Chapter 45

While Willshapers embraced this very sense of contrarity, an attitude that will come as no great surprise to any conversant with their predilections, and indeed might be found unexpected in its absence, the presence of such strife among Skybreakers is a source of no small stupefaction to many.

—From Words of Radiance, chapter 40, page 1

K aladin, Syl, and Szeth met an unexpected obstacle guarding the next monastery. A fort.

They landed together on a grassy hilltop. Kaladin was almost accustomed to the ground’s unnatural plushness. Like he was walking on carpet. Outdoors. All the time.

Kaladin shifted the new Honorblade—wrapped in cloth, with a rope tied to each end to carry it—from one shoulder to the other. They’d decided neither should try to bond it. The distant ramshackle fortification appeared one strong gust away from collapse. The monastery itself—a towering stone block—peeked up behind the wooden wall.

“It looks right,” Szeth said. “Good.”

“Good?” Kaladin asked.

“No darkness,” Syl agreed. “I can feel it too.”

“Was there a wall around it before?” Kaladin asked.

Szeth shook his head. “No, but this is a larger monastery with a small city around it, not just a soldier camp. Perhaps the wall was built after I left. All of the monasteries along the seaboard here were designed to defend against coastal barbarian incursions.”

“By barbarians, you mean people like me,” Kaladin said. “Because we walk on stone.”

“Among other things,” Szeth said, starting forward. “Let’s walk the rest, to not alarm them or reveal we are Radiant.”

“All right,” Kaladin said, joining him. “What, other than walking on stone, marks us as barbarians in your eyes?”

“Your use of color. It doesn’t mean anything to you. Plus, you often eat with your hands.”

“What else would we eat with?” Kaladin said. “Our feet?”

“Forks. Spoons.”

“We have those.”

“You barely use spoons except for soup. As for forks, you just as often use bread. Flat, dry bread with no yeast. You likely got forks from us. People in the East steal everything good from the Shin.”

“Nonsense,” Kaladin said, glancing at Syl for support. She was snickering. “Szeth, that’s nonsense. What have we stolen?”

“Horses,” he said. “Hogs. Chickens. Social graces. Manners. Philosophy …”

“That’s a huge leap,” Kaladin said. “Horses, maybe. But social graces? Regardless, didn’t we all come from Shinovar originally? We landed here when we … shipped in from another planet? Or whatever.”

Szeth simply continued walking.

“Syl,” Kaladin said, “back me up.”

“Well,” she said, “you do get a lot of food on your hands when you eat.”

“We use flatbread to scoop curry!” Kaladin said. “We wash our fingers in dishes. It’s efficient. You’re not more civilized, Szeth, because you wash more forks.”

Szeth didn’t reply, but he did seem to have a hint of a smile on his lips as they crossed the shimmering grassland, passing beneath the boughs of a large tree. After a time flying, Kaladin always forgot how long it took to walk anywhere.

“You let people rile you,” Szeth said. “You get emotional and argue.”

“And?” Kaladin asked.

“And you don’t lose control and kill people.”

“Is that a problem for you?” Kaladin asked, a little unnerved by needing to.

“No,” Szeth said, “but the Skybreakers teach that if my emotions rule me, I will leave corpses in my wake.”

“You haven’t done so anyway?” Kaladin said.

Szeth winced visibly. Damnation. Maybe this wasn’t the right way to approach therapy, or whatever Wit had called it.

“I had an old sergeant,” Kaladin said, “in my first months in the military. He always said that he’d rather his men care, feel emotion, and feel pain. Even anger. Because we’re supposed to fight for something.”

“But if you let emotion take over, it will control you,” Szeth said. “That’s the way of Odium.”

“Sure, going too far is clearly bad,” Kaladin said. “I know the stories of Dalinar’s early days; I’ve met soldiers who were the same. But it’s not like a little grumping about being called a barbarian is going to drive me to a raving frenzy.”

“And you don’t enjoy it?” Szeth asked. “The battle part?”

“I …” Did he? “Yeah. Yeah, I enjoy the battle part sometimes.”

“That doesn’t frighten you?”

“It does,” Kaladin admitted. “I guess it’s like everything in life. You have to find a balance. Is that … maybe part of your problem? You feel that if you take the slightest step in one direction, you might as well dash headlong without looking back?” He thought a moment. “Might be partially the fault of your society, where a child who defends his own life is seen as irreconcilably broken—and needs to be sent away.”

Szeth, characteristically, didn’t respond. But he did appear thoughtful—and walking beside him, Syl gave Kaladin an encouraging smile.

This was the hard part though. Kaladin had to be honest. Both with Szeth and with himself.

He had to open up.

“It still hurts sometimes,” Kaladin said, his eyes forward. “After all I’ve been through, all I’ve learned, it still hurts. I know I’m still going to have bad days, and I’m still going to weep for the friends I lost. I’m still going to feel worthless sometimes. But Szeth, I’m making progress.”

He took a deep breath, clearing out some of the emotion.

“I confronted my shame at being unable to help others,” Kaladin said. “I acknowledged I had unrealistic, impossible expectations for myself. I am learning what my mind does wrong, and have begun practicing how to counteract it. I know your issues are different from mine. They’re similar enough though. If I can improve, you can too.”

Syl nodded firmly at this. “I’ve seen it working, Szeth. Not only for Kaladin, but for others too.” Her words, as a spren, seemed to carry weight for Szeth.

She gestured, indicating Kaladin should say more, but his gut said to wait. He couldn’t force Szeth down this road. All he could do was share, and marvel he was capable of that now.

Eventually, after a good fifteen minutes of walking—passing out of the thigh-high grasses and onto a road, then turning toward the small walled city—Szeth spoke.

“Let us suppose,” he said, “I wanted to … try thinking a different way. How would I approach it?”

“It sometimes feels like I’ve got two minds,” Kaladin said. “Maybe it’s the same for you. I have a brain that wants to destroy me—one that whispers that everything I love is doomed, so I might as well just give up. I can’t merely endure that kind of thinking. I have to be active. I have to go to war.”

“Go to war,” Szeth said, “with your own brain. ”

“Yeah, kind of,” Kaladin said. He sighed, searching for the best words. “You know how, when you’re first starting to learn to fight, you don’t have any instincts? What do you do?”

“Train,” Szeth said. “Train over and over and over until the proper response comes the moment you need it.”

“It’s like that,” Kaladin said. “When the wrong thoughts come in, you need to be ready. Not only to rebuff them, but to present the right thoughts instead. Warrior thoughts, to resist the bad ones.”

“How can you be sure what is right, though?” Szeth asked. “Your own mind has created both ‘good’ thoughts and ‘bad.’ You need something external, something unchanging—like the law—to guide you. That is what my spren teaches.”

“Maybe spren can be wrong,” Kaladin said.

Szeth put his head down, walking faster. “Why do you even care?”

“I took oaths,” Kaladin said, hurrying to catch up.

“I took oaths too,” Szeth said with a flippant wave of his fingers. “Mine are to the law. Why do yours matter more?”

That stopped Kaladin, who paused on the earthen road as Szeth continued on. It was true. Their oaths—their orders—conflicted. Was there something higher than an oath? It was difficult to imagine that being true.

“Szeth,” Kaladin called after him, “how do you feel?”

Szeth halted on the path, dust on his white trousers. He looked back.

“How do you feel ?” Kaladin asked again.

“Awful,” Szeth whispered, barely audible. “I should be able to stamp that emotion out, but I can’t. I feel awful. All the time. You?”

“Better,” Kaladin said. “Lately, better.”

“Really? Truly, honestly?”

Kaladin nodded.

“Well, I suppose that’s something,” Szeth said, turning and continuing on. “Warrior thoughts, you say? Prepared in your head to counter the dark ones when they attack? Curious.”

Before too much longer, they walked up to the wooden gates of the fort to find quite a large group of people had gathered on top to watch them approach.

Interestingly, not all were Shin.

It is good for you to hear the words of the Windrunner, Szeth’s spren said in his head. At first, his … inaccurate teachings worried me. Now I see. Like a sword being forged, you must be subjected to blows. I will ask the other highspren if they have noticed this important step in the forging of their own Skybreakers.

“You have not done this before?” Szeth whispered.

You are my first, and so I will not see you ruined, lest I never be given the chance again. Be careful. You must hear the foolish words of the Windrunner and reject them. He is well-meaning, but so very wrong. Hear, but do not heed, my squire.

Szeth had not known his highspren was new to having a knight; the spren did not speak with the air of one inexperienced. And yet, at least part of what Kaladin had said was true. Szeth was miserable. Perhaps that didn’t matter. He’d spent his life assuming it didn’t, and it seemed late to change that mindset.

But if you had warrior thoughts to destroy such attacks from your own mind, he wondered, what then?

High above, on the ramparts—if one could use such a lofty term for the flimsy walk inside the palisade—people conferred. Finally someone called down, speaking in the language of Szeth’s homeland.

“Why are you here, strangers?”

“We are travelers from beyond the mountains,” Szeth yelled back. “I knew this city when it was called Koring, and had no wall such as this.”

His comment caused a stir above, and behind him, Syl translated for Kaladin. He stepped up to Szeth, Honorblade slung across his shoulder. Nightblood, whom Szeth carried, had said he could persuade the Honorblade not to cut the cloth—and so far that was working.

“Why not tell them who you are?” Kaladin whispered.

“They didn’t ask,” Szeth said.

“You’re such a strange person,” Kaladin said, then gestured toward the ramparts. “Some of those people aren’t Shin.”

“You can’t tell that by looking,” Szeth said. “They might have lived here for generations. Can you always tell an Alethi by looking?”

“Well, no,” Kaladin said. “But we’re …”

“What?” Szeth asked.

“Cosmopolitan,” Kaladin said. “Everyone knows Alethkar is the center of culture.”

“Tell that to the Azish,” Szeth said, amused. He gave the people above some time to confer, and was about to breathe in some Stormlight and float up, when the gates opened.

A group of people stood within, bearing metal weapons, though they also wore splashes of color. A blue hat here, a yellow apron there. Curious. The city beyond was much as he’d pictured it, however. Wooden boardwalks surrounding maybe two hundred buildings, each painted with color and laid out in a neat pattern, with straight roads and plentiful permanent awnings—the type they never had in the East.

He’d missed the sight. A simple sign of a land not dominated by storms. Metal was used in abundance though—around windows, on door hinges. When he’d come to his first city, he’d found that blasphemous—even if it was only serviced by soldiers or shamans, and town workers refused to touch it.

For Shinovar, this was a midsized settlement, although it would be on the smaller side in the East. His people had less need to huddle together for strength against storms, and so there were far more small towns. At least there had been. Every one that Kaladin and Szeth had passed today had been empty, like his own homestead.

Szeth waved to Kaladin and entered, stepping onto the boards that made the street here. Perhaps elsewhere he might have worried about an ambush … except these didn’t seem soldiers, but instead merely people with weapons.

“Is that an Alethi uniform?” a man asked Szeth, his voice accented and his white eyebrows long and straight, hanging down by his face. The man nodded to Kaladin.

“It is,” Szeth said, looking around as people gathered. Mothers carrying children. Workers of all varieties. “What happened here? Why are there so many of you who subtract?”

“It’s … been a hard few years,” said a woman of Shin heritage.

“The others leave us alone, mostly,” the first man said. “It was hardest at first, before the wall. Before we all gathered here, and realized we were the only ones that weren’t …”

“What?” Szeth asked, fixating on him.

“Different,” someone else said.

“Dark,” another added.

Most of them kept their distance from him, as if expecting immediate violence. Their eyes lingered on the black sword strapped to his back. Or on the Honorblade Kaladin wore, which—despite the cloth around it—was obviously a weapon.

“Did you … really come from the East?” the first man asked. “Is the way open? We’ve considered fleeing. We’ve made a life here, but …”

“How long?” Szeth asked.

“Two years.”

Kaladin stepped up, Syl having shrunk to stand on his shoulder and whisper interpretations for him, likely invisible to everyone but him and Szeth.

“Two years?” Kaladin said, and Szeth translated. “Trapped in this city? By what? Attacks from who?”

“The other towns,” a woman said.

Szeth scanned the small city. Evidently when danger had come, these people had put aside their morals and picked up stone and steel. He found it … difficult to blame them. After nine years in the East, he did not deem the act as blasphemous as he once might have.

“Why are things different here?” Kaladin asked.

Szeth met his eyes, then both of them turned to look toward the fortress at the rear of the town. The Willshaper monastery. At the Stoneward monastery, killing the Honorbearer had seemed to release the people. Both started forward.

“Wait!” the woman from earlier said. Stout, short, and dark skinned, with her brown hair in a bun and a bright green splash of an apron. She also had a cudgel tied not-so-inconspicuously to her belt. “Who are you?”

“I am Szeth-son—”

“I mean, what do you want?” she said. “Do you know why everyone outside this immediate region has turned violent? Why they hide during the days, then try to break down our wall at night?”

Others began to pester him with questions. The city felt stuffed—home to thousands perhaps, if all of those barracks were occupied. They’d welcomed in all the people from the surrounding region, it appeared. Unfortunately, he didn’t have time for their questions. He breathed in Stormlight, rising into the air. Kaladin, with some obvious reluctance, followed.

People backed away, gasping.

“The Desolation has finally come,” Szeth told them, “as prophesied by the Heralds themselves. You undoubtedly have seen the new storm. The Everstorm.”

“Yes,” one of the others whispered. “It comes regularly, red with anger, and starts lightning fires.”

“It is a sign,” Szeth said. “The enemy is here, the one we were supposed to have trained for centuries to face. We have failed Truth.” He felt his stomach twist.

Thousands of years wasted. The gathered people murmured at this—he and Kaladin suddenly flying wasn’t much of a surprise, as Honorbearers had once frequented this town, and had not been shy about their abilities. But his words about Truth got to them. They’d known. He could tell by their reactions, the way they lowered their eyes. They’d guessed that they’d failed.

He left the people and flew with Kaladin to the monastery. They found it boarded up, planks nailed over all of the arrow-slit windows, and larger ones across the front gates.

They moved to the roof, where Szeth knelt. “I will make us an opening. I must practice with Division.”

“Please try not to set the entire roof on fire,” Syl said.

“You have seen only inexperienced Dustbringers so far,” Szeth said, pressing his hand to the stone rooftop. “Taravangian’s pets had barely any training. They ignore the ancient honorable traditions and practices of their forebearers.”

“Which are?” Kaladin asked.

“Self-mastery,” Szeth whispered, “and control.”

He summoned the strength of Division. His people had always said that an Honorbearer was far more powerful than an oathed Radiant. Szeth’s experience had taught him there was much nuance to the word “powerful.” Regardless, he reached back through time to his training, blessing the fact that he’d been forced to learn all the Surges, and closed his eyes.

Then he felt the soul of the rooftop.

Division wasn’t so different from other arts. With Soulcasting, you needed to persuade, cajole, or—if you were particularly skilled—command. A Stoneward instead had to know the stone, become kin to it.

With Division, the art of Dustbringing, you gave a spark—and controlled the reaction. The results could be explosive. If you were careful, they could also be precise. Today, the fires he started were tiny, practically invisible. He convinced the single-stone rooftop that it was instead made up of many, many stones. Tiny ones. Barely connected.

He opened his eyes.

“Did you … do something?” Kaladin asked.

In response, Szeth punched his hand through the rooftop, and a circular section five feet wide disintegrated into powder, raining down into the blackened chamber below. Szeth slipped through and dropped into the great hall of this monastery, gemstones glowing in the walls to give light.

No shaman or Honorbearer waited to attack him. Instead he spotted something at the front of the hall, near the wooden altar where a stone—brought up from the depths of the soil, hosting the spirits of spren—was traditionally placed.

Curled in front of it was a corpse. Desiccated by time, holding the Willshaper Honorblade: a wide, flat-sided Shardblade with a curved bell shape at the tip.

The corpse belonged to Sivi-daughter-Sivi, a woman he had once known very well. Szeth knelt beside her and sighed softly. Sivi’s wisdom would have been welcome today.

“What’s this?” Kaladin said, peering at the ground near her. “These markings on the stone?”

“Writing?” Syl said, still small sized, waving for him to hold the light closer. She scrunched up her nose. “I don’t read Shin that well …”

“It says,” Szeth whispered, “‘I will not bow to him.’” He lowered his head in respect for Sivi. This was what honor looked like sometimes: a withered husk dead on the floor.

“So …” Kaladin said. “In the previous monastery, the people were cursed until you killed the bearer of the Honorblade. Here we find a corpse, who said she would not bow. And the people here aren’t cursed.”

“So …” Syl said. “This Honorbearer refused whatever the Unmade wanted from her, and died instead.”

“Bring the Honorblade,” Szeth said to Kaladin and Syl, then stood up and started walking to the end of the hall.

What are you planning, Szeth? his spren asked.

In response, he placed both hands against the gates into the monastery. He closed his eyes, feeling the weight of the doors, which saw themselves as part of the monastery. He severed that, and burned the sides so that when he opened his eyes and pushed, the gates collapsed forward—thundering to the ground outside, tearing down the flimsy boards.

The people had gathered outside. Szeth rose into the air, barely noting that Kaladin and Syl had joined him. As the people approached, he spoke.

“I am Szeth-son-Neturo,” he proclaimed. “Once Honorbearer, now Knight Radiant. I was exiled as Truthless, but by suffering in the East, only I maintained Truth. The Desolation is here; the outside world has been fighting it for over a year.

“We have failed in our long-standing duty, but I will not fail you. Look to the people of the Encilo region—those near the Stoneward monastery. They are freed from the darkness now. I will travel to each monastery in turn. If they are similarly corrupted, I will fight the Honorbearer there and restore the people.”

The people mostly gaped at him. A few clapped—flimsy, hesitant sounds. Well, he didn’t blame them for their confusion. One might imagine that salvation would arrive to thunderous joy, but in his experience it was often rewarded with exhaustion. Those who needed help most rarely had much left to offer their rescuers.

“You can help them, Szeth,” Kaladin said, hovering up beside him in the air. “But trust me: you’ll do more good if you take care of yourself as well.”

“I will ponder what you have said,” Szeth said. “But we must get to the other monasteries. We can gather Stormlight from the hall behind us, then visit the Elsecaller and Lightweaver monasteries tomorrow.”

“We could split up,” Kaladin said. “Visit two at once. If you have to do the fighting, I could see if any of the others are lacking combatants like this one. Might speed us up.”

“I will not stop you, should you wish to go.”

“And what do you want me to do, Szeth?”

“I …” He surveyed the crowd, which was at last beginning to celebrate, people hugging one another. “I feel better than I did. I must attribute some of that to your annoying persistence.”

“Well,” Kaladin said, “with that kind of glowing praise, how could I leave?”

Szeth nodded. “As we travel, I will tell you some of what I know of the leaders of the monasteries. It might be relevant. Both to our quest … and to me. Who I am.”

Were they all turned to the Unmade? How had Ishu let it go this far? The answer, Szeth supposed, was simple: The Heralds had all gone mad, and ignored the people they’d once sworn to protect. Much as the Shin people themselves had ignored their duty.

Szeth went to fetch Stormlight. When he came back, Kaladin had dropped down and—with Syl helping interpret—begun trading for fresh food. These people looked well fed enough to spare some—there was time for farming in the day, judging by the state of the nearby fields.

Szeth, his spren said, are you certain of this path?

“I came to cleanse Shinovar.”

You came to find Truth and administer justice. What if the actions of the Honorbearers you’re killing are just?

“I have considered this, spren-nimi,” Szeth said. “The rest of Roshar belonged to the singers before we arrived, and it makes sense that now, singer laws apply there. By virtue of precedent, this is justice. Here, however, we are in Shinovar. By the ancient histories, Shinovar was given to us.

“Singer law does not apply here; instead, the law of this land is the law of the Heralds. They provided this ultimatum: prepare for the Desolation and protect this land when it comes. So that is what I must do.”

A … compelling argument, Szeth, the spren admitted. Yet you do not have all of the facts, so take care.

“Will you give them to me?”

They must be earned. Continue your pilgrimage.

At this, the whispers from the shadows sounded louder. Calling for Szeth to die.

He met them, and the words of the spren, with a thought soldier. I have a purpose, that thought soldier proclaimed. I am here because of my choices, and I am capable of making such decisions.

It didn’t work as well as he’d hoped. But Kaladin had said it would require time and repetition. With that in mind, even this little rebellion seemed to help, and Szeth raised his head higher. He could do this. He could decide. Which meant the end was finally in sight.

He could cleanse Shinovar.

Then, at long last, he could end himself—and in so doing, grant true justice to those he had murdered. Quietly, he blessed Kaladin for giving him this gift.