Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

“And the parshmen on the Shattered Plains that I killed? Murdering them wasn’t wrong?”

“You were protecting Dalinar.”

“Who was assaulting their homeland.”

“Because they killed his brother.”

“Which, for all we know, they did because they saw how King Gavilar and his people treated the parshmen.” Kaladin turned toward Syl, who sat on his shoulder, one leg tucked beneath her. “So what’s the difference, Syl? What is the difference between Dalinar attacking the parshmen, and these parshmen conquering that city?”

“I don’t know,” she said softly.

“And why was it worse for me to let Elhokar be killed for his injustices than it was for me to actively kill parshmen on the Shattered Plains?”

“One is wrong. I mean, it just feels wrong. Both do, I guess.”

“Except one nearly broke my bond, while the other didn’t. The bond isn’t about what’s right and wrong, is it, Syl. It’s about what you see as right and wrong.”

“What we see,” she corrected. “And about oaths. You swore to protect Elhokar. Tell me that during your time planning to betray Elhokar, you didn’t—deep down—think you were doing something wrong.”

“Fine. But it’s still about perception.” Kaladin let the winds blow him, feeling a pit open in his belly. “Storms, I’d hoped … I’d hoped you could tell me, give me an absolute right. For once, I’d like my moral code not to come with a list of exceptions at the end.”

She nodded thoughtfully.

“I’d have expected you to object,” Kaladin said. “You’re a … what, embodiment of human perceptions of honor? Shouldn’t you at least think you have all the answers?”

“Probably,” she said. “Or maybe if there are answers, I should be the one who wants to find them.”

The stormwall was now fully visible: the great wall of water and refuse pushed by the oncoming winds of a highstorm. Kaladin had drifted along with the winds away from the city, so he Lashed himself eastward until they floated over the hills that made up the city’s windbreak. Here, he spotted something he hadn’t seen earlier: pens full of great masses of humans.

The winds blowing in from the east were growing stronger. However, the parshmen guarding the pens were just standing there, as if nobody had given them orders to move. The first rumblings of the highstorm had been distant, easy to miss. They’d notice it soon, but that might be too late.

“Oh!” Syl said. “Kaladin, those people!”

Kaladin cursed, then dropped the Lashing holding him upward, which made him fall in a rush. He crashed to the ground, sending out a puff of glowing Stormlight that expanded from him in a ring.

“Highstorm!” he shouted at the parshman guards. “Highstorm coming! Get these people to safety!”

They looked at him, dumbfounded. Not a surprising reaction. Kaladin summoned his Blade, shoving past the parshmen and leaping up onto the pen’s low stone wall, for keeping hogs.

He held aloft the Sylblade. Townspeople swarmed to the wall. Cries of “Shardbearer” rose.

“A highstorm is coming!” he shouted, but his voice was quickly lost in the tumult of voices. Storms. He had little doubt that the Voidbringers could handle a group of rioting townsfolk.

He sucked in more Stormlight, raising himself into the air. That quieted them, even drove them backward.

“Where did you shelter,” he demanded in a loud voice, “when the last storms came?”

A few people near the front pointed at the large bunkers nearby. For housing livestock, parshmen, and even travelers during storms. Could those hold an entire town’s worth of people? Maybe if they crowded in.

“Get moving!” Kaladin said. “A storm will be here soon.”

Kaladin, Syl’s voice said in his mind. Behind you.

He turned and found parshman guards approaching his wall with spears. Kaladin hopped down as the townspeople finally reacted, climbing the walls, which were barely chest high and slathered with smooth, hardened crem.

Kaladin took one step toward the parshmen, then swiped his Blade, separating their spearheads from the hafts. The parshmen—who had barely more training than the ones he’d traveled with—stepped back in confusion.

“Do you want to fight me?” Kaladin asked them.

One shook her head.

“Then see that those people don’t trample each other in their haste to get to safety,” Kaladin said, pointing. “And keep the rest of the guards from attacking them. This isn’t a revolt. Can’t you hear the thunder, and feel the wind picking up?”

He launched himself onto the wall again, then waved for the people to move, shouting orders. The parshman guards eventually decided that instead of fighting a Shardbearer, they’d risk getting into trouble for doing what he said. Before too long, he had an entire team of them prodding the humans—often less gently than he’d have liked—toward the storm bunkers.

Kaladin dropped down beside one of the guards, a female whose spear he’d sliced in half. “How did this work the last time the storm hit?”

“We mostly left the humans to themselves,” she admitted. “We were too busy running for safety.”

So the Voidbringers hadn’t anticipated that storm’s arrival either. Kaladin winced, trying not to dwell on how many people had likely been lost to the impact of the stormwall.

“Do better,” he said to her. “These people are your charge now. You’ve seized the city, taken what you want. If you wish to claim any kind of moral superiority, treat your captives better than they did you.”

“Look,” the parshwoman said. “Who are you? And why—”

Something large crashed into Kaladin, tossing him backward into the wall with a crunch. The thing had arms; a person who grasped for his throat, trying to strangle him. He kicked them off; their eyes trailed red.

A blackish-violet glow—like dark Stormlight—rose from the red-eyed parshman. Kaladin cursed and Lashed himself into the air.

The creature followed.

Another rose nearby, leaving a faint violet glow behind, flying as easily as he did. These two looked different from the one he’d seen earlier, leaner, with longer hair. Syl cried out in his mind, a sound like pain and surprise mixed. He could only assume that someone had run to fetch these, after he had taken to the sky.

A few windspren zipped past Kaladin, then began to dance playfully around him. The sky grew dark, the stormwall thundering across the land. Those red-eyed Parshendi chased him upward.

So Kaladin Lashed himself straight toward the storm.

It had worked against the Assassin in White. The highstorm was dangerous, but it was also something of an ally. The two creatures followed, though they overshot his elevation and had to Lash themselves back downward in a weird bobbing motion. They reminded him of his first experimentation with his powers.

Kaladin braced himself—holding to the Sylblade, joined by four or five windspren—and crashed through the stormwall. An unstable darkness swallowed him; a darkness that was often split by lightning and broken by phantom glows. Winds contorted and clashed like rival armies, so irregular that Kaladin was tossed by them one way, then the other. It took all his skill in Lashing to simply get going in the right direction.