Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive #3)

“I’m not the one telling everyone that God is dead.”

“Not everyone,” Dalinar said. He sighed, letting go of her—with reluctance—and walked back into his rooms, where a brazier of coal radiated welcome warmth, as well as the room’s only light. They had recovered his fabrial heating device from the warcamps, but didn’t yet have the Stormlight to run it. The scholars had discovered long chains and cages, apparently used for lowering spheres down into the storms, so they’d be able to renew their spheres—if the highstorms ever returned. In other parts of the world, the Weeping had restarted, then fitfully stopped. It might start again. Or the proper storms might start up. Nobody knew, and the Stormfather refused to enlighten him.

Navani entered and pulled the thick drapings closed over the doorway, tying them tightly in place. This room was heaped with furniture, chairs lining the walls, rolled rugs stacked atop them. There was even a standing mirror. The images of twisting windspren along its sides bore the distinctly rounded look of something that had been carved first from weevilwax, then Soulcast into hardwood.

They had deposited all this here for him, as if worried about their highprince living in simple stone quarters. “Let’s have someone clear this out for me tomorrow,” Dalinar said. “There’s room enough for it in the chamber next door, which we can turn into a sitting room or a common room.”

Navani nodded as she settled onto one of the sofas—he saw her reflected in the mirror—her hand still casually uncovered, gown dropping to the side, exposing neck, collarbone, and some of what was beneath. She wasn’t trying to be seductive right now; she was merely comfortable around him. Intimately familiar, past the point where she felt embarrassed for him to see her uncovered.

It was good that one of them was willing to take the initiative in the relationship. For all his impatience to advance on the battlefield, this was one area in which he’d always needed encouragement. Same as it had been all those years ago …

“When I married last,” Dalinar said softly, “I did many things wrong. I started wrong.”

“I wouldn’t say that. You married Shshshsh for her Shardplate, but many marriages are for political reasons. That doesn’t mean you were wrong. If you’ll recall, we all encouraged you to do it.”

As always, when he heard his dead wife’s name, the word was replaced to his hearing with a breezy sound of rushing air—the name couldn’t gain purchase in his mind, any more than a man could hold to a gust of wind.

“I’m not trying to replace her, Dalinar,” Navani said, suddenly sounding concerned. “I know you still have affection for Shshshsh. It’s all right. I can share you with her memory.”

Oh, how little they all understood. He turned toward Navani, set his jaw against the pain, and said it.

“I don’t remember her, Navani.”

She looked to him with a frown, as if she thought she hadn’t heard him correctly.

“I can’t remember my wife at all,” he said. “I don’t know her face. Portraits of her are a fuzzy smudge to my eyes. Her name is taken from me whenever spoken, like someone has plucked it away. I don’t remember what she and I said when we first met; I can’t even remember seeing her at the feast that night when she first arrived. It’s all a blur. I can remember some events surrounding my wife, but nothing of the actual details. It’s all just … gone.”

Navani raised her safehand fingers to her mouth, and from the way her brow knit with concern, he figured he must look like he was in agony.

He slumped down in a chair across from her.

“The alcohol?” she asked softly.

“Something more.”

She breathed out. “The Old Magic. You said you knew both your boon and your curse.”

He nodded.

“Oh, Dalinar.”

“People glance at me when her name comes up,” Dalinar continued, “and they give me these looks of pity. They see me keeping a stiff expression, and they assume I’m being stoic. They infer hidden pain, when really I’m just trying to keep up. It’s hard to follow a conversation where half of it keeps slipping away from your brain.

“Navani, maybe I did grow to love her. I can’t remember. Not one moment of intimacy, not one fight, not a single word she ever said to me. She’s gone, leaving debris that mars my memory. I can’t remember how she died. That one gets to me, because there are parts of that day I know I should remember. Something about a city in rebellion against my brother, and my wife being taken hostage?”

That … and a long march alone, accompanied only by hatred and the Thrill. He remembered those emotions vividly. He’d brought vengeance to those who had taken his wife from him.

Navani settled down on the seat beside Dalinar, resting her head on his shoulder. “Would that I could create a fabrial,” she whispered, “to take away this kind of pain.”

“I think … I think losing her must have hurt me terribly,” Dalinar whispered, “because of what it drove me to do. I am left with only the scars. Regardless, Navani, I want it to be right with us. No mistakes. Done properly, with oaths, spoken to you before someone.”

“Mere words.”

“Words are the most important things in my life right now.”

She parted her lips, thoughtful. “Elhokar?”

“I wouldn’t want to put him in that position.”

“A foreign priest? From the Azish, maybe? They’re almost Vorin.”

“That would be tantamount to declaring myself a heretic. It goes too far. I will not defy the Vorin church.” He paused. “I might be willing to sidestep it though.…”

“What?” she asked.

He looked upward, toward the ceiling. “Maybe we go to someone with authority greater than theirs.”

“You want a spren to marry us?” she said, sounding amused. “Using a foreign priest would be heretical, but not a spren?”

“The Stormfather is the largest remnant of Honor,” Dalinar said. “He’s a sliver of the Almighty himself—and is the closest thing to a god we have left.”

“Oh, I’m not objecting,” Navani said. “I’d let a confused dishwasher marry us. I just think it’s a little unusual.”

“It’s the best we’re going to get, assuming he is willing.” He looked to Navani, then raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

“Is that a proposal?”

“… Yes?”

“Dalinar Kholin,” she said. “Surely you can do better.”

He rested his hand on the back of her head, touching her black hair, which she had left loose. “Better than you, Navani? No, I don’t think that I could. I don’t think that any man has ever had a chance better than this.”

She smiled, and her only reply was a kiss.

*