Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive #3)

And then … she struck him down.

Renarin couldn’t control what he saw or when he saw it. He had learned to read so he could understand the numbers and words that appeared under some of the images. They had shown him when the Everstorm would come. They had shown him how to find the hidden compartments in Urithiru. Now they showed his death.

The future. Renarin could see what was forbidden.

He wrenched his eyes away from the glass pane showing himself and Jasnah, turning toward one even worse. In it, his father knelt before a god of gold and white.

“No, Father,” Renarin whispered. “Please. Not that. Don’t do it.…”

He will not be resisted, Glys said. My sorrow, Renarin. I will give you my sorrow.

*

A pair of gloryspren swung down from the skies, golden spheres. They floated and spun around Dalinar, brilliant like drops of sunlight.

“Yes,” Dalinar said. “This is what I wish.”

“You wish a contest of champions?” Odium repeated. “This is your true desire, not forced upon you? You were not beguiled or tricked in any way?”

“A contest of champions. For the fate of Roshar.”

“Very well,” Odium said, then sighed softly. “I agree.”

“That easily?”

“Oh, I assure you. This won’t be easy.” Odium raised his eyebrows in an open, inviting way. A concerned expression. “I have chosen my champion already. I’ve been preparing him for a long, long time.”

“Amaram.”

“Him? A passionate man, yes, but hardly suited to this task. No, I need someone who dominates a battlefield like the sun dominates the sky.”

The Thrill suddenly returned to Dalinar. The red mist—which had been fading—roared back to life. Images filled his mind. Memories of his youth spent fighting.

“I need someone stronger than Amaram,” Odium whispered.

“No.”

“A man who will win no matter the cost.”

The Thrill overwhelmed Dalinar, choking him.

“A man who has served me all his life. A man I trust. I believe I warned you that I knew you’d make the right decision. And now here we are.”

“No.”

“Take a deep breath, my friend,” Odium whispered. “I’m afraid that this will hurt.”





These Voidbringers know no songs. They cannot hear Roshar, and where they go, they bring silence. They look soft, with no shell, but they are hard. They have but one heart, and it cannot ever live.

—From the Eila Stele

“No,” Dalinar whispered again, voice ragged as the Thrill thrummed inside of him. “No. You are wrong.”

Odium gripped Dalinar’s shoulder. “What does she say?”

She?

He heard Evi crying. Screaming. Begging for her life as the flames took her.

“Don’t blame yourself,” Odium said as Dalinar winced. “I made you kill her, Dalinar. I caused all of this. Do you remember? I can help. Here.”

Memories flooded Dalinar’s mind, a devastating onslaught of images. He lived them all in detail, somehow squeezed into a moment, the Thrill raging inside of him.

He saw himself stab a poor soldier in the back. A young man trying to crawl to safety, crying for his mother …

“I was with you then,” Odium said.

He killed a far better man than himself, a highlord who had held Teleb’s loyalty. Dalinar knocked him to the ground, then slammed a poleaxe into his chest.

“I was with you then.”

Dalinar fought atop a strange rock formation, facing another man who knew the Thrill. Dalinar dropped him to the ground with burning eyes, and called it a mercy.

“I was with you then.”

He raged at Gavilar, anger and lust rising as twin emotions. He broke a man in a tavern, frustrated that he’d been held back from enjoying the fight. He fought on the borders of Jah Keved, laughing, corpses littering the ground. He remembered every moment of the carnage. He felt each death like a spike driven into his soul. He began to weep for the destruction.

“It’s what you needed to do, Dalinar,” Odium said. “You made a better kingdom!”

“So … much … pain.”

“Blame me, Dalinar. It wasn’t you! You saw red when you did those things! It was my fault. Accept that. You don’t have to hurt.”

Dalinar blinked, meeting Odium’s eyes.

“Let me have the pain, Dalinar,” Odium said. “Give it to me, and never feel guilty again.”

“No.” Dalinar hugged The Way of Kings close. “No. I can’t.”

“Oh, Dalinar. What does she say?”

No …

“Have you forgotten? Here, let me help.”

And he was back in that day. The day he killed Evi.

*

Szeth found purpose in wielding the sword.

It screamed at him to destroy evil, even if evil was obviously a concept that the sword itself could not understand. Its vision was occluded, like Szeth’s own. A metaphor.

How was a twisted soul like his to decide who should die? Impossible. And so he put his trust in someone else, someone whose light peeked through the shadow.

Dalinar Kholin. Knight Radiant. He would know.

This choice was not perfect. But … Stones Unhallowed … it was the best he could manage. It brought him some small measure of peace as he swept through the enemy army.

The sword screamed at him. DESTROY!

Anyone he so much as nicked popped into black smoke. Szeth laid waste to the red-eyed soldiers, who kept coming, showing no fear. Screaming, as if they thirsted for death.

It was a drink that Szeth was all too good at serving.

He wielded Stormlight in one hand, Lashing any men who drew too close, sending them flipping into the air or crashing backward into their fellows. With the other hand he swept the sword through their ranks. He moved on nimble feet, his own body Lashed upward just enough to lighten him. Skybreakers didn’t have access to all of the Lashings, but the most useful—and most deadly—were still his.

Remember the gemstone.

A phantom sense called to him, a desire to continue killing, to revel in the butchery. Szeth rejected it, sick. He had never enjoyed this. He could never enjoy this.

The Voidbringer with the gemstone had slipped away, moving on too-swift feet. Szeth pointed the sword—a piece of him terrified by how quickly it was chewing through his own Stormlight—and Lashed himself to follow. He plowed through soldiers, men bursting into smoke, seeking that one individual.

The Voidbringer turned at the last moment, dancing away from his sword. Szeth Lashed himself downward, then spun in a sweeping arc, towing black smoke—almost liquid—behind his sword as he destroyed men in a grand circle.

EVIL! the sword cried.

Szeth leaped for the Voidbringer woman, but she dropped to the ground and slid on the stone as if it were greased. His sword swung over her head, and she pushed herself backward toward him, sliding right past his legs. There, she swept gracefully to her feet and seized the sheath off Szeth’s back, where he’d tied it for safekeeping.

It broke free. When Szeth turned to attack, she blocked the sword with its own sheath. How had she done that? Was there something about the silvery metal that Szeth didn’t know?