Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive #3)

This girl.

“I’ll speak with Elhokar,” Jasnah said. “I feel that might be extreme. For now, I want you to do drawings of Renarin’s and Kaladin’s spren, for scholarly reasons. Bring them to me for…” She trailed off. “What is he doing?”

Renarin stood near the far wall, which was covered in palm-size tiles. He tapped a specific one, and somehow made it pop out, like a drawer.

Jasnah stood, throwing back her chair. She strode across the room, Shallan scampering along behind her.

Renarin glanced at them, then held up what he’d found in the small drawer. A ruby, long as Jasnah’s thumb, cut into a strange shape with holes drilled in it. What on Roshar? She took it from him and held it up.

“What is it?” Navani said, shouldering up beside her. “A fabrial? No metal parts. What is that shape?”

Jasnah reluctantly surrendered it to her mother.

“So many imperfections in the cut,” Navani said. “That will cause it to lose Stormlight quickly. It won’t even hold a charge for a day, I bet. And it will vibrate something fierce.”

Curious. Jasnah touched it, infusing the gemstone with Stormlight. It started glowing, but not nearly as brightly as it should have. Navani was, of course, right. It vibrated as Stormlight curled off it. Why would anyone spoil a gem with such a twisted cut, and why hide it? The small drawer was latched with a spring, but she couldn’t see how Renarin had gotten it undone.

“Storms,” Shallan whispered as other scholars crowded around. “That’s a pattern.”

“A pattern?”

“Buzzes in sequence…” Shallan said. “My spren says he thinks this is a code. Letters?”

“Music of language,” Renarin whispered. He drew in Stormlight from some spheres in his pocket, then turned and pressed his hands against the wall, sending a surge of Stormlight through it that extended from his palms like twin ripples on the surface of a pond.

Drawers slid open, one behind each white tile. A hundred, two hundred … each revealing gemstones inside.

The library had decayed, but the ancient Radiants had obviously anticipated that.

They’d found another way to pass on their knowledge.





I would have thought, before attaining my current station, that a deity could not be surprised.

Obviously, this is not true. I can be surprised. I can perhaps even be naive, I think.

“I’m just asking,” Khen grumbled, “how this is any better. We were slaves under the Alethi. Now we’re slaves under the Fused. Great. It does me so much good to know that our misery is now at the hands of our own people.” The parshwoman set her bundle down with a rattling thump.

“You’ll get us in trouble again, talking like that,” Sah said. He dropped his bundle of wooden poles, then walked back the other way.

Moash followed, passing rows of humans and parshmen turning the poles into ladders. These, like Sah and the rest of his team, would soon be carrying those ladders into battle, facing down a storm of arrows.

What a strange echo of his life months ago in Sadeas’s warcamp. Except here he’d been given sturdy gloves, a nice pair of boots, and three solid meals a day. The only thing wrong with the situation—other than the fact that he and the others would soon be charging a fortified position—was that he had too much free time.

The workers hauled stacks of wood from one part of the lumberyard to the next, and were occasionally assigned to saw or chop. But there wasn’t enough to keep them busy. That was a very bad thing, as he’d learned on the Shattered Plains. Give condemned men too much time and they’d start to ask questions.

“Look,” Khen said, walking next to Sah just ahead, “at least tell me you’re angry, Sah. Don’t tell me you think we deserve this.”

“We harbored a spy,” Sah muttered.

A spy that, Moash had quickly learned, had been none other than Kaladin Stormblessed.

“Like a bunch of slaves should be able to spot a spy?” Khen said. “Really? Shouldn’t the spren have been the one to spot him? It’s like they wanted something to pin on us. Like it’s … it’s a…”

“Like it’s a setup?” Moash asked from behind.

“Yeah, a setup,” Khen agreed.

They did that a lot, forgetting words. Or … maybe they were simply trying the words out for the first time.

Their accent was so similar to that of many of the bridgemen who had been Moash’s friends.

Let go, Moash, something deep within him whispered. Give up your pain. It’s all right. You did what was natural.

You can’t be blamed. Stop carrying that burden.

Let go.

They each picked up another bundle and began walking back. They passed the carpenters who were making the ladder poles. Most of these were parshmen, and one of the Fused walked among their ranks. He was a head taller than the parshmen, and was a subspecies that grew large portions of carapace armor in wicked shapes.

The Fused stopped, then explained something to one of the working parshmen. The Fused made a fist, and dark violet energy surrounded his arm. Carapace grew there into the shape of a saw. The Fused sawed, carefully explaining what he did. Moash had seen this before. Some of these monsters from the void were carpenters.

Out beyond the lumberyards, parshman troops practiced close-order drill and received basic weapon training. Word was that the army intended to assault Kholinar within weeks. That was ambitious, but they didn’t have time for an extended siege. Kholinar had Soulcasters to make food, while the Voidbringer operations in the country would take months to get going. This Voidbringer army would soon eat itself out of supplies, and would have to divide up to forage. Better to attack, use overwhelming numbers, and seize the Soulcasters for themselves.

Every army needed someone to run at the front and soak up arrows. Well organized or not, benevolent or not, the Voidbringers couldn’t avoid that. Moash’s group wouldn’t be trained; they were really only waiting until the assault so they could run in front of more valuable troops.

“We were set up,” Khen repeated as they walked. “They knew they had too few humans strong enough to run the first assault. They need some of us in there, so they found a reason to toss us out to die.”

Sah grunted.

“Is that all you’re going to say?” Khen demanded. “Don’t you care what our own gods are doing to us?”

Sah slammed his bundle to the ground. “Yes, I care,” Sah snapped. “You think I haven’t been asking the same questions? Storms! They took my daughter, Khen! They ripped her away from me and sent me off to die.”

“Then what do we do?” Khen asked, her voice growing small. “What do we do?”

Sah looked around at the army moving and churning, preparing for war. Overwhelming, enveloping, like its own kind of storm—in motion and inexorable. The sort of thing that picked you up and carried you along.