Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive #3)

Shadesmar exploded with light.

Fused screamed as a wind blasted them away, though Kaladin felt nothing. Beads clattered and roared.

Kaladin shaded his eyes with his hand. The light faded, leaving a brilliant, glowing pillar in the middle of the sea. Beneath it, the beads locked together, turning into a highway of glass.

Kaladin blinked, taking Shallan’s hand as she helped him to his feet. Adolin had forced himself to sit up, holding his bloodied stomach. “What … what is it?”

“Honor’s Perpendicularity,” Syl whispered. “A well of power that pierces all three realms.” She looked to Kaladin. “A pathway home.”

*

Taln gripped Ash’s hand.

Ash looked at his fingers, thick and callused. Thousands of years could come and pass, and she could lose lifetimes to the dream, but those hands … she’d never forget those hands.

“Ash,” he said.

She looked up at him, then gasped and raised her fingers to her lips.

“How long?” he asked.

“Taln.” She gripped his hand in both of hers. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“How long?”

“They say it’s been four millennia. I don’t always … note the passing of time.…”

“Four thousand years?”

She held his hand tighter. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

He pulled his hand from hers and stood up, walking through the tent. She followed, apologizing again—but what good were words? They’d betrayed him.

Taln brushed aside the front drapes and stepped out. He looked up at the city expanding above them, at the sky, at the wall. Soldiers in breastplates and chain rushed past to join a fight farther along.

“Four thousand years?” Taln asked again. “Ash…”

“We couldn’t continue— I … we thought…”

“Ash.” He took her hand again. “What a wonderful thing.”

Wonderful? “We left you, Taln.”

“What a gift you gave them! Time to recover, for once, between Desolations. Time to progress. They never had a chance before. But this time … yes, maybe they do.”

“No, Taln. You can’t be like this.”

“A wonderful thing indeed, Ash.”

“You can’t be like this, Taln. You have to hate me! Hate me, please.”

He turned from her, but still held her hand, pulling her after him. “Come. He’s waiting.”

“Who?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

*

Teft gasped in the darkness.

“Can you see it, Teft?” the spren whispered. “Can you feel the Words?”

“I’m broken.”

“Who isn’t? Life breaks us, Teft. Then we fill the cracks with something stronger.”

“I make myself sick.”

“Teft,” she said, a glowing apparition in the darkness, “that’s what the Words are about.”

Oh, Kelek. The shouts. Fighting. His friends.

“I…”

Storm you! Be a man for once in your life!

Teft licked his lips, and spoke.

“I will protect those I hate. Even … even if the one I hate most … is … myself.”

*

Renarin fell to the last level of the city, the Low Ward. He stumbled to a stop there, his hand slipping from Jasnah’s. Soldiers marched through these streets, with eyes like embers.

“Jasnah!” he called. “Amaram’s soldiers changed sides. They serve Odium now! I saw it in vision!”

She ran right toward them.

“Jasnah!”

The first soldier swung his sword at her. Jasnah ducked the weapon, then shoved her hand against him, throwing him backward. He crystallized in the air, slamming into the next man, who caught the transformation like a disease. He slammed into another man, knocking him back, as if the full force of Jasnah’s shove had transferred to him. He crystallized a moment later.

Jasnah spun, a Shardblade forming in her gloved safehand, her skirt rippling as she sliced through six men in one sweep. The sword vanished as she slapped her hand into the wall of a building behind her, and that wall puffed away into smoke, causing the roof to crash down, blocking the alley between buildings, where other soldiers had been approaching.

She swept her hand upward, and air coalesced into stone, forming steps that she took—barely breaking her stride—to climb to the rooftop of the next building.

Renarin gaped. That— How—

It will be … great … vast … wonderful! Glys said from within Renarin’s heart. It will be beautiful, Renarin! Look!

A well blossomed inside of him. Power like he’d never before felt, an awesome, overwhelming strength. Stormlight unending. A source of it so vast, he was stunned.

“Jasnah?” he shouted, then belatedly ran up the steps she’d created, feeling so alive that he wanted to dance. Wouldn’t that be a sight? Renarin Kholin dancing on a rooftop while …

He slowed, gaping again as he looked through a gap in the wall and saw a column of light. Rising higher and higher, it stretched toward the clouds.

*

Fen and her consort backed away from the storm of light.

Navani exulted in it. She leaned out far over the side of the wall, laughing like a fool. Gloryspren streamed around her, brushing her hair, flowing toward the already impossible number that coursed around Dalinar in a pillar that stretched hundreds of feet into the air.

Then lights sparked to life in a wave across the field, the top of the wall, the street below. Gemstones that had been lying ignored, scattered from the broken bank, drank in Stormlight from Dalinar. They lit the ground with a thousand pinpricks of color.

*

“No!” Odium screamed. He stepped forward. “No, we killed you. WE KILLED YOU!”

Dalinar stood within a pillar of light and spinning gloryspren, one hand to each side, clutching the realms that made up reality.

Forgiven. The pain he’d so recently insisted that he would keep started to fade away on its own.

These Words … are accepted, the Stormfather said, sounding stunned. How? What have you done?

Odium stumbled back. “Kill him! Attack him!”

The parshwoman didn’t move, but Amaram lethargically lowered his hand from his face, then stepped forward, summoning his Shardblade.

Dalinar took his hand from the glowing pillar and held it out. “You can change,” he said. “You can become a better person. I did. Journey before destination.”

“No,” Amaram said. “No, he’ll never forgive me.”

“The bridgeman?”

“Not him.” Amaram tapped his chest. “Him. I’m sorry, Dalinar.”

He raised a familiar Shardblade. Dalinar’s Shardblade, Oathbringer. Passed from tyrant to tyrant to tyrant.

A portion of light split from Dalinar’s column.

Amaram swung Oathbringer with a shout, but the light met the Shardblade with an explosion of sparks, throwing Amaram backward—as if the strength of Shardplate were no more than that of a child. The light resolved into a man with shoulder-length wavy hair, a blue uniform, and a silvery spear in his hand.

A second glowing form split off into Shallan Davar, brilliant red hair streaming behind her, a long thin Shardblade with a slight curve forming in her hands.

And then, blessedly, Adolin appeared.

*

“Mistress!” Wyndle said. “Oh, mistress!”