Interlude 10

T aravangian struggled with balance. Even as his plots were playing out, the pieces falling into line, he struggled. While he knew he needed to dominate, he still questioned.

Why should he question?

Today, his attention was on Shinovar. He was aware of his former servant, Szeth, traveling through this land, disrupting it. Though Taravangian had pieces in motion to ultimately control Shinovar, this place of flowing grasses and echoes of a dead world should have been easy for him to dominate. It was not. It was instead a warning.

He considered from atop a mountain. His emotions, which flared so powerfully, cared more about the kingdoms he already had. Kharbranth. Jah Keved. Alethkar.

I will need to focus on many foreign lands in the centuries to come, he thought. Shinovar, then, is good practice. If I cannot apply my focus to a distant part of Roshar, how will I dominate all worlds, everywhere?

Cultivation appeared behind him. He did not need to look, for he had no eyes.

“You have tried as I asked?” she said.

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Both halves of me reject your assumptions, Cultivation,” he proclaimed. “The mind finds it requisite of me to become the conqueror; the heart needs the same, if for different reasons.”

“And you, Taravangian?” she asked. “ You are neither mind nor heart, but the combination.”

Ah … He focused his essence upon her, and saw her full ploy at last. In mathematics, sums and divisions were straightforward—but not so with souls. Both heart and mind wished conquest, but the two together?

“You,” she said, “were one of the few humans ever to taste divinity. A man who could think with incredible speed. A man who could feel the powerful crushing emotions of Odium. You had both the mind and emotions of a god.”

“… Yet never,” he whispered, “at the same time. Until now.”

“Please, Taravangian. Do you truly want to go down this path?”

Did he?

Did he legitimately ?

He fixated on the people working so hard to resist him. He saw their passion, their ingenuity, and loved it. He realized now why he questioned. There were two on this planet who, even as a divinity, he respected almost as equals. Jasnah Kholin and Dalinar Kholin. If they opposed him, then … he questioned. For in his Ascension to godhood, he’d obtained a wisdom that eluded most mortals. A simple, reasonable precept: if someone you deeply respected disagreed with you, perhaps it was worth reconsidering.

That was when, for the first time, Taravangian legitimately wavered. This problem was not academic, and not one simply of passionate instinct. The question of opposing his friends cut to his very soul. For by its light, he saw that he had been lying, even to himself.

Yes, it made sense to give the cosmere one god.

Yes, it was his passion to protect his people.

Both were true, but they were not the actual reason he’d done any of this. In that moment of uncertainty, Taravangian did what even gods struggled to do.

He saw the truth within himself, one he would never admit to any other being. Why conquer?

Because someday, someone would do it.

And he wanted to be that one.

The burden of a king was to make the difficult choices, and he’d done that for so many years. He longed to enjoy the rewards for those many painful sacrifices. He yearned to see what he could do, unhindered. What heights he could soar to, what accomplishments he—Taravangian, the greatest of men, now divine—could achieve.

Conquest was not a need, but a want. And he was done denying himself the things he wanted.

The power loved this revelation. It was pure, unfettered emotion.

The mind respected this revelation, for it was truth acknowledged.

The two, at that moment, became one. It was the moment of decision. Taravangian hung on that precipice and let himself question for one final moment. What would Dalinar do? Two versions of Taravangian seemed to split off from him, walking into infinite time. Two people that he could be.

Dalinar …

Dalinar was wrong.

And someone needed to prove it.

Questions died. There, on that mountaintop, Taravangian—Odium—was truly born. He coalesced an avatar in radiant, shining gold vestments and placed a small cane to his side, the twin portions of his soul vibrating with the same pure tone. He opened eyes that beamed with the light of the sun.

Cultivation trembled.

“So be it,” she whispered, her voice awash with rhythms expressing her profound, soul-crushing disappointment. She left, and Odium—fully aligned at last—began his work in earnest. For there were two people he respected who needed lessons to help them grow.