Words of Radiance

The cook grew pale, and nodded her head, sinking down in her chair.

Shallan nodded to her curtly, then walked from the kitchens out into the night. There, she ducked to the side of the building, heart pounding. A grin formed on her face anyway.

Out of sight, she exhaled Stormlight in a cloud, then stepped forward. As she passed through it, the image of Amaram vanished, replaced by that of the messenger boy she’d been imitating before. She scrambled back to the front of the building and sat down on the steps, slumping and leaning with her head on her hand.

Amaram and Hav walked up through the night, speaking softly. “. . . I didn’t notice that the girl had seen me talking to the messenger, Highlord,” Hav was saying. “She must have realized . . .” He trailed off as they saw Shallan.

She hopped to her feet and bowed to Amaram.

“It’s no matter now, Hav,” Amaram said, waving the soldier back to his rounds.

“Highlord,” Shallan said. “I bring you a message.”

“Obviously, darkborn,” the man said, stepping up to her. “What does he want?”

“He?” Shallan asked. “This is from Shallan Davar.”

Amaram cocked his head. “Who?”

“Betrothed of Adolin Kholin,” she said. “She is trying to update the accounting of all of the Shardblades in Alethkar with pictures. She would like to schedule a time to come and do a sketch of yours, if you are willing.”

“Oh,” Amaram said. He seemed to relax. “Yes, well, that would be fine. I am free most afternoons. Have her send someone to speak with my steward to arrange a meeting.”

“Yes, Highlord. I’ll see that it is done.” Shallan moved to leave.

“You came this late?” Amaram asked. “To ask such a simple question.”

Shallan shrugged. “I don’t question the commands of lighteyes, Highlord. But my mistress, well, she can be distracted at times. I suppose she wanted me on her task while it was fresh in her mind. And she’s really interested in Shardblades.”

“Who isn’t?” Amaram mused, turning away, speaking softly. “They’re wondrous things, aren’t they?”

Was he talking to her, or to himself? Shallan hesitated. A sword formed in his hand, mist coalescing, water beading on its surface. Amaram held it up, looking at himself in the reflection.

“Such beauty,” he said. “Such art. Why must we kill with our grandest creations? Ah, but I’m babbling, delaying you. I apologize. The Blade is still new to me. I find excuses to summon it.”

Shallan was barely listening. A Blade with the back edge ridged like flowing waves. Or perhaps tongues of fire. Etchings all along its surface. Curved, sinuous.

She knew this Blade.

It belonged to her brother Helaran.

* * *

Kaladin charged through the chasm, and the wind joined him, blowing at his back. Syl soared before him as a ribbon of light.

He reached a boulder in his way and jumped into the air, Lashing himself upward. He soared a good thirty feet upward before Lashing himself to the side and downward at the same time. The downward Lashing slowed his momentum upward; the sideways Lashing brought him to the wall.

He dismissed the downward Lashing and hit the wall with one hand, twisting and throwing himself to his feet. He kept running along the chasm wall. When he reached the end of the plateau, he leaped toward the next one and Lashed himself at its wall instead.

Faster! He held nearly all of the Stormlight he had left, fetched from the pouches he’d dropped earlier. He held so much that he glowed like a bonfire. It encouraged him as he jumped and Lashed himself forward, eastward. This made him fall through the chasm. The floor of the chasm whipped along beneath him, plants a blur to his sides.

He had to remember that he was falling. This was not flight, and every second he moved, his speed increased. That didn’t stop the feeling of liberty, of ultimate freedom. It just meant this could be dangerous.

The winds picked up and he Lashed himself backward at the last moment, slowing his descent as he crashed against a chasm wall before him.

That direction was down to him now, so he stood and ran along it. He was using the Stormlight at a furious rate, but he didn’t need to scrimp. He was paid like a lighteyed officer of the sixth dahn, and his spheres held not tiny chips of gemstone, but broams. A month’s pay for him now was more than he had ever seen at a time, and the Stormlight it held was a vast fortune compared to what he’d once known.

He shouted as he jumped a group of frillblooms, their fronds pulling in beneath him. He Lashed himself to the other chasm wall and crossed the chasm, landing on his hands. He threw himself back upward, and somehow Lashed himself only slightly in that direction.

Now much lighter, he was able to twist in the air and come down on his feet. He stood on the wall, facing down the chasm, hands in fists and Light pouring off him.

Syl hesitated, flitting around him back and forth. “What?” she asked.

“More,” he said, then Lashed himself forward again, down the corridor.

Fearless, he fell. This was his ocean to swim, his winds upon which to soar. He fell face-first toward the next plateau. Just before he arrived, he Lashed himself sideways and backward.

His stomach lurched. He felt like someone had tied a rope around him and pushed him off a cliff, then yanked on the rope right as he reached the end of it. The Stormlight inside, however, made the discomfort negligible. He pulled sideways, into another chasm.

Lashings sent him eastward again down another corridor, and he wove around plateaus, keeping to the chasms—like an eel swimming through the waves, swerving around boulders. Onward, faster, still falling . . .

Teeth clenched at both the wonder and the forces twisting him, he tossed caution aside and Lashed himself upward. Once, twice, three times. He let go of all else, and amid the streaming Light, he shot from the chasms out into the open air above.

He Lashed himself back to the east so that he could fall in that direction again, but now no plateau walls got in his way. He soared toward the horizon, distant, lost in the darkness. He gained speed, coat flapping, hair whipping behind him. Air buffeted his face, and he narrowed his eyes, but did not close them.

Beneath, dark chasms passed one after another. Plateau. Pit. Plateau. Pit. This sensation . . . flying over the land . . . he had felt this before, in dreams. What took bridgemen hours to cross, he passed in minutes. He felt as if something were boosting him from behind, the wind itself carrying him. Syl zipped along to his right.

And to his left? No, those were other windspren. He’d accumulated dozens of them, flying around him as ribbons of light. He could pick out Syl. He didn’t know how; she didn’t look different, but he could tell. Like you could pick a family member out of a crowd just by their walk.

Syl and her cousins twisted around him in a spiral of light, free and loose, but with a hint of coordination.

How long had it been since he felt this good, this triumphant, this alive? Not since before Tien’s death. Even after saving Bridge Four, darkness had shadowed him.

That evaporated. He saw a spire of rock ahead on the plateaus, and nudged himself toward it with a careful Lashing to the right. Other Lashings to his rear slowed his fall enough that when he hit the tip of the spire of rock, he could clutch to it and spin around it, fingers on the smooth cremstone.

A hundred windspren broke around him, like the crash of a wave, spraying outward from Kaladin in a fan of light.

He grinned. Then he looked upward, toward the sky.

* * *

Highlord Amaram continued to stare at the Shardblade in the night. He held it up before him in the light spilling from the front of the manor house.

Shallan remembered her father’s quiet terror as he looked upon that weapon, leveled toward him. Could it be a coincidence? Two weapons that looked the same? Perhaps her memory was flawed.

No. No, she would never forget the look of that Blade. It was the one Helaran had held. And no two Blades were the same.

“Brightlord,” Shallan said, drawing Amaram’s attention. He seemed startled, as if he’d forgotten she was there.

“Yes?”

“Brightness Shallan,” she said, “wants to make certain the records are all correct and that the histories of the Blades and Plate in the Alethi army have been properly traced. Your Blade is not in them. She asked if you would mind sharing the origin of your Blade, in the name of scholarship.”

“I’ve explained this to Dalinar already,” Amaram said. “I don’t know the history of my Shards. Both were in the possession of an assassin who tried to kill me. A younger man. Veden, with red hair. We don’t know his name, and his face was ruined in my counterattack. I had to stab him through his faceplate, you see.”

Young man. Red hair.

She stood before her brother’s killer.

“I . . .” Shallan stammered, feeling sick. “Thank you. I will pass the information along.”

She turned, trying not to stumble as she walked away. She finally knew what had happened to Helaran.

You were involved in all of this, weren’t you, Helaran? she thought. Just like Father was. But how, why?

It seemed that Amaram was trying to bring back the Voidbringers. Helaran had tried to kill him.

But would anyone really want to bring back the Voidbringers? Perhaps she was mistaken. She needed to get to her rooms, draw those maps from the Memories she’d taken, and try to figure this all out.