Words of Radiance

“How bad, exactly, are these debts of yours?” she asked, digging some spheres out of her safepouch to put in the goblet on her desk.

“Well, one of the fellows I owed was executed,” Gaz said, rubbing his chin. “But there is more.” He hesitated. “Eighty ruby broams, Brightness. Though they might not take them anymore. It’s my head they may want, these days.”

“Quite a debt for a man such as yourself. Are you a gambler, then?”

“Ain’t no difference,” he said. “Sure.”

“And that’s a lie,” Shallan said, cocking her head. “I would know the truth from you, Gaz.”

“Just turn me over to them,” he said, turning and walking toward the soup. “Ain’t no matter. I’d rather that than be out here, wondering when they’ll find me, anyways.”

Shallan watched him go, then shook her head, turning back to her studies. She says that Urithiru is not on the Shattered Plains, Shallan thought, turning a few pages. But how is she certain? The Plains were never fully explored, because of the chasms. Who knows what is out there?

Fortunately, Jasnah was very complete in her notes. It appeared that most of the old records spoke of Urithiru as being in the mountains. The Shattered Plains filled a basin.

Nohadon could walk there, Shallan thought, flipping to a quote from The Way of Kings. Jasnah questioned the validity of that statement, though Jasnah questioned pretty much everything. After an hour of study as the sun sank down through the sky, Shallan found herself rubbing her temples.

“Are you well?” Pattern’s voice asked softly. He liked to come out when it was darker, and she did not forbid him. She searched and found him on the table, a complex formation of ridges in the wood.

“Historians,” Shallan said, “are a bunch of liars.”

“Mmmmm,” Pattern said, sounding satisfied.

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“Oh.”

Shallan slammed her current book closed. “These women were supposed to be scholars! Instead of recording facts, they wrote opinions and presented them as truth. They seem to take great pains to contradict one another, and they dance around topics of import like spren around a fire—never providing heat themselves, just making a show of it.”

Pattern hummed. “Truth is individual.”

“What? No it’s not. Truth is . . . it’s Truth. Reality.”

“Your truth is what you see,” Pattern said, sounding confused. “What else could it be? That is the truth that you spoke to me, the truth that brings power.”

She looked at him, his ridges casting shadows in the light of her spheres. She’d renewed those in the highstorm last night, while she was cooped up in her box of a wagon. Pattern had started buzzing in the middle of the storm—a strange, angry sound. After that, he’d ranted in a language she didn’t understand, panicking Gaz and the other soldiers she’d invited into the shelter. Luckily, they took it for granted that terrible things happened during highstorms, and none had spoken of it since.

Fool, she told herself, flipping to an empty page in the notes. Start acting like a scholar. Jasnah would be disappointed. She wrote down what Pattern had said just now.

“Pattern,” she said, tapping her pencil—one she’d gotten from the merchants, along with paper. “This table has four legs. Would you not say that is a truth, independent of my perspective?”

Pattern buzzed uncertainly. “What is a leg? Only as it is defined by you. Without a perspective, there is no such thing as a leg, or a table. There is only wood.”

“You’ve told me the table perceives itself this way.”

“Because people have considered it, long enough, as being a table,” Pattern said. “It becomes truth to the table because of the truth the people create for it.”

Interesting, Shallan thought, scribbling away at her notebook. She wasn’t so interested in the nature of truth at the moment, but in how Pattern perceived it. Is this because he’s from the Cognitive Realm? The books say that the Spiritual Realm is a place of pure truth, while the Cognitive is more fluid.

“Spren,” Shallan said. “If people weren’t here, would spren have thought?”

“Not here, in this realm,” Pattern said. “I do not know about the other realm.”

“You don’t sound concerned,” Shallan said. “Your entire existence might be dependent on people.”

“It is,” Pattern said, again unconcerned. “But children are dependent upon parents.” He hesitated. “Besides, there are others who think.”

“Voidbringers,” Shallan said, cold.

“Yes. I do not think that my kind would live in a world with only them. They have their own spren.”

Shallan sat up sharply. “Their own spren?”

Pattern shrank on her table, scrunching up, his ridges growing less distinct as they mashed together.

“Well?” Shallan asked.

“We do not speak of this.”

“You might want to start,” Shallan said. “It’s important.”

Pattern buzzed. She thought he was going to insist on the point, but after a moment, he continued in a very small voice. “Spren are . . . power . . . shattered power. Power given thought by the perceptions of men. Honor, Cultivation, and . . . and another. Fragments broken off.”

“Another?” Shallan prodded.

Pattern’s buzz became a whine, going so high pitched she almost couldn’t hear it. “Odium.” He spoke the word as if needing to force it out.

Shallan wrote furiously. Odium. Hatred. A type of spren? Perhaps a large unique one, like Cusicesh from Iri or the Nightwatcher. Hatredspren. She’d never heard of such a thing.

As she wrote, one of her slaves approached in the darkening night. The timid man wore a simple tunic and trousers, one of the sets given to Shallan by the merchants. The gift was welcome, as the last of Shallan’s spheres were in the goblet before her, and wouldn’t be enough to buy a meal at some of the finer restaurants in Kharbranth.

“Brightness?” the man asked.

“Yes, Suna?”

“I . . . um . . .” He pointed. “The other lady, she asked me to tell you . . .”

He was pointing toward the tent used by Tyn, the tall woman who was leader of the few remaining caravan guards.

“She wants me to visit her?” Shallan asked.

“Yes,” Suna said, looking down. “For food, I guess?”

“Thank you, Suna,” Shallan said, freeing him to go back toward the fire where he and the other slaves were helping with the cooking while parshmen gathered wood.

Shallan’s slaves were a quiet group. They had tattoos on their foreheads, rather than brands. It was the kinder way to do it, and usually marked a person who had entered servitude willingly, as opposed to being forced into it as a punishment for a violent or terrible crime. They were men with debts or the children of slaves who still bore the debt of their parents.

These were accustomed to labor, and seemed frightened by the idea of what she was paying them. Pittance though it was, it would see most of them freed in under two years. They were obviously uncomfortable with that idea.

Shallan shook her head, packing away her things. As she walked toward Tyn’s tent, Shallan paused at the fire and asked Red to lift her table back into the wagon and secure it there.

She did worry about her things, but she no longer kept any spheres in there, and had left it open so Red and Gaz could glimpse inside and see only books. Hopefully there would be no incentive for people to go rooting through them.

You dance around the truth too, she thought to herself as she walked away from the fire. Just like those historians you were ranting about. She pretended these men were heroes, but had no illusions about how quickly they could change coats in the wrong circumstances.

Tyn’s tent was large and well lit. The woman didn’t travel like a simple guard. In many ways, she was the most intriguing person here. One of the few lighteyes aside from the merchants themselves. A woman who wore a sword.

Shallan peeked in through the open flaps and found several parshmen setting up a meal on a low travel table, meant for people to eat at while sitting on the floor. The parshmen hurried out, and Shallan watched them suspiciously.

Tyn herself stood by a window cut into the cloth. She wore her long, tan coat, buckled at the waist and almost closed. It had a dresslike feel to it, though it was far stiffer than any dress Shallan had worn, matched by the stiff trousers the woman wore underneath.

“I asked your men,” Tyn said without turning, “and they said you hadn’t dined yet. I had the parshmen bring enough for two.”

“Thank you,” Shallan said, entering and trying to keep the hesitation from her voice. Among these people, she wasn’t a timid girl but a powerful woman. Theoretically.

“I’ve ordered my people to keep the perimeter clear,” Tyn said. “We can speak freely.”

“That is well,” Shallan said.

“It means,” Tyn said, turning around, “that you can tell me who you really are.”

Stormfather! What did that mean? “I’m Shallan Davar, as I have said.”

“Yes,” Tyn said, walking over and sitting down at the table. “Please,” she said, gesturing.