Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson
“Angular features?” Kaladin guessed. “Quick with an insult. Silly and straight, somehow all at once?”
“You know him, I see,” Azure said. “He warned us to only Soulcast inside a room lined with this metal. So far as we can tell, it prevents the screamers from sensing us. Unfortunately, it also blocks spanreeds from contacting the outside.
“We keep poor Ithi and her sister working nonstop, trading off the Soulcaster. Feeding the entire city would be an impossible task for the two of them, but we’ve been able to at least keep our army strong, with some to spare.”
Damnation, Kaladin thought, inspecting the reflective walls. This wasn’t going to help him use his powers without notice.
“All right, Stormblessed,” Azure said. “I’ve opened our secrets to you. Now you’ll tell me how the king could expect one man, even a Shardbearer, to be able to save this city.”
“There’s a device in Kholinar,” he said, “of ancient design. It can instantly transport large groups of people across great distances.” He turned toward Azure and the others. “The Kholin armies wait to join us here. All we need to do is activate the device—something that only a select few people can do.”
The soldiers looked stunned—all but Azure, who perked up. “Really? You’re serious?”
Kaladin nodded.
“Great! Let’s get this thing working! Where is it?”
Kaladin took a deep breath. “Well, that happens to be the problem.…”
Surely this will bring—at long last—the end to war that the Heralds promised us.
—From drawer 30-20, final emerald
She huddled someplace. She’d forgotten where.
For a while, she’d been … everybody. A hundred faces, cycling one after another. She searched them for comfort. Surely she could find someone who didn’t hurt.
All the nearby refugees had fled, naming her a spren. They left her with those hundred faces, in silence, until her Stormlight died off.
That left only Shallan. Unfortunately.
Darkness. A candle snuffed out. A scream cut off. With nothing to see, her mind provided images.
Her father, his face turning purple as she strangled him, singing a lullaby.
Her mother, dead with burned eyes.
Tyn, run through by Pattern.
Kabsal, shaking on the floor as he succumbed to poison.
Yalb, the incorrigible sailor from Wind’s Pleasure, dead in the depths of the sea.
An unnamed coachman, murdered by members of the Ghostbloods.
Now Grund, his head opened up.
Veil had tried to help these people, but had succeeded only in making their lives worse. The lie that was Veil became suddenly manifest. She hadn’t lived on the streets and she didn’t know how to help people. Pretending to have experience didn’t mean she actually did.
Veil had always thought to herself that Shallan could handle the big picture, the Voidbringers and the Unmade. Now she had to confront the truth that she had no idea what to do. She couldn’t get to the Oathgate. It was guarded by an ancient spren that could get inside her brain.
The whole city was depending on her, but she hadn’t even been able to save a little beggar boy. As she curled up on the floor, Grund’s death seemed a shadow of everything else, of her good intentions turned arrogant.
Everywhere she trod, death haunted her. Every face she wore was a lie to pretend she could stop it.
Couldn’t she be somebody who didn’t hurt, just once?
Light pushed shadows before it, long and slender. She blinked, momentarily transfixed. How many days had it been since she’d seen light? A figure stepped into the common room outside her little hole of a chamber. She was still in the long room Muri had lived in.
She sniffled softly.
The newcomer brought his light to her doorway, then carefully stepped inside and settled down across from her, his back against the wall. The room was narrow enough that his legs stretched out and touched the wall beside her. She had hers drawn up, knees against her chest, head resting on them.
Wit didn’t speak. He put his sphere on the floor, and let her have the silence.
“I should have known better,” she finally whispered.
“Perhaps,” Wit said.
“Giving out so much food only drew predators. Foolish. I should have focused on the Oathgate.”
“Again, perhaps.”
“It’s so hard, Wit. When I wear Veil’s face … I … I have to think like her. Seeing the larger scope grows difficult when she takes over. And I want her to take over, because she’s not me.”
“The thieves who killed that child have been seen to,” Wit said.
She looked up at him.
“When some of the men in the market heard what had happened,” Wit continued, “they finally formed the militia they’d been talking about. They rushed the Grips, forcing them to give up the murderer, then disperse. I apologize for not acting sooner; I had been distracted by other tasks. You’ll be pleased to know that some of the food you gave away was still in their base.”
“Was it worth that boy’s life?” Shallan whispered.
“I cannot judge the worth of a life. I would not dare to attempt it.”
“Muri said it would be better if I were dead.”
“As I lack the experience to decide the worth of a life, I sincerely doubt that she has somehow obtained it. You tried to help the people of the market. You mostly failed. This is life. The longer you live, the more you fail. Failure is the mark of a life well lived. In turn, the only way to live without failure is to be of no use to anyone. Trust me, I’ve practiced.”
She sniffled, looking away. “I have to become Veil to escape the memories, but I don’t have the experience that she pretends to have. I haven’t lived her life.”
“No,” Wit said softly. “You’ve lived a harsher one, haven’t you?”
“Yet still, somehow, a naive one.” She drew in a deep, ragged breath. She had to stop this. She knew she had to get over the tantrum and go back to the tailor’s shop.
She’d do it. She’d shove all this into the back of her mind, with everything else she ignored. They could all fester together.
Wit settled back. “Have you heard the story of the Girl Who Looked Up?”
Shallan didn’t reply.
“It’s a story from long ago,” Wit said. He cupped his hands around the sphere on the floor. “Things were different in that time. A wall kept out the storms, but everyone ignored it. All but one girl, who looked up one day, and contemplated it.”
“Why is there a wall?” Shallan whispered.
“Oh, so you do know it? Good.” He leaned down, blowing at the crem dust on the floor. It swirled up, making a figure of a girl. It gave the brief impression of her standing before a wall, but then disintegrated back into dust. He tried again, and it swirled a little higher this time, but still fell back to dust.
“A little help?” he asked. He pushed a bag of spheres across the ground toward Shallan.
Shallan sighed, then picked up the bag and drew in the Stormlight. It started to rage within her, demanding to be used, so she stood up and breathed out, Weaving it into an illusion she’d done once before. A pristine village, and a young girl standing and looking upward, toward an impossibly tall wall in the distance.
The illusion made the room seem to vanish. Somehow, Shallan painted the walls and ceiling in precisely the right way, making them disappear into the landscape—become part of it. She hadn’t made them invisible; they were merely covered up in a way that made it seem Shallan and Wit were standing in another place.
This was … this was more than she’d ever done before. But was she really doing it? Shallan shook her head and stepped up beside the girl, who wore long scarves.
Wit stepped up on the other side. “Hmmm,” he said. “Not bad. But it’s not dark enough.”
“What?”
“I thought you knew the story,” Wit said, tapping the air. The color and li
“No light…”
“Of course, even without light, people still had to live, didn’t they? That’s what people do. I hasten to guess it’s the first thing they learn how to do. So they lived in the darkness, farmed in the darkness, ate in the darkness.” He waved behind him. People stumbled about in the village, feeling their way to different activities, barely able to see by the starlight.
In this context, strange though it seemed, some pieces of the story as she’d told it made sense. When the girl went up to people and asked, “Why is there a wall?” it was obvious why they found it so easy to ignore.
The illusion followed Wit’s words as the girl in the scarves asked several people about the wall. Don’t go beyond it, or you shall die.
“And so,” Wit said, “she decided that the only way she’d find answers would be to climb the wall herself.” He glanced at Shallan. “Was she stupid or bold?”
“How should I know?”
“Wrong answer. She was both.”
“It wasn’t stupid. If nobody asked questions, then we would never learn anything.”
“What of the wisdom of her elders?”
“They offered no explanation for why she shouldn’t ask about the wall! No rationalization, no justification. There’s a difference between listening to your elders and just being as frightened as everyone else.”
Wit smiled, the sphere in his hand lighting his face. “Funny, isn’t it, how so many of our stories start the same way, but have opposing endings? In half, the child ignores her parents, wanders out into the woods, and gets eaten. In the other half she discovers great wonders. There aren’t many stories about the kids who say, ‘Yes, I shall not go into the forest. I’m glad my parents explained that is where the monsters live.’ ”
“Is that what you’re trying to teach me, then?” Shallan snapped. “The fine distinction between choosing for yourself and ignoring good advice?”
“I’m a terrible teacher.” He waved his hand as the girl reached the wall after a long hike. She started to climb. “Fortunately, I am an artist, and not a teacher.”
“People learn things from art.”
“Blasphemy! Art is not art if it has a function.”
Shallan rolled her eyes.
“Take this fork,” Wit said. He waved his hand. Some of her Stormlight split off from her, spinning above his hand and making an image of a floating fork in the darkness. “It has a use. Eating. Now, if it were to be ornamented by a master artisan, would that change its function?” The fork grew intricate embossing in the form of growing leaves. “No, of course not. It has the same use, ornamented or not. The art is the part that serves no purpose.”
“It makes me happy, Wit. That’s a purpose.”
He grinned, and the fork disappeared.
“Weren’t we in the middle of a story about a girl climbing a wall?” Shallan asked.
“Yes, but that part takes forever,” he said. “I’m finding things to occupy us.”
“We could just skip the boring part.”
“Skip?” Wit said, aghast. “Skip part of a story?”
Shallan snapped her fingers, and the illusion shifted so that they stood atop the wall in the darkness. The girl in the scarves finally—after toiling many days—pulled herself up beside them.
“You wound me,” Wit said. “What happens next?”
“The girl finds steps,” Shallan said. “And the girl realizes that the wall wasn’t to keep something in, but to keep her and her people out.”
“Because?”
“Because we’re monsters.”
Wit stepped over to Shallan, then quietly folded his arms around her. She trembled, then twisted, burying her face in his shirt.
“You’re not a monster, Shallan,” Wit whispered. “Oh, child. The world is monstrous at times, and there are those who would have you believe that you are terrible by association.”
“I am.”
“No. For you see, it flows the other direction. You are not worse for your association with the world, but it is better for its association with you.”
She pressed against him, shivering. “What do I do, Wit?” she whispered. “I know … I know I shouldn’t be in so much pain. I had to…” She took a deep breath. “I had to kill them. I had to. But now I’ve said the words, and I can’t ignore it anymore. So I should … should just die too, for having done it.…”
Wit waved to the side, toward where the girl in the scarves still overlooked a new world. What was that long pack she had set down beside her?
“So you remember,” Wit said gently, “the rest of the story?”
“It’s not important. We found the moral already. The wall kept people out.”
“Why?”
“Because…” What had she told Pattern before, when she’d been showing him this story?
“Because,” Wit said, pointing, “beyond the wall was God’s Light.”
It burst alight in a sudden explosion: a brilliant and powerful brightness that lit the landscape beyond the wall. Shallan gasped as it shone over them. The girl in the scarves gasped in turn, and saw the world in all its colors for the first time.
“She climbed down the steps,” Shallan whispered, watching the girl run down the steps, scarves streaming behind her. “She hid among the creatures who lived on this side. She sneaked up to the Light and she brought it back with her. To the other side. To the … to the land of shadows…”
“Yes indeed,” Wit said as the scene played out, the girl in the scarves slipping up to the grand source of light, then breaking off a little piece in her hand.
An incredible chase.
The girl climbing the steps frantically.
A crazed descent.
And then … light, for the first time in the village, followed by the coming of the storms—boiling over the wall.
“The people suffered,” Wit said, “but each storm brought light renewed, for it could never be put back, now that it had been taken. And people, for all their hardship, would never choose to go back. Not now that they could see.”
The illusion faded, leaving the two of them standing in the common room of the building, Muri’s little chamber off to the side. Shallan pulled back, ashamed at having wept on his shirt.
“Do you wish,” Wit asked, “that you could go back to not being able to see?”
“No,” she whispered.
“Then live. And let your failures be part of you.”
“That sounds … that sounds an awful lot like a moral, Wit. Like you’re trying to do something useful.”
“Well, as I said, we all fail now and then.” He swept his hands to the sides, as if brushing something away from Shallan. Stormlight curled out from her right and left, swirling, then forming into two identical versions of Shallan. They stood with ruddy hair, mottled faces, and sweeping white coats that belonged to someone else.
“Wit…” she started.
“Hush.” He walked up to one of the illusions, inspecting it, tapping his chin with his index finger. “A lot has happened to this poor girl, hasn’t it?”
“Many people have suffered more and they get along fine.”
“Fine?”
Shallan shrugged, unable to banish the truths she’d spoken. The distant memory of singing to her father as she strangled him. The people she’d failed, the problems she’d caused. The illusion of Shallan to the left gasped, then backed up against the wall of the room, shaking her head. She collapsed, head down against her legs, curling up.
“Poor fool,” Shallan whispered. “Everything she tries only makes the world worse. She was broken by her father, then broke herself in turn. She’s worthless, Wit.” She gritted her teeth, found herself sneering. “It’s not really her fault, but she’s still worthless.”
Wit grunted, then pointed at the second
“No different,” Shallan said, tiring of this game. She gave the second illusion the same memories. Father. Helaran. Failing Jasnah. Everything.
The illusory Shallan stiffened. Then set her jaw and stood there.
“Yes, I see,” Wit said, strolling up to her. “No different.”
“What are you doing to my illusions?” Shallan snapped.
“Nothing. They’re the same in every detail.”
“Of course they’re not,” Shallan said, tapping the illusion, feeling it. A sense pulsed through her from it, memories and pain. And … and something smothering them …
Forgiveness. For herself.
She gasped, pulling her finger back as if it had been bitten.
“It’s terrible,” Wit said, stepping up beside her, “to have been hurt. It’s unfair, and awful, and horrid. But Shallan … it’s okay to live on.”
She shook her head.
“Your other minds take over,” he whispered, “because they look so much more appealing. You’ll never control them until you’re confident in returning to the one who birthed them. Until you accept being you.”
“Then I’ll never control it.” She blinked tears.
“No,” Wit said. He nodded toward the version of her still standing up. “You will, Shallan. If you do not trust yourself, can you trust me? For in you, I see a woman more wonderful than any of the lies. I promise you, that woman is worth protecting. You are worth protecting.”
She nodded toward the illusion of herself still standing. “I can’t be her. She’s just another fabrication.”
Both illusions vanished. “I see only one woman here,” Wit said. “And it’s the one who is standing up. Shallan, that has always been you. You just have to admit it. Allow it.” He whispered to her. “It’s all right to hurt.”
He picked up his pack, then unfolded something from inside it. Veil’s hat. He pressed the hat into her palm.
Shockingly, morning light was shining in the doorway. Had she been here all night, huddled in this hole of a room?
“Wit?” she asked. “I … I can’t do it.”
He smiled. “There are certain things I know, Shallan. This is one of them. You can. Find the balance. Accept the pain, but don’t accept that you deserved it.”