Chapter 94

NINE AND A HALF YEARS AGO

S zeth found the Bondsmith monastery easily, as he’d heard of it in lore and myth since his childhood. A section of ground with rock formations rising high around it. A curious little sheltered alcove. They called it a monastery, though the stones had created it themselves, rather than relying on hands of flesh. An act of the First Spren, before he’d bidden his creation farewell and moved on.

Szeth landed right at the center. So much rock; standing there, he wasn’t certain he could spot a speck of soil anywhere. Only someone very profane—or extremely holy—could walk here. In the past, there had been ten who fit both descriptions. Szeth knelt and touched one of the slots in the stone, still present after thousands of years, kept clean by the shamans. He’d expected to find a few of them here today, but the place was empty.

Szeth reverenced each of the stone divots in turn, the sheaths for the Honorblades when they’d been gifted to the Shin for safekeeping. He went through all …

… all nine. That was right. He felt a fool for imagining ten people earlier. Had he forgotten his lessons so easily? He paused at the blank section of stone where Talmut’s Blade would have been placed, and kissed the ground there. It was the first time his lips had touched stone.

Forehead against the rock, he prayed silently to Talmut. The one who had chosen to remain in Damnation so that his brothers and sisters—and all humankind—might escape it. The story was so dramatic, so inspiring, that Szeth wondered why it wasn’t emphasized more in their teachings.

He remembered one retelling of it during his days in the monasteries, when some of the acolytes had acted out the holy text where Talmut had stood before the other nine and demanded they let him return to Damnation alone, for all of their good. How each of the nine had demanded that he let them be the one to return in his place, only to be refuted by his impeccable logic.

He kissed the stone again, glad to have this delay before meeting the Voice. Because a part of him that he’d never acknowledged was afraid.

“What now?” he asked.

Now, Truth, the Voice said.

“I do not want a sterilized version,” he said. “Tell me everything.”

I will.

The longer Szeth spent thinking about what had happened to him these last months, the worse he felt. The other Honorbearers had used him to remove an inconvenient member of their order.

“I’m here,” Szeth said, turning around. “Show yourself to me.”

You should not make demands of your betters, Szeth, the Voice said. I am tempted to make you wait. Would you perhaps like the others to prepare you for what you are about to see?

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to hear their version of whatever this is.”

Why not?

“I don’t trust them,” he admitted.

And you trust me?

“I have to,” Szeth said. “If I don’t, what is left?”

Ah … that is an excellent reply, the Voice said. Well, I am not always here, but I have returned in person this time to meet you. Follow the path to your left.

Szeth turned that way, leaving the Sheathing of Swords, and started along a small pathway between the rock formations, washed smooth by centuries of rainfall drainage.

There. Turn here.

Szeth glanced over and found that—though the wash continued downward—a trail broke off along a shallow ridge some ten feet off the ground. He followed this, one hand on the stone cliff face, his steps grinding on a narrow stone ledge. He deliberately chose not to fly.

The cavern was barely a few dozen feet along the trail. He stopped maybe ten feet from it.

“Here?” he asked.

Yes. Upon ascension, each Honorbearer must stand before me. To ask my approval.

“And if one doesn’t get it?”

They would have been culled long before being allowed this far.

“Then what happened with Tuko?” Szeth said.

He was promising, but ultimately proved too weak to do what was needed.

“Which was?”

Come forward, Szeth. Let us speak in person.

Szeth frowned, continuing on the path, which seemed … darker than it had moments ago. His mind could not reconcile the discontinuity. Shade on a cloudless day. A smothering of his soul. A blackness only visible when he wasn’t looking directly at it.

Something here was very, very wrong.

“What is that?” Szeth asked.

What?

“I sense … something dark.”

Senses are not to be trusted, Szeth. Come to me.

Szeth walked to the mouth of the cavern. He found Shardblade cuts along the tunnel beyond, and fingerprints? The work of a Stoneward, or a Willshaper.

Are you ready, the Voice said, to meet your God, Szeth?

“God left us,” he whispered. “God created the world, saw that it pleased him, then moved on. He is the sun high above, and beyond. The spren nurture us.”

You speak of a god. Not your God, Szeth.

Szeth swallowed, then stepped into the tunnel. With a single ruby for light, he traveled deeper, his footsteps echoing far into the darkness. Until he reached a room with the tunnel continuing on the other end. The room … was filled with spren.

Nailed to the walls.

Szeth gasped and gripped the stone on either side of the opening. The room was barely ten feet wide, and had straight flat walls. Here, tens of holy spren, each of a different variety, had been affixed in place by crystal spikes. As if for ornamentation.

Stones Unhallowed … he could hear them screaming. See them writhing. A windspren, in the shape of a small woman, shrieking in a constant panic, trying to push the spike out of her chest—where it had been driven through her into the stone. A flamespren, quiet but whimpering, flickering like a lit candle. A gloryspren, bulbous and round, motionless.

Some he didn’t understand. That was an angerspren—he’d read of those—there, in the puddle of blood. But there was no nail in it—instead the nail was driven though something above it, a vague shape like a plate of carapace from some insect. Another was a translucent arrowhead shape that he didn’t recognize, thrashing like a captured snake.

Szeth stumbled back, rapidly gasping for breath. Trying to banish their terrible screams, so frail, so agonized.

I leave them up on purpose, the Voice said, softer. He’d never been able to tell if it was a male or female voice. They have to learn their true master. Spren need to change, Szeth. I can transform them.

“Into what?” Szeth hissed.

Into better versions of themselves. That match me, and what I need them to do. Do not fret, Szeth. Things like this have always been done.

Something shifted in the tunnel beyond the room. Darkness growing, made manifest into a shadow with human proportions. It was coming. For him.

Szeth. I have prepared and chosen you for this. Each of the others have agreed to do what needs to be done. To prepare.

“I … I know what you are,” Szeth whispered, trembling.

Good. You are not the first to guess.

He’d read of this. One of the most powerful enemies of humankind. A creature who lived in shadows, made of shadows, who could take spren and twist them to her own ends. He hadn’t realized she could do it to people as well.

All his life … from childhood and that first awful day when he’d killed … he’d been listening not to a god or a spren.

But to one of the Unmade.

Szeth? the Voice said. I realize it is much to accept and much to bear. I know you can handle it; this is why you were chosen.

So it came to this. He had never thought … never believed …

Szeth, the Voice said, growing more forceful, the shadow approaching. Come and worship.

“I …” Szeth said. “I have to make a decision, don’t I?”

The decision is made. You are here.

It would be easy to stay. To accept. Yet even now—after all these years—he remembered his father’s words. Son. I trust you to decide.

Szeth had been too afraid to make the right decision as a child. He’d always worried that if he faced such a choice again, again he’d prove too weak.

But that day, Szeth was stronger than he’d ever been. For as the shadow called to him, Szeth turned and fled.