Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

“Jasnah?” Ivory asked. “Am I … in error?”

“I am not so much a stone as you think, Ivory. Sometimes I wish I were.”

“These words trouble you,” he said, stepping up to her again and resting his jet-black fingers on the paper. “Why? You have read many troubling things.”

Jasnah settled back, listening to the three spanreeds scratching paper, writing out notes that—she feared—would mostly be irrelevant. Something stirred deep within her. Glimmers of memory from a dark room, screaming her voice ragged. A childhood illness nobody else seemed to remember, for all it had done to her.

It had taught her that people she loved could still hurt her.

“Have you ever wondered how it would feel to lose your sanity, Ivory?”

Ivory nodded. “I have wondered this. How could I not? Considering what the ancient fathers are.”

“You call me logical,” Jasnah whispered. “It’s untrue, as I let my passions rule me as much as many. In my times of peace, however, my mind has always been the one thing I could rely upon.”

Except once.

She shook her head, picking up the paper again. “I fear losing that, Ivory. It terrifies me. How would it have felt, to be these Heralds? To suffer your mind slowly becoming untrustworthy? Are they too far gone to know? Or are there lucid moments, where they strain and sort through memories … trying frantically to decide which are reliable and which are fabrications…”

She shivered.

“The ancient ones,” Ivory said again, nodding. He didn’t often speak of the spren who had been lost during the Recreance. Ivory and his fellows had been mere children—well, the spren equivalent—at the time. They spent years, centuries, with no older spren to nurture and guide them. The inkspren were only now beginning to recover the culture and society they had lost when men abandoned their vows.

“Your ward,” Ivory said. “Her spren. A Cryptic.”

“Which is bad?”

Ivory nodded. He preferred simple, straightforward gestures. You never saw Ivory shrug. “Cryptics are trouble. They enjoy lies, Jasnah. Feast upon them. Speak one word untrue at a gathering, and seven cluster around you. Their humming fills your ears.”

“Have you warred with them?”

“One does not war with Cryptics, as one does honorspren. Cryptics have but one city, and do not wish to rule more. Only to listen.” He tapped the table. “Perhaps this one is better, with the bond.”

Ivory was the only new-generation inkspren to form a Radiant bond. Some of his fellows would rather have killed Jasnah, instead of letting him risk what he had done.

The spren had a noble air about him, stiff-backed and commanding. He could change his size at will, but not his shape, except when fully in this realm, manifesting as a Shardblade. He had taken the name Ivory as a symbol of defiance. He was not what his kin said he was, and would not suffer what fate proclaimed.

The difference between a higher spren like him and a common emotion spren was in their ability to decide how to act. A living contradiction. Like human beings.

“Shallan won’t listen to me any longer,” Jasnah said. “She rebels against every little thing I tell her. These last few months on her own have changed the child.”

“She never obeyed well, Jasnah. That is who she is.”

“In the past, at least she pretended to care about my teaching.”

“But you have said, more humans should question their places in life. Did you not say that they too often accept presumed truth as fact?”

She tapped the table. “You’re right, of course. Wouldn’t I rather have her straining against her boundaries, as opposed to happily living within them? Whether she obeys me or not is of little import. But I do worry about her ability to command her situation, rather than letting her impulses command her.”

“How do you change this, if it is?”

An excellent question. Jasnah searched through the papers on her small table. She’d been collecting reports from her informants in the warcamps—the ones who had survived—about Shallan. She’d truly done well in Jasnah’s absence. Perhaps what the child needed was not more structure, but more challenges.

“All ten orders are again,” Ivory said from behind her. For years it had been only the two of them, Jasnah and Ivory. Ivory had been dodgy about giving odds on whether the other sapient spren would refound their orders or not.

However, he’d always said that he was certain that the honorspren—and therefore the Windrunners—would never return. Their attempts to rule Shadesmar had apparently not endeared them to the other races.

“Ten orders,” Jasnah said. “All ended in death.”

“All but one,” Ivory agreed. “They lived in death instead.”

She turned around, and he met her eyes with his own. No pupils, just oil shimmering above something deeply black.

“We must tell the others what we learned from Wit, Ivory. Eventually, this secret must be known.”

“Jasnah, no. It would be the end. Another Recreance.”

“The truth has not destroyed me.”

“You are special. No knowledge is that can destroy you. But the others…”

She held his eyes, then gathered the sheets stacked beside her. “We shall see,” she said, then carried them to the table to bind them into a book.

But we stand in the sea, pleased with our domains. Leave us alone.

Moash grunted as he crossed the uneven ground, hauling a thick, knotted cord over his shoulder. Turned out, the Voidbringers had run out of wagons. Too many supplies to bring, and not enough vehicles.

At least, vehicles with wheels.

Moash had been assigned to a sledge—a cart with broken wheels that had been repurposed with a pair of long, steel skids. They’d put him first in the line pulling their rope. The parshman overseers had considered him the most enthusiastic.

Why wouldn’t he be? The caravans moved at the slow pace of the chulls, which pulled roughly half the ordinary wagons. He had sturdy boots, and even a pair of gloves. Compared to bridge duty, this was a paradise.

The scenery was even better. Central Alethkar was far more fertile than the Shattered Plains, and the ground sprouted with rockbuds and the gnarled roots of trees. The sledge bounced and crunched over these, but at least he didn’t have to carry the thing on his shoulders.

Around him, hundreds of men pulled wagons or sledges piled high with foodstuffs, freshly cut lumber, or leather made from hogshide or eelskin. Some of the workers had collapsed on their first day out of Revolar. The Voidbringers had separated these into two groups. The ones who had tried, but were genuinely too weak, had been sent back to the city. A few deemed to be faking had been whipped, then moved to sledges instead of wagons.

Harsh, but fair. Indeed, as the march continued, Moash was surprised at how well the human workers were treated. Though strict and unforgiving, the Voidbringers understood that to work hard, slaves needed good rations and plenty of time at night to rest. They weren’t even chained up. Running away would be pointless under the watchful care of Fused who could fly.

Moash found himself enjoying these weeks hiking and pulling his sledge. It exhausted his body, quieted his thoughts, and let him fall into a calm rhythm. This was certainly far better than his days as a lighteyes, when he’d worried incessantly about the plot against the king.