The Way of Kings (90 page)

Storming Damnation,
he thought, wearily stepping outside. It was still raining, of course. These were the after-flurries of drizzle that trailed a highstorm, the riddens. A few rainspren sat in puddles, like blue candles, and a few windspren danced in the stormwinds. The rain was cold, and he splashed through puddles that soaked his sandaled feet, chilling them straight through the skin and muscle. He hated being wet. But, then, he hated a lot of things.

For a while, life had been looking up. Not now.

How did everything go so wrong so quickly?
he thought, holding his arms close, walking slowly and watching his feet. Some soldiers had left their barracks and stood nearby, wearing raincloaks, watching. Probably to make certain nobody had snuck out to cut Kaladin down early. They didn’t try to stop Rock, though. The storm had passed.

Rock charged around the side of the building. Other bridgemen left the barrack behind as Teft followed Rock. Storming Horneater. Like a big lumbering chull. He actually believed. He thought they’d find that foolish young bridgeleader alive. Probably figured they’d discover him having a nice cup of tea, relaxing in the shade with the Stormfather himself.

And you don’t believe?
Teft asked himself, still looking down.
If you don’t, why are you following? But if you did believe, you’d look. You wouldn’t stare at your feet. You’d look up and see.

Could a man both believe, and not believe, at the same time? Teft stopped beside Rock and—steeling himself—looked up at the wall of the barrack.

There he saw what he’d expected and what he’d feared. The corpse looked like a hunk of slaughter house meat, skinned and bled. Was that a person? Kaladin’s skin was sliced in a hundred places, dribbles of blood mixing with rainwater running down the side of the building. The lad’s body still hung by the ankles. His shirt had been ripped off; his bridgeman trousers were ragged. Ironically, his face was cleaner now than when they’d left him, washed by the storm.

Teft had seen enough dead men on the battlefield to know what he was looking at.
Poor lad,
he thought, shaking his head as the rest of Bridge Four gathered around him and Rock, quiet, horrified.
You almost made me believe in you.

Kaladin’s eyes snapped open.

The gathered bridgemen gasped, several cursing and falling to the ground, splashing in the pools of rainwater. Kaladin drew in a ragged breath, wheezing, eyes staring forward, intense and unseeing. He exhaled, blowing flecks of bloody spittle out over his lips. His hand, hanging below him, slipped open.

Something dropped to the stones. The sphere Teft had given him. It splashed into a puddle and stopped there. It was dun, no Stormlight in it.

What in the name of Kelek?
Teft thought, kneeling. You left a sphere out in the storm, and it gathered Stormlight. Held in Kaladin’s hand, this one should have been fully infused. What had gone wrong?

“
Umalakai’ki
!” Rock bellowed, pointing. “
Kama mohoray namavau
—” He stopped, realizing he was speaking the wrong language. “Somebody be helping me get him down! Is still alive! We need ladder and knife! Hurry!”

The bridgemen scrambled. The soldiers approached, muttering, but they didn’t stop the bridgemen. Sadeas himself had declared that the Stormfather would choose Kaladin’s fate. Everyone knew that meant death.

Except…Teft stood up straight, holding the dun sphere.
An empty sphere after a storm,
he thought.
And a man who’s still alive when he should be dead. Two impossibilities.

Together they bespoke something that should be even
more
impossible.

“Where’s that ladder!” Teft found himself yelling. “Curse you all, hurry, hurry! We need to get him bandaged. Somebody go fetch that salve he always puts on wounds!”

He glanced back at Kaladin, then spoke much more softly. “And you’d
better
survive, son. Because I want some answers.”

“Taking the Dawnshard, known to bind any creature voidish or mortal, he crawled up the steps crafted for Heralds, ten strides tall apiece, toward the grand temple above.”

—From
The Poem of Ista
. I have found no modern explanation of what these “Dawnshards” are. They seem ignored by scholars, though talk of them was obviously prevalent among those recording the early mythologies.

It was not uncommon for us to meet native peoples while traveling through the Unclaimed Hills,
Shallan read.
These ancient lands were once one of the Silver Kingdoms, after all. One must wonder if the great-shelled beasts lived among them back then, or if the creatures have come to inhabit the wilderness left by humankind’s passing.

She settled back in her chair, the humid air warm around her. To her left, Jasnah Kholin floated quietly in the pool inset in the floor of the bathing chamber. Jasnah liked to soak in the bath, and Shallan couldn’t blame her. During most of Shallan’s life, bathing had been an ordeal involving dozens of parshmen carting heated buckets of water, followed by a quick scrub in the brass tub before the water cooled.

Kharbranth’s palace offered far more luxury. The stone pool in the ground resembled a small personal lake, luxuriously warmed by clever fabrials that produced heat. Shallan didn’t know much about fabrials yet, though part of her was very intrigued. This type was becoming increasingly common. Just the other day, the Conclave staff had sent Jasnah one to heat her chambers.

The water didn’t have to be carried in but came out of pipes. At the turn of a lever, water flowed in. It was warm when it entered, and was kept heated by the fabrials set into the sides of the pool. Shallan had bathed in the chamber herself, and it was absolutely marvelous.

The practical decor was of rock decorated with small colorful stones set in mortar up the sides of the walls. Shallan sat beside the pool, fully dressed, reading as she waited on Jasnah’s needs. The book was Gavilar’s account—as spoken to Jasnah herself years ago—after his first meeting with the strange parshmen later known as the Parshendi.

Occasionally, during our explorations, we’d meet with natives,
she read.
Not parshmen. Natan people, with their pale bluish skin, wide noses, and wool-like white hair. In exchange for gifts of food, they would point us to the hunting grounds of greatshells.

Then we met the parshmen. I’d been on a half-dozen expeditions to Natanatan, but never had I seen anything like this! Parshmen, living on their own? All logic, experience, and science declared that to be an impossibility. Parshmen need the hand of civilized peoples to guide them. This has been proven time and time again. Leave one out in the wilderness, and it will just sit there, doing nothing, until someone comes along to give it orders.

Yet here was a group who could hunt, make weapons, build buildings, and—indeed—create their own civilization. We soon realized that this single discovery could expand, perhaps overthrow, all we understood about our gentle servants.

Shallan moved her eyes down to the bottom of the page where—separated by a line—the undertext was written in a small, cramped script. Most books dictated by men had an undertext, notes added by the woman or ardent who scribed the book. By unspoken agreement, the undertext was never shared out loud. Here, a wife would sometimes clarify—or even contradict—the account of her husband. The only way to preserve such honesty for future scholars was to maintain the sanctity and secrecy of the writing.

It should be noted,
Jasnah had written in the undertext to this passage,
that I have adapted my father’s words—by his own instruction—to make them more appropriate for recording.
That meant she made his dictation sound more scholarly and impressive.
In addition, by most accounts, King Gavilar originally ignored these strange, self-sufficient parshmen. It was only after explanation by his scholars and scribes that he understood the import of what he’d discovered. This inclusion is not meant to highlight my father’s ignorance; he was, and is, a warrior. His attention was not on the anthropological import of our expedition, but upon the hunt that was to be its culmination.

Shallan closed the cover, thoughtful. The volume was from Jasnah’s own collection—the Palanaeum had several copies, but Shallan wasn’t allowed to bring the Palanaeum’s books into a bathing chamber.

Jasnah’s clothing lay on a bench at the side of the room. Atop the folded garments, a small golden pouch held the Soulcaster. Shallan glanced at Jasnah. The princess floated face-up in the pool, black hair fanning out behind her in the water, her eyes closed. Her daily bath was the one time she seemed to relax completely. She looked much younger now, stripped of both clothing and intensity, floating like a child resting after a day of active swimming.

Thirty-four years old. That seemed ancient in some regards—some women Jasnah’s age had children as old as Shallan. And yet it was also young. Young enough that Jasnah was praised for her beauty, young enough that men declared it a shame she wasn’t yet married.

Shallan glanced at the pile of clothing. She carried the broken fabrial in her safepouch. She could swap them here and now. It was the opportunity she’d been waiting for. Jasnah now trusted her enough to relax, soaking in the bathing chamber without worrying about her fabrial.

Could Shallan really do it? Could she betray this woman who had taken her in?

Considering what I’ve done before,
she thought,
this is nothing.
It wouldn’t be the first time she betrayed someone who trusted her.

She stood up. To the side, Jasnah cracked an eye.

Blast,
Shallan thought, tucking the book under her arm, pacing, trying to look thoughtful. Jasnah watched her. Not suspiciously. Curiously.

“Why did your father want to make a treaty with the Parshendi?” Shallan found herself asking as she walked.

“Why wouldn’t he want to?”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Of course it is. It’s just not one that tells you anything.”

“It would help, Brightness, if you would give me a
useful
answer.”

“Then ask a useful question.”

Shallan set her jaw. “What did the Parshendi have that King Gavilar wanted?”

Jasnah smiled, closing her eyes again. “Closer. But you can probably guess the answer to that.”

“Shards.”

Jasnah nodded, still relaxed in the water.

“The text doesn’t mention them,” Shallan said.

“My father didn’t speak of them,” Jasnah said. “But from things he said…well, I now suspect that they motivated the treaty.”

“Can you be sure he knew, though? Maybe he just wanted the gemhearts.”

“Perhaps,” Jasnah said. “The Parshendi seemed amused at our interest in the gemstones woven into their beards.” She smiled. “You should have seen our shock when we discovered where they’d gotten them. When the lanceryn died off during the scouring of Aimia, we thought we’d seen the last gemhearts of large size. And yet here was another great-shelled beast with them, living in a land not too distant from Kholinar itself.

“Anyway, the Parshendi were willing to share them with us, so long as they could still hunt them too. To them, if you took the trouble to hunt the chasmfiends, their gemhearts were yours. I doubt a treaty would have been needed for that. And yet, just before leaving to return to Alethkar, my father suddenly began talking fervently of the need for an agreement.”

“So what happened? What changed?”

“I can’t be certain. However, he once described the strange actions of a Parshendi warrior during a chasmfiend hunt. Instead of reaching for his spear when the greatshell appeared, this man held his hand to the side in a very suspicious way. Only my father saw it; I suspected he believed the man planned to summon a Blade. The Parshendi realized what he was doing, and stopped himself. My father didn’t speak of it further, and I assume he didn’t want the world’s eyes on the Shattered Plains any more than they already were.”

Shallan tapped her book. “It seems tenuous. If he was sure about the Blades, he must have seen more.”

“I suspect so as well. But I studied the treaty carefully, after his death. The clauses for favored trade status and mutual border crossing could very well have been a step toward folding the Parshendi into Alethkar as a nation. It certainly would have prevented the Parshendi from trading their Shards to other kingdoms without coming to us first. Perhaps that was all he wanted to do.”

“But why kill him?” Shallan said, arms crossed, strolling in the direction of Jasnah’s folded clothing. “Did the Parshendi realize that he intended to have their Shardblades, and so struck at him preemptively?”

“Uncertain,” Jasnah said. She sounded skeptical. Why did
she
think the Parshendi killed Gavilar? Shallan nearly asked, but she had a feeling she wouldn’t get any more out of Jasnah. The woman expected Shallan to think, discover, and draw conclusions on her own.