Words of Radiance

Kaladin was also strange. In ways Adolin couldn’t explain.

Well, for all that, Kaladin’s men were just doing their duty. No use in snapping at them, so he gave them a smile.

Adolin’s Shardblade dropped into his fingers again, too light for its size. He had always felt a certain strength when holding it. Never before had Adolin felt powerless when bearing his Shards. Even surrounded by the Parshendi, even certain he was going to die, he’d still felt power.

Where was that feeling now?

He spun and threw the weapon, focusing as Zahel had taught him years before, sending a direct instruction to the Blade—picturing what he needed it to do. It held together, spinning end over end, flashing in the air. It sank up to its hilt into the stone of the rock formation. Adolin let out the breath he had been holding. Finally. He released the Blade, and it burst into mist, which streamed like a tiny river from the hole left behind.

“Come,” he said to his bodyguards, snatching his helm from the rock and walking toward the nearby warcamp. As one might expect, the crater edge that formed the warcamp wall was most weathered here, in the east. The camp had spilled out like the contents of a broken turtle egg, and—over the years—had even started to creep down onto the near plateaus.

Emerging from that creep of civilization was a distinctly odd procession. The congregation of robed ardents chanted in unison, surrounding parshmen who carried large poles upright like lances. Silk cloth shimmered between these poles, a good forty feet wide, rippling in the breeze and cutting off the view of something in the center.

Soulcasters? They didn’t normally come out during the day. “Wait here,” he told his bodyguards, then jogged over toward the ardents.

The three bridgemen obeyed. If Kaladin had been with them, he would have insisted on following. Maybe the way the fellow acted was a result of his strange position. Why had father put a darkeyed soldier outside the command structure? Adolin was all for treating men with respect and honor regardless of eye shade, but the Almighty had put some men in command and others beneath them. It was simply the natural order of things.

The parshmen carrying the poles watched him come, then looked down at the ground. Nearby ardents let Adolin pass, though they looked uncomfortable. Adolin was allowed to see Soulcasters, but having him visit them was irregular.

Inside the temporary silk room, Adolin found Kadash—one of the foremost of Dalinar’s ardents. The tall man had once been a soldier, as the scars on his head testified. He spoke with ardents in bloodred robes.

Soulcasters. It was the word for both the people who performed the art and the fabrials they used. Kadash was not one himself; he wore the standard grey robes instead of red, his head shaven, face accented by a square beard. He noticed Adolin, hesitated briefly, then bowed his head in respect. Like all of the ardents, Kadash was technically a slave.

That included the five Soulcasters. Each stood with right hand to breast, displaying a sparkling fabrial across the back of the palm. One of the ardents glanced at Adolin. Stormfather—that gaze wasn’t completely human, not any longer. Prolonged use of the Soulcaster had transformed the eyes so that they sparkled like gemstones themselves. The woman’s skin had hardened to something like stone, smooth, with fine cracks. It was as if the person were a living statue.

Kadash hustled over toward Adolin. “Brightlord,” he said. “I had not realized you were coming to supervise.”

“I’m not here to supervise,” Adolin said, glancing with discomfort at the Soulcasters. “I’m just surprised. Don’t you usually do this at night?”

“We can’t afford to any longer, bright one,” Kadash said. “There are too many demands upon the Soulcasters. Buildings, food, removal of waste . . . To fit it all in, we are going to need to start training multiple ardents on each fabrial, then working them in shifts. Your father approved this earlier in the week.”

This drew glances from several of the red-robed ardents. What did they think about others training on their fabrials? Their almost-alien expressions were unreadable.

“I see,” Adolin said. Storms, we rely on these things a lot. Everyone talked about Shardblades and Shardplate, and their advantages in war. But in truth, it was these strange fabrials—and the grain they created—that had allowed this war to proceed as it had.

“May we proceed, bright one?” Kadash asked.

Adolin nodded, and Kadash walked back to the five and gave a few brief commands. He spoke quickly, nervous. It was odd to see that in Kadash, who was normally so placid and unflappable. Soulcasters had that effect on everyone.

The five started softly chanting, a harmony to the singing of the ardents outside. The five stepped forward and raised their hands in a line, and Adolin found his face breaking out in a sweat, blown cold by the wind that managed to sneak past the silken walls.

At first there was nothing. And then stone.

Adolin thought he caught a brief glimpse of mist coalescing—like the moment a Shardblade appeared—as a massive wall sprang into existence. Wind blew inward, as if sucked by that materializing rock, making the cloth flap violently, snapping and writhing in the air. Why should the wind pull inward? Shouldn’t it have been blown outward by rock displacing it?

The large barrier abutted the cloth on either side, causing the silk screens to bulge outward, and rose high into the air.

“We’ll need taller poles,” Kadash muttered to himself.

The stone wall had the same utilitarian look as the barracks, but this was a new shape. Flat on the side facing the warcamps, it was sloped on the other side, like a wedge. Adolin recognized it as something his father had been deliberating building for months now.

“A windbreak!” Adolin said. “That’s wonderful, Kadash.”

“Yes, well, your father seemed to like the proposal. A few dozen of these out here, and the construction yards will be able to expand onto the entire plateau without fear of highstorms.”

That wasn’t completely true. You always had to worry about highstorms, since they could hurl boulders and blow hard enough to rip buildings from their foundations. But a good solid windbreak would be a blessing of the Almighty out here in the stormlands.

The Soulcasters retreated, not speaking with the other ardents. The parshmen scrambled to keep up, those on one side of the barrier running along behind it with their silk and opening the back of the room to let the new windbreak slip out of the enclosure. They passed by Adolin and Kadash, leaving them exposed on the plateau and standing in the shade of the large new stone structure.

The silk wall went back up, blocking sight of the Soulcasters. Just before it did, Adolin noticed one of the Soulcasters’ hands. The fabrial’s glow was gone. Likely one or more of the gemstones in it had shattered.

“I still find it incredible,” Kadash said, looking up at the stone barrier. “Even after all these years. If we needed proof of the Almighty’s hand in our lives, this is certainly it.” A few gloryspren appeared around him, spinning and golden.

“The Radiants could Soulcast,” Adolin said, “couldn’t they?”

“It is written that they could,” Kadash said carefully. The Recreance—the term for the Radiants’ betrayal of mankind—was often seen as a failure of Vorinism as a religion. The way the Church sought to seize power in the centuries that followed was even more embarrassing.

“What else could the Radiants do?” Adolin asked. “They had strange powers, right?”

“I have not read on it extensively, bright one,” Kadash said. “Perhaps I should have spent more time learning about them, if only to remember the evils of pride. I will be certain to do this, bright one, in order to remain faithful and remember the proper place of all ardents.”

“Kadash,” Adolin said, watching the shimmering silken procession retreat, “I need information right now, not humility. The Assassin in White has returned.”

Kadash gasped. “The disturbance at the palace last night? The rumors are true?”

“Yes.”

There was no use hiding it. His father and the king had told the highprinces, and were planning on how to release the information to everyone else.

Adolin met the ardent’s eyes. “That assassin walked on the walls, as if the pull of the earth were nothing to him. He fell a hundred feet without injury. He was like a Voidbringer, death given form. So I ask you again. What could the Radiants do? Were abilities like these ascribed to them?”

“Those and more, bright one,” Kadash whispered, face drained of color. “I spoke with some of the soldiers who survived that first terrible night when the old king was killed. I thought the things they claimed to have seen the result of trauma—”

“I need to know,” Adolin said. “Look into it. Read. Tell me what this creature might be capable of doing. We have to know how to fight him. He will return.”

“Yes,” Kadash said, visibly shaken. “But . . . Adolin? If what you say is true . . . Storms! It could mean the Radiants are not dead.”

“I know.”

“Almighty preserve us,” Kadash whispered.

* * *

Navani Kholin loved warcamps. In ordinary cities, everything was so messy. Shops where they hardly belonged, streets that refused to run in straight lines.