Chapter 137
There were not two heroes that day, but many.
—From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 237
B etd—who called himself Mraize—had always been a man of many emotions.
It was the way of the adult to accept this: to feel was not weakness, and to indulge emotions was not hedonism. It was to be alive.
So he could accept the pain of failing Iyatil and letting her die—yet at the same time he could glory in freedom. Never again would she hold him back. Never again would he fume at her prohibitions, her rules.
He had survived her. He was their leader now. He would have had Shallan as his own acolyte, trained in a better path—controlled not through punishment, but through information. But she refused. He respected her fire and ambition. She had been trained well, after all.
Now she needed to be eliminated. For if you could not control the beast, then it was your duty to put it down. He smiled as he approached her. She stood next to that Lightweaving she’d made of him, the tempting one that imagined him as a Radiant.
“We can talk,” he said, ignoring that illusion. “Service to me will not be so harsh as you imagine, Shallan. I am capable of many revelations that will be … illustrative to you. Perhaps we can travel those worlds together. I know how you hunger to see them.”
She made the false illusion step toward him, which gave him pause as he regarded it, trying to determine if there was some trick here. It puffed away a second later. A distraction? He looked back and met her eyes, which seemed afraid. Concerned. Or was he reading her expression wrong? She had grown proficient at hiding what she was feeling.
He prowled forward, and she shifted, one foot to the other. Such odd behavior … but ah, another distraction, yes. Her spren had moved to the side, and Mraize caught sight of it dashing toward him in a sudden rush. It was trying to tackle him, but Mraize set his stance. It collided with him weakly; it was just a Cryptic, with no battle sense. Mraize easily deflected it, sending it to the ground.
Mraize almost struck at it with his knife, annoyance rising in him as he eyed Shallan and growled. A desperate move on her part—she must have seen the knife he’d taken from his babsk’s corpse, hidden in his pocket.
“You send your spren,” he said, “hoping I’ll wound it and leave myself unarmed? Ruthless, little knife. I didn’t know you had it in you.” He glanced toward the other Cryptic—still at the doorway into the prison. The sick one. “Yet I suppose it is not your first time sacrificing a spren.”
Shallan backed away from him, appearing genuinely frightened. She was unarmed. The spren stood up behind him.
Too fast.
Too smooth.
Mraize realized right then the trick. It was the same one Iyatil had used. Shallan had swapped places with the spren while he’d been distracted by the illusion of himself.
He turned and with one hand caught Shallan’s strike. The Lightweaving fell away, revealing her true self.
“I’m sorry,” Mraize said as she struggled in his grip. He slipped the knife from his pocket and raised it. “Almost, you made me wish I could be the man you imagine. How do you do that?”
“By caring,” Shallan said quietly. “And by lying.” Her eyes flicked to his dagger.
Which did not glow with that light that warped the air. Instead he held her drained knife—while the one she held, which had almost struck him—warped the air.
What?
When she tried to tackle me, he thought. It was a cover for swapping the knives!
Great Gods of Fallen Worlds … how? How had she become that good at sleight of hand? For the first time in this fight, he started to worry.
“You have a choice, Mraize,” she said. “You always have a choice. Don’t force this.”
If you don’t kill her, he thought, then she will kill you.
It was the way of these things. He met her eyes.
This was the moment.
He dropped his useless knife and twisted her wrist with both hands, making her scream and drop her glowing knife. He snatched it from the air as she scrambled for the one he’d dropped. In a flash they met, him ramming his knife into her chest, and her driving hers into his stomach.
A sudden, blazing, burning tore through his abdomen.
He gasped at her as the anti-Stormlight surged through his body. “H … how?”
“I’m not good enough to slip a knife out of your pocket and replace it,” Shallan said. “But I’ve always been great with a calculated lie. You always held the knife that could have killed me, but you dropped it.” She brought her face close to his as his strength faded. “I have a choice too. I make it now. The choice to no longer let myself be abused.”
She rammed the knife in deeper. Mraize felt his life fading as she sought his heart, and despite himself—too inexperienced with his powers to do otherwise—he breathed in Stormlight.
In a second, fire consumed all. Like a sunrise burning away night.
Venli knew the deadline had arrived when El finally called his guards away from watching the Oathgate. He’d been expecting some sort of attack right up until that moment.
It was then that she acknowledged it at last: her plan had worked. El hadn’t seen what they were doing. Timbre had insisted everything would work out, but Venli …
Venli had secretly worried she was ruining everything again. She’d emerged from fitful sleep in one of the collapsed human dwellings, anxious, waiting for this moment.
Sunlight fell on the Plains through the dispersing clouds. The sodden, broken plateau took on a new light. The Rhythm of Joy began to beat in her head, unbidden, her soul attuned to it without conscious decision.
Not yet, she thought. We need to be absolutely certain.
She joined the Five, as El and several other high-ranking Fused walked across Narak, full of debris and sleeping chasmfiends. Leshwi floated over, met Venli’s eyes, and smiled. An open, excited smile. From one of the Fused. And … was she humming to Joy ?
“An odd rhythm, Leshwi,” El said, clasping hands behind his back. “I wasn’t aware you were capable of hearing the old ones.”
“Is it true, El?” Leshwi said, hovering a few inches off the ground beside him as he walked through a puddle. “Has the contest begun?”
“Yes,” El said. “As per the agreement, the boundaries of nations are now set and immutable. We have won the Shattered Plains, as I was asked to do.”
Venli looked to Thude and the others of the Five who had gathered. To Determination, Thude spoke. “Then, by that contract, we respectfully ask that you withdraw your forces until diplomatic relations between our nations can be normalized.”
Every rhythm stilled. No humming. Quiet upon the plateau. El blinked once, then turned to regard the group of them as if for the first time.
“Excuse me?” he said.
Venli reached into the pocket of her cloak, to an oiled and protected pouch. From within she took a roll of papers signed by Jasnah, the human queen.
A treaty.
After seven long years at war, the Alethi and listeners had finally made peace. Venli handed the papers to Thude, who held them up. A treaty signed by Gavilar’s heir—daughter of the man they’d killed on the night of the previous treaty signing.
This one would hold. They had vowed it.
El took the treaty and read it quietly. “You arranged this how?”
“With great care,” Venli said. “The humans knew the plateaus were lost, and together we agreed that a friendly party in control was preferable to an unfriendly one.”
“This is our land,” Bila said. “The humans did the right thing in acknowledging that on paper.”
“They are willing to do the right thing occasionally,” El said softly, “when it is the only option.”
“This is stupidity!” one of El’s companions, a Magnified One, shouted to Fury. “We will just take it from these little ones!” He drew back his hand to swing at Venli, and while Leshwi and the others tried to intervene, it was El who moved first. Forming a long, thin sword from the air and stabbing it through the side of the Fused’s head.
The eyes burned.
That … was a Shardblade.
“We will hold to the terms our god has made,” El said, not even looking up from the treaty as the Fused crumpled. El lifted the treaty, reading further, absently dismissing his Blade. “You earn tariffs on any use of the Oathgate … you rent land to the humans for their lumberyards and farms … but you get everything else …” He looked from Venli to the Five, then to Leshwi, who had floated nearer them. “I’m impressed. We’ll send ambassadors. I should have liked to own this land, but this is not an unacceptable outcome. It offers … different opportunities.”
He returned the treaty and walked away, calling for his forces to retreat.
A second storm had begun to build on the top of Urithiru. The highstorm. Dalinar noted it, as one might note the first rays of dawn. A … herald of things to come. A glimmer of hope.
Was there any possible way out of this?
He looked again toward Gav, who stood with his arms raised to kill—but with no weapon in them. His sword, Oathbringer—the symbol of both Dalinar’s greatest sin, and his attempts at redemption—scoring the roof nearby.
Gavinor was crying. It was such a cheap trick, to use him as a pawn—but at the same time, Dalinar understood the greater message here. Taravangian could have used some unnamed innocent just as easily, as this wasn’t about whether or not Dalinar was the better fighter. It was to force him to agree, one way or another, with Taravangian.
Kill Gav, and Taravangian’s philosophy proved correct. Walk away, and Dalinar would be forced to join him in advancing that philosophy anyway.
He’s right though, isn’t he? Dalinar thought. It’s better that I kill one person now, to free Alethkar. Although he hated the way this had happened, Gav had chosen …
Damnation. No. Dalinar wouldn’t accept that line of reasoning. A child taken by a monster and lied to for decades could not be held accountable for this decision. If Dalinar killed him, he would at least do himself—and Gav—the dignity of not blaming the lad.
It would be so easy. Few monarchs would have hesitated for long. It gives Taravangian what he wants most, he thought. The chance to corrupt me.
But the other choice? To join Odium? To launch wars that spanned the void between worlds? That was … that was what humankind had already done, essentially, in coming to Roshar.
Perhaps … perhaps he could do that. Perhaps he could manage those wars, so they didn’t get too terrible. Was it the worst thing, to have a capable general in the command structure, preventing atrocities? Plus, he could surely wage war against other worlds without getting too emotionally involved. It was nothing more than he and Gavilar had done in uniting Alethkar—simply on a grander scale.
That seemed … a terrible perversion of the goals he’d spent the last few years seeking. The unity he still felt a true God had commanded him to bring. To do what Taravangian wished … that would be to reject Dalinar’s budding faith, and join a quest he knew was evil. That was far worse than killing one young man.
Storms. He gazed at Gav. Remembering the child he’d played with, held, rejoiced over. A child he’d seen mere hours ago, by his mental reckoning. Could it be that … that Taravangian had been right all along? That this was the actual way of kings? Not Nohadon’s platitudes about helping. A deeper, darker truth: that a king’s duty was to take upon him the sins of an entire government.
The Stormfather formed as a shimmer beside him, and Dalinar realized he saw the spren as a friend. An occasionally combative one, yes, but … well, Dalinar had few friends he hadn’t at some point wanted to punch. He’d followed through with more than a couple.
“Do you have an answer for me?” Dalinar asked.
The Stormfather shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“Dalinar?” Taravangian asked from behind, near the far railing, streaming with the darkness that fed his storm. “Shall we talk further?”
“I could … go with him,” Dalinar whispered. “Become his Fused, but then ignore his orders to fight. He can’t compel me.”
“I think he might be able to,” the Stormfather said. “He may be able to remake you, Dalinar, as the Unmade were created. It requires your permission, but the contract …”
The contract would give that.
“It is hard,” Taravangian said, “to have one’s morals legitimately tested, isn’t it? To find yourself at the crossroads of what you’ve said and what you have lived. I know, Dalinar. Trust me, I know. And I am sorry.”
Storm that man. He sounded so …
Not reasonable. Relatable. Taravangian had been in Dalinar’s position, and had been forced to make these choices. It was as Dalinar had feared. All of his searching, all of his work, was for nothing. In the end, Odium controlled this confrontation utterly.
No, Dalinar thought. The journey. I learned.
He raised his hands to the sides, cold wind blowing across him, and he looked out across the peaks, feeling …
Life. Perhaps it was an echo of his visions. Perhaps it was that sense of warmth, the one he sometimes knew during quiet hours in his study. Perhaps it was the time, the place, the company.
He felt them. The people of the tower, of the surrounding nations, of Alethkar, of the world. He felt their fear, their love, their dreams. Some of them hurt, as Odium said. That was terrible, but it was also life. And life could be painful.
Most didn’t know what he was doing, nor could they really care. Other needs were too pressing, too immediate. He knew in that moment the deepest lie that Taravangian told: that only “great” men had difficult choices to make. That only kings carried burdens of guilt. That he was somehow special in needing to make painful decisions.
Dalinar’s power was vast, so his choices were influential, but they were not unique.
Yes, something familiar said in Dalinar’s mind. See …
He had seen. He had strode the path of history, coming to Urithiru not by conventional means, but by walking time itself. He had been singer, Herald, human, god. In the Spiritual Realm, he had seen what Connected them all.
Last of all, he stood here, knowing weakness. Not being enough … like a young man he loved who celebrated now in Azimir.
Not enough …
You could never be smart enough. Jasnah had learned that. Nor could you just keep fighting forever. Kaladin had learned that. You couldn’t be strong enough, nor could you be perfectly honorable. That was what it was to be mortal. Sometimes you succeeded anyway. Sometimes you failed. Dalinar had experienced the breaking of oath after oath. Humans turning on singers. Singers turning from Honor to Odium. He’d even seen a god trying, as best he could, and finding no way out but to break his word.
Yes. Dalinar felt that voice. The power of Honor. It HURTS. Why must it hurt? Can humans not simply do as they say that they will?
This—the power of Honor—was one person he hadn’t yet acknowledged. One he’d seen, but hadn’t considered. He did so now, seeing through the eyes of the power itself.
Person after person had failed it, making it tremble with agony. Awareness blossomed in Dalinar. And there, at the crux of two storms, Dalinar Kholin understood.
“Stormfather,” he said. “ I know the Words! ”