Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive #3)

She prepared to swing, but then Renarin turned and looked at her. Tears streaming down his face, he met her eyes, and he nodded.

Suddenly they were young again. He was a trembling child, weeping on her shoulder for a father who didn’t seem to be able to feel love. Little Renarin, always so solemn. Always misunderstood, laughed at and condemned by people who said similar things about Jasnah behind her back.



Jasnah froze, as if standing at the edge of a cliff. Wind blew through the temple, carrying with it a pair of spren in the form of golden spheres, bobbing in the currents.

Jasnah dismissed her sword.

“Jasnah?” Ivory said, appearing back in the form of a man, clinging to her collar.

Jasnah fell to her knees, then pulled Renarin into an embrace. He broke down crying, like he had as a boy, burying his head in her shoulder.

“What’s wrong with me?” Renarin asked. “Why do I see these things? I thought I was doing something right, with Glys, but somehow it’s all wrong.…”

“Hush,” Jasnah whispered. “We’ll find a way through it, Renarin. Whatever it is, we’ll fix it. We’ll survive this, somehow.”

Storms. The things he’d said about Dalinar …

“Jasnah,” Ivory said, becoming full size as he stepped free of her collar. He leaned down. “Jasnah, this is right. Somehow it is.” He seemed completely stunned. “It is not what makes sense, yet it is still right. How. How is this thing?”

Renarin pulled back from her, his tearstained eyes going wide. “I saw you kill me.”

“It’s all right, Renarin. I’m not going to.”

“But don’t you see? Don’t you understand what that means?”

Jasnah shook her head.



“Jasnah,” Renarin said. “My vision was wrong about you. What I see … it can be wrong.”

*

Alone.

Dalinar held a fist to his chest.

So alone.

It hurt to breathe, to think. But something stirred inside his fist. He opened bleeding fingers.

The most … the most important …

Inside his fist, he somehow found a golden sphere. A solitary gloryspren.

The most important step a man can take. It’s not the first one, is it?

It’s the next one. Always the next step, Dalinar.

Trembling, bleeding, agonized, Dalinar forced air into his lungs and spoke a single ragged sentence.

“You cannot have my pain.”





As I began my journey, I was challenged to defend why I insisted on traveling alone. They called it irresponsible. An avoidance of duty and obligation.

Those who said this made an enormous mistake of assumption.

—From The Way of Kings, postscript

Odium stepped back. “Dalinar? What is this?”

“You cannot have my pain.”

“Dalinar—”

Dalinar forced himself to his feet. “You. Cannot. Have. My. Pain.”

“Be sensible.”

“I killed those children,” Dalinar said.

“No, it—”

“I burned the people of Rathalas.”

“I was there, influencing you—”

“YOU CANNOT HAVE MY PAIN!” Dalinar bellowed, stepping toward Odium. The god frowned. His Fused companions shied back, and Amaram raised a hand before his eyes and squinted.

Were those gloryspren spinning around Dalinar?

“I did kill the people of Rathalas,” Dalinar shouted. “You might have been there, but I made the choice. I decided!” He stilled. “I killed her. It hurts so much, but I did it. I accept that. You cannot have her. You cannot take her from me again.”

“Dalinar,” Odium said. “What do you hope to gain, keeping this burden?”

Dalinar sneered at the god. “If I pretend … If I pretend I didn’t do those things, it means that I can’t have grown to become someone else.”

“A failure.”

Something stirred inside of Dalinar. A warmth that he had known once before. A warm, calming light.

Unite them.

“Journey before destination,” Dalinar said. “It cannot be a journey if it doesn’t have a beginning.”

A thunderclap sounded in his mind. Suddenly, awareness poured back into him. The Stormfather, distant, feeling frightened—but also surprised.



Dalinar?

“I will take responsibility for what I have done,” Dalinar whispered. “If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man.”

*

Renarin ran after Jasnah through the Loft Wards of the city. People clogged the streets, but she didn’t use those. She leaped off buildings, dropping onto rooftops of the tiers below. She ran across each of these, then leaped down to the next street.

Renarin struggled to follow, afraid of his weakness, confused by the things he’d seen. He dropped to a rooftop, feeling sudden pain at the fall—though Stormlight healed that. He limped after her until the pain left.

“Jasnah!” he called. “Jasnah, I can’t keep up!”

She stopped at the edge of a rooftop. He reached her, and she took his arm. “You can keep up, Renarin. You’re a Knight Radiant.”

“I don’t think I’m a Radiant, Jasnah. I don’t know what I am.”

An entire stream of gloryspren flew past them, hundreds in a sweeping formation that curved toward the base of the city. Something was glowing down there, a beacon in the dim light of an overcast city.

“I know what you are,” Jasnah said. “You’re my cousin. Family, Renarin. Hold my hand. Run with me.”

He nodded, and she towed him after her, leaping from the rooftop, ignoring the monstrous creature that climbed up nearby. Jasnah seemed focused on only one thing.

That light.

*

Unite them!

Gloryspren streamed around Dalinar. Thousands of golden spheres, more spren than he’d ever seen in one place. They swirled around him in a column of golden light.

Beyond it, Odium stumbled back.

So small, Dalinar thought. Has he always looked that small?

*

Syl looked up.

Kaladin turned to see what had drawn her attention. She looked past the Fused who had landed to attack. She was staring toward the ocean of beads, and the trembling lights of souls above it.

“Syl?”

She pulled him tight. “Maybe you don’t have to save anyone, Kaladin. Maybe it’s time for someone to save you.”

*

UNITE THEM!

Dalinar thrust his left hand to the side, plunging it between realms, grabbing hold of the very fabric of existence. The world of minds, the realm of thought.

He thrust his right hand to the other side, touching something vast, something that wasn’t a place—it was all places in one. He’d seen this before, in the moment when Odium had let him glimpse the Spiritual Realm.

Today, he held it in his hand.

The Fused scrambled away. Amaram pushed down his faceplate, but that wasn’t enough. He stumbled back, arm raised. Only one person remained in place. A young parshwoman, the one that Dalinar had visited in the visions.

“What are you?” she whispered as he stood with arms outstretched, holding to the lands of mind and spirit.

He closed his eyes, breathing out, listening to a sudden stillness. And within it a simple, quiet voice. A woman’s voice, so familiar to him.

I forgive you.

Dalinar opened his eyes, and knew what the parshwoman saw in him. Swirling clouds, glowing light, thunder and lightning.

“I am Unity.”

He slammed both hands together.

And combined three realms into one.

*