Chapter 105

The fool will, when losing, seek to flip the board and scatter the pieces. This is not an adage for towers.

— Proverbs for Towers and War, Zenaz, date unknown

N avani paused outside her office in the Kholinar palace, listening. The entire building seemed to vibrate with shouts and clashing men. How familiar those sounds were to her. A scholar in name, and at heart, but her life had never been one of quiet study. Her life had been a battlefield.

She felt drawn toward the sounds, magnetically, as she walked the empty hallways; all soldiers had been pulled into the clash. Aesudan’s loyalists—corrupted by the touch of an Unmade, having locked away any soldiers who disagreed—were fighting both Elhokar’s incursion force and invading singers. Adolin described it as a confusing storm of killing. Yet that was below. Here, on an upper floor, she was able to walk alone.

At the hallway she knew they would come down, she turned and watched. I’m early, she thought, remembering Adolin’s narrative. That fighting she heard was Adolin and Elhokar battering their way through the defenders at the front of the palace. She had time. Should she go for Gav alone?

No. Though it was difficult, she forced herself to analyze the situation. Adolin had said the queen was guarded by a force of soldiers. These hallways were empty, but Aesudan’s chambers would not be—and Navani would have a very difficult time there, even with some power over the visions.

Moreover, what good would it do to rescue Gav, then hopefully Dalinar, if the three of them were still trapped in these visions? She needed to devise a path out of the Spiritual Realm entirely. She reached out for the Sibling, but found her mind abuzz with … with tones, vibrations, music that disharmonized.

But Navani … she knew the right tones, didn’t she? She thought back to her time with Raboniel, and sorted through the noise. With her eyes closed, she found them. The tones. The sounds of Roshar itself.

Navani? The Sibling’s voice.

Yes.

You are lost among infinite possibilities.

I can hear them, I think, Navani said. Tones that vibrate the wrong way, like an instrument out of tune.

Those are the possible futures, the Sibling said. Discordant until they become reality, and then snap, they match the tones of Roshar. I’m sorry. I cannot see you. I …

Is there time left? Navani asked, feeling desperate. Until the deadline?

Less than a day.

Time. She wasn’t too late.

I need a way out, Navani sent. I’ve attempted to make a perpendicularity in here. Nothing happens.

You can’t make one that leads out in the same way, the Sibling said. It’s like you’ve slid down a tall mountain slope, and are now at the base, trying to get back up.

Wit gets out, Navani sent. Others get out. How?

Using points of transition, the Sibling said, their voice growing distant. If someone else made a hole in, you could escape that way. I could … I could try to help …

Navani lost the tones in the cacophony. Points of transition, she thought. Can I trick the vision into giving me one of those?

She heard soldiers approaching, so she stepped back as a collection of Aesudan’s troops—having left her private chambers—passed and gathered at the top of the stairs. It was time. She turned, steeling herself, and watched the stairwell.

And there he was, with brilliant Shardblade aloft. Elhokar, her son. Kaladin guarded his side, and some fifty soldiers followed, loyal to the king. Part of the force Elhokar had recruited to break in and save his family—the son who needed him desperately, and the wife who would refuse his aid.

Navani’s heart twisted to see his face again. She blinked away tears, and found … a certain peace as he announced himself to the gathered defenders—his proud voice making them break and retreat past Navani, ignoring her. Elhokar hadn’t been a particularly good king. And he … he could have been a better person. Maybe that last part was her fault, though she hadn’t had much parenting help—not the useful kind.

Those worries fled as she saw Elhokar appearing to glow with his own power. In the end, her son had been a hero. A king. His death hurt, but she didn’t feel the extreme pain she’d expected at encountering him here. In some ways it was actually comforting. For this was Elhokar Kholin at his finest, perhaps the brightest moment of his life, leading with confidence. Rescuing his son. Standing shoulder to shoulder with a Radiant.

As the defenders retreated, Navani emerged from her alcove. Kaladin and Elhokar saw her, and stopped.

“M-Mother?” Elhokar said.

So, he saw her as herself. She hadn’t been certain. “Come quickly,” she said. “Aesudan has left your son to the torments of spren.”

“How are you here?” Elhokar asked, stepping up. “Mother. It seems impossible.”

“Dalinar learned to make a portal for me,” she said. “It’s fine. It makes sense. Let this play out as it should.”

Elhokar … nodded. He took her face in his hands, as if uncertain she was real, then embraced her. Kaladin, standing behind, waved them forward and together they marched on Aesudan’s chambers, passing statues of Heralds and the corridor where the soldiers had retreated—leaving the queen. Who could be heard singing in the room beyond.

Elhokar halted in place, cocked his head, then looked at Navani. Something in his demeanor had changed.

“What is it?” Navani asked.

“Just … impressed with you, Mother,” he said, and led the way into the room.

She didn’t have time for the conversation that took place with Aesudan—it wasn’t real anyway. Now that she was here, Navani pushed through the cluttered room and found Gav at the rear, behind a dressing screen. And blessedly, it was the real him. The older Gav—a year made a big difference when one was small—with tearstained eyes. Navani seized him, pulling him close, ignoring the spren that darted away.

“Gram?” he said. He held her tightly. “Gram, is that you? The real you?”

“Yes, dear one.”

“Where is Grampa?” Gavinor whispered, clinging to her. “Why … why is he so busy killing people? Why is he so terrible? Why does he hate me, and everyone, so much?”

“That wasn’t him you saw,” Navani guessed. “It was a terrible vision, Gav. Dalinar loves you.”

“Daddy said …” Gav whispered. “Daddy said I should try to be strong, like him …”

He calmed, and his soul vibrated against hers. This was him, and not some fabrication of the visions. She soothed him, drying his tears, before processing what he’d said.

He’d been hearing his father all through these visions. Navani looked back toward Elhokar—who had left the conversation with Aesudan and stood alone in the center of the room, staring toward her, a hint of a smile on his lips. His face in shadow. He’d changed in an eyeblink.

Whatever that was, it wasn’t her son. Not even a simulacrum of him created in vision, as it had been moments before. This was something else in his skin.

“What now?” not-Elhokar asked. “You have Gavinor.”

“We get out,” she whispered, pulling Gav close.

“Oh, but how?” not-Elhokar said. “Isn’t that the problem you’ve had all along, Navani?”

“Gram,” Gav said, pointing. “It’s him. Daddy. He’s been helping me.”

Navani held him, trembling, and backed away from the thing. What lived in this place of shadows and half realities? She ran into the wall as the thing advanced.

“Oh, Navani,” it said, and the voice … sounded familiar to her. Not Elhokar’s, but someone else’s. “I’m so glad I was able to spend more time with you here, seeing what makes you afraid, and what makes you angry. ”

“Odium,” she whispered.

“And more,” he replied. “You haven’t answered me. You found Gav, through your cleverness. I should have expected you’d work out how to manipulate this place. But what now?”

“Now,” she whispered, “I am worried I’ll see him being tormented. Dalinar, the man I love. I am afraid you’ll make me watch him in pain.”

“Ah …” Odium said, still bearing Elhokar’s face—but making expressions she’d never seen on her son. As if his flesh were a mask distorted by something behind. “So that’s how you made it here. Clever indeed. I should have watched you more closely.”

She thought about Dalinar in need and tried to Connect to him—or trick the vision into taking her there. But Odium waved his hand, and the vision remained solid. Here, he was completely in control. Her will was a candle’s flame compared to the bonfire that was the will of a god.

Now what?

Holding to Gav, she made a decision. A desperate, painful decision. She couldn’t help Dalinar in here, but if she got out, she might be able to find a way to use her powers—or the Stormfather’s—to reach him.

She had Gav. She needed to take him and go, hopefully while the enemy underestimated her.

“We must continue this vision,” Navani whispered.

“Why?” Odium asked. “You’re that eager to see your son die, Navani? Such passion that will inspire!”

She hurried past him, joining Kaladin and the soldiers as they rushed back down the hallway. Odium trailed behind in Elhokar’s form, playing out the vision. Navani kept Gav safe, whispering for him not to watch, as they reached the ground floor—and the mess really started. The singer attack had breached the palace.

She found—as she pushed through the chaos of the battle—that she didn’t need to watch the next part. Why look backward? She couldn’t save Elhokar. But she could save Gav. She deliberately chose to remember her son as he’d been, bursting to the top of that stairwell. Before Odium had turned his attention on this vision and taken his place.

“Gram,” Gav whispered, his eyes squeezed shut, “I’m scared.”

“It’s all right, gemheart,” she whispered, barreling toward the Sunwalk with some soldiers. “I have you.” This long covered walkway led to a built-up location beside the palace.

Kholinar’s Oathgate.

“Navani?” Elhokar’s voice called after her. “Mother? Mother, help me!”

Her blood turned cold as she heard Odium shifting his tone to mimic Elhokar’s. Pleading for help amid the screaming and fighting soldiers.

Life before death.

Gav was alive.

Behind her was only death.

She reached the Oathgate. Below, she knew the city was flooding with singers.

This city was lost long ago. This is a vision.

“Activate it,” she hissed at the simulacrum of Kaladin beside her. He hadn’t frozen in battle this time, as he’d followed her instead of staying to fight.

“But …”

“Do it!” she snapped.

“Mother?” Elhokar’s voice.

“Elhokar’s coming,” Kaladin said. “Navani, he’s limping across the Sunwalk. He’s wounded!”

“ Activate the Oathgate, ” she said.

“But …”

“You aren’t real,” she whispered to Kaladin, refusing to turn toward Elhokar. “He isn’t real. But we are. Please. Help us. If there is anything of the real Stormblessed inside of you, summon it. Please.”

The simulacrum looked to her, and something did seem to steel inside him. He ran for the Oathgate’s control building.

While Elhokar’s pained voice whispered behind her, “Ah … that might work for you, Navani. An Oathgate activation, even in a vision, will be a rush of power. But will you abandon Dalinar as you did Elhokar? The man you love? He is real. And I have him.”

“Dalinar,” she whispered, “is strong enough to fight you. I trust him.”

The Oathgate flashed. In that moment, she sought the tones of Roshar again, and she felt something latch onto her.

I have you, the Sibling said. Connect to me.

She held on. Tight. She’d always been good at holding to things she loved. Only recently had she begun to acknowledge when she needed to let go.

Gav in one arm, she pulled with her might and—more importantly—her mind.

And emerged from light into her rooms at Urithiru.

Venli—shrouded in a cloak, hunched down to hide her envoyform height—walked through the human camp, accompanied by several armed human guards.

Narak had changed much in the year or so since she’d lived here. Gone were the ramshackle listener buildings, replaced by stone bunkers. A large stone wall protected it, a fortification of amazing strength, standing even against the boulders thrown by the metacha-im, the Focused Ones.

It was cracked though, and she could hear the stone pleading as it began to fail. She passed the dead lying in rows, among solemn rainspren and blood flowing like water. Beleaguered soldiers carried wounded to the Oathgate, for transfer to Urithiru—and the healers there.

Most telling, she passed someone in a Radiant uniform, weeping and shivering, her stare hollow as she whispered about a distinctly new pain. Rlain had told her the truth: spren could be killed. A new era had come upon them.

Still under guard, she stepped into a building at the center of the plateau. A well-lit room inside held tables, battle maps, and an Azish man in a Windrunner uniform. He looked up, studying her as she entered.

“The singer Radiant,” he said to her in Alethi. “I don’t think I’d have believed it, despite what I’ve heard, if you hadn’t emerged from the rock near one of my patrols.”

She’d noticed that Odium’s forces didn’t know what she could do. Her people had been given cloaks as blankets to sleep under. Hopefully the enemy guards would not find the lump of shaped stone under a cloak, the real Venli having slipped down into the stones to escape. It was more than she’d ever done with the power before. She was improving.

“Welcome,” the Windrunner said, exhaustionspren buzzing around him. “I’m glad for your offer, but I don’t think you’ll be able to help in the way you want.”

“You’re right,” she said, frank. “The enemy will wipe you off this plateau within hours, and we haven’t enough troops to help you. But your message said you have a different proposal?”

He outlined one, and it wouldn’t work either. She knew that instantly. But what if …

What if she took some of his idea … and added some of hers?

“Where is Jasnah?” Venli asked. “The human queen of Alethkar, daughter of the man we slew so many years ago?”

“At Thaylen City,” he said, frowning. “Why?”

“I think your idea will work, with some revisions. But it will need to involve her …”