Words of Radiance

The guards, blessedly, did not give her any further troubles as she slipped away from Amaram’s camp and into the anonymity of the darkness. That was well, for if they’d looked closely, they’d have seen the messenger boy with tears in his eyes. Crying for a brother that now, once and for all, Shallan knew was dead.

* * *

Upward.

One Lashing, then another, then a third. Kaladin shot up into the sky. Nothing but open expanse, an infinite sea for his delight.

The air grew cold. Still upward he went, reaching for the clouds. Finally, worried about running out of Stormlight before returning to the ground—he had only one infused sphere left, carried in his pocket for an emergency—Kaladin reluctantly Lashed himself downward.

He didn’t fall downward immediately; his momentum upward merely slowed. He was still Lashed to the sky; he hadn’t dismissed the upward Lashings.

Curious, he Lashed himself downward to slow further, then dismissed all of his Lashings except one up and one down. He eventually came to a stop hanging in midair. The second moon had risen, bathing the Plains in light far below. From here, they looked like a broken plate. No . . . he thought, squinting. It’s a pattern. He’d seen this before. In a dream.

Wind blew against him, causing him to drift like a kite. The windspren he’d attracted scampered away now that he wasn’t riding upon the winds. Funny. He’d never realized one could attract windspren as one attracted the spren of emotions.

All you had to do was fall into the sky.

Syl remained, spinning around him in a swirl until finally coming to rest on his shoulder. She sat, then looked down.

“Not many men ever see this view,” she noted. From up here, the warcamps—circles of fire to his right—seemed insignificant. It was cold enough to be uncomfortable. Rock claimed the air was thinner up high, though Kaladin couldn’t tell any difference.

“I’ve been trying to get you to do this for a while now,” Syl said.

“It’s like when I first picked up a spear,” Kaladin whispered. “I was just a child. Were you with me back then? All that time ago?”

“No,” Syl said, “and yes.”

“It can’t be both.”

“It can. I knew I needed to find you. And the winds knew you. They led me to you.”

“So everything I’ve done,” Kaladin said. “My skill with the spear, the way I fight. That’s not me. It’s you.”

“It’s us.”

“It’s cheating. Unearned.”

“Nonsense,” Syl said. “You practice every day.”

“I have an advantage.”

“The advantage of talent,” Syl said. “When the master musician first picks up an instrument and finds music in it that nobody else can, is that cheating? Is that art unearned, just because she is naturally more skilled? Or is it genius?”

Kaladin Lashed himself westward, back toward the warcamps. He didn’t want to leave himself stranded in the middle of the Shattered Plains without Stormlight. The tempest within had calmed greatly since he started. He fell in that direction for a time—getting as close as he dared before slowing himself—then removed part of the upward Lashing and began to drift downward.

“I’ll take it,” Kaladin said. “Whatever it is that gives me that edge. I’ll use it. I’ll need it to beat him.”

Syl nodded, still sitting on his shoulder.

“You don’t think he has a spren,” Kaladin said. “But how does he do what he does?”

“The weapon,” Syl said, more confidently than she had before. “It’s something special. It was created to give abilities to men, much as our bond does.”

Kaladin nodded, light wind ruffling his jacket as he fell through the night. “Syl . . .” How to broach this? “I can’t fight him without a Shardblade.”

She looked the other way, squeezing her arms together, hugging herself. Such human gestures.

“I’ve avoided the training with the Blades that Zahel offers,” Kaladin continued. “It’s hard to justify. I need to learn how to use one of those weapons.”

“They’re evil,” she said in a small voice.

“Because they’re symbols of the knights’ broken oaths,” Kaladin said. “But where did they come from in the first place? How were they forged?”

Syl didn’t answer.

“Can a new one be forged? One that doesn’t bear the stain of broken promises?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

She didn’t reply. They floated downward for a time in silence until gently coming to rest on a dark plateau. Kaladin got his bearings, then walked over and drifted off the edge, going down into the chasms. He wouldn’t want to walk back using the bridges. The scouts would find it odd that he was coming back without having gone out.

Storms. They’d have seen him flying out here, wouldn’t they? What would they think? Were any close enough to have seen him land?

Well, he couldn’t do anything about that now. He reached the bottom of the chasm and started walking back toward the warcamps, his Stormlight slowly dying out, leaving him in darkness. He felt deflated without it, sluggish, tired.

He fished the last infused sphere from his pocket and used it to light his path.

“There’s a question you’re avoiding,” Syl said, landing on his shoulder. “It’s been two days. When are you going to tell Dalinar about those men that Moash took you to meet?”

“He didn’t listen when I told him about Amaram.”

“This is obviously different,” Syl said.

It was, and she was right. So why hadn’t he told Dalinar?

“Those men didn’t seem the type who would wait long,” Syl said.

“I’ll do something about them,” Kaladin said. “I just want to think about it some more. I don’t want Moash to get caught in the storm when we bring them down.”

She fell silent as he walked the rest of the way, retrieving his spear, then climbed the ladder up onto the plateaus. The sky overhead had grown cloudy, but the weather had been turning toward spring lately.

Enjoy it while you can, he thought. The Weeping comes soon. Weeks of ceaseless rain. No Tien to cheer him up. His brother had always been able to do that.

Amaram had taken that from him. Kaladin lowered his head and started walking. At the warcamps’ edge, he turned right and walked northward.

“Kaladin?” Syl asked, flitting in beside him. “Why are you walking this way?”

He looked up. This was the way toward Sadeas’s camp. Dalinar’s camp was the other direction.

Kaladin kept walking.

“Kaladin? What are you doing?”

Finally, he stopped in place. Amaram would be there, just ahead, inside Sadeas’s camp somewhere. It was late, Nomon inching toward its zenith.

“I could end him,” Kaladin said. “Enter his window in a flash of Stormlight, kill him, and be off before anyone has time to react. So easy. Everyone would blame it on the Assassin in White.”

“Kaladin . . .”

“It’s justice, Syl,” he said, suddenly angry, turning toward her. “You tell me that I need to protect. If I kill him, that’s what I’m doing! Protecting people, keeping him from ruining them. Like he ruined me.”

“I don’t like how you get,” she said, seeming small, “when you think about him. You stop being you. You stop thinking. Please.”

“He killed Tien,” Kaladin said. “I will end him, Syl.”

“But tonight?” Syl asked. “After what you just discovered, after what you just did?”

He took a deep breath, remembering the thrill of the chasms and the freedom of flight. He’d felt true joy for the first time in what seemed like ages.

Did he want to taint that memory with Amaram? No. Not even with the man’s demise, which would surely be a wonderful day.

“All right,” he said, turning back toward Dalinar’s camp. “Not tonight.”

Evening stew was finished by the time Kaladin arrived back at the barracks. He passed the fire, where embers still glowed, and made his way to his room. Syl zipped up into the air. She’d ride the winds overnight, playing with her cousins. So far as he knew, she didn’t need sleep.

He stepped into his private room, feeling tired and drained, but in a pleasing way. It—

Someone stirred in the room.

Kaladin spun, leveling his spear, and sucked in the last light of the sphere he’d been using to guide his way. The Light that streamed off him revealed a red and black face. Shen looked disturbingly eerie in those shadows, like an evil spren from the stories.

“Shen,” Kaladin said, lowering his spear. “What in the—”

“Sir,” Shen said. “I must leave.”

Kaladin frowned.

“I am sorry,” Shen added speaking in his slow, deliberate way. “I cannot tell you why.” He seemed to be waiting for something, his hands tense on his spear. The spear Kaladin had given him.

“You’re a free man, Shen,” Kaladin said. “I won’t keep you here if you feel you must go, but I don’t know that there is another place you can go where you will be able to make good on your freedom.”