Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

They’d put paper in a stack by the door without being asked, which surprised him, as they usually had to be ordered to do everything. He closed the door, then knelt and did some calculations relating to the size of the tower city. Hmmmm …

It provided a fine distraction, but he was soon drawn back to the true work, interrupted only by the arrival of his gum paste, which he used to begin sticking fragments of the Diagram to his walls.

This, he thought, arranging pages with numbers interspersing the text, pages they’d never been able to make sense of. It’s a list of what? Not code, like the other numbers. Unless … could this be shorthand for words?

Yes … yes, he’d been too impatient to write the actual words. He’d numbered them in his head—alphabetically perhaps—so he could write quickly. Where was the key?

This is reinforcement, he thought as he worked, of the Dalinar paradigm! His hands shook with excitement as he wrote out possible interpretations. Yes … Kill Dalinar, or he will resist your attempts to take over Alethkar. So Taravangian had sent the Assassin in White, which—incredibly—had failed.

Fortunately, there were contingencies. Here, Taravangian thought, bringing up another scrap from the Diagram and gluing it to the wall beside the others. The initial explanation of the Dalinar paradigm, from the catechism of the headboard, back side, third quadrant. It had been written in meter, as a poem, and presaged that Dalinar would attempt to unite the world.

So if he looked to the second contingency …

Taravangian wrote furiously, seeing words instead of numbers, and—full of energy—for a time he forgot his age, his aches, the way his fingers trembled—sometimes—even when he wasn’t so excited.

The Diagram hadn’t seen the effect the second son, Renarin, would have—he was a completely wild element. Taravangian finished his notations, proud, and wandered toward the door, which he opened without looking up.

“Get me a copy of the surgeon’s words upon my birth,” he said to those outside. “Oh, and kill those children.”

The music trailed off as the children heard what he’d said. Musicspren flitted away.

“You mean, quiet them from singing,” Mrall said.

“Whatever. I’m perturbed by the Vorin hymns as a reminder of historic religious oppression of ideas and thought.”

Taravangian returned to his work, but a short time later a knock came at the door. He flung it open. “I was not to be—”

“Interrupted,” Adrotagia said, proffering him a sheet of paper. “The surgeon’s words you requested. We keep them handy now, considering how often you ask for them.”

“Fine.”

“We need to talk, Vargo.”

“No we—”

She walked in anyway, then stopped, inspecting the cut-up pieces of the Diagram. Her eyes widened as she turned about. “Are you…”

“No,” he said. “I haven’t become him again. But I am me, for the first time in weeks.”

“This isn’t you. This is the monster you sometimes become.”

“I am not smart enough to be in the dangerous zone.” The zone where, annoyingly, they claimed he was too smart to be allowed to make decisions. As if intelligence were somehow a liability!

She unfolded a piece of paper from the pocket of her skirt. “Yes, your daily test. You stopped on this page, claiming you couldn’t answer the next question.”

Damnation. She’d seen it.

“If you’d answered,” she said, “it would have proved you were intelligent enough to be dangerous. Instead, you decided you couldn’t manage. A loophole we should have considered. You knew that if you finished the question, we’d restrict your decision-making for the day.”

“Do you know about Stormlight growth?” he said, brushing past her and taking one of the pages he’d written earlier.

“Vargo…”

“Calculating the total surface area for farming at Urithiru,” he said, “and comparing it to the projected number of rooms that could be occupied, I have determined that even if food grew here naturally—as it would at the temperatures of your average fecund plain—it could not provide enough to sustain the entire tower.”

“Trade,” she said.

“I have trouble believing the Knights Radiant, always threatened with war, would build a fortress like this to be anything but self-sufficient. Have you read Golombi?”

“Of course I have, and you know it,” she said. “You think they enhanced the growth by use of Stormlight-infused gemstones, providing light to darkened places?”

“Nothing else makes sense, does it?”

“The tests are inconclusive,” she said. “Yes, spherelight inspires growth in a dark room, when candlelight cannot, but Golombi says that the results may have been compromised, and the efficiency is … Oh, bah! That’s a distraction, Vargo. We were discussing what you’ve done to circumvent the rules you yourself set out!”

“When I was stupid.”

“When you were normal.”

“Normal is stupid, Adro.” He took her by the shoulders and firmly pushed her from the room. “I won’t make policy decisions, and I’ll avoid ordering the murder of any further groups of melodic children. Fine? All right? Now leave me alone. You’re stinking up the place with an air of contented idiocy.”

He shut the door, and—deep down—felt a glimmer of shame. Had he called Adrotagia, of all people, an idiot?

Well. Nothing to do about it now. She would understand.

He set to work again, cutting out more of the Diagram, arranging it, searching for any mentions of the Blackthorn, as there was too much in the book to study today, and he had to be focused on their current problem.

Dalinar lived. He was building a coalition. So what did Taravangian do now? Another assassin?

What is the secret? he thought, holding up sheets from the Diagram, finding one where he could see the words on the other side through the paper. Could that have been intentional? What should I do? Please. Show me the way.

He scribbled words on a page. Light. Intelligence. Meaning. He hung them on the wall to inspire him, but he couldn’t help reading the surgeon’s words—the words of a master healer who had delivered Taravangian through a cut in his mother’s belly.

He had the cord wrapped around his neck, the surgeon had said. The queen will know the best course, but I regret to inform her that while he lives, your son may have diminished capacity. Perhaps this is one to keep on outer estates, in favor of other heirs.

The “diminished capacity” hadn’t appeared, but the reputation had chased Taravangian from childhood, so pervasive in people’s minds that not a one had seen through his recent act of stupidity, which they’d attributed to a stroke or to simple senility. Or maybe, some said, that was the way he’d always been.

He’d overcome that reputation in magnificent ways. Now he’d save the world. Well, the part of the world that mattered.

He worked for hours, pinning up more portions of the Diagram, then scribbling on them as connections came to him, using beauty and light to chase away the shadows of dullness and ignorance, giving him answers—they were here, he merely needed to interpret them.