Words of Radiance

Shallan climbed off her bed and tossed the book onto her white-painted writing desk. She knelt beside Jasnah’s trunk, digging through it before coming out with a map of Roshar. It was ancient, and not terribly accurate; Alethkar was depicted as far too large and the world as a whole was misshapen, with trade routes emphasized. It clearly predated modern methods of survey and cartography. Still, it was important, for it showed the Silver Kingdoms as they had supposedly existed during the time of the Knights Radiant.

“Urithiru,” Shallan said, pointing toward a shining city depicted on the map as the center of everything. It wasn’t in Alethkar, or Alethela as it had been known at the time. The map put it in the middle of the mountains near what might have been modern Jah Keved. However, Jasnah’s annotations said other maps from the time placed it elsewhere. “How could they not know where their capital was, the center of the orders of knights? Why does every map argue with its fellows?”

“Mmmmmm . . .” Pattern said, thoughtful. “Perhaps many had heard of it, but never visited.”

“Cartographers as well?” Shallan asked. “And the kings who commissioned these maps? Surely some of them had been to the place. Why on Roshar would it be so difficult to pinpoint?”

“They wished to keep its location secret, perhaps?”

Shallan stuck the map to the wall using some weevilwax from Jasnah’s supplies. She backed away, folding her arms. She hadn’t dressed for the day yet, and wore her dressing gown, hands uncovered.

“If that’s the case,” Shallan said, “they did too good a job of it.” She dug out a few other maps from the time, created by other kingdoms. In each, Shallan noted, the country of origin was presented far larger than it should have been. She stuck these to the wall too.

“Each shows Urithiru in a different location,” Shallan said. “Notably close to their own lands, yet not in their lands.”

“Different languages on each,” Pattern said. “Mmm . . . There are patterns here.” He started to try sounding them out.

Shallan smiled. Jasnah had told her that several of them were thought to have been written in the Dawnchant, a dead language. Scholars had been trying for years to—

“Behardan King . . . something I do not understand . . . order, perhaps . . .” Pattern said. “Map? Yes, that would likely be map. So the next is perhaps to draw . . . draw . . . something I do not understand . . .”

“You’re reading it?”

“It is a pattern.”

“You’re reading the Dawnchant.”

“Not well.”

“You’re reading the Dawnchant!” Shallan exclaimed. She scrambled up to the map beside which Pattern hovered, then rested her fingers on the script at the bottom. “Behardan, you said? Maybe Bajerden . . . Nohadon himself.”

“Bajerden? Nohadon? Must people have so many names?”

“One is honorific,” Shallan said. “His original name wasn’t considered symmetrical enough. Well, I guess it wasn’t really symmetrical at all, so the ardents gave him a new one centuries ago.”

“But . . . the new one isn’t symmetrical either.”

“The h sound can be for any letter,” Shallan said absently. “We write it as the symmetrical letter, to make the word balance, but add a diacritical mark to indicate it sounds like an h so the word is easier to say.”

“That— One can’t just pretend that a word is symmetrical when it isn’t!”

Shallan ignored his sputtering, instead staring at the alien script of what was supposedly the Dawnchant. If we do find Jasnah’s city, Shallan thought, and if it does have records, they might be in this language. “We need to see how much of the Dawnchant you can translate.”

“I did not read it,” Pattern said, annoyed. “I postulated a few words. The name I could translate because of the sounds of the cities above.”

“But those aren’t written in the Dawnchant!”

“The scripts are derived from one another,” Pattern said. “Obviously.”

“So obvious that no human scholar has ever figured it out.”

“You are not as good with patterns,” he said, sounding smug. “You are abstract. You think in lies and tell them to yourselves. That is fascinating, but it is not good for patterns.”

You are abstract . . . Shallan rounded the bed and slipped a book from the pile there, one written by the scholar Ali-daughter-Hasweth of Shinovar. The Shin scholars were among the most interesting to read, as their perspectives on the rest of Roshar could be so frank, so different.

She found the passage she wanted. Jasnah had highlighted it in her notes, so Shallan had sent out for the full book. Sebarial’s stipend to her—which he was paying—came in very handy. Vathah and Gaz, by her request, had spent the last few days visiting book merchants asking after Words of Radiance, the book Jasnah had given her just before dying. So far no luck, though one merchant had claimed he might be able to order it in from Kholinar.

“Urithiru was the connection to all nations,” she read from the Shin writer’s work. “And, at times, our only path to the outside world, with its stones unhallowed.” She looked up at Pattern. “What does that mean to you?”

“It means what it says,” Pattern replied, still hovering beside the maps. “That Urithiru was well connected. Roads, perhaps?”

“I’ve always read the phrase metaphorically. Connected in purpose, in thought, and scholarship.”

“Ah. Lies.”

“What if it’s not a metaphor? What if it’s like what you say?” She rose and crossed the room toward the maps, resting her fingers on Urithiru at the center. “Connected . . . but not by roads. Some of these maps don’t have any roads leading to Urithiru at all. They all place it in the mountains, or at least the hills. . . .”

“Mmm.”

“How do you reach a city if not by roads?” Shallan asked. “Nohadon could walk there, or so he claimed. But others do not speak of riding, or walking, to Urithiru.” True, there were few accounts of people visiting the city. It was a legend. Most modern scholars considered it a myth.

She needed more information. She scrambled over to Jasnah’s trunk, digging out one of her notebooks. “She said that Urithiru wasn’t on the Shattered Plains,” Shallan said, “but what if the pathway to it is here? Not an ordinary pathway, though. Urithiru was the city of Surgebinders. Of ancient wonders, like Shardblades.”

“Mm . . .” Pattern said softly. “Shardblades are no wonder . . .”

Shallan found the reference she was searching for. It wasn’t the quote she found curious, but Jasnah’s annotation of it. Another folktale, this one recorded in Among the Darkeyed, by Calinam. Page 102. Stories of instantaneous travel and the Oathgates pervade these tales.

Instantaneous travel. Oathgates.

“That’s what she was coming here for,” Shallan whispered. “She thought she could find a passageway here, on the Plains. But they’re barren stormlands, just stone, crem, and greatshells.” She looked up at Pattern. “We really need to get out there, onto the Shattered Plains.”

Her announcement was accompanied by an ominous chime from the clock. Ominous in that it meant the hour was far later than she’d assumed. Storms! She needed to meet Adolin by noon. She had to leave in a half hour if she was going to meet him on time.

Shallan yelped and ran for the washroom. She turned the spigot for water to fill the tub. After a moment of it spitting out dirty cremwater, clean, warm water began to flow, and she put in the stopper. She put her hand underneath it, marveling yet again. Flowing warm water. Sebarial said that artifabrians had visited recently, arranging to set up a fabrial that would keep the water in the cistern above perpetually warm, like the ones in Kharbranth.

“I,” she said, shucking off her dressing gown, “am going to allow myself to grow very, very accustomed to this.”

She climbed into the tub as Pattern moved along the wall above her. She had decided not to be bashful around him. True, he had a male voice, but he wasn’t really a man. Besides, there were spren everywhere. The tub probably had one in it, as did the walls. She’d seen for herself that everything had a soul, or a spren, or whatever. Did she care if the walls watched her? No. So why should she care about Pattern?

She did have to repeat this line of reasoning every time he saw her undress. It would help if he weren’t so blasted curious about everything.

“The anatomical differences between genders are so slight,” Pattern said, humming to himself. “Yet so profound. And you augment them. Long hair. Blush on the cheeks. I went and watched Sebarial bathe last night and—”

“Please tell me you didn’t,” Shallan said, blushing as she grabbed some pasty soap from the jar beside the iron tub.

“But . . . I just told you that I did. . . . Anyway, I wasn’t seen. I would not need to do this if you’d be more accommodating.”

“I am not doing nude sketches for you.”

She had made the mistake of mentioning that many of the great artists had trained themselves this way. After much pleading back home, she’d gotten several of the maids to pose for her, so long as she promised to destroy the sketches. Which she had. She’d never sketched men that way. Storms, that would be embarrassing!