Lotr starlight archive Chapter 9: 9, a 17776 fanfic

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Of Many Colors [Stormlight Archive/Lord of the Rings]

Thread starter LithosMaitreya Start date Aug 29, 2022 Tags lord of the rings (middle-earth) stormlight archive (cosmere)

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Threadmarks Interludes II

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INTERLUDES

Tally • Edgli • Melkor

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Threadmarks I-4: The Prospector

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Thanks to Elran and BeaconHill for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.

-x-x-x-

I-4

The Prospector

-x-x-x-

Two Years Ago, Rosharan Calendar

Tally tugged hard on the tether connecting her envirosuit to the Robinsong. The line held, as it always did. Given that the consequences of it failing during the descent was a lethal fall several hundred feet to the flaming surface, she was always careful to check anyway. "Looks good," she said aloud, knowing the microphone in her helmet would transmit her voice back to the bridge.

"Great," came Alistair's voice through her earpiece. His voice was nasal, and before he continued speaking he sniffled audibly—a symptom of his metastasized Sharpeye Fever.

The runny nose would have little more than a funny quirk—and certainly a good trade for superhuman vision—if water were not so scarce. As it was, Alistair was constantly draining away one of the most important resources the crew of the Robinsong had. And the runny nose wasn't the worst of Sharpeye's side effects, anyway.

"We have a lock on the drill," Alistair continued. "You can descend whenever you're ready, Tally."

Tally put one hand on the loop of coiled cord at her side, gingerly pulling the trigger on the attached latch to allow the tether to begin to unspool. Her other hand, she kept on the line above her head, ready to tighten her grip at a moment's notice. Two failsafes, always—let go of the trigger to immediately stop her descent, and if the latch broke, grab the rope with her bare hand.

She began to lower into the yellow-orange smoke, watching the blocky shape of the Robinsong fall away into the sulfurous haze over her head. By the time she'd descended halfway to the surface, she had lost sight of it entirely.

She continued descending until she saw a shape rise out of the fiery haze below her. An object protruded from the burning rock, half buried in it. A green indicator light on the top showed it was still in working order—a yellow band beside it let her know its battery was running low. That was half of why she was here—the drill had done its work here, and now it needed to be brought back up to the Robinsong for recharging and maintenance before being deployed to one of the other fields they were prospecting.

But before she lifted it, there was one more thing to check. She descended a few feet more until she could see the screen on the drill's side—hidden from above, so that other Sharpeyes couldn't immediately see whether another prospector's drill had found any deposits.

She stopped, staring at the screen for a moment. That… couldn't be right, could it? "I think the drill is bugged," she said. "It's giving me some odd results."

"Odd how?" Alistair asked. "I can see you're looking at the screen, what's it say?"

"It says there's an unidentified substance here," Tally said. "Solid metal, conductive, but the Investiture probe doesn't recognize the axi configuration."

"…You're probably right that it's a bug," Alistair said. "But bring the drill up and we'll check the probe. Who knows, this might be our big break."

"Don't get your hopes up," Tally said dryly. "Remember, the last time you spotted something weird on a prospecting run all you got for your trouble was a very lost hitchhiker."

"And that hitchhiker helped me and Miranda buy out the Robinsong," Alistair said. "So I think it turned out pretty well for me, all things considered."

"You already had most of the money together," Tally said. "It would have—"

She stopped. There had been a sound, just on the edge of hearing—something from outside her suit, picked up by the external microphones. They were calibrated to ignore the ambient noise of the roaring groundflame around her—which meant that if they picked something up this close to the surface, it usually meant something loud was happening nearby.

"What's up? You all right?" Alistair asked sharply.

"Fine," Tally said. "Heard something. Look around for me up there, would you? I think it came from that way." She gestured with a hand, knowing Alistair's enhanced vision would see her.

"Give me a minute to turn the viewpod." Alistair was silent, save for occasional sniffling, for several seconds. When he spoke again, it was with a tone of half-amused surprise. "Huh. Does this happen to all prospectors, or am I special?"

"What?" Tally asked.

"There's someone on a rock, well above the groundflame line. Hook the drill onto your line and I'll tell Miranda to steer the Robinsong over towards him so you can pick him up too."

Tally was frozen, staring into the haze in the direction of the mysterious man. "Someone on the ground?" she asked hesitantly. "What does he look like? Talk to me, Alistair, please."

"I don't want to leave you down there any longer than we need to. Hook up the drill, I'll talk to Miranda, and you'll see for yourself in two minutes."

They were two very long minutes. By the time the silhouette of the rock loomed out of the sulfur haze, Tally was practically vibrating in her suit with anticipation.

There was a figure curled on a very narrow shelf on a rock protruding above the roaring groundflame. His age was hard to determine—Tally guessed somewhere around his early thirties. His hawkish features were caught in an anguished grimace as he sobbed, and his white hair was tangled and matted with sweat.

All of that was secondary, in Tally's eyes, to what the man was wearing. Because that black uniform, well-tailored with two rows of buttons down the sides of the chest, was unmistakably Alethi fashion.

Hesitantly, she reached out and touched the man's shoulder. He started, bloodshot eyes opening wide as he scrambled away from the point of contact. Doing so nearly had him slipping from his precarious perch into the groundflame below, but Tally reached out and grabbed for his arm. She missed, but his other hand came out and caught her wrist. With her help, he managed to steady himself on the rock. He tried to say something to her, but his words were lost to the roaring flames.

"Can't hear you!" she said, pointing at the side of her helmet where her ears were hidden under it. Her voice should be transmitted out to him, though it was anyone's guess whether it would be any more audible than his. Still, he seemed to understand. He was already growing calm—though his face was still pale and drawn, his eyes still bloodshot, the tears had stopped streaming and his teeth had stopped chattering. When she gestured at the drill, he immediately followed her unspoken order and grabbed at the insulated grips on its side.

"All right," she called up to Alistair. "He's on. Bring us up."

Slowly, the tether began to reel in, bearing Tally, the drill, and her strange passenger upward.

-x-x-x-

Tally began stripping off her envirosuit the moment the airlock door had closed behind her, before the decontamination procedure had even properly started. The stranger turned away as if to offer her privacy.

"It's not as though I'm naked under here," she told him as she pulled off her helmet. The thin, damp mist of the decontamination was wonderfully cool on her skin. "Although you might be disappointed by what I'm wearing if you're used to—people wearing clothes like that." She hastily cut herself off from revealing anything that might be dangerous. Roshar and Rosharans did not have a sterling reputation on Ashyn.

"There have been times when I would have cared about such things," the man said in hoarse—but unaccented—Ashynite Trade, the common language spoken by just about everyone who lived on the Flotilla. "This is not one of those times." His lips twitched into an attempt at a smile, but the effect was ruined by the lingering paleness of his face. How he'd managed to stay so clammy even in the firestorm outside, Tally had no idea.

"Most times are like that around here," Tally said, stepping out of the baggy legs of her envirosuit. She sighed in relief at the sensation of freedom. Her undersuit was simple polyester, designed not to grow damp and heavy with her sweat in the heat outside. That did make her feel a bit disgusting underneath it, but function trumped comfort for an Ashynite prospector.

The man looked at her, and his smile fell away. "I imagine they are," he said quietly. As the color slowly returned to his cheeks, she thought she saw something like pity in his face. Once upon a time, she would have shared it. She had probably borne exactly that expression three years ago. Now, she found she resented it.

Life on Ashyn was hard. Life on the Flotilla was hard. A prospector's job was harder even than most. But it was hers. On the Flotilla, people banded together to face their hostile world. They took care of each other. A life on Ashyn was a life never taken for granted, and that was something to take pride in.

Still, she put aside that odd flare of anger on behalf of her people. "Not every day we pull up someone without a suit barely two meters above the groundflame," she said to him. "What's your story?"

His face twitched. Those hawkish features shifted into something like terror before he brought them back under control. "Complicated," he said shortly.

The last of the decontamination mist faded away, and the inner airlock door opened before she could interrogate him further. "Welcome back, Tally," said Alistair with a wide smile on his desperately thin face. "And hello, new passenger."

To say that Alistair Marlowe was thin was beyond understatement. The young man was emaciated. His forearms, resting on the plastic armrests of his motorized wheelchair, looked like little more than skin and bone. That was the more significant side effect of Sharpeye Fever—a body which consumed energy far faster than normal, coupled with a near total loss of appetite. It was difficult for Alistair to keep more than a few bites of real food down, even spread across an entire day.

He took supplemental pills to keep his body going, but they were never enough. There were limits to the powers of even Flotilla dieticians, and cramming the calories necessary to keep Alistair at a healthy weight into a pill that he would be able to keep down was beyond them. He could survive on his current regimen for a very long time… so long as he didn't catch another disease along with his Sharpeye Fever.

The newcomer nodded his head in apparent respect to Alistair. "Hello," he said. "I assume you are this vessel's Sharpeye?"

"That's me," Alistair said.

"Then I have you to thank for my rescue," the man said. "I do appreciate it. Burning alive does not sound pleasant."

"I can confirm it isn't," Tally said, pulling up one legging to show some of the mottled skin around her left foot and ankle. "Occupational hazard for a prospector, but no—not pleasant."

"I'm Alistair Marlowe of Snowcap," Alistair said. "This is Tally, our diver. Our Plaguebearer's name is Miranda Thompson, also of Snowcap. You got a name?"

"Most people do," the man said. "I happen to have several. You may call me Hoid."

"Good to meet you, Hoid," Alistair said warmly. Despite his rail-thin, sickly appearance, Alistair was perhaps the warmest, most open-hearted person Tailiah had ever known. In his pale, sunken face, his eyes constantly glimmered with the sheer joy of living. He seemed to see it as triumphing over a world that conspired to kill him, and celebrated the victory each day. "I won't ask your story if you don't want to share it, but I will say we don't have the fuel to spare to make a trip to drop you off at whatever ship you want. We're headed to the Silence Divine for a refuel and resupply, so if you want to hop off there, that's fine. But if you want us to make a special trip somewhere else, we're going to have to talk payment, I'm afraid."

"That won't be necessary," Hoid said with an undertone of dread. "As you might have guessed, I arrived on the surface by rather unusual means. As much as I'd rather not… I suspect I'll have to use those means again to get to my next destination."

"Well, if we can help you with those 'unusual means', let us know," said Alistair. "In the meantime, we can't afford to worry about it. Tally, I'll check the drill. You should go let Miranda know you're all right."

Tally nodded and walked past him, out of the airlock and into the Robinsong proper. She was a small vessel. The airlock let out directly onto the bridge. From there, a narrow upward stairway led to her and Alistair's cabins. A downward stairway led to the hold. But Tally made for neither of these, instead opening a doorway in the back of the bridge and stepping into the small, cylindrical room almost exactly in the center of the ship.

This room was unlike any other. Tally and Alistair's cabins were tiny, cramped things, with no furniture to speak of beyond their bunks. This room was decorated. Shelves jutted out from more than a third of the curved wall, full to bursting with enough books to keep a person reading for years on end. A holodisplay shimmered on the opposite side, depicting a replica of a particularly famous painting. Tally had seen the original, once, during a brief stint of shore leave on the Silence Divine. The painting depicted green pastures where large black and white livestock animals grazed, and a yellow sun shining in a blue sky dotted with clouds. It was titled Before.

In the center of the room was a piece of furniture that was somewhere between a bed and a chair. Its back could be tilted upward or downward for sleep or waking. At the moment, it looked more like a chair, with its back most of the way upright.

On one side of the bed-chair was an end table. On the other was a metal apparatus, comprised of several hooks on a tall stand. On one hook hung the control panel for the bed. On another hung a canister of oxygen. That canister was attached to a hose, which connected it to the nostrils of the thin girl laying on the mattress. She didn't look up from her book immediately, but as Tally drew nearer she seemed to notice her visitor. She looked up, smiled, and put down her book, marking her page with a green bookmark. Then she lifted her hands and moved them in Plaguesign.

"Hey, Tally," Miranda said silently. "Alistair told me we were picking up a passenger?"

Miranda was the Robinsong's Plaguebearer. All the other Illnesses had more specific names, but there was only one Plague, and Plaguebearers were at once the most necessary and the most pitiable of all the sick. The Plague allowed its bearer to modify the effect of gravity on a building or vehicle that contained them. A team of Plaguebearers was stationed on every cityship in the Flotilla, and every tiny prospector's ship had at least one. Without a Plaguebearer, a vessel like the Robinsong was little more than an inert metal box.

But just as the powers the Plague bestowed were necessary, the side effects were almost unbearable. A Plaguebearer lost their hearing in the early stages of the disease—one of the first markers that the illness they had contracted was the Plague—but that was just the start. They needed to be constantly fed oxygen due to the degeneration of their lungs. Their bones became brittle, to the point where even walking was dangerous. They became immunocompromised, forcing them to sequester themselves away when they were on a bustling cityship. Worst of all, using the Plague could cause arrhythmia in the heart. Most Plaguebearers died of sudden heart failure before they turned forty—and on Ashyn, where the years were significantly shorter than on Roshar, that was even younger than it sounded.

Fortunately, that last symptom was finally beginning to come under control. A medical breakthrough on the Silence Divine, only two years ago, had led to the creation of a drug which stabilized the arrhythmias. Replenishing their supply of that drug was why they were going to the Silence Divine, rather than to the Starry Sky where fuel and batteries were cheaper.

Miranda put a brave face on the plague, but Tally had known her since just a few weeks after she contracted it. She knew how her friend resented it—how she missed being able to hear, to walk, to go into the markets on a cityship without a dozen layers of protective gear.

The sign for yes was just a nod, so Tally nodded. "I think he's like me," she signed.

"Like you?" Miranda asked. "You mean—Rosharan?"

"Yes. His clothes remind me of… the stuff I used to wear. He's odd. He calls himself Hoid." Tally signed out the name for Miranda, guessing at the exact spelling.

Miranda looked pensive. "You really think he's Rosharan? No one had heard from the Rosharans in generations, before you. You think another Rosharan ended up here so soon after?"

"I don't know. It seems impossible… but then, finding someone in Rosharan summer fashion"—technically Alethi, but there was no word for Alethkar in Plaguesign—"on a rock barely above the groundflame line doesn't sound especially likely either."

"I guess not." Miranda's expression was conflicted.

"What's wrong?" Tally asked.

"If he is Rosharan… do you think he has a way to get back?"

"He implied he could. Or at least that he could leave Ashyn."

Miranda hesitated. "Then will you go with him, when he does?"

Tally paused. She… hadn't thought that all the way through. "I don't know," she signed.

"Why wouldn't you?" Miranda pressed. "You've been stuck here for years now. Surely Roshar is better than Ashyn? And your family's there."

Tally's shoulders hunched unbidden. "I… yes, I miss them. My parents. My best friend. And I miss being able to go outside. But I'm… I'm the Robinsong's diver now. I don't want to just leave you and Alistair hanging."

"We could find another diver," Miranda signed. But Tally had never forgotten how to read faces. She knew what Miranda was doing.

"I couldn't find another Miranda," she answered. "Or another Alistair, or another Robinsong."

Miranda's lips twitched into a smile.

"Tally!" Alistair's voice came from outside the room. Tally turned to see him rushing in through the door, the motor of his wheelchair humming in his speed. His eyes were wild with excitement as he switched to Plaguesign for Miranda's benefit. "It wasn't a bug."

"What wasn't a bug?" Miranda asked, but Tally's eyes went wide.

"What do you mean, it wasn't a bug?" she asked. "You can't be saying—"

"The drill found an unidentified metal deposit," Alistair signed excitedly. "I don't know what it is, but it's rare enough that it's bound to be valuable. The location alone could be worth more than a cityship! If we can find a buyer—or, better yet, an investor—we're set for life!"

-x-x-x-

"We're not here for long," Tally warned Hoid as they approached the Silence Divine's laboratory district. "Just long enough to get Miranda's medicine while Alistair orders rations and supplies for the Robinsong, then we're out of here."

The Silence Divine, like most cityships, did not much resemble the prospector ships like the Robinsong. It didn't much look like a ship at all. As Tally and Hoid walked down the cityship's wide streets, they passed by tall buildings of steel and concrete, with glass windows that glittered in the light of a false sun. It looks for all the world like a grounded city, except for three things. First, the pale blue dome which covered all the buildings, from the tallest spire in the center to the squat low-income housing along the outer edge. Second, the brilliantly glowing false sun which hung suspended between the central spire and the top of the dome, casting shadows which lengthened, not as the day went on, but as one passed further from the city center. And third, the sky outside the dome, which like the rest of Ashyn was a constant whirling maelstrom of sulfurous smoke and storm clouds.

"You seem in quite a hurry," Hoid said, quietly enough to be inaudible to anyone else in the ship's wide thoroughfare. "I gathered, given what your drill found, that you would be looking for business partners?"

"Yeah," said Tally, "but not on the Silence Divine. We can't trust people here. It's too central—too many desperate people with nothing to lose." Most Ashynites Tally had met tended to have a strong collaborative spirit. When the survival of the cityships relied on a lot of people working together, they learned to trust each other. But there were exceptions, and the Silence Divine, as the largest cityship in the Flotilla, was the place where those exceptions tended to congregate. "Besides, most of the money here is already tied up investing in Dr. Miller's research."

"Dr. Miller is the developer of this new Plague treatment?"

"Yeah. He showed up out of nowhere a couple years ago."

"And this medicine," Hoid asked. "What does it do, exactly? How does it work?"

"It's called ICRS—Irregular Cardiac Rhythm Stabilizer," Tally said as they turned onto a narrower side street. "It's a targeted muscle relaxant combined with a stabilizing salt to neutralize errant electrical signals. I don't know how they get the targeting to work—I'd have expected a muscle relaxant strong enough to counter Miranda's arrhythmias to have serious side effects. But it doesn't. The only known side effect is that it's heavily addictive."

"Fascinating," Hoid said softly.

They reached the entrance to Dr. Miller's lab. It was about halfway between the city center and the dome's edge, and shorter than many of the surrounding towers, but it was well defended by guards carrying muskets stationed along the perimeter and on several balconies. Tailiah pressed the doorbell button, then said into the microphone, "Tally of the Robinsong. Here for a prescription pickup."

The door slid open. As soon as it did, she heard the sound of an argument in a backroom. She ignored it as she approached the clerk at the front desk. "Hello," she said, looking down at him. Ashynites were, as a rule, quite a bit shorter than Tally. Or Hoid, for that matter. "Here to pick up a ICRS prescription for one Plaguebearer—Miranda Thompson of Snowcap, employed on the Robinsong."

The clerk consulted his notes, then nodded up at her with a wan smile. "Gotcha. I'll get that for you—please wait here." He stood up and stepped through a door into a back room.

With nothing else to do, Tally caught herself listening in on the argument going on. She thought she recognized one of the voices as Dr. Miller himself, who she'd met once when she picked up Miranda's first prescription of ICRS.

"—I don't care how much you offer!" Miller was saying loudly. "You could offer me the deed to the Silence Divine herself! I would still refuse!"

"Be reasonable, Doctor!" shouted the voice of another man who sounded rather shy of reasonable himself. "Your abilities could revolutionize modern medicine! Surely those suffering from milder Illnesses at least deserve the chance to—"

"I am not here to be your candyman! If you want to be in that business, contact one of the damn amphetamine cooks in the hold!"

"This is not the same thing at all!"

"Tell that to every prospector who self-medicates their chronic pain!" Miller roared. "My answer is no, and that's final! Now get the hell out of my lab!"

A door burst open and a man in a tailored suit stormed out. To Tally's eye, brought up as it was on high Alethi fashion, it was still very modest—but for an Ashynite, even on the Silence Divine, it was particularly fine. This must be one of Miller's investors. "This discussion isn't over!" he shot over his shoulder as he marched out. "I'll come back when you're feeling less hysterical!"

Another man stepped into the doorway he'd just exited—tall, for an Ashynite, with a bony frame and a scraggly brown beard. He wore a white coat with the name Alexander Miller monogrammed on the breast. "Best of luck to you," he growled as the investor left. "Don't think I'm likely to get less 'hysterical' about this anytime soon." He blinked, seeming to notice Tally and Hoid standing there for the first time. "Oh. Customers? Sorry you had to see that."

"No problem, Doctor," Tally said.

"What was all that about?" Hoid asked. "If you don't mind my curiosity." Tally shot him a look, but he was focused entirely on the doctor with surprising intensity.

Dr. Miller sighed, his shoulders slumping. "Ivan and the rest of the board want me to release some of my other drugs to the public," he said. "ICRS was one thing, but they want my treatments for the Illnesses that aren't life-threatening. Sharpeye Fever, Conductive Chill, even Miner's Migraine."

"You already have cures for all of these?" Hoid asked.

"I have treatments for almost half of all known Illnesses already," said Miller. "Not cures—never cures. And every single medicine I can produce is heavily addictive."

"Why is that a problem?" Hoid asked. "Surely there are people willing to become dependent on a medicine if it eases their suffering?"

Miller shot him a baleful look. "You sound like Ivan."

"I'm not trying to persuade," Hoid said, holding his hands out to his sides in a placating gesture. "I'm merely curious."

"My wife died of an overdose two years ago," Miller snapped. "Addiction can be as bad as the disease a medicine cures. I refuse to spread it."

"Why are you telling us all this?" Tally blurted out. Miller was famously reclusive. She hadn't even known he was married.

Miller blinked at her. An odd, confused look appeared in his eyes. "I'm… not sure—"

"It doesn't matter," Hoid said, shooting her a quelling look before turning his attention back on Miller. "We won't tell anyone, you have my word. We won't keep you from your research any longer, Doctor."

"Fine, fine," Miller said, striding back into his lab as if he'd already forgotten they were there.

Tally stared at Hoid. "What the hell was that?" she hissed.

Hoid looked at her, then looked over her shoulder as the back room door opened. "Your prescription is ready," the clerk said, coming over.

"Right, thanks." Tally took the canister of pills from him and handed over an uncomfortably large stack of bills in return. Then she turned to leave the clinic, shooting Hoid a look as she passed him.

He fell into step beside her as they strode back down the road, passing between the shadows of increasingly tall skyscrapers. "So?" she demanded. "What the hell was that?"

"A long story," Hoid said stiffly. "And a failure to be properly subtle on my part. Apologies for that."

"Properly subtle doing what?"

Hoid let out a breath through his angular nose. "It's called Allomancy," he said in a very low voice. "I'll thank you not to mention it to anyone."

"And what is Allomancy?"

"An Invested Art from a very distant corner of the cosmere."

"Invested Art?"

Hoid waved a hand impatiently. "The Illnesses here on Ashyn give those suffering from them abilities, yes? In most of the cosmere, similar abilities must be deliberately used by people with either a talent for them or who have been inducted into select groups with access to them. On Roshar, Surgebinding. On Sel, AonDor, Forgery, and any number of other Arts. And on Scadrial, the Metallic Arts—including Allomancy."

Tally stared at him. "So you have been to Roshar," she said quietly.

Hoid rolled his eyes. "You knew that already," he said. "I don't know how you knew that, but I know you did. What gave me away?"

"Your clothes," Tally said. "They're Alethi."

"Ah, of course. You did comment on them." He examined her as they walked down the thoroughfare. "…Yes, I can see it. The height, the epicanthic folds. There are Ashynites who look like you, but very few these days."

"Are you going back to Roshar?" Tally asked.

"Eventually," Hoid said. "And before you ask, I cannot take you with me. The means I use to travel do not allow me to take passengers."

It was… honestly a relief to hear. It meant she didn't have to choose. "That's… okay. But could you take a message?"

She saw a caustic reply in every line of Hoid's face as he opened his mouth. Then he paused, looking her in the eye, and his expression softened. "I make no promises," he said. "They are too easily broken. But tell me what you want, and I will see what I can do."

"Can you tell my parents I'm alive?"

Hoid considered her. "It depends," he said. "There are delicate things ongoing on Roshar right now, particularly in Alethkar. I cannot interfere with some of them. But if your parents are not central to those events, then I will try. Who are they?"

"Torol and Ialai Sadeas."

Hoid's expression froze. He stopped walking. For a long moment he stared at her. "Tailiah Sadeas?" he murmured.

Tally smiled wryly. "That's me."

"You're supposed to be dead."

"I had a feeling that's what they would have assumed. My best friend tried to save me from an assassin. He pushed me out of the path of an arrow, and somehow I ended up here. Alistair picked me up, and the rest is history."

"How…?" Hoid trailed off. "No, it's been too long. Whatever Invested Art brought you here, any traces are long gone by now." He sighed. "I'm afraid your parents are rather central to matters in Alethkar right now. I can't tell them of your survival until things stabilize—not when doing so might risk hundreds of thousands of lives, if not more."

"How the hell does telling my parents I'm alive cost hundreds of thousands of lives?"

Hoid shugged helplessly. "Causality is a fickle thing, I'm afraid," he said. "The very, very abridged version is that your father and Highprince Dalinar Kholin are currently very deep in a very bitter rivalry."

"What? But Dad was always friends with Highprince Dalinar!"

"Not anymore. And that rivalry is an essential part of ensuring that Dalinar Kholin does what he needs to do, at the moments when things need to be done. As soon as affairs stabilize, the next time I am on Roshar, I will tell your parents if I can. You have my word."

"That's the best I'm getting, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"…It's more than I've had for three years. Thanks."

Hoid just looked at her for a long moment. "I told you I'd make no promises, and already I've been made a liar," he said finally. "But if I've already given my word once, I'll give it once more. Why not? Tai—Tally. I promise to do what I can to keep your father alive."

"He's going to die?" Tally's face paled.

"If things go as I've foreseen?" Hoid said grimly. "Yes. And arguably he'll deserve it. But I will do what I can for him."

Tally swallowed. "Thank you."

"Don't," Hoid murmured. "Don't thank me. You have no idea how little I deserve it." He met her eyes. "For what it's worth, I hope you make it home one day, and that both your parents are alive to welcome you."

"Yeah," Tally said. "Me too." And although she was conflicted about leaving the Robinsong, that much was undeniably true.

Last edited: May 6, 2024

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Threadmarks I-5: The Sixteenth Shard

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LithosMaitreya

Character Witness

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May 6, 2024

#1,839

Thanks to Elran and BeaconHill for betareading.

-x-x-x-

I-5

The Sixteenth Shard

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Edgli's eyes snapped open with a gasp. It took her a moment to place herself—to recognize the walls and ceiling of her cozy bedroom. Gentle, golden daylight streamed in through the window, filtered through her gossamer-thin curtains.

Shaking, she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Trying to bring her breathing under control, she crossed to the window, opened the curtains, and leaned on the sill, looking out at the vibrant green of the Hallandren jungle. A panther shot her an annoyed look from its perch on a branch, its tail lashing. She had interrupted its hunt—perhaps the sound that had escaped her as she woke had frightened away its unwary prey.

"Sorry," she murmured, reaching for the shutters and closing the window. The panther, satisfied, leapt down from the branch and trotted away. The panthers of the jungle were wild creatures, and could be very dangerous to humans, or even Returned, should they come across them in the undergrowth. But Edgli had been living in these forests longer than they had, and they knew by instinct—instinct she had Endowed them with—that she was not human.

She might still call herself Edgli, but she hadn't been human in a very long time.

She pressed the palm of her hand against her mouth, trying to settle her racing heart. Idly, she was conscious of someone dying in T'Telir—a potential candidate for a Return. She sent a projection of herself into the Cognitive Realm to give them the offer. It was easier for a projection to act calm and comforting, as the poor souls she offered Returns to needed. The projection was immaterial. It had no skin to raise gooseflesh, no heart to race, no bile to swallow down.

She stepped out of her bedroom into the sitting room of the cabin. It was a small house, not too different from the one she remembered having all those millennia ago on Yolen. Two bedrooms—one for guests, though she had not had use for that in several centuries now—a kitchen, and a larger, central room with a table and chairs for dining, a pair of armchairs not far from the hearth, and a writing desk in one corner.

The last time—the last hundred times—she'd had anyone other than herself in this house, they had been either a mortal or one of her Returned, who generally thought her either an odd hermit living in solitude for one reason or another, or an exile from some other country on Nalthis. It had been a very, very long time since she'd had anyone come by who would have known enough to comment on her choice of living quarters.

She shot a look over at her writing desk, and the letter on it. No visitors, but occasional correspondence, she thought. For better or worse.

Edgli sighed, putting the letter out of her mind for the moment as she entered the kitchen to put on a pot of tea and begin making flatcakes for breakfast. Necessary? Certainly not. No more than sleep was necessary. But these rituals were important in ways the others had forgotten almost as soon as they had mantled Adonalsium's shards. Edgli was not human—but bitterly she had to acknowledge that she was much nearer to it than most of her peers, at this point.

Unfortunately, instead of the letter, her mind kept drifting back to her dream. If there was ever something to tempt me to stop sleeping, she thought, these damn dreams would do it.

But that wasn't fair. She didn't enjoy the dreams, of course—certainly not lately—but they were important, too.

She set down her plate of flatcakes and her cup of tea on her table. Sitting, she sweetened them with honey collected from the hives of bees which fed on the flowers which grew near her Perpendicularity. The so-called 'Tears of Edgli' were frequently used by the Hallandren for dyes—and those dyes had caused more than one terrible war in the past, so rare were the flowers and so fine their product—but the honey distilled from their nectar was a secret all Edgli's own, at least for now.

Other than her Returned—whose memory of her was lost when they came back to the Physical Realm—the only people who she ever spoke to were those occasional wanderers who happened upon her cabin. It was better that way. Painful, of course—she took no joy in watching the people of Nalthis kill each other for reasons as petty as dyes, and wanted desperately to stop them—but better.

That was something the dreams had taught her.

After she had finished her breakfast and washed her dishes, she could put it off no longer. Glumly she sat at her writing desk. She reread Cephandrius' letter, making sure she had gathered the salient details before reaching for a fresh sheet of paper and her pen.

Dearest Cephandrius, Edgli wrote, hoping that her sarcasm was coming through clearly. Then her pen stilled in the air above the paper as she tried to decide what to write next. Her dreams swam before her eyes again.

She wasn't the only Shard to have such visions. But she did have them the most often, and the most frequently. And that wasn't just because she slept more often than the others, although that was part of it.

When her dreams had darkened for the first time, barely a century after the Shattering, she had been terrified. She had weathered that first wave of dire dreams, and eventually they had settled again. She had stopped dreaming of disaster, acute terror, and pain, and begun dreaming of grief, simmering dread, and the depths of empty space. And then, centuries later, her dreams had warmed again. She had seen light, joy, and hope. For centuries.

And then the terror had come again. And again. Over and over. By the time the cycle had begun a fifth time, she had been desperate enough to violate her own principles.

She had been committed, from the very beginning, to keeping the Shards separate. There had been reasons to Shatter Adonalsium, and those reasons had not gone away just because Koravellium and Tanavast liked one another's company, or because Ati and Leras thought they could overcome one another's Intents. But after waking from another terrible dream of calamity, in a moment of weakness, she had reached out to Honor.

"What do you need, my friend?" Tanavast had asked, responding to her invitation by projecting an image of himself seated at her table.

"My Shard has a Connection," Edgli had answered. "I need you to trace it."

Tanavast had been as helpful as he could. He had traced the Connection through the Spiritual Realm all the way to its very edge, to the border between Spirit and whatever was Beyond. The experience had unsettled him.

"I believe you are Connected to something outside the cosmere," he had told her grimly, his projected image hunched slightly.

His posture, more than his words, had been what scared Edgli—because anything that could scare Tanavast was something to be feared by anyone. "What does that mean?" she had asked.

He had hesitated. "I'm not sure," he'd told her. "But… I'm afraid you may not be the only one. I plan to see if Koravellium has a similar Connection. It's possible I can use my tighter Connection to her to trace it."

"I do, and you can't." Koravellium had appeared in projected form seated at their table, startling them both. "And please, love, don't try."

"You know something about this, then?" Edgli had asked desperately.

Koravellium had looked at her with hooded eyes. "I do," she had answered. "I'm a dragon. We have never forgotten where we came from."

It had been Yolish myth that the dragons were the last relics of a cosmere before their own. It had never even occurred to Edgli, before that moment, that it might be true.

"We're all Connected to this thing, aren't we?" Tanavast had asked in a grim voice. "What is it? Is it Adonalsium, still extant in some form in the Beyond?"

Koravellium seemed reluctant to answer, but she met her husband's eyes and sighed. "We are each connected to something," she had told him, "but they aren't the same thing, and they are no more—or less—Adonalsium than we are." Then her eyes had met Edgli's, and her frown had deepened. "But there is one thing I have never understood," she had said. "There should have been fifteen Shards, for there were only fifteen of the things they are connected to. But there are sixteen. You, Endowment, are the exception—the sixteenth Shard. I know exactly what is waiting at the end of each of our Connections… except yours."

Edgli had been unable to stop the thrill of fear in her chest. "Meaning… what?"

Koravellium had spoken with the air of a physician pronouncing her patient terminally ill. "I suspect it means that, whatever destiny is waiting at the end of time… you will be at the heart of it."

Less than a century later, Tanavast had been mortally wounded and Koravellium had become essentially impossible to contact.

Edgli had spent the next five millennia trying to glean whatever she could about the thing at the other end of her Shard. Gradually, fear had given way to respect, and even wonder.

It never spoke to her, but it knew she was there. She suspected that was part of what set her apart from the other Vessels, what set Endowment apart from the other Shards. She could feel it, sometimes, welcoming her into her own dreams, as if it knew she had returned, had missed her since her last vision. It was not like the Shards, who had all once been mortal or near-mortal. But it was not like Adonalsium either, all unknowable sound and horrifying, mind-breaking beauty.

It was warm. It was soft. It was giving.

She had taken inspiration from her visions. She had begun bestowing her divine Breath to the Returned because it was so generous with its own divine light, in its own distant cosmere. But try as she might, she could never quite shake the feeling that she was missing something—some underlying purpose, some ethos that explained why it did the things she was trying to emulate. She often felt like a child imitating her older sibling, without ever understanding the context or meaning behind the actions she was imitating.

Sometimes she thought it might be imitating her, too. Especially lately. But even then, it still surpassed her. Whatever it understood that she did not, it lent a grace to its execution of even the same ideas.

Edgli sighed, leaning back in her desk chair, staring up at the ceiling. The dreams were different, this time. Normally the terrible, calamitous dreams only lasted a century or two at most. This time, they had been going on for most of a millennium. Something had changed. She didn't know what, but something had happened to her counterpart. And she could do nothing. She couldn't even find out what was wrong because it never spoke to her. And her visions were too vague, most of the time, for her to have a clear picture of exactly what it was going through.

She paused, a thoughtful frown rising unbidden to her lips, and looked back down at the letter on her desk. Cephandrius had written asking her for help against Rayse, who was apparently beginning to break free of the bonds with which Tanavast had tied him to the Rosharan system these past five thousand years. He had also mentioned something else stirring on Ashyn—a Dawnshard, he suspected, though he had no idea how one had gotten there. By the time the letter had reached her, she imagined he had likely already gone to investigate.

She could not help her counterpart. It was somewhere entirely unreachable, somewhere Beyond. But she had once had friends in this cosmere, and she could still help them.

Decision made, she threw away her barely-started, caustic letter of rebuke, and started again.

LithosMaitreya

May 6, 2024

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Threadmarks I-6: Fragments of Silence

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LithosMaitreya

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May 13, 2024

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Thanks to Elran and BeaconHill for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.

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I-6

Fragments of Silence

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Curumo, Melkor mused as he watched the Everstorm strike the edge of the sea of beads where Shin Kak Nish was reflected in the Cognitive Realm. It marked the beginning of the storm's second passage over the continent—the second of uncountably many. Curumo. What was he doing during the war?

He'd been wracking his brain, trying to remember whatever he could about the Maia he'd encountered in the wreckage of Natanatan. But for the life of him he could not remember a single thing that distinguished Curumo from the sea of other mediocre Maiar. He was no Olórin, who was regarded as wise even by the Valar; nor was he anything to rival Sauron, his fellow Maia of Aulë, and a far more capable mind—that was why Melkor had expended so much effort to turn Sauron to his side, after all. He was no Melian, who understood mortals so well she practically was one, nor was he like Arien, so alien from mortality as to be as much a force of nature as she was a person.

Curumo was just… there. Melkor remembered him, vaguely, among the throng of other unimportant Maiar.

Wait, no. He had been one of the Five Guardians, hadn't he? One of the Maiar the others sent to guard the first Elves so that Oromë could go to war with Melkor instead of babysitting the newborn people? Yes, yes, now Melkor remembered! He'd been known by the Elves as Tarindor, then, but it had been the same Maia.

That was a respectable appointment for a Maia, honestly. Melkor had to admit that much. Curumo might not be among the greatest of his kindred, but he had distinguished himself to a moderate degree. It hadn't been enough to tempt Melkor to subvert him back in Arda, but times had changed. Now Curumo was the only other Ainu in the cosmere, so far as Melkor could tell, and that was more than enough to make Melkor want him. Melkor would want him even if he had been… Calaurë, or Carnil, or one of any number of other Maiar who had never risen beyond the role of foot-soldiers in the war.

"Lord?"

Melkor looked away from the storm. "Yes, Ashret?"

The commander bowed. "The volunteers have assembled in Alethela, as you ordered. They await your pleasure in the growing encampment north of the border with the ruins of Natanatan."

"Good," Melkor said, standing and allowing his stone chair to recede back into the black rock of the Cognitive ground. "Before I go—how goes the muster outside Alethela? Have we identified any large populations of enslaved singers now freed by the Everstorm?"

"It seems the humans never kept singers enslaved in such numbers in the west as they did in the east. In particular, it appears that barely a few dozen slaveform singers existed in all of Shin Kak Nish, and none at all in Aimia. But as the storm traveled eastward, the numbers of your servants swelled. Iri contained small populations; Sela Tales and Makabakam more. It appears that Valhav, Rishir, and Thalath contained slaveform populations to rival that of Alethela. We have dispatched voidspren to organize these populations. As you ordered, they shall be made to march on Alethela, where our conquest shall begin."

"Good," Melkor said. "Alethela is our top priority. Nergaoul has done a superb job of turning the Alethi into little more than brutes, a far cry from the soldier-caste which fought us during the Desolations—but even a brute may be dangerous if directed. We must neutralize the east before we can begin to spread across the west."

"If I might ask for clarification on an ongoing strategy?" Ashret asked. "Before you shed the last trappings of your mortal Vessel, you had made plans involving a human called 'Blackthorn.' Are these plans still relevant, or have they been discarded?"

Melkor hummed thoughtfully. He hadn't told all of his Fused about Rayse's… 'death', for want of a better word, for the simple reason that it shouldn't matter to them. He was Odium—he had always been Odium, and Odium he remained. But Ashret was one of his best tacticians. He did need to know these things, for exactly this reason. He needed to be able to identify ways in which Rayse's old plans might no longer befit Melkor unfiltered. In this case, though… "It's too early to say. The plan is a good one… but there are multiple elements among the Alethi which interfere with my foresight. We still need to figure out exactly why the Blackthorn's son has that effect, and now the addition of a Maia among the Alethi has the potential to alter things significantly. It depends on what Curumo does. For now, the plan continues apace, but we can no longer rely on Dalinar Kholin behaving as I predicted he would. We need a backup plan. I am open to your suggestions."

"If we cannot rely on the Blackthorn, it may behoove us to deploy still more Unmade to the east," Ashret said. "Ashertmarn and Yelig-nar are both set to stir chaos within Kholinar, and Sja-anat has laid her trap at the Kholinar Oathgate as you ordered, but that leaves Thalath unsecure. I believe that was where the original plan for the Blackthorn was to come to fruition?"

"It was," Melkor said. "But… yes, since we cannot rely on that plan… Hm. If only Ba-Ado-Mishram hadn't gotten herself trapped. Still no leads on where she is?"

"None, Lord. She must be imprisoned in a truly flawless gemstone—none of her Investiture has been observed leaching into the Everstorm."

"Blast. She would have been invaluable—once she was properly punished for that disastrous attempt at a Desolation, at any rate. What of Chemoarish, Re-Shephir, and Dai-Gonarthis? Have any of them made contact?"

"Dai-Gonarthis has. She is active in southwestern Makabakam, in the region the humans call Tukar. She claims to be actively subverting one of the Heralds. I have dispatched a Mavset-im scout to verify her information. None have yet heard from Chemoarish or Re-Shephir."

"We need Re-Shephir sooner rather than later," Melkor said. "I need access to Midnight Essence, and I can't exactly go offworld to find an Aether. Speaking of Aethers—how many Makay-im do we have in the east?"

Ashret blinked. "No more than a handful have deployed as yet. We simply do not have enough loyal singers educated in the process of accepting a Fused into their gemheart as yet. Why?"

"Once we have enough for a scouting team, I want them to explore under Natanatan," Melkor said. "Something caused the destruction of that entire region—something centered on Stormseat. I have my suspicions, but if I'm right the answers lie underground."

"I will organize a force as soon as possible, Lord."

"See that you do. And make sure every Fused is keeping their eyes and ears open for the slightest sign of Chemoarish or Re-Shephir."

"Yes, Lord." Ashret bowed.

Melkor nodded at him, then abandoned physical form and sped east. He passed the Everstorm in a matter of minutes, crossing the vastness of the bead ocean, before alighting on the deck of a ship within the sea that reflected Alethkar. He could hear the beads singing to him as he restored his physical form standing on the boards—people, rocks, trees, and everything else that made up a continent. Every single one of them tainted, however slightly, with his Discord.

"Hail Odium, Lord of Passion, God of All Roshar," intoned Shural, one of the nine Fused on the ship's deck, kneeling.

"Hail!" several of the other Fused echoed, also taking to their knees.

One Fused met his eyes first. A tiny smirk played about Raboniel's lips. "Hail," she said quietly, and knelt herself, after just long enough to be insubordinate.

Melkor grinned at her. "Rise, all of you. You are to be the first of a new sort of being—no need for such ceremony."

They rose, Shural shooting Raboniel a glare for her insubordination, which she ignored.

"You have each volunteered for an experimental procedure which will change your nature and give you new abilities. The exact details of these new abilities are unknown even to me, for they are unique to each individual who undergoes the process. This much, you all already know. However, the time has come for more detail." Melkor looked up to the dark sky, streaked with lines of cloud leading into the pale sun in the west. "Elysium, are you here?"

You have invited me in, and so I have come. Even the barest whisper of the Child of Ungoliant seemed to rattle the boards beneath Melkor's feet. All around him, the nine Fused shifted in a sudden shock of instinctive fear.

"That voice," Melkor said to them, "is a being named Elysium, whom I discovered on Ashyn. His experiments gave great and terrible powers to the humans still lingering there. He and I struck a pact—I would offer him my own Fused, immortal and far more powerful than mortal men, and he would bestow unto these Fused powers beyond the Surges to which you are accustomed. These powers will be provided in a manner which may be familiar to all of you."

The sea of beads around the vessel churned suddenly. One by one, shapes crawled out of the depths—shapes like irregular spiders, though the number of legs and eyes each creature possessed seemed to vary from moment to moment. These are my Fragments, Elysium whispered to the Fused, who were casting frightened eyes about at the approaching monstrosities. They will bind themselves to you, much as Morgoth tells me spren bind to the so-called Knights Radiant who have harried you these many millennia. Through this bond, they shall give you power, and how you use these powers shall provide them with the data we seek.

"Fascinating," murmured Raboniel. She, alone among the Fused, seemed to have already gotten over her fear. Now she was examining the Fragment nearest her. "Data, you say? What sort of data do you hope to gain?"

I like this one, Elysium told Melkor, dark mirth in his voice. My kind are not like you, nor even like the Shards you consider gods. Our minds work differently. We have immense power, but we lack the Fëar, the souls, which would allow us to choose how they are directed. So we bind our fragments to your souls, and through this partnership achieve more than we could alone.

"I assume this procedure has side effects," Raboniel said.

Of course, said Elysium dryly. Most notably, it typically requires great trauma in order to give a physical brain the plasticity to accept the connection, and in order to ensure that our abilities are used we impose a minor compulsion to encourage the host to wield the Fragment. But you lack physical brains, and so with Morgoth's help I can directly bind my Fragments to your spiritwebs without the need for a traumatic experience. The connection will affect your spiritwebs, of course, but you need not fear that it will affect your freedom of choice. It is that very freedom that we need. It is, you might say, the entire point.

"Well, Elysium?" Melkor said. "You have seen my nine volunteers. Have you decided which Fragments to assign to them?"

Yes, Elysium whispered, silk over a knife's edge. To Rine of the shanay-im, I bestow Arbitrator of Fission. From the sky you shall rain terror over all the earth.

One of the fragments reared up and leapt onto the Heavenly One, sinking a pair of fangs made of dripping shadow into his neck. Rine screamed and fell to his knees, shuddering as the creature wove itself into his soul.

The other Fused shifted, looking suddenly hesitant—save Raboniel and Shural, who both looked fascinated. After only a few moments, Rine stopped thrashing, gasping for breath as he fell still on his knees. His eyes opened as he looked up at Melkor, humming once more to the Rhythm of Exultation. Within it Melkor could hear a new layer—a Silence on a level deeper than the sound itself. "I can feel it, Lord," the Fused said softly. "I… will need to learn to use it, but I can feel it. It feels… good. Powerful."

"As it should," Melkor said.

Then, to Lezian of the nex-im, I bestow one of my very own Stings. All that stands in your path, you shall destroy.

Another Fragment leapt onto the Husked One. He, too, screamed and fell. Before he had recovered, Elysium moved on.

To Hariel of the Gedel-im, I bestow Triumph Material. That which breaks, you shall bolster; that which bends, you shall bend back.

The Magnified One fell.

One by one, the other Fused were each assigned one of Elysium's Fragments, until at last the only one remaining was Raboniel herself. And to you, Raboniel of the fannahn-im, Elysium murmured, you with a mind like diamond and a will of iron, I bestow a Fragment befitting your curiosity, a Fragment I have guarded jealously for many cycles. To you I offer the Engineer. May all your questions find their answers.

As the last of Melkor's Fused fell under the assault of her new Fragment, Melkor looked up to the sky where, like a constellation without stars, he could just make out the outline of the immense bulk of the Child of Ungoliant. "Assuming these nine adapt well to their new abilities," he said, "we will discuss further expanding our partnership in future."

Yes, hissed Elysium gleefully. I am sure you will find my Fragments most capable, Morgoth. Enjoy them—it is not often my kind cooperate with knowing allies. I look forward to hearing of your successes here on Roshar.

Melkor grinned. "As do I, beast. As do I."

LithosMaitreya

May 13, 2024

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Threadmarks Part Three: Time Over Time

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LithosMaitreya

Character Witness

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Part

THREE

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Time Over Time

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Sarus • Elhokar • Rlain • Renarin • Kaladin

LithosMaitreya

Oct 14, 2024

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Threadmarks 74: Investiture

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Thanks to Elran and BeaconHill for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.

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Investiture

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I don't think it would be wise for me to act directly and personally against Rayse. I maintain that we Shards must remain separate whenever possible.

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Sarus sat on the rocky hill of a plateau overlooking Narak. The Weeping rain pattered against the outcrop he was using for shelter, occasionally spattering the thick canvas he'd draped over himself for warmth at Archive's insistence. Even through all his protection, the cold felt bitter—frustratingly so.

"You should be resting," Archive said softly from her perch on his knee. She didn't look at him. Her eyes, like his own, were fixed on the procession just outside the city. "You have no need to be here. Your health still is not."

"Need, no," Sarus agreed quietly. "But this occasion won't wait for my recovery. I'd rather not miss it."

"Why?" Archive asked.

Sarus' lips twisted into something that might have been a smile or a grimace. "I'm not sure."

At the head of the procession, the ardent raised his hands to the sky. Sarus had placed himself far enough that none of the attendees would be able to identify him out of the sentries stationed all around the city, but with his hearing the ardent's words, while quiet, were entirely audible.

"Glorious Almighty, the man beholds Halls Tranquiline. To welcome him, bid him welcome to Tranquiline Halls. Behold, man, the Almighty's glory."

It was one of several traditional keteks spoken at the funeral for honored lighteyes in Alethkar. As with everything in Alethi society, it was rigidly stratified by caste. There were keteks for the king at first dahn, for highprinces at second dahn, for highlords at third dahn, and so on. There was even a single ketek to be spoken at the funeral of any tenner who could afford an ardent's services at their funeral. There were, of course, no such rites for darkeyes.

The ardent gestured to the woman beside him, who approached the body on the slab between the ardent and the mourners. Torol Sadeas looked almost at peace. Almost, save for the patch of embroidered green-and-gold cloth covering the ruin where one of his eyes had been. The woman reached out, the gemstones and metal of her Soulcaster glinting on her wrist, and laid her hand on the dead highprince's breast. From where her skin touched his robes, the matter transformed. Stone replaced cloth and flesh alike, until after only a moment all that was left of Torol Sadeas was an impossibly detailed statue.

Archive made a disapproving sound. At his questioning glance, she quietly said, "They use an Elsecaller's abilities to revere what I revile. It is… unsettling."

"Yes," Sarus agreed. "Yes, I suppose it is."

The transformation was done. The sermon continued, the ardent delivering keteks and speeches recycled from ancient, half-remembered and entirely misrepresented traditions. Sarus stared down at the statue of the man who had been so many different things to him—the distant father to his dearest friend, the murderer of his poor mother, the slaver who took joy in his suffering. He watched as Ialai Sadeas bent over the man's bier, her tears mingling with the rain as it pattered against the stone. The only Kholin in attendance was Elhokar, who hung awkwardly near the back of the procession.

"I've seen enough," Sarus said quietly. "Help me up?"

Archive nodded, and as she stood she took shape, transforming into a rod of black metal. When he needed a walking stick, she became something between a quarterstaff and a mace, with four sharp flanges on one end. He used her to lever himself upright. Slowly, leaning heavily on her, he hobbled down the hill towards one of the bridges leading back towards the city.

"Speaking of our Surges," he said aloud, his voice rasping in his throat. "I've sworn the Second Ideal now. That's when Kaladin started gaining conscious control of his Surges, isn't it?"

Do not compare yourself to Kaladin, Archive cautioned, her voice passing into his mind through the link between their souls, rather than by way of his ears. Not because he is better or worse than you, but because he is a Windrunner and you are an Elsecaller. Many differences are. Your Surges are the most difficult, the most complex. Kaladin used Gravitation accidentally on every bridge run, even before swearing the First Ideal, because Gravitation is intuitive. Simple. By comparison, your Surges are opaque. This is why you can already manifest me as a physical object, where Kaladin could not manifest Syl until he swore his Third Ideal.

"Then I won't begin Surgebinding until after my next Ideal?"

I did not say this. We can begin training now. But where Kaladin had already developed an intuition for using Stormlight by the time he gained conscious control of his Surges, you will be starting from the beginning. It will be difficult. It will take time.

"Fine," Sarus said. "It's not as if I've much better to do while I can barely walk."

His recovery from the Everstorm was taking even longer than recovering from Szeth's attack had. More than a week had passed already.

Kaladin had left to scout southern Alethkar only a few days after Sarus had awakened. Communication had been all but cut off with the kingdom at large, except by spanreed, and what little anyone heard from Kholinar was never good news. The city was practically in open revolt, apparently as a result of some truly spectacular mismanagement by Queen Aesudan.

And, of course, the specter hanging over the entire disorderly mess was the Everstorm, passing repeatedly over Roshar from west to east.

Sarus had ideas for what needed to be done, who would be best to do it, how they might be convinced. But they were only vague suppositions at this point. To make more concrete plans, he needed more information. Real intelligence regarding the state of Alethkar and Kholinar, ideally not filtered through the biases of lighteyed scholars with spanreed access and a connection to Navani Kholin.

And, even more importantly, he needed to know what the Everstorm was doing. He was certain, down to his still-aching bones, that it was more than just a storm blowing down the buildings of everyone who had never thought to reinforce the leeward side of their constructions. The Everstorm was the first stage in Melkor's—Odium's—invasion of Roshar, a plan which the dark god had been constructing for well over four millennia. He would not stop at knocking over a few houses.

Sarus took a somewhat circuitous route back to the Oathgate, minimizing the chance of running into any of the mourners. It took him several minutes to hobble back to the platform.

"Welcome back, Sarus," Shallan said, giving him one of her many-layered smiles. "Back to Urithiru?"

"Please," Sarus said. "I'd rather not wait for all the mourners, if it's all the same to you." He didn't much relish the idea of traveling back to the tower in the company of people mourning Torol Sadeas.

She shrugged. "It doesn't take much Stormlight to transport just one person, and you're the one person who can actually replenish our Stormlight right now," she said. "Up to you."

She embedded her Shardblade into the slot in the gate, and rotated the panel. There was a momentary sense of disorientation, a sudden surge in the everpresent music of the world that only Sarus could hear—and then they were back in Urithiru. The lamps around the walls of the Oathgate dimmed only slightly, and one, already dim, went out entirely.

"Thank you," he said, passing her his sphere pouch. She held it up and breathed in.

Nothing happened.

He frowned. "What?"

She blinked down at the spheres, glimmering with orange light. "It's… not working," she said. "Why isn't it working?"

"Mmm." Her spren, Pattern, hummed where he rested against the wall, a play of shadows against the stone. "We have no Connection to this Investiture."

Sarus blinked at him. "Kaladin and I have always been able to use the Stormlight I generate," he said. "Why wouldn't you be able to?"

"A better question is, why can Kaladin use it?" he asked. "We do not have a Connection to this Investiture. Why does he?"

Sarus frowned at him. "Investiture. Is that another word for Stormlight?"

"Mmmm. Lies. But also, true."

Sarus took a steadying breath. "Are you capable of answering my questions plainly, Pattern?"

"No," Pattern said simply. "My memory, mmm, is incomplete. Stormlight is Investiture, but Investiture is not Stormlight. Perhaps."

"Brightness Navani might know something," Shallan suggested. "Or Dalinar. If anyone would know more, it would be the Stormfather, and Dalinar can ask him now."

"Assuming the Stormfather is willing to answer his questions," Sarus said. "Not exactly a conventional Radiant-spren pair, those two."

Shallan grinned. "Are any of us conventional? There aren't even half a dozen yet. It might be worth asking? Either way…" she passed him back the sphere pouch. "Could you invest that empty gem for me?"

He took the spheres, breathed in the Stormlight, and infused the lamp. "You should return to Narak," he said. "I'll wait until you leave, to make sure you can still use the Gate even though it's infused with my… Investiture."

She nodded. As he stepped off the platform, she inserted her Blade and rotated the structure. A moment later, she vanished.

Archive hummed thoughtfully in his mind. The fabrial can use your Stormlight, even if the Radiant activating it cannot. Interesting.

"Unless it was only using the normal Stormlight in the other lamps."

Possible. We will have to experiment.

"Do you have any idea what makes Kaladin different from the other Radiants?" Sarus asked.

She was quiet for a moment. I feel it, she said. When he uses your Stormlight—it feels as if the energy is passing through me.

"Why on earth would that be happening?" Sarus asked blankly.

The first time he used your Stormlight—the first time we noticed you were generating it—was after he was strung up during the highstorm, she said. After I—foolishly, dangerously—gave him the words of the First Ideal. Perhaps that somehow connected the Nahel bond between him and Syl to me—and, through me, to you?

"That… makes as much sense as anything else," Sarus said slowly, starting to hobble back into the tower proper. "Then what exactly is Investiture?"

A general term, I believe.

"A general term for what?"

What Stormlight is. Stormlight is the Investiture of Honor. But other gods are, and so other forms of Investiture are. Other Lights.

"Such as Odium and Cultivation."

And others, elsewhere in the cosmere, yes.

"Then what form of Investiture am I generating, if not that of Honor? Cultivation?"

Doubtful. Cryptics are nearly as much of Cultivation as inkspren are. If it were Cultivation's Investiture you were generating, I suspect Shallan would be able to use it.

"Odium, then?"

No.

Sarus grimaced as he slowly tottered down a corridor. "Are you sure?"

Yes. The Everstorm is made of Odium's Voidlight. It is not the same as what you create.

"But why would I have a Connection of any sort to a god not even on Roshar?"

This question is, Archive said.

Sarus turned off the corridor into a room he knew had not yet been claimed by anyone. Despite its disuse, there was already some stone furniture inside—a slab that might once have been the base for a bed, and a ledge at the perfect height for a seat. Sarus carefully leveraged himself down into the makeshift chair with a sigh. "All right," he said. "Surgebinding. How do I begin training?"

Archive transformed back from a rod of lightweight metal into her usual shape, at her full human size. She sat on the bed-slab, facing him. "First," she said, "I recommend we start with Transportation."

"Because I've already used it?" he asked. "When Kaladin and I came to Narak?"

"I am… unsure whether that was the Surge of Transportation," Archive said. "If it was, it was far more advanced Surgebinding than I would have expected so recently after your Second Ideal. The Surge of Transportation is capable of movement within one Realm, I believe, but that is difficult and dangerous. It is much easier to move between the Physical and Cognitive Realms."

"Like you did, to come here?"

She nodded. "Although I made use of a permanent Perpendicularity—a place where the Realms intersect. The Surge of Transportation allows an Elsecaller or Willshaper to create a temporary Perpendicularity."

Sarus leaned back against the wall, considering her. "It seems to me that my Surges are much more… discrete than Kaladin's. Either I do open a Perpendicularity, or I do not. Either I do transform matter with Soulcasting, or I do not."

She nodded. "This difficulty is," she agreed. "While Kaladin learned Gravitation, he could invest as much or as little Stormlight as he had, achieving half-measures where he lacked the resources for more. You have fewer options. But not no options. You can try to create a very small, very brief Perpendicularity—too small to travel through, but perhaps large enough to see through."

"A window into the Cognitive Realm."

"Shadesmar, we call it," Archive said. "Try."

"How?"

She shrugged. "Draw out your Stormlight and infuse the very space before you. No spheres are. Only the stuff of the cosmere itself."

Sarus reached for his sphere pouch and pulled out a glowing orange clearmark. With a sharp inhalation, he drew the Stormlight—no, the Investiture, it wasn't Stormlight at all—into himself. Holding it inside, he lowered the sphere and reached out with his other hand. Then he breathed out, trying to will the Light into the air before him.

A puff of blue-green mist floated out of his nose. Nothing else happened.

"Again," Archive ordered.

"I don't feel like I'm doing anything," Sarus said.

"A problem is," Archive agreed. "But Surgebinding is an internal process, the Elsecaller Surges particularly. I cannot see inside your mind, so I cannot see what you are doing rightly or wrongly. A change is, and another attempt follows."

Sarus nodded, pulled out another sphere, and tried again. This time, he tried to imagine the air before him tearing open, imagining his Investiture as a spear ripping flesh apart. Nothing.

"Again," Archive said.

Another sphere, another breath in, another breath out. This time, he imagined his Investiture as a hand reaching out to grasp the handle of a door. Nothing.

"Again."

Again. This time, he imagined his Investiture as a sphere, infused with Light, dropped into a pool of still water.

An image appeared in the ripples before his eyes. He could see a spire of crystal a hundred or more feet ahead of him, brilliantly luminous. Far below him was a sea of black beads, small enough to resemble a fluid at this distance, but glinting individually in the pale light of a distant sun hanging immobile in the western sky, dim and white, framed by thin strips of cloud streaking outward like a starburst.

Then his Investiture ran out, and the image vanished.

"Excellent," Archive said.

"Was that…?" he asked, breathing heavily.

"Shadesmar, yes," she said. "My home."

He looked at her. "Do you miss it?"

She seemed to give this question due consideration. "Sometimes," she said. "Not often."

There was the sound of someone bustling down the corridor outside. Sarus looked towards the open door as they passed and met the eyes of a soldier in Kholin blue. The man blinked. "Oh, Shardbreaker, there you are!" he said. "Brightlord Dalinar has asked for a meeting of the Radiants. Are you well enough to go to him?"

Sarus reached out, and Archive flowed into the shape of a staff between his fingers without being asked. With her help, he rose to his feet. "Certainly," he said. "Lead the way."

Last edited: Oct 14, 2024

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LithosMaitreya

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Threadmarks 75: Design

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LithosMaitreya

Character Witness

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Oct 21, 2024

#1,910

Thanks to Elran and BeaconHill for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.

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Design

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Even if I was willing to leave the Nalthian system, I don't think I should come to Roshar personally.

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"…And may we all be welcomed, as he is welcomed, in the Almighty's embrace."

Elhokar found himself tensing as the ardent's sermon ended. What should I do? he thought desperately, staring at the stone body of the man who had been like an uncle to him—but who had also tried to have his actual uncle, and half his family, killed, and who had all but openly tried to depose Elhokar in the past several months. Do I stay and offer condolences? Do I leave now that I've been seen at the funeral? What should I do?

He looked at Ialai, standing beside her husband's bier. She didn't so much as glance his way. Her eyes were fixed on her husband's face, the rain soaking through her long safehand sleeve where it rested on Sadeas' stone chest.

None of the other mourners seemed to be paying him much attention, either. That was a slight, wasn't it? Meridas Amaram had already approached Ialai and was standing silently beside her, looking down at the body of his Highprince. The other Brightlords of the Sadeas princedom—all of them who had been on the Shattered Plains—gathered closer to pay their respects. Not one tried to get the king's attention, or draw him into a conversation. Which was good, he supposed. It would have been disrespectful to be so openly political at a funeral. But that sort of politicking was also expected when he made a public appearance. That there was none of it here…

"Your Majesty," the leader of his five guards for the afternoon said quietly beside him, his Bridge Four tattoo glistening in the rain. "Shall we return to the tower?"

Elhokar looked at all these people, grieving for a man he wasn't sure he was even allowed to grieve, and sighed. "Yes," he said. "Yes, let's go."

The walk back to the Oathgate was silent. Elhokar noticed as he and his guards walked that they weren't alone. Many of the funeral's attendees—those too low-rank to really be considered true mourners, but who owed fealty to House Sadeas and therefore couldn't ignore the prince's death—were taking his departure as a sign that they could leave as well. None of them approached him. This wasn't unusual on its face. These men ranged from tenth to sixth dahn, most of them far too insignificant to presume upon their king's time. Elhokar's father would never have tolerated any of them daring to speak to him without his invitation.

Somehow, the fact that none of them tried still felt wrong to Elhokar. It felt like all of them were watching him out of the corners of their eyes, judging him, finding him wanting. Every single one of these men and women, all of them nominally far beneath him—they weren't supposed to try and speak to him, but some part of him couldn't help but wonder if part of the reason they didn't was because they thought he was beneath them.

Part of him couldn't help but wonder if they were right.

He shook the thoughts off as they reached the Oathgate platform. Brightness Shallan was seated on a stool inside, sketching something on a pad in her lap. She looked up as they approached. "Your Majesty," she said, standing and bowing.

False respect, he thought, watching her rise again. She's a Knight Radiant. She is better than me. She just shows respect because it's not worth the hassle of dismantling my authority. But she could. Any of them could.

"Brightness," he said. "Return us to Urithiru, if you please."

She lazily stretched out a hand and summoned her Shardblade, heedless of the usual ten-heartbeat requirement. "Of course, Your Majesty. Everyone into the chamber, please."

They filed in. There were enough of them that they should have all been moderately crowded together—not pressed against one another, but near enough that no one would be beyond an arm's length from their neighbor. Instead, Elhokar found himself alone, save for his guards, while the entire rest of the group bunched together on the other side of the chamber.

They're giving me space, as they should for their king, he thought.

They're trying to stay away from someone who could bring calamity on their heads at any moment, he thought.

They're avoiding the village idiot, he thought.

The lamps—he noticed one glowed orange, instead of pale blue—dimmed as Brightness Shallan operated the Oathgate. "Here we are," she said. "I'll return to the Shattered Plains to wait for the next group, Your Majesty."

"Very good," he said stiffly, and walked away, his guards following. Behind him, he heard Brightness Shallan's other passengers shuffling out, talking to one another in low, indistinct voices.

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"There has been no new information from Kholinar, Your Majesty," said one of Elhokar's secretaries. She was a woman in her early twenties, with pale blue eyes and slightly darker skin than the average Alethi, perhaps from Azish ancestry.

She was quite pretty, Elhokar couldn't help but notice. That was something he'd had a very difficult time learning to notice, when he was younger. It had been necessary—one of the only things his father had asked him every time Elhokar came with him to any sort of diplomatic function within the kingdom was whether any of the young noble ladies caught his eye. It had been necessary to learn to distinguish that sort of thing, unless he wanted to get another of his father's disappointed looks. But now he was married, had been for most of a decade, and that hard-won discerning eye just refused to stop catching on every other woman under the age of forty-five.

He'd never strayed, of course. The very idea made him slightly ill. Even harboring the thoughts was sin enough for him.

"Several of the more experienced scribes are working on compiling the information we do have from different sources to prepare a full report on the state of Alethkar," the secretary continued. "That should be ready sometime tomorrow. With your permission, one of them will come to read it to you then."

"Good. Yes. Thank you."

She bowed. "Will there be anything else, Your Majesty?"

"No." Do I thank her? No, I just thanked her. Tell her to go? Ask her to leave? Do I need something else?

Before he could figure out what he should say, she had already walked out, shutting the door behind her. Elhokar was left alone, his guards gathered outside the door.

He leaned back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling. The cold mountain sunlight filtered in through his window. Urithiru's windows were nothing like those of Alethkar, with their wooden slats and reinforced frame to shutter against the highstorms. Urithiru's windows were pure and clear panes of glass, with no reinforcement. The only shutters were frail things meant only to keep light out, not to stand up to highstorm winds.

The tower was high enough in the mountains that the everpresent clouds of the Weeping blanketed the valleys below. Mother's scholars had theorized that even highstorms might pass beneath the tower, meaning the windows had no need for reinforcement. Elhokar believed them, especially given that the Everstorm had. Nonetheless, he did not intend to be near a window when the first true highstorm of the year arrived.

He let his head slump down against his shoulder as he looked down at the map on his desk. It was a painted depiction of Alethkar, with each of the ten highprincedoms filled in with the color of their ruling house—blue for Kholin, green for Sadeas, red for Roion, and so on. His eyes found the Sadeas princedom in the nation's northwestern corner.

Why did you have to make so many enemies, Sadeas? Elhokar wondered. I wanted your help. I needed your help. Look at me now, barely a puppet to my own uncle. You could have helped me balance his authority, if only you could have controlled your ambitions. If only I had been better at managing you.

He sighed, glancing at the Kholin princedom. At the dot labeled with the familiar glyphs for Kholinar. What good am I doing here? Uncle Dalinar is a Radiant now—a Bondsmith. He's the one who finally united the princedoms, not me. He's the one who finally pushed for us to finish avenging my father. How pathetic—the king's son, his heir, couldn't make that happen for five years, until finally his brother decided to do it himself.

…Maybe that's not the only thing Uncle Dalinar would do better than me.

It wasn't the first time such a thought had occurred to him. They had become harder to ignore over the past few years. Unbidden, the sight of Uncle Dalinar standing over him, his bloodstained, Shardplate boot on Elhokar's chest, glaring down at him, telling him what he would do next. He shuddered, his chest tightening painfully at the memory once again. He'd been afraid, for a moment, that his uncle had finally had enough of his incompetence. That Alethkar was about to crown a new king. And he hadn't been able to ignore the insistent voice in his head that maybe that would be for the best.

He shouldn't have had to go that far, Elhokar thought, not for the first time. I should have already been doing the things he wanted done. The things we all needed done. If I'd listened to him from the beginning, maybe we wouldn't be in this mess. Maybe we could have finished the war in a year or two, before the Parshendi had time to learn about their 'stormform' and summon the Everstorm. Maybe Kholinar wouldn't be in revolt. Maybe I would be home, being a father to my son, instead of half a world away, hiding in a tower straight out of legend.

With a sudden burst of motion, Elhokar stood up, clenching his eyes tightly shut. These thoughts were always there, but sometimes they were louder. Today was particularly bad. He felt like a lone building in a highstorm, listening to the winds roar around him, waiting in dread and anticipation for a boulder or an uprooted tree to knock him over.

He opened his eyes with a shuddering exhale, trying to get his thoughts back under control. You are King of Alethkar, he told himself. The greatest nation on Roshar, son of the greatest monarch in a thousand years. You must not be a disappointment.

His eyes caught on a momentary flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. It was his mirror. He'd thought about having all mirrors removed from his rooms, but that would have been another sign of weakness. He felt his entire body tense at the twitch in the glass. He knew that if he turned to look, he would see the strange figure again, hovering over his reflection's shoulder, its head a strange mess of shifting patterns, watching him like his own personal Voidbringer.

Only… he knew what the Voidbringers were, now, didn't he? Brightness Shallan had brought Jasnah's research, and he had heard the reports of the battle at the center of the Plains. The Voidbringers were the parshmen, so Jasnah—his heart clenched in still-fresh grief—had claimed. So… what was the shape in the mirror? Just a figment of his imagination, or—

What does it matter that he's a prospective Radiant, just like you and me?

—Or something else. Jerkily, forcing his muscles to obey, Elhokar turned to face the mirror fully. The figure was there, hovering over his shoulder, watching him with its eyeless, faceless head of mind-bending, twisting lines.

He swallowed, resisting the urge to look behind him. Every time he'd done that in the past, when he looked back at the mirror, the figure was gone. This time, he stared it down. And then he spoke.

"Life before death," he whispered. The words had been whispered throughout the tower lately, spread by the men of Bridge Four who knew Kaladin and Sarus, by Uncle Dalinar's aides who had heard of his confrontation with the Stormfather, by Adolin telling everyone who would listen about his Radiant brother. "Strength before weakness. Journey before destination."

The figure behind him in the mirror moved, stepping around him. And at his feet, he saw a shadow—a shadow which resembled the strange pattern of its head in the mirror, come around to rest in front of him, as if it were the figure in the mirror, only outside the mirror all he could see was the shadow its strange head left on the floor. And then, in a soft, feminine voice, it said, "Finally."

"You're a spren," Elhokar breathed. "Like Brightness Shallan's—Pattern."

"Yes," it—she?—said. "A Cryptic. Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting on you? I hope you appreciate it. Patience doesn't come naturally to me."

"I'm sorry."

She chuckled. It was an odd sound, seeming to echo around him. "Keep feeding me lies like that and I'll forgive you eventually."

"What is your name?" Elhokar asked.

"Don't know," she said cheerfully. "Doubt you'd be able to say it anyway. I don't think we Cryptics give each other names that would make sense to you. That's why Shallan's spren is just called Pattern, because he looked to her like a pattern on the wall. At least, that's what I assume happened. Call me—I don't know, Design."

"Design," he said faintly. "Very well. You don't… sound much like him."

She snorted. It was an exceedingly unladylike sound. "Mmmm, if you insist, mmmm, I can, mmm, add some humming, mmm," she said mockingly. "Or I could just talk like a normal person. I'd think that'd be easier, personally."

"I… suppose so." He blinked a few times, staring at her—his eyes darting from the… design on the floor to the shape in his mirror. "Why can I see you in the mirror?"

"Don't know," she said. "I just started messing with you because I noticed you could and I figured it was the safest way to get your attention."

"I thought I was going mad!" he exclaimed. "For years I've thought I was going mad!"

"Madness might be an improvement," she said dryly, "if the people you surround yourself with are what passes for sane around here. Besides, you have to be a little cracked to form a Nahel bond. Otherwise, what is it supposed to latch onto?"

He stared helplessly at her for a long moment, suddenly aware that his heart had settled, that he was no longer panicking. The strange, awful shape in his mirror had lost all its dread when he learned that it was this… person, snarky and dry and self-satisfied. "I… I don't…" He shook his head. "That wasn't kind. That wasn't right."

"I'm a Cryptic. We're not attached to being either. You want kindness, find a cultivationspren."

He stared at her for a long moment. Then he turned away. "Come on."

"Hm? Where to?"

He didn't answer. He just opened the door. "Guard?" he said. "Could you take me to my uncle? I believe he's meeting with the other Radiants right now."

LithosMaitreya

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Threadmarks 76: Find a Way

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LithosMaitreya

Character Witness

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#1,928

Thanks to Elran and BeaconHill for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.

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Find a Way

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But that doesn't mean I can't help you.

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"I don't think this makes much sense," Rlain said to the Rhythm of Skepticism, though he still allowed Eshonai's hand on his wrist to pull him along.

"If you think I'm going to a meeting with half a dozen of the most important humans on Roshar, all of whom have plenty of reasons to want me dead, without the one Listener they actually trust, you're crazy," Eshonai said to Amusement.

"I don't know how much they do trust me anymore," Rlain cautioned her. "Sarus does, I think—he knew about me for months, and never turned me in—and Kaladin let me go after finding out, but I have no idea how Highprince Dalinar, Renarin, or Brightness Shallan will react."

She shot him a look. "That's another reason I want you with me. You understand what all of their titles mean. If I was going in there alone I'd have no idea what to call anyone."

He shrugged helplessly, humming to Consideration. "I don't think it matters as much as they like to pretend. Particularly not to Kaladin or Renarin. I don't know Shallan or Dalinar well, but I doubt they'd make an issue of it either. I only learned because Sarus is so strict about using the titles for lighteyes, and I don't think that's because he particularly cares about them."

"Then why?"

"Because…" Rlain paused, trying to put words to an understanding of his friend and mentor that had become instinctive. "Sarus likes to be whatever people want him to be," he said finally. "Or what they expect, or both. Not every lighteyes expects or wants every darkeyes they interact with to treat them with the sort of strict respect all of the Alethi traditions create, but some do. And those that don't, in Sarus' mind, never mind it. So it costs him nothing to use those titles, to use them almost religiously, because it's easy for him and sometimes it can give him an advantage. He approaches everything in his life that way—tactically." He thought back to what little he had heard, from both Kaladin and Sarus, about the confrontation in the warcamps a few weeks ago. "Most of the time, at least."

Eshonai was frowning. "That seems like a difficult way to live," she said, humming to Confusion. "Especially without the Rhythms. He sounds like… like everything the oldest songs say about humans. That they live their lives surrounded in a shell of lies, and never let their walls down for anyone."

Rlain softly hummed to Praise. "I don't think anyone is more afraid of that than Sarus himself."

They emerged onto the high floor where the Gallery of Maps had been established, stepping out of the strange fabrial lift. There were several such lifts throughout Urithiru—cylindrical chambers, lined with filaments of metal, with housing for spheres. Once those spheres were infused, these chambers could ascend or descend the tower. There were several such lifts lining an open shaft in the middle of the tower, though none of these lifts reached the tower's extreme base. No one had yet found a safe way to get to the bottom of the tower from the inside, though with the sheer size of Urithiru such exploration was still very much ongoing. There were other lifts throughout the tower, but these were among the few that could take one all the way to the roof of the central spire. Dalinar's Gallery was only a few floors down from the summit, and it was there that the Radiants had taken to meeting.

As Eshonai led Rlain into the Gallery, he saw that Dalinar and Renarin were already present. So were Prince Adolin and Brightness Navani—despite not being Radiants themselves, Rlain was not surprised to see Dalinar's wife and firstborn son there. Sarus and Shallan did not seem to have arrived just yet, and Kaladin was still away in Alethkar.

"Ah, Eshonai," Dalinar said, nodding to her. "And Rlain. Good to see you both. How have the Listeners been settling in?"

Eshonai shrugged. "As well as could be hoped," she said to Peace, clearly forcing the Rhythm. "There have been… arguments, between some of the Listeners and the humans nearest the part of the tower where we are staying. But so far there has been no violence."

"That's good," Dalinar said. "We cannot afford to fight amongst ourselves. Human, Listener—we will need to work together through this."

"Yes," Eshonai said. "I hope you don't mind that I've brought Rlain with me."

"Not at all." Dalinar turned to Rlain. "I've heard a little about what you did in Narak, Rlain. I can't say I fully understand what this stormform did to the Listeners who took it, but I've gathered that resisting it as you did was nothing short of heroic."

Rlain stuttered through a measure of the Rhythm of Confusion in embarrassed surprise before settling back into the Rhythm of Resolve. It had become something of a constant companion, ever since it had kept him grounded while in stormform. "I had a unique perspective on things, that's all," he said. "I'd already heard in advance of Eshonai's discussion with you on the Plains, so I already understood that stormform was affecting her mind in a way most forms do not. The other Listeners—the ones willing to take stormform, at least—either didn't realize that was happening or put those concerns aside in the interest of the war."

Dalinar nodded grimly. "I predict we'll all face dangerous compromises like that in the coming months. The War of Reckoning was only the beginning. This conflict is now far bigger than the Shattered Plains."

"Yes," said a voice from behind Rlain. He and Eshonai stepped aside to allow Sarus to enter. The man was pale, his mouth a thin, tense line as he stumped forward, leaning heavily on Archive in the form of a black staff. Behind him Shallan filed in—not helping him to walk, but clearly making herself available in case such was necessary. Sarus, however, ignored her, staggering to a chair and lowering himself painfully into it with a sigh. "Yes," he said again. "By now, whatever the Everstorm is going to do to the parshmen of Roshar, it will have happened."

"It will turn them into Voidbringers," Dalinar said. "We know this from Jasnah's research."

"I'd argue we suspect it," Sarus said. "We haven't had confirmation. But even if we take that as true, we still don't know what that means. It certainly doesn't mean that every single parshman on Roshar will become a direct manifestation of Odium's will, capable of wielding powers equal to any Radiant."

"Why shouldn't it mean that?" Navani asked.

"Because the warcamps were left standing," Sarus said. "There were enough parshmen in those camps that, particularly with so many of our soldiers on the expedition to Narak, they could have utterly leveled them, slaughtering everyone we left behind—if they were so powerful, and if they were all aware of the enemy's plans and goals. They did not do this, so we can assume that they lack one of those resources—either power, or information. Or perhaps something else entirely. We cannot assume we know exactly what the Everstorm did until we have word back, either from Kaladin or from any other scout who encounters former parshmen while exploring."

Eshonai shot Rlain a look. He gave her an encouraging nod, humming to Confidence. "It may be simpler than that," she said, looking at the other Radiants. "We—the Listeners—have a great many songs to record parts of our history. From them, we know that we were not always the only people who both looked like us and were capable of thought. Something happened to the parshmen to turn them into what they have been for the past several centuries. Maybe all the Everstorm has done is revert that change?"

"I remember worrying, while I was in dullform, that I might wake up one day in slaveform instead," Rlain said. "That is what we call the form of those you call parshmen. Dullform is already a case of failure to properly take another form. A Listener enters dullform by failing to properly bond a spren during a highstorm. Slaveform… might be some form of catastrophic failure. A version of dullform caused by a much worse mistake than simply reaching for the wrong spren or singing the wrong Rhythm."

"And in that case, the Everstorm might simply make every parshman on Roshar a Parshendi," Dalinar said. "But that wouldn't guarantee that they would worship him, would it?"

"No," Sarus says. "But assuming they remember, even vaguely, the treatment they faced at humans' hands—that might be incentive enough."

Dalinar looked shocked. "But they're—they were—parshmen! If humans didn't intervene, they would stand in a field until they died of exposure! They can't possibly blame us—"

"Brightlord," Sarus interrupted. "I realize I am the only darkeyes in this room, but understand that I know what it is to face the cruelty of well-meaning men at the top of a hierarchy. You do not. Even if every lighteyes in Alethkar, every man and woman of authority on Roshar, was as committed to the ideals of honor and justice as you are—there would still be ample reason for the parshmen to be bitter at their treatment, if Eshonai is right about what has happened. We humans breed parshmen like livestock, and like livestock we separate parent from child. Like livestock, when a parshman has outlived their usefulness, we put them down. Like livestock, we stable them with none of the comforts we afford our own kind."

"We could not have foreseen that they would one day be able to think!" Dalinar exclaimed.

"Do you think that will matter to them?" Sarus asked dryly. "True, it might count in our favor if we were able to speak to them. If we apologized. But we have no way to apologize to every single parshman who has suffered abuse at the hands of our species. There are too many of them, and Odium is surely already reaching out to gather any of them who will listen—and most of them will listen—to his cause. And we are here—in a tower in the middle of nowhere, struggling to make contact with the rest of the world. No, Brightlord, the fact that we did not intend to harm people when we heaped indignities upon the parshmen will not matter one clearchip. Not in this context, not in a way that matters."

"It does matter," Dalinar insisted. "Acting with honor always matters."

Sarus let out an exasperated huff of air. "Of course, Brightlord. Regardless, we cannot make any concrete plans without information. Kaladin will likely not be able to return to the tower until he can replenish his Stormlight with the first highstorm, still some weeks away. What other channels do we have to learn what is happening in the rest of Roshar?"

"We have spanreeds," Navani reported. "I have scholars with contacts all over Roshar. The Everstorm has swept through every major city multiple times now, but we were able to warn several of them in advance. Few believed us at the time, but that may have won us some trust after the storm came."

"We need to reestablish the Oathgate network across the continent," Dalinar said. "Right now, the only active Oathgate connects Urithiru to the Shattered Plains, but there were once ten Oathgates connecting all of Roshar to this tower. We've determined where those gates likely are—the surviving ones, at any rate."

"Aimia is lost," Sarus said. "The gate may have survived, but even if it has, there is no value in reestablishing that connection. No one lives on that island. I assume there is one in each of the Silver Kingdoms?"

"Yes," Dalinar said. "I'm reaching out to the monarchs who control the cities where we believe the Oathgates to be, but many of those kingdoms are in chaos now. The Assassin in White killed several of their leaders in the past year. I've made contact with King Taravangian—who has taken the throne of Jah Keved following the Assassin's rampage—and he seems receptive to an alliance. Unfortunately, no one else does."

"Your reputation precedes you, Blackthorn," Sarus said dryly. "Perhaps—"

The door swung open. Rlain turned to see King Elhokar step inside. For a moment, everyone was silent, staring at the newcomer.

"Your Majesty," said Dalinar, nodding at the king without standing. "Has something happened?"

"Ah… yes." Elhokar swallowed. "This is a meeting for Radiants, isn't it?"

"Indeed," Sarus said. "Welcome. Why don't you introduce us, Your Majesty?"

Introduce…? Rlain wondered.

Elhokar swallowed. Then he gestured at a pattern of shadows on the floor, his hand following it as it skittered up the wall beside the door. "This is Design," he said. "She—I've just sworn the First Ideal. I… I'm a Radiant as well, now. I suppose."

"I suppose, he says," the spren, Design, said with caustic amusement. "Well, then, I suppose I'm a Cryptic who supposedly has been trying to get this supposed Radiant to say the supposed words for months. Hello."

Elhokar winced. Sarus chuckled, but something about the sound put Rlain on edge. "Good to know that His Majesty will have someone supporting him," he said.

"That—I've been thinking about that," Elhokar said quietly. "Uncle—I think I should abdicate in favor of you."

Dalinar's eyes widened. "What—"

"Absolutely not," Sarus said flatly.

Everyone turned to him. "Sorry," Adolin said. "How is that your decision, exactly?"

"It's not my decision," Sarus said. "But it is an extremely foolish decision." He shot Dalinar a look. "We were just discussing how you were having trouble winning the trust of the monarchs of Roshar because of your reputation as the Blackthorn. Usurping your own nephew would not improve matters."

"He wouldn't be usurping me," Elhokar protested.

"Tell that to them," Sarus said. "See if they believe you."

Elhokar threw up his hands. "I am a poor king!" he exclaimed. "I—"

"That does not matter," Sarus snapped. He stared Elhokar down, dark eyes flashing. "It does not matter whether you deserve to be king of Alethkar. It does not matter whether your uncle would be more effective in the role. It does not matter, Your Majesty, whether your father would be proud of what you have done with his crown. You are king. You must, therefore, be king."

"And if I can't?" Elhokar demanded.

"Find a way."

"I agree," Dalinar said. "Alethkar cannot undergo a succession crisis now, Your Majesty, and I cannot be king of Alethkar and also Urithiru's only Bondsmith."

Elhokar slumped. "Then what am I supposed to do?"

"You have friends and family with all the experience and skills you need," Sarus said. "Make use of them, Your Majesty."

LithosMaitreya

Oct 28, 2024

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Threadmarks 77: Secret Keeper

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LithosMaitreya

Character Witness

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Nov 4, 2024

#1,939

Thanks to Elran and BeaconHill for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.

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Secret Keeper

-x-x-x-

You've probably found him already, but there is a Returned on Roshar right now. He's had a few names—the last one he used before leaving Nalthis was Vasher. He has a weapon that could be useful in fighting a Shard, if you can use it safely. You probably can't. I don't think even he can. But it's something to consider.

-x-x-x-

Renarin sighed as he shut the door to his chambers quietly behind him. He leaned back against it, looking at the dimly lit gloom surrounding his bed and table. A servant must have come by during the meeting, because there was a plate of food slowly cooling on a tray there, waiting for him. The sun had set, and only the mingled pinks and orange of late twilight illuminated the room. Soon, even those would fade, leaving only the deep violet of dim Salas.

"Are you all right, Renarin?" Glys asked. He emerged slowly from Renarin's breast pocket, and his red light filled the chamber. Stars dripped upward from the spren's crystalline body, vanishing into the mottled stone of the ceiling.

"Fine," Renarin said automatically.

There was a brief pause. Then Glys gently pressed, "Don't lie to me. What's wrong?"

Renarin swallowed. Then he stepped away from the door, past Glys, and looked out his room's wide window at the sunset. Even on these lower levels of the tower, the structure was not hardened against highstorms the way Renarin was used to in Alethkar. The scholars had already determined that they were much further west here, in the impassable mountains of Ur just east of Azir. This placed them much further from the Ocean of Origins than Renarin's homeland—and, as they had seen with the Everstorm passing below the peak on which Urithiru was built, they were high enough that the storms did not touch them anyway.

Renarin's own window looked out at the western sky, away from Alethkar. So he could see the last rays of sunlight disappearing behind the other peaks which had sheltered Urithiru from the view of explorers for centuries. And he could watch as Salas' light first began to kiss those peaks, violet dripping down the mountainsides like wine spilled from a chalice.

"Renarin?"

"Why was I at that meeting, Glys?" Renarin asked quietly, not looking back at his spren.

Glys was silent for a long moment. Renarin watched a small flock of windspren ride a breeze, ribbons of blue light streaking across the darkening sky. "Because you're a Radiant," Glys said finally, sounding confused. "I—why wouldn't you be at the meeting?"

"Because I didn't say anything," Renarin said. "I didn't do anything. There weren't even any instructions for me. I didn't know what I was supposed to do in Urithiru before the meeting, and I still don't after."

"You've been doing things, though," Glys said. "You've been working with Bridge Four. You've been doing your duties as a Brightlord of House Kholin. Being a Radiant was never going to be saving the world all the time, and that's a good thing."

"Especially since I'm pretty terrible at that part of the job," Renarin mumbled.

"What makes you say that?" Glys asked.

"Are you joking?" Renarin asked. "I was practically insensate at Narak!"

"You were being tormented by visions of the calamity coming," Glys said. "No one else was—"

"Does that matter?" Renarin demanded. He turned around, facing the red crystalline spren, the room between them lit only by the crimson glow. "It doesn't matter why I wasn't helping. The fact is that I was the most useless member of Bridge Four in that battle—and both of Bridge Four's other Radiants only arrived halfway through it! One of Bridge Four was with the enemy when the battle started!"

"You're the reason the Alethi were even at that battle in the first place!" Glys exclaimed. "If it weren't for your visions, Dalinar would still be spinning his wheels trying to deal with Sadeas! He'd have been doing that right up until the Everstorm came and flattened both of their warcamps!"

"And how much more could we have done if we hadn't been so storming careful? If we weren't hiding everything behind numbers scratched on Father's walls, if we just told him what we were seeing?"

A silence fell as those questions echoed in the air between them. "Is that what this is about?" Glys finally asked, voice soft.

"No—no," Renarin said, shaking his head. "I know we have to be careful. I know. I'm Alethi—if the ardentia found out I could see the future, they'd have me excommunicated before the day was out. I still don't think our friends would hurt you if they knew the truth… but I won't push you on it. I just…"

"You're tired of keeping secrets," Glys guessed.

"I'm tired of keeping secrets from my family," Renarin said. "I thought telling Father I was a Radiant would make it easier, but it hasn't. I still—I used to tell Adolin everything, Glys. Now I feel like I can hardly talk to him. Storms, I took a Shardblade from him because I couldn't tell him I was a Radiant. I still have that Blade, not that it made me any less useless at Narak. The screaming probably made things worse."

"Well…" Glys said hesitantly. "Let's… try something. Hold out your hand."

Renarin obeyed, and the red crystalline spren drifted towards his palm. Drawing nearer, his floating body contorted. Shifted. Lengthened. And Renarin's fingers closed, almost unbidden, on the Shardblade suddenly pressed against his hand. It felt nothing like the dead, screaming thing still bonded to him. Glys, as a Blade, was almost warm to the touch. His shape was much simpler, with a long two-edged blade and only a very minimal crossguard. The only ornamentation took the form of flowing waves rippling along the metal of the blade. The gemstone in the pommel glowed with the same soft red light as Glys' body usually did.

It works! Glys crowed in Renarin's mind. I thought you'd need to be Third Ideal for me to take the form of a Blade, but then Sarus started using Archive as a staff and he's only Second Ideal. I thought it was worth a try, and it works!

Careful not to accidentally cut through any of the walls or furniture, Renarin took a couple of experimental swings. Glys cut through the air easily, seeming lighter even than the unnaturally light Shardblade Adolin had given him all those weeks ago.

I think I can take other shapes, too, Glys said. Like Archive, taking the shape of a staff while Sarus is still weak. Just tell me what weapon you want, and I'll do it. You want a longer sword, a dagger, a spear, just say so.

"Incredible," Renarin whispered. Standing there, bathed in Glys' red glow, a living Shardblade in his hands, it suddenly sunk in the sheer monumentality of all that had happened, all that was happening.

The Knights Radiant had returned to Urithiru. And he was one of them. For a moment, he almost felt like he deserved it.

"Well," he said. "I know what we have to do next." He glanced out the window at the deepening night. "Maybe in the morning."

He still worried about the secrets between him and Adolin. He still remembered with longing the days when, even as different as they were, even as isolated as Renarin felt from everyone else, he had known there was one person he could trust with anything, who would never hurt him or shame him.

But even if he still clung to secrets like a starving man to spheres, at least he could let go of the Shardblade now. That was something.

-x-x-x-

"Adolin!" Renarin called, jogging over to where his brother was sparring with General Khal. A cold wind—but not nearly cold enough, Renarin thought, given how high up they were—gusted through the enormous balcony that served as Urithiru's training ground. The two men broke apart, and Adolin glanced over, nodding at Renarin, an easy smile coming to his sweaty face.

"Brother," Adolin greeted, glancing back at Khal with a nod. Recognizing the dismissal, the relatively inexperienced Shardbearer—he'd been granted a Shardblade whose wielder had died at Narak—went to find another partner elsewhere in the training ground. Adolin turned back to Renarin, dismissing his Blade. "What brings you here, Renarin? I thought you'd be with Bridge Four."

"It's… not my shift," Renarin said, searching Adolin's face for any sign of judgement or pity. He found none. That wasn't unusual, but in this case he thought he might not be seeing anything because, just maybe, there was nothing there to see. "I've been looking for you. I need to give this back." He held out his hand and summoned the dead Shardblade Adolin had given him. As it fell into his hand, he couldn't hold back the wince as the dead spren's screams filled his head.

Adolin blinked. "Why?"

"It… hurts to hold," Renarin admitted. "It always has, to be honest. I think that happens with all Radiants. We can't use the dead Blades."

"Your spren don't like sharing?" Adolin asked. Renarin wasn't sure whether his tone was sympathetic or amused.

Either way, Renarin shook his head. "No, it's not that. It hurts our spren, too. Or at least it hurt mine. It's just… not right. I think it interferes with the Nahel bond, somehow, but now isn't the time for more extensive research."

"I suppose not." Adolin took the Blade. "I can find someone for this, but by right of bestowal, it's yours. You should probably choose who gets it."

"I'd… really rather you choose," Renarin said. "I don't know the warriors well, outside of Bridge Four, and I don't think any of Bridge Four will want it. Not after they've started developing Radiant abilities, at least when Kaladin's here. Especially since it seems like Moash didn't develop those abilities, possibly because he has a Shardblade already."

Adolin nodded. "Still, that leaves you unarmed." He searched Renarin's face. "Or… no, it doesn't, does it? You've already got a replacement!"

Renarin flushed. "I… yes." Glys? Do you mind?

Of course. The spren appeared in Renarin's hand in Blade form, long before ten heartbeats had passed.

Adolin studied the Blade, beaming. "Amazing, Renarin. Incredible."

"Thanks," Renarin said, squirming and looking away. "I—"

"Prince Adolin, Prince Renarin!"

They both turned to face the messenger running towards them, the breeze making her hair whip around her face. Ignoring it, she skidded to a stop before them and snapped a military salute. "Your father calls for both of your presence," she says. "There has been another murder."

-x-x-x-

The chamber, Renarin thought, had once been a bathhouse. The floor was dominated by a cavity perhaps four feet deep, with a wide step around the edge which might have served as a seat if the pool were filled with water. Four sets of more ordinary stairs descended into the basin from the center of each of its four sides. The chamber was high, with curling reddish strata encircling the walls like trails of old blood. Eight stone sculptures, like horse's heads, emerged from the walls—spouts from which water had once poured into the bath.

There are so many functions of this tower that we have no idea how to use, Renarin mused.

What? Glys asked.

The spouts, Renarin said. How did they pump water all the way up here? From where? It has to be a fabrial, but how is it powered? How can we reactivate it?

Is now really the time?

Renarin blinked and, with a slight flush he hoped no one could see, refocused his attention on the corpse at the bottom of the empty pool. Aunt Navani was already kneeling beside it, with Dalinar watching her from the top of one of the staircases.

"This is… remarkable," Navani said slowly. "The same injury, he's even lying in the same position. It has to be the same killer as whoever attacked Sadeas."

Dalinar hummed, his mouth a thin line as he looked down at the corpse from above. If he'd been planning to say anything, however, he was interrupted by another arrival. Sarus stomped into the chamber by a different door, Archive clanking against the stone rhythmically as he leaned on her. Shallan followed close behind him. She had taken to doing that, Renarin had noticed, whenever she wasn't with Adolin. Renarin had never heard her offer to help Sarus walk, but he had seen her start a few times when the sickly man stumbled.

Sarus looked down into the pit, eyes dark as jet beneath his mostly white brows. He frowned. "How odd."

"Agreed," Navani said. "What on Roshar does this man have in common with Sadeas? Has anyone identified him?"

"His appearance," Sarus said.

"What?" Navani glanced back at him.

"His build, his proportions," Sarus said. "They're similar to Sadeas'. I don't suppose anyone measured the size of the entry wound on Sadeas' corpse?"

"No," Dalinar said slowly. "You think the murders were committed with the same knife?"

"I think that I would like to know whether they were committed with the same knife."

"The man's name was Vedekar Perel," Dalinar said. "One of Sebarial's infantry." He glanced past Sarus at Shallan. "Did you know him, Brightness?"

Shallan shook her head wordlessly. She looked a little pale. Renarin watched her tear her eyes from the corpse, seeking Adolin's gaze. Something Renarin couldn't read changed in her expression.

Hoping for a clue, he followed her gaze. Adolin looked white as a sheet. He was staring transfixed at the corpse, and Renarin saw from a glance down that his hands were shaking.

Renarin was bad at reading people because he didn't know people. He was bad at inferring from what an emotion looked like on one face what it might look like on another. But Adolin, he knew. He had seen all those emotions on Adolin. He knew how to identify them. He could remember the last time he had seen a similar expression on Adolin's face, and remember what emotion Adolin had been feeling.

This was not grief. Renarin had seen grief on Adolin's face—awful, heartstopping grief, when word had come back from Rathalas. It hadn't looked like this.

It wasn't horror, either—not entirely. Renarin would have been surprised if Adolin were so affected by the gruesome sight, but that wasn't it.

No. This… this was guilt. And shock.

Oh, Damnation.

What? Glys asked. What is it?

Adolin killed Sadeas.

What!? Are you serious?

Yes. But he didn't kill this man. So who did?

"Adolin." Both brothers started, looking towards their father. Renarin noticed that the soldiers seemed to have left the room, giving the Kholins and Radiants some privacy. "Most of the men I'd normally assign to an investigation like this are dead, and skilled as Bridge Four is in battle, they have no experience with this sort of thing." He glanced over at Sarus. "You have keen instincts, Captain, but…"

"But I also can hardly be expected to chase a murderer through the tower if it comes to it," Sarus said with a dark chuckle, rapping the base of his Archive-staff on the stone floor. "I understand, Brightlord."

"So," Dalinar said, turning back to Adolin. "I'll leave it to you."

"Me?" Adolin asked incredulously.

"You did well investigating Elhokar's saddle, even if that turned out to be nothing."

"Highprince Aladar has been named Highprince of Information, I believe," Sarus said, his piercing gaze fixed on Adolin. For the first time, Renarin found himself suddenly afraid of what the man might see. Was this how Glys felt all the time? "I think, Highprince Dalinar, that Adolin's role should be at best as liaison to Highprince Aladar. You don't want to be seen taking control of this investigation—not as a known enemy of Highprince Sadeas. Before Aladar marched with you to Narak, he was Sadeas' ally. That makes it less likely that he will be seen as covering up your actions."

Dalinar nodded slowly. "I wish Jasnah were here," he said. "She always had good instincts for this sort of thing. But I expect you're right, Sarus. So, Adolin, I want you to go to Highprince Aladar and set some of his men to investigate. Keep me apprised of the search. Find the killer."

"You want me to hunt for Sadeas' killer," Adolin said.

"Yes," Sarus said before Dalinar could reply. His lips had twisted slightly, but Renarin couldn't guess as to what emotion tugged at their corners. "You are more than qualified." He turned back to Dalinar and gave a salute with his off hand, his right still holding his staff. "I must return to my shift at the Oathgate, Brightlord."

"Of course," Dalinar said. "Thank you for coming, Captain."

Sarus nodded, turned and started stomping away. Shallan looked between his back and Adolin, for a moment, then seemed to make up her mind and jogged around the perimeter of the basin, the skirt of her havah rustling about her legs.

"Did you know this man?" she demanded of Adolin. "Do you know who killed him?"

Adolin swallowed, seeming to rally. "No," he said. "I didn't know him, and I don't know who killed him. But I will find out." He took a last glance at the body, then turned to leave. He squeezed Renarin's shoulder as he passed, but didn't meet his gaze.

Renarin watched him leave, Shallan at his heels. Storms, he thought. What do I do with this?

Last edited: Nov 5, 2024

LithosMaitreya

Nov 4, 2024

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Threadmarks 78: Shardbreaker

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LithosMaitreya

Character Witness

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Nov 11, 2024

#1,951

Thanks to Elran and BeaconHill for betareading, and to Phinnia for the commissioned icon.

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Shardbreaker

-x-x-x-

I have no idea what a Dawnshard would be doing on Ashyn either. I can confirm that Endure was still contained as of my last correspondence with its keeper. That was less than a year ago. I can't see how it could have gotten all the way to the Rosharan system that quickly.

-x-x-x-

More than qualified, Archive said in Sarus' mind, her tone dryly amused. I suppose the murderer's qualifications to find himself are. Why do you tolerate this?

Because I don't have all the information I need to decide what to do, Sarus thought back to her as they limped together down the long corridor towards the nearest lift. He leaned heavily on her as they went, the black metal staff carrying his weight easily.

What information must be?

Whether Adolin is dangerous. I can guess why he killed Sadeas—he has more than one obvious motive—but why this man? I don't know anything about him. I'm not even sure Adolin did kill this second man. In which case, he will have a very good reason to find the copycat—if only so he can frame them for Sadeas' death as well. I don't know whether Adolin's attack on Sadeas was an isolated incident or a pattern of behavior, whether a new one or one that is simply more obvious in the close quarters of this tower. If it was isolated—if Adolin has no intention of committing murder beyond Sadeas, and did not kill Perel—then I see no need to take action against him.

Some will say the murder of Sadeas was a dishonorable act, Archive said, though her tone was not judgemental. That punishment should be regardless of who was killed.

By 'some' you mean Dalinar.

Among others.

Dalinar has many talents. Unfortunately, he appears to be afraid of most of them. Sarus shook his head, infusing a scrap of his own orange Light into the lift fabrial. It began to bear him downward, toward the Oathgate platform. Sadeas was a cremling swimming in our wine barrels. There was a time when the Blackthorn would not have tolerated such a confounding factor in his plans. The man who put Rathalas to the torch would never have let Sadeas live this long.

An improvement may be, in this, Archive pointed out. The man who put Rathalas to the torch could not have been a Bondsmith.

Perhaps, Sarus agreed. But if idealism has its place, then so has pragmatism.

Yes. But what place is that?

Sarus shrugged. I'm not sure what you mean.

Something to consider, she said. There is a risk to leaving justice undone.

Certainly. If the secret comes out anyway, anyone around Adolin will become suspect. Those outside Dalinar's inner circle will suspect all of the Radiants of covering this up.

Not this—yes, this risk is, but that is not what I mean.

Then what do you mean?

She was silent for a moment. I am… not certain. An instinct is.

I'd be a fool to disregard the instincts of a spren, Sarus thought in her direction. But I confess, I can't bring myself to worry overmuch about Sadeas' death. This new murder is more concerning, which is why I'll keep an eye on Adolin.

I understand.

-x-x-x-

After Shallan came to relieve him at the Oathgate, Sarus made his slow way up the tower to one of the higher explored regions. It was time to stop putting off an overdue conversation.

Ahis and Gadol saluted him as he approached the door. He nodded at them then walked past, rapping on the door with Archive. "Enter," Elhokar's voice called from inside.

Sarus pushed open the door, limping into the king's suite. "Your Majesty," he said, bowing slightly—even that aborted maneuver difficult while he leaned on his staff.

Elhokar stood from beside his table, quickly putting something down behind himself, out of Sarus' view. "Ah, Captain. Good to see you."

"Hey," came Design's voice from the wall to Sarus' left.

Sarus nodded at the spren. "Brightlady Design."

"Oh, don't you try that on me," Design groaned as Sarus shut the door. "I'm a Cryptic. You know, a liespren? I've been watching you call everyone 'brightlord,' 'brightlady,' 'brightness,' and 'Your Majesty.' Cultivation, some of these people actually think you mean it! But I know better. None of that."

Sarus grinned. "As you wish, spren." He turned to Elhokar. "Your Majesty, I owe you an apology."

Elhokar frowned at him. "Is it true?" he asked, glancing at Design. "Do you not mean it when you call people by their titles?"

"What, pray tell, should I mean?" Sarus asked dryly. "When I call you 'Your Majesty' I am acknowledging that you are king of Alethkar. Is that not as it should be?"

"Oh, come on," Design complained.

Sarus shot her a look. "You disagree?"

"You disagree," she snapped. "You know what people hear when you use those titles, and it's not just the societal fact of their rank."

"I… don't understand." Elhokar looked lost.

Sarus sighed. "When I call a lighteyes 'brightlord,'" he said, "they often hear an implicit acceptance of my station relative to theirs. An acceptance that because they have light eyes, they are superior to me, with my dark ones. But that is not something I am saying."

"No," Design grumbled. "Just carefully implying."

Sarus' staff shifted slightly in his grip. He took hold of a table in his other hand, then released it. Archive took her human form, nearly as tall as he was. She stayed beside him, however, putting her arm beneath his to help him stay upright. "Envy does not become you, Cryptic," she said.

"Oh, keep your Elsecaller, inkspren," Design said. "Even if he would make a good Lightweaver. But no—not for me. I'll stick with my Radiant, thanks."

Archive nodded, then allowed herself to take the shape of a staff again. Sarus leaned gratefully on it. "Your Majesty," he said to Elhokar. "As I said, I owe you an apology."

"What for?" But Elhokar didn't look at him as he asked the question. On the wall, Design made a derisive noise.

Sarus ignored her. "For allowing the plot on your life to progress as far as it did," he said. "I had not identified the suspects until the confrontation outside your chambers—but I did know that a plot was being hatched. And I should have done more to prevent it from progressing so far. For that, you have my sincere apologies."

Elhokar glanced at Design, then back at Sarus when she was silent. "I… you're forgiven," he said. "I suppose I should thank you. What you said in that hall, about me being a prospective Radiant… if you hadn't, I might never have tried to make contact with Design."

"And instead, kept jumping at shadows on a daily basis," Design muttered.

Sarus pursed his lips, shooting the Cryptic a look before refocusing on Elhokar. "She is a very… interesting spren," he said diplomatically. "I've not spoken much with Pattern, but he seems much less… opinionated than she."

"Boring, in other words," Design said.

"Opinionated is… not inaccurate," Elhokar said with something like a wince. "I'm not… I have to admit, Captain—Sarus—I'm not sure why she approached me. It can't be as simple as me telling lies to myself."

"It's not," Design said. "Believe me, even I wish you told a few less of those. Some of them are funny. Some of them, not so much."

"Then why?" Sarus asked. "Would you care to explain yourself, spren?"

"No," she said brightly.

Sarus rolled his eyes. "Do you even know yourself?" he asked. "Or is that one of the things you haven't quite remembered since coming to the Physical Realm? I gather the journey from Shadesmar is difficult."

"You're trying to bait me," she accused. "It won't work."

"Worth a try." Sarus turned back to Elhokar. "She seems difficult."

Elhokar flushed. "I'm… I recognize the opportunity she represents. The chance I've been given."

"Meaning," Sarus said, "you've seen the transformations in your uncle, your cousin, and you want that for yourself."

Elhokar looked away.

"It is worth remembering, Your Majesty, that Highprince Dalinar only swore the First Ideal as we arrived in Urithiru. The transformations he has experienced in the past five years can hardly be attributed to the Stormfather. And Prince Renarin still has many of the same problems he always has—he's simply more at peace with them, more stable in himself."

"That's not nothing," Elhokar said quietly.

"Certainly it isn't. But it's also not a solution to all his problems. Renarin finds stability in his Nahel bond with Glys, but all those traits which made him an outcast in Alethi society remain part of him."

Elhokar shrugged helplessly. "Even so. I'm just… Captain, I've known I'm a poor king for a long time. Years. If Design can help me, can make me less of a terrible king, she can laugh at me all she likes. It will be worth it."

"Is that even something she intends to do?" Sarus asked. "A Lightweaver's Ideals are uncomfortable personal truths. I don't know what Brightness Shallan's truths have been, I haven't asked. But I don't know whether Pattern has made any effort to make those truths go away after she shares them. Are you certain you're not just signing up for more uncomfortable revelations with no promise of solace?"

What are you doing? Archive asked him silently.

Trust me, he told her.

Elhokar swallowed. He shot Design a glance. "I… hope not."

"Well?" Sarus said, looking directly at the spren. "Anything to offer this discussion?"

"You're still baiting me," she said.

"Is that what you think?" he asked. "Let me be clearer, then. His Majesty does not need yet another person to hurl derision and disappointment down on him from above. He has had far too much of that, from many who should instead have been supporting him. Take it from a Radiant who has had to navigate troubles with his spren—if you intend to be just another set of judgemental eyes over him, it will go poorly for you. If that is all you intend, you had best start investigating how to break your Nahel bond without being killed now, because it is only a matter of time." He shifted his grip on Archive, leaning heavily on her. "To put it another way, Design—you need your Radiant as much as he needs you. Start acting like it."

She said nothing.

Sarus turned back to Elhokar, who was staring at her with wide eyes. "She offers you power," he said. "But you are king of Alethkar, Your Majesty—you don't need power. If she offers you nothing else, then you don't need her."

"Is this because I caught you lying?" Design asked.

"No," Sarus said. He did not elaborate before turning back to Elhokar. "That being said, Your Majesty—she did come to you. I'll tell you what Archive told me—the fact that a spren demands growth and progress from their Radiant does not mean they are not pleased with the Radiant they have now. Design chose you because of what she saw in you as you are now. It is up to you—both of you—how far you want to progress from this point."

Elhokar nodded, slowly, his eyes going from Sarus to Design on the wall. "Thank you, Captain. Sarus."

Sarus nodded and left, nodding at the guards as he walked away. Archive clanged against the floor as he limped down the corridor.

…My apologies are, Archive said after a time. Again.

No need, Sarus reassured her. That highstorm has passed us by, Archive.

"Shardbreaker!"

Sarus stopped and turned. A young man in the robes of an ardent was jogging down the corridor towards him.

"Shardbreaker," the man gasped, staggering to a stop in front of him. "I've been looking for you. Brightness Shallan said I'd just missed you at the Oathgate, and then Lieutenant Murk said you were off duty, and Brightlord Moash said you were going to see the king, and—"

"And now you've found me," Sarus said. "What did you need?"

The ardent flushed. "Ah… Sir, the ardentia, we—there have been a great deal of rumors surrounding your… experience with the Assassin in White's Shardblade. We were hoping you would be willing to offer your own account of the event?"

"Certainly," Sarus said. "Although I'm told those who were in the corridor with me saw something different. A giant of a man standing where I had been a moment earlier, or some such. For myself, I had a vision."

"That was rumored," the ardent said eagerly. "But there are several conflicting reports of just what it is you saw."

"Then let me resolve those conflicts," Sarus said. "I saw a room, filled with glittering fabrials and glowing panes of glass. In the room were two people. One was a man, with ears pointed like speartips and clothes of green and gold. The other was a girl. She was young, perhaps fifteen or sixteen, and she wore a strange black suit, something not entirely unlike the padding soldiers wear beneath their armor. She was forging something, a silver-white hammer in her grip, an anvil beside her."

"Forging?" the ardent asked, surprised. "A woman, blacksmithing?"

"We have women swearing the oaths of Knights Radiant now," Sarus reminded him. "It seems likely that much of what we Alethi have taken for granted regarding the will of the Almighty may have been introduced by men during the Era of Solitude." Still, Sarus decided not to mention that the girl's safehand had been uncovered. Her existence would be shocking enough to the ardentia.

"I… suppose," the ardent said, looking doubtful.

"There was a window in the room," Sarus continued. "And hanging in the blue sky like skyeels I saw a fleet of ships with hulls of white wood and silver, and sails like spun gold. The man and the girl were speaking. Laughing. Then the girl turned to me. She seemed surprised, but I thought she recognized me somehow. She was just beginning to speak my name when the vision ended."

"Fascinating," the ardent said, eyes wide. "Thank you so much, Shardbreaker. I will speak to the others of this. Perhaps your vision was of the Tranquiline Halls? Perhaps that fleet is the Almighty's own host, soon to descend into Damnation to end this last Desolation forever?"

"Perhaps," Sarus said, trying not to let his amusement show on his face. "Please let me know if you have any more questions."

"Of course, sir!" The ardent dashed off.

That was exceedingly forthright, for you, Archive said. Why?

Why not? Sarus shrugged, continuing down the corridor. I didn't tell him about the name Curumo, or my connection to Melkor, or anything else that I'm trying to keep hidden. Telling them about the girl stands to benefit us, given that women appear just as likely to become Radiant as men. Better not to have the ardentia standing in the way of that. My status as the mythical Shardbreaker could benefit me, us, greatly, but only if I can keep the ardentia on my side. Better to cultivate that relationship with honesty. It's simpler than keeping track of lies.

Hm. Archive let out a hum that sounded almost amused. I disagree with Design. You would not make a good Lightweaver. When you lie, it is too… intentional.

Sarus chuckled. I try.

LithosMaitreya

Nov 11, 2024

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