Words of Radiance

Then Light began to rise from her skin like vapors off boiling water. It lit the cabin with swimming shadows.

“Now what?” she demanded.

“Shape the lie.”

What did that mean? The door crunched again, cracking, a large split opening down the center.

Panicked, Shallan let out a breath. Stormlight streamed from her in a cloud; she almost felt as if she could touch it. She could feel its potential.

“How!” she demanded.

“Make the truth.”

“That makes no sense!”

Shallan screamed as the door broke open. New light entered the cabin, torchlight—red and yellow, hostile.

The cloud of Light leaped from Shallan, more Stormlight streaming from her body to join it. It formed a vague upright shape. An illuminated blur. It washed past the men through the doorway, waving appendages that could have been arms. Shallan herself, kneeling by the bed, fell into shadow.

The men’s eyes were drawn to the glowing shape. Then, blessedly, they turned and gave chase.

Shallan huddled against the wall, shaking. The cabin was utterly dark. Above, men screamed.

“Shallan . . .” Pattern buzzed somewhere in the darkness.

“Go and look,” she said. “Tell me what is happening up on deck.”

She didn’t know if he obeyed, as he made no sound when he moved. After a few deep breaths, Shallan stood up. Her legs shook, but she stood.

She collected herself somewhat. This was terrible, this was awful, but nothing, nothing, could compare to what she’d had to do the night her father died. She had survived that. She could survive this.

These men, they would be of the same group Kabsal had been from—the assassins Jasnah feared. They had finally gotten her.

Oh, Jasnah . . .

Jasnah was dead.

Grieve later. What was Shallan going to do about armed men taking over the ship? How would she find a way out?

She felt her way out into the passageway. There was a little light here, from torches above on the deck. The yells she heard there grew more panicked.

“Killing,” a voice suddenly said.

She jumped, though of course it was only Pattern.

“What?” Shallan hissed.

“Dark men killing,” Pattern said. “Sailors tied in ropes. One dead, bleeding red. I . . . I do not understand. . . .”

Oh, Stormfather . . . Above, the shouting heightened, but there was no scramble of boots on the deck, no clanging of weapons. The sailors had been captured. At least one had been killed.

In the darkness, Shallan saw shaking, wiggling forms creep up from the wood around her. Fearspren.

“What of the men who chased after my image?” she asked.

“Looking in water,” Pattern said.

So they thought she’d jumped overboard. Heart thumping, Shallan felt her way to Jasnah’s cabin, expecting at any moment to trip over the woman’s corpse on the floor. She didn’t. Had the men dragged it above?

Shallan entered Jasnah’s cabin and closed the door. It wouldn’t latch shut, so she pulled a box over to block it.

She had to do something. She felt her way to one of Jasnah’s trunks, which had been thrown open by the men, its contents—clothing—scattered about. In the bottom, Shallan found the hidden drawer and pulled it open. Light suddenly bathed the cabin. The spheres were so bright they blinded Shallan for a moment, and she had to look away.

Pattern vibrated on the floor beside her, form shaking in worry. Shallan looked about. The small cabin was a shambles, clothing on the floor, papers strewn everywhere. The trunk with Jasnah’s books was gone. Too fresh to have soaked in, blood was pooled on the bed. Shallan quickly looked away.

A shout suddenly sounded above, followed by a thump. The screaming grew louder. She heard Tozbek bellow for the men to spare his wife.

Almighty above . . . the assassins were executing the sailors one at a time. Shallan had to do something. Anything.

Shallan looked back at the spheres in their false bottom, lined with black cloth. “Pattern,” she said, “we’re going to Soulcast the bottom of the ship and sink it.”

“What!” His vibrating increased, a buzz of sound. “Humans . . . Humans . . . Eat water?”

“We drink it,” Shallan said, “but we cannot breathe it.”

“Mmmm . . . Confused . . .” Pattern said.

“The captain and the others are captured and being executed. The best chance I can give them is chaos.” Shallan placed her hands on the spheres and drew in the Light with a sharp breath. She felt afire with it inside of her, as if she were going to burst. The Light was a living thing, trying to press out through the pores of her skin.

“Show me!” she shouted, far more loudly than she’d intended. That Stormlight urged her to action. “I’ve Soulcast before. I must do it again!” Stormlight puffed from her mouth as she spoke, like breath on a cold day.

“Mmmmm . . .” Pattern said anxiously. “I will intercede. See.”

“See what?”

“See!”

Shadesmar. The last time she’d gone to that place, she’d nearly gotten herself killed. Only, it wasn’t a place. Or was it? Did it matter?

She reached back through recent memory to the time when she’d last Soulcast and accidentally turned a goblet into blood. “I need a truth.”

“You have given enough,” Pattern said. “Now. See.”

The ship vanished.

Everything . . . popped. The walls, the furniture, it all shattered into little globes of black glass. Shallan prepared herself to fall into the ocean of those glass beads, but instead she dropped onto solid ground.

She stood in a place with a black sky and a tiny, distant sun. The ground beneath her reflected light. Obsidian? Each way she turned, the ground was made of that same blackness. Nearby, the spheres—like those that would hold Stormlight, but dark and small—bounced to a rest on the ground.

Trees, like growing crystal, clustered here and there. The limbs were spiky and glassy, without leaves. Nearby, little lights hung in the air, flames without their candles. People, she realized. Those are each a person’s mind, reflected here in the Cognitive Realm. Smaller ones were scattered about her feet, dozens upon dozens, but so small she almost couldn’t make them out. The minds of fish?

She turned around and came face-to-face with a creature that had a symbol for a head. Startled, she screamed and jumped back. These things . . . they had haunted her . . . they . . .

It was Pattern. He stood tall and willowy, but slightly indistinct, translucent. The complex pattern of his head, with its sharp lines and impossible geometries, seemed to have no eyes. He stood with hands behind his back, wearing a robe that seemed too stiff to be cloth.

“Go,” he said. “Choose.”

“Choose what?” she said, Stormlight escaping her lips.

“Your ship.”

He did not have eyes, but she thought she could follow his gaze toward one of the little spheres on the glassy ground. She snatched it, and suddenly was given the impression of a ship.

The Wind’s Pleasure. A ship that had been cared for, loved. It had carried its passengers well for years and years, owned by Tozbek and his father before him. An old ship, but not ancient, still reliable. A proud ship. It manifested here as a sphere.

It could actually think. The ship could think. Or . . . well, it reflected the thoughts of the people who served on it, knew it, thought about it.

“I need you to change,” Shallan whispered to it, cradling the bead in her hands. It was too heavy for its size, as if the entire weight of the ship had been compressed to this singular bead.

“No,” the reply came, though it was Pattern who spoke. “No, I cannot. I must serve. I am happy.”

Shallan looked to him.

“I will intercede,” Pattern repeated. “. . . Translate. You are not ready.”

Shallan looked back to the bead in her hands. “I have Stormlight. Lots of it. I will give it to you.”

“No!” the reply seemed angry. “I serve.”

It really wanted to stay a ship. She could feel it, the pride it took, the reinforcement of years of service.

“They are dying,” she whispered.

“No!”

“You can feel them dying. Their blood on your deck. One by one, the people you serve will be cut down.”

She could feel it herself, could see it in the ship. They were being executed. Nearby, one of the floating candle flames vanished. Three of the eight captives dead, though she did not know which ones.

“There is only one chance to save them,” Shallan said. “And that is to change.”

“Change,” Pattern whispered for the ship.

“If you change, they might escape the evil men who kill,” Shallan whispered. “It is uncertain, but they will have a chance to swim. To do something. You can do them a last service, Wind’s Pleasure. Change for them.”

Silence.

“I . . .”

Another light vanished.

“I will change.”

It happened in a hectic second; the Stormlight ripped from Shallan. She heard distant cracks from the physical world as she withdrew so much Light from the nearby gemstones that they shattered.

Shadesmar vanished.

She was back in Jasnah’s cabin.

The floor, walls, and ceiling melted into water.

Shallan was plunged into the icy black depths. She thrashed in the water, dress hampering her movements. All around her, objects sank, the common artifacts of human life.