Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive 2)

He stopped in place, and stared at her in surprise. Then he grunted, his face barely visible. “I see Jasnah in you.”

Rarely had Shallan been given such a compliment.

Lights bobbed and approached in the rain, soldiers bearing sphere lanterns. Vathah and his men jogged up, having been left behind, and Bridge Four held them back for the moment.

“Very well, Brightness,” Dalinar said to Shallan. “Your secret will remain one, for now. We will consult further, once this expedition is done. You have read of the things I have been seeing?”

She nodded.

“The world is about to change,” Dalinar said. He took a deep breath. “You give me hope, true hope, that we can change it in the right way.”

The approaching scouts saluted, and Bridge Four parted to allow their leader access to Dalinar. He was a portly man with a brown hat that reminded her of the one Veil wore, except it was wide-brimmed. The scout wore soldier’s trousers, but a leather jacket over them, and certainly didn’t seem in fighting shape.

“Bashin,” Dalinar said.

“Parshendi on that plateau next to us, sir,” Bashin said, pointing. “The Parshendi stumbled over one of my scouting teams. The lads raised the alarm quickly, but we lost all three men.”

Dalinar cursed softly, then turned toward Highlord Teleb, who had approached from the other direction, wearing his Shardplate, which he’d painted silver. “Wake the army, Teleb. Everyone on alert.”

“Yes, Brightlord,” Teleb said.

“Brightlord Dalinar,” Bashin said, “the lads took down one of those shellheads before being killed themselves. Sir… you need to see this. Something has changed.”

Shallan shivered, feeling sodden and cold. She’d brought clothing that would last well in the rain, of course, but that didn’t mean standing out here was comfortable. Though they wore coats, nobody else seemed to pay much heed. Likely, they took it for granted that during the Weeping, you were going to get soaked. That was something else for which her sheltered childhood had not prepared her.

Dalinar did not object as Shallan joined him in walking toward a nearby bridge—one of the more mobile ones run by Kaladin’s bridge teams, who wore raincoats and front-brimmed caps. A group of soldiers on the other side of the bridge dragged something across, pushing a little wave of water before it. A Parshendi corpse.

Shallan had only seen the one that she’d found with Kaladin in the chasm. She’d done a sketch of that earlier, and this one looked very different. It had hair—well, a kind of hair. Leaning down, she found that it was thicker than human hair, and felt too… slick. Was that the right word? The face was marbled, like that of a parshman, this one with prominent red streaks through the black. The body was lean and strong, and something seemed to grow under the skin of the exposed arms, peeking out. Shallan prodded at it, and found it hard and ridged, like a crab shell. In fact, the face was crusted with a kind of thin, bumpy carapace just above the cheeks and running back around the sides of the head.

“This isn’t a type we’ve seen before, sir,” Bashin said to Dalinar. “Look at those ridges. Sir… some of the lads that were killed, they had burn marks on them. In the rain. Shakiest thing I’ve ever seen…”

Shallan looked up at them. “What do you mean by a ‘type,’ Bashin?”

“Some Parshendi have hair,” the man said—he was a darkeyes, but clearly well respected, though he didn’t bear an obvious military rank. “Others have carapace. The ones we met with King Gavilar long ago, they were… shaped different from the ones we fight.”

“They have specialized subspecies?” Shallan said. Some cremlings were like that, working in a hive, with different specializations and varied forms.

“We might be depleting their numbers,” Dalinar said to Bashin. “Forcing them to send out their equivalent of lighteyes to fight.”

“And the burns, Dalinar?” Bashin said, scratching his head under his hat.

Shallan reached out to check the Parshendi’s eye color. Did they have lighteyes and dark, like humans? She lifted the eyelid.

The eye beneath was completely red.

She screamed, jumping back, pulling her hand up to her chest. The soldiers cursed, looking around, and Dalinar’s Shardblade appeared in his hand a few seconds later.

“Red eyes,” Shallan whispered. “It’s happening.”

“The red eyes are just a legend.”

“Jasnah had an entire notebook of references to this, Brightlord,” Shallan said, shivering. “The Voidbringers are here. Time is short.”

“Throw the body into the chasm,” Dalinar said to his men. “I doubt we’d be able to easily burn it. Keep everyone alert. Be prepared for an attack tonight. They—”

“Brightlord!”

Shallan spun as a hulking armored figure came up, rainwater trailing down his silvery Plate. “We’ve found another one, sir,” Teleb said.

“Dead?” Dalinar said.

“No, sir,” the Shardbearer said, pointing. “He walked right up to us, sir. He’s sitting on a rock over there.”

Dalinar looked to Shallan, who shrugged. Dalinar started off in the direction Teleb had pointed.

“Sir?” Teleb said, voice resonating inside his helm. “Should you…”

Dalinar ignored the warning, and Shallan hastened after him, collecting Vathah and his two guards.

“Should you head back?” Vathah said under his breath to her. Storms, but that face of his looked dangerous in the dim light, even if his voice was respectful. She couldn’t help but still see him as the man who had almost killed her, back in the Unclaimed Hills.

“I will be safe,” Shallan replied softly.

“You might have a Blade, Brightness, but you could still die to an arrow in the back.”

“Unlikely, in this rain,” she said.

He fell in behind her, offering no further objection. He was trying to do the job she had assigned him. Unfortunately, she was discovering that she didn’t much like being guarded.

They found the Parshendi after a hike through the rain. The rock he sat on was about as high as a man was tall. He seemed to have no weapons, and about a hundred Alethi soldiers stood around the base of his seat, spears pointed upward. Shallan couldn’t make out much more, as he sat across the chasm from them, a portable bridge in place to his plateau.

“Has he said anything?” Dalinar asked softly as Teleb stepped up.

“Not that I know of,” the Shardbearer said. “He just sits there.”

Shallan peered across the chasm toward the solitary Parshendi man. He stood up, and shaded his eyes against the rain. The soldiers below shuffled, spears rising into more threatening positions.

“Skar?” the Parshendi’s voice called. “Skar, is that you? And Leyten?”

Nearby, one of Dalinar’s bridgeman guards cursed. He ran across the bridge, and several other bridgemen followed.

They returned a moment later. Shallan crowded in closely to hear what their leader whispered to Dalinar.

“It’s him, sir,” Skar said. “He’s changed, but storm me for a fool if I’m wrong—it’s him. Shen. He ran bridges with us for months, then vanished. Now he’s here. He says he wants to surrender to you.”