Words of Radiance

“Exhaustionspren?” she asked, shocked by their size here.

“Yes.”

She shivered, then looked down at the sphere beneath her hand. She was dangerously close to falling into Shadesmar completely, and could barely see the impressions of the physical realm around her. Only those beads. She felt as if she would tumble into their sea at any moment.

“Please,” Shallan said to the sphere. “I need you to become fire.”

Pattern buzzed, speaking with a new voice, interpreting the sphere’s words. “I am a stick,” he said. He sounded satisfied.

“You could be fire,” Shallan said.

“I am a stick.”

The stick was not particularly eloquent. She supposed that she shouldn’t be surprised.

“Why don’t you become fire instead?”

“I am a stick.”

“How do I make it change?” Shallan asked of Pattern.

“Mm . . . I do not know. You must persuade it. Offer it truths, I think?” He sounded agitated. “This place is dangerous for you. For us. Please. Speed.”

She looked back at the stick.

“You want to burn.”

“I am a stick.”

“Think how much fun it would be?”

“I am a stick.”

“Stormlight,” Shallan said. “You could have it! All that I’m holding.”

A pause. Finally, “I am a stick.”

“Sticks need Stormlight. For . . . things . . .” Shallan blinked away tears of fatigue.

“I am—”

“—a stick,” Shallan said. She gripped the sphere, feeling both it and the stick in the physical realm, trying to think through another argument. For a moment, she hadn’t felt quite so tired, but it was returning—crashing back upon her. Why . . .

Her Stormlight was running out.

It was gone in a moment, drained from her, and she exhaled, slipping into Shadesmar with a sigh, feeling overwhelmed and exhausted.

She fell into the sea of spheres. That awful blackness, millions of moving bits, consuming her.

She threw herself from Shadesmar.

The spheres expanded outward, growing into sticks and rocks and trees, restoring the world as she knew it. She collapsed into her small stand of trees, heart pounding.

All grew normal around her. No more distant sun, no more sea of spheres. Just frigid cold, a night sky, and biting wind that blew between the trees. The single sphere she’d drained slipped from her fingers, clicking against the stone ground. She leaned back against Jasnah’s trunk. Her arms still ached from dragging that up the beach to the trees.

She huddled there, frightened. “Do you know how to make fire?” she asked Pattern. Her teeth chattered. Stormfather. She didn’t feel cold anymore, but her teeth were chattering, and her breath was visible as vapor in the starlight.

She found herself growing drowsy. Maybe she should just sleep, then try to deal with it all in the morning.

“Change?” Pattern asked. “Offer the change.”

“I tried.”

“I know.” His vibrations sounded depressed.

Shallan stared at that pile of sticks, feeling utterly useless. What was it Jasnah had said? Control is the basis of all true power? Authority and strength are matters of perception? Well, this was a direct refutation of that. Shallan could imagine herself as grand, could act like a queen, but that didn’t change a thing out here in the wilderness.

Well, Shallan thought, I’m not going to sit here and freeze to death. I’ll at least freeze to death trying to find help.

She didn’t move, though. Moving was hard. At least here, huddled by the trunk, she didn’t have to feel the wind so much. Just lying here until morning . . .

She curled into a ball.

No. This didn’t seem right. She coughed, then somehow got to her feet. She stumbled away from her not-fire, dug a sphere from her safepouch, then started walking.

Pattern moved at her feet. Those were bloodier now. She left a red trail on the rock. She couldn’t feel the cuts.

She walked and walked.

And walked.

And . . .

Light.

She didn’t move any more quickly. She couldn’t. But she did keep going, shambling directly toward that pinprick in the darkness. A numb part of her worried that the light was really Nomon, the second moon. That she’d march toward it and fall off the edge of Roshar itself.

So she surprised herself by stumbling right into the middle of a small group of people sitting around a campfire. She blinked, looking from one face to another; then—ignoring the sounds they made, for words were meaningless to her in this state—she walked to the campfire and lay down, curled up, and fell asleep.

* * *

“Brightness?”

Shallan grumbled, rolling over. Her face hurt. No, her feet hurt. Her face was nothing compared to that pain.

If she slept a little longer, maybe it would fade. At least for that time. . . .

“B-Brightness?” the voice asked again. “Are you feeling well, yes?”

That was a Thaylen accent. Dredged from deep within her, a light surfaced, bringing memories. The ship. Thaylens. The sailors?

Shallan forced her eyes open. The air smelled faintly of smoke from the still-smoldering fire. The sky was a deep violet, brightening as the sun broke the horizon. She’d slept on hard rock, and her body ached.

She didn’t recognize the speaker, a portly Thaylen man with a white beard wearing a knit cap and an old suit and vest, patched in a few inconspicuous places. He wore his white Thaylen eyebrows tucked up over his ears. Not a sailor. A merchant.

Shallan stifled a groan, sitting up. Then, in a moment of panic, she checked her safehand. One of her fingers had slipped out of the sleeve, and she pulled it back in. The Thaylen’s eyes flicked toward it, but he said nothing.

“You are well, then?” the man asked. He spoke in Alethi. “We were going to pack to go, you see. Your arrival last night was . . . unexpected. We did not wish to disturb you, but thought perhaps you would want to wake before we depart.”

Shallan ran her freehand through her hair, a mess of red locks stuck with twigs. Two other men—tall, hulking, and of Vorin descent—packed up blankets and bedrolls. She’d have killed for one of those during the night. She remembered tossing uncomfortably.

Stilling the needs of nature, she turned and was surprised to see three large chull wagons with cages on the back. Inside were a handful of dirty, shirtless men. It took just a moment for it all to click.

Slavers.

She shoved down an initial burst of panic. Slaving was a perfectly legal profession. Most of the time. Only this was the Frostlands, far from the rule of any group or nation. Who was to say what was legal here and what was not?

Be calm, she told herself forcefully. They wouldn’t have awakened you politely if they were planning something like that.

Selling a Vorin woman of high dahn—which the dress marked her as being—would be a risky gambit for a slaver. Most owners in civilized lands would require documentation of the slave’s past, and it was rare indeed that a lighteyes was made a slave, aside from ardents. Usually someone of higher breeding would simply be executed instead. Slavery was a mercy for the lower classes.

“Brightness?” the slaver asked nervously.

She was thinking like a scholar again, to distract herself. She’d need to get past that.

“What is your name?” Shallan asked. She hadn’t intended to make her voice quite so emotionless, but the shock of what she’d seen left her in turmoil.

The man stepped back at her tone. “I am Tvlakv, humble merchant.”

“Slaver,” Shallan said, standing up and pushing her hair back from her face.

“As I said. A merchant.”

His two guards watched her as they loaded equipment onto the lead wagon. She did not miss the cudgels they carried prominently at their waists. She’d had a sphere in her hand as she walked last night, hadn’t she?

Memories of that made her feet flare up again. She had to grit her teeth against the agony as painspren, like orange hands made of sinew, clawed out of the ground nearby. She’d need to clean her wounds, but bloodied and bruised as they were, she wasn’t going to be walking anywhere anytime soon. Those wagons had seats. . . .

They likely stole the sphere from me, she thought. She felt around in her safepouch. The other spheres were still there, but the the sleeve was unbuttoned. Had she done that? Had they peeked? She couldn’t suppress a blush at the thought.

The two guards regarded her hungrily. Tvlakv acted humble, but his leering eyes were also very eager. These men were one step from robbing her.

But if she left them, she’d probably die out here, alone. Stormfather! What could she do? She felt like sitting down and sobbing. After everything that had happened, now this?

Control is the basis of all power.

How would Jasnah respond to this situation?

The answer was simple. She would be Jasnah.

“I will allow you to assist me,” Shallan said. She somehow kept her voice even, despite the anxious terror she felt inside.

“. . . Brightness?” Tvlakv asked.

“As you can see,” Shallan said, “I am the victim of a shipwreck. My servants are lost to me. You and your men will do. I have a trunk. We will need to go fetch it.”

She felt like one of the ten fools. Surely he would see through the flimsy act. Pretending you had authority was not the same as having it, no matter what Jasnah said.