Oathbringer

I-4. Kaza

The ship First Dreams crashed through a wave, prompting Kaza to cling tightly to the rigging. Her gloved hands already ached, and she was certain each new wave would toss her overboard.

She refused to go down below. This was her destiny. She was not a thing to be carted from place to place, not any longer. Besides, that dark sky—suddenly stormy, even though the sailing had been easy up until an hour ago—was no more disconcerting than her visions.

Another wave sent water crashing across the deck. Sailors scrambled and screamed, mostly hirelings out of Steen, as no rational crew would make this trip. Captain Vazrmeb stalked among them, shouting orders, while Droz—the helmsman—kept them on a steady heading. Into the storm. Straight. Into. The storm.

Kaza held tight, feeling her age as her arms started to weaken. Icy water washed over her, pushing back the hood of her robe, exposing her face—and its twisted nature. Most sailors weren’t paying attention, though her cry did bring Vazrmeb’s attention.

The only Thaylen on board, the captain didn’t much match her image of the people. Thaylens, to her, were portly little men in vests—merchants with styled hair who haggled for every last sphere. Vazrmeb, however, was as tall as an Alethi, with hands wide enough to palm boulders and forearms large enough to lift them.

Over the crashing of waves, he yelled, “Someone get that Soulcaster below deck!”

“No,” she shouted back at him. “I stay.”

“I didn’t pay a prince’s ransom to bring you,” he said, stalking up to her, “only to lose you over the side!”

“I’m not a thing to—”

“Captain!” a sailor shouted. “Captain!”

They both looked as the ship tipped over the peak of a huge wave, then teetered, before just kind of falling over the other side. Storms! Kaza’s stomach practically squeezed up into her throat, and she felt her fingers sliding on the ropes.

Vazrmeb seized her by the side of her robe, holding her tight as they plunged into the water beyond the wave. For a brief terrifying moment, they seemed entombed in the chill water. As if the entire ship had sunk.

The wave passed, and Kaza found herself lying in a sodden heap on the deck, held by the captain. “Storming fool,” he said to her. “You’re my secret weapon. You drown yourself when you’re not in my pay, understand?”

She nodded limply. And then realized, with a shock, she’d been able to hear him easily. The storm …

Was gone?

Vazrmeb stood up straight, grinning broadly, his white eyebrows combed back into his long mane of dripping hair. All across the deck, the sailors who had survived were climbing to their feet, sopping wet and staring at the sky. It maintained its overcast gloom—but the winds had fallen completely still.

Vazrmeb bellowed out a laugh, sweeping back his long, curling hair. “What did I tell you, men! That new storm came from Aimia! Now it has gone and escaped, leaving the riches of its homeland to be plundered!”

Everyone knew you didn’t linger around Aimia, though everyone had different explanations why. Some rumors told of a vengeful storm here, one that sought out and destroyed approaching ships. The strange wind they’d encountered—which didn’t match the timing of highstorm or Everstorm—seemed to support that.

The captain started shouting orders, getting the men back into position. They hadn’t been sailing long, only a short distance out of Liafor, along the Shin coast, then westward toward this northern section of Aimia. They’d soon spotted the large main island, but had not visited it. Everyone knew that was barren, lifeless. The treasures were on the hidden islands, supposedly lying in wait to enrich those willing to brave the winds and treacherous straits.

She cared less for that—what were riches to her? She had come because of another rumor, one spoken of only among her kind. Perhaps here, at last, she could find a cure for her condition.

Even as she righted herself, she felt in her pouch, seeking the comforting touch of her Soulcaster. Hers, no matter what the rulers of Liafor claimed. Had they spent their youths caressing it, learning its secrets? Had they spent their middle years in service, stepping—with each use—closer and closer to oblivion?

The common sailors gave Kaza space, refusing to look her in the eyes. She pulled her hood up, unaccustomed to the gaze of ordinary people. She’d entered the stage where her … disfigurements were starkly obvious.

Kaza was, slowly, becoming smoke.

Vazrmeb took the helm himself, giving Droz a break. The lanky man stepped down from the poop deck, noting her by the side of the ship. He grinned at her, which she found curious. She hadn’t ever spoken to him. Now he sauntered over, as if intending to make small talk.

“So…” he said. “Up on deck? Through that? You’ve got guts.”

She hesitated, considering this strange creature, then lowered her hood.

He didn’t flinch, even though her hair, her ears, and now parts of her face were disintegrating. There was a hole in her cheek through which you could see her jaw and teeth. Lines of smoke rimmed the hole; the flesh seemed to be burning away. Air passed through it when she spoke, altering her voice, and she had to tip her head all the way back to drink anything. Even then, it dribbled out.

The process was slow. She had a few years left until the Soulcasting killed her.

Droz seemed intent on pretending nothing was wrong. “I can’t believe we got through that storm. You think it hunts ships, like the stories say?”

He was Liaforan like herself, with deep brown skin and dark brown eyes. What did he want? She tried to remember the ordinary passions of human life, which she’d begun to forget. “Is it sex you want?… No, you are much younger than I am. Hmmm…” Curious. “Are you frightened, and wishing for comfort?”

He started to fidget, playing with the end of a tied-off rope. “Um … So, I mean, the prince sent you, right?”

“Ah.” So he knew that she was the prince’s cousin. “You wish to connect yourself to royalty. Well, I came on my own.”

“Surely he let you go.”

“Of course he didn’t. If not for my safety, then for that of my device.” It was hers. She looked off across the too-still ocean. “They locked me up each day, gave me comforts they assumed would keep me happy. They realized that at any moment, I could literally make walls and bonds turn to smoke.”

“Does … does it hurt?”

“It is blissful. I slowly connect to the device, and through it to Roshar. Until the day it will take me fully into its embrace.” She lifted a hand and pulled her black glove off, one finger at a time, revealing a hand that was disintegrating. Five lines of darkness, one rising from the tip of each finger. She turned it, palm toward him. “I could show you. Feel my touch, and you can know. One moment, and then you will mingle with the air itself.”

He fled. Excellent.

The captain steered them toward a small island, poking from the placid ocean right where the captain’s map had claimed it would be. It had dozens of names. The Rock of Secrets. The Void’s Playground. So melodramatic. She preferred the old name for the place: Akinah.

Supposedly, there had once been a grand city here. But who would put a city on an island you couldn’t approach? For, jutting from the ocean here were a set of strange rock formations. They ringed the entire island like a wall, each some forty feet tall, resembling spearheads. As the ship drew closer, the sea grew choppy again, and she felt a bout of nausea. She liked that. It was a human feeling.

Her hand again sought her Soulcaster.

That nausea mixed with a faint sense of hunger. Food was something she often forgot about these days, as her body needed less of it now. Chewing was annoying, with the hole in her cheek. Still, she liked the scents from whatever the cook was stirring up below. Perhaps the meal would calm the men, who seemed agitated about approaching the island.

Kaza moved to the poop deck, near the captain.

“Now you earn your keep, Soulcaster,” he said. “And I’m justified in hauling you all the way out here.”

“I’m not a thing,” she said absently, “to be used. I am a person. Those spikes of stone … they were Soulcast there.” The enormous stone spearheads were too even in a ring about the island. Judging by the currents ahead, some lurked beneath the waters as well, to rip up the hulls of approaching vessels.

“Can you destroy one?” the captain asked her.

“No. They are much larger than you indicated.”

“But—”

“I can make a hole in them, Captain. It is easier to Soulcast an entire object, but I am no ordinary Soulcaster. I have begun to see the dark sky and the second sun, the creatures that lurk, hidden, around the cities of men.”

He shivered visibly. Why should that have frightened him? She’d merely stated facts.

“We need you to transform the tips of a few under the waves,” he said. “Then make a hole at least large enough for the dinghies to get in to the island beyond.”

“I will keep my word, but you must remember. I do not serve you. I am here for my own purposes.”

They dropped anchor as close to the spikes as they dared get. The spikes were even more daunting—and more obviously Soulcast—from here. Each would have required several Soulcasters in concert, she thought, standing at the prow of the ship as the men ate a hasty meal of stew.

The cook was a woman, Reshi from the looks of her, with tattoos all across her face. She pushed the captain to eat, claiming that if he went in hungry, he’d be distracted. Even Kaza took some, though her tongue no longer tasted food. It all felt like the same mush to her, and she ate with a napkin pressed to her cheek.

The captain drew anticipationspren as he waited—ribbons that waved in the wind—and Kaza could see the beasts beyond, the creatures that accompanied the spren.

The ship’s four dinghies were cramped, with rowers and officers all together, but they made space for her at the front of one. She pulled up her hood, which still hadn’t dried, and sat on her bench. What had the captain been planning to do if the storm hadn’t stopped? Would he seriously have tried to use her and a dinghy to remove these spears in the middle of a tempest?

They reached the first spike, and Kaza carefully unwrapped her Soulcaster, releasing a flood of light. Three large gemstones connected by chains, with loops for her fingers. She put it on, with the gemstones on the back of her hand. She sighed softly to feel the metal against her skin again. Warm, welcoming, a part of her.

She reached over the side into the chill water and pressed her hand against the tip of the stone spear—smoothed from years in the ocean. Light from the gemstones lit the water, reflections dancing across her robe.

She closed her eyes, and felt the familiar sensation of being drawn into the other world. Of another will reinforcing her own, something commanding and powerful, attracted by her request for aid.

The stone did not wish to change. It was content with its long slumber in the ocean. But … yes, yes, it remembered. It had once been air, until someone had locked it into this shape. She could not make it air again; her Soulcaster had only one mode, not the full three. She did not know why.

Smoke, she whispered to the stone. Freedom in the air. Remember? She tempted it, picking at its memories of dancing free.

Yes … freedom.

She nearly gave in herself. How wonderful would it be to no longer fear? To soar into infinity on the air? To be free of mortal pains?

The tip of the stone burst into smoke, sending an explosion of bubbles up around the dinghy. Kaza was shocked back into the real world, and a piece deep within her trembled. Terrified. She’d almost gone that time.

Smoke bubbles rattled the dinghy, which nearly upended. She should have warned them. Sailors muttered, but in the next dinghy over, the captain praised her.

She removed two more spear tips beneath the waves before finally reaching the wall. Here, the spearheadlike formations had been grown so close together, there was barely a handspan gap between them. It took three tries to get the dinghy close enough—as soon as they got into position, some turning of the waves would pull them away again.

Finally, the sailors managed to keep the dinghy steady. Kaza reached out with the Soulcaster—two of the three gems were almost out of Stormlight, and glowed only faintly. She should have enough.

She pressed her hand against the spike, then convinced it to become smoke. It was … easy this time. She felt the explosion of wind from the transformation, her soul crying in delight at the smoke, thick and sweet. She breathed it in through the hole in her cheek while sailors coughed. She looked up at the smoke, drifting away. How wonderful it would be to join it.…

No.

The island proper loomed beyond that hole. Dark, like its stones had been stained by smoke themselves, it had tall rock formations along its center. They looked almost like the walls of a city.

The captain’s dinghy pulled up to hers, and the captain transferred to her boat. His began to row backward.

“What?” she asked. “Why is your boat heading back?”

“They claim to not be feeling well,” the captain said. Was he abnormally pale? “Cowards. They won’t have any of the prize, then.”

“Gemstones lay around just for the plucking here,” Droz added. “Generations of greatshells have died here, leaving their hearts. We’re going to be rich, rich men.”

As long as the secret was here.

She settled into her place at the prow of the boat as the sailors guided the three dinghies through the gap. The Aimians had known about Soulcasters. This was where you’d come to get the devices, in the old days. You’d come to the ancient island of Akinah.

If there was a secret of how to avoid death by the device she loved, she would find it here.

Her stomach began acting up again as they rowed. Kaza endured it, though she felt as if she were slipping into the other world. That wasn’t an ocean beneath her, but deep black glass. And two suns in the sky, one that drew her soul toward it. Her shadow, to stretch out in the wrong direction …

Splash.

She started. One of the sailors had slipped from his boat into the water. She gaped as another slumped to the side, oar falling from his fingers.

“Captain?” She turned to find him with drooping eyes. He went limp, then fell backward, unconscious, knocking his head against the back seat of the boat.

The rest of the sailors weren’t doing any better. The other two dinghies had begun to drift aimlessly. Not a single sailor seemed to be conscious.

My destiny, Kaza thought. My choice.

Not a thing to be carted from place to place, and ordered to Soulcast. Not a tool. A person.

She shoved aside an unconscious sailor and took the oars herself. It was difficult work. She was unaccustomed to physical labor, and her fingers had trouble gripping. They’d started to dissolve further. Perhaps a year or two for her survival was optimistic.

Still, she rowed. She fought the waters until she at long last got close enough to hop out into the water and feel rock beneath her feet. Her robes billowing up around her, she finally thought to check if Vazrmeb was alive.

None of the sailors in her dinghy were breathing, so she let the boat slip backward on the waves. Alone, Kaza fought through the surf and—finally—on hands and knees, crawled up onto the stones of the island.

There, she collapsed, drowsy. Why was she so sleepy?

She awoke to a small cremling scuttling across the rocks near her. It had a strange shape, with large wings and a head that made it look like an axehound. Its carapace shimmered with dozens of colors.

Kaza could remember a time when she’d collected cremlings, pinning them to boards and proclaiming she’d become a natural historian. What had happened to that girl?

She was transformed by necessity. Given the Soulcaster, which was always to be kept in the royal family. Given a charge.

And a death sentence.

She stirred, and the cremling scrambled away. She coughed, then began to crawl toward those rock formations. That city? Dark city of stone? She could barely think, though she did notice a gemstone as she passed it—a large uncut gemheart among the bleached white carapace leftovers of a dead greatshell. Vazrmeb had been right.

She collapsed again near the perimeter of the rock formations. They looked like large, ornate buildings, crusted with crem.

“Ah…” a voice said from behind her. “I should have guessed the drug would not affect you as quickly. You are barely human anymore.”

Kaza rolled over and found someone approaching on quiet, bare feet. The cook? Yes, that was her, with the tattooed face.

“You…” Kaza croaked, “you poisoned us.”

“After many warnings not to come to this place,” the cook said. “It is rare I must guard it so … aggressively. Men must not again discover this place.”

“The gemstones?” Kaza asked, growing more drowsy. “Or … is it something else … something … more…”

“I cannot speak,” the cook said, “even to sate a dying demand. There are those who could pull secrets from your soul, and the cost would be the ends of worlds. Sleep now, Soulcaster. This is the most merciful end I could give.”

The cook began to hum. Pieces of her broke off. She crumbled to a pile of chittering little cremlings that moved out of her clothing, leaving it in a heap.

A hallucination? Kaza wondered as she drifted.

She was dying. Well, that was nothing new.

The cremlings began to pick at her hand, taking off her Soulcaster. No … she had one last thing to do.

With a defiant shout, she pressed her hand to the rocky ground beneath her and demanded it change. When it became smoke, she went with it.

Her choice.

Her destiny.

I-5. Taravangian

Taravangian paced in his rooms in Urithiru as two servants from the Diagram arranged his table, and fidgety Dukar—head of the King’s Testers, who each wore a ridiculous stormwarden robe with glyphs all along the seams—set out the tests, though they needn’t have bothered.

Today, Taravangian was a storming genius.

The way he thought, breathed, even moved, implicitly conveyed that today was a day of intelligence—perhaps not as brilliant as that single transcendent one when he’d created the Diagram, but he finally felt like himself after so many days trapped in the mausoleum of his own flesh, his mind like a master painter allowed only to whitewash walls.

Once the table was finished, Taravangian pushed a nameless servant aside and sat down, grabbing a pen and launching into the problems—starting at the second page, as the first was too simple—and flicking ink at Dukar when the idiot started to complain.

“Next page,” he snapped. “Quickly, quickly. Let’s not waste this, Dukar.”

“You still must—”

“Yes, yes. Prove myself not an idiot. The one day I’m not drooling and lying in my own waste, you tax my time with this idiocy.”

“You set—”

“It up. Yes, the irony is that you let the prohibitions instituted by my idiot self control my true self when it finally has opportunity to emerge.”

“You weren’t an idiot when you—”

“Here,” Taravangian said, proffering the sheet of math problems to him. “Done.”

“All but the last on this sheet,” Dukar said, taking it in cautious fingers. “Do you want to try that one, or…”

“No need. I know I can’t solve it; too bad. Make quick with the requisite formalities. I have work to do.”

Adrotagia had entered with Malata, the Dustbringer; they were growing in companionship as Adrotagia attempted to secure an emotional bond with this lesser Diagram member who had suddenly been thrust into its upper echelons, an event predicted by the Diagram—which explained that the Dustbringers would be the Radiants most likely to accept their cause, and at that Taravangian felt proud, for actually locating one of their number who could bond a spren had not, by any means, been an assured accomplishment.

“He’s smart,” Dukar said to Mrall. The bodyguard was the final adjudicator of Taravangian’s daily capacity—an infuriating check necessary to prevent his stupid side from ruining anything, but a mere annoyance when Taravangian was like this.

Energized.

Awake.

Brilliant.

“He’s almost to the danger line,” Dukar said.

“I can see that,” Adrotagia said. “Vargo, are you—”

“I feel perfect. Can’t we be done with this? I can interact, and make policy decisions, and need no restrictions.”

Dukar nodded, reluctantly, in agreement. Mrall assented. Finally!

“Get me a copy of the Diagram,” Taravangian said, pushing past Adrotagia. “And some music, something relaxing but not too slow. Clear the chambers of nonessential persons, empty the bedroom of furniture, and don’t interrupt me.”

It took them a frustratingly long time to accomplish, almost half an hour, which he spent on his balcony, contemplating the large space for a garden outside and wondering how big it was. He needed measurements.…

“Your room is prepared, Your Majesty,” Mrall said.

“Thank you, Uscritic one, for your leave to go into my own bedroom. Have you been drinking salt?”

“… What?”

Taravangian strode through the small room beside the balcony and into his bedroom, then breathed deeply, pleased to find it completely empty of furniture—only four blank stone walls, no window, though it had a strange rectangular outcropping along the back wall, like a high step, which Maben was dusting.

Taravangian seized the maid by the arm and hauled her out, to where Adrotagia was bringing him a thick book bound in hogshide. A copy of the Diagram. Excellent. “Measure the available gardening area of the stone field outside our balcony and report it to me.”

He carried the Diagram into the room, and then shut himself into blissful self-company, in which he arranged a diamond in each corner—a light to accompany that of his own spark, which shone in truth where others could not venture—and as he finished, a small choir of children started to sing Vorin hymns outside the room per his request.

He breathed in, out, bathed in light and encouraged by song, his hands to the sides; capable of anything, he was consumed by the satisfaction of his own working mind, unclogged and flowing freely for the first time in what seemed like ages.

He opened the Diagram. In it, Taravangian finally faced something greater than himself: a different version of himself.

The Diagram—which was the name for this book and for the organization that studied it—had not originally been written merely on paper, for on that day of majestic capacity, Taravangian had annexed every surface to hold his genius—from the cabinetry to the walls—and while so doing had invented new languages to better express ideas that had to be recorded, by necessity, in a medium less perfect than his thoughts. Even as the intellect he was today, the sight of that writing enforced humility; he leafed through pages packed with tiny scrawls, copied—spots, scratches, and all—from the original Diagram room, created during what felt like a different lifetime, as alien to him now as was the drooling idiot he sometimes became.

More alien. Everyone understood stupidity.

He knelt on the stones, ignoring his aches of body, reverently leafing through the pages. Then he slipped out his belt knife, and began to cut it up.

The Diagram had not been written on paper, and interacting with its transcription bound into codex form must necessarily have influenced their thinking, so to obtain true perspective—he now decided—he needed the flexibility of seeing the pieces, then arranging them in new ways, for his thoughts had not been locked down on that day and he should not perceive them as such today.

He was not as brilliant as he’d been on that day, but he didn’t need to be. That day, he’d been God. Today, he could be God’s prophet.

He arranged the cut-out pages, and found numerous new connections simply by how the sheets were placed next to each other—indeed, this page here actually connected to this page here … yes. Taravangian cut them both down the middle, dividing sentences. When he put the halves of separate pages beside one another, they made a more complete whole. Ideas he’d missed before seemed to rise from the pages like spren.

Taravangian did not believe in any religion, for they were unwieldy things, designed to fill gaps in human understanding with nonsensical explanations, allowing people to sleep well at night, granting them a false sense of comfort and control and preventing them from stretching further for true understanding, yet there was something strangely holy about the Diagram, the power of raw intelligence, the only thing man should worship, and oh how little most understood it—oh, how little they deserved it—in handling purity while corrupting it with flawed understanding and silly superstitions. Was there a way he could prevent any but the most intelligent from learning to read? That would accomplish so much good; it seemed insane that nobody had implemented such a ban, for while Vorinism forbade men to read, that merely prevented an arbitrary half of the population from handling information, when it was the stupid who should be barred.

He paced in the room, then noted a scrap of paper under the door; it contained the answer to his question about the size of the farming platform. He looked over the calculations, listening with half an ear to voices outside, almost overwhelmed by the singing children.

“Uscritic,” Adrotagia said, “seems to refer to Uscri, a figure from a tragic poem written seventeen hundred years ago. She drowned herself after hearing her lover had died, though the truth was that he’d not died at all, and she misunderstood the report about him.”

“All right…” Mrall said.

“She was used in following centuries as an example of acting without information, though the term eventually came to simply mean ‘stupid.’ The salt seems to refer to the fact that she drowned herself in the sea.”

“So it was an insult?” Mrall asked.

“Using an obscure literary reference. Yes.” He could almost hear Adrotagia’s sigh. Best to interrupt her before she thought on this further.

Taravangian flung open the door. “Gum paste for sticking paper to this wall. Fetch it for me, Adrotagia.”

They’d put paper in a stack by the door without being asked, which surprised him, as they usually had to be ordered to do everything. He closed the door, then knelt and did some calculations relating to the size of the tower city. Hmmmm …

It provided a fine distraction, but he was soon drawn back to the true work, interrupted only by the arrival of his gum paste, which he used to begin sticking fragments of the Diagram to his walls.

This, he thought, arranging pages with numbers interspersing the text, pages they’d never been able to make sense of. It’s a list of what? Not code, like the other numbers. Unless … could this be shorthand for words?

Yes … yes, he’d been too impatient to write the actual words. He’d numbered them in his head—alphabetically perhaps—so he could write quickly. Where was the key?

This is reinforcement, he thought as he worked, of the Dalinar paradigm! His hands shook with excitement as he wrote out possible interpretations. Yes … Kill Dalinar, or he will resist your attempts to take over Alethkar. So Taravangian had sent the Assassin in White, which—incredibly—had failed.

Fortunately, there were contingencies. Here, Taravangian thought, bringing up another scrap from the Diagram and gluing it to the wall beside the others. The initial explanation of the Dalinar paradigm, from the catechism of the headboard, back side, third quadrant. It had been written in meter, as a poem, and presaged that Dalinar would attempt to unite the world.

So if he looked to the second contingency …

Taravangian wrote furiously, seeing words instead of numbers, and—full of energy—for a time he forgot his age, his aches, the way his fingers trembled—sometimes—even when he wasn’t so excited.

The Diagram hadn’t seen the effect the second son, Renarin, would have—he was a completely wild element. Taravangian finished his notations, proud, and wandered toward the door, which he opened without looking up.

“Get me a copy of the surgeon’s words upon my birth,” he said to those outside. “Oh, and kill those children.”

The music trailed off as the children heard what he’d said. Musicspren flitted away.

“You mean, quiet them from singing,” Mrall said.

“Whatever. I’m perturbed by the Vorin hymns as a reminder of historic religious oppression of ideas and thought.”

Taravangian returned to his work, but a short time later a knock came at the door. He flung it open. “I was not to be—”

“Interrupted,” Adrotagia said, proffering him a sheet of paper. “The surgeon’s words you requested. We keep them handy now, considering how often you ask for them.”

“Fine.”

“We need to talk, Vargo.”

“No we—”

She walked in anyway, then stopped, inspecting the cut-up pieces of the Diagram. Her eyes widened as she turned about. “Are you…”

“No,” he said. “I haven’t become him again. But I am me, for the first time in weeks.”

“This isn’t you. This is the monster you sometimes become.”

“I am not smart enough to be in the dangerous zone.” The zone where, annoyingly, they claimed he was too smart to be allowed to make decisions. As if intelligence were somehow a liability!

She unfolded a piece of paper from the pocket of her skirt. “Yes, your daily test. You stopped on this page, claiming you couldn’t answer the next question.”

Damnation. She’d seen it.

“If you’d answered,” she said, “it would have proved you were intelligent enough to be dangerous. Instead, you decided you couldn’t manage. A loophole we should have considered. You knew that if you finished the question, we’d restrict your decision-making for the day.”

“Do you know about Stormlight growth?” he said, brushing past her and taking one of the pages he’d written earlier.

“Vargo…”

“Calculating the total surface area for farming at Urithiru,” he said, “and comparing it to the projected number of rooms that could be occupied, I have determined that even if food grew here naturally—as it would at the temperatures of your average fecund plain—it could not provide enough to sustain the entire tower.”

“Trade,” she said.

“I have trouble believing the Knights Radiant, always threatened with war, would build a fortress like this to be anything but self-sufficient. Have you read Golombi?”

“Of course I have, and you know it,” she said. “You think they enhanced the growth by use of Stormlight-infused gemstones, providing light to darkened places?”

“Nothing else makes sense, does it?”

“The tests are inconclusive,” she said. “Yes, spherelight inspires growth in a dark room, when candlelight cannot, but Golombi says that the results may have been compromised, and the efficiency is … Oh, bah! That’s a distraction, Vargo. We were discussing what you’ve done to circumvent the rules you yourself set out!”

“When I was stupid.”

“When you were normal.”

“Normal is stupid, Adro.” He took her by the shoulders and firmly pushed her from the room. “I won’t make policy decisions, and I’ll avoid ordering the murder of any further groups of melodic children. Fine? All right? Now leave me alone. You’re stinking up the place with an air of contented idiocy.”

He shut the door, and—deep down—felt a glimmer of shame. Had he called Adrotagia, of all people, an idiot?

Well. Nothing to do about it now. She would understand.

He set to work again, cutting out more of the Diagram, arranging it, searching for any mentions of the Blackthorn, as there was too much in the book to study today, and he had to be focused on their current problem.

Dalinar lived. He was building a coalition. So what did Taravangian do now? Another assassin?

What is the secret? he thought, holding up sheets from the Diagram, finding one where he could see the words on the other side through the paper. Could that have been intentional? What should I do? Please. Show me the way.

He scribbled words on a page. Light. Intelligence. Meaning. He hung them on the wall to inspire him, but he couldn’t help reading the surgeon’s words—the words of a master healer who had delivered Taravangian through a cut in his mother’s belly.

He had the cord wrapped around his neck, the surgeon had said. The queen will know the best course, but I regret to inform her that while he lives, your son may have diminished capacity. Perhaps this is one to keep on outer estates, in favor of other heirs.

The “diminished capacity” hadn’t appeared, but the reputation had chased Taravangian from childhood, so pervasive in people’s minds that not a one had seen through his recent act of stupidity, which they’d attributed to a stroke or to simple senility. Or maybe, some said, that was the way he’d always been.

He’d overcome that reputation in magnificent ways. Now he’d save the world. Well, the part of the world that mattered.

He worked for hours, pinning up more portions of the Diagram, then scribbling on them as connections came to him, using beauty and light to chase away the shadows of dullness and ignorance, giving him answers—they were here, he merely needed to interpret them.

His maid finally interrupted him; the annoying woman was always bustling around, trying to make him do this or that, as if he didn’t have more important concerns than soaking his feet.

“Idiot woman!” he shouted.

She didn’t flinch, but walked forward and put a tray of food down beside him.

“Can’t you see that my work here is important?” he demanded. “I haven’t time for food.”

She set out drink for him, then, infuriatingly, patted him on the shoulder. As she left, he noticed Adrotagia and Mrall standing right outside.

“I don’t suppose,” he said to Mrall, “you’d execute that maid if I demanded it?”

“We have decided,” the bodyguard said, “that you are not allowed to make such decisions today.”

“To Damnation with you then. I almost have the answers anyway. We must not assassinate Dalinar Kholin. The time has passed for that. Instead, we must support his coalition. Then we force him to step down, so that I can take his place at the head of the monarchs.”

Adrotagia walked in and inspected his work. “I doubt Dalinar will simply give leadership of the coalition to you.”

Taravangian rapped on a set of pages stuck to the wall. “Look here. It should be clear, even to you. I foresaw this.”

“You’ve made changes,” Mrall said, aghast. “To the Diagram.”

“Only little ones,” Taravangian said. “Look, see the original writing here? I didn’t change that, and it’s clear. Our task now is to make Dalinar withdraw from leadership, take his place.”

“We don’t kill him?” Mrall asked.

Taravangian eyed him, then turned and waved toward the other wall, with even more papers stuck to it. “Killing him now would only raise suspicion.”

“Yes,” Adrotagia said, “I see this interpretation of the headboard—we must push the Blackthorn so hard that he collapses. But we’ll need secrets to use against him.”

“Easy,” Taravangian said, pushing her toward another set of notations on the wall. “We send that Dustbringer’s spren to spy. Dalinar Kholin reeks of secrets. We can break him, and I can take his place—as the coalition will see me as nonthreatening—whereupon we’ll be in a position of power to negotiate with Odium—who will, by laws of spren and gods, be bound by the agreement made.”

“Can’t we … beat Odium instead?” Mrall asked.

Muscle-bound idiot. Taravangian rolled his eyes, but Adrotagia—more sentimental than he was—turned and explained. “The Diagram is clear, Mrall,” she said. “This is the purpose of its creation. We cannot beat the enemy; so instead, we save whatever we can.”

“The only way,” Taravangian agreed. Dalinar would never accept this fact. Only one man would be strong enough to make that sacrifice.

Taravangian felt a glimmer of … something. Memory.

Give me the capacity to save us.

“Take this,” he said to Adrotagia, pulling down a sheet he’d annotated. “This will work.”

She nodded, towing Mrall from the room as Taravangian knelt before the broken, ripped, sliced-up remnants of the Diagram.

Light and truth. Save what he could.

Abandon the rest.

Thankfully, he had been given that capacity.

I-6. This One Is Mine

Venli was determined to live worthy of power.

She presented herself with the others, a small group selected from the remaining listeners, and braced for the oncoming storm.

She didn’t know if Ulim—or his phantom masters, the ancient listener gods—could read her mind. But if they could, they’d find that she was loyal.

This was war, and Venli among its vanguard. She had discovered the first Voidspren. She had discovered stormform. She had redeemed her people. She was blessed.

Today would prove it. Nine of them had been selected from among the two thousand listener survivors, Venli included. Demid stood beside her with a wide grin on his face. He loved to learn new things, and the storm was another adventure. They’d been promised something great.

See, Eshonai? Venli thought. See what we can do, if you don’t hold us back?

“All right, yes, that’s it,” Ulim said, rippling across the ground as vibrant red energy. “Good, good. All in a line. Keep facing west.”

“Should we seek for cover before the storm, Envoy?” Melu asked to the Rhythm of Agony. “Or carry shields?”

Ulim took the form of a small person before them. “Don’t be silly. This is our storm. You have nothing to fear.”

“And it will bring us power,” Venli said. “Power beyond even that of stormform?”

“Great power,” Ulim said. “You’ve been chosen. You’re special. But you must embrace this. Welcome it. You have to want it, or the powers will not be able to take a place in your gemhearts.”

Venli had suffered so much, but this was her reward. She was done with a life spent wasting away under human oppression. She would never again be trapped, impotent. With this new power, she would always, always be able to fight back.

The Everstorm appeared from the west, returning as it had before. A tiny village in the near distance fell into the storm’s shadow, then was illuminated by the striking of bright red lightning.

Venli stepped forward and hummed to Craving, holding her arms out to the sides. The storm wasn’t like the highstorms—no stormwall of blown debris and cremwater. This was far more elegant. It was a billowing cloud of smoke and darkness, lightning breaking out on all sides, coloring it crimson.

She tipped her head back to meet the boiling, churning clouds, and was consumed by the storm.

Angry, violent darkness overshadowed her. Flecks of burning ash streamed past her on all sides, and she felt no rain this time. Just the beat of thunder. The storm’s pulse.

Ash bit into her skin, and something crashed down beside her, rolling on the stones. A tree? Yes, a burning tree. Sand, shredded bark, and pebbles washed across her skin and carapace. She knelt down, eyes squeezed closed, arms protecting her face from the blown debris.

Something larger glanced off her arm, cracking her carapace. She gasped and dropped to the stone ground, curling up.

A pressure enveloped her, pushing at her mind, her soul. Let Me In.

With difficulty, she opened herself up to this force. This was just like adopting a new form, right?

Pain seared her insides, as if someone had set fire to her veins. She screamed, and sand bit her tongue. Tiny coals ripped at her clothing, singeing her skin.

And then, a voice.

WHAT IS THIS?

It was a warm voice. An ancient, paternal voice, kindly and enveloping.

“Please,” Venli said, gasping in breaths of smoky air. “Please.”

YES, the voice said. CHOOSE ANOTHER. THIS ONE IS MINE.

The force that had been pushing against her retreated, and the pain stopped. Something else—something smaller, less domineering—took its place. She accepted this spren gladly, then whimpered in relief, attuned to Agony.

An eternity seemed to pass as she lay huddled before the storm. Finally, the winds weakened. The lightning faded. The thunder moved into the distance.

She blinked the grit from her eyes. Bits of cremstone and broken bark streamed from her as she moved. She coughed, then stood, looking at her ruined clothing and singed skin.

She no longer bore stormform. She’d changed to … was this nimbleform? Her clothing felt large on her, and her body no longer bore its impressive musculature. She attuned the rhythms, and found they were still the new ones—the violent, angry rhythms that came with forms of power.

This wasn’t nimbleform, but it also wasn’t anything she recognized. She had breasts—though they were small, as with most forms outside of mateform—and long hairstrands. She turned about to see if the others were the same.

Demid stood nearby, and though his clothing was in tatters, his well-muscled body wasn’t scored. He stood tall—far taller than her—with a broad chest and powerful stance. He seemed more like a statue than a listener. He flexed, eyes glowing red, and his body pulsed with a dark violet power—a glow that somehow evoked both light and darkness at once. It retreated, but Demid seemed pleased by his ability to invoke it.

What form was that? So majestic, with ridges of carapace poking through his skin along the arms and at the corners of the face. “Demid?” she asked.

He turned toward Melu, who strode up in a similar form and said something in a language Venli didn’t recognize. The rhythms were there though, and this was to Derision.

“Demid?” Venli asked again. “How do you feel? What happened?”

He spoke again in that strange language, and his next words seemed to blur in her mind, somehow shifting until she understood them. “… Odium rides the very winds, like the enemy once did. Incredible. Aharat, is that you?”

“Yes,” Melu said. “This … this feels … good.”

“Feel,” Demid said. “It feels.” He took a long, deep breath. “It feels.”

Had they gone mad?

Nearby, Mrun pulled himself past a large boulder, which had not been there before. With horror, Venli realized that she could see a broken arm underneath it, blood leaking out. In direct defiance of Ulim’s promise of safety, one of them had been crushed.

Though Mrun had been blessed with a tall, imperious form like the others, he stumbled as he stepped away from the boulder. He grabbed the stone, then fell to his knees. His body coursing with that dark violet light, he groaned, muttering gibberish. Altoki approached from the other direction, standing low, teeth bared, her steps like those of a predator. When she drew closer, Venli could hear her whispering between bared teeth. “High sky. Dead winds. Blood rain.”

“Demid,” Venli said to Destruction. “Something has gone wrong. Sit down, wait. I will find the spren.”

Demid looked at her. “You knew this corpse?”

“This corpse? Demid, why—”

“Oh no. Oh no. Oh no!” Ulim coursed across the ground to her. “You— You aren’t— Oh, bad, bad.”

“Ulim!” Venli demanded, attuning Derision and gesturing at Demid. “Something is wrong with my companions. What have you brought upon us?”

“Don’t talk to them, Venli!” Ulim said, forming into the shape of a little man. “Don’t point at them!”

Nearby, Demid was pooling dark violet power in his hand somehow, studying her and Ulim. “It is you,” he said to Ulim. “The Envoy. You have my respect for your work, spren.”

Ulim bowed to Demid. “Please, grand of the Fused, see passion and forgive this child.”

“You should explain to her,” Demid said, “so she does not … aggravate me.”

Venli frowned. “What is—”

“Come with me,” Ulim said, rippling across the ground. Concerned, overwhelmed by her experience, Venli attuned Agony and followed. Behind, Demid and the others were gathering.

Ulim formed as a person again before her. “You’re lucky. He could have destroyed you.”

“Demid would never do that.”

“Unfortunately for you, your once-mate is gone. That’s Hariel—and he has one of the worst tempers of all the Fused.”

“Hariel? What do you mean by…” She trailed off as the others spoke softly to Demid. They stood so tall, so haughty, and their mannerisms—all wrong.

Each new form changed a listener, down to their ways of thinking, even their temperament. Despite that, you were always you. Even stormform hadn’t changed her into someone else. Perhaps … she had become less empathetic, more aggressive. But she’d still been herself.

This was different. Demid didn’t stand like her once-mate, or speak like him.

“No…” she whispered. “You said we were opening ourselves up to a new spren, a new form!”

“I said,” Ulim hissed, “that you were opening yourselves up. I didn’t say what would enter. Look, your gods need bodies. It’s like this every Return. You should be flattered.”

“Flattered to be killed?”

“Yeah, for the good of the race,” Ulim said. “Those are the Fused: ancient souls reborn. What you have, apparently, is just another form of power. A bond with a lesser Voidspren, which puts you above common listeners—who have normal forms—but a step below the Fused. A big step.”

She nodded, then started to walk back toward the group.

“Wait,” Ulim said, rippling across the ground before her. “What are you doing? What is wrong with you?”

“I’m going to send that soul out,” she said. “Bring Demid back. He needs to know the consequences before he can choose such a drastic—”

“Back?” Ulim said. “Back? He’s dead. As you should be. This is bad. What did you do? Resist, like that sister of yours?”

“Out of my way.”

“He’ll kill you. I warned of his temper—”

“Envoy,” Demid said to Destruction, turning toward them. It wasn’t his voice.

She attuned Agony. It wasn’t his voice.

“Let her pass,” the thing with Demid’s body said. “I will speak with her.”

Ulim sighed. “Bother.”

“You speak like a human, spren,” Demid said. “Your service here was grand, but you use their ways, their language. I find that displeasing.”

Ulim rippled away across the stones. Venli stepped up to the group of Fused. Two still had trouble moving. They lurched, stumbled, fell to their knees. A different two wore smiles, twisted and wrong.

The listener gods were not completely sane.

“I regret the death of your friend, good servant,” Demid said with a deep voice, fully in sync with the Rhythm of Command. “Though you are the children of traitors, your war here is to be commended. You faced our hereditary enemies and gave no quarter, even when doomed.”

“Please,” Venli said. “He was precious to me. Can you return him?”

“He has passed into the blindness beyond,” Demid said. “Unlike the witless Voidspren you bonded—which resides in your gemheart—my soul cannot share its dwelling. Nothing, not Regrowth or act of Odium, can restore him now.”

He reached out and took Venli by the chin, lifting her face, inspecting it. “You were to bear a soul I have fought beside for thousands of years. She was turned away, and you were reserved. Odium has a purpose for you. Revel in that, and mourn not your friend’s passing. Odium will bring vengeance at long last to those we fight.”

He let go of her, and she had to struggle to keep herself from collapsing. No. No, she would not show weakness.

But … Demid …

She put him out of her mind, like Eshonai before him. This was the path she had placed herself on from the moment she’d first listened to Ulim years ago, deciding that she would risk the return of her people’s gods.

Demid had fallen, but she had been preserved. And Odium himself, god of gods, had a purpose for her. She sat down on the ground to wait as the Fused conversed in their strange language. As she waited, she noted something hovering near the ground a short distance away. A little spren that looked like a ball of light. Yes … she’d seen one of those near Eshonai. What was it?

It seemed agitated, and scooted across the stone closer to her. She instantly knew something—an instinctive truth, as sure as the storms and the sun. If the creatures standing nearby saw this spren, they would destroy it.

She slapped her hand down over the spren as the creature wearing Demid’s body turned toward her. She cupped the little spren against the stone, and attuned Abashment.

He didn’t seem to notice what she’d done.

“Ready yourself to be carried,” he said. “We must travel to Alethela.”