The Way of Kings (170 page)

“We can do tests,” Rock folded his arms, smiling. “Is good idea.”

“Maybe it will help us figure out how we can do it too,” Moash noted.

“Is not thing to learn.” Rock shook his head. “Is of the
holetental
. For him only.”

“You don’t know that for certain,” Teft said.

“You don’t know for certain I don’t know for certain.” Rock wagged a spoon at him. “Eat your stew.”

Kaladin held up his hands. “You can’t tell anyone about this, men. They’ll be frightened of me, maybe think I’m related to the Voidbringers or the Radiants. I need your oaths on this.”

He looked at them, and they nodded, one by one.

“But we want to help,” Skar said. “Even if we can’t learn it. This thing is part of you, and you’re one of us. Bridge Four. Right?”

Kaladin looked at their eager faces and couldn’t stop himself from nodding. “Yes. Yes, you can help.”

“Excellent,” Sigzil said. “I’ll prepare a list of tests to gauge speed, accuracy, and the strength of these bonds you can create. We’ll have to find a way to determine if there’s anything else you can do.”

“Throw him off cliff,” Rock said.

“What good will that do?” Peet asked.

Rock shrugged. “If he has other abilities, this thing will make them come out, eh? Nothing like falling from cliff to make a man out of a boy!”

Kaladin regarded him with a sour expression, and Rock laughed. “It will be small cliff.” He held up his thumb and forefinger to indicate a tiny amount. “I like you too much for large one.”

“I think you’re joking,” Kaladin said, taking a bite of his stew. “But just to be safe, I’m sticking you to the ceiling tonight to keep you from trying any experiments while I’m asleep.”

The bridgemen chuckled.

“Just don’t glow too brightly while we’re trying to sleep, eh, gancho?” Lopen said.

“I’ll do my best.” He took another spoonful of stew. It tasted better than usual. Had Rock changed the recipe?

Or was it something else? As he settled back to eat, the other bridgemen began chatting, speaking of home and their pasts, things that had once been taboo. Several of the men from other crews—wounded whom Kaladin had helped, even just a few lonely souls who were still awake— wandered over. The men of Bridge Four welcomed them, handing over stew and making room.

Everyone looked as exhausted as Kaladin felt, but nobody spoke of turning in. He could see why, now. Being together, eating Rock’s stew, listening to the quiet chatter while the fire crackled and popped, sending dancing flakes of yellow light into the air…

This was more relaxing than sleep could be. Kaladin smiled, leaning back, looking upward toward the dark sky and the large sapphire moon. Then he closed his eyes, listening.

Three more men were dead. Malop, Earless Jaks, and Narm. Kaladin had failed them. But he and Bridge Four had protected hundreds of others. Hundreds who would never have to run a bridge again, would never have to face Parshendi arrows, would never have to fight again if they didn’t want to. More personally, twenty-seven of his friends lived. Partially because of what he’d done, partially because of their own heroism.

Twenty-seven men lived. He’d finally managed to save someone.

For now, that was enough.

Shallan rubbed her eyes. She’d read through Jasnah’s notes—at least the most important ones. Those alone had made a large stack. She still sat in the alcove, though they’d sent a parshman to get her a blanket to wrap around herself, covering up the hospital robe.

Her eyes burned from the night spent crying, then reading. She was exhausted. And yet she also felt alive.

“It’s true,” she said. “You’re right. The Voidbringers are the parshmen. I can see no other conclusion.”

Jasnah smiled, looking oddly pleased with herself, considering that she’d only convinced one person.

“So what next?” Shallan asked.

“That has to do with your previous studies.”

“My studies? You mean your father’s death?”

“Indeed.”

“The Parshendi attacked him,” Shallan said. “Killed him suddenly, without warning.” She focused on the other woman. “That’s what made you begin studying all of this, isn’t it?”

Jasnah nodded. “Those wild parshmen—the Parshendi of the Shattered Plains—are the key.” She leaned forward. “Shallan. The disaster awaiting us is all too real, all too terrible. I don’t need mystical warnings or theological sermons to frighten me. I’m downright terrified in my own right.”

“But we have the parshmen tamed.”

“Do we? Shallan, think of what they do, how they’re regarded, how often they’re used.”

Shallan hesitated. The parshmen were pervasive.

“They serve our food,” Jasnah continued. “They work our storehouses. They tend our
children
. There isn’t a village in Roshar that doesn’t have some parshmen. We ignore them; we just expect them to be there, doing as they do. Working without complaint.

“Yet one group turned suddenly from peaceful friends to slaughtering warriors. Something set them off. Just as it did hundreds of years ago, during the days known as the Heraldic Epochs. There would be a period of peace, followed by an invasion of parshmen who—for reasons nobody understood—had suddenly gone mad with anger and rage.
This
was what was behind mankind’s fight to keep from being ‘banished to Damnation.’ This was what nearly ended our civilization. This was the terrible, repeated cataclysm that was so frightening men began to speak of them as Desolations.

“We’ve nurtured the parshmen. We’ve integrated them into every part of our society. We depend on them, never realizing that we’ve harnessed a highstorm waiting to explode. The accounts from the Shattered Plains speak of these Parshendi’s ability to communicate among themselves, allowing them to sing their songs in unison when far apart. Their minds are connected, like spanreeds. Do you realize what that means?”

Shallan nodded. What would happen if every parshman on Roshar suddenly turned against his masters? Seeking freedom, or worse—vengeance? “We’d be devastated. Civilization as we know it could collapse. We have to
do
something!”

“We are,” Jasnah said. “We’re gathering facts, making certain we know what we think we know.”

“And how many facts do we need?”

“More. Many more.” Jasnah glanced at the books. “There are some things about the histories I don’t yet understand. Tales of creatures fighting alongside the parshmen, beasts of stone that might be some kind of greatshell, and other oddities that I think may have truth to them. But we’ve exhausted what Kharbranth can offer. Are you still certain you want to delve into this? It is a heavy burden we will bear. You won’t be returning to your estates for some time.”

Shallan bit her lip, thinking of her brothers. “You’d let me go now, after what I know?”

“I won’t have you serving me while thinking of ways to escape.” Jasnah sounded exhausted.

“I can’t just abandon my brothers.” Shallan’s insides twisted again. “But this is bigger than them. Damnation—it’s bigger than
me
or
you
or any of us. I have to help, Jasnah. I can’t walk out on this. I’ll find some other way to help my family.”

“Good. Then go pack our things. We’re leaving tomorrow on that ship I chartered for you.”

“We’re going to Jah Keved?”

“No. We need to get to the center of it all.” She looked at Shallan. “We’re going to the Shattered Plains. We need to find out if the Parshendi were ever ordinary parshmen, and if so, what set them off. Perhaps I am wrong about this, but if I am right, then the Parshendi could hold the key to turning ordinary parshmen into soldiers.” Then, grimly, she continued. “And we need to do it before someone else does, then uses it against us.”

“Someone else?” Shallan asked, feeling a sharp stab of panic. “There are others looking for this?”

“Of course there are. Who do you think went to so much trouble trying to have me assassinated?” She reached into a stack of papers on her desk. “I don’t know much about them. For all I know, there are many groups searching for these secrets. I know of one for certain, however. They call themselves the Ghostbloods.” She pulled out a sheet. “Your friend Kabsal was one. We found their symbol tattooed on the inside of his arm.”

She set the sheet down. On it was a symbol of three diamonds in a pattern, overlapping one another.

It was the same symbol that Nan Balat had shown her weeks ago. The symbol worn by Luesh, her father’s steward, the man who had known how to use the Soulcaster. The symbol worn by the men who had come, pressuring her family to return it. The men who had been financing Shallan’s father in his bid to become highprince.

“Almighty above,” Shallan whispered. She looked up. “Jasnah, I think… I think my
father
might have been a member of this group.”

The highstorm winds began to blow against Dalinar’s complex, powerful enough to make rocks groan. Navani huddled close to Dalinar, holding to him. She smelled wonderful. It felt… humbling to know how terrified she’d been for him.

Her joy at having him back was enough to dampen, for now, her fury at him for how he’d treated Elhokar. She would come around. It had needed to be done.

As the highstorm hit in force, Dalinar felt the vision coming on. He closed his eyes, letting it take him. He had a decision to make, a responsibility. What to do? These visions had lied to him, or had at least misled him. It seemed that he couldn’t trust them, at least not as explicitly as he once had.

He took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and found himself in a place of smoke.

He turned about, wary. The sky was dark and he stood on a field of dull, bone-white rock, jagged and rough, extending in all directions. Off into eternity. Amorphous shapes made of curling grey smoke rose from the ground. Like smoke rings, only in other shapes. Here a chair. There a rockbud, with vines extended, curling to the sides and vanishing. Beside him appeared the figure of a man in uniform, silent and vaporous, rising lethargically toward the sky, mouth open. The shapes melted and distorted as they climbed higher, though they seemed to hold their forms longer than they should. It was unnerving, standing on the eternal plain, pure darkness above, smoke figures rising all around.

It wasn’t like any vision he’d seen before. It was…

No, wait.
He frowned, stepping back as the figure of a tree burst from the ground close to him.
I have seen this place before. In the first of my visions, so many months ago.
It was fuzzy in his mind. He’d been disoriented, the vision vague, as if his mind hadn’t learned to accept what it was seeing. In fact, the only thing he remembered distinctly was—

“You must unite them,” a strong voice boomed.

—was the voice. Speaking to him from all around, causing the smoke figures to fuzz and distort.

“Why did you lie to me?” Dalinar demanded of the open darkness. “I did what you said, and I was betrayed!”

“Unite them. The sun approaches the horizon. The Everstorm comes. The True Desolation. The Night of Sorrows.”

“I need answers!” Dalinar said. “I don’t trust you any longer. If you want me to listen to you, you’ll need to—”

The vision changed. He spun about, finding that he was still on an open plain of rock, but the normal sun was in the sky. The stone field looked like an ordinary one on Roshar.

It was very odd for one of the visions to set him in a place without others to talk to and interact with. Though, for once, he wore his own clothing. The sharp blue Kholin uniform.

Had this happened before, the other time he’d been in that place of smoke? Yes… it had. This was the first time he’d been taken to a place where he’d been before. Why?

He carefully scanned the scenery. Since the voice didn’t speak to him again, he began to walk, passing cracked boulders and broken bits of shale, pebbles and rocks. There were no plants, not even rockbuds. Just an empty landscape filled with broken stones.

Eventually, he spotted a ridge. Getting to high ground felt like a good idea, though the hike seemed to take hours. The vision did not end. Time was often odd in these visions. He continued to hike up the side of the rock formation, wishing he had his Shardplate to strengthen him. Finally at the top, he walked over to the edge to look down below.