Words of Radiance

Silence. Shallan didn’t reply. How could she reply to that?

“What?” Kaladin finally asked.

“I’m trying to decide how to react,” Shallan said. “You see, you just said something very, very funny.”

“Then why aren’t you laughing?”

“Well, it isn’t that kind of funny.” She handed him her satchel and stepped onto a small dry rise of rock running through the middle of a deep pond on the chasm floor. The ground was usually flat—all of that crem settling—but the water in this pool looked a good two or three feet deep.

She crossed with hands out to the sides, balancing. “So, let me see,” she said as she stepped carefully. “You think I’ve lived a simple, happy life full of sunshine and joy. But you also imply that I’ve got dark, evil secrets, so you’re suspicious of and even hostile to me. You tell me I’m arrogant and assume that I consider darkeyes to be playthings, but when I tell you what I’m trying to do to protect them—and everyone else—you imply I’m meddling and should just leave well enough alone.”

She reached the other side and turned about. “Would you say that’s an accurate summary of our conversations up to this point, Kaladin Stormblessed?”

He grimaced. “Yes. I suppose.”

“Wow,” she said, “you sure do seem to know me well. Particularly considering that you started this conversation by professing that you don’t know what to make of me. An odd statement from someone who seems, from my perspective, to have figured it all out. Next time I’m trying to decide what to do, I’ll just ask you, since you appear to understand me better than I understand myself.”

He crossed the same ridge of rock in the path, and she watched anxiously, as he was carrying her satchel. She trusted him better with it over the water than she trusted herself, though. She reached for it when he arrived on the other side, but found herself taking his arm to draw his attention.

“How about this?” she said, holding his eyes. “I promise, solemnly and by the tenth name of the Almighty, that I mean no harm to Adolin or his family. I mean to prevent a disaster. I might be wrong, and I might be misguided, but I vow to you that I’m sincere.”

He stared into her eyes. So intense. She felt a shiver meeting that expression. This was a man of passion.

“I believe you,” he said. “And I guess that will do.” He looked upward, then cursed.

“What?” she asked, looking toward the distant light above. The sun was peeking out over the lip of the ridge there.

The wrong ridge. They weren’t going west any longer. They’d strayed again, pointing southward.

“Blast,” Shallan said. “Give me that satchel. I need to draw this out.”

He bears the weight of God’s own divine hatred, separated from the virtues that gave it context. He is what we made him to be, old friend. And that is what he, unfortunately, wished to become.

“I was young,” Teft said, “so I didn’t hear much. Kelek, I didn’t want to hear much. The things my family did, they weren’t the sort of things you want your parents doing, all right? I didn’t want to know. So it’s not surprising I can’t remember.”

Sigzil nodded in that mild, yet infuriating way of his. The Azish man just knew things. And he made you tell him things too. Unfair, that was. Terribly. Why did Teft have to end up with him on watch duty?

The two sat on rocks near the chasms just east of Dalinar’s warcamp. A cold wind blew in. Highstorm tonight.

He’ll be back before then. Surely by then.

A cremling scuttled past. Teft threw a rock at it, driving it toward a nearby crack. “I don’t know why you want to hear all of these things anyway. They aren’t any use.”

Sigzil nodded. Storming foreigner.

“All right, fine,” Teft said. “It was some kind of cult, you see, called the Envisagers. They . . . well, they thought if they could find a way to return the Voidbringers, then the Knights Radiant would return as well. Stupid, right? Only, they knew things. Things they shouldn’t, things like what Kaladin can do.”

“I see this is hard for you,” Sigzil said. “Want to play another hand of michim to pass the time instead?”

“You just want my storming spheres,” Teft snapped, wagging his finger at the Azish man. “And don’t call it by that name.”

“Michim is the game’s actual name.”

“That’s a holy word, and ain’t no game named a holy word.”

“The word isn’t holy where it came from,” Sigzil said, obviously annoyed.

“We ain’t there now, are we? Call it something else.”

“I thought you’d like it,” Sigzil said, picking up the colored rocks that were used in the game. You bet them, in a pile, while trying to guess the ones your opponent had hidden. “It’s a game of skill, not chance, so it doesn’t offend Vorin sensibilities.”

Teft watched him pick up the rocks. Maybe it would be better if he just lost all of his spheres in that storming game. It wasn’t good for him to have money again. He couldn’t be trusted with money.

“They thought,” Teft said, “that people were more likely to manifest powers if their lives were in danger. So . . . they’d put lives in danger. Members of their own group—never an innocent outsider, bless the winds. But that was bad enough. I watched people let themselves be pushed off cliffs, watched them tied in place with a candle slowly burning a rope until it snapped and dropped a rock to crush them. It was bad, Sigzil. Awful. The sort of thing nobody should have to watch, especially a boy of six.”

“So what did you do?” Sigzil asked softly, pulling tight the string on his little bag of rocks.

“Ain’t none of your business,” Teft said. “Don’t know why I’m even talking to you.”

“It’s all right,” Sigzil said. “I can see—”

“I turned them in,” Teft blurted out. “To the citylord. He held a trial for them, a big one. Had them all executed in the end. Never did understand that. They were only a danger to themselves. Their punishment for threatening suicide was to be killed. Nonsense, that is. Should have found a way to help them . . .”

“Your parents?”

“Mother died in that rock–string contraption,” Teft said. “She really believed, Sig. That she had it in her, you know? The powers? That if she were about to die, they’d come out in her, and she’d save herself . . .”

“And you watched?”

“Storms, no! You think they’d let her son watch that? Are you mad?”

“But—”

“Did watch my father die, though,” Teft said, looking out over the Plains. “Hanged.” He shook his head, digging in his pocket. Where had he put that flask? As he turned, however, he caught sight of that other lad sitting back there, fiddling with his little box as he often did. Renarin.

Teft wasn’t one for all that nonsense like Moash had talked about, wanting to overturn lighteyes. The Almighty had put them in their place, and who had business questioning him? Not spearmen, that’s for certain. But in a way, Prince Renarin was as bad as Moash. Neither one knew their place. A lighteyes wanting to join Bridge Four was as bad as a darkeyes talking stupid and lofty to the king. It didn’t fit, even if the other bridgemen seemed to like the lad.

And, of course, Moash was one of them now. Storms. Had he left his flask back at the barrack?

“Heads up, Teft,” Sigzil said, rising.

Teft turned around and saw men in uniform approaching. He scrambled to his feet, grabbing his spear. It was Dalinar Kholin, accompanied by several of his lighteyed advisors, along with Drehy and Skar from Bridge Four, the day’s guards. With Moash promoted away and Kaladin . . . well, not there . . . Teft had taken over daily assignments. Nobody else would storming do it. They said he was in command now. Idiots.

“Brightlord,” Teft said, slapping his chest in salute.

“Adolin told me you men were coming here,” the highprince said. He spared a glance for Prince Renarin, who had also stood and saluted, as if this weren’t his own father. “A rotation, I understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Teft said, looking toward Sigzil. It was a rotation.

Teft was just on nearly every shift.

“You really think he’s alive out there, soldier?” Dalinar asked.

“He is, sir,” Teft said. “It’s not about what I or anyone thinks.”

“He fell hundreds of feet,” Dalinar said.

Teft continued to stand at attention. The highprince hadn’t asked a question, so Teft didn’t give a reply.

He did have to banish a few terrible images in his head. Kaladin having knocked his head while falling. Kaladin having been crushed by the falling bridge. Kaladin lying with a broken leg, unable to find spheres to heal himself. The fool boy thought he was immortal, sometimes.

Kelek. They all thought he was.

“He is going to come back, sir,” Sigzil said to Dalinar. “He’s going to come climbing right up out of that chasm right there. It will be well if we’re here to meet him. Uniforms on, spears polished.”