed that Dalinar had been four people in his life. The bloodlusty warrior, who killed wherever he was pointed, and the consequences could go to Damnation.

The general, who had feigned distinguished civility—when secretly, he’d longed to get back on the battlefield so he could shed more blood.

Third, the broken man. The one who paid for the actions of the youth.

Then finally, the fourth man: most false of them all. The man who had given up his memories so he could pretend to be something better.

Dalinar stopped, resting one hand on the stones. His guards assembled behind him. A Veden soldier approached from the other direction along the wall, calling out in anger. “Who are you? What are you doing up here?”

Dalinar squeezed his eyes shut.

“You! Alethi. Answer me. Who let you scale this fortification?”

The Thrill stirred, and the animal inside him wanted to lash out. A fight. He needed a fight.

No. He fled again, hurrying down a tight, constricting stone stairwell. His breathing echoed against the walls, and he nearly stumbled and tripped down the last flight.

He burst out onto the street, sweating, surprising a group of women carrying water. His guards piled out after him. “Sir?” Rial asked. “Sir, are you … Is everything…?”

Dalinar sucked in Stormlight, hoping it would drive away the Thrill. It didn’t. It seemed to complement the sensation, driving him to act.

“Sir?” Rial said, holding out a canteen that smelled of something strong. “I know you said I shouldn’t carry this, but I did. And … and you might need it.”

Dalinar stared at that canteen. A pungent scent rose to envelop him. If he drank that, he could forget the whispers. Forget the burned city, and what he’d done to Rathalas. And to Evi.

So easy …

Blood of my fathers. Please. No.

He spun away from Rial. He needed rest. That was all, just rest. He tried to keep his head up and slow his pace as he marched back toward the Oathgate.

The Thrill nipped at him from behind.

If you become that first man again, it will stop hurting. In your youth, you did what needed to be done. You were stronger then.

He growled, spinning and flinging his cloak to the side, looking for the voice that had spoken those words. His guards shied back, gripping their spears tightly. The beleaguered inhabitants of Vedenar scurried away from him.

Is this leadership? To cry each night? To shake and tremble? Those are the actions of a child, not a man.

“Leave me alone!”

Give me your pain.

Dalinar looked toward the sky and let out a raw bellow. He charged through the streets, no longer caring what people thought when they saw him. He needed to be away from this city.

There. The steps up to the Oathgate. The people of this city had once made a garden out of its platform, but that had been cleared away. Ignoring the long ramp, Dalinar took the steps two at a time, Stormlight lending him endurance.

At the top, he found a cluster of guards in Kholin blue standing with Navani and a smattering of scribes. She immediately strode over. “Dalinar, I tried to ward him off, but he was insistent. I don’t know what he wants.”

“He?” Dalinar asked, puffing from his near run.

Navani gestured toward the scribes. For the first time, Dalinar noticed that several among them wore the short beards of ardents. But those blue robes? What were those?

Curates, he thought, from the Holy Enclave in Valath. Technically, Dalinar himself was a head of the Vorin religion—but in practice, the curates guided church doctrine. The staves they bore were wound with gemstones, more ornate than he’d expected. Hadn’t most of that pomp been done away with at the fall of the Hierocracy?

“Dalinar Kholin!” one said, stepping forward. He was young for an ardentia leader, perhaps in his early forties. His square beard was streaked with a few lines of grey.

“I am he,” Dalinar said, shrugging off Navani’s touch to his shoulder. “If you would speak with me, let us retire to a place more private—”

“Dalinar Kholin,” the ardent said, louder. “The council of curates declares you a heretic. We cannot tolerate your insistence that the Almighty is not God. You are hereby proclaimed excommunicate and anathema.”