Oathbringer: Book Three of the Stormlight Archive

The wind itself couldn’t touch her. She’d been here before. She’d held for a beautiful moment between crashes, sliding on bare feet, moving free, untouched. Like she was gliding between worlds. She could do it. She could—

Something crashed to the ground nearby, crushing several soldiers, throwing Lift off balance and sending her into a heap. She slid to a stop and rolled over, looking up at one of the huge stone monsters. The skeletal thing raised a spiked hand and slammed it down.

Lift threw herself out of the way, but the shaking from the impact sent her sprawling again. Soldiers nearby didn’t seem to care that their fellows had been crushed. Eyes glowing, they scrambled for her, as if it were a contest to see who could kill her first.

Her only choice was to dodge toward the stone monster. Maybe she could get so close that it—

The creature pounded again, mashing three soldiers, but also slamming into Lift. The blow snapped her legs in the blink of an eye, then crushed her lower half, sending her into a screaming fit of pain. Eyes watering, she curled up on the ground.

Heal. Heal.

Just had to weather the pain. Just had to …

Stones ground against one another overhead. She blinked away tears, looking up at the creature raising its spike high in the sky, toward the sun, which was slipping behind the clouds of the deadly storm.

“Mistress!” Wyndle said. His vines climbed over her, as if trying to cradle her. “Oh, mistress. Summon me as a sword!”

The pain in her legs started to fade. Too slowly. She was growing hungry again, her Stormlight running low. She summoned Wyndle as a rod, twisting against the pain and holding him toward the monster, her eyes watering with the effort.

An explosion of light appeared overhead, a ball of expanding Radiance. Something dropped from the middle of it, trailing smoke both black and white. Glowing like a star.

“Mother!” Wyndle said. “What is—”

As the monster raised its fist to strike Lift, the spear of light hit the creature in the head and cut straight through. It divided the enormous thing in two, sending out an explosion of black smoke. The halves of the monster fell to the sides, crashing into the stone, then burned away, evaporating into blackness.

Soldiers cursed and coughed, backing up as something resolved in the center of the tempest. A figure in the smoke, glowing white and holding a jet-black Shardblade that seemed to feed on the smoke, sucking it in, then letting it pour down beneath itself as a liquid blackness.

White and black. A man with a shaved head, eyes glowing a light grey, Stormlight rising from him. He straightened and strode through the smoke, leaving an afterimage behind. Lift had seen this man before. The Assassin in White. Murderer.

And apparently savior.

He stopped beside her. “The Blackthorn assigned you a task?”

“Uh … yeah,” Lift said, wiggling her toes, which seemed to be working again. “There’s a Voidbringer who stole a large ruby. I’m supposed to get it back.”

“Then stand,” the assassin said, raising his strange Shardblade toward the enemy soldiers. “Our master has given us a task. We shall see it completed.”

*

Navani scrambled across the top of the wall, alone except for crushed corpses.

Dalinar, don’t you dare become a martyr, she thought, reaching the stairwell. She pulled open the door at the top and started down the dark steps. What was he thinking? Facing an entire army on his own? He wasn’t a young man in his prime, outfitted in Shardplate!

She fumbled for a sphere in her safepouch, then eventually undid the clasp on her arm fabrial instead, using its light to guide her down the steps and into the room at the base. Where had Fen and—

A hand grabbed her, pulling her to the side and slamming her against the wall. Fen and Kmakl lay here, gagged, bound tightly. A pair of men in forest green, eyes glowing red, held knives to them. A third one, wearing the knots of a captain, pressed Navani against the wall.

“What a handsome reward you’ll earn me,” the man hissed at Navani. “Two queens. Brightlord Amaram will enjoy this gift. That almost makes up for not being able to kill you personally, as justice for what your husband did to Brightlord Sadeas.”

*

Ash stumbled to a stop before a brazier. It bore delicate metalwork around the rim, a finer piece than one expected to find in such a common location.

This improvised camp was where the Alethi troops had bivouacked while repairing the city; it clogged multiple streets and squares of the Low Ward. The unlit brazier that had stopped Ash was in front of a tent, and had perhaps been used for warmth on cold Thaylen nights. Ten figures ringed the bowl. Her fingers itched. She couldn’t move on, no matter how desperate her task, until she’d done it.

She seized the bowl and turned it until she found the woman depicting her, marked by the iconography of the brush and the mask, symbols of creativity. Pure absurdity. She pulled out her knife and sawed at the metal until she’d managed to scratch out the face.

Good enough. Good enough.

She dropped the brazier. Keep going. What that man, Mraize, had told her had better be true. If he had lied …

The large tent near the wall was completely unguarded, though soldiers had run past her a short time ago, eyes glowing with the light of corrupted Investiture. Odium has learned to possess men. A dark, dangerous day. He’d always been able to tempt them to fight for him, but sending spren to bond with them? Terrible.

And how had he managed to start a storm of his own?

Well, this land was finally doomed. And Ash … Ash couldn’t find it inside herself to care any longer. She pushed into the tent, forcibly keeping herself from looking at the rug in case it bore depictions of the Heralds.

There she found him, sitting alone in the dim light, staring ahead sightlessly. Dark skin, even darker than hers, and a muscled physique. A king, for all the fact that he’d never worn a crown. He was the one of the ten who was never supposed to have borne their burden.

And he’d borne it the longest anyway.

“Taln,” she whispered.

*

Renarin Kholin knew he wasn’t actually a Knight Radiant. Glys had once been a different kind of spren, but something had changed him, corrupted him. Glys didn’t remember that very well; it had happened before they had formed their bond.

Now, neither knew what they’d become. Renarin could feel the spren trembling inside him, hiding and whispering about the danger. Jasnah had found them.

Renarin had seen that coming.

He knelt in the ancient temple of Pailiah, and to his eyes it was full of colors. A thousand panes of stained glass sprouted on the walls, combining and melting together, creating a panorama. He saw himself coming to Thaylen City earlier in the day. He saw Dalinar talking to the monarchs, and then he saw them turning against him.

She will hurt us! She will hurt us!

“I know, Glys,” he whispered, turning toward a specific section of stained glass. This showed Renarin kneeling on the floor of the temple. In the sequence of stained glass panels, Jasnah approached him from behind, sword raised.