Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive 2)

People began to stir on the patio. She ignored them for a moment, but then many began to stand up from their seats, looking eastward.

Highstorm. Right.

Shallan felt a spike of alarm as she looked toward the Origin of Storms. The wind picked up, leaves and bits of refuse fluttering across the patio. Down below, the Outer Market had been packed up, tents folded away, awnings withdrawn, windows closed. The entirety of the warcamps braced itself.

Shallan stuffed her things into her satchel, then rose to her feet, stepping to the edge of the terrace, freehand fingers on the stone railing there. Adolin joined her. Behind them, people whispered and gathered. She heard iron grinding across stone; the parshmen had begun pulling away the tables and chairs, stowing them to both protect them and make a path for the lighteyes to retreat to safety.

The horizon had bled from light to dark, like a man flushing with anger. Shallan gripped the railing, watching the entire world transform. Vines withdrew, rockbuds closed. Grass hid in its holes. They knew, somehow. They all knew.

The air grew chill and wet, and prestorm winds gusted against her, blowing her hair back. Below and just to the north, the warcamps had piled refuse and waste to be blown away with the storm. It was a forbidden practice in most civilized areas, where that waste could blow into the next town. Out here, there was no next town.

The horizon grew even darker. A few people on the balcony fled to the back room’s safety, their nerves getting the better of them. Most stayed, silent. Windspren zipped in tiny rivers of light overhead. Shallan took Adolin by the arm, staring eastward. Minutes passed until finally, she saw it.

The stormwall.

A huge sheet of water and debris blown before the storm. In places, it flashed with light from behind, revealing movement and shadows within. Like the skeleton of a hand when light illuminated the flesh, there was something inside this wall of destruction.

Most of the people fled the balcony, though the stormwall was still distant. In moments, only a handful remained, Shallan and Adolin among them. She watched, transfixed, as the storm approached. It took longer than she’d expected. It was moving at a terrible speed, but it was so large, they’d been able to spot it from quite a distance.

It consumed the Shattered Plains, one plateau at a time. Soon, it loomed over the warcamps, coming on with a roar.

“We should go,” Adolin eventually said. She barely heard him.

Life. Something lived inside that storm, something that no artist had ever drawn, no scholar had ever described.

“Shallan!” Adolin began to tow her toward the protected room. She grabbed the railing with her freehand, remaining in place, clutching her satchel to her chest with her safehand. That humming, that was Pattern.

She’d never been so close to a highstorm. Even when she’d been only inches away from one, separated by a window shutter, she had not been as close as she was now. Watching that darkness descend upon the warcamps…

I need to draw.

“Shallan!” Adolin said, pulling her away from the railing. “They’ll close the doors if we don’t go now!”

With a start, she realized that everyone else had left the balcony. She allowed Adolin to get her moving, and she joined him in a dash across the empty patio. They reached the room at the side, packed with huddled lighteyes who watched in terror. Adolin’s guards entered right after her, and several parshmen slammed the thick doors. The bar thumped in place, locking out the sky, leaving them to the light of spheres on the walls.

Shallan counted. The highstorm hit—she could feel it. Something beyond the thumping of the door and the distant sound of thunder.

“Six seconds,” she said.

“What?” Adolin asked. His voice was hushed, and others in the room spoke in whispers.

“It took six seconds after the servants closed the doors until the storm hit. We could have spent that much longer out there.”

Adolin regarded her with an incredulous expression. “When you first realized what we were doing on that balcony, you seemed terrified.”

“I was.”

“Now you wish you’d stayed out until the last moment before the storm hit?”

“I… yeah,” she said, blushing.

“I have no idea what to make of you.” Adolin regarded her. “You’re not like anyone I’ve met.”

“It’s my air of feminine mystique.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“It’s a term we use,” she said, “when we’re feeling particularly erratic. It’s considered polite not to point out that you know this. Now, do we just… wait in here?”

“In this box of a room?” Adolin asked, sounding amused. “We’re lighteyes, not livestock.” He gestured to the side, where several servants had opened doors leading to places burrowed deeper into the mountain. “Two sitting rooms. One for men, the other for women.”

Shallan nodded. Sometimes during a highstorm, the genders would retire to separate rooms to chat. It looked like the winehouse followed this tradition. They’d probably have finger food. Shallan walked toward the indicated room, but Adolin rested a hand on her arm, making her pause.

“I’ll see about getting you out onto the Shattered Plains,” he said. “Amaram wants to go explore more, he’s said, than he gets to during a plateau run. I think he and Father are having dinner to talk about it tomorrow night, and I can ask then if I can bring you. I’ll also talk to Aunt Navani. Maybe we can discuss what I’ve come up with at the feast next week?”

“There’s a feast next week?”

“There’s always a feast next week,” Adolin said. “We just have to figure out who’s throwing it. I’ll send to you.”

She smiled, and then they separated. Next week is not soon enough, she thought. I’ll have to find a way to drop in on him when it’s not too awkward.

Had she really promised to help him breed chasmfiends? As if she needed something else to take her time. Still, she felt good about the day as she entered the women’s sitting room, her guards taking their places in the appropriate waiting room.

Shallan strolled through the women’s room, which was well lit with gemstones gathered in goblets—cut stones, but not in spheres. An expensive display.

She felt that, if her teachers had been watching, both would have been disappointed at her conversation with Adolin. Tyn would have wanted her to manipulate the prince more; Jasnah would have wanted Shallan to be more poised, more in control of her tongue.

It seemed that Adolin liked her anyway. That made her want to cheer.

The looks of the women about her washed away that emotion. Some turned backs toward Shallan, and others pressed their lips together and looked her up and down skeptically. Courting the kingdom’s most eligible bachelor was not going to make her popular, not when she was an outsider.

That didn’t bother Shallan. She didn’t need acceptance from these women; she just needed to find Urithiru and the secrets it contained. Gaining Adolin’s trust was a big step in that direction.

She decided to reward herself by stuffing her face with sweets and thinking further on her plan to sneak into Brightlord Amaram’s house.

50. Uncut Gems

And now, if there was an uncut gem among the Radiants, it was the Willshapers; for though enterprising, they were erratic, and Invia wrote of them, “capricious, frustrating, unreliable,” as taking it for granted that others would agree; this may have been an intolerant view, as often Invia expressed, for this order was said to be most varied, inconsistent in temperament save for a general love of adventure, novelty, or oddity.