Chapter 84

With you, it was both, wasn’t it? Suffocating at times, yet not involved enough at others.

A dolin lay on the road, dazed from his failure against the thunderclast, trying to push to his feet. He slipped on the oil and collapsed, hitting his helm against the stones, and heard echoes of another time.

Storms, Adolin! What are you doing!

He forced himself up again by his arms.

Adolin, don’t be foolhardy! You’ll get yourself killed fighting this thing!

“I’m …” Adolin whispered. “I’m supposed to say that to you, Renarin. I’m supposed to keep you safe. I …”

I can handle it, Adolin. Just go! Please.

Adolin shook his head, clearing it. Those words—etched into his mind like an inscription on a sword—were from the first time. Over a year ago, when Renarin had saved him from a different thunderclast. Renarin, who Adolin had spent his life defending.

Renarin didn’t need him any longer, and that was good. But … storms. What did you do when you weren’t enough anymore? When you had been the best all your life, but suddenly you were obsolete?

Still braced by his arms, he looked toward the thunderclast along a road strewn with rubble. It shoved its way past buildings, leaving destruction in its wake. In the distance beyond, those Heavenly Ones buzzed around the dome. If more Fused were here … the city was lost.

He’d failed. Again. I … I don’t know if I can do this anymore, he thought, so terribly exhausted.

He slumped back down.

Then felt hands on his shoulders.

Armored though he was, he could still feel them trying to help him to his feet. He glanced up and found Hmask. The Thaylen man had a head wound, glistening blood staining one long eyebrow and half his mustache. He tried anyway to help a Shardbearer many times his weight to rise.

Something awakened in Adolin. Memories of people to whom Adolin had mattered, like a little boy in Thaylen City. And storms, there were a lot of little boys in Azimir. But only one Shardbearer left. Him.

With a heave, Adolin got to his feet, armor still in place but leaking something furious. He nodded in thanks to Hmask, then picked up one of the remnants of the chain—only ten feet long—and threw it over his shoulder and clanked forward to pick up Neziham’s bloody Shardblade.

“Hey,” he said to the sword, his voice muffled in his helm. “I’m Adolin. I need to borrow you for a little while, if that’s all right.”

Up ahead, directly in the thunderclast’s path, was the tower he’d stood on earlier in the morning. The watchpost. It was roughly the same height as the creature, which moved slowly. Deliberately, destructively, but slowly.

So Adolin stumbled past the oiled ground and called for Gallant, who emerged from between two buildings. Then Adolin heaved himself into the saddle and set off after the thunderclast.

Ash, former Herald of the Almighty, sat beside the bed of a man the size of a horse. She held his hand.

It was callused.

This Return, Taln hadn’t been fighting—he had spent most of these years lying in one bed or another—yet he had calluses and muscles. They were part of his Identity—part of how he saw himself—so they were how the body manifested when created from pure Investiture.

So strange, to hold his hand again. The man she’d come to see, over the centuries, as the sibling she’d never had.

The one they’d betrayed.

The one they’d abandoned.

The one who had, through sheer determination, carried Roshar on his back into the modern age.

He mumbled that same mantra. “The time of the Return … We must prepare …”

The fighting in the square outside had grown quiet. No more men screaming for reinforcements. No more clangs of metal. No more sounds of stone against stone. That worried her. It meant the battle had been won.

Or lost.

Shapes darkened the doorway, then a figure with glowing eyes stepped into the long hospital corridor. Abidi the Monarch, she recognized by the patterns. Unlucky, to encounter him of all Heavenly Ones. Abidi liked pain.

Doctors cringed and hid as Ash stood up. But of course, what was she? Nothing. She’d spent centuries insisting she was nobody. She sank down into her seat, trembling, and Abidi didn’t seem to notice her.

“So,” Abidi said in the old language. Others were joining him, pushing into the chamber. “The wounded.”

Ash closed her eyes.

“Slaughter them,” Abidi ordered. “It will demoralize the defenders.”

Silence. Oh, people were whimpering or groaning. Some wounded soldiers were standing up, trying to find weapons. But it was silent in one stark way that made Ash shiver.

Taln had stopped whispering.

The bed behind her creaked and shifted, and she blinked away tears to look up. To see him towering there in the shadows at the end of the hall.

One of the Fused at the other end of the room raised a sphere. Then tossed it their direction.

Then gasped.

In the light, Taln stood bare chested and wearing only short breeches, practically filling the hallway that had been made into a sickroom. His hands clenched to fists.

“You fools,” Ash said to the Fused. “You could have had the city, but you came here. For the broken. ”

Abidi pointed, seeing them for the first time, and his eyes went wide with abject horror. It was so satisfying to watch him turn and flee. Because Talenel’Elin, unarmed and without his Blade, was still the most terrifying warrior on the planet.

A crash broke the silence, windows cracking, air rushing to fill the hole Taln left when he moved. And for the first time in over four thousand years, the Bearer of Agonies fought back.

Adolin hauled himself onto the top of the watchpost. He’d climbed up the outside. His Plate was losing functionality, but it had been strong enough to haul him up, and climbing had been better than navigating those tiny stairs.

He checked Neziham’s Blade, which he’d tied on with a rope. Then he checked the ten-foot chain—one end of which had a hook. He’d coiled the snapped end around his waist, secured with a bent broken link.

With Gallant—who now had orders to get to safety—he’d managed to get ahead of the monster. The thunderclast’s footsteps vibrated through him as it brushed past the tower. Across the way, Adolin saw faces in the windows. Terrified people, perhaps too paralyzed to evacuate.

“Prime and People,” Adolin whispered in honor of Neziham. The local oath. “Herald and Home.”

With a deep breath, Adolin leaped off the top of the tower and grabbed hold of ridges on the thunderclast’s back. Gripping with one hand, he used the hooked end of the chain to lock himself into place. This thunderclast’s body—particularly a hulking portion of the back—was made up of a crisscrossing mess of stone protrusions. Like a snarl of branches, with small gaps between them here and there. The hook fit right in.

From this vantage, Adolin could see chaos around the dome—broken open on one side, the enemy flooding out. Storms. The city really was lost already, wasn’t it?

He growled, clinging to the thunderclast as it noticed him, then began shaking. Fortunately, its stone arms didn’t bend the correct ways to reach its back, but that shaking was furious. Adolin managed to hold on, barely—then as it paused, Adolin pulled the Blade off his belt and rammed it into the thing’s back.

Unfortunately, the sword didn’t stab deep enough to kill—not with all this mass of stone on the thunderclast’s back. Either that or he just wasn’t high enough; the weak spot was the neck, at the base of the skull, and that was a few feet higher up. The thing began shaking again, more furiously. Growling, he left the sword rammed into the body and held tight with gauntleted fingers that—leaking Stormlight—were starting to lose their strength.

The monster trumped—an awful, terrible sound. Adolin took the chance to grab the Shardblade and yank it out—and in that moment the monster bent down, then lurched upward and spun. Adolin only had one hand on it this time. The forceful motion dislodged his weakened fingers and sent him flying.

The chain links snapped tight with Adolin on the end, swinging back and forth like a ball on a string—slamming into one side of the thunderclast, then the other. His vision became a mess of cracked lines from a failing helmet, and he barely kept track of what was happening, though he clung to the Blade.

There! a chorus of voices seemed to say to him. Grab!

He reached out blindly, his free hand moving almost of its own accord, and seized hold of an upper portion of the thunderclast’s back again. This time the thing tried to bend over and flip him forward so that its fingers—reaching toward its head—could grab him.

Adolin screamed as pieces of his Plate began to fail, going dull and powerless from the lack of Stormlight. He leaped upward, using the momentum of the monster’s motion, and hit the head. Slipped. Then rammed his Blade straight into the thunderclast’s neck.

It jerked upright, its head tipping back, Adolin falling free along the thing’s side.

Then it froze.

Finally, it collapsed like a felled tree. Sideways.

Toward Adolin.

He furiously tried to cut the chain free of the stone back, but his armor wasn’t working, and the Blade slipped from his grip. A second later, all came crashing down on top of him with a weight to shake an entire city.

Renarin’s vision of that day in the palace—when Adolin had saved him—evaporated, and he was cast back into the Spiritual Realm proper. He stood up among the many shifting futures.

And was not afraid.

He’d been here. In this situation. He remembered nights early in his spren bond, feverishly scrawling on the floor what he’d seen and heard. That had terrified him—not knowing what was happening to him, or why.

The Spiritual Realm was overwhelming to the senses—and he disliked that—but it wasn’t frightening. He knew why he was here, and he knew what he was. No longer was Renarin a scared child needing Adolin to rescue him. No longer was he an abomination needing to hide while simultaneously feeling he must share what he knew, in case it helped his father.

He was Radiant. He was Truthwatcher. He was Glys’s companion. He was Bridge Four. So much about the world didn’t make sense to him, but he knew why he was here, and that gave him a path forward. Strangely, he found he didn’t fear even the gods. What was the worst they could do? Destroy him? In the face of the terrors he’d lived through—the terror of not knowing if he was mad, or if he’d somehow been corrupted and was serving evil—simple mortality seemed a distant nightmare, barely remembered.

I am scared, Glys said. I will be destroyed. I will be erased. I will be hated.

“Hide in me,” Renarin said. “I will protect you.”

He held out his hand, and Glys formed from the chaos—then shrank to the self he preferred in the Physical Realm. The strange red crystalline structure. This melded into Renarin, finding no gemheart, but a welcome hiding place nonetheless.

All felt … right with Glys then. The spren ceased trembling. Renarin looked around, but found only echoes of his past, shifting and constantly moving like shadowy clouds.

This place, he thought, requires organization to understand it. This is too much for a human mind.

Fortunately, he’d learned all kinds of strategies for making sense of a world—and its people. Admittedly, something about his bond with Glys gave him extra advantages. He clasped his hands behind him, unconsciously—he realized—adopting the posture his father took at strategy meetings, and he imposed his will on the surroundings.

Around him the chaos faded, and instead a group of stained glass windows grew up. Each separated from the others, like a little display in an art museum, with a black featureless background spreading behind. Out there, he could vaguely see figures made as if out of white smoke, rising from the ground.

He walked along the windows, each of which bore an elaborate glass scene. There was Shallan, and there his father and Navani—on some new battlefield with a large tent. The stained glass didn’t move, but when he looked away and turned back, it often had changed to a new perspective. He focused on his father and aunt. They were at a meeting of singers and humans.

They will be close, Glys whispered. Close to secrets.

“And you?” Renarin said to him. “Are you safe now? From the gods?”

Your father has drawn their attention for now.

Renarin stopped beside a window with Rlain sitting among other singers, and considered how best to get his friend’s attention. Rlain had said they should find Mishram’s prison, which Renarin was starting to consider.

He thought he could likely enter the window if he wanted, so should he—

Renarin froze. One of the windows was changing. He sensed it before he saw it. She was here.

Turning slowly, Renarin picked out the window. Growing dark, with shards of glass colored violet, blue, and black. Ba-Ado-Mishram. That same singer face from before, railing against the confines of the window. Moving when none of the others did. Shaking the glass. The windows closest to her began to darken.

Storms. Renarin didn’t know how to react. But he … he had felt like that before. Confused, terrified, worried. Each emotion she showed was so very familiar to him. Strange. He barely understood the other members of Bridge Four at dinner. Why should he feel he understood an ancient spren?

He walked up to the window.

“When I make noise like that,” he whispered, “it’s because I have so many emotions, I don’t know what to do with them all. So they burst from me like a storm.”

The figure glared at him, seething.

Careful, Glys warned. She would destroy you if she could. And Renarin, I think she has influenced your visions. Somehow, that vision with Adolin was her doing.

“Was it, now?” he said. “Why that vision, Mishram?”

She continued to glare at him.

“More importantly,” Renarin said, “what did you show the others? And why?”

“Destroy … you …” Mishram whispered, her frame vibrating. “I showed you so you can find me … Find me! So I may destroy you. ”

“How tempting.” Renarin stepped closer. “I recognize it must be terrible to suffer imprisonment for so long, but is this any worse than the torture the Heralds endured at the hands of the Fused?”

She withdrew until the glass window showed no more than a pair of eyes burning in the darkness. He wondered, if he stepped through this window, would he reach her? Find her prison?

No, Glys said. You would find nothing. She pervades this place, so she appears in it, but we have not found her prison.

“How do we do so?” Renarin asked.

Do you want to?

“I’m beginning to think it might be the only way,” Renarin said. “Take the prison, hide it elsewhere, leave the Ghostbloods to wander in here, seeking something they will never locate.”

The idea unnerved him, because he worried what Shallan wanted with the prison. He trusted her, but he missed some subtleties of conversations, and he felt unequipped to say if her desires here were valid or not.

“Thoughts?” Renarin prompted Glys.

To reach her, you will need … to Connect to her somehow.

“Interesting,” Renarin said. “Like Father and Navani were doing, traveling the visions?”

Yes, Glys said. Though your Connection must be deeper. They travel echoes of the past—you seek a hidden secret that has been locked away. You will need to anchor soul to soul.

Renarin contemplated this, before turning and walking to Rlain’s window. He took a long breath, then stepped into the glass as if he were entering a pond of water. Inside the vision, Rlain sat alone in a small Narak shanty. Head bowed, humming softly, the others having left. Storms, was Renarin intruding? Should he go? That was the posture Renarin sometimes had when he didn’t want to be talked to or touched. If he stayed, it would be awkward, wouldn’t it?

And yet … he remembered something that Zahel, of all people, had told him. Sometimes you just have to push through. The swordmaster had been talking about fatigue at the start of an exercise routine. Some days, you’d arrive and would be eager for the exercise. Others … well, you just had to push through.

What had Drehy said?

In the long run, it’s better to ask and deal with it if you’re wrong. Could … one just push through awkwardness too?

“Rlain?” he asked.

Rlain glanced at him, then brightened immediately, his hummed rhythm changing to the Rhythm of Joy. Storms … he’d been feeling alone, hadn’t he? It was basically the opposite of what Renarin had assumed.

“Glys says it’s all right to group together again,” Renarin said, walking over. “Is this your room in Narak?”

“No,” Rlain said, settling against the wall. “This is one of the meeting chambers where my people discussed strategy and plans. Nothing formal. This was simply … where we talked. As friends …”

He looked toward the ceiling. Renarin couldn’t read the meaning behind those words, but the rhythm changed to what he was sure was the Rhythm of Annoyance. In this realm, picking those out was becoming natural to him.

I help, Glys whispered, seeming pleased with himself.

Well, thank you, Renarin replied.

“Annoyed,” Renarin said, settling down by Rlain, “with your friends?”

“They sent me off to be a spy,” Rlain said quietly. “I volunteered, so it’s not like I should be mad. But …”

“You felt unwanted.”

“Storms, but I did,” Rlain said.

“Yeah,” Renarin said. “I know.”

“Were you … unwanted?” Rlain asked, surprised.

“Never overtly,” Renarin said. “And my father has grown so much. It’s unfair to hold his actions as a younger man against him. You know that he came to meetings of scholars last year, merely so I wouldn’t be the only non-ardent man present? But …”

“When you were young, he wanted a soldier.”

“Even Adolin wasn’t enough for him,” Renarin said. “What chance did I have?” He paused. “Why did they send you away?”

“Well,” Rlain said, his head tipped back against the wall, “the need was legitimate. It’s just that … I never fit in the same as everyone else. Nobody hated me. Nobody wanted to be rid of me. But when it came to losing someone they loved to be a spy, or losing me … not even Eshonai asked me to stay. By this point she was in a full ‘I must be a general’ mindset. I was a solution to a problem. That was all she could afford to let me be.”

“I make things difficult,” Renarin said. “Because I don’t see the world the same way as everyone else, and they have to make accommodations for me. They have to explain differently to me, taking an extra effort. It causes me to feel like a burden. And … sometimes I feel it would be so much more convenient for everyone if I weren’t there.”

“It’s so awful,” Rlain said to the Rhythm of Appreciation, “that people have to grow and stretch themselves around you. Becoming better.”

Renarin smiled. Sarcasm was different among the singers, who could deliberately match an incongruous rhythm to their words.

Rlain kept humming but didn’t speak. Together they gazed out the window to where the sun had set, and starspren began playing in the evening sky.

I like the way he’s quiet sometimes, Renarin thought. At dances or parties, to make up for his awkward silences, his aunt Navani or his cousin Aesudan had always tried to put him with someone talkative. They thought he’d enjoy having someone else speak when he didn’t want to. But it had taken so much effort to keep track of all the words.

Dared he ruin this? It was perfect as it was.

No, he thought. That’s fear talking. It’s not perfect yet.

Push through. He braced himself for the awkwardness.

And spoke.

“What’s it like,” he said, feeling like he was stumbling over each word, “for a singer to be in a relationship with someone? A … romantic one, I mean.” He’d started. He might as well finish. “Could it ever work with a human?”

“Oh, um …” Rlain hummed to Tension. “I haven’t thought about it, really. I mean …”

Oh, storms. I’ve ruined it. I’ve gone and broken everything. I—

“That’s a lie,” Rlain said, wincing. “I … um, have thought about it, Renarin. A lot.”

A part of Renarin wished he could simply vanish. Could his powers do that? For once, the silence seemed far worse than words. It kept stretching on and on and on.

“You’ve always tried to understand me, Renarin,” Rlain said. “And usually you figure it out. Even though you don’t have the rhythms, you can read me.”

“I just … hate seeing someone alone. In a crowd.”

“Is that all?” Rlain asked.

“No,” Renarin admitted.

More silence. More awkwardness.

And then a rhythm. The Rhythm of Curiosity, hummed by Rlain. “We pretend,” he said, “that when we’re in forms other than mateform, we don’t feel attraction at all. But Renarin, can I tell you something? That’s an exaggeration.

“When I’m in warform, I’m more prone to want to follow orders. That doesn’t mean I’m completely without self-determination. Likewise, when we’re in mateform, we feel all kinds of powerful attractions—but those emotions and feelings are there in other forms. Most singers stay together as a pair, even after children are raised. Relationships are important to us, just as they are with humans.”

“Different though,” Renarin said. “It’s different.”

“Isn’t … learning about someone different interesting?” Rlain said. “Like I said earlier?”

“I … guess that it is,” Renarin said. “How do you know you’re compatible? What makes you compatible? What if you spend a lot of time together, and start to form a relationship, and then mateform comes and … well, it doesn’t work.”

Rlain hummed to Anxiety.

“What?” Renarin asked.

“That happened to me,” he explained. “The first time I tried mateform. Everyone expected me to bond with one of the three females from our group … and I tried very hard to get the attention of Harvo instead.”

“A … male?”

“I never attempted that form again,” Rlain said, humming to Anxiety, looking down. “They laughed at me for months. As if I had made a mistake or something. They thought I was so lustful that I lost track of who was who.” He glanced at Renarin. “The mateform part, it’s not as important to us as it seems to be to you. If we get along, work well together, that’s more important—that’s what makes us a warpair. Then the rest … you can make it fit.”

“Unless, you know, you end up chasing a man instead …” Renarin said, chuckling. Not because he wasn’t still anxious, but because—amazingly—that anxiety had begun to ebb.

“Even then,” Rlain said. “I knew, Renarin. I was hesitant to try mateform for that reason. I didn’t want to bond with any of the others. I could have told them what would happen, because it was there inside me, even if it’s not as strong in most forms as it is for humans. Personality compatibility, though, that’s what we look for. What I’ve wanted.”

He looked to Renarin, then hummed to Anxiety, but while smiling.

That combination, Renarin thought. He’s blushing.

Renarin took a deep breath, then pushed through this last bit of awkwardness. “Is it worth trying, then, do you think?”

In response, Rlain rested his hand hesitantly on top of Renarin’s. Renarin turned his hand upward and took Rlain’s—and felt heat. And beyond that, he could sense the rhythms pulsing from Rlain into him.

The Rhythm of Excitement.

There was so much to do, so much to talk about, but this was enough for now. He let them have silence. Just the rhythms, the heat, and two people harmonizing together.

Renarin, Glys said eventually. Shallan has arrived, and is responding oddly.

Shallan? he thought. What do you mean?

I brought her out of her vision, Glys said, because you indicated you wanted to gather us again. Your window is still standing, and she’s watching.

Oh, blood of his fathers. Shallan was watching? What’s she doing? he asked.

Hopping up and down, Glys said, making a high-pitched sound like she’s in pain.

She’s not in pain, Renarin said back, sighing. She’s squealing in excitement. That girl … Maybe it was a Lightweaver thing, or maybe it was only Shallan, but he’d always sensed a voyeuristic side to her. It took a special type to enjoy pretending to be someone else.

Well, if nothing else, he was glad to be able to provide his sister-in-law with some entertainment. He stood up, holding to Rlain’s hand. “Come on. We need to talk about what we’ve each seen in these most recent visions.”

“Why?” Rlain asked. “Is it relevant?”

“I think Mishram influenced them,” Renarin said. “I just encountered her, and something she said makes me think that there’s a secret in what we’re being shown.”

Rlain nodded, and banished the vision, still holding Renarin’s hand. And remarkably, as they rejoined Shallan—who gave him a thumbs-up and a grin—he found that the awkwardness had passed. The future—for once—seemed extraordinarily bright. Like glowing, brilliant glass.