Chapter 28

I do not have answers, and there will always be some who denounce me for this decision I made. But let me teach a truth here that is often misunderstood: sometimes, it is not weakness, but strength, to stand up and walk away.

—From The Way of Kings , fourth parable

I yatil ran for the larger room, giving Shallan time to reach into her sleeve and activate the spanreed strapped to her arm. A long press, locked into position, which would make the ruby on the other spanreed pulse—indicating an emergency.

Shallan turned to run up the steps.

Radiant stopped her. She’d fooled Mraize and Iyatil. She’d done it. They were just people. Deadly, capable, manipulative. But people. In some ways less capable than Shallan, for if they genuinely had spren, they were very new to them. Perhaps barely a few days into their bonding.

Instead of running, Radiant ripped away the stupid wig and mask. “Armor,” she commanded.

Shallan!

It encased her in a heartbeat, a bright glow from the front of her visor illuminating the room. Pattern followed at her summons, a brilliant, silvery sword. And Testament?

She would not ask Testament to kill again. Shallan reached her left arm to the side, and Testament appeared as a powerful shield, affixed to her arm, light as a cloth glyphward.

Shallan was no longer a child, confused, terrified, forced to kill with a gifted necklace. She had spoken Truth. And today she was the Radiant she’d once only imagined.

From the larger room with the bales of hay, Iyatil shouted to the others. “The Lightweaver is here! She was impersonating Aleen!”

Radiant stepped through the doorway, checking the corners. She leveled her weapon at Lieke, who had been right inside. He fled backward, stepping on purple fearspren. Radiant didn’t blame him. Facing a Shardbearer without Shards was not a wise proposition. Unless you were a storm-faced bridgeman, of course.

Across the room, Mraize took her in, then smiled. Storm him, he was proud of her. He calmly raised his hand ballista and shot a normal, non-lit bolt. She deflected it easily with her shield, and was struck by a new fear. What would happen if anti-Light met a Shardweapon?

Storms, they were in unknown territory.

Iyatil ripped the ballista out of Mraize’s hands. Nearby, the other Ghostbloods were doing themselves credit. When Shallan had pulled similar operations on groups like the Sons of Honor, there had been mass chaos. The Ghostbloods moved with deliberate coordination, spreading out, two summoning Shardblades, others producing conventional weapons.

Iyatil moved quickest of all, explaining why she’d retreated instead of engaging Shallan. Stabbing a Knight Radiant was basically useless; she needed something stronger. Iyatil pulled a bolt from Mraize’s pouch and raised a now-cocked ballista with it loaded, glowing bright. While Mraize had chosen a conventional bolt, Iyatil would shoot anti-Stormlight.

Shallan ducked back into the trophy room. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the Ghostbloods retreating toward the west side of the large chamber. Storms, of course they’d have another exit. There was no way in Damnation’s cold winds they would trap themselves—which meant she couldn’t just hold this room and wait for the others.

She stepped into the doorway and shouted, “Mraize!”

Her helmet amplified the sound, as if she’d spoken with ten times the force. Wow.

Shallan! the armor said, somehow conveying You’re welcome.

Mraize stopped retreating and turned toward her.

“Would you become the prey?” she demanded. “Running before the axehound?”

“Even a master hunter hides from the storm,” he called back. “I will face you when it is time, little knife.”

“Why not now?” she asked, advancing. Iyatil was pulling on Mraize’s arm to flee, ballista lowered to her side. Lieke opened a hidden door in the west wall. The others went through—one at a time, no pushing.

Shallan held her hands to the sides, dismissing both Pattern and Testament. “Go find the others; see what is taking them so long,” she whispered to the spren. She could resummon them, but didn’t want to risk them if that bolt was loosed.

Iyatil trained the ballista on her, but did not shoot. She knew she had exactly one shot. The others were escaping, but so long as Iyatil and Mraize were focused on Shallan, she bought time for the strike force to arrive.

“I’ve seen Mishram,” Shallan said. “Lightning in her eyes. Hair like midnight. I’ve seen her.”

That did it. The two fixated on her even more squarely.

“Mishram is imprisoned,” Iyatil said.

“Can any prison truly hold a god?” Shallan said, stepping forward. “Whatever advantage you think you can gain from her, you’re wrong. She is malevolent and terrible, the essence of hatred, imprisoned for two thousand years. She will destroy you, Mraize. Whatever your plan, it is not worth the risk.”

Mraize clasped his hands behind his back, studying her. Her argument wasn’t a good one—Mraize was willing to make big wagers, and was not driven by fear—but it was all she’d been able to come up with on the spot.

Still, he studied Radiant. Was he thinking about what she’d said …

No, Veil thought. He’s thinking how we surprised him by sneaking in here. And how bold we are to stand here, staring down that weapon.

“We don’t have to be enemies,” she said to him.

“You aren’t my enemy,” he said. “You’re my obstacle.”

Iyatil shifted.

She’s going to shoot.

Shallan dove to the side while breathing out and purposely ejecting all of her Stormlight. With some, she created two illusions: one of her jumping in the other direction, another staying in place.

Iyatil tracked the correct Shallan, then loosed.

Go! Shallan commanded the armor.

Shallan? the spren sent, but obeyed, vanishing right as the crossbow bolt took her in the ribs. She tumbled in her dive, grunting at the sudden jolt of pain. She almost drew in Stormlight, but forcibly stopped herself. No. No.

The bolt had a metal tip, with a gemstone clipped into the shaft. That tip … it was designed, like the weapons of the Fused, to move Light. In this case, it injected the anti-Light, making it seep through her. It wasn’t painful, not compared to the actual wound, but it was wrong. A cold that prowled through her veins, carried through her body with every beat of her heart.

Painspren clawed up from the stone ground around her. This feeling was unnatural, counter to her very nature, but … she felt she could have drawn it in like normal Light. She decided not to try, as it did not seem to be able to hurt her so long as she set her jaw against the pain and refused the normal Stormlight that would heal her. Because if those two met …

Through tears of pain, Shallan watched Mraize take Iyatil by the arm and gesture toward the exit. She instead pulled a knife from its sheath at her belt and moved toward Shallan.

Then, blessedly, something distracted them. Shouts from the hidden hallway?

The ceiling in the center of the room—between Shallan and the other two—melted.

Stone in a hole maybe eight feet across poured down, as if it had suddenly become mud. It splashed on the floor of the cavern—missing the podium by inches and touching none of the people—then instantly hardened. Through that hole came a dozen Windrunners one after another—the last carrying Erinor, Darcira’s husband, a Stoneward. That explained the meltiness.

Hand on her wound—bloodied fingers around the crossbow bolt—Shallan met Mraize’s eyes.

Then he, Iyatil, and Lieke—who had been lingering—vanished. The air around them warped with a light tinged black-violet, and they were gone.

Szeth trailed off, having told Kaladin a little about his family as they walked through the forest for a few hours. A story of the discovery of a rock, told in fits and starts. Kaladin hadn’t interrupted, enjoying hearing the other man open up—plus, learning about the Shin was genuinely interesting.

This time when Szeth trailed off, he didn’t continue.

“You heard a horn?” Kaladin eventually prompted. “What did that mean?”

“I’m done for now,” Szeth said.

Kaladin sighed, but otherwise contained his annoyance. At least that story had been something. They soon reached a sharp drop-off. Here the trail wound down in a series of steep switchbacks, so they took a quick jaunt into the sky. Kaladin felt invigorated, bathed in the light of a sun that had passed its zenith and was now working toward the horizon.

“Do you have forests near your home?” Szeth asked as they lazily drifted down, skimming the tops of the foliage.

“Not like this,” Kaladin said. “I didn’t see a true forest until I reached the Shattered Plains, and took a trip to the harvesting operations a half day’s march north.”

“I always thought there couldn’t be trees outside Shinovar,” Szeth said, Stormlight escaping his lips. “How could they grow in a land with no soil?”

“And I,” Kaladin said, “never imagined you’d have them here. With nothing for their roots to grip.”

Szeth grunted at that, then Lashed himself in a steady swoop along the mountainside. Kaladin followed as the trees dwindled, and they approached Shinovar proper: a vast plain of vibrant green. Kaladin had seen many a field before, but he realized that up until this moment, he’d never seen something so alive as this prairie. Though again, there were no lifespren, which he found odd.

Regardless, fields back home had grass, but with more space between the blades, so the brown cremstone filtered through. Here the grass grew like moss, achieving an aggressive density. As if the individual blades had formed mobs, armies, pike blocks.

Following Szeth, he landed on an outcropping on the slope. As Szeth sat down to inspect the land before them, Kaladin walked to the edge, his Stormlight giving out, and his full weight settled on him, his feet sinking into the soft soil to an unfamiliar degree. The entire view—with the rolling hills of green and a thick blanket of grass—made him think of an ocean. Each of those hills a swell or wave, with trees like ships. There was even what he thought might be a herd of wild horses in the distance. Incredible.

“I see it now,” Kaladin whispered.

“What?” Szeth asked.

“I see how your land survives. That grass … it doesn’t move, doesn’t react. Yet it feels as if it could swallow everything. Like it wants to consume me.”

“It will, once you die,” Szeth said softly. “It will take all of us. Undoubtedly later than we deserve.”

What a delightful way of thinking. Syl landed next to Kaladin, becoming full sized and trimmed in violet. She was grinning, naturally. “Look at the solitary trees!” she said, pointing. “Look at them just sitting there alone, without a care in the world.”

Here, trees didn’t need companions with whom to lock roots. But Kaladin, now that he thought to look closer, found the buildings more unusual. This region wasn’t terribly well populated, but he picked out one town, maybe the size of Hearthstone—and several lonely homesteads.

Those buildings seemed so unprotected, practically shouting for the storms to take them. Though they were distant, he thought they were wooden, and appeared flimsy. With flat walls to the east, and windows on those sides as well. He knew people here didn’t have to fight the storms, but those homes unnerved him. Made him think the people must be weak, innocent, in need of protection. Like lost children wandering a battlefield.

“This is wrong,” Szeth said.

“Yeah,” Kaladin said, kneeling beside him in the knee-high grass. “How do people live here?”

“Peacefully, when your kind let them,” Szeth said, his eyes narrowed. He sat somewhat awkwardly, the strange black sword strapped to his back. It was a good example of why one normally summoned a Shardblade, instead of carrying it. The weapon was awkwardly sized: too long to be worn at the waist, but difficult to draw when strapped to the back like that.

Szeth glanced at him and shook his head. “Something is wrong here. Not the things you see with a stonewalker’s perspective, Kaladin. Look. Does that region seem … darker than it should?”

Kaladin followed Szeth’s pointing finger to a rise on the right, along the cliffsides of the mountain. It was darker than the stones and soil around it. But … there was no visible cloud to cause that shadow. Kaladin narrowed his eyes and thought he could see wisps of blackness rising from it.

“What’s over there?” Kaladin asked.

“The monastery,” Szeth said. “We have ten of them. Most are homes of the Honorblades.”

The legendary weapons of the Heralds. Szeth had wielded one when killing old King Gavilar. It, unfortunately, had fallen into other hands … the hands of a man who should have been Kaladin’s brother.

“You keep the Honorblades in monasteries?” Kaladin asked.

“One for each Radiant order, though Talmut’s is missing, of course, as is Nin’s. Ishu has claimed his too, now. Regardless, when a person is elevated as I was in my youth, they travel to each monastery on pilgrimage, training at those that have an Honorblade, mastering each Surge. That one ahead is the first I lived in, but it has no Blade.”

“Which one is it?” Syl asked from the edge of their overlook, gazing straight along the mountainside to that distant fortress on the ridge. “Which Blade should it have held?”

“Talmut’s,” Szeth said. “You call him Talenelat, or Taln. Stonesinew, the Bearer of Agonies.”

“That darkness,” Kaladin said, “reminds me of the darkness around the Kholinar palace. An Unmade lived there. You really met one here, in Shinovar?”

“Yes,” Szeth said softly.

“When was this?” Kaladin said. “After you discovered a rock on your family’s ground?” He hoped to prompt more of the story.

“The meeting was much later,” Szeth said, “but that day with the rock, and the raid … that was the beginning.”

“Do you want to tell me more?” Kaladin asked.

“None of that matters. All that matters is the quest.”

“And the people, your family, the—”

“None of it matters,” Szeth repeated. “We should camp here for the night and visit the monastery in the morning. Unless you want to investigate that place now.”

Kaladin shoved aside his annoyance at Szeth and looked again at the patch of darkness. Then he glanced at the sun, which was getting close to setting. He wasn’t certain how all this connected—Ishar, Dalinar’s request of him, and Szeth’s story. But if there was an Unmade, he didn’t want to risk encountering it at night. Kaladin had faced them at Kholinar, where he’d failed to protect the people. Even the Unmade he’d eventually defeated—when it had worn Amaram’s body—had been extremely dangerous.

“Camping sounds good,” Kaladin said. “But let’s do it farther back and around that bend, to shelter the cookfire.”

“We don’t need a cookfire,” Szeth said. “We have travel rations.”

Kaladin insisted, however. Thankfully Szeth joined him, and offered no further complaint about a cookfire. Because Kaladin needed this man to open up.

And he figured he’d try an old standby.