Words of Radiance

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—From the Diagram, Book of the 2nd Ceiling Rotation: pattern 15

The stone block slid inward, confirming Shallan’s deduction. They had opened a building that hadn’t been entered, or even seen, for centuries. Renarin stepped back from the hole he’d made, giving Shallan a chance to step forward. The air from inside smelled stale, musty.

Renarin dismissed his Blade, and oddly, as he did so, he let out a relieved sigh and relaxed against the outer wall of the building. Shallan moved to enter, but the bridgemen slipped in front of her to check the building’s safety first, raising sapphire lanterns.

The light revealed majesty.

Shallan’s breath caught in her throat. The large, circular room was a space worthy of a palace or temple. A mosaic mural covered the wall and floor with majestic images and dazzling color. Knights in armor stood before swirling skies of red and blue. People from all walks of life were depicted in all manner of settings, each crafted from vivid colors of every kind of stone—a masterwork that brought the whole world into one room.

Worried she’d damage the portal somehow, she’d placed Renarin’s cuts near a ripple that she had hoped indicated a doorway, and it seemed that she’d been correct. She entered through the hole and walked a curving path through the circular chamber, silently counting the divisions in the floor mural. There were ten main ones, just as there had been ten orders of knights, ten kingdoms, ten peoples. And then—between the segments representing the first and tenth kingdoms—was a narrower eleventh section. It depicted a tall tower. Urithiru.

She’d found it, the portal. And this artwork! Such beauty. It was breathtaking.

No, there wasn’t time to admire art right now. The large floor mosaic swirled around the center, but the swords of each knight pointed toward the same area of the wall, so Shallan walked in that direction. Everything in here seemed perfectly preserved, even the lamps on the walls, which appeared to still hold dun gemstones.

On the wall, she found a metal disc set into the stone. Was this steel? It hadn’t rusted or even tarnished despite its long abandonment.

“It’s coming,” Renarin announced from the other side of the room, his quiet voice echoing across the domed chamber. Storms, that boy was disturbing, particularly when accompanied by a howling storm and the sound of rain pelting the plateau outside.

Brightness Inadara and several scholars arrived. Stepping into the chamber, they gasped and then began talking over one another as they rushed to examine the mural.

Shallan studied the strange disc set into the wall. It was shaped like a ten-pointed star and had a thin slot directly in the center. The Radiants could operate this place, she thought. And what did the Radiants have that nobody else did? Many things, but the shape of that slot in the metal gave her a pretty good guess why only they could make the Oathgate work.

“Renarin, get over here,” Shallan said.

The boy clomped in her direction.

“Shallan,” Pattern said warningly. “Time is very short. They have summoned the Everstorm. And . . . and there’s something else, coming from the other direction. A highstorm?”

“It’s the Weeping,” Shallan said, looking to Pattern, who dimpled the wall just beside the steel disc. “No highstorms.”

“One is coming anyway. Shallan, they’re going to hit together. Two storms coming, one from each direction. They will crash into each other right here.”

“I don’t suppose they’ll just, you know, cancel each other out?”

“They will feed each other,” Pattern said. “It will be like two waves hitting with their peaks coinciding . . . it will create a storm like none the world has ever seen. Stone will shatter, plateaus themselves might collapse. It’s going to be bad. Very, very bad.”

Shallan looked to Inadara, who had walked up beside her. “Thoughts?”

“I don’t know what to think, Brightness,” Inadara said. “You were right about this place. I . . . I no longer trust myself to judge what is correct and what is false.”

“We need to move the armies to this plateau,” Shallan said. “Even if they defeat the Parshendi, they’re doomed unless we can make this portal work.”

“It doesn’t look like a portal at all,” Inadara said. “What will it do? Open a doorway in the wall?”

“I don’t know,” Shallan said, looking to Renarin. “Summon your Shardblade.”

He did so, wincing as it appeared. Shallan pointed at the slot like a keyhole in the wall—acting on a hunch. “See if you can scratch that metal with your Blade. Be very careful. We don’t want to ruin the Oathgate, in case I’m wrong.”

Renarin stepped up and carefully—using his hand to pinch the weapon from above—placed the tip of the blade on the metal around the keyhole. He grunted as the Blade wouldn’t cut. He tried a little harder, and the metal resisted the Blade.

“Made of the same stuff!” Shallan said, growing excited. “And that slot is shaped like it might fit a Blade. Try sliding the weapon in, very slowly.”

He did so, and as the point moved into the hole, the entire shape of the keyhole shifted, the metal flowing to match the shape of Renarin’s Shardblade. It was working! He got the weapon placed, and they turned around, looking over the chamber. Nothing appeared to have changed.

“Did that do anything?” Renarin asked.

“It has to have,” Shallan said. They’d unlocked a door, perhaps. But how to turn the equivalent of the doorknob?

“We need Highlady Navani to help,” Shallan said. “More importantly, we need to bring everyone here. Go, soldiers, bridgemen! Run and tell Dalinar to gather his armies on this plateau. Tell him that if he doesn’t, they are doomed. The rest of you scholars, we’re going to put our heads together and figure out how this storming thing works.”

* * *

Adolin danced through the storm, trading blows with Eshonai. She was good, though she didn’t use stances he recognized. She dodged back and forth, feeling him out with her Blade, bursting through the storm like a crackling thunderbolt.

Adolin kept after her, sweeping with his Shardblade, forcing her away. A duel. He could win a duel. Even in the middle of a storm, even against a monster, this was something he could do. He backed her away across the battlefield, closer to where his armies had crossed the chasm to join this battle.

She was difficult to maneuver. He had only met this Eshonai twice, but he felt he knew her through the way she fought. He sensed her eagerness for blood. Her eagerness to kill. The Thrill. He did not feel it himself. He sensed it in her.

Around him, Parshendi fled or fought in pockets as his men harried them. He passed a Parshendi, forced to the ground by soldiers, being gutted in the rain as he tried to crawl away. Water and blood splashed on the plateau, frantic yells sounding amid the thunder.

Thunder. Distant thunder from the west. Adolin glanced in that direction, and nearly lost his concentration. He could see it building, wind and rain spinning in a gigantic pillar, flashing red.

Eshonai swung for him, and Adolin turned back, blocking the blow with his forearm. That section of his Plate was getting weak, the cracks leaking Stormlight. He stepped into the blow and swung his own Blade, one-handed, into Eshonai’s side. He was rewarded by a grunt. She didn’t fold, though. She didn’t even step back. She raised her Blade and smashed it down against his forearm yet again.

The Plate there exploded in a flash of light and molten metal. Storms. Adolin was forced to pull the arm back and release the gauntlet—now too heavy, without the connecting Plate to help it—letting it drop off his hand. The wind that blew against his exposed skin was startlingly powerful.

A little more, Adolin thought, not backing away despite the lost section of Plate. He grabbed his Shardblade in two hands—one metal, the other flesh—and battered forward with a series of strikes. He transitioned out of Windstance. No sweeping majesty for him. He needed the frantic fury of Flamestance. Not just for the power, but because of what he needed to convey to Eshonai.

Eshonai growled, forced backward. “Your day has ended, destroyer,” she said inside her helm. “Today, your brutality turns against you. Today, extinction turns from us to you.”

A little more.

Adolin pressed her with a burst of swordplay, then he flagged, presenting her with an opening. She took it immediately, swinging for his helm, which leaked from an earlier blow. Yes, she was fully caught up in the Thrill. That lent her energy and strength, but it drove her to recklessness. To ignore her surroundings.

Adolin took the hit to the head and stumbled. Eshonai laughed with glee and moved to swing again.

Adolin lunged forward and slammed his shoulder and head into her chest. His helm exploded from the force of it, but his gambit succeeded.

Eshonai had not noticed how close they were to the chasm.

His shove threw her over the plateau’s edge. He felt Eshonai’s panic, heard her shout, as she was dropped into the open blackness.

Unfortunately, the exploding helm left Adolin momentarily blinded. He stumbled, and when he put a foot down, it landed only on empty air. He lurched, then fell toward the void of the chasm.