Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson
“It’s your story. You decide.”
“But you already knew it.”
“I know most stories, but I’d never sung this one before.” Wit looked back at him, smiling. “What does it mean, Kaladin of Bridge Four? Kaladin Stormblessed?”
“The storm caught him,” Kaladin said.
“The storm catches everyone, eventually. Does it matter?”
“I don’t know.”
“Good.” Wit tipped his sword up toward his forehead, as if in respect. “Then you have something to think about.”
He left.
Have you given up on the gemstone, now that it is dead? And do you no longer hide behind the name of your old master? I am told that in your current incarnation you’ve taken a name that references what you presume to be one of your virtues.
“Aha!” Shallan said. She scrambled across her fluffy bed—sinking down practically to her neck with each motion—and leaned precariously over the side. She scrabbled among the stacks of papers on the floor, tossing aside irrelevant sheets.
Finally, she retrieved the one she wanted, holding it up while pushing hair out of her eyes and tucking it behind her ears. The page was a map, one of those ancient ones that Jasnah had talked about. It had taken forever to find a merchant at the Shattered Plains who had a copy.
“Look,” Shallan said, holding the map beside a modern one of the same area, copied by her own hand from Amaram’s wall.
Bastard, she noted to herself.
She turned the maps around so that Pattern—who decorated the wall above her headboard—could see them.
“Maps,” he said.
“A pattern!” Shallan exclaimed.
“I see no pattern.”
“Look right here,” she said, edging over beside the wall. “On this old map, the area is . . .”
“Natanatan,” Pattern read, then hummed softly.
“One of the Epoch Kingdoms,” Shallan said. “Organized by the Heralds themselves for divine purposes and blah blah. But look.” She stabbed the page with her finger. “The capital of Natanatan, Stormseat. If you were to judge where we’d find the ruins of it, comparing this old map to the one Amaram had . . .”
“It would be in those mountains somewhere,” Pattern said, “between the words ‘Dawn’s Shadow’ and the U in ‘Unclaimed Hills.’”
“No, no,” Shallan said. “Use a little imagination! The old map is wildly inaccurate. Stormseat was right here. On the Shattered Plains.”
“That is not what the map says,” Pattern said, humming.
“Close enough.”
“That is not a pattern,” he said, sounding offended. “Humans; you do not understand patterns. Like right now. It is second moon. Each night, you sleep during this time. But not tonight.”
“I can’t sleep tonight.”
“More information, please,” Pattern said. “Why not tonight? Is it the day of the week? Do you always not sleep on Jesel? Or is it the weather? Has it grown too warm? The position of the moons relative to—”
“It’s none of that,” Shallan said, shrugging. “I just can’t sleep.”
“Your body is capable of it, surely.”
“Probably,” Shallan said. “But not my head. It surges with too many ideas, like waves against the rocks. Rocks that . . . I guess . . . are also in my head.” She cocked her head. “I don’t think that metaphor makes me sound particularly bright.”
“But—”
“No more complaints,” Shallan said, raising a finger. “Tonight, I am doing scholarship.”
She put the page down on her bed, then leaned over the side, fishing out several others.
“I wasn’t complaining,” Pattern complained. He moved down onto the bed beside her. “I do not remember well, but did Jasnah not use a desk when . . . ‘doing scholarship’?”
“Desks are for boring people,” Shallan said. “And for people who don’t have a squishy bed.” Would Dalinar’s camp have had such a plush bed for her? Likely, the workload would have been smaller. Though, finally, she’d managed to finish sorting through Sebarial’s personal finances and was almost ready to present him with a set of relatively neat books.
In a stroke of insight, she’d slipped a copy of one of her pages of quotes about Urithiru—its potential riches, and its connection to the Shattered Plains—in among the other reports she’d sent Palona. At the bottom, she wrote, “Among Jasnah Kholin’s notes are these indications of something valuable hidden out on the Shattered Plains. Will keep you informed of my discoveries.” If Sebarial thought there was opportunity beyond gemhearts out on the Plains, she might be able to get him to take her out there with his armies, in case Adolin’s promises didn’t come through.
Getting all of that ready had left her with little time for studying, unfortunately. Perhaps that was why she couldn’t sleep. This would be easier, Shallan thought, if Navani would agree to meet with me. She’d written again, and gotten the reply that Navani was busy caring for Dalinar, who had come down with a sickness. Nothing life-threatening, apparently, but he had withdrawn for a few days to recuperate.
Did Adolin’s aunt blame her for botching the dueling agreement? After what Adolin had decided to do last week . . . Well, at least his preoccupation left Shallan with some time to read and think about Urithiru. Anything other than worrying about her brothers, who still hadn’t responded to her letters pleading for them to leave Jah Keved and come to her.
“I find sleeping very odd,” Pattern said. “I know that all beings in the Physical Realm engage in it. Do you find it pleasant? You fear nonexistence, but is not unconsciousness the same thing?”
“With sleep, it’s only temporary.”
“Ah. It is all right, because in the morning, you each return to sentience.”
“Well, that depends on the person,” Shallan said absently. “For many of them, ‘sentience’ might be too generous a term. . . .”
Pattern hummed, trying to sort through to the meaning of what she said. Finally, he buzzed an approximation of a laugh.
Shallan cocked an eyebrow at him.
“I have guessed that what you said is humorous,” Pattern said. “Though I do not know why. It was not a joke. I know of jokes. A soldier came running into camp after going to see the prostitutes. He was white in the face. His friends asked if he had found a good time. He said that he had not. They asked why. He said that when he’d asked how much the woman charged, she’d said one mark plus the tip. He told his friends that he hadn’t realized they were charging body parts now.”
Shallan grimaced. “You heard that from Vathah’s men, didn’t you?”
“Yes. It is funny because the word ‘tip’ means several different things. A payment made in addition to the sum initially charged, usually given voluntarily, and the top piece of something. In addition, I believe that ‘the tip’ means something in the slang of the soldiers, and so the man in the joke thought she was going to cut off his—”
“Yes, thank you,” Shallan said.
“That is a joke,” Pattern continued. “I understand why it is funny. Ha ha. Sarcasm is similar. You replace an expected result with one grossly unexpected, and the humor is in the juxtaposition. But why was your earlier comment funny?”
“It’s debatable whether it was, at this point. . . .”
“But—”
“Pattern, nothing is less funny than explaining humor,” Shallan said. “We have more important things to discuss.”
“Mmm . . . Such as why you have forgotten how to make your images produce sound? You did it once, long ago.”
. . .
Shallan blinked, then held up the modern map. “The capital of Natanatan was here, on the Shattered Plains. The old maps are misleading. Amaram notes that the Parshendi use weapons of masterly design, far beyond their skill in craftsmanship. Where would they have gotten those? From the ruins of the city that once was here.”
Shallan dug in her stacks of papers, getting out a map of the city itself. It didn??
The merchant she’d bought it from claimed it was ancient—that it was a copy of a copy from a book in Azir that claimed to be a drawing of a tile mosaic depiction of the city of Stormseat. The mosaic no longer existed—so much of what they had of the shadowdays came from fragments like these.
“Scholars reject the idea that Stormseat was here on the Plains,” Shallan said. “They say that the craters of the warcamps don’t match the descriptions of the city. Instead, they propose that the ruins must be hidden up in the highlands, where you indicated. But Jasnah didn’t agree with them. She points out that few of the scholars have actually been here, and that this area in general is poorly explored.”
“Mmm,” Pattern said. “Shallan . . .”
“I agree with Jasnah,” Shallan said, turning from him. “Stormseat wasn’t a large city. It could have been in the middle of the Plains, and these craters something else. . . . Amaram says here he thinks they might once have been domes. I wonder if that is even possible. . . . They’d be so large. . . . Anyway, this might have been a satellite city of some sort.”
Shallan felt like she was getting close to something. Amaram’s notes spoke mostly of trying to meet with the Parshendi, to ask them about the Voidbringers and how to return them. He did mention Urithiru, however, and seemed to have come to the same conclusion as Jasnah—that the ancient city of Stormseat would have contained a path to Urithiru. Ten of them had once connected the ten capitals of the Epoch Kingdoms to Urithiru, which had some kind of conference room for the ten monarchs of the Epoch Kingdoms—and a throne for each one.
That was why none of the maps placed the holy city in the same location. It was ridiculous to walk there; instead, you made for the nearest city with an Oathgate and used that.
He’s searching for the information there, Shallan thought. Same as I am. But he wants to return the Voidbringers, not fight them. Why?
She held up the antique map of Stormseat, the copy from the mosaic. It had artistic stylings instead of specific indications of things like distance and location. While she appreciated the former, the latter was truly frustrating.
Are you on here? she thought. The secret, the Oathgate? Are you here, on this dais, as Jasnah thought?
“The Shattered Plains haven’t always been shattered,” Shallan whispered to herself. “That’s what the scholars, all but Jasnah, are missing. Stormseat was destroyed during the Last Desolation, but it was so long ago, nobody talks about how. Fire? Earthquake? No. Something more terrible. The city was broken, like a piece of fine dinnerware hit with a hammer.”
“Shallan,” Pattern said, moving closer to her. “I know that you have forgotten much of what once was. Those lies attracted me. But you cannot continue like this; you must admit the truth about me. About what I can do, and what we have done. Mmm . . . More, you must know yourself. And remember.”
She sat cross-legged on the too-nice bed. Memories tried to claw their way out of the boxes inside her head. Those memories all pointed one way, toward carpet bloodied. And carpet . . . not.
“You wish to help,” Pattern said. “You wish to prepare for the Everstorm, the spren of the unnatural one. You must become something. I did not come to you merely to teach you tricks of light.”
“You came to learn,” Shallan said, staring at her map. “That’s what you said.”
“I came to learn. We became to do something greater.”
“Would you have me unable to laugh?” she demanded, suddenly holding back tears. “Would you have me crippled? That is what those memories would do to me. I can be what I am because I cut them off.”
An image formed in front of her, born of Stormlight, created by instinct. She hadn’t needed to draw this image first, for she knew it too well.
The image was of herself. Shallan, as she should be. Curled in a huddle on the bed, unable to weep for she had long since run out of tears. This girl . . . not a woman, a girl . . . flinched whenever spoken to. She expected everyone to shout at her. She could not laugh, for laughter had been squeezed from her by a childhood of darkness and pain.
That was the real Shallan. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name. The person she had become instead was a lie, one she had fabricated in the name of survival. To remember herself as a child, discovering Light in the gardens, Patterns in the stonework, and dreams that became real . . .
. . .
“Mmmm . . . Such a deep lie,” Pattern whispered. “A deep lie indeed. But still, you must obtain your abilities. Learn again, if you have to.”
“Very well,” Shallan said. “But if we did this before, can’t you just tell me how it is done?”
“My memory is weak,” Pattern said. “I was dumb so long, nearly dead. Mmm. I could not speak.”
“Yeah,” Shallan said, remembering him spinning on the ground and running into the wall. “You were kind of cute, though.” She banished the image of the frightened, huddled, whimpering girl, then got out her drawing implements. She tapped a pencil against her lips, then did something simple, a drawing of Veil, the darkeyed con woman.
Veil was not Shallan. Her features were different enough that the two of them would be distinct individuals to anyone who happened to see them both. Still, Veil did bear echoes of Shallan. She was a darkeyed, tan-skinned, Alethi version of Shallan—a Shallan that was a few years older and had a pointier nose and chin.
Finished with the drawing, Shallan breathed out Stormlight and created the image. It stood beside the bed, arms folded, looking as confident as a master duelist facing a child with a stick.
Sound. How would she do sound? Pattern had called it a force, part of the Surge of Illumination—or at least similar to it. She situated herself on the bed, one leg folded beneath her, inspecting Veil. Over the next hour, Shallan tried everything she could think of, from straining herself and concentrating, to trying to draw sounds to make them appear. Nothing worked.
Finally, she climbed off the bed and walked to get herself a drink from the bottle chilling in the bucket in the next room. As she approached it, however, she felt a tugging inside of her. She looked over her shoulder into the bedroom, and saw that the image of Veil had started to blur, like smudged pencil lines.
Blast, but that was inconvenient. Sustaining the illusion required Shallan to provide a constant source of Stormlight. She walked back into the bedroom and set a sphere on the floor inside of Veil’s foot. When she walked away, the illusion still grew indistinct, like a bubble preparing to pop. Shallan turned and put her hands on her hips, staring at the version of Veil that had gone all fuzzy.
“Annoying!” she snapped.
Pattern hummed. “I’m sorry that your mystical, godlike powers do not instantly work as you would like them to.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “I thought you didn’t understand humor.”
“I do. I just explained . . .” He paused for a moment. “Was I being funny? Sarcasm. I was sarcastic. By accident!” He seemed surprised, even gleeful.
“I guess you’re learning.”
“It is the bond,” he explained. “In Shadesmar, I do not communicate this way, this . . . human way. My connection to you gives me the means by which I can manifest in the Physical Realm as more than a mindless glimmer. Mmmm. It links me to you, helps me communicate as you do. Fascinating. Mmmm.”
He settled down like a trumping axehound, perfectly content. And then Shallan noticed something.
“I’m not glowing,” Shallan said. “I’m holding a lot of Stormlight, but I’m not glowing.”
“Mmm . . .” Pattern said. “Large illusion transforms the Surge into another. Feeds off your Stormlight.”
She nodded. The Stormlight she held fed the illusion, drawing the excess from her that would normally float above her skin. That could be useful. As Pattern moved up onto the bed, Veil’s elbow—which
Shallan frowned. “Pattern, move closer to the image.”
He obliged, crossing the cover of her bed toward where Veil stood. She unfuzzed. Not completely, but his presence made a noticeable difference.
Shallan walked over, her proximity making the illusion snap back to full clarity.
“Can you hold Stormlight?” Shallan asked Pattern.
“I don’t . . . I mean . . . Investiture is the means by which I . . .”
“Here,” Shallan said, pressing her hand down on him, muffling his words to an annoyed buzzing. It was an odd sensation, as if she’d trapped an angry cremling under the bedsheets. She pushed some Stormlight into him. When she lifted her hand, he was trailing wisps of it, like steam off a hotplate fabrial.
“We’re bonded,” she said. “My illusion is your illusion. I’m going to get a drink. See if you can keep the image from breaking apart.” She backed to the sitting room and smiled. Pattern, still buzzing with annoyance, moved down off the bed. She couldn’t see him—the bed was in the way—but she guessed he’d gone to Veil’s feet.
It worked. The illusion stayed. “Ha!” Shallan said, getting herself a cup of wine. She walked back and eased onto the bed—flopping down with a cup of red wine did not seem prudent—and looked over the side at the floor, where Pattern sat beneath Veil. He was visible because of the Stormlight.
I’ll need to take that into account, Shallan thought. Build illusions so that he can hide in them.
“It worked?” Pattern said. “How did you know it would work?”
“I didn’t.” Shallan took a sip of wine. “I guessed.”
She drank another sip as Pattern hummed. Jasnah would not have approved. Scholarship requires a sharp mind and alert senses. These do not mix with alcohol. Shallan drank the rest of the wine in a gulp.
“Here,” Shallan said, reaching down. She did the next bit by instinct. She had a connection to the illusion, and she had a connection to Pattern, so . . .
With a push of Stormlight, she attached the illusion to Pattern as she often attached them to herself. His glow subsided. “Walk around,” she said.