Chapter 141

The curious effect that the Black Sword has on individuals is one that I find poorly recorded. It is true that many feel nausea when picking it up, which is a sign of a heart uncorrupted by greed.

Others are, then, corrupted by that greed.

Most interesting are those in between. Those who feel neither emotion. Those who can use the sword, but walk a fine line upon its edge.

—From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 266

K aladin stood back with Syl, watching Szeth fight, and marveled. One man stood against six Honorbearers, and he made them look like children.

One, a Stoneward, raised a wall of rock, and Szeth merely used it as a promenade—running up along it. As he crested it and the stone tried to envelop him, Nightblood destroyed it in a burst of smoke.

Szeth landed amid a group of five enemies and blocked their blows easily, throwing sparks from their Blades—breaking off chips from them, tossing their bearers back. He scattered enemies, but they kept scrambling to attack him again. Every time, Szeth somehow pressed the advantage against overwhelming odds. He moved as, and with, the wind. As the Stoneward tried to grab him, Szeth slid along the ground and touched her leg. The woman went careening into the air.

“The Wind aids him …” Kaladin whispered.

No. We fear him.

That startled Kaladin, and he glanced to the sides, to see pinpricks of light hovering around him. Windspren? His armor. They had never spoken to him before.

Wait. If those were the spren of his armor … why were there so many? Fading in and out, vanishing as soon as he could see them in the air. He felt …

Thousands of them. Watching on the other side. With them the Wind herself, the ancient soul of Roshar. As if all of the wind on Roshar was holding its breath here, in this moment.

To the east, through the spren, he felt the land tremble.

Something terrible was happening at Urithiru.

Dalinar felt the moment Renarin and Rlain released Ba-Ado-Mishram. A long-lasting discordant note, vibrating the soul of Roshar in the most terrible of ways, was finally extinguished.

Something that had been broken—for so very long— righted.

Dalinar strode toward Odium, the power of Honor surrounding him. He saw it, true honor, in the efforts of two young people to set right an ancient wrong. In the way a young spearman rose to his feet in the darkness. In a man who stood with friends to save a city that was not his own. In the Lightweaver who refused the lies and accepted truth. Even in the way a queen who had been wrong resolved to do better.

He saw it in what Alethkar had been, and what it had become. In himself. If the man who burned cities could be redeemed, then who could not?

That was honor. The power couldn’t see it, and that still troubled Dalinar, but he could.

Fortunately, with the release of Mishram accomplished—her betrayal the very thing that had broken Tanavast—the path became clear. That sin had been holding the power back all these centuries, but now it thirsted for a Vessel, and Dalinar had seen its existence and its failings.

It wanted someone who understood it. That was the budding humanity of it, the budding awareness. Like all sapient things, it wanted to be understood. And thus, with that Connection, the power that had been ostracized at long last returned.

Honor was born again in Dalinar Kholin.

Szeth was free.

Released from an eternal prison. He … he could dance again.

He spun among the Honorbearers, Nightblood laughing as he sprayed dark mist around them.

He was alive.

Szeth-son-Neturo was alive.

So strange, then, that he should weep for what he must now do. Because it was time, past time. He needed to bring peace to these people. So he stopped stalling and slid on a Lashing across the ground. Two slashed behind him, but missed, as Szeth placed himself right in front of Pozen. The old Honorbearer reached out with rage in his eyes to try to send Szeth to Shadesmar.

“Thank you,” Szeth said, thrusting with the midnight sword, “for your training.” Pozen, his first teacher, exploded into black smoke and his Blade went flying, clanging to the ground in the distance.

Szeth Lashed himself backward—abruptly moving in an unnatural way, to anyone not used to Lashings. He left four confused assailants trying to swing at him as he turned, wind in his face, and located a rock formation that hadn’t been there a moment earlier. He drove his blade straight into it, consuming it in a burst of black smoke.

“Farewell, Moss,” Szeth said, tears on his cheeks, as the Lightweaving vanished around the stones, revealing a man being consumed by Nightblood. “The only one of you to be an actual friend. May you rest at last.”

Ba-Ado-Mishram filled the small chamber with a billowing black smoke. Rlain lost sight of Shallan outside—even lost track of his surroundings. He put a hand out to one wall through the darkness.

That darkness formed a sphere around him and Renarin, and then Mishram appeared from the smoke—with hands like claws. She loomed over Renarin like a vengeful shadow, fingers making knifelike nails, eyes blazing red.

Rlain attuned Resolve and leaped forward, seizing Renarin, sheltering him, and turned to Mishram. “ NO. ”

“He is one of them,” she growled.

“He freed you. He did what was right, because it is right!”

“He was a fool! They imprisoned me. They lied to me! He is evil !”

“He is a person,” Rlain shouted.

“He is human!” she shouted back.

“Some are evil, some are good. Most are both! Just like us, and until we accept that, nothing will ever change!”

“Nothing changed for me in two thousand years!”

“It changed for us,” Rlain said. He pulled Renarin closer, then attuned Love. “It changed for us, Mishram.”

The Rhythm of Spite beat around them like thunder. Yet she did not strike. She screamed—and an explosion of light followed. Rlain clung to Renarin, and they fell through the floor. Renarin shouted, and all was blackness and light, somehow mixing, until with a jolt they hit the ground.

Rlain twisted, groaning. When his vision recovered, he found himself and Renarin lying with Shallan and the spren on one of the Oathgate plateaus of Urithiru. The version in Shadesmar, with its strange black sky and odd clouds.

They had been ejected from the Spiritual Realm. And deposited near where they’d begun this journey.

Szeth landed softly on the stones as a third Blade clanged to the ground at his feet. A third foe killed, this time the Stoneward. That left him with only three. His sister, the Dustbringer. The older Truthwatcher woman whose name he had never learned. Finally, his father.

Szeth hesitated, his hand sweaty on Nightblood’s grip.

Fight! the sword said. DESTROY!

The feeling of the battle had changed. Neturo’s head jerked, as if forced to move. He nodded to the Truthwatcher. That oddest of orders, the one Szeth had understood the least, even when using its Blade.

The Truthwatcher strode forward, a globe of light forming in her hands. Shadows came alive. Szeth stumbled back as they crawled from the darkness around him. Transparent figures. That one … that was the old Alethi king. That one a bandit from Bavland. There, a serving woman at the Veden feast …

Guards. Common darkeyes. Kings. Shardbearers.

The people Szeth had killed. The whispers.

The whispers were alive. Each one pointed at Szeth. Accusatory.

Szeth spun around, trying to face them all, waving Nightblood—though his hand was starting to hurt, black tendrils moving up his wrist. An oath spoken had brought great power to Kaladin, but Nightblood searched for even more. Darkness moved like veins under the skin, corruption seeking Szeth’s heart. The sword was looking to feast upon his soul.

Szeth! Nightblood demanded. We must kill!

A Blade flashed from among the clustering shadows. Szeth parried by instinct, knocking away the Blade. His sister emerged from among the dead. “You ruined everything, Szeth. Before you bashed out that soldier’s brains, our life was perfect. You sent Mother away. You broke Father. You ripped our family apart. ”

“I know,” he said, tears on his cheeks.

“I’m going to kill you for that,” she said, circling him like a predator, turning her Blade in her hand. “I’m not going to hold back this time. You deserve it.”

“I do,” Szeth said as the shadows drew closer. “But Elid … you don’t.”

“Don’t deserve to die?”

“Don’t deserve that burden,” Szeth whispered. “You don’t deserve any of this … what Ishu has done to you. What I did to our family. I wish I could restore you.” He blinked tears from the corners of his eyes as he saw that she, when she moved, trailed a faint shadow. Like … like he had done, to some eyes, after being healed from near death.

Except where his was white, hers was red.

“I can’t spare you though,” Szeth said. “You aren’t alive any longer, Elid. You’re something else.”

She growled, raising her sword toward him. The shadows surrounded Szeth, and he realized as they touched him … if they took him, he could not help his sister.

None of them were real. They never had been real. Like a stone revered and carried without purpose, they were … nothing.

Ignoring them didn’t make them go away, but it did steal their power. As Elid lunged, he turned aside her Blade. She appeared shocked by this—she’d thought he would be taken down by his madness. Her lunge brought them face-to-face, and Szeth kissed her on the forehead.

Then he swept Nightblood through her, bringing peace to his sister and sending her Blade clattering to the ground, digging a gouge out of the stones.