The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive 1)

The cold of the rainwater numbed the scrapes and bruises. But it also numbed his fingers. He didn’t feel them slipping. The next he knew, he was whipping in the air again, tossed to the side, being slammed down against the roof of the barrack.

He hit hard. His vision flashed with sparkling lights that melded together and were followed by blackness.

Not unconsciousness, blackness.

Kaladin blinked. All was still. The storm was quiet, and everything was purely dark. I’m dead, he thought immediately. But why could he feel the wet stone roof beneath him? He shook his head, dripping rainwater down his face. There was no lightning, no wind, no rain. The silence was unnatural.

He stumbled to his feet, managing to stand on the gently sloped roof. The stone was slick beneath his toes. He couldn’t feel his wounds. The pain just wasn’t there.

He opened his mouth to call out into the darkness, but hesitated. That silence was not to be broken. The air itself seemed to weigh less, as did he. He almost felt as if he could float away.

In that darkness, an enormous face appeared just in front of his. A face of blackness, yet faintly traced in the dark. It was wide, the breadth of a massive thunderhead, and extended far to either side, yet it was somehow still visible to Kaladin. Inhuman. Smiling.

Kaladin felt a deep chill—a rolling prickle of ice—scurry down his spine and through his entire body. The sphere suddenly burst to life in his hand, flaring with a sapphire glow. It illuminated the stone roof beneath him, making his fist blaze with blue fire. His shirt was in tatters, his skin lacerated. He looked down at himself, shocked, then looked up at the face.

It was gone. There was only the darkness.

Lightning flashed, and Kaladin’s pains returned. He gasped, falling to his knees before the rain and the wind. He slipped down, face hitting the rooftop.

What had that been? A vision? A delusion? His strength was fleeing him, his thoughts growing muddled again. The winds weren’t as strong now, but the rain was still so cold. Lethargic, confused, nearly overwhelmed by his pain, he brought his hand up to the side and looked at the sphere. It was glowing. Smeared with his blood and glowing.

He hurt so much, and his strength had faded. Closing his eyes, he felt himself enveloped by a second blackness. The blackness of unconsciousness.

Rock was the first to the door when the highstorm subsided. Teft followed more slowly, groaning to himself. His knees hurt. His knees always hurt near a storm. His grandfather had complained about that in his later years, and Teft had called him daft. Now he felt it too.

Storming Damnation, he thought, wearily stepping outside. It was still raining, of course. These were the after-flurries of drizzle that trailed a highstorm, the riddens. A few rainspren sat in puddles, like blue candles, and a few windspren danced in the stormwinds. The rain was cold, and he splashed through puddles that soaked his sandaled feet, chilling them straight through the skin and muscle. He hated being wet. But, then, he hated a lot of things.

For a while, life had been looking up. Not now.

How did everything go so wrong so quickly? he thought, holding his arms close, walking slowly and watching his feet. Some soldiers had left their barracks and stood nearby, wearing raincloaks, watching. Probably to make certain nobody had snuck out to cut Kaladin down early. They didn’t try to stop Rock, though. The storm had passed.

Rock charged around the side of the building. Other bridgemen left the barrack behind as Teft followed Rock. Storming Horneater. Like a big lumbering chull. He actually believed. He thought they’d find that foolish young bridgeleader alive. Probably figured they’d discover him having a nice cup of tea, relaxing in the shade with the Stormfather himself.

And you don’t believe? Teft asked himself, still looking down. If you don’t, why are you following? But if you did believe, you’d look. You wouldn’t stare at your feet. You’d look up and see.

Could a man both believe, and not believe, at the same time? Teft stopped beside Rock and—steeling himself—looked up at the wall of the barrack.

There he saw what he’d expected and what he’d feared. The corpse looked like a hunk of slaughter house meat, skinned and bled. Was that a person? Kaladin’s skin was sliced in a hundred places, dribbles of blood mixing with rainwater running down the side of the building. The lad’s body still hung by the ankles. His shirt had been ripped off; his bridgeman trousers were ragged. Ironically, his face was cleaner now than when they’d left him, washed by the storm.

Teft had seen enough dead men on the battlefield to know what he was looking at. Poor lad, he thought, shaking his head as the rest of Bridge Four gathered around him and Rock, quiet, horrified. You almost made me believe in you.

Kaladin’s eyes snapped open.

The gathered bridgemen gasped, several cursing and falling to the ground, splashing in the pools of rainwater. Kaladin drew in a ragged breath, wheezing, eyes staring forward, intense and unseeing. He exhaled, blowing flecks of bloody spittle out over his lips. His hand, hanging below him, slipped open.

Something dropped to the stones. The sphere Teft had given him. It splashed into a puddle and stopped there. It was dun, no Stormlight in it.

What in the name of Kelek? Teft thought, kneeling. You left a sphere out in the storm, and it gathered Stormlight. Held in Kaladin’s hand, this one should have been fully infused. What had gone wrong?

“Umalakai’ki!” Rock bellowed, pointing. “Kama mohoray namavau—” He stopped, realizing he was speaking the wrong language. “Somebody be helping me get him down! Is still alive! We need ladder and knife! Hurry!”

The bridgemen scrambled. The soldiers approached, muttering, but they didn’t stop the bridgemen. Sadeas himself had declared that the Stormfather would choose Kaladin’s fate. Everyone knew that meant death.

Except…Teft stood up straight, holding the dun sphere. An empty sphere after a storm, he thought. And a man who’s still alive when he should be dead. Two impossibilities.

Together they bespoke something that should be even more impossible.

“Where’s that ladder!” Teft found himself yelling. “Curse you all, hurry, hurry! We need to get him bandaged. Somebody go fetch that salve he always puts on wounds!”

He glanced back at Kaladin, then spoke much more softly. “And you’d better survive, son. Because I want some answers.”

“Taking the Dawnshard, known to bind any creature voidish or mortal, he crawled up the steps crafted for Heralds, ten strides tall apiece, toward the grand temple above.”

—From The Poem of Ista. I have found no modern explanation of what these “Dawnshards” are. They seem ignored by scholars, though talk of them was obviously prevalent among those recording the early mythologies.

It was not uncommon for us to meet native peoples while traveling through the Unclaimed Hills, Shallan read. These ancient lands were once one of the Silver Kingdoms, after all. One must wonder if the great-shelled beasts lived among them back then, or if the creatures have come to inhabit the wilderness left by humankind’s passing.

She settled back in her chair, the humid air warm around her. To her left, Jasnah Kholin floated quietly in the pool inset in the floor of the bathing chamber. Jasnah liked to soak in the bath, and Shallan couldn’t blame her. During most of Shallan’s life, bathing had been an ordeal involving dozens of parshmen carting heated buckets of water, followed by a quick scrub in the brass tub before the water cooled.