Words of Radiance

Shallan shook her head. She had no experience sneaking about in the darkness. She’d just make a fool of herself.

But how to get in . . .

“Porter,” she commanded, sticking her head out the window and pointing, “take us to that building there, then set us down. Send one of your number to seek the master healers. Tell them I need their aid.”

The tenner who led the parshmen—hired with Shallan’s spheres—nodded brusquely. Tenners were a strange lot. This one didn’t own the parshmen; he just worked for the woman who rented them out. Veil, with dark eyes, would be beneath him socially, but was also the one paying his wage, and so he just treated her as he would any other master.

The palanquin settled down and one of the parshmen walked off to deliver her request.

“Going to feign sickness?” Iyatil asked.

“Something like that,” Shallan said as footsteps arrived outside. She climbed out to meet a pair of square-bearded ardents, conferring as the parshmen led them in her direction. They looked her over, noting her dark eyes and her clothing—which was well-made but obviously intended for rugged use. Likely, they placed her in one of the upper-middle nahns, a citizen, but not a particularly important one.

“What is the problem, young woman?” asked the older of the two ardents.

“It is my sister,” Shallan said. “She has put on this strange mask and refuses to remove it.”

A soft groan rose from inside the palanquin.

“Child,” said the lead ardent, his tone suffering, “a stubborn sister is not a matter for the ardents.”

“I understand, good brother,” Shallan said, raising her hands before her. “But this is no simple stubbornness. I think . . . I think one of the Voidbringers has inhabited her!”

She pushed aside the curtains of the palanquin, revealing Iyatil inside. Her strange mask made the ardents pull back and break off their objections. The younger of the two men peered in at Iyatil with wide eyes.

Iyatil turned to Shallan, and with an almost inaudible sigh, started rocking back and forth in place. “Should we kill them?” she muttered. “No. No, we shouldn’t. But someone will see! No, do not say these things. No. I will not listen to you.” She started humming.

The younger ardent turned to look back at the senior.

“This is dire,” the ardent said, nodding. “Porter, come. Have your parshmen bring the palanquin.”

* * *

A short time later, Shallan waited in the corner of a small monastery room, watching Iyatil sit and resist the ministration of several ardents. She kept warning them that if they removed her mask, she would have to kill them.

That did not seem to be part of the act.

Fortunately, she otherwise played her part well. Her ravings, mixed with her hidden face, gave even Shallan shivers. The ardents seemed alternately fascinated and horrified.

Concentrate on the drawing, Shallan thought to herself. It was a sketch of one of the ardents, a portly man about her own height. The drawing was rushed but capable. She idly found herself wondering what a beard would feel like. Would it itch? But no, hair on your head didn’t itch, so why should hair on your face? How did they keep food out of the things?

She finished with a few quick marks, then rose quietly. Iyatil kept the ardents’ attention with a new bout of raving. Shallan nodded to her in thanks, then slipped out of the door, entering the hallway. After glancing to the sides to see that she was alone, she used a cloud of Stormlight to transform into the ardent. That done, she reached up and tucked her straight red hair—the only part of her that threatened to pop out of the illusion—inside the back of her coat.

“Pattern,” she whispered, turning and walking down the hallway with a relaxed demeanor.

“Mmm?”

“Find him,” she said, removing from her satchel a sketch of the madman that Mraize had left in the tree. The sketch had been done at a distance, and wasn’t terribly good. Hopefully . . .

“Second hallway on the left,” Pattern said.

Shallan looked down at him, though her new costume—an ardent’s robe—obscured him where he sat on her coat. “How do you know?”

“You were distracted by your drawing,” he said. “I peeked about. There is a very interesting woman four doors down. She appears to be rubbing excrement on the wall.”

“Ew.” Shallan thought she could smell it.

“Patterns . . .” he said as they walked. “I did not get a good look at what she was writing, but it seemed very interesting. I think I shall go and—”

“No,” Shallan whispered, “stay with me.” She smiled, nodding to several ardents who strolled past. They didn’t speak to her, fortunately, merely nodding back.

The monastery building, like most everything in Dalinar’s warcamp, was sliced through with dull, unornamented hallways. Shallan followed Pattern’s instructions to a thick door set into the stone. The lock clicked open with Pattern’s help, and Shallan quietly slipped inside.

A single small window—more of a slit—proved insufficient to fully illuminate the large figure sitting on the bed. Dark-skinned, like a man from the Makabaki kingdoms, he had dark, ragged hair and hulking arms. Those were the arms of either a laborer or a soldier. The man sat slumped, back bowed, head down, frail light from the window cutting a slice across his back in white. It made for a grim, powerful silhouette.

The man was whispering. Shallan couldn’t make out the words. She shivered, her back to the door, and held up the sketch Mraize had given her. This seemed to be the same person—at least, the skin color and stout build were the same, though this man was far more muscled than the picture indicated. Storms . . . those hands of his looked as if they could crush her like a cremling.

The man did not move. He did not look up, did not shift. He was like a boulder that had rolled to a stop here.

“Why is it kept so dark in this room?” Pattern asked, perfectly cheerful.

The madman didn’t react to the comment, or even Shallan, as she stepped forward.

“Modern theory for helping the mad suggests dim confines,” Shallan whispered. “Too much light stimulates them, and can reduce the effectiveness of treatment.” That was what she remembered, at least. She hadn’t read much on this subject. The room was dark. That window couldn’t be more than a few fingers wide.

What was he whispering? Shallan cautiously continued forward. “Sir?” she asked. Then she hesitated, realizing that she was projecting a young woman’s voice from an old, fat ardent’s body. Would that startle the man? He wasn’t looking, so she withdrew the illusion.

“He doesn’t seem angry,” Pattern said. “But you call him mad.”

“‘Mad’ has two definitions,” Shallan said. “One means to be angry. The other means broken in the head.”

“Ah,” Pattern said, “like a spren who has lost his bond.”

“Not exactly, I’d guess,” Shallan said, stepping up to the madman. “But similar.” She knelt down by the man, trying to figure out what he was saying.

“The time of the Return, the Desolation, is at hand,” he whispered. She would have expected an Azish accent from him, considering the skin color, but he spoke perfect Alethi. “We must prepare. You will have forgotten much, following the destruction of times past.”

She looked over at Pattern, lost in the shadows at the side of the room, then back at the man. Light glinted off his dark brown eyes, two bright pinpricks on an otherwise shadowed visage. That slumped posture seemed so morose. He whispered on, about bronze and steel, about preparations and training.

“Who are you?” Shallan whispered.

“Talenel’Elin. The one you call Stonesinew.”

She felt a chill. Then the madman continued, whispering the same things he had before, repeated exactly. She couldn’t even be certain if his comment had been a reply to her question, or just a part of his recitation. He did not answer further questions.

Shallan stepped back, folding her arms, satchel over her shoulder.

“Talenel,” Pattern said. “I know that name.”

“Talenelat’Elin is the name of one of the Heralds,” Shallan said. “This is almost the same.”

“Ah.” Pattern paused. “Lie?”

“Undoubtedly,” Shallan said. “It defies reason that Dalinar Kholin would have one of the Heralds of the Almighty locked away in a temple’s back rooms. Many madmen think themselves someone else.”

Of course, many said that Dalinar himself was mad. And he was trying to refound the Knights Radiant. Scooping up a madman who thought he was one of the Heralds could be in line with that.

“Madman,” Shallan said, “where do you come from?”

He continued ranting.

“Do you know what Dalinar Kholin wishes of you?”

More ranting.

Shallan sighed, but knelt and wrote his exact words to deliver to Mraize. She got the entire sequence down, and listened to it twice through to make sure he wasn’t going to say anything new. He didn’t say his supposed name this time, though. So that was one deviation.

He couldn’t actually be one of the Heralds, could he?

Don’t be silly, she thought, tucking away her writing implements. The Heralds glow like the sun, wield the Honorblades, and speak with the voices of a thousand trumpets. They could cast down buildings with a command, force the storms to obey, and heal with a touch.