Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive 2)

“Oh, Stormfather,” Jushu said, pulling it out. The device consisted of several chains of silvery metal connecting three large gemstones, one of which was cracked, its glow lost. “Is this what I think it is?”

“A Soulcaster,” Shallan said.

“Prop me up,” Balat said as Eylita returned with the wine. “Please.”

Reluctantly the girl helped him sit. His leg… his leg was not in good shape. They would need to get him a surgeon.

Shallan stood, wiping bloodied hands on her dress, and took the Soulcaster from Jushu. The delicate metal was broken where the sword had struck it.

“I don’t understand,” Jushu said. “Isn’t that blasphemy? Don’t those belong to the king, only to be used by ardents?”

Shallan rubbed her thumb across the metal. She couldn’t think. Numbness… shock. That was it. Shock.

I killed Father.

Wikim yelped suddenly, jumping back. “His leg twitched.”

Shallan spun on the body. Father’s fingers spasmed.

“Voidbringers!” Jushu said. He looked up at the ceiling, and at the raging storm. “They’re here. They’re inside of him. It—”

Shallan knelt next to the body. The eyes trembled, then focused on her. “It wasn’t enough,” she whispered. “The poison wasn’t strong enough.”

“Oh, storms!” Wikim said, kneeling next to her. “He’s still breathing. It didn’t kill him, it just paralyzed him.” His eyes widened. “And he’s waking.”

“We need to finish the job, then,” Shallan said. She looked to her brothers.

Jushu and Wikim stumbled away, shaking their heads. Balat, dazed, was barely conscious.

She turned back to her father. He was looking at her, his eyes moving easily now. His leg twitched.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, unhooking her necklace. “Thank you for what you did for me.” She wrapped the necklace around his neck.

Then she began to twist.

She used the handle of one of the forks that had fallen from the table as her father tried to steady himself. She looped one side of the closed necklace around it, and in twisting, pulled the chain very tight around Father’s throat.

“Now go to sleep,” she whispered, “in chasms deep, with darkness all around you…”

A lullaby. Shallan spoke the song through her tears—the song he’d sung for her as a child, when she was frightened. Red blood speckled his face and covered her hands.

“Though rock and dread may be your bed, so sleep my baby dear.”

She felt his eyes on her. Her skin squirmed as she held the necklace tight.

“Now comes the storm,” she whispered, “but you’ll be warm, the wind will rock your basket…”

Shallan had to watch as his eyes bulged out, his face turning colors. His body trembling, straining, trying to move. The eyes looked to her, demanding, betrayed.

Almost, Shallan could imagine that the storm’s howls were part of a nightmare. That soon she would awaken in terror, and Father would sing to her. As he’d done when she was a child…

“The crystals fine… will glow sublime…”

Father stopped moving.

“And with a song… you’ll sleep… my baby dear.”

74. Striding the Storm

You, however, have never been a force for equilibrium. You tow chaos behind you like a corpse dragged by one leg through the snow. Please, hearken to my plea. Leave that place and join me in my oath of nonintervention.

Kaladin caught Shallan’s hand.

Boulders crashed above, smashing against the plateaus, breaking off chunks and tossing them down around him. Wind raged. Water swelled below, rising toward him. He clung to Shallan, but their wet hands started to slip.

And then, in a sudden surge, her grip tightened. With a strength that seemed to belie her smaller form, she heaved. Kaladin shoved with his good leg as water washed over it, and forced himself up the remaining distance to join her in the rocky alcove.

The hollow was barely three or four feet deep, shallower than the crack they’d hid in. Fortunately, it faced westward. Though icy wind twisted about and sprayed water on them, the brunt of the storm was broken by the plateau.

Puffing, Kaladin pulled against the wall of the alcove, his injured leg smarting like nothing else, Shallan clinging to him. She was a warmth in his arms, and he held to her as much as she did him, both of them sitting hunched against the rock, his head brushing the top of the hollowed hole.

The plateau shuddered, quivering like a frightened man. He couldn’t see much; the blackness was absolute except when lightning came. And the sound. Thunder crashing, seemingly disconnected from the sprays of lightning. Water roared like an angry beast, and the flashes illuminated a frothing, churning, raging river in the chasm.

Damnation… it was almost up to their alcove. It had risen fifty or more feet in moments. The dirty water was filled with branches, broken plants, vines ripped from their mountings.

“The sphere?” Kaladin asked in the blackness. “You had a sphere with you for light.”

“Gone,” she shouted over the roar. “I must have dropped it when I grabbed you!”

“I didn’t—”

A crash of thunder, accompanied by a blinding flash of light, sent him stuttering. Shallan pulled more tightly against him, fingers digging into his arm. The light left an afterimage in his eyes.

Storms. He could swear that afterimage was a face, horribly twisted, the mouth pulled open. The next lightning bolt lit the flood just outside with a sequence of crackling light, and it showed water bobbing with corpses. Dozens of them pulled past in the current, dead eyes toward the sky, many just empty sockets. Men and Parshendi.

The water surged upward, and a few inches of it flooded the chamber. The water of dead men. The storm went dark again, as black as a cavern beneath the ground. Just Kaladin, Shallan, and the bodies.

“That was,” Shallan said, her head near his, “the most surreal thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Storms are strange.”

“You speak from experience?”

“Sadeas hung me out in one,” he said. “I was supposed to die.”

That tempest had tried to rip the skin, then muscles, from his skeleton. Rain like knives. Lightning like a cauterizing iron.

And a small figure, all white, standing before him with hands forward, as if to part the tempest for him. Tiny and frail, yet as strong as the winds themselves.

Syl… what have I done to you?

“I need to hear the story,” Shallan said.

“I’ll tell it to you sometime.”

Water washed up over them again. For a moment, they became lighter, floating in the sudden burst of water. The current pulled with unexpected strength, as if eager to tow them out into the river. Shallan screamed and Kaladin gripped the rock on either side, holding on in a panic. The river retreated, though he could still hear it rushing. They settled back into the alcove.

Light came from above, too steady to be lightning. Something was glowing on the plateau. Something that moved. It was hard to see, since water streamed off the side of the plateau above, falling in a sheet before their refuge. He swore he saw an enormous figure walking up there, a glowing inhuman form, followed by another, alien and sleek. Striding the storm. Leg after leg, until the glow passed.