Interlude 7

M oash was done.

I killed Teft …

Odium no longer protected Moash from his own emotions. His eyes had been burned away, leaving him with one final image—as if struck upon his mind like the branding of a glyph: the queen of Urithiru with a halo of light around her, and he swore …

… he swore …

… that he’d seen Teft’s spirit, Radiant and accusatory, rising behind her as part of that glow.

Moash lay somewhere loud. Humming singers and constant stonework. Kholinar, he thought, after a long flight. He’d been recovered from the snows of Urithiru, then eventually deposited here. His bed was plush, but his innards were raw as he groaned and turned on his side, clawing at his face.

I killed Teft.

The god of all emotions had promised to protect Moash from these feelings, this awful guilt, this sense of worthlessness. That was why he’d believed. Why he’d followed.

“Take my pain,” he croaked. “Why won’t you take my pain?”

“I don’t do that any longer, Vyre,” a quiet voice said from next to his bed.

Moash turned toward the sound, trying to look, despite no longer having eyes. He did that every time. Looking. Not seeing.

That voice. It was different, but …

“It is not right for me to take emotions,” the voice said. “My predecessor was a glutton, and would feed upon those of his followers. Not I. Your passion is what makes you live, Vyre. What god of passion am I if I do not celebrate emotion in my followers?”

“You celebrate this ?” Moash asked, clawing at his face again. “I feel like I’m being ripped apart. Each day I’m destroyed anew, condemned as a monster …”

“That is the price we pay,” the voice said, “for doing what is right. If it did not have a cost, would it be a sacrifice to do what was right? Would not all people just do it naturally?”

“Right?” Moash asked. “Killing a friend?”

“If a man must die for his choices,” the voice said, “is it not better that he be killed by a friend, who will mourn him?” Sounds of clothing rumpling. A chair scooting. As if the speaker was leaning forward in his seat. “You’re not a monster. A monster would murder with glee and love it. To kill with agony, like a surgeon who must bring pain … those are the actions of a hero, Vyre.”

A … hero?

“Who are you?” Moash asked.

“Your new god,” the voice said. “ You know me .”

That voice, that use of tone … it was Odium. But a new Odium. Different, yet the same.

“Take my pain …” Moash whispered.

“No, Vyre, I will not. If you cannot bear the price, then you are not worthy of your title or Blade. However, there is something I can give you. See. Not with your eyes—I cannot restore them, as they were taken by an act of my adversary—but I can still engage your mind.”

And Moash saw. Or … imagined. Glorious forces marching to war, across a hundred worlds, bringing peace and order to so many. He saw peace, serenity, a thousand wrongs righted. Kings cast down, and the families of working people—like those who ran the caravans—given, at long last, true retribution for the crimes committed against them.

He saw unity. Forged beneath the banner of an eternal, immortal army led by a man in black Shardplate, eyes glowing red.

“The Blackthorn serves you?”

“He may,” Odium said. “Equal odds, depending on his choices in a few days. But if not him, another. Vyre, isn’t this what you want? Isn’t this why you turned against your friends in the first place? Why do you fight?”

“Because nothing matters …”

“Why did you fight?”

“Because the king of Alethkar was a rat, who got good men killed. And nobody would ever bring him to justice for his crimes.”

“What you see,” Odium said, “is every wrong being righted. Every wrong. If you follow me, you can decide how that happens, and who is rewarded. Is that not better than fighting for nothing? Better than feeling nothing? When you contemplate your pain, contemplate the peace and unity that pain will earn for so many. Let it become a badge to you, Vyre.”

A badge. A way to recover the man he’d once been, who had stood against even Kaladin to bring justice to the men who wore crowns and exploited the weak. That was who Moash had been.

“How?” Moash asked.

“You’re willing to try again?” Odium asked. “Although it may require opposing your friends? For they might name you traitor, but they never do stop being your friends, do they?”

“No. They don’t.”

“I understand better than any,” Odium said. “It’s why I care about you, Vyre. Yes, I do understand …”

The chair moved again, then Odium’s voice, more distant: “He’s yours. Let’s see if this works.”

Hands strapped him down in the darkness. They shoved a cloth into his mouth to muffle screams, and then, what happened next …

They took mallets and pounded spikes of light through his skull. He screamed. But this time the screams were in defiance of the pain, both outside and in. They were in rejection of the guilt, for he had been working for a greater world. How dare they fight against him?

How dare Kaladin claim to protect, when he defended the highborn who murdered? He was a pawn. How dare he not admit it? How dare he serve them ?

When it was finished, the agony throbbing through Moash, he lay in a sweat, ragged and used, like an old pair of shoes worn on far too long a walk. They’d done something with his empty eye sockets, something that should have killed him. But as he lay there, wondering at the point of it, he …

He saw.

Not as he had. Outlines of light, the people specifically, and … gemstones, infused. Living things. No color, but … spren.

He could see spren. All around.

“That should work,” a new voice said, feminine. “Look at his response. It’s functioning. He can see Investiture.”

“What have you done to me?” Moash whispered.

“You,” Odium said, “have become a very specific kind of weapon. Are you ready to serve again? To forge a better world?”

This was … not what he’d been expecting. He looked around the room, and found Odium as a blazing source of light, his figure washed out by the power. Like a sun standing not ten feet away. And with him another, glowing with a different kind of light. A different … not color … rhythm of light?

“I will do what must be done,” Vyre said. “Because someone must.”

“That is right, Vyre,” Odium said.