Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

“Would that it were so simple, Captain.” Dalinar sighed loudly, looking … weathered to Shallan. “Let me say this: If we can be certain of one thing, it is the morality of defending our homeland. I don’t ask you to go to war idly, but I will ask you to protect. Alethkar is besieged. The men doing it might be innocents, but they are controlled by those who are evil.”

Kaladin nodded slowly. “The king has asked my help in opening the Oathgate. I’ve agreed to give it to him.”

“Once we secure our homeland,” Dalinar said, “I promise to do something I’d never have contemplated before hearing your reports. I’ll seek to negotiate; I’ll see if there is some way out of this that doesn’t involve smashing our armies together.”

“Negotiate?” Jasnah said. “Uncle, these creatures are crafty, ancient, and angry. They spent millennia torturing the Heralds just to return and seek our destruction.”

“We’ll see,” Dalinar said. “Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to contact anyone in the city with the visions. The Stormfather has found Kholinar to be a ‘dark spot’ to him.”

Navani nodded. “That seems, unfortunately, to coordinate with the failure of the spanreeds in the city. Captain Kaladin’s report confirms what our last notes from the city said: The enemy is mobilizing for an assault on the capital. We can’t know what the city’s status will be once our strike force arrives. You might have to infiltrate an occupied city, Captain.”

“Please send that it isn’t so,” Renarin whispered, eyes down. “How many would have died on those walls, fighting nightmares…”

“We need more information,” Jasnah said. “Captain Kaladin, how many people can you take with you to Alethkar?”

“I plan to fly at the front of a storm,” Kaladin said. “Like I did returning to Urithiru. It’s a bumpy ride, but maybe I can fly over the top of the winds. I need to test it. Anyway, I think I could bring a small group.”

“You won’t need a large force,” Dalinar said. “You, a few of your best squires. I’d send Adolin with you too, so you have another Shardbearer in an emergency. Six, perhaps? You, three of your men, the king, Adolin. Get past the enemy, sneak into the palace, and activate the Oathgate.”

“Pardon if this is out of line,” Kaladin said, “but Elhokar himself is the odd one. Why not just send me and Adolin? The king will probably slow us down.”

“The king needs to go for personal reasons. Will there be a problem between you?”

“I’ll do what is right, regardless of my feelings, sir. And … I might be beyond those feelings anyway, now.”

“This is too small,” Jasnah mumbled.

Shallan started, then glanced at her. “Too small?”

“Not ambitious enough,” Jasnah said more firmly. “By the Stormfather’s explanation, the Fused are immortal. Nothing stops their rebirth now that the Heralds have failed. This is our real problem. Our enemy has a near-endless supply of parshman bodies to inhabit, and judging by what the good captain has confirmed through experience, these Fused can access some kind of Surgebinding. How do we fight against that?”

Shallan looked up from her notepad, glancing toward the others in the room. Renarin still leaned forward, hands clasped, eyes on the floor. Navani and Dalinar were sharing a look. Kaladin continued to lean against the wall, arms folded, but he shifted his posture, uncomfortable.

“Well,” Dalinar finally said. “We’ll have to take this one goal at a time. First Kholinar.”

“Pardon, Uncle,” Jasnah said. “While I don’t disagree with that first step, now is not the time to think only of the immediate future. If we are to avoid a Desolation that breaks society, then we’ll need to use the past as our guide and make a plan.”

“She’s right,” Renarin whispered. “We’re facing something that killed the Almighty himself. We fight terrors that break the minds of men and ruin their souls. We can’t think small.” He ran his hands through his hair, which was marked by less yellow than his brother’s. “Almighty. We have to think big—but can we take it all in without going mad ourselves?”

Dalinar took a deep breath. “Jasnah, you have a suggestion of where to start this plan?”

“Yes. The answer is obvious. We need to find the Heralds.”

Kaladin nodded in agreement.

“Then,” Jasnah added, “we need to kill them.”

“What?” Kaladin demanded. “Woman, are you insane?”

“The Stormfather laid it out,” Jasnah said, unperturbed. “The Heralds made a pact. When they died, their souls traveled to Damnation and trapped the spirits of the Voidbringers, preventing them from returning.”

“Yeah. Then the Heralds were tortured until they broke.”

“The Stormfather said their pact was weakened, but did not say it was destroyed,” Jasnah said. “I suggest that we at least see if one of them is willing to return to Damnation. Perhaps they can still prevent the spirits of the enemy from being reborn. It’s either that, or we completely exterminate the parshmen so that the enemy has no hosts.” She met Kaladin’s eyes. “In the face of such an atrocity, I would consider the sacrifice of one or more Heralds to be a small price.”

“Storms!” Kaladin said, standing up straight. “Have you no sympathy?”

“I have plenty, bridgeman. Fortunately, I temper it with logic. Perhaps you should consider acquiring some at a future date.”

“Listen, Brightness,” Kaladin began. “I—”

“Enough, Captain,” Dalinar said. He gave Jasnah a glance. Both fell quiet, Jasnah without so much as a peep. Shallan had never seen her respond to someone with the respect she gave Dalinar.

“Jasnah,” Dalinar said. “Even if the pact of the Heralds still holds, we can’t know that they’d stay in Damnation—or the mechanics for locking away the Voidbringers there. That said, locating them seems like an excellent first step; they must know much that can greatly assist us. I will leave it to you, Jasnah, to plan out how to accomplish that.”

“What … what of the Unmade?” Renarin said. “There will be others, like the creature we found down here.”

“Navani has been researching them,” Dalinar said.

“We need to go even farther, Uncle,” Jasnah said. “We need to watch the movements of the Voidbringers. Our only hope is to defeat their armies so soundly that even if their leaders are constantly reborn, they lack the manpower to overwhelm us.”

“Protecting Alethkar,” Kaladin said, “doesn’t have to mean completely crushing the parshmen and—”

“If you wish, Captain,” Jasnah snapped, “I can get you some mink kits to cuddle while the adults plan. None of us want to talk about this, but that does not make it any less inevitable.”

“I’d love that,” Kaladin responded. “In turn, I’ll get you some eels to cuddle. You’ll feel right at home.”

Jasnah, curiously, smiled. “Let me ask this, Captain. Do you think ignoring the movement of Voidbringer troops would be wise?”