Words of Radiance

—From the Diagram, West Wall Psalm of Wonders: paragraph 8 (Note by Adrotagia: Could this refer to Mraize?)

“She didn’t say if she could even open the pathway?” Dalinar asked as he stalked toward the command tent. Rain pummeled the ground around him, so dense that it was no longer possible to distinguish separate windblown sheets in the glare of Navani’s fabrial floodlights. It was long past when he should have found cover.

“No, Brightlord,” said Peet, the bridgeman. “But she was insistent that we couldn’t face what was coming at us. Two highstorms.”

“How could there be two?” Navani asked. She wore a stout cloak but was soaked clear through anyway, her umbrella having blown away long ago. Roion walked on Dalinar’s other side, his beard and mustache limp with water.

“I don’t know, Brightness,” Peet said. “But that’s what she said. A highstorm and something else. She called it an Everstorm. She expects they’re going to collide right here.”

Dalinar considered, frowning. The command tent was just ahead. Inside, he’d talk to his field commanders, and—

The command tent shuddered, then ripped free in a burst of wind. Trailing ropes and spikes, it blew right past Dalinar, almost close enough to touch. Dalinar cursed as the light of a dozen lanterns—once contained in the tent—spilled onto the plateau. Scribes and soldiers scrambled, trying to grab maps and sheets of paper as rain and wind claimed them.

“Storm it!” Dalinar said, turning his back to the powerful wind. “I need an update!”

“Sir!” Commander Cael, head of the field command, jogged over, his wife—Apara—following. Cael’s clothing was mostly dry, though that was quickly changing. “Aladar has won his plateau! Apara was just composing you a message.”

“Really?” Almighty bless that man. He’d done it.

“Yes, sir,” Cael said. He had to shout against the wind and rain. “Highprince Aladar said the singing Parshendi went right down, letting him slaughter them. The rest broke and fled. Even with Roion’s plateau fallen, we’ve won the day!”

“Doesn’t feel like it,” Dalinar shouted back. Just minutes ago, the rainfall had been light. The situation was degrading quickly. “Send orders immediately to Aladar, my son, and General Khal. There’s a plateau just to the southeast, perfectly round. I want all of our forces to move there to brace for an oncoming storm.”

“Yes, sir!” Cael said with a salute, fist to coat. With the other hand, however, he pointed over Dalinar’s shoulder. “Sir, have you seen that?”

He turned, looking back toward the west. Red light flashed, lightning coursing down in repeated blasts. The sky itself seemed to spasm as something built there, swirling in an enormous storm cell that was rapidly expanding outward.

“Almighty above . . .” Navani whispered.

Nearby another tent shook, its stakes coming undone. “Leave the tents, Cael,” Dalinar said. “Get everyone moving. Now. Navani, go to Brightness Shallan. Help her if you can.”

The officer leaped away and began shouting orders. Navani went with him, vanishing into the night, and a squad of soldiers chased after her to provide protection.

“And me, Dalinar?” Roion asked.

“We’ll need you to take command of your men and lead them to safety,” Dalinar said. “If such a thing can be found.”

That tent nearby shook again. Dalinar frowned. It didn’t seem to be moving along with the wind. And was that . . . shouting?

Adolin crashed through the tent’s fabric and skidded along the stones on his back, his armor leaking Light.

“Adolin!” Dalinar shouted, dashing to his son.

The young man was missing several segments of his armor. He looked up with gritted teeth, blood streaming from his nose. He said something, but it was lost to the wind. No helm, no left vambrace, the breastplate cracked just short of shattering, his right leg exposed. Who could have done such a thing to a Shardbearer?

Dalinar knew the answer immediately. He cradled Adolin, but looked up past the collapsed tent. It whipped in the storm and tore away as a man strode past it, glowing with spinning trails of Stormlight. Those foreign features, clothing all of white plastered to his body by the rain, a bowed, hairless head, shadows hiding eyes that glowed with Stormlight.

Gavilar’s murderer. Szeth, the Assassin in White.

* * *

Shallan worked through the inscriptions on the wall of the round chamber, frantically searching for some way to make the Oathgate function.

This had to work. It had to.

“This is all in the Dawnchant,” Inadara said. “I can’t make sense of any of it.”

The Knights Radiant are the key.

Shouldn’t Renarin’s sword have been enough? “What’s the pattern?” she whispered.

“Mmm . . .” Pattern said. “Perhaps you cannot see it because you are too close? Like the Shattered Plains?”

Shallan hesitated, then stood and walked to the center of the room, where the depictions of the Knights Radiant and their kingdoms met at a central point.

“Brightlord Renarin?” Inadara asked. “Is something wrong?” The young prince had fallen to his knees and was huddled next to the wall.

“I can see it,” Renarin answered feverishly, his voice echoing in the chamber. Ardents who had been studying part of the murals looked up at him. “I can see the future itself. Why? Why, Almighty? Why have you cursed me so?” He screamed a pleading cry, then stood and cracked something against the wall. A rock? Where had he gotten it? He gripped the thing in a gauntleted hand and began to write.

Shocked, Shallan took a step toward him. A sequence of numbers?

All zeros.

“It’s come,” Renarin whispered. “It’s come, it’s come, it’s come. We’re dead. We’re dead. We’re dead. . . .”

* * *

Dalinar knelt beneath a fracturing sky, holding his son. Rainwater washed the blood from Adolin’s face, and the boy blinked, dazed from his thrashing.

“Father . . .” Adolin said.

The assassin stepped forward quietly, with no apparent urgency. The man seemed to glide through the rain.

“When you take the princedom, son,” Dalinar said, “don’t let them corrupt you. Don’t play their games. Lead. Don’t follow.”

“Father!” Adolin said, his eyes focusing.

Dalinar stood up. Adolin lurched over onto all fours and tried to get to his feet, but the assassin had broken one of Adolin’s greaves, which made it almost impossible to rise. The boy slipped back into the pooling water.

“You’ve been taught well, Adolin,” Dalinar said, eyes on that assassin. “You’re a better man than I am. I was always a tyrant who had to learn to be something else. But you, you’ve been a good man from the start. Lead them, Adolin. Unite them.”

“Father!”

Dalinar walked away from Adolin. Nearby, scribes and attendants, captains and enlisted men all shouted and scrambled, trying to find order in the chaos of the storm. They followed Dalinar’s order to evacuate, and most had yet to notice the figure in white.

The assassin stopped ten paces from Dalinar. Roion, pale-faced and stammering, backed away from the two of them and began shouting. “Assassin! Assassin!”

The rainfall was actually letting up a little. That didn’t bring Dalinar much hope; not with that red lightning on the horizon. Was that . . . a stormwall building at the front of the new storm? His efforts to disrupt the Parshendi had fallen short.

The Shin man didn’t strike. He stood opposite Dalinar, motionless, expressionless, water dripping down his face. Unnaturally calm.

Dalinar was far taller and broader. This small man in white, with his pale skin, seemed almost a youth, a stripling by comparison.

Behind him, Roion’s cries were lost in the confusion. However, Bridge Four did run up to surround Dalinar, spears in hand. Dalinar waved them back. “There’s nothing you can do here, lads,” Dalinar said. “Let me face him.”

Ten heartbeats.

“Why?” Dalinar asked the assassin, who still stood there in the rain. “Why kill my brother? Did they explain the reasoning behind your orders?”

“I am Szeth-son-son-Vallano,” the man said. Harshly. “Truthless of Shinovar. I do as my masters demand, and I do not ask for explanations.”

Dalinar revised his assessment. This man was not calm. He seemed that way, but when he spoke, he did it through clenched teeth, his eyes open too wide.

He’s mad, Dalinar thought. Storms.

“You don’t have to do this,” Dalinar said. “If it’s about pay . . .”

“What I am owed,” the assassin shouted, rainwater spraying from his face and Stormlight rising from his lips, “will come to me eventually! Every bit of it. I will drown in it, stonewalker!”

Szeth put his hand to the side, Shardblade appearing. Then, with a curt, deprecatory motion—like he was merely trimming a bit of gristle from his meat—he strode forward and swung at Dalinar.

Dalinar caught the Blade with his own, which appeared in his hand as he raised it.

The assassin spared a glance for Dalinar’s weapon, then smiled, lips drawn thin, showing only a hint of teeth. That eager smile matched with haunted eyes was one of the most evil things Dalinar had ever seen.