Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive #3)

“Perhaps,” Azure said, “one shouldn’t be questioning my arrival. Be thankful someone was here when the city needed them.”

“I am thankful,” Kaladin said. “Your reputation with these men commends you, Azure, and extreme times can excuse a great deal. Eventually though, you’ll need to come clean. These men deserve to know who—exactly—is commanding them.”

“And what about you, Kal?” She took a spoonful of curry and rice—men’s food, which she ate with gusto. “Do they deserve to know your past? Shouldn’t you come clean?”

“Perhaps.”

“I am your commanding officer, you realize. You should answer me when I ask questions.”

“I’ve given answers,” Kaladin said. “If they aren’t the ones you want, then perhaps your questions aren’t very good.”

Noro gasped audibly.

“And you, Kal? You make statements, dripping with implications. You want answers? Why not just ask?”

Storms. She was right. He’d been dancing around serious questions. Kaladin looked her in the eyes. “Why won’t you let anyone talk about the fact that you’re a woman, Azure? Noro, don’t faint. You’ll embarrass us all.”

The lieutenant thumped his forehead against the table, groaning softly. The captainlord, with whom Kaladin hadn’t interacted much, had gone red-faced.

“They came up with this game on their own,” Azure said. “They’re Alethi, so they need an excuse for why they’re listening to a woman giving military orders. Pretending there’s some mystery focuses them on that, instead of on masculine pride. I find the entire thing silly.” She leaned forward. “Tell me honestly. Did you come here chasing me?”

Chasing you? Kaladin cocked his head.

Drums sounded in the near distance.

It took a moment for them, even Kaladin, to register what that meant. Then Kaladin and Azure threw themselves back from the bench at nearly the same time. “To arms!” Kaladin shouted. “There’s an attack on the wall!”

*

The next ring inward on the Oathgate platform was filled with people crawling.

Kishi stood at the perimeter, watching a multitude of men and women in ragged finery crawl past her, giggling, moaning, or gasping. Each seemed in the thrall of a different emotion, and each stared with an openly maddened expression. She thought she recognized a few from the descriptions of lighteyes who had disappeared into the palace, though in their state, it was hard to tell.

A woman with long hair dragging on the ground looked toward her, grinning with clenched teeth and bleeding gums. She crawled, one hand after another, her havah shredded, faded. She was followed by a man wearing rings glowing with Stormlight, in contrast to his ripped clothing. He giggled incessantly.

The food on the tables here rotted, and was infested with decayspren. Kishi wavered at the edge of the ring. She should have kept to the outer ring; she didn’t belong here. There was food aplenty behind her. Laughter and reveling. It seemed to pull her back, inviting her to join the eternal, beautiful walk.

Within that ring, time wouldn’t matter. She could forget Shallan, and what she’d done. Just … just give in …

Pattern hummed. Veil gasped, letting Kishi burst from her, Lightweaving collapsing. Storms. She had to be away from this place. It was doing things to her brain. Strange things, even for her.

Not yet. She pulled her coat tight, then picked her way across the street full of crawling people. No bonfire lit her way, only the moon overhead and the light of the jewelry the people wore.

Storms. Where had they all gone for the storm? Their moaning, chittering, and babbling chased her as she crossed the street, then hurried down a dark pathway between two monastery buildings, inward. Toward the control building, which should be right ahead.

The voices in her head combined from whispers to a kind of surging rhythm. A thumping of impressions, followed by a pause, followed by another surge. Almost like …

She stepped between the buildings and entered a moonlit square, colored violet from Salas above. Instead of the control building, she found an overgrown mass. Something had covered the entire structure, like the Midnight Mother had enveloped the gemstone pillar beneath Urithiru.

The dark mass pulsed and throbbed. Black veins as thick as a man’s leg ran from it and melded with the ground nearby. A heart. It beat an irregular rhythm, bum-ba-ba-bum instead of the common ba-bum of her own heartbeat.

Give in.

Join the revel.

Shallan, listen to me.

She shook herself. That last voice had been different. She’d heard it before, hadn’t she?

She looked to the side, and found her shadow on the ground, pointed the wrong way, toward the moonlight instead of away from it. The shadow crept up the wall, with eyes that were white holes, glowing faintly.

I’m not your enemy. But the heart is a trap. Take caution.

Distantly, drums started sounding on the top of the wall. The Voidbringers were attacking.

It all threatened to overwhelm her. The thumping heart, the strange processions in rings around it, the drums and the panic that the Fused were coming for her because she’d been seen.

Veil seized control. She’d accomplished her goal, she’d scouted the area, and she had information about the Oathgate. It was time to get out.

She turned and—forcibly—put on Kishi’s face. She crossed the stream of crawling, moaning people. She flowed back into the outer ring of revelers, before slipping out.

She didn’t check on her guide. She walked to the rim of the Oathgate platform and, without a look back, leaped off.





Our revelation is fueled by the theory that the Unmade can perhaps be captured like ordinary spren. It would require a special prison. And Melishi.

—From drawer 30-20, third emerald

Kaladin charged up the stairwell beside Highmarshal Azure, the sound of drums breaking the air like echoes of thunder from the departed storm. He counted the beats.

Storms. That’s my section under assault.

“Damnation these creatures!” Azure muttered. “I’m missing something. Like white on black…” She glanced at Kaladin. “Just tell me. Who are you?”

“Who are you?”

The two burst out of the stairwell onto the wall’s top, entering a scene of chaos. The soldiers on duty had lit the enormous oil lamps on the tops of the towers, giving light to the dark walls. Fused swooped between them, trailing dark violet light, attacking with long, bloodied lances.

Men lay screaming on the ground or huddled in pairs, holding up shields as if trying to hide from the nightmares above.

Kaladin and Azure exchanged a look, then nodded to one another. Later.