Words of Radiance (Page 188)

Navani looked out at the sea of lighteyes, many congregating in groups around the various highprinces in the soft, violet light. She stepped closer to Dalinar, and though her eyes were fierce, he knew her well enough to guess what she was feeling. Betrayal. Invasion. That which was private to them, opened up, mocked and then displayed for the world.

“Dalinar, I’m sorry,” Amaram said.

“They did not change the visions themselves?” Dalinar asked. “They copied them accurately.”

“So far as I can tell, yes,” Navani said. “But the tone is different, and that mockery. Storms. It’s nauseating. When I find the woman who did this . . .”

“Peace, Navani,” Dalinar said, resting his hand on her shoulder.

“How can you say that?”

“Because this is the act of childish men who assume that I can be embarrassed by the truth.”

“But the commentary! The changes. They’ve done everything they can to discredit you. They even managed to undermine the part where you offer a translation of the Dawnchant. It—”

“‘As I fear not a child with a weapon he cannot lift, I will never fear the mind of a man who does not think.’”

Navani frowned at him.

“It’s from The Way of Kings,” Dalinar said. “I am not a youth, nervous at his first feast. Sadeas makes a mistake in believing I will respond to this as he would. Unlike a sword, scorn has only the bite you give it.”

“This does hurt you,” Navani said, meeting his eyes. “I can see it, Dalinar.”

Hopefully, the others would not know him well enough to see what she did. Yes, it did hurt. It hurt because these visions were his, entrusted to him—to be shared for the good of men, not to be held up for mockery. It was not the laughter itself that pained him, but the loss of what could have been.

He stepped away from her, passing through the crowd. Some of those eyes he now interpreted as being sorrowful, not just amused. Perhaps he was imagining it, but he thought some pitied him more than scorned him.

He wasn’t certain which emotion was more damaging.

Dalinar reached the food table at the back of the island. There, he picked up a large pan and handed it to a bewildered serving woman, then hauled himself up onto the table. He set one hand on the lantern pole beside the table and looked out over the small crowd. They were the most important people in Alethkar.

Those who hadn’t already been watching him turned with shock to see him up there. In the distance, he noticed Adolin and Brightness Shallan rushing onto the island. They’d likely only just arrived, and heard the talk.

Dalinar looked to the crowd. “What you have read,” he bellowed, “is true.”

Stunned silence. Making a spectacle of oneself in this way was not done in Alethkar. He, however, had already been this evening’s spectacle.

“Commentary has been added to discredit me,” Dalinar said, “and the tone of Navani’s writing has been changed. But I will not hide what has been happening to me. I see visions from the Almighty. They come with almost every storm. This should not surprise you. There have been rumors circulating about my experiences for weeks now. Perhaps I should have released these visions already. In the future, each one I receive will be published, so that scholars around the world can investigate what I have seen.”

He sought out Sadeas, who stood with Aladar and Ruthar. Dalinar gripped the lantern pole, looking back at the Alethi crowd. “I do not blame you for thinking I am mad. It is natural. But in the coming nights, when rain washes your walls and the wind howls, you will wonder. You will question. And soon, when I offer you proof, you will know. This attempt to destroy me will then vindicate me instead.”

He looked over their faces, some aghast, some sympathetic, others amused.

“There are those among you who assume I will flee, or be broken, because of this attack,” he said. “They do not know me as well as they presume. Let the feast continue, for I wish to speak with each and every one of you. The words you hold may mock, but if you must laugh, do it while looking me in the eyes.”

He stepped down from the table.

Then he went to work.

* * *

Hours later, Dalinar eventually let himself sit down in a seat beside a table at the feast, exhaustionspren swirling around him. He’d spent the rest of the evening moving through the crowd, forcing his way into conversations, drumming up support for his excursion onto the Plains.

He had pointedly ignored the pages with his visions on them, except when asked direct questions about what he’d seen. Instead, he had presented them with a forceful, confident man—the Blackthorn turned politician. Let them chew on that and compare him to the frail madman the falsified transcripts would make him out to be.

Outside, past the small rivers—they now glowed blue, the spheres having been changed to match the second moon—the king’s carriage rolled away, bearing Elhokar and Navani the short distance to the Pinnacle, where porters would carry them in a palanquin up to the top. Adolin had already retired, escorting Shallan back to Sebarial’s warcamp, which was a fair ride away.

Adolin seemed to be fonder of the young Veden woman than of any woman in the recent past. For that reason alone, Dalinar was increasingly inclined to encourage the relationship, assuming he could ever get some straight answers out of Jah Keved about her family. That kingdom was a mess.

Most of the other lighteyes had retired, leaving him on an island populated by servants and parshmen who cleared away food. A few master-servants, trusted for such duties, began to scoop the spheres out of the river with nets on long poles. Dalinar’s bridgemen, at his suggestion, were attacking the feast’s leftovers with the voracious appetite exclusive to soldiers who had been offered an unexpected meal.

A servant strolled by, then stopped, resting his hand on his side sword. Dalinar started, realizing he’d mistaken Wit’s black military uniform for that of a master-servant in training.

Dalinar put on a firm face, though inwardly he groaned. Wit? Now? Dalinar felt as if he’d been fighting on the battlefield for ten hours straight. Odd, how a few hours of delicate conversation could feel so similar to that.

“What you did tonight was clever,” Wit said. “You turned an attack into a promise. The wisest of men know that to render an insult powerless, you often need only to embrace it.”

“Thank you,” Dalinar said.

Wit nodded curtly, following the king’s coach with his eyes as it vanished. “I found myself without much to do tonight. Elhokar was not in need of Wit, as few sought to speak to him. All came to you instead.”

Dalinar sighed, his strength seeming to drain away. Wit hadn’t said it, but he hadn’t needed to. Dalinar read the implication.

They came to you, instead of the king. Because essentially, you are king.

“Wit,” Dalinar found himself asking, “am I a tyrant?”

Wit cocked an eyebrow, and seemed to be looking for a clever quip. A moment later, he discarded the thought. “Yes, Dalinar Kholin,” he said softly, consolingly, as one might speak to a tearful child. “You are.”

“I do not wish to be.”

“With all due respect, Brightlord, that is not quite the truth. You seek for power. You take hold, and let go only with great difficulty.”

Dalinar bowed his head.

“Do not sorrow,” Wit said. “It is an era for tyrants. I doubt this place is ready for anything more, and a benevolent tyrant is preferable to the disaster of weak rule. Perhaps in another place and time, I’d have denounced you with spit and bile. Here, today, I praise you as what this world needs.”

Dalinar shook his head. “I should have allowed Elhokar his right of rule, and not interfered as I did.”

“Why?”

“Because he is king.”

“And that position is something sacrosanct? Divine?”

“No,” Dalinar admitted. “The Almighty, or the one claiming to be him, is dead. Even if he hadn’t been, the kingship didn’t come to our family naturally. We claimed it, and forced it upon the other highprinces.”

“So then why?”

“Because we were wrong,” Dalinar said, narrowing his eyes. “Gavilar, Sadeas, and I were wrong to do as we did all those years ago.”

Wit seemed genuinely surprised. “You unified the kingdom, Dalinar. You did a good work, something that was sorely needed.”

“This is unity?” Dalinar asked, waving a hand back toward the scattered remnants of the feast, the departing lighteyes. “No, Wit. We failed. We crushed, we killed, and we have failed miserably.” He looked up. “I receive, in Alethkar, only what I have demanded. In taking the throne by force, we implied—no we screamed—that strength is the right of rule. If Sadeas thinks he is stronger than I am, then it is his duty to try to take the throne from me. These are the fruits of my youth, Wit. It is why we need more than tyranny, even the benevolent kind, to transform this kingdom. That is what Nohadon was teaching. And that is what I’ve been missing all along.”

Wit nodded, looking thoughtful. “I need to read that book of yours again, it seems. I wanted to warn you, however. I’ll be leaving soon.”

“Leave?” Dalinar said. “You only just arrived.”