Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive 2)

“Kaladin is trustworthy,” Moash said. It was just the three of them—four, if you counted the king—standing in a lonely hallway of the palace.

This would be a sad place to die. A place away from the wind.

“He’s just a little confused,” Moash said, stepping forward. “This will still work. You didn’t tell anyone, right, Kal?”

I recognize this hallway, Kaladin realized. It’s the very place we fought the Assassin in White. To his left, windows lined the wall, though shutters kept out the light rainfall. Yes… there. He spotted where planks had been installed over the hole that the assassin had cut through the wall. The place where Kaladin had fallen into blackness.

Back here again. He took a deep breath and steadied himself as best he could on his good leg, then raised the spear, point toward Moash.

Storms, his leg hurt.

“Kal, the king is obviously wounded,” Moash said. “We followed your trail of blood here. He’s practically dead already.”

Trail of blood. Kaladin blinked bleary eyes. Of course. His thoughts were coming slowly. He should have caught that.

Moash stopped a few feet from Kaladin, just out of easy striking range with the spear. “What are you going to do, Kal?” Moash demanded, looking at the spear pointed toward him. “Would you really attack a member of Bridge Four?”

“You left Bridge Four the moment you turned against our duty,” Kaladin whispered.

“And you’re different?”

“No, I’m not,” Kaladin said, feeling a hollowness in his stomach. “But I’m trying to change that.”

Moash took another step forward, but Kaladin pushed the spear point upward, toward Moash’s face. His friend hesitated, raising his gauntleted hands in a warding gesture.

Graves moved forward, but Moash shooed him away, then turned to Kaladin. “What do you think this will accomplish, Kal? If you get in our way, you’ll just get yourself killed, and the king will still be dead. You want me to know you don’t agree with this? Fine. You tried. Now you’re overmatched, and there is no point in fighting. Put down the spear.”

Kaladin glanced over his shoulder. The king was still breathing.

Moash’s armor clinked. Kaladin turned back, raising the spear again. Storms… his head was really throbbing now.

“I mean it, Kal,” Moash said.

“You’d attack me?” Kaladin said. “Your captain? Your friend?”

“Don’t turn this around on me.”

“Why not? Which is more important to you? Me or petty vengeance?”

“He murdered them, Kaladin,” Moash snapped. “That sorry excuse for a king killed the only family I ever had.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you protecting him?”

“It wasn’t his fault.”

“That’s a load of—”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Kaladin said. “But I’d be here even if it had been, Moash! We have to be better than this, you and I. It’s… I can’t explain it, not perfectly. You have to trust me. Back down. The king hasn’t yet seen you or Graves. We’ll go to Dalinar, and I’ll see that you get justice against the right man, Roshone, the one truly behind your grandparents’ deaths.

“But Moash, we’re not going to be this kind of men. Murders in dark corridors, killing a drunk man because we find him distasteful, telling ourselves it’s for the good of the kingdom. If I kill a man, I’m going to do it in the sunlight, and I’m going to do it only because there is no other way.”

Moash hesitated. Graves clinked up beside him, but again Moash raised a hand, stopping him. Moash met Kaladin’s eyes, then shook his head. “Sorry, Kal. It’s too late.”

“You won’t have him. I won’t back down.”

“I guess I wouldn’t want you to.” Moash slammed his faceplate down, the sides misting as it sealed.

84. The One Who Saves

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From the Diagram, Book of the 2nd Ceiling Rotation: pattern 15

The stone block slid inward, confirming Shallan’s deduction. They had opened a building that hadn’t been entered, or even seen, for centuries. Renarin stepped back from the hole he’d made, giving Shallan a chance to step forward. The air from inside smelled stale, musty.

Renarin dismissed his Blade, and oddly, as he did so, he let out a relieved sigh and relaxed against the outer wall of the building. Shallan moved to enter, but the bridgemen slipped in front of her to check the building’s safety first, raising sapphire lanterns.

The light revealed majesty.

Shallan’s breath caught in her throat. The large, circular room was a space worthy of a palace or temple. A mosaic mural covered the wall and floor with majestic images and dazzling color. Knights in armor stood before swirling skies of red and blue. People from all walks of life were depicted in all manner of settings, each crafted from vivid colors of every kind of stone—a masterwork that brought the whole world into one room.

Worried she’d damage the portal somehow, she’d placed Renarin’s cuts near a ripple that she had hoped indicated a doorway, and it seemed that she’d been correct. She entered through the hole and walked a curving path through the circular chamber, silently counting the divisions in the floor mural. There were ten main ones, just as there had been ten orders of knights, ten kingdoms, ten peoples. And then—between the segments representing the first and tenth kingdoms—was a narrower eleventh section. It depicted a tall tower. Urithiru.

She’d found it, the portal. And this artwork! Such beauty. It was breathtaking.

No, there wasn’t time to admire art right now. The large floor mosaic swirled around the center, but the swords of each knight pointed toward the same area of the wall, so Shallan walked in that direction. Everything in here seemed perfectly preserved, even the lamps on the walls, which appeared to still hold dun gemstones.

On the wall, she found a metal disc set into the stone. Was this steel? It hadn’t rusted or even tarnished despite its long abandonment.

“It’s coming,” Renarin announced from the other side of the room, his quiet voice echoing across the domed chamber. Storms, that boy was disturbing, particularly when accompanied by a howling storm and the sound of rain pelting the plateau outside.

Brightness Inadara and several scholars arrived. Stepping into the chamber, they gasped and then began talking over one another as they rushed to examine the mural.

Shallan studied the strange disc set into the wall. It was shaped like a ten-pointed star and had a thin slot directly in the center. The Radiants could operate this place, she thought. And what did the Radiants have that nobody else did? Many things, but the shape of that slot in the metal gave her a pretty good guess why only they could make the Oathgate work.

“Renarin, get over here,” Shallan said.

The boy clomped in her direction.

“Shallan,” Pattern said warningly. “Time is very short. They have summoned the Everstorm. And… and there’s something else, coming from the other direction. A highstorm?”