Interlude 11

D yel had the most unusual of visitors.

That was not uncommon in Iri, now that the Owners had returned. They walked the streets, with bodies bearing patterns that looked like they were painted. Red, white, and black.

But these visitors were not of the Owners. These visitors were different.

The three sat at a table in her shop near the cubbies on the wall where her grandfather—before his murder—had put shoes. When they’d come in, they’d pretended they were from “the East.” But Dyel knew accents, and these men were not from the East. Besides, their clothing was strange—particularly the tallest man’s, with the long white coat and the spectacles peeking from his pocket.

She hovered in the doorway to the kitchen after delivering their tea, hoping her mother wouldn’t notice her loitering.

“Are you certain this is the right time?” asked the tall man in the coat. He had skin like he was from Azir, with short black hair and muscles like a soldier. She could almost believe he was from the far East, where terrible men were said to be the fiercest of warriors. But he liked sugar in his tea. What kind of fierce warrior liked sugar in his tea?

“Of course I’m not,” said the tubby one, who was constantly scowling. “The device is unpredictable, don’t you know?” This one had darker skin too, and was completely bald. Older. Shorter. Again he wore odd clothing—most people in Iri went around without shirts, and only a bandeau for the women. He wore a cloak and colorful robes. In this weather?

The tall man grunted, then sipped his sugared tea. The third of them sat quietly. A Shin man of middling height, also balding—with a scar on his head—light skin, and more normal clothing, for an outlander. Shirt and trousers. He didn’t talk as much. But he watched. She knew people like that.

Lest they think that she was observing them, Dyel busied herself cleaning tables, then standing by the door to give welcoming smiles to those who passed on the street. She liked that: watching the different kinds of people who were part of the One. She also liked smelling the ocean air. Though they were too poor to have a shop in the best part of town, the breeze carried the crisp, salty air inland. A gift of experience she could add to the One.

Outside, an Owner walked past, a hulking figure with carapace and eyes that glowed red. There was some discussion about them in Iri; were these singers, these Owners, part of the One, or were they something else? She thought they must be the One. It wouldn’t be the One unless it—God—encompassed everything. Every person a piece of it, extended out into the cosmere to live a different life and bring back enriching knowledge.

Her mother didn’t believe, but Dyel did. Because if she did, then Grandpa Ym was always with her and she with him.

“Serving girl?” one of the men called. “Could I get another?”

She hurried to the table with the three strangers, her hair aflutter. She trimmed it only when Mother forced her to. She was Iriali, and her golden hair was her heritage. She quickly refilled the men’s cups as the thoughtful one—the quiet one—set a sphere on the table.

Her breath caught. A full broam? She looked to the man, who had a round, friendly face. He nodded.

She snatched it up, the azure light inside it making her skin glow. But Mother would insist she ask. So, reluctantly, she spoke. “Do I have to give you change?”

“No,” he said, smiling. “Though I wouldn’t mind answers to a question or two.”

She shrugged. “Sure.”

“Have you ever seen,” the man asked, “a strange collection of lights that moves across the wall or floor, though you can find no source reflecting it?”

Dyel felt an immediate spike of terror. She nearly dropped the teapot. She’d suspected they weren’t what they said, but this? This?

“I’m sorry I have to go I forgot my mother wanted me to check on the biscuits stay as long as you want thank you for the tip we are closed now goodbye.” She scampered into the rear room—now a kitchen and living space, transformed from her grandfather’s workshop. She put her back to the wall, her heart thundering.

He had returned. The murderer. What to do?

Find Mother.

Mother was gone. Dyel found nothing but a note. Back in fifteen. Watch the shop.

Oh no. Nonononono.

She scrambled past globby purple fearspren and found a knife for spreading butter. Then she hid in the corner, clutching it, trying not to be too loud as she cried and trembled. Until they darkened the doorway. Three men—two shorter, one taller. Dyel yelped despite herself, holding out the knife.

The tall one glanced at the thoughtful one. “Look what you’ve done, Demoux,” he said. “I told you to stop talking about that.”

“I need an intelligent spren to study!” he said. “They keep telling me no.”

“Perhaps because you keep saying you want to ‘study’ them, isn’t that so?” the grumpy one said. “We certainly frightened fewer people when your translator didn’t work.”

The tallest man knelt before Dyel, who tried to squeeze herself against the wall, her skirt getting twisted and crumpled, the rough grain of the wood pressing into the skin of her back except where she wore her bandeau.

“I’m sorry,” the man said, “to have—”

The rear door slammed open and there was her mother—frantic, in loose blue trousers and matching bandeau, with a golden mane of hair that was radiant in the light of the setting sun. She saw the three strangers.

Her Shardblade materialized a second later.

Bright and silver, their family’s hidden secret, kept quiet since it had manifested a few months ago. But few secrets mattered when you found your twelve-year-old daughter facing three assailants.

“Whoa,” the tall one said, leaping away. He was the one, the killer. “ Whoa. ” He pulled something from his belt, something he brandished like a weapon, though Dyel had never seen a weapon that was just a metal tube with a handle.

The grumpy one smashed a sphere into the ground, somehow cracking it. Stormlight flowed up around him, and strange symbols formed in the air.

Mother leaped in front of Dyel, sweating, gripping her weapon in two hands. “We knew you’d be back! We knew you’d come for me once you heard!”

Dyel crawled forward and grabbed her around the legs, terrified.

They all stood silently in the room until the thoughtful Shin man spoke. “What the hell is going on?”

“We know about you,” Mother said, inching backward toward the door. “I spent months seeking the tall Makabaki man who killed my father. I talked to the families of others you killed. We know what you are. Murderer.”

Dyel cowered. Mother kept trying to inch them toward the door. Strangely, the tall man relaxed, lowering his weapon.

The bald one lowered his hands, the strange glowing light around him evaporating. “I told you that you looked like him.”

“I do not, ” the tall one said.

“You kind of do,” the thoughtful one said.

“Just because we’re both dark-skinned?” the tall one said.

“I’m dark-skinned too,” said the bald one. “And nobody says I look like him.”

“You’re silver most of the time, Galladon,” the tall one said, putting his weapon away in his coat. “Listen, I’m not the murderer you’re worried about. That’s Nale, the Herald.”

They both watched him, terrified, silent—until Mother, oddly, cocked her head. She dismissed her Blade, which made Dyel quiver. Surely Mother didn’t believe a killer.

Uma appeared a second later, sliding up the wall, a collection of lights like those scattered by a prism. “It is all right, Dyel,” she said. Her voice was quiet, like the sound of a vibrating glass cup. “I know the Herald Nale by sight—the one who killed your grandfather—and this is not him.”

Oh. Dyel carefully stood up behind her mother. Her heart pounding, likely the same as all of them. Until a moment later, the thoughtful one said, “Can I study you?”

“Um …” Uma said. “No?”

“I told you to stop phrasing it that way, Demoux,” said the one who had been called Galladon.

“I don’t want to lie to them,” Demoux said, gesturing.

The tall one cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should go.”

Mother eyed them, still tense. She’d still heard her daughter cry out, then had found three strange men intimidating her in the rear of the shop.

“Mother,” Dyel whispered, pointing. “They knew. They asked me about Uma.”

“How?” Mother demanded.

“We didn’t mean to frighten the girl,” the tall one said, with a placating hand forward. “We had simply heard rumors. We are scholars, and like to study spren.”

“See?” Demoux said. “Baon uses the word.”

“Baon is not an example of how to be in any way tactful!” Galladon said. “Crazyfools, all of you.” What a curious word. He stepped forward, and though he had been the grouchiest at the table ordering drinks, he made his tone polite now. “I’m sorry we frightened you. We will go now, with your leave, Radiant.”

Mother glanced down at Dyel, then sighed, looking back at the men. “I have a letter for you.”

What?

What?

“Mother?” Dyel asked.

“You remember that odd woman who visited last month?” she asked. “She left me a letter. It’s in my nightstand. Please fetch it.”

Dyel, confused, did as she was asked. Mother remained, eye-to-eye with the three strangers. That woman? The one who wore many rings, and who had helped for several weeks at the local charity hospital. A healer skilled with herbs, whose room had smelled of the fish she’d caught in the Purelake, then dried. She’d come for tea each morning.

In the nightstand beside the bed, Dyel found a sealed envelope. On it was drawn, roughly, the profiles of three men. These three men, except with quite comical, exaggerated proportions. What an odd experience from the One. How had the woman known? But then, Dyel’s life had been turned upside down ever since Uma had arrived and her mother had started glowing sometimes. Unique experiences.

She cherished thinking of it that way. So many didn’t believe these days, but she did. For Grandfather.

She scampered down the stairs and handed the letter to her mother, who tossed it to the men. “I was told,” Mother explained, “that I would know who to give this to.”

The tall one, Baon, caught it. He eyed the others, then slit it open with a pocketknife.

“It’s from him, ” Baon said.

“Of course it is,” Demoux replied. “Right as we’re leaving.”

“What does it say?” Galladon said.

Baon closed the envelope. “It has only his signature. And a crude depiction of male genitalia.”

“From the Trickster Aspect,” Mother said. “He was here too, last year.”

“Of course he was,” Demoux repeated, then sighed. “I’m ready to get off this rusting planet. What about you two?”

“Yes, please, ” Galladon said. “One of the eldest beings in the cosmere … and he has the mental age of a thirteen-year-old. ”

“If this man ever returns,” Baon said, “keep your distance. He isn’t terribly dangerous, but whenever he’s spotted, innocents get hurt.”

That was only natural. He was the Trickster Aspect, spun out of the One to create chaos. They had hundreds of legends about him, but you couldn’t insult him by not serving him tea.

A ding came from Galladon’s pocket.

“Time,” he said.

The three men started out. Baon hesitated by the door. “Things might be chaotic in your city for a little while.”

Then he too left.

Dyel hugged her mother, but the fearspren remained. Not just because of what Baon had said. This meant the killer had not yet come, and they still needed to fear him.

Outside, people started shouting.

“I will look,” Uma said in her tinkling voice. “Stay strong. I do not know what this is.”

Mother nodded and led Dyel up the steps as Uma went out the door. Their shop was part of a larger building, four stories high, and they helped keep it tidy and fixed things—which meant Mother could take them up the access stairway to the roof.

There, they saw what was causing the chaos. Cusicesh the Protector had risen from the bay—the great, multi-armed spren made of a column of water. That was all? Dyel relaxed. She’d seen Cusicesh many times. But why then were so many people pointing and crying out? Why were so many running?

“It’s … the wrong time,” her mother said.

Cusicesh—breaking all tradition—waved his hands out to the sides, palms toward the city. And then, before him in the bay, the air split in a glorious radiant fountain. A column of light.

“The gateway to the land of shadows,” Mother whispered. “Honor’s gateway … Oh Father, Mother, ancestors who have become One … Dyel, fetch the travel packs! It’s time !”

Dyel froze. Time … the travel packs … All good Iriali kept them, but that was mostly a formality, unless …

It was time ? A rare awespren burst around her, made of blue rings of smoke.

“People,” Cusicesh said. He never spoke. His voice was deep, and vibrated the city—somehow loud enough to make her soul shake, but not so loud it hurt her ears. “I am to be your guide for the Fifth Journey.”

Time. That meant …

Time to continue the Long Trail.

Time to find the Fifth Land.

Shocked out of her reverie, she went running for the travel packs—terrified that this great day should have come during her life. She wished there were a way to explain that she was filled up with new experiences. That she’d rather live some peaceful days, without Owners returning to the land, or her mother starting to glow, or the call to the Long Trail itself occurring.

It wasn’t to be. As when she met back with her mother, Uma had returned. Mother was crying.

“We will try,” Mother whispered to the spren, who brightened the floor of the rooftop. “We will see … see how far you can go. Come, Dyel. We mustn’t miss the call. Boats are already rowing out to meet the gateway.”

And so, with only their travel packs, they found their way to a boat. They joined with the light of the gateway, which she briefly thought must be like rejoining the One when she died. They emerged into the place of shadows with the leaders of their kind, who had already begun preparing caravans to cross the darkness. Other portals, she heard, had opened all across Iri—one in every major city.

Nearby, she spied the three strangers again, Demoux complaining about the “odd behavior for a perpendicularity of this nature.” Mother settled her down in some blankets, then went to find them a position in the caravans. Dyel clutched her pack to her chest, stunned by how fast it had happened. Her time in the city, with the shop, was over.

She whispered a quiet farewell.

It was time to leave Roshar. Forever.