Words of Radiance (Page 217)

She returned with it, and with the stormwardens, who set up a tent around Taravangian right there on the path. Excuses continued. The king is weak from the sun. He must rest and burn glyphwards to the Almighty for the preservation of your nation. Taravangian cares while your own lighteyes sent you to the slaughter . . .

By the light of spheres, Taravangian picked through the tome, poring over translations of his own words written in a language he had invented and then forgotten. Answers. He needed answers.

“Did ever I tell you, Adro, what I asked for?” he whispered as he read.

“Yes.”

He was barely listening. “Capacity,” he whispered, turning a page. “Capacity to stop what was coming. The capacity to save humankind.”

He searched. He was not brilliant today, but he had spent many days reading these pages, going over, and over, and over passages. He knew them.

The answers would be here. They would. Taravangian worshipped only one god now. It was the man he had been on that day.

There.

He found it on a reproduction of one corner of his room, where he’d written in tiny script sentences over the top of one another because he’d run out of space. In his clarity of genius, the sentences had looked easy to separate, but it had taken his scholars years to piece together what this said.

They will come. You cannot stop their oaths. Look for those who survive when they should not. That pattern will be your clue.

“The bridgemen,” Taravangian whispered.

“What?” Adrotagia asked.

Taravangian looked up, blinking bleary eyes. “Dalinar’s bridgemen, the ones he took from Sadeas. Did you read the account of their survival?”

“I didn’t think it important. Just another game of power between Sadeas and Dalinar.”

“No. It’s more.” They had survived. Taravangian stood up. “Wake every Alethi sleeper we have; send every agent in the area. There will be stories told of one of these bridgemen. Miraculous survival. Favored of the winds. One is among them. He might not know yet exactly what he’s doing, but he has bonded a spren and sworn at least the First Ideal.”

“If we find him?” Adrotagia asked.

“We keep him away from Szeth at all costs.” Taravangian handed her the Diagram. “Our lives depend upon it. Szeth is a beast who gnaws at his leg to escape his bonds. If he gets free . . .”

She nodded, moving off to do as he commanded. She hesitated at the flaps to their temporary tent. “We might have to reassess our methods of determining your intelligence. What I have seen in the last hour makes me question whether ‘average’ can be applied to you today.”

“The assessments are not inaccurate,” he said. “You simply underestimate the average man.”

Besides, in dealing with the Diagram, he might not remember what he had written or why—but there were echoes sometimes.

She left, making way as Mrall stepped in. “Your Majesty,” he said. “Time runs short. The highprince is dying.”

“He’s been dying for years.” Still, Taravangian did hasten his step—as much as he was capable of doing these days—as he resumed his hike. He didn’t stop with any more of the soldiers, and gave only brief waves toward the cheers he received.

Eventually, Mrall led him over a hillside away from the immediate stench of the battle and the smoldering city. A series of stormwagons here flew an optimistic flag, that of the king of Jah Keved. The guards there let Taravangian enter their ring of wagons, and he approached the largest one, an enormous vehicle almost like a mobile building on wheels.

They found Highprince Valam . . . King Valam . . . in bed coughing. His hair had fallen out since Taravangian had last seen him, and his cheeks were so sunken that rainwater would have pooled in them. Redin, the king’s bastard son, stood at the foot of the bed, head bowed. With the three guards who stood in the room, there wasn’t room for Taravangian, so he stopped in the doorway.

“Taravangian,” Valam said, then coughed into his handkerchief. The cloth came back bloodied. “You’ve come for my kingdom, have you?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Your Majesty,” Taravangian said.

“Don’t play coy,” Valam snapped. “I can’t stand it in women or in rivals. Stormfather . . . I don’t know what they’re going to make of you. I half think they’ll have you assassinated by the end of the week.” He waved with a sickly hand, all draped in cloth, and the guards made way for Taravangian to enter the small bedchamber.

“Clever ploy,” the king said. “Sending that food, those healers. The soldiers love you, I’ve heard. What would you have done if one side had won decisively?”

“I’d have had a new ally,” Taravangian said. “Grateful for my aid.”

“You helped all sides.”

“But the winner the most, Your Majesty,” Taravangian said. “We can minister to survivors, but not the dead.”

Valam coughed again, a great hacking mess. His bastard stepped up, concerned, but the king waved him back. “Would have figured,” the king said to him between wheezes, “you’d be the only one of my children to live, bastard.” He turned to Taravangian. “Turns out, you have a legitimate claim on the throne, Taravangian. Through your mother’s side, I think? A marriage to a Veden princess some three generations back?”

“I am not aware,” Taravangian said.

“Didn’t you hear me about being coy?”

“We both have a role to play in this production, Your Majesty,” Taravangian said. “I am merely speaking the lines as they were written.”

“You talk like a woman,” Valam said. He spat blood to the side. “I know what you’re up to. In a week or so, after caring for my people, your scribes will ‘discover’ your claim on the throne. You’ll reluctantly step in to save the kingdom, as urged by my own storming people.”

“I see you’ve had the script read to you,” Taravangian said softly.

“That assassin will come for you.”

“He very well might.” That was the truth.

“Don’t know why I even storming tried for this throne,” Valam said. “At least I’ll die as king.” He heaved a deep breath, then raised his hand, gesturing impatiently at the scribes huddled outside the room. The women perked up, peeking around Taravangian.

“I’m making this idiot my heir,” Valam said, waving at Taravangian. “Ha! Let the other highprinces chew on that.”

“They’re dead, Your Majesty,” Taravangian said.

“What? All of them?”

“Yes.”

“Even Boriar?”

“Yes.”

“Huh,” Valam said. “Bastard.”

At first, Taravangian thought that was a reference to one of the deceased. Then, however, he noticed the king waving at his illegitimate son. Redin stepped up, going onto one knee beside the bed as Taravangian made room.

Valam struggled with something beneath his blankets; his side knife. Redin helped him get it out, then held the knife awkwardly.

Taravangian inspected this Redin, curious. This was the king’s ruthless executioner that he had read about? This concerned, helpless-looking man?

“Through my heart,” Valam said.

“Father, no . . .” Redin said.

“Through my storming heart!” Valam shouted, spraying bloody spittle across his sheet. “I won’t lie here and let Taravangian coax my own servants into poisoning me. Do it, boy! Or can’t you do a single thing that—”

Redin slammed the knife down into his father’s chest with such force, it made Taravangian jump. Redin then stood, saluted, and shoved his way out of the room.

The king heaved a final gasp, eyes glazing over. “So the night will reign, for the choice of honor is life . . .”

Taravangian raised an eyebrow. A Death Rattle? Here, now? Blast, and he wasn’t in a position where he could write down the exact phrasing. He’d have to remember it.

Valam’s life faded away until he was simply meat. A Shardblade appeared from vapor beside the bed, then thumped to the wooden floor of the wagon. Nobody reached for it, and the soldiers in the room and scribes outside it looked to Taravangian, then knelt.

“Cruel, what Valam did to that one,” Mrall said, nodding toward the bastard, who shoved his way out of the stormwagon and into the light.

“More than you know,” Taravangian said, reaching out to touch the knife protruding through blanket and clothing from the old king’s chest. He hesitated, fingers inches from the handle. “The bastard will be known as a patricide on the official records. If he had interest in the throne, this will make it . . . difficult for him, even more so than his parentage.” Taravangian pulled his fingers away from the knife. “Might I have a moment with the fallen king? I would speak a prayer for him.”

The others left him, even Mrall. They shut the small door, and Taravangian sat down on the stool beside the corpse. He had no intention of saying any sort of prayer, but he did want a moment. Alone. To think.

It had worked. Just as the Diagram instructed, Taravangian was king of Jah Keved. He had taken the first major step toward unifying the world, as Gavilar had insisted would need to happen if they were to survive.