Chapter 53

I wish not to engage to the reader their faults, rather to make it clear that an order so determined to care for the unwanted, the unguarded, and the disenfranchised would obviously have passionate disagreement in how to best attend to the needs of the lowly and disregarded.

—From Words of Radiance, chapter 40, page 2

S zeth ate his stew, pondering whether he should tell Kaladin about the Voice.

That Voice he’d heard as a child, the one he hadn’t heard since leaving Shinovar. It didn’t seem to be the same as the voices of the dead he now heard. Sometimes he wondered if that first Voice had been real—or an early manifestation of his … problems.

He’d initially started telling Kaladin his past in order to explain how he knew an Unmade was in Shinovar. Only … when reaching the part where he’d first heard the Voice … Szeth had left that out. Even still—as he talked to Kaladin about being forced into the military, and training there his first few years—he left out details. No mention of the Voice, little discussion of his family, except his father.

It felt like lying. At the same time, some things were personal. With a sigh, Szeth set aside his bowl and stood up, stepping forward.

Where he immediately fell into the place of shadows.

The world of beads and a distant sun. Makari Sin in the old Shin writings. The glasslands. Shadesmar.

Panic hit as he splashed into the sea of beads. He desperately reached toward the alien sky. He would drown here. Sink into the deep sea of beads, falling, falling, falling until he was forced to inhale a mouthful of glass. Until he died and came to rest on the obsidian ocean floor. An open-eyed eternal corpse that lore claimed would never rot, staring at an abyss that would never stare back, despite its million million beaded eyes.

Death didn’t frighten him, but he had to finish his quest before he went, and so he fought through the panic. He stopped thrashing as he sank in the beads, their insectile clacking ceaseless as they rolled over one another. He was not powerless here. He’d survived this place during training long ago, and he could do so again.

He fished in the pouch at his waist and brought forth a gemstone full of Stormlight. He drew in the tiniest amount—sucking air between his teeth, beads pressing against his lips as if eager to find their way into his throat. He almost Lashed himself upward. But he was here, in this place. Why?

Instead he focused, imagining a shape in his mind. A pillar. A solid pillar upon which he could stand. Certain orders of Knights Radiant had an affinity for this place, but Skybreakers were not one of them. Fortunately, anyone with Stormlight—including those who weren’t Radiant—could command the beads.

The sea beneath him began to solidify. Beads clicked together, sticking as if magnetized, and pushed upward. A few seconds later he broke through the surface—beads rolling free of his platform. He stumbled to his feet, beads dripping from his clothing, and found himself upon what amounted to a small raft.

Keeping it cohesive was difficult. He had to concentrate, and despite that his platform undulated beneath his feet as if held together by the most tenuous of bonds. He would never manage any construction more complex than this, not without a model or guide, and he couldn’t draw in too much Stormlight—for if he did, the nearby beads would surge toward him, flooding over the top of the platform. It also might draw the attention of very dangerous spren beasts.

“So, you remember your training,” a voice said, causing him to spin. A stern man sat on a similar platform ten yards away, a Blade across his lap—the Elsecaller Blade, which had an appearance reminiscent of Oathbringer. A hooked shape on the end, but flowing lines in an arcing curve. The man was shrouded in black, inky cloth. White hair in tufts, clean shaven across the face, and hands that had seen some years.

Pozen-son-Nash. One of Szeth’s earliest teachers, and a man a part of him still hated. Few individuals had the power to enter Shadesmar, and even fewer could bring others. If Szeth was here, it was because of this man—bearer of Batlah’s sword.

Szeth was to have visited Pozen’s monastery next, but the old man had plainly decided not to wait.

“An assassination,” Szeth said, falling into a fighting stance and reaching out to summon his Blade. “You ignore the rules of pilgrimage?”

“No such rules apply,” Pozen said. “You are aspiring to a position no man has claimed in thousands of years. Such a lofty goal must come with a lofty test.”

“I seek no position.” Szeth glanced at his hand. Empty. His Shardblade. Where was it?

Of course. He knelt down on his platform, hearing something shifting below, thrashing in the beads. With focus, he raised up another small pillar, and upon it was a strange figure in the shape of a clothed man. The interior of the figure was blackness and stars—like a rip in reality. It was the way his spren manifested in this realm. Szeth, in his panic, hadn’t seen the spren appear. Unfortunately, Honorblades acted differently, as evidenced by the one across Pozen’s lap.

Well, perhaps this would be an advantage; Szeth’s spren was an ancient warrior. He might not be able to become a Shardblade in Shadesmar, but he could fight by Szeth’s side. His spren stopped thrashing somewhat hesitantly, then looked around—his strange shape seeming to flow more than it moved. As if he were some kind of shadow of a person.

“Oh,” the spren said. “Oh!”

“Prepare yourself, Szeth-son-Neturo,” Pozen said, hands on his Blade. “I could have killed you as you fell, but I have given you this chance out of what may be an overabundance of fondness for a former student.”

“I have no weapon!” Szeth shouted. “I cannot fight you without one.”

“Then you do not deserve to win.”

Something exploded from the beads to Szeth’s left. A younger Shin woman in grey robes, a bow strapped to her back. She bore the Edgedancer Honorblade: a narrow sword almost six feet long, with a curved crossguard. She swiped for Szeth and he Lashed himself backward just in time. His spren sputtered and ducked, his hands over his head, although no Shin would dare attack a spren.

Szeth drew in more Stormlight, making the beads rattle and surge toward him, and took to the sky. He didn’t recognize the newcomer, with that black cloud of curls around her head. A newer bearer of the Blade, he suspected, having been elevated in the years since his exile, to replace Dulo.

Szeth’s spren yelped and dropped into the beads, as Szeth couldn’t maintain that platform. He started splashing about in an … admittedly undignified way. Perhaps the creature would not be as much use in this fight as Szeth had hoped.

“You gang up on me?” Szeth shouted to those below. “Two on one? Have you no shame?”

“Should the mountain feel shame for breaking those who cross it?” Pozen called. “We are the barrier you must pass, Szeth-son-Neturo.”

“Why?” Szeth shouted. “Tell me why !”

Once, he had never asked why. Strange, how he should be so insistent now. He’d changed, hadn’t he.

In response, the Edgedancer removed the bow from her back and began launching arrows at him.

Szeth Lashed himself higher in the strange sky with its too-still clouds and tiny sun. He could stay out of range easily, but to what end? His Stormlight would run dry quickly—he had only the pouch of gemstones at his belt.

He watched the two figures below, the Edgedancer sinking beneath the beads again. Her order had no specific powers here; he suspected that Pozen was creating platforms so she could concentrate on the fighting.

My sole way out, Szeth thought, is to capture Pozen and force him to Elsegate us home.

Szeth should have been able to seize the Blade, then make his own Elsegate to escape. However, in the months he’d spent training with Pozen as a younger man, he had never managed it. Elsegates were a difficult skill to master, and barely a small fraction of those who trained achieved them.

Regardless, he had to engage the two Honorbearers. Weaponless. On turf they’d chosen. With just one pouchful of Stormlight.

His strategizing was interrupted as something dark dove at him from the sky. Inky black, shaped vaguely like a skyeel, though many times the size. A spren he didn’t recognize, but one that was obviously dangerous. He hadn’t spotted it, black against black as it was, but he did manage to Lash himself into a dodge at the last second.

Teeth flashed white as it tore through the air. Spren could be deadly here, particularly if you didn’t know which emotions were drawing them. He growled softly as—now that he knew what to look for—he spotted an entire flock of them. That Edgedancer with her bow had driven him this direction on purpose.

He dove toward the beads, anticipating an attack. The Edgedancer popped up, raised on a pillar created by Pozen, who continued to sit cross-legged in his spot. She loosed a series of arrows in Szeth’s direction, so he dropped quickly and hit the beads with a crash. He canceled his Lashings, letting him slip beneath the surface.

Here the whispers were louder. In this realm, was he closer to the souls he’d killed?

Thankfully, his training was coming back to him. He imagined motion, waves of beads bearing him sideways, and it worked—the beads responded. With Stormlight and proper thought, you could swim through the beads, with them pushing you along. His control wouldn’t be as precise as Pozen’s, but it would work. At least, so long as he held a small amount of Stormlight—which would also spare him needing to breathe.

As he ushered himself through the beads, he heard one voice above the others. A whisper that was stronger.

Szeth? it said. Szeth?

He searched through the beads, and his fingers brushed something. He seized it, finding a handful of cloth. He yanked the figure closer.

“Squire?” his spren said. “Is that you?”

“Locate me a weapon,” Szeth hissed through closed teeth. In this place, you could summon objects from the real world if you held the bead that represented their soul. “I cannot read the beads, so you must search them for a weapon. I will distract the enemies while you do so.”

“I shouldn’t interfere …” the spren said.

“Then I will die, and you will have no squire,” Szeth snapped, letting go and allowing the flowing beads to separate them. He perhaps should not have spoken so demandingly. Strangely, his reverence for his spren had begun to wane.

He surged through the beads, trying to head vaguely in the direction of a small river he and Kaladin had seen earlier. It would manifest as solid ground here, and would perhaps give him terrain to use to his advantage.

Unfortunately, as he moved, the beads began to pull away from him. He’d been discovered.

They formed a tube ten feet in diameter, like a mine shaft from Bavland, where he’d once been owned. The walls of the large tube hardened, and Szeth now scrambled on curved, solid ground. He ran for the open end of the tunnel as—just behind him—the wall crashed open and the Edgedancer entered. She skated along the side of the tube, her powers giving her grace and speed. Szeth spun and Lashed himself backward to stay ahead of her, but the tube kept extending, beads falling into place.

The tube suddenly ended in a wall, which he should have expected. He slammed into it and she approached, moving quickly.

He canceled his Lashing, crouching as her Blade stabbed straight into the wall above him—coming within inches of his head. He ducked and ran back through the tube as she stopped with precision, then lunged again. He grunted and set the air alight to distract her—a flash of fire.

Stormlight healed the Edgedancer of the superficial burns as her next lunge sliced his cheek before plunging the Blade into the wall of the strange tube. That brought her in very close to him, and he grunted, grabbing for her arm.

She backhanded him, deceptively strong—and when he seized her, her skin and clothing became as if coated in grease. Edgedancer. Right. There would be no grappling with her. His fingers slipped free, and the Edgedancer slid backward, then sliced at him once more with her Blade.

He dodged, barely, but then the tunnel’s beads crumbled beneath his feet, dumping him down to his waist before partially resolidifying. Pozen’s work. The Edgedancer sprang forward as Szeth struggled in the beads, holding up warding hands, but mostly floundering.

In a flash, the Blade cut through his forearms. His fingers went limp, losing all sensation, turning into dead weights on the ends of his arms. Desperate, he Lashed himself downward through the beads, sinking to his shoulders as the next attack passed over his head. The beads started to harden further, trying to trap him in place—but with concentration, he made the closest ones respond to him, not Pozen.

Free enough to slide out, Szeth Lashed himself straight at the Edgedancer. He slammed into her and Lashed her away. She soared backward until his Lashing ran out, then she regained control, shaking herself.

Szeth hovered up into the air of the tunnel, wary, exerting effort and concentration to heal his hands. In the distance, he heard it again. That voice.

Szeth? I’m here! Use me!

His spren? No, the voice was wrong. Not Kaladin either.

Was that … Nightblood?

The Edgedancer watched him, careful. He had to get out of the tube—it was a clever construction, intended to prevent him from leveraging his ability to fly while still giving the Edgedancer room to maneuver. Pozen must be nearby, to see inside well enough to have liquefied the beads under Szeth alone.

“They told me you were the best,” the Edgedancer said, gliding forward lithely, Blade up and pointed at him. “They told me I’d need to train exhaustively to have even a chance against you, Truthless. Yet here you are, defeated.”

Szeth said nothing. He drew in more of his precious remaining Stormlight and forced it into his hands. Healing from a cut like this took work. Why was she giving him time to accomplish it?

Because she doesn’t know, he realized. They haven’t fought Radiants. He remembered well his stark amazement when Kaladin had first healed from an Honorblade slice, impossible without living oaths and Radiance. The Honorblades were amazing, but they were essentially prototypes, without the … refinement that had come as the Radiants had experimented.

An opportunity, then.

“Perhaps,” the Edgedancer said, “I will instead be allowed your great honor. If I am the one who kills you, do you think they will grant it to me instead?”

“Grant you what ?” Szeth asked, landing in the tunnel. He could hear the rolling of the beads outside, but distantly, muffled. He sagged, pretended to be worn out, defeated. Letting her stalk closer. “I don’t know what any of you are talking about.”

“We were instructed not to say,” she told him. “I wish I had not found you so … disappointing, Truthless.”

“I am but one man,” he said. “Training and skill cannot overcome all things. You have trapped me, weaponless, in an unstable location and have pitted me two against one. What did you expect?”

“Brilliance,” she whispered, then lunged for him.

Szeth, in turn, raised fully healed hands and—with two fingers—pushed the tip of the sword aside. He stepped into her lunge—the sword passing just by him—and raised his other fist in a punch, slamming it into her stomach.

“I’m not Truthless,” he growled.

She gasped, eyes going wide, and he clocked her across the face with another fist. Then he brought his elbow down on her wrist to disarm her. The Honorblade vanished as she let go, but his next punch missed as the tunnel began to undulate and the stunned Edgedancer was dropped into the beads to protect her.

He sighed, and a second later the tunnel collapsed into a crushing, churning mass of beads. Fortunately, he was able to control the flow of it; Pozen couldn’t completely trap him, not so long as Szeth knew to command the beads closest to him.

As he swam to hide, he felt cloth in the beads. His spren had returned. It thrust a bead into his palm. “The best I could do!”

Szeth pressed Stormlight into the bead, eager for the weapon the spren had found. Here, he did what was called “manifesting.” Using the soul of an object, and Stormlight, to create a physical representation of the item in Shadesmar.

He felt the object form as he made a surge of beads to lift him up toward the surface. There, he saw what he’d been given.

A spoon. A wide wooden stirring spoon, as was commonly used in Shinovar for cooking.

His spren, appearing far from distinguished as his strange head bobbed up from the beads nearby, waved. Close beyond him, Szeth spotted the peninsula of firm obsidian ground that followed the river in the Physical Realm.

“A spoon?” Szeth shouted. “The best you could find was a spoon ?”

“You’re inventive!” the spren called back. “I figured you could find something to do with it!”

Yes, Szeth did find something to do with the spoon. He threw it at the spren, hitting him square in the forehead. Then, with a sigh, Szeth let himself sink into the beads again. Weak hope though it was, if he stayed submerged, he might be able to hide.

Szeth commanded the currents of beads to swing him toward that ridge of land. He wanted his back to that wall, even underneath the beads—as it would at least protect him from one direction. Plus, he was running low on Stormlight. The moment his reserves failed, he’d quickly suffocate unless he had land to climb upon.

It was an unusual experience, flowing through the beads, feeling them roll off his face. If he opened his eyes, they’d press against his eyeballs, stinging. Each bead glimmered faintly with a spark deep within. They made way for him at first … but then started working against him.

Pozen had located him. The beads, rather than ushering Szeth forward, began to swirl and churn around him. Pozen couldn’t capture Szeth in them, but he could send rival currents to smash into Szeth. Those threw him off course, as if he were flying through a highstorm.

Szeth soon lost control. It had been too many years since his training, and he’d never been particularly skilled in Shadesmar anyway. Wave after wave of beads crashed across him, spinning him, battering him. One finally slammed him up against something hard—the ridge he’d been swimming toward.

He let out a grunt of pain. The beads—as if sensing his weakness—sucked him away from the wall, then crashed him back into it. This time he screamed, glowing Stormlight escaping his lips as his ribs were cracked. His remaining Light rushed to heal him, but at this rate he’d run out in minutes.

Szeth, Nightblood said in his mind—cutting through the whispers like a blade. I’m here!

“Where?” Szeth said.

I sank and hit something hard. By a wall, I think.

Could it be? Szeth, using his small reserve of Stormlight, Lashed himself downward. A force strong enough to rip him out of the currents. He sank some hundred feet, and it grew even darker in these depths, the voices louder.

But … he thought he could see light? He searched for it, and as he thrashed in the beads, his hand fell on something. He seized it. A hilt.

Yes! You found me!

“Why is your voice different?”

The sword shouldn’t manifest as a weapon in here, should it? Shardblades didn’t. But Honorblades could be brought through into Shadesmar intact—so who knew what the rules would be for Nightblood. At least the sword didn’t suck his Stormlight away. It was likely still sheathed.

Worn out, low on Stormlight, Szeth projected control and focus, calling a wave from below to lift him. He soon entered the currents Pozen had sent, which again tried to smash him against the land. Szeth continued upward though, until his head and shoulders broke the surface of the ocean. He used his left arm to cling to the obsidian ridge, the top of which was only a few inches above the beads. In his right hand, beneath the beads, he clung to Nightblood’s hilt, not revealing it.

The Edgedancer was already atop the ridge. She strode along it toward him, grey robes rustling, her Blade out and held before her. She didn’t engage him in conversation; she just raised her weapon, preparing to chop down through his head.

Szeth ripped his right hand from the beads.

And released an explosion of light.

In that hand he held not a jet-black sword, but a blazing, radiant line of golden light. Glowing like the sun itself, so bright it made the Edgedancer gasp and stumble back, shading her eyes with her left hand.

Szeth hauled himself onto the obsidian ridge. He took the effulgent weapon—it was a sword, if difficult to see through the blinding light—and held it before him. Fortunately, his eyes adjusted, letting him see his enemy enough to fight.

“Sword-nimi?” he whispered. “What happened to you?”

Happened? Nightblood asked, the voice … different. Distorted, as if heard underwater. Nothing happened. Say, where did the hill where we were camping go? Did the grass get covered in those beads?

“We’re in Shadesmar,” Szeth said. “You don’t know?”

What’s Shadesmar? Oh! Is that person in front of us evil? Are you really going to use me to fight? Yay!

Szeth glanced to the side, to where he caught sight of his spren drifting in the beads, useless as he tried to swim.

“Yes,” Szeth said. “I am proud to wield you.”

What a great choice!

“Why are you glowing though?”

Glowing? I always glow, don’t I?

The truth of it clicked with Szeth. This was Shadesmar, the land of the mind. Sometimes what appeared here related to how it was perceived.

In this realm, Nightblood looked the way it imagined itself.

The Edgedancer recovered from her surprise and came in, pushing off with one foot and gliding toward him on the other. Their skill, however, was one he had taken to fairly well—which let him know how to fight one of their kind. He used that understanding now, blocking the Edgedancer’s attacks with a sequence of expert parries—and using small Lashings to make himself lighter, to pull him out of the way with extra speed when dodging.

She spun, coasting backward a short distance and watching him with what he read as concern. Then she gritted her teeth and came in a second time—and once more he easily dodged or parried each of her strikes. Although she moved like a liquid, he moved like the wind. As they again parted, she was puffing, Stormlight leaking from her lips as she skidded to a stop, illuminated starkly by Nightblood. Bright highlights and harsh shadows. He was winning.

It was not good to take pride in his skill. To kill was to subtract, after all. Yet after what she’d said earlier, he did feel some measure of enjoyment at the way she regarded him. It was easy to pretend superiority when you left your opponent unable to resist in any meaningful way. Szeth turned and positioned himself with his sword held before him, shining and brilliant, then nodded to the Edgedancer to come in again.

Are we … fighting or sparring? Nightblood asked.

“Fighting, sword-nimi,” Szeth said softly. “They would kill me.”

Unfortunately, as the Edgedancer prepared, beads began to bubble up and pour onto the narrow peninsula of ground. Szeth glanced out into the ocean, where Pozen had floated over—still cross-legged on a platform of beads, Shardblade in his lap. Beads surged up around Szeth to interfere in the fight; they began to pool around him, shoving him off balance, locking together and trying to trap his feet.

That is cheating, Nightblood said. That’s cheating, isn’t it, Szeth?

Szeth grunted as he tried to lift into the air, but beads grabbed him by the legs and held on. He tried to prepare the mental commands to get the beads to let go, but couldn’t spare that attention—as the Edgedancer attacked in a blinding sequence of strikes. True swordplay on this level wasn’t about parrying, despite his showy engagements earlier. So while he managed to block some of her attacks, another one speared him straight through the left thigh, making him stumble.

Do you want extra help? Nightblood asked.

“Yes,” Szeth whispered. “Please.” He grabbed the sword in two hands, staggering. He had to balance on one leg, fighting with the beads that—having formed snaking tentacles—tried to pull him down.

DRAW ME.

The Edgedancer came at him, ready to swing a powerful, two-handed attack. Szeth growled and whipped the golden sheath from Nightblood, releasing a further explosion of light—though it began to drain Szeth’s Stormlight at a furious rate. Szeth raised his own attack, swinging with everything he had.

Blade met Blade.

A crash exploded from the swords—a blast of force that hurled back beads in a massive crater around Szeth some fifty feet wide. The hit tossed the Edgedancer like a leaf, her Blade flung from her fingers to shimmer and fall into the beads while she crumpled and rolled backward along the ridge. No Stormlight wafted from her body. She fell still, as if dead.

Szeth gasped, barely stabilizing himself on one leg—and resheathed the sword. Beads rained down distantly into the ocean.

Hmm, Nightblood said. That didn’t do what I thought it would.

“What … did you think it would do?” Szeth said.

I’ve been chatting with the Honorblades you recovered, and thought maybe I’d give you some other Radiant abilities.

“You can … actually do that?” Szeth asked.

Apparently not. I really thought I’d figured it out. Sorry, Szeth.

“This will do,” Szeth said, drawing Stormlight and letting it surge into his wounded leg. He stepped forward a moment later, healed, walking toward the Edgedancer as she climbed to her feet, woozy. She saw him, then resummoned her Blade. She’d stopped glowing, however.

No Stormlight. No powers.

“Stand down,” Szeth said to her.

She growled and launched at him with her Blade, so Szeth swung and expertly feinted, then unsheathed his blade again and struck—Nightblood didn’t simply cut, but made the Edgedancer burst into motes of light. Like tiny meteorites scattering away from him in a million sparks that vaporized and vanished.

As Szeth resheathed—Nightblood having consumed the last of his Stormlight—her Honorblade clanged to the ridge, then slipped and fell into the beads. Szeth turned toward Pozen—who remained sitting patiently out in the sea. The elderly man held his hand to the side, and the beads there split, delivering to him the Edgedancer Honorblade, which he placed into his lap alongside his own weapon.

“You are defeated, Pozen,” Szeth shouted across the sixty or so feet separating them. “Reject the touch of the Unmade! Help me cleanse the land, rather than bolstering the darkness!”

“You have no idea of what you speak,” Pozen called back. “You have always had trouble seeing the right of things, Szeth-son-Neturo.”

“True,” Szeth said softly. “But I think I might at last be seeing clearly.” He stepped to the edge of the beads, pondering how to cross them to Pozen, and they hardened in front of him.

Ah, there, Nightblood said. That helps, doesn’t it?

“Thank you, sword-nimi,” Szeth said, striding across the surface of the ocean. As he took each step, the beads locked together underfoot.

The beads like Honorblades. Oh! They like regular Shardblades too. And the spren who make them. Something about the bond …

“You think you have won,” Pozen called as Szeth approached. “But I see you are out of Stormlight, Szeth-son-Neturo.”

“Pozen,” Szeth said, “you cannot defeat me in a duel. We both know that. Let us talk. Can you spare me no courtesy? After all those months we spent together?”

“Months spent preparing you,” Pozen said, “for a duty you rejected.” Still, the elderly man studied him, and there was … something between them. Not affection. Neither had particularly liked the other.

But Pozen was the Honorbearer with whom Szeth had spent the most time. The first who had recruited him. So the elderly man held up a hand, halting Szeth’s advance.

“I will give you a chance, Szeth,” Pozen said softly. “If you can remember what I taught you, and apply it. You never did learn to Elsegate. Well, let us see if you can figure it out when the stakes are so high.”

Szeth cursed and started running.

Pozen stood up, then fell forward onto his Honorblade. Szeth screamed as he arrived, stabilizing the ground of that pillar so it didn’t fall apart at Pozen’s death. He dropped to his knees, grabbing the body in one hand, Nightblood in the other.

The corpse evaporated into dark mist, the same way the Stoneward had. Szeth looked up, kneeling before the two Honorblades, and scanned the area around him. No sign of any ships. He had no supplies, and was in the middle of an ocean. Even if he could walk down the river peninsula and find land, it would take him weeks to reach a settlement. He’d be dead long before that. Rain did not fall in Shadesmar.

Szeth? Nightblood asked. What is wrong? Why do you have that expression?

“We are trapped, sword-nimi,” Szeth whispered. “I cannot get us out of this place.”

This place? Nightblood said. Oh, the sword is explaining. Strange. But Szeth, you’re amazing. You can get us out.

Could he?

Szeth searched Pozen’s robes, and found a pouch of gemstones. He drew in that Light, then took Pozen’s Honorblade in one hand, admiring it. A decade ago, he’d used it to come to Shadesmar during his pilgrimage. He’d had to be rescued by Pozen—borrowing the Willshaper Honorblade—to get back out. Holding it this time though, he felt something.

Fear?

The Honorblade didn’t speak, at least not to people. But it was afraid. It knew something was deeply wrong. Whatever was happening in Shinovar, this Blade wasn’t part of the problem—and it was as confused as Szeth. It wanted to be in the hands of its true owner, the Herald.

Szeth closed his eyes and whispered a prayer. To the spren of this Blade, to the spren of his land. He concentrated, and didn’t rely on the training that had never worked. Instead he focused on his quest.

If he did not return, his people were doomed. And he would never find out how, or why, his father had died.

To this urgent need, the Honorblade seemed to listen, and made up for his inadequacy.

Let’s go! Nightblood said. I’ll bet Syl is worried about me!

Szeth stabbed into the air. His hand grew cold as the Honorblade drew Stormlight from him in a rush, and the weapon’s tip sliced through reality itself, cutting a slit like in the stomach of an enemy, maybe four feet across. It bowed outward, a hole just big enough for him to pass through.

His exhaustion struck him right as the beads under his feet began to undulate and fall apart. With a cry, he clutched Nightblood and the two Honorblades, then sprang through the opening and tumbled out onto a dark landscape.

Springy grass above loam, smelling of freshness and life. He drew a deep breath and flopped onto his back, enervated by the sudden loss of Stormlight. The golden version of Nightblood had vanished from his hand, but Szeth heard the black sword humming and talking from where he’d left it by the tree. He still had the two Honorblades, and he’d managed to avoid impaling himself as he fell.

So he took a moment, lying there and looking up at the sky. Until a shadow in the night approached and loomed over him.

“Szeth?” Kaladin asked. “Here you are. Why did you wander off? Stop lounging—shouldn’t we be planning the confrontation with the next Honorbearer?”

Szeth laughed at that. Kaladin—raising a sphere for light—spotted the two Honorblades and gasped.

“You did well, Szeth,” Szeth’s highspren said in his ear. “A challenge met and overcome.”

“You sound so confident,” Szeth whispered.

“I am,” the spren said, invisible.

“Then would you prefer I forget the image of you floundering in the beads? That of your providing, when asked to help, a spoon ? Shall I forget how useless you were?”

“I … That was … intentional. To ensure you did not rely upon me.”

“Yes, of course, spren-nimi,” he said. “If we continue, we will find the Lightweaver monastery next, will we not?”

“Yes. That would make sense.”

“It is good, then, that I share with you something I learned from my teacher in Lightweaving many years ago.”

“Um … all right,” the spren said. “What is that?”

Szeth cracked an eye at Kaladin, who was demanding answers. Instead, Szeth whispered softly to the spren.

“When you’re living an illusion, spren-nimi, be very careful not to do anything to spoil it. Because once you do, it is exceedingly difficult to recapture your audience.”