Words of Radiance

“Are you implying that the Assassin in White never really worked for the Parshendi?” Kaladin asked. “Or are you implying that the Parshendi lied about being as isolated as they claimed?”

“I’m not implying anything,” Sigzil said, turning toward Kaladin. “My master trained me to ask questions, so I’m asking them. Something doesn’t make sense about this whole matter. The Shin are extremely xenophobic. They rarely leave their lands, and you never find them working as mercenaries. Now this one goes about assassinating kings? With a Shardblade? Is he still working for the Parshendi? If so, why did they wait so long to unleash him against us again?”

“Does it matter who he’s working for?” Kaladin asked, sucking in Stormlight.

“Of course it does,” Sigzil said.

“Why?”

“Because it’s a question,” he said, as if offended. “Besides, discovering his true employer might give us a clue to their goal, and knowing that might help us defeat him.”

Kaladin smiled, then tried to run up the wall.

After falling to the ground, ending up flat on his back, he sighed.

Rock’s head leaned in over him. “Is fun to watch,” he said. “But this thing, you are certain she can work?”

“The assassin walked on the ceiling,” Kaladin said.

“Are you sure he wasn’t just doing what we did?” Sigzil asked skeptically. “Using the Stormlight to stick one object to another? He could have sprayed the ceiling with Stormlight, then jumped up into it to stick there.”

“No,” Kaladin said, Stormlight escaping his lips. “He jumped up and landed on the ceiling. Then he ran down the wall and sent Adolin to the ceiling somehow. The prince didn’t stick there, he fell that way.” Kaladin watched his Stormlight rise and evaporate. “At the end of it all, the assassin . . . he flew away.”

“Ha!” Lopen said from his rock perch. “I knew it. When we have this figured out, the king of all Herdaz, he will say to me, ‘Lopen, you are glowing, and this is impressive. But you can also fly. For this, you may marry my daughter.’”

“The king of Herdaz doesn’t have a daughter,” Sigzil said.

“He doesn’t? I have been lied to all this time!”

“You don’t know your royal family?” Kaladin asked, sitting up.

“Gon, I haven’t been to Herdaz since I was a baby. There are as many Herdazians in Alethkar and Jah Keved these days as there are in our homeland. Flick my sparks, I’m practically an Alethi! Only not so tall and not so grouchy.”

Rock gave Kaladin a hand and pulled him to his feet. Syl had taken a perch on the wall.

“Do you know how this works?” Kaladin asked her.

She shook her head.

“But the assassin is a Windrunner,” Kaladin said.

“I think?” Syl said. “Something like you? Maybe?” She shrugged.

Sigzil followed the direction that Kaladin was looking. “I wish I could see it,” he mumbled. “It would be a— Gah!” He jumped backward, pointing. “It looks like a little person!”

Kaladin raised an eyebrow toward Syl.

“I like him,” she said. “Also, Sigzil, I’m a ‘she’ and not an ‘it,’ thank you very much.”

“Spren have genders?” Sigzil asked, amazed.

“Of course,” she said. “Though, technically, it probably has something to do with the way people view us. Personification of the forces of nature or some similar gobbletyblarthy.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?” Kaladin asked. “That you might be a creation of human perception?”

“You’re a creation of your parents. Who cares how we were born? I can think. That’s good enough.” She grinned in a mischievous way, then zipped down as a ribbon of light toward Sigzil, who had settled down on a rock with a stunned expression. She stopped right in front of him, returned to the form of a young woman, then leaned in and made her face look exactly like his.

“Gah!” Sigzil cried again, scrambling away, making her giggle and change her face back.

Sigzil looked toward Kaladin. “She talks . . . She talks like a real person.” He raised a hand to his head. “The stories say the Nightwatcher might be capable of that. . . . Powerful spren. Vast spren.”

“Is he calling me vast?” Syl said, cocking her head to the side. “Not sure what I think of that.”

“Sigzil,” Kaladin said, “could the Windrunners fly?”

The man gingerly sat back down, still staring at Syl. “Stories and lore aren’t my specialty,” he said. “I tell of different places, to make the world smaller and to help men understand each other. I’ve heard legends speak of people dancing on the clouds, but who is to say what is fancy and what is truth, from stories so old?”

“We’ve got to figure this out,” Kaladin said. “The assassin will return.”

“So,” Rock said, “jump at wall some more. I will not laugh much.” He settled down on a boulder and plucked a small crab off the ground beside him. He inspected it, then popped it into his mouth and began chewing.

“Ew,” Sigzil said.

“Tastes good,” Rock said, speaking with his mouth full. “But better with salt and oil.”

Kaladin regarded the wall, then closed his eyes and drew in more Stormlight. He felt it inside of him, beating against the walls of his veins and arteries, trying to escape. Daring him forward. To jump, to move, to do.

“So,” Sigzil said to the others, “are we assuming that the Assassin in White was the one who sabotaged the king’s railing?”

“Bah,” Rock said. “Why would he do this thing? He could kill more easily.”

“Yeah,” Lopen agreed. “Maybe the railing was done by one of the other highprinces.”

Kaladin opened his eyes and looked at his arm, palm against the slick wall of the chasm, elbow straight. Stormlight rose from his skin. Curling wisps of Light that vaporized in the air.

Rock nodded. “All highprinces want the king dead, though they will not speak of this. One of them sent saboteur.”

“So how did this saboteur get to the balcony?” Sigzil asked. “It must have taken some time to cut through the railing. It was metal. Unless . . . How smooth was that cut, Kaladin?”

Kaladin narrowed his eyes, watching that Stormlight rise. It was raw power. No. “Power” was the wrong term. It was a force, like the Surges that ruled the universe. They made fire burn, made rocks fall, made light glow. These wisps, they were the Surges reduced to some primal form.

He could use it. Use it to . . .

“Kal?” Sigzil’s voice asked, though it seemed distant. Like an unimportant buzzing. “How smooth was the cut to the railing? Could it have been a Shardblade?”

The voice faded. For a moment, Kaladin thought he saw shadows of a world that was not, shadows of another place. And in that place, a distant sky with a sun enclosed, almost as if by a corridor of clouds.

There.

He made the direction of the wall become down.

Suddenly, his arm was all that was supporting him. He fell forward into the wall, grunting. His awareness of his surroundings returned in a crash—only, his perspective was bizarre. He scrambled to his feet, and found himself standing on the wall.

He backed up a few paces—walking up the side of the chasm. To him, that wall was the floor, and the other three bridgemen stood on the actual floor, which looked like the wall. . . .

This, Kaladin thought, is going to get confusing.

“Wow,” Lopen said, standing up excitedly. “Yeah, this is really going to be fun. Run up the wall, gancho!”

Kaladin hesitated, then turned and started running. It was like he was in a cave, the two walls of the chasm the top and bottom. Those slowly squeezed together as he moved toward the sky.

Feeling the rush of the Stormlight within him, Kaladin grinned. Syl streaked along beside him, laughing. The closer they got to the top, the narrower the chasm became. Kaladin slowed, then stopped.

Syl streaked out in front of him, zipping out of the chasm as if leaping from the mouth of the cave. She turned about, a ribbon of light.

“Come on!” she called to him. “Out onto the plateau! Into the sunlight!”

“There are scouts out there,” he said, “watching for gemhearts.”

“Come out anyway. Stop hiding, Kaladin. Be.”

Lopen and Rock whooped below in excitement. Kaladin stared outward at the blue sky. “I have to know,” he whispered.

“Know?”

“You ask me why I protect Dalinar. I have to know if he really is what he seems, Syl. I have to know if one of them lives up to his reputation. That will tell me—”

“Tell you?” she asked, becoming the image of a full-size young woman standing on the wall before him. She was nearly as tall as he was, her dress fading to mist. “Tell you what?”

“If honor is dead,” Kaladin whispered.

“He is,” Syl said. “But he lives on in men. And in me.”

Kaladin frowned.

“Dalinar Kholin is a good man,” Syl said.

“He is friends with Amaram. He could be the same, inside.”