Words of Radiance (Page 168)

Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, sat atop the highest tower in the world and contemplated the End of All Things.

The souls of the people he had murdered lurked in the shadows. They whispered to him. If he drew close, they screamed.

They also screamed when he shut his eyes. He had taken to blinking as little as possible. His eyes felt dry in his skull. It was what any . . . sane man would do.

The highest tower in the world, hidden in the tops of the mountains, was perfect for his contemplation. If he had not been bound to an Oathstone, if he had been another man entirely, he would have stayed here. The only place in the East where the stones were not cursed, where walking on them was allowed. This place was holy.

Bright sunlight shone down to banish the shadows, which kept those screams to a minimum. The screamers deserved their deaths, of course. They should have killed Szeth. I hate you. I hate . . . everyone. Glories within, what a strange emotion.

He did not look up. He would not meet the gaze of the God of Gods. But it was good to be in the sunlight. There were no clouds here to bring the darkness. This place was above them all. Urithiru ruled even the clouds.

The massive tower was also empty; that was another reason he liked it. A hundred levels, built in ring shapes, each one beneath larger than the one above it to provide a sunlit balcony. The eastern side, however, was a sheer, flat edge that made the tower look from a distance as if that side had been sliced off by an enormous Shardblade. What a strange shape.

He sat on that edge, right at the top, feet swinging over a drop of a hundred massive stories and a plummet down the mountainside below. Glass sparkled on the smooth surface of the flat side there.

Glass windows. Facing east, toward the Origin. The first time he had visited this place—just after being exiled from his homeland—he hadn’t understood just how odd those windows were. Back then, he’d still been accustomed to gentle highstorms. Rain, wind, and meditation.

Things were different in these cursed lands of the stonewalkers. These hateful lands. These lands flowing with blood, death, and screams. And . . . And . . .

Breathe. He forced the air in and out and stood up on the rim of the parapet atop the tower.

He had fought an impossibility. A man with Stormlight, a man who knew the storm within. That meant . . . problems. Years ago, Szeth had been banished for raising the alarm. The false alarm, it had been said.

The Voidbringers are no more, they had told him.

The spirits of the stones themselves promised it.

The powers of old are no more.

The Knights Radiant are fallen.

We are all that remains.

All that remains. . . . Truthless.

“Have I not been faithful?” Szeth shouted, finally looking up to face the sun. His voice echoed against the mountains and their spirit-souls. “Have I not obeyed, kept my oath? Have I not done as you demanded of me?”

The killing, the murder. He blinked tired eyes.

SCREAMS.

“What does it mean if the Shamanate are wrong? What does it mean if they banished me in error?”

It meant the End of All Things. The end of truth. It would mean that nothing made sense, and that his oath was meaningless.

It would mean he had killed for no reason.

He dropped off the side of the tower, white clothing—now a symbol to him of many things—flapping in the wind. He filled himself with Stormlight and Lashed himself southward. His body lurched in that direction, falling across the sky. He could only travel this way for a short time; his Stormlight did not last long.

Too imperfect a body. The Knights Radiant . . . they’d been said . . . they’d been said to be better at this . . . like the Voidbringers.

He had just enough Light to free himself from the mountains and land in a village in the foothills. They often set out spheres for him there as an offering, considering him some kind of god. He would feed upon that Light, and it would let him go a farther distance until he found another city and more Stormlight.

It would take days to get where he was going, but he would find answers. Or, barring that, someone to kill.

Of his own choice, this time.

Eshonai waved her hand as she climbed the central spire of Narak, trying to shoo away the tiny spren. It danced around her head, shedding rings of light from its cometlike form. Horrid thing. Why would it not leave her alone?

Perhaps it could not stay away. She was experiencing something wonderfully new, after all. Something that had not been seen in centuries. Stormform. A form of true power.

A form given of the gods.

She continued up the steps, feet clinking in her Shardplate. It felt good on her.

She had held this form for fifteen days now, fifteen days of hearing new rhythms. At first, she had attuned those often, but this had made some people very nervous. She had backed off, and forced herself to attune the old, familiar ones when speaking.

It was difficult, for those old rhythms were so dull. Buried within those new rhythms, the names of which she intuited somehow, she could almost hear voices speaking to her. Advising her. If her people had received such guidance over the centuries, they surely would not have fallen so far.

Eshonai reached the top of the spire, where the other four awaited her. Again, her sister Venli was also there, and she wore the new form as well—with its spiking armor plates, its red eyes, its lithe danger. This meeting would proceed very differently from the previous one. Eshonai cycled through the new rhythms, careful not to hum them. The others weren’t ready yet.

She sat down, then gasped.

That rhythm! It sounded like . . . like her own voice yelling at her. Screaming in pain. What was that? She shook her head, and found that she had reflexively pulled her hand to her chest in anxiety. When she opened it, the cometlike spren shot out.

She attuned Irritation. The others of the Five regarded her with heads cocked, a couple humming to Curiosity. Why did she act as she did?

Eshonai settled herself, Shardplate grinding against stone. This close to the lull—the time called the Weeping by the humans—highstorms were growing more rare. That had created a small impediment in her march to see every listener given stormform. There had only been one storm since Eshonai’s own transformation, and during it, Venli and her scholars had taken stormform along with two hundred soldiers chosen by Eshonai. Not officers. Common soldiers. The type she was sure would obey.

The next highstorm was mere days away, and Venli had been gathering her spren. They had thousands ready. It was time.

Eshonai regarded the others of the Five. Today’s clear sky rained down white sunlight, and a few windspren approached on a breeze. They stopped when they grew near, then zipped away in the opposite direction.

“Why have you called this meeting?” Eshonai asked the others.

“You’ve been speaking of a plan,” Davim said, broad worker’s hands clasped before him. “You’ve been telling everyone of it. Shouldn’t you have brought it to the Five first?”

“I’m sorry,” Eshonai said. “I am merely excited. I believe, however, we should now be the Six.”

“That has not been decided,” Abronai said, weak and plump. Mateform was disgusting. “This moves too quickly.”

“We must move quickly,” Eshonai replied to Resolve. “We have only two highstorms before the lull. You know what the spies report. The humans are planning a final push toward us, toward Narak.”

“It is a pity,” Abronai said to Consideration, “that your meeting with them went so poorly.”

“They wanted to tell me of the destruction they planned to bring,” Eshonai lied. “They wanted to gloat. That was the only reason they met with me.”

“We need to be ready to fight them,” Davim said to Anxiety.

Eshonai laughed. A blatant use of emotion, but she truly felt it. “Fight them? Haven’t you been listening? I can summon a highstorm.”

“With help,” Chivi said to Curiosity. Nimbleform. Another weak form. They should expunge that one from their ranks. “You have said you cannot do it alone. How many others would you need? Certainly the two hundred you have now are enough.”

“No, that is not nearly enough,” Eshonai replied. “I feel that the more people we have in this form, the more likely we are to succeed. I would like, therefore, to move that we transform.”

“Yes,” Chivi said. “But how many of us?”

“All of us.”

Davim hummed to Amusement, thinking it must be a joke. He trailed off as the rest sat in silence.

“We will have just one chance,” Eshonai said to Resolve. “The humans will leave their warcamps together, in one large army that intends to reach Narak during the lull. They will be completely exposed on the plateaus, with no shelter. A highstorm at that time would destroy them.”

“We don’t even truly know if you can summon one,” Abronai said to Skepticism.

“That is why we need as many of us in stormform as possible,” Eshonai said. “If we miss this opportunity, our children will sing us the songs of Cursing, assuming they even live long enough to do so. This is our chance, our one chance. Imagine the ten armies of men, isolated on the plateaus, buffeted and overwhelmed by a tempest they could never have expected! With stormform, we would be immune to its effects. If any survive, we could destroy them easily.”

“It is tempting,” Davim said.