Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson
“The ancient ones,” Ivory said again, nodding. He didn’t often speak of the spren who had been lost during the Recreance. Ivory and his fellows had been mere children—well, the spren equivalent—at the time. They spent years, centuries, with no older spren to nurture and guide them. The inkspren were only now beginning to recover the culture and society they had lost when men abandoned their vows.
“Your ward,” Ivory said. “Her spren. A Cryptic.”
“Which is bad?”
Ivory nodded. He preferred simple, straightforward gestures. You never saw Ivory shrug. “Cryptics are trouble. They enjoy lies, Jasnah. Feast upon them. Speak one word untrue at a gathering, and seven cluster around you. Their humming fills your ears.”
“Have you warred with them?”
“One does not war with Cryptics, as one does honorspren. Cryptics have but one city, and do not wish to rule more. Only to listen.” He tapped the table. “Perhaps this one is better, with the bond.”
Ivory was the only new-generation inkspren to form a Radiant bond. Some of his fellows would rather have killed Jasnah, instead of letting him risk what he had done.
The spren had a noble air about him, stiff-backed and commanding. He could change his size at will, but not his shape, except when fully in this realm, manifesting as a Shardblade. He had taken the name Ivory as a symbol of defiance. He was not what his kin said he was, and would not suffer what fate proclaimed.
The difference between a higher spren like him and a common emotion spren was in their ability to decide how to act. A living contradiction. Like human beings.
“Shallan won’t listen to me any longer,” Jasnah said. “She rebels against every little thing I tell her. These last few months on her own have changed the child.”
“She never obeyed well, Jasnah. That is who she is.”
“In the past, at least she pretended to care about my teaching.”
“But you have said, more humans should question their places in life. Did you not say that they too often accept presumed truth as fact?”
She tapped the table. “You’re right, of course. Wouldn’t I rather have her straining against her boundaries, as opposed to happily living within them? Whether she obeys me or not is of little import. But I do worry about her ability to command her situation, rather than letting her impulses command her.”
“How do you change this, if it is?”
An excellent question. Jasnah searched through the papers on her small table. She’d been collecting reports from her informants in the warcamps—the ones who had survived—about Shallan. She’d truly done well in Jasnah’s absence. Perhaps what the child needed was not more structure, but more challenges.
“All ten orders are again,” Ivory said from behind her. For years it had been only the two of them, Jasnah and Ivory. Ivory had been dodgy about giving odds on whether the other sapient spren would refound their orders or not.
However, he’d always said that he was certain that the honorspren—and therefore the Windrunners—would never return. Their attempts to rule Shadesmar had apparently not endeared them to the other races.
“Ten orders,” Jasnah said. “All ended in death.”
“All but one,” Ivory agreed. “They lived in death instead.”
She turned around, and he met her eyes with his own. No pupils, just oil shimmering above something deeply black.
“We must tell the others what we learned from Wit, Ivory. Eventually, this secret must be known.”
“Jasnah, no. It would be the end. Another Recreance.”
“The truth has not destroyed me.”
“You are special. No knowledge is that can destroy you. But the others…”
She held his eyes, then gathered the sheets stacked beside her. “We shall see,” she said, then carried them to the table to bind them into a book.
But we stand in the sea, pleased with our domains. Leave us alone.
Moash grunted as he crossed the uneven ground, hauling a thick, knotted cord over his shoulder. Turned out, the Voidbringers had run out of wagons. Too many supplies to bring, and not enough vehicles.
At least, vehicles with wheels.
Moash had been assigned to a sledge—a cart with broken wheels that had been repurposed with a pair of long, steel skids. They’d put him first in the line pulling their rope. The parshman overseers had considered him the most enthusiastic.
Why wouldn’t he be? The caravans moved at the slow pace of the chulls, which pulled roughly half the ordinary wagons. He had sturdy boots, and even a pair of gloves. Compared to bridge duty, this was a paradise.
The scenery was even better. Central Alethkar was far more fertile than the Shattered Plains, and the ground sprouted with rockbuds and the gnarled roots of trees. The sledge bounced and crunched over these, but at least he didn’t have to carry the thing on his shoulders.
Around him, hundreds of men pulled wagons or sledges piled high with foodstuffs, freshly cut lumber, or leather made from hogshide or eelskin. Some of the workers had collapsed on their first day out of Revolar. The Voidbringers had separated these into two groups. The ones who had tried, but were genuinely too weak, had been sent back to the city. A few deemed to be faking had been whipped, then moved to sledges instead of wagons.
Harsh, but fair. Indeed, as the march continued, Moash was surprised at how well the human workers were treated. Though strict and unforgiving, the Voidbringers understood that to work hard, slaves needed good rations and plenty of time at night to rest. They weren’t even chained up. Running away would be pointless under the watchful care of Fused who could fly.
Moash found himself enjoying these weeks hiking and pulling his sledge. It exhausted his body, quieted his thoughts, and let him fall into a calm rhythm. This was certainly far better than his days as a lighteyes, when he’d worried incessantly about the plot against the king.
It felt good to just be told what to do.
What happened at the Shattered Plains wasn’t my fault, he thought as he hauled the sledge. I was pushed into it. I can’t be blamed. These thoughts comforted him.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t ignore their apparent destination. He’d walked this path dozens of times, running caravans with his uncle even when he’d been a youth. Across the river, straight southeast. Over Ishar’s Field and cutting past the town of Inkwell.
The Voidbringers were marching to take Kholinar. The caravan included tens of thousands of parshmen armed with axes or spears. They wore what Moash now knew was called warform: a parshman form with carapace armor and a strong physique. They weren’t experienced—watching their nightly training told him they were basically the equivalent of darkeyes scrounged from villages and pressed into the army.
But they were learning, and they had access to the Fused. Those zipped through the air or strode along beside carts, powerful and imperious—and surrounded by dark energy. There seemed to be different varieties, but each was intimidating.
Everything was converging on the capital. Should that bother him? After all, what had Kholinar ever done for him? It was the place where his grandparents had been left to die, cold and alone in a prison cell. It was where the blighted King Elhokar had danced and connived while good people rotted.
Did humankind even deserve this kingdom?
During his youth, he’d listened to traveling ardents who accompanied the caravans. He knew that long ago, humankind had won. Aharietiam, the final confrontation with the Voidbringers, had happened thousands of years ago.
What had they done with that victory? They’d set up false gods in the form of men whose eyes reminded them of the Knights Radiant. The life of men over the centuries had been nothing more than a long string of murders, wars, and thefts.
The Voidbringers had obviously returned because men had proven they couldn’t govern themselves. That was why the Almighty had sent this scourge.
Indeed, the more he marched, the more Moash admired the Voidbringers. The armies were efficient, and the troop
Each wagon or sledge was given two parshman overseers, but these were told to use their whips sparingly. They were quietly trained for the position, and Moash heard the occasional conversation between an overseer—once a parshman slave—and an unseen spren who gave them directions.
The Voidbringers were smart, driven, and efficient. If Kholinar fell to this force, it would be no more than humankind deserved. Yes … perhaps the time for his people had passed. Moash had failed Kaladin and the others—but that was merely how men were in this debased age. He couldn’t be blamed. He was a product of his culture.
Only one oddity marred his observations. The Voidbringers seemed so much better than the human armies he’d been part of … except for one thing.
There was a group of parshman slaves.
They pulled one of the sledges, and always walked apart from the humans. They wore workform, not warform—though otherwise they looked exactly like the other parshmen, with the same marbled skin. Why did this group pull a sledge?
At first, as Moash plodded across the endless plains of central Alethkar, he found the sight of them encouraging. It suggested that the Voidbringers could be egalitarian. Maybe there’d simply been too few men with the strength to pull these sledges.
Yet if that were so, why were these parshman sledge-pullers treated so poorly? The overseers did little to hide their disgust, and were allowed to whip the poor creatures without restriction. Moash rarely glanced in their direction without finding one of them being beaten, yelled at, or abused.
Moash’s heart wrenched to see and hear this. Everyone else seemed to work so well together; everything else about the army seemed so perfect. Except this.
Who were these poor souls?
* * *
The overseer called a break, and Moash dropped his rope, then took a long pull on his waterskin. It was their twenty-first day of marching, which he only knew because some of the other slaves kept track. He judged the location as several days past Inkwell, in the final stretch toward Kholinar.
He ignored the other slaves and settled down in the shade of the sledge, which was piled high with cut timber. Not far behind them, a village burned. There hadn’t been anyone in it, as word had run before them. Why had the Voidbringers burned it, but not others they’d passed? Perhaps it was to send a message—indeed, that smoke trail was ominous. Or perhaps it was to prevent any potential flanking armies from using the village.
As his crew waited—Moash didn’t know their names, and hadn’t bothered to ask—the parshman crew trudged past, bloodied and whipped, their overseers yelling them onward. They’d lagged behind. Pervasive cruel treatment led to a tired crew, which in turn led to them being forced to march to catch up when everyone else got a water break. That, of course, only wore them out and caused injuries—which made them lag farther behind, which made them get whipped …
That’s what happened to Bridge Four, back before Kaladin, Moash thought. Everyone said we were unlucky, but it was just a self-perpetuating downward spiral.
Once that crew passed, trailing a few exhaustionspren, one of Moash’s overseers called for his team to take up their ropes and get moving again. She was a young parshwoman with dark red skin, marbled only slightly with white. She wore a havah. Though it didn’t seem like marching clothing, she wore it well. She had even done up the sleeve to cover her safehand.
“What’d they do, anyway?” he said as he took up his rope.
“What was that?” she asked, looking back at him. Storms. Save for that skin and the odd singsong quality to her voice, she could have been a pretty Makabaki caravan girl.
“That parshman crew,” he said. “What did they do to deserve such rough treatment?”
He didn’t actually expect an answer. But the parshwoman followed his gaze, then shook her head. “They harbored a false god. Brought him into the very center among us.”
“The Almighty?”
She laughed. “A real false god, a living one. Like our living gods.” She looked up as one of the Fused passed overhead.
“There are lots who think the Almighty is real,” Moash said.
“If that’s the case, why are you pulling a sledge?” She snapped her fingers, pointing.
Moash picked up his rope, joining the other men in a double line. They merged with the enormous column of marching feet, scraping sledges, and rattling wheels. The Parshendi wanted to arrive at the next town before an impending storm. They’d weathered both types—highstorm and Everstorm—sheltering in villages along the way.
Moash fell into the sturdy rhythm of the work. It wasn’t long until he was sweating. He’d grown accustomed to the colder weather in the east, near the Frostlands. It was strange to be in a place where the sun felt hot on his skin, and now the weather here was turning toward summer.
His sledge soon caught up to the parshman crew. The two sledges walked side by side for a time, and Moash liked to think that keeping pace with his crew could motivate the poor parshmen. Then one of them slipped and fell, and the entire team lurched to a stop.
The whipping began. The cries, the crack of leather on skin.
That’s enough.
Moash dropped his rope and stepped out of the line. His shocked overseers called after him, but didn’t follow. Perhaps they were too surprised.
He strode up to the parshman sledge, where the slaves were struggling to pull themselves back up and start again. Several had bloodied faces and backs. The large parshman who had slipped lay curled on the ground. His feet were bleeding; no wonder he’d had trouble walking.
Two overseers were whipping him. Moash seized one by the shoulder and pushed him back. “Stop it!” he snapped, then shoved the other overseer aside. “Don’t you see what you’re doing? You’re becoming like us.”
The two overseers stared at him, dumbfounded.
“You can’t abuse each other,” Moash said. “You can’t.” He turned toward the fallen parshman and extended a hand to help him up, but from the corner of his eye he saw one of the overseers raise his arm.
Moash spun and caught the whip that cracked at him, snatching it from the air and twisting it around his wrist to gain leverage. Then he yanked it—pulling the overseer stumbling toward him. Moash smashed a fist into his face, slamming him backward to the ground.
Storms that hurt. He shook his hand, which had clipped carapace on the side as he’d connected. He glared at the other overseer, who yelped and dropped his whip, jumping backward.
Moash nodded once, then took the fallen slave by the arm and pulled him upright. “Ride in the sledge. Heal those feet.” He took the parshman slave’s place in line, and pulled the rope taut over his shoulder.
By now, his own overseers had gathered their wits and chased after him. They conferred with the two that he’d confronted, one nursing a bleeding cut around his eye. Their conversation was hushed, urgent, and punctuated by intimidated glances toward him.
Finally, they decided to let it be. Moash pulled the sledge with the parshmen, and they found someone to replace him on the other sledge. For a while he thought more would come of it—he even saw one of the overseers conferring with a Fused. But they didn’t punish him.
No one dared to again raise a whip against the parshman crew the rest of the march.
TWENTY-THREE YEARS AGO
Dalinar pressed his fingers together, then rubbed them, scraping the dry, red-brown moss against itself. The scratchy sound was unpleasantly similar to that of a knife along bone.
He felt the warmth immediately, like an ember. A thin plume of smoke rose from his callused fingers and struck below his nose, then parted around his face.
Everything faded: the raucous sound of too many men in one room, the musky smell of their bodies pressed together. Euphoria spread through him like sudden sunlight on a cloudy day. He released a protracted sigh. He didn’t even mind when
Most places, being highprince would have won him a bubble of space, but at the stained wooden table in this poorly lit den, social standing was irrelevant. Here, with a good drink and a little help pressed between his fingers, he could finally relax. Here nobody cared how presentable he was, or if he drank too much.
Here, he didn’t have to listen to reports of rebellion and imagine himself out on those fields, solving problems the direct way. Sword in hand, Thrill in his heart …
He rubbed the moss more vigorously. Don’t think about war. Just live in the moment, as Evi always said.
Havar returned with drinks. The lean, bearded man studied the overcrowded bench, then set the drinks down and hauled a slumped drunk out of his spot. He squeezed in beside Bashin. Havar was lighteyed, good family too. He’d been one of Dalinar’s elites back when that had meant something, though now he had his own land and a high commission. He was one of the few who didn’t salute Dalinar so hard you could hear it.
Bashin though … well, Bashin was an odd one. Darkeyed of the first nahn, the portly man had traveled half the world, and encouraged Dalinar to go with him to see the other half. He still wore that stupid, wide-brimmed floppy hat.
Havar grunted, passing down the drinks. “Squeezing in beside you, Bashin, would be far easier if you didn’t have a gut that stretched to next week.”
“Just trying to do my duty, Brightlord.”
“Your duty?”
“Lighteyes need folks to obey them, right? I’m making certain that you got lots to serve you, at least by weight.”
Dalinar took his mug, but didn’t drink. For now, the firemoss was doing its job. His wasn’t the only plume rising in the dim stone chamber.
Gavilar hated the stuff. But then, Gavilar liked his life now.
In the center of the dim room, a pair of parshmen pushed tables aside, then started setting diamond chips on the floor. Men backed away, making space for a large ring of light. A couple of shirtless men pushed their way through the crowd. The room’s general air of clumsy conversation turned to one of roaring excitement.