Words of Radiance

Shallan walked to the door. By now, her absence in the other room would have been noticed. She should get back and give her lie, of seeking a drink for her parched throat. First, though, she’d want to put back on the ardent disguise. She sucked in some Stormlight, then breathed out, using the still-fresh memory of the ardent to create—

“Aaaaaaaah!”

The madman leaped to his feet, screaming. He lurched for her, moving with incredible speed. As Shallan yelped in surprise, he grabbed her and shoved her out of her cloud of Stormlight. The image fell apart, evaporating, and the madman smashed her up against the wall, his eyes wide, his breathing ragged. He searched her face with frantic eyes, pupils darting back and forth.

Shallan trembled, breath catching.

Ten heartbeats.

“One of Ishar’s Knights,” the madman whispered. His eyes narrowed. “I remember . . . He founded them? Yes. Several Desolations ago. No longer just talk. It hasn’t been talk for thousands of years. But . . . When . . .”

He stumbled back from her, hand to his head. Her Shardblade dropped into her hands, but she no longer appeared to need it. The man turned his back to her, walked to his bed, then lay down and curled up.

Shallan inched forward, and found he was back to whispering the same things as before. She dismissed the Blade.

Mother’s soul . . .

“Shallan?” Pattern asked. “Shallan, are you mad?”

She shook herself. How much time had passed? “Yes,” she said, walking hurriedly for the door. She peeked outside. She couldn’t risk using Stormlight again in this room. She’d just have to slip out—

Blast. Several people approached down the hallway. She would have to wait for them to pass. Except, they seemed to be heading right to this very door.

One of those men was Highlord Amaram.

Yes, I’m disappointed. Perpetually, as you put it.

Kaladin lay on his bench, ignoring the afternoon bowl of steamed, spiced tallew on the floor.

He had begun to imagine himself as that whitespine in the menagerie. A predator in a cage. Storms send that he didn’t end up like that poor beast. Wilted, hungry, confused. They don’t do well in captivity, Shallan had said.

How many days had it been? Kaladin found himself not caring. That worried him. During his time as a slave, he’d also stopped caring about the date.

He wasn’t so far removed from that wretch he’d once been. He felt himself slipping back toward that same mindset, like a man climbing a cliff covered in crem and slime. Each time he tried to pull himself higher, he slid back. Eventually he’d fall.

Old ways of thinking . . . a slave’s ways of thinking . . . churned within him. Stop caring. Worry only about the next meal, and keeping it away from the others. Don’t think too much. Thinking is dangerous. Thinking makes you hope, makes you want.

Kaladin shouted, throwing himself off his bench and pacing in the small room, hands to his head. He’d thought himself so strong. A fighter. But all they had to do to take that away was stuff him in a box for a few weeks, and the truth returned! He slammed himself against the bars and stretched a hand between them, toward one of the lamps on the wall. He sucked in a breath.

Nothing happened. No Stormlight. The sphere continued to glow, even and steady.

Kaladin cried out, reaching farther, pushing his fingertips toward that distant light. Don’t let the darkness take me, he thought. He . . . prayed. How long had it been since he’d done that? He didn’t have someone to properly write and burn the words, but the Almighty listened to hearts, didn’t he? Please. Not again. I can’t go back to that.

Please.

He strained for that sphere, breathing in. The Light seemed to resist, then gloriously streamed out into his fingertips. The storm pulsed in his veins.

Kaladin held his breath, eyes shut, savoring it. The power strained against him, trying to escape. He pushed off the bars and started pacing again, eyes closed, not so frantic as before.

“I’m worried about you.” Syl’s voice. “You’re growing dark.”

Kaladin opened his eyes and finally found her, sitting between two of the bars as if on a swing.

“I’ll be all right,” Kaladin said, letting Stormlight rise from his lips like smoke. “I just need to get out of this cage.”

“It’s worse than that. It’s the darkness . . . the darkness . . .” She looked to the side, then giggled suddenly, streaking off to inspect something on the floor. A little cremling that was creeping along the edge of the room. She stood over it, eyes widening at the stark red and violet color of its shell.

Kaladin smiled. She was still a spren. Childlike. The world was a place of wonder to Syl. What would that be like?

He sat down and ate his meal, feeling as if he’d pushed aside the gloom for a time. Eventually, one of the guards checked on him and found the dun sphere. He pulled it out, frowning, shaking his head before replacing it and moving on.

* * *

Amaram was coming into this room.

Hide!

Shallan was proud of how quickly she spat out the rest of her Stormlight, wreathing herself in it. She didn’t even give thought to how the madman had reacted to her Lightweaving before, though perhaps she should have. Regardless, this time he didn’t seem to notice.

Should she become an ardent? No. Something much simpler, something faster.

Darkness.

Her clothing turned black. Her skin, her hat, her hair—everything pure black. She scrambled back away from the door into the corner of the room, farthest from the slot of a window, stilling herself. With her illusion in place, the Lightweaving consumed the trails of Stormlight that would normally rise from her skin, further masking her presence.

The door opened. Her heart thundered within her. She wished she’d had time to create a false wall. Amaram entered the room with a young darkeyed man, obviously Alethi, with short dark hair and prominent eyebrows. He wore Kholin livery. They shut the door quietly behind themselves, Amaram pocketing a key.

Shallan felt an immediate anger at seeing her brother’s murderer here, but found that it had quieted somewhat. A smoldering loathing instead of an intense hatred. It had been a long time since she’d seen Helaran, now. And Balat had a point in that her older brother had abandoned them.

To try to kill this man, apparently—or so she’d been able to put together from what she’d read of Amaram and his Shardblade. Why had Helaran gone to kill this man? And could she really blame Amaram when, in truth, he’d probably just been defending himself?

She felt like she knew so little. Though Amaram was still a bastard, of course.

Together, Amaram and the Alethi darkeyes turned to the madman. Shallan couldn’t make out much of their features in the mostly dark room. “I don’t know why you need to hear it for yourself, Brightlord,” the servant said. “I told you what he said.”

“Hush, Bordin,” Amaram said, crossing the room. “Listen at the door.”

Shallan stood stiff, pressed back in the corner. They’d see her, wouldn’t they?

Amaram knelt beside the bed. “Great Prince,” he whispered, hand to the madman’s shoulder. “Turn. Let me see you.”

The madman looked up, still muttering.

“Ah . . .” Amaram said, breathing out. “Almighty above, ten names, all true. You are beautiful. Gavilar, we have done it. We have finally done it.”

“Brightlord?” Bordin said from the door. “I don’t like being here. If we’re discovered, people might ask questions. The treasure . . .”

“He truly spoke of Shardblades?”

“Yes,” Bordin said. “A whole cache of them.”

“The Honorblades,” Amaram whispered. “Great Prince, please, give me the same words you spoke to this one.”

The madman muttered on, the same as Shallan had heard. Amaram continued kneeling, but eventually he turned toward the nervous Bordin. “Well?”

“He repeated those words every day,” Bordin said, “but he only spoke of the Blades once.”

“I would hear of them for myself.”

“Brightlord . . . We could wait here days and not hear those words. Please. We must go. The ardents will eventually come by on their rounds.”

Amaram stood up with obvious reluctance. “Great Prince,” he said to the huddled figure of the madman, “I go to recover your treasures. Speak not of them to the others. I will put the Blades to good use.” He turned to Bordin. “Come. Let us search out this place.”

“Today?”

“You said it was close.”

“Yes, well, that was why I brought him all the way out here. But—”

“If he accidentally speaks of this to others, I would have them go to the place and find it empty of treasures. Come, quickly. You will be rewarded.”

Amaram strode out. Bordin lingered at the door, looking at the madman, then trailed out and shut the door with a click.

Shallan breathed out a long, deep breath, slumping down to the floor. “It’s like that sea of spheres.”

“Shallan?” Pattern asked.

“I’ve fallen in,” she said, “and it isn’t that the water is over my head—it’s that the stuff isn’t even water, and I have no idea how to swim in it.”

“I do not understand this lie,” Pattern said.