Chapter 125

Never assume the game actually replicates real life.

— Proverbs for Towers and War, Zenaz, date unknown

N avani sat with Wit, long after sundown. The dawning of the tenth day was approaching. Dalinar was still trapped in the Spiritual Realm.

And Wit thought they shouldn’t do anything.

“If Odium was interfering with your visions,” Wit said, leaning forward as he sat on his couch, hands clasped before him, “then he likely was with Dalinar’s as well. In fact, we can be certain he is interfering right now. He was the reason you lost contact with one another.”

“How can you be sure it counts, Wit?” Navani asked, pacing. “Frankly, you’ve been wrong about this contract before.”

News from the battlefronts was eminently discouraging. Even if they did win back Alethkar, they’d end up losing far more. She couldn’t … couldn’t honestly say she wouldn’t make that trade, considering how many of the other monarchs had given in to Odium’s demands. As long as she had Jasnah, as long as Adolin and Renarin survived …

“I can’t be sure I’m right,” Wit admitted. “But while you were checking on Gavinor I asked my contact on Yolen for her read, and she agrees. Odium severing your Connection to Dalinar, isolating the two of you, would count as interfering with Dalinar’s reaching the meeting on time. The contract explicitly indicates this would mean a forfeit.”

“So if Dalinar doesn’t make it,” Navani said, “we win?”

“Yes.”

“So either Odium has to make absolutely certain Dalinar arrives, or …”

“Or …” Wit continued, grim. “Or Odium thinks what he’s gaining in playing with Dalinar is worth the price of forfeiting Alethkar.”

That possibility horrified her.

They were the only people in the room. There were no other monarchs to look to for support. Fen had betrayed them, as had the Emuli and the others in the once-unified Azish empire. Yanagawn fought alongside Adolin in a city on the verge of falling, and Jasnah was still in Thaylen City. Her terseness about when she’d return indicated she was taking her failure poorly.

For now, Navani was alone. She and Wit. She … was so very tired. Exhausted, though she’d banished those spren from buzzing around her. It felt as if she hadn’t slept in days, and given the strange nature of the Spiritual Realm, she wasn’t certain that she had.

“I think Odium will be sure Dalinar returns,” he said. “Considering who he once was.”

“Excuse me?” she asked, fingers at her temples, trying to massage away a headache.

“Ah, right. You wouldn’t know,” Wit said. “Odium’s new Vessel is Taravangian.”

Sleep fled.

Navani stood bolt upright. “Taravangian is dead. We found his body.”

“ A body,” Wit said, “nearly completely consumed by Nightblood. A husk that could have been anyone. In this case, it was almost certainly what remained of my old friend Rayse.”

Navani tried to sort through the implications. “Is this … good for us? Taravangian was … almost a friend.”

Wit looked away.

“No,” Navani whispered. “An almost-friend knows us too well. Plus, Taravangian has already proven that he cares nothing for such bonds.”

“He cares, and that makes him dangerous,” Wit said. “Navani, Ra yse was a horrible human being. One of the worst I’ve ever known. But he was predictable, savage, with an extreme sense of self-preservation and a pride that was easy to exploit. Taravangian is …”

“A catastrophe.”

“I cannot think of a better, or worse, vessel for Odium. Rayse had experience with the power, which is our only advantage in swapping him for Taravangian. But I fear that in the long run, this … this is very, very bad.”

“He won’t just want to defeat Dalinar,” Navani said. “He’ll want to break him.”

“We’ve trapped Odium, one way or another, on Roshar,” Wit said. “For Rayse, this was an indignity. For Taravangian, this will give him time to get used to his powers. He likely doesn’t want to go out into the cosmere yet; he’ll certainly want a powerful general to do that for him. A … near friend.

“I’d hazard Taravangian cares little for Alethkar … but the soul of your husband, that is his true prize. Dalinar needs to be there so Taravangian can win his oath to follow. I wouldn’t worry about Dalinar returning from the Spiritual Realm, Navani. I would worry about which version of him will return.”

Navani took that as calmly as she could, and tried to consider this like a scholar, despite her fatigue. “If what you say is true, then we should try even harder to find Dalinar.”

“That’s the problem, Navani,” Wit said. “If Odium is taking an active role, risking a loss by forfeit, then you and I are completely out of our depth. Compared to the might of a Shard of Adonalsium, whatever tricks I might know … well, they’re like sparks before the power of the sun. There is nothing you, I, the Stormfather, or the Sibling can do.”

“So …”

“So we wait,” Wit said, his eyes seeming hollow. “You should pray. I will wish. Together we will hope that the man we have all chosen as our champion can resist whoever Odium chooses to be his. Because whatever happens tomorrow, I think that secretly, Dalinar Kholin is both champions.”

Adolin remembered the Battle of the Tower on the Shattered Plains.

He fought the endless waves of singers, ramming his spear into darkness broken by faded stars and red embers. He used his shield as best he could to protect the man to his left, counting on the man—or actually woman—to his right to do the same for him. He tried to give space for the pikes to reach across his shoulders—but those dwindled as people were pulled to fill holes in the shield line.

He pushed through fatigue and terror, past fatalism into numbness. And he remembered the Tower. Fighting, hopeless, along with his father atop a natural rock wedge, knowing there was no salvation. He’d been wrong then, because of the valor of Bridge Four. Today, no one was coming.

His was a numbness of four levels. Numbness of ear, as he turned off the part of him that empathized with the screaming of his fellows as they died. Numbness of mind, as he just kept doing what he was doing, muscle memory now completely dominant. Numbness of body, as he felt less like a man and more like meat Soulcast into a man’s shape. Thrusting his spear and holding his shield with limbs that could not be his, because they were too sluggish, too heavy, too dead. As if they had already climbed onto the pyre ahead of him.

Numbness of soul. Storms. He needed a break. He looked to the sides and found he could still feel something: a chill, followed by a terrible sense of dread.

There were no more soldiers waiting to fill the line. No replacements coming. No more pikes at his back. Every available soldier was plugging this hole, or others.

There would be no more breaks. No more rotations. No more rest. Until he fell.

Last moon was setting.

He knew that because he could see it on the other side of the dome. The large gap they held let him see in, but across the way—hundreds of yards in the distance—the catwalk doors inside the dome were open. Here, the enemy fought against frantic defenders on the narrow, elevated ledge outside. Their defense must have been as terrible as his.

Regardless, the gaps let him see straight out at the moon, green and solemn. A figure stepped in front of the moon—holding a brilliant Shardblade. The last human Shardbearer.

He defended alone, unsupported, a silhouette holding firm. In his numbness, Adolin imagined it was him fighting gloriously. It was his Plate, and that sealed the illusion in Adolin’s mind. Never in a battle even close to as bad as this one had he been without his armor. He couldn’t be this wretch on the ground with a spear he could hardly grip.

Then the Shardbearer fell. Surrounded, overwhelmed, pulled into the darkness of the dome. That man who should have been Adolin—he didn’t know which armor standby bore the Plate and Blade—could not fight them all. Adolin’s shout was lost in the cacophony of battle, then he slipped on his peg. In that moment, Adolin remembered he wasn’t a shining hero. Today he was a crippled spearman with barely enough strength to lift his shield.

Cheering sounded inside the dome. It was hundreds of yards across, so Adolin couldn’t see the details—and he had to focus on his own fight. But that cheering became chants, deliberately in Azish. “The last human falls. The Shards are ours. The last human falls. The Shards are ours!”

The sound shook Adolin straight to his heart. Around him, his line buckled further.

“Hold!” he shouted. But no one was listening. “Hold!”

He gripped his shield and used his spear less as a weapon, more as a way to try to push back the tide. He screamed and no one replied. Across the dome, red eyes flooded out through the gap the Shardbearer had been holding.

This time no one stopped them.

Adolin continued to fight. Holding the gap for another eternity, screaming at his soldiers to hold. Until at long last, the enemy ranks in front of him parted—and a figure stepped to their forefront. Red eyes shining through the eye slits of a helm covered in blood. Familiar, terrible laughter. Glistening Shardplate—Adolin’s. And a Blade that had once been an imperial Azish heirloom.

Abidi the Monarch had Shards now.

The beleaguered shield line shattered around Adolin. The general inside him was surprised they’d held so long—far past what a game of towers said they would. He could not feel angry at them, but in their haste, a faceless soldier shoved him. Adolin tried to turn and stabilize himself, but tripped on his bad leg and went down.

The floodgates opened. Singer ranks gushed from the wound in the dome, some trampling across him, their officers yelling in Azish for them to press the advance, cut down the stragglers, eliminate defenses.

Adolin curled up, and thought to hide among the dead. It was dark. They might not think to send someone to check the fallen. It happened. Lying there would be smart.

He didn’t feel smart. He suddenly felt angry. Because nothing seemed to have a point. He’d loved his father, supported him against the tide of betrayal in Alethkar, only to learn Dalinar had killed Adolin’s mother.

Adolin had stood trial for all of humankind at Lasting Integrity. For what? No help, no answers. Moral victories didn’t matter when cities fell anyway. He’d always tried to fight for his kingdom and his family, while others played games and murdered in the night—but when he stood up for those he loved, he became a villain? For killing a man who had tried to do the same to him?

Finally, at long last, he acknowledged it. The cloud that had been chasing him for so many months.

If Adolin couldn’t trust his father …

What … what could he trust in?

If Dalinar Kholin wasn’t worthy of Adolin’s reverence, where was the sense in any of this? Maybe there wasn’t any. Maybe it didn’t mean anything.

Maybe nothing did.

He shouted and heaved himself up, no longer numb, but alive with a cold sense of fury. Surrounded by figures moving in the darkness—who at first didn’t realize he wasn’t one of them—Adolin yanked the release cord on his back and pulled off his longsword. He grabbed it and flung the sheath away into the night, his shield lost, common helmet and breastplate biting into his skin. He forced his peg backward into a hole between two cobbles, bracing it, and put two hands on the hilt of his sword. Shallan had given him this one, for their wedding.

On this terrible night, chaos flowing around him, Adolin became the stone. The man who would not back down. The man who would hold his ground.

Because in the past, the world had always started making sense again when he stood with sword in hand.

He began to fight. One man against a tide of glowing gemstones in beards or on clothing for the femalens. He attacked the first one that recognized him. She turned to raise an axe, and Adolin expertly batted the weapon aside, then rammed his sword straight into her eye. As that one fell, he swung at the next, separating arm from body.

A sword was not commonly the best weapon for this kind of fighting—better an axe or mace against carapace. However, if the sword was part of you, that changed—because singers tended to rely on their carapace. To expect it would protect them—when in reality it had plenty of chinks, plenty of holes.

Adolin did not dance. A duel was a dance. This was not something beautiful, and he was no poet. This was a man, a fallen city, and anger culminating in blood to spill. First theirs, then his.

For he knew this was the night he’d die. At least he could go down fighting.

Adolin … Maya.

No. He did not summon her.

Why?

He did not want her to see him fall. The city was lost, and he … he felt ashamed.

No shame in loss … she whispered.

I failed Kholinar.

Never shame in loss …

I failed you. Father. Everyone.

Never. I AM COMING.

He ignored her and kept fighting. He brought down eight singers before one landed a real hit on him, a spear to the back of his good leg, right through the opening of the greave. His calf burned with pain as he grunted and spun on his peg, slapping away the spear and then driving his sword through the neck of the singer. He kept swinging, but Adolin was a lone ship on this dark sea, surrounded by enemies. Another slammed an axe into his side, and he knew that was the blow that would do it. Numb though his body was to pain, he had fought enough to recognize that sensation of blood saturating armor, warming his skin.

Another swept that cursed peg out from under him, and he went down, wedding sword clanging from his numb fingers, lost into the night. And as he lay there, he was still angry. Because for the first time in his life, the sword hadn’t brought him peace or answers.

He couldn’t trust in his father any longer. But as a singer stood above him—with halberd raised to ram down—Adolin found he wanted to.

He wanted to find a way to love his father again. He wanted to make peace. He wanted a chance.

“Not yet!” he screamed. “Not until I see him again!” He kicked the singer in the knee with his peg. She stumbled.

Then an arrow took her in the eye.

A flood of arrows followed, forcing enemies nearby to fall back. Adolin twisted, seeing a small enclave of defenders with archers at the front. The singers … the battle lines had fallen and they didn’t have enough discipline … which hurt them here … They could make a powerful, mad rush, but reorienting to an enemy position was …

Storms, it was hard to think …

“There!” Colot’s voice said as he dashed from among May and her archers. “I’ve found him.”

“Leave me,” Adolin croaked, numb.

“Can you stand?” Colot asked, reaching him.

“Leave me.”

“Storm that,” Colot said.

“Leave—”

“Look,” Colot said, leaning down and looming large in the night. “You see that man holding a lantern near May? That’s the storming emperor. He refused to leave until we came for you. May, fortunately, saw you in the line earlier. You hear me, Adolin? Yanagawn will not leave until you are with us. So get to your storming feet, or let that boy die.”

They locked eyes, and storm him, Colot was right. And storm it, Adolin needed to see his father at least one more time. He let Colot help him stand. A moment later Hmask was there under his other arm. They stumbled away from the dome and met up with Yanagawn amid his soldiers. Would they suffer Gezamal’s fate for letting the emperor put himself in danger? The idea made Adolin, groggy, chuckle. How many latrine attendants did they need in the fallen city?

Because it had fallen. Adolin paused to look it over, held upright by his friends, and saw enemy soldiers in every direction. They didn’t set the city on fire, the way human conquerors would have. They wanted to rule, and some of the singers fighting to claim Azimir had lived here as parshmen. It was their home.

The group decided to head for the saferoom beneath the hospital. There was no escaping the city like this. But maybe later, somehow, they could slip away.

In the chaos, they managed to make it to the building complex. They picked up some enemies—singer officers who were able to get some troops to give chase. Fortunately, the defenders had a protocol for this. Adolin and the emperor were shut in a room with a few defenders while others made it seem like they had all escaped through the back doors.

After that, it was a quick run—well, a limping, exhausted, beleaguered trot—through several buildings all built against one another, until they reached the saferoom door. Adolin suffered it in a daze, and didn’t fully come alert until coldness washed through him.

He blinked, and found himself on the floor of the saferoom, bloodied, with Rahel the teenage Truthwatcher kneeling beside him. He noted others there: the emperor, some soldiers, many of the wounded who had been moved into this bunker instead of left in the hospital.

How … how much time had he lost? He groaned, lying there, as the healing hadn’t done anything for his fatigue. At least the numbness was returning. The numbness of utter loss. He saw it in the faces of everyone down here with him: Colot, May, Yanagawn—even Kushkam, who was nursing a wound of his own, his face bloodied, barely healed as they could spare Regrowth for only the worst cases.

Adolin was glad to see the other general, but the look they shared was demoralizing.

The city had fallen. And with it the empire.

Azir was no more.

THE END OF

Day Nine