Chapter 122

FOUR THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AGO

I , Honor, was winning.

How can you be happy with this ?

I ignored that part of me. It was a quiet voice.

The combination of unchained Heralds—capable of incredible works—and the growing organization of the Knights Radiant was working . I walked another battlefield, and though there were casualties—so many casualties—the destruction was greater on the other side.

How can you not be horrified ? The Desolations grow worse and worse. Humankind is blasted back to the stone age again with each c lash.

It was fine. The Heralds could help humankind rebuild once we annihilated the enemy. Their powers were both great and useful. They were from Ashyn; they knew to control themselves. So long as I was here, to act as an inhibitor per the agreement Kor had forced between myself and Odium, all would be well.

I stopped, unseen, in the center of a battlefield, where a soldier lay weeping, holding to a fallen comrade. In his lap, a book.

How can you not weep for the fa llen ?

Nohadon’s book. Yes … it had been centuries since that man had died. Such a curious individual. Perhaps I should have insisted that he accept immortality, if only to study him longer …

They trust you. They love you.

You are a f raud.

I left the soldier, searching the stone field for my Heralds. I wanted to commend them for their bravery and accomplishments. I had felt only Taln die this time, which meant nine had survived.

Of course, I would need to send them back to Braize anyway. The planet had its strange properties, attracting souls, but I needed them to … act as a lock, so to speak. Their souls worked after the fashion of my own—which trapped Odium in this system—upon the Fused. This was a wonderful solution. It let them experience, in a small way, what it was to be divine.

You speak the way you think a god should. But inside, you know. You know, H onor.

I could not quiet this voice. It was not the power.

It was the person I had been before all of this.

Tanner.

I found Ishar sitting alone near the corpse of a fallen thunderclast. The oldest of the Heralds—though age didn’t matter to them—sat slumped forward, staring at the stone ground.

“You did well,” I said, manifesting in my glorious form for him. “We come closer to complete victory each time.”

“ Lord ,” Ishar said, then climbed to his knees. “ Lord … What does complete victory look like? ”

“Defeat of our foes.”

“ We defeat them each time ,” Ishar said, exhausted. “ We drive them back to Braize. Then we follow … we follow … ”

“They will lose their nerve eventually.”

“ And … if we lose ours first, Lord? ”

I frowned, then turned and searched the futures. What was permuting from this event … ? Things seemed uncertain, and dangerous … but I was likely wrong. I couldn’t see the future as well as Kor. I resolved to ask her. How long had it been since we’d spent time together ? We had been so consumed by our own projects …

My power, I acknowledged, did not like her. Did not like the way she refused to fight outright. Did not like how she chafed at the binding we’d performed against Odium, even though it had been her idea. This kept us apart more and more. It had been a century or two since I’d held her.

Maybe … no … maybe more like four …

“ We break, Lord ,” Ishar said softly. “ Your Heralds break. I do not think we can go back this time .”

“But you must,” I said. “Or the enemy will return quickly, and the people will not be ready.”

“ Maybe ,” Ishar said. “ But maybe …” he finally looked up. “I have an idea …”

He explained it, and I listened while also searching the permutat ions.

And to my horror, I began to see a frightening number of futures where the Heralds stopped fighting. I hadn’t … I hadn’t noticed what immortality was doing to them. Not just immortality—there was more. My power. They could not hold so much of my power.

If I lost the Heralds, I would start losing the wars. The Radiants were not enough. I needed to do something more, get stronger somehow, improve the Heralds.

The others began to gather, and I … I …

Oh. They were hur ting .

Something changed in me. I knew them each intimately by this point—they were, unknown to them, my dearest friends. And oh, how they hurt. Dear Chana was falling apart. Nale had become so rigid. Jezrien hated himself. Vedel became indifferent, Battar so cruel …

Ishar, who was explaining his plan and looking for validation, hid it best. But the same hurt was there, manifesting as a need to control. A need to …

“ Is this a deific plan? ” Ishar asked me. “ A plan that you might create? To isolate the one, yes, but save the world? ”

“Yes,” I whispered. It was exactly what I had done.

As I said it though, my powers reasserted control. Honor hated Ishar for this request, hated them all for growing so weak. Would they really do this ? Turn their backs on their oaths ? I, Honor, reviled it. But I did not speak, did not forbid.

I let them choose, and I withdrew, becoming the storm and blowing across the landscape, fleeing from the hurt I had created. Yet I could not escape, for it was here across the entire world. Suffering for family members lost. Blood spilled in an eternal cycle of warfare.

Was it any better than Ashyn ? So much suffering.

Finally, I acknowledged that something inside me was unraveling—and had been for a long time. The ailment striking the Heralds was in part my doing. I had shared too much of myself with them, and I was … slowly …

Losing myself.

I did not seek my ardent priests. My places of worship. The devout singing my praises. I felt profoundly unworthy, for the quiet piece of myself was becoming loud now. The piece that knew that I, and the fifteen others, had done something terrible on Yolen.

I returned to Shinovar, the land where humans had first arrived. There I lay down in an uncultivated grass field, pretending I was a boy back on Yolen. Looking up at the sky, and the clouds, and feeling …

Whispers on the breeze.

“Adonalsium ? ” I whispered.

Not entirely, the breeze answered.

“Wind,” I said. “Can you help me ? ”

No, the breeze said.

“What do I do ? ”

Listen , it replied, then faded.

Listen. I hauled myself up and, with my divine nature, infused the land. Parts of me were already spread through it, but now I let myself be the land. Let my soul align with the rhythms from long ago.

And I listened to them—the people whom I should have loved. I was with them as they slowly recovered from this war. I lost myself entirely in hearing their stories as they lived. The woman milking her hogs and singing into the wind. The child playing with her axehounds upon stones that loved her. The scholar at work trying to untangle my sayings, writing and commenting about them in tomes grown thick. The wanderer on a journey, unwittingly walking the same path Nohadon had taken.

I stopped trying to lead, to organize, or push—and instead listened. For the first time in my divine existence, some of it started to make sense. What I had become, why I was needed—as a witness. To remember all these voices. So many tears spilled alone in the darkness of night.

I loved them. There were wars, yes, of their own making. But no Desolations.

They were … they were better off without me ?

Without what you have become, the Wind whispered. Having no god is far preferable to having a heartless one.

And a god who c ares ?

You killed that god.

I pondered this, looked at the permutations of my revelations, and at the future of Roshar. Their lives Connected to mine, their souls now intertwined with my own. Eventually, pain trembled through the land. I heard their anguish as other clashes began, echoes of what had come before. Ah, Taln had broken. Well, it had been coming. I would have to …

No.

Taln had not br oken.

Millennia had passed, I realized, in my state of exploration, feeling, and contemplation. I sought out Urithiru, the tower of the Radiants, and there found a single Bondsmith. Only one this time, though I had given them the ability to bond my storms. That seemed … to have been denied them awhile, during my exploration.

I manifested to the Bondsmith. The man gasped in his chamber, then fell to his knees, tears in his eyes.

“Melishi,” I said, finding the man’s name in the echoes of Connection. “What is this ? A new Desolation ? ”

“ Almighty ,” Melishi said, raising hands toward me. “ You have chosen to bless me? ”

“The Desolation,” I said.

“ Not a true one. Just some parsh rabble pretending .” Melishi looked to me. “ We need help, Lord. The Radiants squabble. But a war … a war could unite us again! ”

“War never unites,” I snapped. “Men might align briefly out of terror, but nothing more.”

Melishi drew back before my wrath. “ But … ”

I swept from Melishi, searching the land for my enemy. I shied away from our nest, and Kor, and her disappointment in me. Instead I came to rest on a familiar mountaintop where Rayse had formed.

Something was different about him. Yes … he was even more disconnected from his power now. It hovered far behind him, the Shard of Odium, drawn toward Braize. Forced isolation in this system, the inability to fulfill the power’s desire, was wearing on him.

That made him more dangerous. Much, much more dangerous.

“So,” Odium said, “your tantrum is finally over ? ”

“What are you doing, Rayse ? ” I demanded. “It is not time for a confrontation.”

“Isn’t it ? ” Rayse said. “I wasn’t aware we had an appointm ent. ”

I surged toward him, and Rayse smiled. He drew his power behind him, and it aligned with him, eager.

Cities laid waste. Nations broken. People slaughtered.

Never again.

“Come on,” Odium whispered. “It has been building for so long, Tanner. We can’t exist here together; you know it. One of us must destroy the other. The powers require it.”

I wanted to. I would revel in Rayse’s death. Ripping the power away from him and leaving him whimpering on the ground before he was at long last annihilated. It was thousands of years overdue.

But I, Tanavast, remembered Ashyn.

Holding a child’s body.

I, Tanavast, remembered Natanatan.

A landscape shattered.

I, Tanavast, remembered the land and what I’d learned over the last two and a half thousand years. The people’s deaths were ripping me apart. Because I cared, and had made myself part of them. I would not fight. I would not destroy Roshar. Not now that I could hear their songs …

I refused.

“I will force this, Tanavast,” Odium declared. “You cannot stop me.”

“Our clash would destroy them all,” I whispered. “You don’t care, do you ? ”

“The cost is regrettable, but acceptable,” Rayse said. “I cannot exist in this state.” He pulled more of his power together, his voice growing to a crescendo of crackling energy. “Fight me, Tanner ! Fight me or free me ! I will NOT BE HELD HERE ANY LONGER! ”

I knew then that Ba-Ado-Mishram’s plan would not work. If she took up Odium, it would eventually force her to this same confrontation. The power would never be content here; to replace Rayse would only cause a delay. I needed a way to expand our agreement. It had to include a prohibition on us ever clashing directly, lest I falter and try to destroy him.

“Champions ! ” I pled. “Let us pick champions. Let them decide ! The god of the victor rules Roshar. The god of the loser withdraws, confines their attention to one of the other planets in the system, and leaves Roshar alone.”

“Why would I agree to such a thing ? I am my own champion ! ”

The future became clear. If I did not fight, Odium would kill, and kill, and kill until every person on this planet was no more. All in a desperate, degenerate attempt to escape. I could not replace him, and I could not fight him. I had no way out.

“Please ! ” I screamed. “I do not want them to die, Rayse ! I do not want to do this again ! ”

The tempest that had been building around us stilled. “You always were too weak for godhood,” Rayse said. “You should never have been given a chance at this … honor.”

“Champions,” I pled once more.

“Again, why would I ever consider that ? ” Rayse said.

Yet he had a weakness. Rayse and the power wanted different things. It wanted only to escape, while he yearned to remain its vessel. And so I waited, watching for what I’d seen in the permutations. I kept his attention for a few years—but an eyeblink to us. Meanwhile, I saw what his rival had done. During my medita tions, Rayse had briefly lost control of his power, requiring his full attention to maintain it. In those years, his rival had already found his pool—a part of his soul—and partaken of it. This should not have been easy, but something about his pool—the way he was maintaining it—was different …

Rayse wanted to resist her—even then, while talking with me, he raged as she continued her machinations. His power refused to work against her. Rayse was forced to watch, and atop that mountain, I knew …

Knew how close he was to losing. Ba-Ado-Mishram didn’t truly lock him away, as she claimed—but the power protected her from his touch. “What is it like, Rayse ? ” I asked. “To know, for the first time in your existence, what it is to be powerless ? ”

Anger moved through him, a rhythm I could hear. The power liked that. He looked to me, red and gold surging through his avatar. “A deal,” he growled. “What would a deal look like ? ”

“If my people stop the rogue Unmade for you,” I said, “you will agree to my terms ? ”

“I will agree,” Rayse said reluctantly, “not to force a direct confrontation between us.”

“No more increasing gifts of power to our minions,” I said. “What the mortals have, they keep—but that is it . No direct confrontation between us, and no further expansion of our powers to our people. We leave them alone …”

Because they deserve better tha n us.

“These two points,” Rayse said, “I agree to: I will limit myself to never attack you first—yet I will not hold you to the same limitation; if you decide to attack me, I may fight back. And I … I will agree to a contest of champions, in the future, if specifics can be arranged and agreed to. Now, can you deal with this spren of mine ? Remove her ? ”

My power did not like the idea, but it did ratify our agreement, binding us to it. As it did so, it questioned. Could I do this ? Had I not made a promise to Mishram ?

I assured it that this was for the best. It simmered, thinking I was doing this for Roshar, not for it.

It was right.

“Kor knows of a way,” I whispered to Rayse. “A method to capture and hold a powerful spren. I will teach this method to the Bondsmith …”