Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson
Amaram. Kaladin stiffened, straining to keep his face expressionless.
Dalinar and Amaram approached. The pain in Kaladin’s leg seemed to fade, and for the moment he could only see that man. That monster of a man. Wearing Plate Kaladin had earned, a golden cloak billowing out behind, bearing the symbol of the Knights Radiant.
Control yourself, Kaladin thought. He managed to swallow his rage. Last time it had gotten the better of him, he’d earned himself weeks in prison.
“You should be resting, soldier,” Dalinar said.
“Yes, sir,” Kaladin replied. “My men have already made that abundantly clear.”
“Then you trained them well. I’m proud to have them along with me on this expedition.”
Teft saluted. “If there is danger to you, Brightlord, it will be out there on the Plains. We can’t protect you if we wait back here.”
Kaladin frowned, realizing something. “Skar is here . . . Teft . . . so who is watching the king?”
“We’ve seen to it, sir,” Teft said. “Brightlord Dalinar asked me leave our best man behind with a team of his own selection. They’ll watch the king.”
Their best man . . .
Coldness. Moash. Moash had been left in charge of the king’s safety, and had a team of his own choosing.
Storms.
“Amaram,” Dalinar said, waving for the highlord to step up. “You told me that you’d never seen this man before arriving here on the Shattered Plains. Is that true?”
Kaladin met the eyes of a murderer.
“Yes,” Amaram said.
“What of his claim that you took your Blade and Plate from him?” Dalinar asked.
“Brightlord,” Amaram said, taking Dalinar by the arm, “I don’t know if the lad is touched in the head or merely starved for attention. Perhaps he served in my army, as he claims—he certainly bears the correct slave brand. But his allegations regarding me are obviously preposterous.”
Dalinar nodded to himself, as if this were all expected. “I believe an apology is due.”
Kaladin struggled to remain upright, his leg feeling weak. So this would be his final punishment. Apologizing to Amaram in public. A humiliation above all others.
“I—” Kaladin began.
“Not you, son,” Dalinar said softly.
Amaram turned, posture suddenly more alert—like that of a man preparing for a fight. “Surely you don’t believe these allegations, Dalinar!”
“A few weeks ago,” Dalinar said, “I received two special visitors in camp. One was a trusted servant who had come from Kholinar in secret, bringing a precious cargo. The other was that cargo: a madman who had arrived at the gates of Kholinar carrying a Shardblade.”
Amaram paled and stepped back, hand going to his side.
“I told my servant,” Dalinar said calmly, “to go drinking with your personal guard—he knew many of them—and talk of a treasure that the madman said had been hidden for years outside the warcamp. By my order, he then placed the madman’s Shardblade in a nearby cavern. After that, we waited.”
He’s summoning his Blade, Kaladin thought, looking at Amaram’s hand. Kaladin reached for his side knife, but Dalinar was already raising his own hand.
White mist coalesced in Dalinar’s fingers, and a Shardblade appeared, tip to Amaram’s throat. Wider than most, it was almost cleaverlike in appearance.
A Blade formed in Amaram’s hand a second later—a second too late. His eyes went wide as he stared at the silvery Blade held to his throat.
Dalinar had a Shardblade.
“I thought,” Dalinar said, “that if you had been willing to murder for one Blade, you would certainly be willing to lie for a second. And so, after I knew you’d sneaked in to see the madman on your own, I asked you to investigate his claims for me. I gave your conscience plenty of time to come clean, out of respect for our friendship. When you told me you’d found nothing—but in fact you had actually recovered the Shardblade—I knew the truth.”
“How?” Amaram hissed, looking at the Blade Dalinar held. “How did you get it back? I removed it from the cave. My men had it safe!”
“I wasn’t about to risk it just to prove a point,” Dalinar said, cold. “I bonded this Blade before we hid it away.”
“That week you spent ill,” Amaram said.
“Yes.”
“Damnation.”
Dalinar exhaled, a hissing sound through his teeth. “Why, Amaram? Of all people, I thought that you . . . Bah!” Dalinar’s grip on the weapon tightened, knuckles white. Amaram raised his chin, as if thrusting his neck toward the point of the Shardblade.
“I did it,” Amaram said, “and I would do it again. The Voidbringers will soon return, and we must be strong enough to face them. That means practiced, accomplished Shardbearers. In sacrificing a few of my soldiers, I planned to save many more.”
“Lies!” Kaladin said, stumbling forward. “You just wanted the Blade for yourself!”
Amaram looked Kaladin in the eyes. “I am sorry for what I did to you and yours. Sometimes, good men must die so that greater goals may be accomplished.”
Kaladin felt a gathering chill, a numbness that spread from his heart outward.
He’s telling the truth, he thought. He . . . honestly believes that he did the right thing.
Amaram dismissed his Blade, turning back to Dalinar. “What now?”
“You are guilty of murder—of killing men for personal wealth.”
“And what is it,” Amaram said, “when you send thousands of men to their deaths so that you may secure gemhearts, Dalinar? Is that different somehow? We all know that sometimes lives must be spent for the greater good.”
“Take off that cloak,” Dalinar growled. “You are no Radiant.”
Amaram reached up and undid it, then dropped it to the rock. He turned and started to walk away.
“No!” Kaladin said, stumbling after him.
“Let him go, son,” Dalinar said, sighing. “His reputation is broken.”
“He is still a murderer.”
“And we will try him fairly,” Dalinar said, “once I return. I can’t imprison him—Shardbearers are above that, and he’d cut his way out anyway. Either you execute a Shardbearer or you leave him free.”
Kaladin sagged, and Lopen appeared on one side, holding him up while Teft got under his other arm. He felt drained.
Sometimes lives must be spent for the greater good. . . .
“Thank you,” Kaladin said to Dalinar, “for believing me.”
“I do listen sometimes, soldier,” Dalinar said. “Now go back to camp and get some rest.”
Kaladin nodded. “Sir? Stay safe out there.”
Dalinar smiled grimly. “If possible. At least now I’ve got a way to fight that assassin, if he arrives. With all of these Shardblades flying around lately, I figured having one myself made too much sense to ignore.” He narrowed his eyes, turning eastward. “Even if it feels . . . wrong somehow to hold one. Strange, that. Why should it feel wrong? Perhaps I just miss my old Blade.”
Dalinar dismissed the Blade. “Go,” he said, walking back toward his horse, where Highprince Roion—looking stunned—was watching Amaram stalk away, his personal guard of fifty joining him.
* * *
Yes, that was Aladar’s banner, joining Dalinar’s. Sadeas could make it out through the spyglass.
He lowered it, and sat quietly for a long, long time. So long that his guards, and even his wife, started to fidget and looked nervous. But there was no reason.
He quelled his annoyance.
“Let them die out there,” he said. “All four. Ialai, make a report for me. I would like to know . . . Ialai?”
His wife started, looking toward him.
“Is all well?”
“I was merely thinking,” she said, seeming distant. “About the future. And what it is going to bring. For us.”
“It is going to bring Alethkar new highprinces,” Sadeas said. “Make a report of which among our
He turned his horse and continued the day’s ride, his back pointedly toward the Shattered Plains.
One danger in deploying such a potent weapon will be the potential encouragement of those exploring the Nahel bond. Care must be taken to avoid placing these subjects in situations of powerful stress unless you accept the consequences of their potential Investiture.
—From the Diagram, Floorboard 27: paragraph 6
Like a river suddenly undammed, the four armies flooded out onto the plateaus. Shallan watched from horseback, excited, anxious. Her little part of the convoy included Vathah and her soldiers, along with Marri, her lady’s maid. Gaz, notably, hadn’t arrived yet, and Vathah claimed to not know where he was. Perhaps she should have looked more into the nature of his debts. She’d been so busy with other things . . . storms, if the man vanished, how would she feel about that?
She would have to deal with that later. Today, she was part of something extremely important—a story that had begun with Gavilar and Dalinar’s first hunting expedition into the Unclaimed Hills years ago. Now came the final chapter, the mission that would unearth the truth and determine the future of the Shattered Plains, the Parshendi, and perhaps Alethkar itself.
Shallan kicked her horse forward, eager. The gelding started to walk, placid despite Shallan’s prodding.
Storming animal.
Adolin trotted up beside her on Sureblood. The beautiful animal was pure white—not dusty grey, like some horses she’d seen, but actually white. That Adolin should have the larger horse was patently unfair. She was shorter than he was, so she should be on the taller horse.
“You purposely gave me a slow one,” Shallan complained, “didn’t you?”
“Sure did.”
“I’d smack you. If I could reach you up there.”
He chuckled. “You said you don’t have a lot of experience riding, so I picked a horse that had a lot of experience being ridden. Trust me, you’ll be thankful.”
“I want to ride in a majestic charge as we begin our expedition!”
“And you can do so.”
“Slowly.”
“Technically, slow speeds can be very majestic.”
“Technically,” she said, “a man doesn’t need all of his toes. Shall we remove a few of yours and prove it?”
He laughed. “As long as you don’t hurt my face, I suppose.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I like your face.”
He grinned, Shardplate helm hanging from his saddle so as to not mess up his hair. She waited for him to add a quip to hers, but he didn’t.
That was all right. She liked Adolin as he was. He was kind, noble, and genuine. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t brilliant or . . . or whatever else Kaladin was. She couldn’t even define it. So there.
Passionate, with an intense, smoldering resolve. A leashed anger that he used, because he had dominated it. And a certain tempting arrogance. Not the haughty pride of a highlord. Instead, the secure, stable sense of determination that whispered that no matter who you were—or what you did—you could not hurt him. Could not change him.
He was. Like the wind and rocks were.
Shallan completely missed what Adolin said next. She blushed. “What was that?”
“I said that Sebarial has a carriage. You might want to travel with him.”
“Because I’m too delicate for riding?” Shallan said. “Did you miss that I walked back through the chasms in the middle of a highstorm?”
“Um, no. But walking and riding are different. I mean, the soreness . . .”
“Soreness?” Shallan asked. “Why would I be sore? Doesn’t the horse do all of the work?”
Adolin looked at her, eyes widening.
“Um,” she said. “Dumb question?”
“You said you’d ridden before.”
“Ponies,” she said, “on my father’s estates. Around in circles . . . All right, from that expression, I’m led to believe I’m being an idiot. When I get sore, I’ll go ride with Sebarial.”
“Before you get sore,” Adolin said. “We’ll give it an hour.”
As annoyed as she was at this turn, she couldn’t deny his expertise. Jasnah had once defined a fool as a person who ignored information because it disagreed with desired results.
She determined to not be bothered, and instead enjoy the ride. The army as a whole moved slowly, considering that each piece seemed to be so efficient. Spearmen in blocks, scribes on horseback, scouts roving outward. Dalinar had six of the massive mechanical bridges, but he had also brought all of the former bridgemen and their simpler, man-carried bridges, designed as copies of the ones they’d left in Sadeas’s camp. That was good, since Sebarial only had a couple of bridge crews.
She allowed herself a moment of personal satisfaction at the fact that he’d come on the expedition. As she was thinking on that, she noticed someone running up the line of troops behind her. A short man, with an eye patch, who drew glares from Adolin’s bridgeman guards for the day.
“Gaz?” Shallan said with relief as he hustled up, carrying a package under his arm. Her fears that he’d been knifed in an alley somewhere were unfounded.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said. “It came. You owe the merchant two sapphire broams, Brightness.”
“It?” Shallan asked, accepting the package.
“Yeah. You asked me to find one for you. I storming did.” He seemed proud of himself.
She unwrapped the cloth around the rectangular object, and found inside a book. Words of Radiance, the cover said. The sides were worn, and the pages faded—one patch across the top was even stained from spilled ink sometime in the past.
Rarely had she been as pleased to receive something so damaged. “Gaz!” she said. “You’re wonderful!”
He grinned, shooting Vathah a triumphant smile. The taller man rolled his eyes, muttering something Shallan didn’t hear.
“Thank you,” Shallan said. “Thank you truly, Gaz.”
* * *
As the time passed and one day led into another, Shallan found the distraction of the book extremely welcome. The armies moved about as fast as a herd of sleepy chulls, and the scenery was actually quite boring, though she’d never admit that to Kaladin or Adolin, considering what she’d told them last time she was out here.
The book, though. The book was wonderful. And frustrating.
But what was the “wicked thing of eminence” that led to the Recreance? she thought, writing the quote in her notebook. It was the second day of their travels on the Plains, and she had agreed to ride in the coach Adolin had provided—alone, though it baffled Adolin why she wouldn’t want her lady’s maid with her. Shallan did not want to explain Pattern to the girl.
The book had a chapter for each order of Knights Radiant, with talk of their traditions, their abilities, and their attitudes. The author admitted that a lot of it was hearsay—the book had been written two hundred years after the Recreance, and by then facts, lore, and superstition had mixed freely. Beyond that, it was in an old dialect of Alethi, using the protoscript, a precursor to the true women’s script of modern day. She spent a lot of her time sorting out meanings, occasionally calling over some of Navani’s scholars to provide definitions or interpretation.
Still, she had learned a great deal. For example, each order had different Ideals, or standards, to determine advancement. Some were specific, others left to the interpretation of the spren. Also, some orders were individualistic, while others—like the Windrunners—functioned in teams, with a specific hierarchy.
She settled back, thinking about the powers described. Would the others be appearing, then? As she and Jasnah had? Men who could glide elegantly across the ground as if the
Right now, he buzzed on the seat beside her in a contented way. The carriage hit a bump—it was rough out here—but at least in the coach, she could read and reference other books at the same time. That would have been practically impossible while riding.
The coach did make her feel shut away, though. Not everyone who tries to take care of you is trying to do what your father did, she told herself firmly.
Adolin’s warned-of soreness had never manifested, of course. Originally, she’d felt a small amount of pain in her thighs from holding herself in place in the saddle, but Stormlight had made it vanish.
“Mmm,” Pattern said, climbing onto the door of the carriage. “It comes.”
Shallan looked out the window and felt a drop of water sprinkle against her face. Rock darkened as rain coated it. Soon, the air filled with a steady drizzle, light and pleasant. Though colder, it reminded her of some of the rainfalls back in Jah Keved. Here in the stormlands, it seemed that rain was rarely this soft.
She pulled down the shades and scooted to the center of the seat so she wouldn’t get rained on. She soon found that the pleasing sound of water muffled the soldiers’ voices and the monotonous sound of marching feet, making it a nice accompaniment to reading. A quote sparked her interest, and so she dug out her sketch of the Shattered Plains and her old maps of Stormseat.
I need to find out how these maps relate, she thought. Multiple points of reference, preferably. If she could identify two places on the Shattered Plains that matched points on her map of Stormseat, she could judge how large Stormseat had been—the old map had no scale—and then overlay it on the map of the Shattered Plains. That would give them some context.
What really drew her attention was the Oathgate. On the map of Stormseat, Jasnah thought it was represented by a round disc, like a dais, on the southwestern side of the city. Was there a doorway there on that dais somewhere? A magical portal to Urithiru? How did one of the knights operate it?