Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive 2)

Kaladin and the others followed, then—a half hour later—they let the vanguard onto the next plateau. They continued like that for a time, waiting for Dalinar’s bridge to arrive before crossing, then leading the vanguard onto the next plateau. Hours passed—sweaty, muscle-straining hours. Good hours. Kaladin didn’t come to any realizations about the king, or his place in the man’s potential assassination. But for the moment, he carried his bridge and enjoyed the progress of an army moving toward their goal beneath an open sky.

As the day grew long, they approached the target plateau, where the hollowed-out chrysalis awaited Shallan’s study. Kaladin and Bridge Four let the vanguard across as they’d been doing, then settled in to wait. Eventually, the bulk of the army approached, and Dalinar’s lumbering bridges moved into position, ratcheting down to span the chasm.

Kaladin gulped deeply of warm water as he watched. He washed his face with the water, then wiped his brow. They were getting close. This plateau was far out onto the Plains, almost to the Tower itself. Getting back would take hours, assuming they moved at the same relaxed speed they had taken getting out here. It would be well after dark when they returned to the warcamps.

If Dalinar does want to assault the center of the Shattered Plains, Kaladin thought, it will take days of marching, all the while exposed on the plateaus, with the potential of being surrounded and cut off from the warcamps.

The Weeping would make a great chance for that. Four straight weeks of rain, but no highstorms. This was the off year, when there wouldn’t even be a highstorm on Lightday in the middle—part of the thousand-day cycle of two years that made up a full storm rotation. Still, he knew that many Alethi patrols had tried exploring eastward before. They’d all been destroyed by highstorms, chasmfiends, or Parshendi assault teams.

Nothing short of an all-out, full-on movement of resources toward the center would work. An assault that would leave Dalinar, and whoever came with him, isolated.

Dalinar’s bridge thumped down into place. Kaladin’s men traversed their own bridge and prepared to pull it across to go move the vanguard. Kaladin crossed, then waved them on ahead of him. He walked over to where the larger bridge had settled down.

Dalinar was crossing it while walking with some of his scouts, all vaulters, with servants behind carrying long poles. “I want you to spread out,” the highprince said to them. “We won’t have much time before we need to head back. I want a survey of as many plateaus as you can see from here. The more of our route we can plan now, the less time we’ll have to waste during the actual assault.”

The scouts nodded, saluting as he dismissed them. He stepped off the bridge and nodded to Kaladin. Behind them, Dalinar’s generals, scribes, and engineers crossed the bridge. They’d be followed by the bulk of the army, and finally the rearguard.

“I hear you’ve been building mobile bridges, sir,” Kaladin said. “You realize those mechanical ones are too slow for your assault, I assume.”

Dalinar nodded. “But I will have soldiers carry them. No need for your men to do so.”

“Sir, that is thoughtful of you, but I don’t think you have to worry. The bridge crews will carry for you, if ordered. Many of them will probably welcome the familiarity.”

“I thought you and your men considered assignment to those bridge crews a death sentence, soldier,” Dalinar said.

“The way Sadeas ran them, it was. You could do a better job. Armored men, trained in formations, running the bridges. Soldiers marching in front with shields. Archers with instructions to defend the bridge crews. Besides, the danger is only for an assault.”

Dalinar nodded. “Prepare the crews, then. Having your men on the bridges will free the soldiers in case we get attacked.” He started to walk across the plateau, but one of the carpenters on the other side of the chasm called to him. Dalinar turned and started to cross the bridge again.

He passed officers and scribes crossing the bridge, including Adolin and Shallan, who walked side by side. She’d given up on the palanquin and he had given up on his horse, and she seemed to be explaining to him about the hidden remnants of a structure she’d found inside that rock earlier.

Behind them, on the other side of the chasm, stood the worker who had called Dalinar back across.

It’s that same carpenter, Kaladin thought. The stout man with the cap and the birthmark. Where have I seen him… ?

It clicked. Sadeas’s lumberyards. The man had been one of the carpenters there, overseeing the construction of bridges.

Kaladin started running.

He was charging toward the bridge before the connection fully solidified in his mind. Ahead of him, Adolin spun immediately and started running, searching for whatever danger Kaladin had spotted. He left a bewildered Shallan standing in the bridge’s center. Kaladin approached her in a rush.

The carpenter grabbed a lever on the side of the bridge contraption.

“The carpenter, Adolin!” Kaladin screamed. “Stop that man!”

Dalinar still stood on the bridge. The highprince had been distracted by something else. What? Kaladin realized he had heard something too. Horns, the call that the enemy had been spotted.

It happened all in an instant. Dalinar turning toward the horns. The carpenter pulling the lever, Adolin in his glimmering Shardplate reaching Dalinar.

The bridge lurched.

Then it collapsed.

69. Nothing

Rayse is captive. He cannot leave the system he now inhabits. His destructive potential is, therefore, inhibited.

As the bridge fell out from beneath him, Kaladin reached for Stormlight.

Nothing.

Panic surged through him. His stomach dropped and he tumbled into the air.

The fall into the darkness of the chasm was a brief moment, but also an eternity. He caught a glimpse of Shallan and several men in blue uniforms falling and flailing in terror.

Like a drowning man struggling toward the surface, Kaladin thrashed for the Stormlight. He would not die this way! The sky was his! The winds were his. The chasms were his.

He would not!

Syl screamed, a terrified, painful sound that vibrated Kaladin’s very bones. In that moment, he got a breath of Stormlight, life itself.

He crashed into the ground at the bottom of the chasm and all went black.

* * *

Swimming through pain.

The pain washed over him, a liquid, but did not get inside. His skin kept it out.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? The distant voice sounded like rumbling thunder.

Kaladin gasped and opened his eyes, and the pain crawled inside. Suddenly, his entire body hurt.

He lay on his back, staring upward at a streak of light in the air. Syl? No… no, that was sunlight. The opening at the top of the chasm, high above him. This far out onto the Shattered Plains, the chasms here were hundreds of feet deep.

Kaladin groaned and sat up. That strip of light seemed impossibly distant. He’d been swallowed by the darkness, and the chasm nearby was shadowed, obscure. He put a hand to his head.

I got some Stormlight right at the end, he thought. I survived. But that scream! It haunted him, echoing in his mind. It had sounded too much like the scream he’d heard when touching the duelist’s Shardblade in the arena.

Check for wounds, his father’s teachings whispered from the back of his mind. The body could go into shock with a bad break or wound, and not notice the damage that had been done. He went through the motions of checking his limbs for breaks, and did not reach for any of the spheres in his pouch. He didn’t want to light the gloom, and potentially face the dead around him.