Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

He soon arrived at the monastery, which looked like most of the warcamp—a collection of buildings with the same smooth, rounded construction. Crafted from the air by Alethi Soulcasters. This place had a few small, hand-built buildings of cut stone, but they looked more like bunkers than places of worship. Dalinar had never wanted his people to forget that they were at war.

He strolled through the campus and found that without a guide, he didn’t know his way among the nearly identical structures. He stopped in a courtyard between buildings. The air smelled of wet stone from the highstorm, and a nice group of shalebark sculptures rose to his right, shaped like stacks of square plates. The only sound was water dripping from the eaves of the buildings.

Storms. He should know his way around his own monastery, shouldn’t he? How often did you actually visit here, during all the years in the warcamps? He’d meant to come more often, and talk to the ardents in his chosen devotary. There had always been something more pressing, and besides, the ardents stressed that he didn’t need to come. They had prayed and burned glyphwards on his behalf; that was why highlords owned ardents.

Even during his darkest days of war, they’d assured him that in pursuing his Calling—by leading his armies—he served the Almighty.

Dalinar stooped into a building that had been divided into many small rooms for prayers. He walked down a hallway until he stepped through a storm door into the atrium, which still smelled faintly of incense. It seemed insane that the ardents would be angry with him now, after training him his whole life to do as he wished. But he’d upset the balance. Rocked the boat.

He moved among braziers filled with wet ash. Everyone liked the system they had. The lighteyes got to live without guilt or burden, always confident that they were active manifestations of God’s will. The darkeyes got free access to training in a multitude of skills. The ardents got to pursue scholarship. The best of them lived lives of service. The worst lived lives of indolence—but what else were important lighteyed families going to do with unmotivated children?

A noise drew his attention, and he left the courtyard and looked into a dark corridor. Light poured from a room at the other end, and Dalinar was not surprised to find Kadash inside. The ardent was moving some ledgers and books from a wall safe into a pack on the floor. On a desk nearby, a spanreed scribbled.

Dalinar stepped into the room. The scarred ardent jumped, then relaxed when he saw it was Dalinar.

“Do we need to have this conversation again, Dalinar?” he asked, turning back to his packing.

“No,” Dalinar said. “I didn’t actually come looking for you. I want to find a man who lived here. A madman who claimed to be one of the Heralds.”

Kadash cocked his head. “Ah, yes. The one who had a Shardblade?”

“All of the other patients at the monastery are accounted for, safe at Urithiru, but he vanished somehow. I was hoping to see if his room offered any clues to what became of him.”

Kadash looked at him, gauging his sincerity. Then the ardent sighed, rising. “That’s a different devotary from mine,” he said, “but I have occupancy records here. I should be able to tell you which room he was in.”

“Thank you.”

Kadash looked through a stack of ledgers. “Shash building,” he finally said, pointing absently out the window. “That one right there. Room thirty-seven. Insah ran the facility; her records will list details of the madman’s treatment. If her departure from the warcamp was anything like mine, she’ll have left most of her paperwork behind.” He gestured toward the safe and his packing.

“Thank you,” Dalinar said. He moved to leave.

“You … think the madman was actually a Herald, don’t you?”

“I think it’s likely.”

“He spoke with a rural Alethi accent, Dalinar.”

“And he looked Makabaki,” Dalinar replied. “That alone is an oddity, wouldn’t you say?”

“Immigrant families are not so uncommon.”

“Ones with Shardblades?”

Kadash shrugged.

“Let’s say I could actually find one of the Heralds,” Dalinar said. “Let’s say we could confirm his identity, and you accepted that proof. Would you believe him if he told you the same things I have?”

Kadash sighed.

“Surely you’d want to know if the Almighty were dead, Kadash,” Dalinar said, stepping back into the room. “Tell me you wouldn’t.”

“You know what it would mean? It would mean there is no spiritual basis for your rule.”

“I know.”

“And the things you did in conquering Alethkar?” Kadash said. “No divine mandate, Dalinar. Everyone accepts what you did because your victories were proof of the Almighty’s favor. Without him … then what are you?”

“Tell me, Kadash. Would you really rather not know?”

Kadash looked at the spanreed, which had stopped writing. He shook his head. “I don’t know, Dalinar. It certainly would be easier.”

“Isn’t that the problem? What has any of this ever required of men like me? What has it required of any of us?”

“It required you to be what you are.”

“Which is self-fulfilling,” Dalinar said. “You were a swordsman, Kadash. Would you have gotten better without opponents to face? Would you have gotten stronger without weights to lift? Well, in Vorinism, we’ve spent centuries avoiding the opponents and the weights.”

Again, Kadash glanced at the spanreed.

“What is it?” Dalinar asked.

“I left most of my spanreeds behind,” Kadash explained, “when I went with you toward the center of the Shattered Plains. I took only the spanreed linked to an ardent transfer station in Kholinar. I thought that would be enough, but it no longer works. I’ve been forced to use intermediaries in Tashikk.”

Kadash lifted a box onto the desk and opened it. Inside were five more spanreeds, with blinking rubies, indicating that someone had been trying to contact Kadash.

“These are links to the leaders of Vorinism in Jah Keved, Herdaz, Kharbranth, Thaylenah, and New Natanan,” Kadash said, counting them off. “They had a meeting via reeds today, discussing the nature of the Desolation and the Everstorm. And perhaps you. I mentioned I was going to recover my own spanreeds today. Apparently, their meeting has made them all very eager to question me further.”

He let the silence hang between them, measured out by the five blinking red lights.

“What of the one that is writing?” Dalinar asked.

“A line to the Palanaeum and the heads of Vorin research there. They’ve been working on the Dawnchant, using the clues Brightness Navani gave them from your visions. What they’ve sent me are relevant passages from ongoing translations.”

“Proof,” Dalinar said. “You wanted solid proof that what I’ve been seeing is real.” He strode forward, grabbing Kadash by the shoulders. “You waited for that reed first, before answering the leaders of Vorinism?”

“I wanted all the facts in hand.”

“So you know that the visions are real!”

“I long ago accepted that you weren’t mad. These days, it’s more a question of who might be influencing you.”