Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson
He crossed the deck toward her, stumbling as the ship crashed through a swell in the beads. Storms, and Shallan said this was more smooth than some boats she’d been on? Several Reachers passed, calmly managing the large riggings and harnesses that attached to the spren who pulled the craft.
“Ah, human,” one of the Reachers said as Kaladin passed. That was the captain, wasn’t it? Captain Ico? He resembled a Shin man, with large, childlike eyes made of metal. He was shorter than the Alethi, but sturdy. He wore the same tan clothing as the others, sporting a multitude of buttoned pockets.
“Come with me,” Ico told Kaladin, then crossed the deck without waiting for a response. They didn’t speak much, these Reachers.
Kaladin sighed, then followed the captain back to the stairwell. A line of copper plating ran down the inside wall of the stairwell—and Kaladin had seen a similar ornamentation on the deck. He’d assumed it was decorative, but as the captain walked, he rested his fingers on the metal in an odd way.
Touching a plate with the tips of his fingers, Kaladin felt a distinct vibration. They passed the quarters of the ordinary spren sailors. They didn’t sleep, but they did seem to enjoy their breaks from work, swinging quietly in hammocks, often reading.
It didn’t bother him to see male Reachers with books—spren were obviously similar to ardents, who were outside of common understandings of male and female. At the same time … spren, reading? How odd.
When they reached the hold, the captain turned on a small oil lamp—so far as Kaladin could tell, he didn’t use a flaming brand to create the fire. How did it work? It seemed foolhardy to use fire for light with so much wood and cloth around.
“Why not use spheres for light?” Kaladin asked him.
“We have none,” Ico said. “Stormlight fades too quickly on this side.”
That was true. Kaladin’s team carried several larger unset gemstones, which would hold Stormlight for weeks—but the smaller spheres would run out after a week or so without seeing a storm. They’d been able to trade the chips and marks to the lighthouse keeper in exchange for barter supplies—mostly cloth—to buy passage on this ship.
“The lighthouse keeper wanted the Stormlight,” Kaladin said. “He kept it in some kind of globe.”
Captain Ico grunted. “Foreign technology,” he said. “Dangerous. Draws the wrong spren.” He shook his head. “At Celebrant, the moneychangers have perfect gemstones that can hold the light indefinitely. Similar.”
“Perfect gemstones? Like, the Stone of Ten Dawns?”
“I don’t know of this thing. Light in a perfect stone doesn’t run out, so you can give Stormlight to the moneychangers. They use devices to transfer it from smaller gemstones to their perfect ones. Then they give you credit to spend in the city.”
The hold was closely packed with barrels and boxes that were lashed to the walls and floor. Kaladin could barely squeeze through. Ico selected a rope-handled box from a stack, then asked Kaladin to pull it out as Ico resettled the boxes that had been atop it, then relashed them.
Kaladin spent the time thinking about perfect gemstones. Did such a thing exist on his side? If there really were flawless stones that could hold Stormlight without ever running out, that seemed important to know. It could mean the difference between life and death for Radiants during the Weeping.
Once Ico was done resettling the cargo, he gestured for Kaladin to help him pick up the box they’d removed. They maneuvered it out of the hold and up onto the top deck. Here, the captain knelt and opened the box, which revealed a strange device that looked a little like a coatrack—although only about three feet tall. Made entirely of steel, it had dozens of small metal prongs extending from it, like the branches of a tree—only it had a metal basin at the very bottom.
Ico fished in a pocket and took out a small box, from which he removed a handful of glass beads like those that made up the ocean. He placed one of them into a hole in the center of the device, then waved toward Kaladin. “Stormlight.”
“For what?”
“For you to live.”
“Are you threatening me, Captain?”
Ico sighed and regarded him with a suffering expression. Very human in its nature. It seemed the look of a man talking to a child. The spren captain waved his hand, insistent, so Kaladin took a diamond mark from his pocket.
Cradling the sphere in one hand, Ico touched the glass bead he’d put in the fabrial. “This is a soul,” he said. “Soul of water, but very cold.”
“Ice?”
“Ice from a high, high place,” he said. “Ice that has never melted. Ice that has never known warmth.” The light in Kaladin’s sphere dimmed as Ico concentrated. “You know how to manifest souls?”
“No,” Kaladin said.
“Some of your kind do,” he said. “It is rare. Rare among us too. The gardeners among the cultivationspren are best at it. I am unpracticed.”
The ocean bead expanded and grew cloudy, looking like ice. Kaladin got a distinct sense of coldness from it.
Ico handed back the diamond mark, now partially drained, then dusted off his hands and stood up, pleased.
“What does it do?” Kaladin asked.
Ico nudged the device with his foot. “It gets cold now.”
“Why?”
“Cold makes water,” he said. “Water collects in that basin. You drink, and don’t die.”
Cold makes water? It didn’t seem to be making any water that Kaladin could see. Ico hiked off to survey the spren steering the ship, so Kaladin knelt beside the device, trying to understand. Eventually, he spotted drops of water collecting on the “branches” of the device. They ran down the metal and gathered in the basin.
Huh. When the captain had said—during their initial negotiations—that he could provide water for human passengers, Kaladin had assumed the ship would have some barrels in the hold.
The device took about a half hour to make a small cup of water, which Kaladin drank as a test—the basin had a spigot and a detachable tin cup. The water was cool but flavorless, unlike rainwater. How did coldness make water though? Was this melting ice in the Physical Realm somehow, and bringing it here?
As he was sipping the water, Syl walked over—her skin, hair, and dress still colored like those of a human. She stopped next to him, placed her hands on her hips, and went into full pout.
“What?” Kaladin asked.
“They won’t let me ride one of the flying spren.”
“Smart.”
“Insufferable.”
“Why on Roshar would you look at one of those things and think, ‘You know what, I need to get on its back’?”
Syl looked at him as if he were crazy. “Because they can fly.”
“So can you. Actually, so can I.”
“You don’t fly, you fall the wrong way.” She unfolded her arms so that she could fold them immediately again and huff loudly. “You’re telling me you’re not even curious what it’s like to climb on one of those things?”
“Horses are bad enough. I’m not about to get onto something that doesn’t even have legs.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“I dragged it out back and clubbed it senseless for getting me into the army. What have you done to your skin and hair, by the way?”
“It’s a Lightweaving,” she said. “I asked Shallan, because I didn’t want rumors of an honorspren spreading from the ship’s crew.”
“We can’t waste Stormlight on something like that, Syl.”
“We used a mark that was running out anyway!” she said. “So it was worthless to us; it would have been depleted by the time we arrived. So it’s wasting nothing.”
“What if there’s an emergency?”
She stuck her tongue out at him, then at the sailors at the front of the ship. Kaladin returned the little tin cup to its place on the side of the device, then settled with his back to the ship railing. Shallan sat across the deck near the flying spren, doing sketches.
&nbs
“About wasting Stormlight?” Kaladin said. “Yes, perhaps I should. She does seem inclined to be frivolous with who she expends it for.”
Syl rolled her eyes.
“What?”
“Don’t go lecture her, silly. Chat with her. About life. About fun things.” Syl nudged him with her foot. “I know you want to. I can feel that you do. Be glad I’m the wrong kind of spren, or I would probably be licking your forehead or something to get at your emotions.”
The ship surged against a wave of beads. The souls of things in the physical world.
“Shallan is betrothed to Adolin,” Kaladin said.
“Which isn’t an oath,” Syl said. “It’s a promise to maybe make an oath sometime.”
“It’s still not the sort of thing you play around with.”
Syl rested her hand on his knee. “Kaladin. I’m your spren. It’s my duty to make sure that you’re not alone.”
“Is that so? Who decided?”
“I did. And don’t give me excuses about not being lonely, or about ‘only needing your brothers in arms.’ You can’t lie to me. You feel dark, sad. You need something, someone, and she makes you feel better.”
Storms. It felt like Syl and his emotions were double-teaming him. One smiled with encouragement, while the other whispered terrible things. That he’d always be alone. That Tarah had been right to leave him.
He filled another cup with as much water as he could get from the basin, then carried it toward Shallan. The pitching of the ship almost made him dump the cup overboard.
Shallan glanced up as he eased down beside her, his back resting against the deck’s railing. He handed her the cup. “It makes water,” he said, thumbing at the device. “By getting cold.”
“Condensation? How fast does it go? Navani would be interested in that.” She sipped the water, holding it in her gloved safehand—which was strange to see on her. Even when they’d traveled the bottoms of the chasms together, she’d worn a very formal havah.
“You walk like they do,” she said absently, finishing her sketch of one of the flying beasts.
“They?”
“The sailors. You keep your balance well. You’d have been at home as a sailor yourself, I suspect. Unlike some others.” She nodded toward Azure, who stood across the deck, holding on to the railing for dear life and occasionally shooting distrusting glares at the Reachers. Either she did not like being on a ship, or she did not trust the spren. Perhaps both.
“May I?” Kaladin asked, nodding toward Shallan’s sketch. She shrugged, so he took the sketchpad and studied her pictures of the flying beasts. As always, they were excellent. “What does the text say?”
“Just some theorizing,” she said, flipping back a page in her notebook. “I lost my original of this picture, so this is kind of crude. But have you ever seen something like these arrowhead spren here?”
“Yeah…” Kaladin said, studying her drawing of a skyeel flying with arrowhead spren moving around it. “I’ve seen them near greatshells.”
“Chasmfiends, skyeels, anything else that should be heavier than it actually is. Sailors call them luckspren on our side.” She gestured with the cup toward the front of the ship, where sailors managed the flying beasts. “They call these ‘mandras,’ but the arrowhead shapes on their heads are the same shape as luckspren. These are bigger, but I think they—or something like them—help skyeels fly.”
“Chasmfiends don’t fly.”
“They kind of do, mathematically. Bavamar did the calculations on Reshi greatshells, and found they should be crushed by their own weight.”
“Huh,” Kaladin said.
She started to get excited. “There’s more. Those mandras, they vanish sometimes. Their keepers call it ‘dropping.’ I think they must be getting pulled into the Physical Realm. It means you can never use only one mandra to pull a ship, no matter how small that ship. And you can’t take them—or most other spren—too far from human population centers on our side. They waste away and die for reasons people here don’t understand.”
“Huh. So what do they eat?”
“I’m not sure,” Shallan said. “Syl and Pattern talk about feeding off emotions, but there’s something else that…” She trailed off as Kaladin flipped to the next page in her notebook. It seemed like an attempt at drawing Captain Ico, but was incredibly juvenile. Basically just a stick figure.
“Did Adolin get hold of your sketchbook?” he asked.
She snatched the book from him and closed it. “I was just trying out a different style. Thanks for the water.”
“Yes, I had to walk all the way from over there. At least seven steps.”
“Easily ten,” Shallan said. “And on this precarious deck. Very dangerous.”
“Practically as bad as fighting the Fused.”
“Could have stubbed your toe. Or gotten a splinter. Or pitched over the side and been lost to the depths, buried by a thousand thousand beads and the weight of the souls of an infinite number of forgotten objects.”
“Or … that.”
“Highly unlikely,” Shallan agreed. “They keep this deck well maintained, so there really aren’t any splinters.”
“With my luck, I’d find one anyway.”
“I had a splinter once,” Shallan noted. “It eventually got out of hand.”
“You … you did not just say that.”
“Yes, you obviously imagined it. What a sick, sick mind you have, Kaladin.”
Kaladin sighed, then nodded to the sailors. “They do walk about barefoot. Have you noticed that? Something about the copper lines set into the deck.”
“The copper vibrates,” Shallan said. “And they keep touching it. I think they might be using it to communicate somehow.”
“That would explain why they don’t talk much,” Kaladin said. “I’d have expected them to watch us a little more than they do. They don’t seem that curious about us.”
“Which is odd, considering how interesting Azure is.”
“Wait. Just Azure?”
“Yes. In that polished breastplate and striking figure, with her talk of chasing bounties and traveling worlds. She’s deeply mysterious.”
“I’m mysterious,” Kaladin said.
“I used to think you were. Then I found out you don’t like good puns—it’s truly possible to know too much about somebody.”
He grunted. “I’ll try to be more mysterious. Take up bounty hunting.” His stomach growled. “Starting with a bounty on lunch, maybe.”
They’d been promised two meals a day, but considering how long it had taken Ico to remember they needed water, perhaps he should ask.
“I’ve been trying to track our speed,” Shallan said, flipping through her notebook. She went quickly through the pages, and he could see that—oddly—they alternated between expert renditions and comically bad ones.
She landed on a map she’d made of this region in Shadesmar. Alethi rivers were now peninsulas, and the Sea of Spears was an island, with the city named Celebrant on the western side. The river peninsulas meant that in order to get to the city, the ship had to swing to the west. Shallan had marked their path with a line.
“It’s hard to gauge our progress, but I’d guess that we’re moving faster than the average ship in our world. We can go directly where we want without worrying about the winds, for one thing.”
“So … two more days?” Kaladin asked, guessing based on her marks.
“More or less. Quick progress.”
He moved his fingers down, toward the bottom of her map. “Thaylen City?” he asked, tapping one point she’d marked.
“Yes. On this side, it will be on the edge of a lake of beads. We can guess the Oathgate will reflect there as a platform, like the one we left in Kholinar. But how to activate it…”
“I want to try. Dalinar is in danger. We need to get to him, Shallan. In Thaylen City.”
She glanced at Azure, w
“I didn’t see the future,” Kaladin said quickly. “It wasn’t like that. It was like soaring the sky with the Stormfather. I just know … I know I have to get to Dalinar.”
She still seemed skeptical. Perhaps he’d told them too much of the lighthouse keeper’s theatrics.
“We’ll see, once we get to Celebrant.” Shallan closed her map, then squirmed, glancing back at the railing they’d been leaning against. “Do you suppose they have chairs anywhere? These railings aren’t very comfortable for sitting against.”
“Probably not.”
“What do you even call these things?” Shallan said, tapping the railing. “A deck wall?”
“No doubt they’ve made up some obscure nautical word,” Kaladin said. “Everything on a ship has odd names. Port and starboard instead of left and right. Galley instead of kitchen. Nuisance instead of Shallan.”
“There was a name … railing? Deck guard? No, wale. It’s called a wale.” She grinned. “I don’t really like how it feels to sit against this wale, but I’m sure I’ll eventually get over it.”
He groaned softly. “Really?”
“Vengeance for calling me names.”
“Name. One name. And it was more a declaration of fact than an attack.”
She punched him lightly in the arm. “It’s good to see you smiling.”
“That was smiling?”
“It was the Kaladin equivalent. That scowl was almost jovial.” She smiled at him.
Something felt warm within him at being near her. Something felt right. It wasn’t like with Laral, his boyhood crush. Or even like with Tarah, his first real romance. It was something different, and he couldn’t define it. He only knew he didn’t want it to stop. It pushed back the darkness.
“Down in the chasms,” he said, “when we were trapped together, you talked about your life. About … your father.”