Chapter 142

Those who were not there, you future readers, understand. Even hundreds of miles away from the event, I heard the thunder.

The land trembled at what Dalinar Kholin did.

—From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 181

D alinar’s mind expanded.

He could see it all. Past, present, potential futures.

His body evaporated into the substance that was the vast, incomprehensible essence of godhood. What stepped forward from that power to meet Taravangian was merely a projection that towed infinity behind it like a cloak.

You have done it, the Stormfather said, awed, his voice so very, very tiny now. A puff of air against a raging highstorm. Dalinar, Honor, could meet Taravangian on equal terms. And could consider a third option apart from the two he’d been offered.

What if he destroyed Odium? The contract of old let Dalinar attack as he wished. Yes, Odium could defend himself if that happened, but Dalinar had been a soldier and Taravangian a philosopher.

Dalinar could destroy his enemy and save Roshar. The power of Honor wanted this confrontation. Dalinar, in a moment of infinite lucidity, saw that this was part of why it had broken away from Tanavast. Of what he had worried, he now saw the fulfillment: Honor, in the power’s eyes, was about oaths. But there was a darker side to it.

How many men had stabbed someone they loved because of “honor”?

How many wars had been started because of an insult to “honor”?

How much anger in the world had been caused by a belief in “honor”?

The power accepted those definitions of it. It was the power of oaths and the pride that men bore at being thought of as men of oaths. As Dalinar had witnessed: thousands of years of warfare to prove who was right, and who deserved this land. The power didn’t care about self-improvement, but it cared deeply about being right.

“ So ,” Taravangian said, “ This is what it comes to ?”

“ It is the only way ,” Dalinar found himself replying.

“ I accept ,” Taravangian said. “ If I can annihilate the power of Honor, splinter it completely, then I will be freed. ”

Dalinar. A puff of air. Easy to ignore.

“ I accept ,” Dalinar said. “ If you are dead, then this world will be free of your stench forever. I can maintain Honor, and will be proven right in not killing Gav—and will not have to join you and your conquests. Let us end this, Taravangian. ”

Dalinar!

“ Let us end this !” Taravangian said, his power billowing behind him, the red lightning crashing.

“ You ,” Dalinar said, the winds becoming furious, “ should not have threatened my family. Today you shall know the Blackthorn ! You shall know the tempest awakened !”

Dalinar, please.

It was the Stormfather’s voice.

Dalinar blinked, seeing the powers beginning to touch, the friction causing the tower beneath him to shake—and the mountains nearby to tremble. On the top of the tower, he heard Gavinor crying, suddenly freed as Taravangian focused on Dalinar. Crying … the way he had as a child …

Dalinar remembered his first vision ever, standing and watching a cataclysm engulf his homeland. How many times had he seen that vision, and assumed the cataclysm was some enemy force? Some terrible fate he needed to stand before and prevent?

Now, he saw it clearly for the first time. The cataclysm was Dalinar himself.

He was there, frantically punching Elhokar again.

“Stop.”

He burned Evi because it was what the people of the Rift deserved. It was retribution for breaking the treaty they’d sworn an oath to follow.

“We can’t do this.”

His people had killed tens of thousands of Parshendi on the Plains, pursuing the Vengeance Pact in the name of honor and oaths broken.

“No,” Dalinar said, backing down from the fight with Odium. “Never.” This had never been his plan upon taking the power, but he’d been swept up in the moment. Now he refused. Now … he had the power …

And he still needed another solution.

Light surrounded Dalinar. A moment later, he vanished. Drawn into one final vision.

Kaladin and Syl knelt beside Ishar, who seemed conscious—but barely. He stared at the sky, not blinking, and hardly stirred as Kaladin lifted him to a seated position.

Storms, Kaladin thought. Nightblood was using up Light at a furious rate—even though Kaladin had felt minutes ago like he was holding it full to bursting. As he waved his hand in front of Ishar’s dazed eyes, he found frost on his clothing. He breathed in to restore his Light, and found nearly all of his gemstones already empty. Storms.

“That’s bad,” Syl said, glancing at the black lines forming on his hand around where the cord tethered him to Nightblood. “This is dangerous.”

“I know,” he said. “Ishar. Can you hear me? Can you use the Bondsmith Blade to open a perpendicularity? We need more Stormlight.”

Please, he thought. Please have worked.

Kaladin found it remarkable how easily the final Words had come to him. He’d expected so much pain from it, and yet … the Fourth Ideal had been his biggest stumbling block. After admitting he couldn’t help everyone, with a little time he came to the natural ultimate conclusion—that if he wanted to keep doing what he could do, he’d need to look out for himself.

“Kaladin,” Syl said, resting her hand on his arm and staring at the sky, “the spren feel something coming.”

The sky was shimmering more brightly now.

“What is it?” Kaladin asked.

They know, the Wind whispered, that we stand upon a cliffside. Dalinar Kholin faces his greatest challenge.

“And what will happen?” Kaladin asked, feeling cold.

It is not written, the Wind said. Not yet. But be ready, Kaladin. Please. Be ready.

Sweat on his temples crystallized to ice in an extremely strange sensation. Fortunately, Ishar finally groaned, blinking. He focused on Kaladin.

“Stormblessed,” he whispered. “What did you do to me?”

“Depends,” Kaladin said. “How do you feel?”

“Like a mountain fell on me,” Ishar said. He coughed and leaned forward, then his eyes found Szeth, still fighting the spirits. “Oh. Oh no. What have I done …?”

Well, that was a good sign.

“Can you stop them?” Kaladin asked.

“I …” Ishar held his hand before him. “I have no power … no Surges …”

Nale stumbled up to them, looking confused, a hand to his head. Kaladin didn’t have time for them at the moment though. He yanked a pouch from Ishar’s belt, then breathed in the Stormlight inside, feeding Nightblood.

It’s coming, the Wind said, and her voice seemed to echo. As if there were a thousand versions of it overlapping. You say you’ll help … but I’m suddenly afraid. Will you still curse me because you continue to live?

“No,” Kaladin promised. “Never again.”

Will you be there? When I need you?

“Have I ever not been?” he said—though moments later a sharp pain struck his hand. He cried out, then raised his hand to find the black veins running up his forearm.

Kaladin breathed in, searching for more Stormlight, but Ishar was completely tapped. He looked to Nale, who shook his head. Nothing.

Nightblood would soon consume Kaladin.

Perhaps Nightblood would consume them all.

Dalinar appeared somewhere warm, with light coming in through windows that was somehow … softer than other light. More blurry, like he saw it through eyes that couldn’t focus. He could see the room around him better though: it was an antiquated stone chamber, full of the belongings gathered in a long life, well lived.

Wooden bowls on one counter. Paintings on one wall, of an older style: depicting mountains and rainfalls in black and grey ink, with the slightest washings of red and blue. A few hung askew, but not because of some disaster. They had just slipped, and nobody had righted them yet. Dalinar looked out the window and saw only a soft light that didn’t blind him, but washed out whatever there was to see.

He could hear sounds out there: people chatting, individual voices indistinguishable, but the talk was bright and energetic. The sounds of a winehouse with people laughing, or perhaps a market …

Blood of my fathers, Dalinar thought. Dare I hope? Have I finally come back here … to him …

In a daze, he walked to the door and pushed it open. In the small kitchen beyond, he found a shorter man with an Alethi or Veden look about him. Silver hair, pointed beard. Smile lines and simple, old-fashioned grey robes, embroidered red and yellow. He was working at an archaic oven, all stone and brick, with a front that could not be closed.

Nohadon. The ancient king who had written The Way of Kings.

“Oh, thank the storms,” Dalinar whispered.

“What?” Nohadon said, reaching into the oven with a flat metal tool.

“The visions have been terrible lately,” Dalinar said. “I worried this one would be twisted somehow.” He said it, though he didn’t expect that to make sense to Nohadon. Still, the previous time he’d seen this man …

Hadn’t he called Dalinar by name? Despite being in a vision of the past?

“You’re surprised to find me, Dalinar?” Nohadon said. “I promised you Shin bread, my friend. I usually keep my promises.” He pulled a thick loaf of bread from the oven, made in the strange Shin style that Dalinar—after shopping for ingredients with this man in a vision the year before—had asked to try in the real world.

Nohadon gestured for him to sit at the small table on the floor nearby. Dalinar did so, and the ancient king—moving with a spry sense of excitement—slid the bread onto the tabletop. “Perfect!” he said, poking it. “Exactly the right mix of crust and fluffiness! I’d be embarrassed if it had been a dud, considering the importance of the moment.”

“What is this?” Dalinar said, feeling so … surreal. The warmth, the room that seemed to fuzz, a softness to each corner or edge. “Did I create this? I’m Honor now. I’m creating visions?”

“Ha!” Nohadon said, settling down. “A god for less than five minutes, and already you think you control everything.” He took a knife and cut into the bread, steam rising from the fluffy insides. Dalinar liked a good flatbread with his meals, but this stuff had just tasted … wrong. Like it was moss.

“Nohadon,” Dalinar said, his hands on the tabletop, “I don’t have time for flighty visions of meaningless days. I’m standing, right now, at the nexus of all things. The final confrontation between Odium and Honor.”

“I would counter,” Nohadon said, “that this is the most important time for you to be reminded of lazy days baking bread. Why do you fight, if not for days like these?” He took a healthy bite. “What happened?”

“I nearly destroyed it all,” Dalinar admitted. “It was so tempting to fight him, knowing I could win.”

“Except …”

“Except that would destroy too much,” Dalinar said. “I realized it. I stopped myself.”

“That’s progress, my friend.”

“Is there no way to fight him?” Dalinar said. “Without destroying all of Roshar?”

“I don’t think there is,” Nohadon said. “Powers like yours have clashed before without destructive results—but always then, one of the two wanted to preserve. When both want to destroy … it’s violent.”

“So that puts me right back where I started!” Dalinar said. “I have the power of a god, but I still cannot see a way out. Either I kill my grandnephew, or I serve Odium.” He put his hands on his head, leaning forward, elbows on the table.

The power of Honor let him see so much farther. But Odium could see that distance as well, and had designed this trap so there was no way out. “I have to be strong. I must do as you would do, Nohadon.”

“And what would I do?” the elderly king asked.

“Make the right choice,” Dalinar said. “Refuse to kill Gav. Accept this means serving Odium.”

“Interesting,” Nohadon said. “Wouldn’t that give Odium everything he wants? If you willingly serve him, then many of the Radiants will go with you. He would ostensibly be trapped here on Roshar, so the other gods will continue to ignore him—but he’d have access to the finest military in the whole of the cosmere. He’d have time to plan, build, and raise a new force of Fused who aren’t suffering from mental fatigue. In a hundred years or so, he’d be able to launch his armies and conquer everything with ease.”

Dalinar narrowed his eyes at the old king. “Who are you, really?”

“Perhaps merely a construction of your mind,” he said. “Or maybe I’m actually Nohadon. Well, I was born with the name Bajerden, but no one seems to like that one.”

“You can’t be encouraging me to kill Gav!” Dalinar slammed his fist to the table. “Nohadon wouldn’t kill a child to achieve his goals!”

“Dalinar,” Nohadon said. “I did so all the time. Every policy I made hurt someone. ”

Dalinar hesitated. In this room, he didn’t feel like a god. He felt like … just a man talking to another man. “So … killing Gavinor is the right answer?”

“I didn’t say that,” Nohadon replied. “Only that sometimes, we all have to make awful choices. Not just kings, Dalinar. Did you see that?”

“Yes,” Dalinar said. “I did.”

“Every parent must choose themselves or their child, every day—sometimes multiple times a day. When to play. When to rest. Every decision we make influences others, and sometimes harms them. That’s not the way of kings. That’s the way of life.”

“So you would kill the boy,” Dalinar said.

“Would I?”

“I don’t know,” Dalinar said, attempting to remain angry, though this place had a soothing quality. He sat back, sighing. “What do I do ?”

“I suggest,” Nohadon said, pushing the loaf in Dalinar’s direction, “you have a slice of bread.”

Dalinar paused, then cut a slice. “I did try this stuff. I didn’t much care for it.”

“How’d you eat it?”

“With my dinner.”

“With curry and hot spices, no doubt,” Nohadon said, clicking his tongue. “This is Shin bread, Dalinar. Eat it their way. With salted butter.”

“Butter? Why? That’s for cooking.”

“Here,” Nohadon said, demonstrating by spreading the stuff from a block onto a slice of bread.

Dalinar hesitantly did as instructed. Then he tried the bread, and found it a different experience entirely. Light, tasty, with a hint of salt and oil. It was delicious.

“Too much yeast, I think,” Nohadon noted.

“No, it’s perfect,” Dalinar said, taking another bite. “Much better than what I got at Urithiru.”

“Good, good,” Nohadon said. “I suppose context matters both with bread and with decisions. What’s your context, Dalinar?”

“An evil god,” Dalinar said, “wearing the face of a man I once called a friend. Putting me in an impossible situation. I keep thinking of the first vision I ever saw. That of my homeland falling to a destructive wave.”

“This one?” Nohadon said.

And they were standing there, pieces of bread still in hand. Upon a cliff overlooking Kholinar, the home he’d not seen in so many years. The gem of Gavilar’s conquest.

It was the first vision, the first and the last. Each time he’d stood here, Dalinar had felt like a different man. He watched it play out again, the ground falling away, a terrible destructive wall of something overwhelming Kholinar and breaking it apart completely. Darkness of unfathomable depth swallowing all.

“What does it mean?” Nohadon said.

“I am the destruction,” Dalinar said, pointing. “A clash between me and Odium would destroy this world.”

Tanavast was always too weak to take this step, the Stormfather whispered in Dalinar’s head from someplace distant. He … I … spent so long searching for someone who wouldn’t dare do it. Maybe … I was wrong. Could I have been wrong?

“No,” Dalinar said, confident.

Nohadon put his hand on Dalinar’s shoulder, gesturing to the vision of Kholinar. “Are you sure this represents the destruction you’d cause by clashing with Odium?”

“What else could it mean?” Dalinar asked.

“I don’t know,” Nohadon replied. He took a bite of bread. “A conundrum. But I suppose you are here, at this decision point, and not someone else. So maybe only you can know.”

The wave of destruction reached the cliff upon which Dalinar stood, and all started falling. Breaking.

He appeared back in Nohadon’s kitchen. Slice of bread in his fingers. He sighed, leaning forward. “I’m so tired of this question, Nohadon.”

“And what question is that?”

“How to defeat Odium!”

“And what does defeating him look like?” Nohadon said.

“I don’t know!” Dalinar said. “That’s the problem.”

“Paint for me the picture,” Nohadon replied, “of what a perfect outcome looks like to you.”

Dalinar hesitated, then ate more of the bread, considering. “Wit told a story, with the point being to not lose sight of the everyday lives of the people. Navani told me to make what feels the best decision in the moment. I think … I think what I want, then, is peace. Without compromising my values.”

“What kind of peace?” Nohadon asked. “Enforced? No ability to choose?”

“That … serves him, doesn’t it?” Dalinar said. “Taravangian’s predecessor spent millennia—all of the wars—trying to build himself unstoppable armies. That didn’t work, as it merely broke us. With enforced peace though, Taravangian can recruit, train, marshal his forces—pick careful engagements offworld to build veteran experience. That’s how you train a military.” Dalinar put his hands to his head. “I need to break the cycle of constant battle.”

“So that is what victory looks like to you?”

“Everything serves him!” Dalinar said, standing up, pacing. “Every possible outcome! Peace serves him, war serves him! Everything I could think of, everything I could do!” He stopped by one of those windows, bathed in the strange light. “I can’t defeat him … Storms, I really just can’t. ”

“Who can?”

Dalinar looked back at Nohadon, who met his eyes.

Who can?

A thought occurred to him. And a knock came at the door right after. Nohadon rose and answered it, ushering in an Alethi child—perhaps nine or ten—of indistinguishable gender. He patted them on the head, gave them some bread, and sat them by the hearth to watch the flames.

“Strange,” Nohadon said, walking up to Dalinar, “how one so ancient can still be so young …”

“Honor,” Dalinar guessed. “That’s the power of Honor. It’s started to develop its own mind.”

“Yes,” Nohadon said, looking on it fondly.

Who could stop the war?

“The powers,” Dalinar whispered. “The war will stop when the powers themselves want it to stop.”

Nohadon snapped his fingers.

Dalinar walked over to the child, then settled down next to them. “Hey,” he said.

“I chose you,” they whispered, “because you’d seen my life, and understood what I’d been through. But then you refused to fight. You refused. ” The child stared at the wall, at nothing. “Even he knows it’s the right thing, to fight until one of us wins. Why does he know better than you do? He’s our enemy?”

Dalinar took a bite of bread. “You saw my life, parts of it, as you made the visions for me.”

“Yes.”

“You remember the one with the barrels of oil?”

“That one played out wrong,” Honor’s power whispered. “You were supposed to burn the room, and all in it. Why do you do what is wrong? There was another you there, who understood.”

Storms. This bread really was good.

“Understanding. You wanted someone to understand you. That’s why you came to me.”

The child nodded.

“What about my wife, Evi?” Dalinar asked. “Can you try to understand her?”

“She broke an oath. She went to the enemy. You were there to stop them, and she went to them anyway.”

“Can you understand, though?” Dalinar said. “Why she did? Why it was, to her—and to me now—the right thing? Why she’s the example, and I the failure?”

“I … I can’t.”

“Can you try? You want to be understood. Do you not think others want to be understood too, by you?”

The being scrunched up its brow. And thought.

Good enough for now. Dalinar finished his bread, then stood and walked back to Nohadon, by the wall.

“It is a child,” Dalinar said. “Or like one. Newly born, with its own volition.” He met Nohadon’s eyes. “It reasons like one now, with a simple perspective. But it’s willing to consider things. It can change, can’t it? Grow?”

“What do you think?” Nohadon said, snacking on bread.

“Yes. The powers must be able to change. Everyone can change, even me. I walked those paths … I saw the past … I know divinity. Honor must learn. That’s the answer.”

“Midius is right. You really aren’t as dense as everyone says.”

“You realize people have spent literal centuries writing about how wise, and serene, and full of decorum you must have been.”

“I’m a king,” Nohadon said. “Therefore, whatever I do is by definition regal. You have the answer?”

“Almost …” Dalinar said. “The power needs time to learn, and ways to experience the lessons to change, but I can’t give them either. Because time is what Taravangian wants. So he can plot. I can’t let him do that, so I need to simultaneously buy time for Honor’s power, but deny it to Taravangian.”

The answer was so close. Today, Dalinar had seen true honor. As Adolin stood for Azir, and Renarin set right a terrible wrong. As Jasnah picked herself up from failure, and Shallan rose above what had been done to her. And Kaladin …

Blood of my fathers, Dalinar thought, realizing. Kaladin will preserve a piece … That’s what we need …

Now that he knew the end he wanted, Dalinar could see the answers. You never could find them unless you knew what you were looking for, could you?

“I can’t stop Odium,” Dalinar whispered, a plan forming. “But they can.” He looked to Nohadon. “Am I simply doing the same thing that has always been done, though? Kicking the problem down to the next generation. Isn’t that an awful idea?”

“That depends,” Nohadon said, “upon what aid you can give them. And upon the type of people they are.”

“They are the best,” Dalinar whispered. “There will be a cost, won’t there? I need Taravangian to think he’s won. And storms, he’s at least a little bit right, isn’t he? About decisions?”

“Right,” Nohadon said, “and terribly, terribly wrong.” He squeezed Dalinar’s arm. “We do have to make awful decisions sometimes. They will be flawed because we are flawed. That is not a reason, however, to give up on finding better solutions. And the destination …”

“… must not undermine the journey.” Dalinar nodded. “I’ll pay the cost. Send me back.”

Nohadon smiled. “Good luck, my friend. Thank you for listening to me all those years. It does a man good to know that what he wrote has meant something …”

The vision collapsed. In the blink of an eye, Dalinar was back on that rooftop—and was again a god, his power pressing against that of Taravangian.

Yes, he could defeat Taravangian, but that wasn’t winning. “I cannot best you,” Dalinar whispered with a voice of thunder. “No matter what I do.”

“You are correct,” Taravangian said, and Dalinar sensed relief in his voice. At least part of him had known that fighting Honor, with the will of the Blackthorn, was a dangerous proposition for him. “Whether you are god or man, it is the same: serve me or kill an innocent. You will learn the lesson.”

“I have learned it,” Dalinar said. “Just not the way you intended me to.” Dalinar felt the Stormfather there, and he remarkably came to the same conclusion. The path of the Heralds from long ago. A path Dalinar had spent a lifetime trying to understand.

Yes, the remnant of Tanavast said. I am willing. This is my ultimate choice and sacrifice, Dalinar. I choose. Do it now.

Dalinar opened his eyes, beacons of blazing power, and spoke four fateful words.

“I renounce my oaths.”