Chapter 67

You feign altruism. But you have another motive, do you not? Well, you always have.

I had already decided to follow,” Notum explained to Adolin, Colot, and May in Adolin’s command tent.

The spren had grown to full size and glowed softly, standing at an odd kind of attention with one arm to his breast and the other folded behind his back. He spoke in that same formal way as always, as if giving a report to superiors.

“How though?” Colot asked. “From what Adolin says, there was a great ocean between you and here.”

“I … I realized, right after Brightlord Adolin left, that staying behind was cowardice on my part.” Notum drew himself up. “I determined to come join the fight, though I’m not going to be a Radiant spren. I will not give any human that power over me. That doesn’t mean I can’t help.”

“But Radiants are what we need!” May said, seated at Adolin’s writing desk in her battle leathers. “If we had more Windrunners, we—”

“Peace, May,” Adolin requested. “We shouldn’t try to force the Radiant bond on anyone.”

That she didn’t like that idea was clear from the way she drew her lips to a line.

Notum nodded to Adolin in thanks. “I was going to try to find a means to sail all the way to the Oathgate here. Then, that first night, I heard a voice.”

“Was it Maya?”

“Your spren?” Notum asked.

“She doesn’t belong to me,” Adolin said. “She’s my comrade in arms. She went to the honorspren dissenters for help.”

How could she have gotten so far? It had taken weeks to cross that distance by ship, and while Adolin had the sense that she was traveling a different way—swept along by the beads as deadeyes sometimes were—she couldn’t have arrived so quickly, could she?

“I do not know her voice well,” Notum said. “So I could not say. This was a quiet feminine voice, calling me to arms. I made my decision at that moment, and I allowed the hopes and thoughts of humankind to draw me into the Physical Realm. I came to myself about a day later, and flew here.”

“One day?” Colot said. “You spent only one day disoriented? It took Sylphrena years, I believe.”

“The mind-dampening has been growing shorter and shorter,” May said from her desk. “Still, one day is remarkable. Particularly for a spren who isn’t intending to form a Radiant bond. What’s holding him here, Adolin?”

“What do you mean?” Adolin asked.

“The Radiant bond is a symbiosis,” May said. “Which means the bond gives something to both parties. Like … a contract. The human gets access to the Surges that are an innate aspect of the spren. In return, the spren gets stability in this realm. A human mind and soul to anchor them to the physical world, without which spren have trouble thinking and functioning.”

“I do not find it difficult,” Notum said. “But I am firm about not being bonded. You aid the war effort without being Radiants. Why can I not do the same?”

“You already did,” Adolin said. “You saved a Shardbearer today, Notum. Thank you.”

“You rescued me from torture,” Notum said to Adolin, “at the hands of those Tukari. It is an honor to return the favor.” He drew himself up even straighter. “I formally request a battlefield commission under your command, Adolin Kholin. I cannot hold a weapon in this realm, but I will be of service to you. I promise it.”

“I accept the offer, Captain Notum,” Adolin said. “I’ll put you in charge of my messenger corps, if May approves.”

“I have my hands full with reports and archery training,” she said, “considering that I have a new apprentice.” She leaned forward and continued making battle reports to Urithiru via spanreed. “An invisible, flying spren to lead our messengers would be an advantage. And maybe he’ll eventually realize what he should truly be doing.”

Adolin tried shaking hands with Notum, but he could barely feel the spren’s touch. Afterward, Notum bowed instead.

“Thank you,” Notum said. “For giving me a place, unconventional though it is. We will hold back the enemy, Adolin. Remember, Honor is not dead.”

“Not so long as he lives within us,” Adolin said. “Good to have you, Notum. I grant you a field commission as a captain in the Cobalt Guard. Colot, would you process him? Though I suppose he won’t be needing rations or a quartermaster requisition allotment …”

They left, and Adolin strolled over to May, watching her scribble out lines on her report. He’d never felt the desire to learn to read himself. Perhaps he should have, but there was plenty else to do. Plus, he’d had enough of being like his father. Echoes of that reverberated from earlier in the day—being the killer the situation required.

Not simply a killer, he thought, remembering his mother’s voice and face. I kill for a cause—something that matters.

“I still find that spren’s arrival strange,” May said as she wrote. “He should need more time to adjust.”

“Maybe we don’t know everything about the process yet,” Adolin said. “Isn’t that what science teaches? That we should never assume we have all the answers, and we should keep testing what we observe against what we think we know?”

May hesitated, the pen on her page halting. “Well, yes. How do you know that?”

“Shallan talks about it,” he said, smiling. She reportedly was still on her secret mission to deal with the Ghostbloods. Her squires weren’t worried, but Adolin couldn’t help but be anxious. How would he know if she was in trouble and needed help? What if it was weeks until he saw her again? She could handle herself, but … storms, he hoped she was safe.

“And you actually listen when she speaks of womanly things?” May asked. “When we were not-courting, all I could get you to listen to was historical battle accounts.”

“Guess I’m expanding my horizons.”

May huffed, making another note. “She’s good for you.”

“You have no idea. Any word from Urithiru today?”

“Battle reports from the Shattered Plains,” she said, sliding him a sheet for a scribe to read to him later. “They’re holding against an incredible number of Fused, but worry about dwindling Stormlight supplies. No surprises yet at Thaylen City.”

“Nothing further about my wife?”

“I tried to ask the fool, as requested,” she told him. “But no one can find him. Your aunt, though, sent you this short reply: she believes that Shallan and your brother are both doing a very important task. That is all.”

“Well, it’s something,” he said, taking the page with the battle report. “Thank you.”

“I am glad,” May said, continuing to write, “that you and I did not work out as a couple. I think we’d have hated one another eventually. I’m glad you found someone better suited to you, though I thought you and Shallan a strange pairing until I realized something. You both share the same sense of whimsy.”

“I don’t have a whimsical bone in my body, May.”

May eyed him, then kept writing.

“What?” he said.

“I thought you more self-aware than that,” she said. “Don’t you have a dinner appointment with the emperor?”

She was right, and he probably shouldn’t keep the emperor waiting—even if they had achieved a first-name basis. Adolin left her to her reports, amused she thought him whimsical. Today he’d washed free the blood, but the brutal destruction he’d caused chased him. That was the job, after all.

He felt a comforting reassurance from Maya, though no words. She was too far away. He wished he knew if Notum had been her doing or not—certainly, his arrival was proof that spren could be of great value on the battlefield. Maya’s quest was relevant, and not too problematic, so long as Adolin didn’t run out of Shardhammers.

But at the same time, he had to shoo away anxietyspren at the worry her quest wouldn’t be enough. A dozen honorspren wouldn’t mean much if those reinforcements didn’t arrive. Adolin glanced at the dome, trying to imagine holding here five more days without further troops, and shivered at the thought.

He couldn’t quash the fear that once again, he wouldn’t be enough. Battle report from the Shattered Plains in hand, he shook his head and went jogging toward Yanagawn’s tent for their nightly training and games of towers.

Sigzil flew through the chasms of the Shattered Plains with two of his squires. Via spanreed, Leyten had advised Sigzil to come in low, unseen, so he moved through darkened chasms, lit occasionally from the red lightning above. A low misting of rain meant that water streamed through the slots in a quiet gurgle. Not a rushing roar, and not particularly dangerous.

Fortunately, each plateau was numbered on his map for reference, and that ultimately got him to the correct spot. There he found Leyten and his squires hovering low, peeking up over the edge of a plateau. Sigzil flew to them and gave the salute of the day, and they gave the proper response.

A set of flashes on Sigzil’s bracer indicated that the assault on Narak had been rebuffed. The enemy was withdrawing for now. The coalition army would retreat from Narak Four eventually, but today’s hard fighting was worth something—with that wall broken, the enemy would keep concentrating attacks there, maybe earning the other plateaus breathing room.

“You were right to send me looking for the Heavenly Ones,” Leyten whispered to him, pointing at a group of them soaring just ahead. “One of our scout nests spotted them out here; it seems all of them are in this region, patrolling. I bet they’ve got orders to keep humans away from whatever is happening over there. I don’t think they spotted me or my squires though.”

Sigzil considered, spending some time watching the Heavenly Ones.

“Thoughts?” he whispered.

“I think I can estimate a proper heading,” Vienta whispered. “Judging by their guard pattern, they are trying to keep people away as Leyten said. A place farther north, along the edge of the Shattered Plains.”

Sigzil turned toward the others. “You have cloaks?”

Leyten’s squires broke them out. The policy was to wear or carry them when on patrol—and swathed in these buttoning, hooded black cloaks, they weren’t nearly as noticeable. Stormlight still streamed off their skin and tighter clothing, but it tended to get caught in the folds of the cloaks and evaporate.

“We’ll go in through the chasms,” Sigzil said. “Leyten, me, Weiss, and one of Leyten’s squires. The rest of you, wait for our signal in case we need you.”

Careful Lashings sent them zipping through the network of chasms with Sigzil in the lead—map in hand, its surface waxed against the rain. The lightning above seemed focused in a specific region, so he flew that direction, passing chasms littered with refuse that was overgrown with life. Here he found the strangely companionable scents of growth and decay, lifespren and rotspren dancing together above the streaming water. There were fewer corpses than he remembered from his days as a bridgeman. More bits of trees and shell. The Shattered Plains were moving on from the time when human and listener clashed atop them every few days.

He consulted with Vienta, who flew up to watch the enemy search patterns. Eventually the group reached the edge of the Plains—and indeed, that was exactly where the lightning was concentrated. Here, Sigzil carefully led them upward. In leaving the gurgling chasm floor, he felt as if he were parting from an old friend. The chasms had been Bridge Four’s punishment at first, then their respite, then their shelter as they practiced. The very skills he now used as a warrior had been seeded in this network of tombs, where he’d first wielded a spear with those who would become his brothers.

He and Leyten peeked carefully up over the rim of the chasms, looking out at the hilly—even mountainous—landscape north of the Plains. It was a region he’d rarely visited, and then only when flying scouting missions. Here, on a field of stone beneath violent lightning—which was almost constant—an army was gathering. Hundreds of enemy soldiers, their wet carapace reflecting lightning.

Regals. How? How had the enemy brought in these reinforcements? They couldn’t have walked from Alethkar. That was hundreds of miles. Heavenly Ones and Skybreakers had been too busy fighting to transport anyone.

“I don’t understand,” Leyten said, his voice barely audible over the thunder. “This should be impossible, Sig.”

“Maybe they’re a Lightweaving,” Weiss said. The short, dark-haired squire had been a seamstress before joining the Windrunners. “A grand show meant to intimidate us.”

“Best we know, Masked Ones can’t make giant Lightweavings on this scale,” Leyten replied. “They mostly just change their own features.”

“We have evidence,” Sigzil said, “of Heavenly Ones creating occasional weak Lashings in others, though it uses up their power quickly. So it’s possible Masked Ones can do the same. But I think that’s unlikely here.”

“I … agree,” Vienta whispered. “No hypothesis I imagine can explain this, Sigzil. Unless …”

“What?” he whispered.

“Unless they’ve figured out a way to Elsecall.”

Damnation. “I’m going up,” Sigzil said.

“ Up? ” Leyten hissed, grabbing his arm.

“That light in the center of the army? I need to know what it is, but can’t see from this perspective.” He glanced at the sky. “The lightning is going to have everyone light-blinded; it will be storming difficult to locate me if I stay high enough.”

Leyten considered, then nodded and let go of his arm. He probably wanted to insist on coming too, but knew that would double the chances of them being spotted.

“Be ready to flee just in case,” Sigzil said to the others. Then he withdrew a few hundred yards before taking to the sky, doing something they rarely dared—coming close to the cloud line of rippling red lightning. To avoid that lightning, he moved fast, pulling his cloak tight and Lashing himself to the north, back toward the gathering army. The constant flashes above seemed the eyes of Odium, but he forcibly told himself it was no such thing. Odium couldn’t see everywhere at once. Many things slipped his notice.

And surely, if he had seen Sigzil, the response would have been immediate. Because at the center of the gathering army was a hole in the ground—a wide ring of violet light, the inside falling away like a pit. Soldiers jumped up from within it, soaring out of the hole, being seized by companions and stabilized as they landed.

“Storms,” Sigzil whispered. “You were right. That’s an Elsegate, I assume?”

“Yes,” Vienta whispered back. She appeared to him shrouded in billowing cloth, like laundry on the line. “There’s only a few ways it could be possible.”

“How?” This power had created the Oathgates long ago, had brought humans to Roshar. Despite years of trying, Jasnah hadn’t figured out its mechanics, and interrogations with Heralds hadn’t helped. The Fused shouldn’t be capable of large-scale manifestations like this.

“It would mean,” she said, “that the enemy has empowered Dai-Gonarthis again, which we all thought he’d never do. So outside of reason that it was barely worth consideration. She wishes to break and burn this world. Bad though that is, I am hopeful this is the case, because if it’s not her … then the enemy has the Elsecaller Honorblade.”

“Storms,” he whispered, to the appropriate sound of rumbling thunder.

“Would that we could experiment with the power …” Vienta whispered to him. “The two of us. All the time in the world, and an Elsecaller.”

“See if we can create perpetual motion …” Sigzil said. “See if there are any limits to speed and distance …”

“So many things to learn.” In a rare moment, her billowing cloth retracted around her face, and she smiled toward him.

Unfortunately, there was still a war to fight. Sigzil used his spyglass to see if he could spot an Honorblade or sign of an Unmade. He did locate an interesting Fused. Tall, and standing apart from the others, with a body too silvery to be natural. He knelt at the edge of the large portal in the ground.

Then a figure jumped up out of the portal near the Fused. A human with brown hair flecked with black, in a black uniform, carrying a familiar Honorblade. As he looked up, Sigzil could swear that this man’s eyes glowed violet. As if … as if they were gemstones full of Voidlight.

Sigzil knew this figure all too well. Moash. Once friend.

Teft’s killer.