Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

He winced. “Perhaps some other accommodation, then. A … dividing of the kingdom? A parshman highprince?” He seemed shocked to be considering it.

She attuned Resolve. “Your tone implies you know that would be impossible. There can be no accommodation, human. Send me from this place. We can meet on the battlefield.”

“No.” He seized her arm again. “I don’t know what the accommodation will be, but we can find one. Let me prove to you that I want to negotiate, instead of fight.”

“You can start,” she said to Irritation, pulling away from him, “by not assaulting me.”

She wasn’t certain she could fight him, honestly. Her current body was tall, but fragile. And in truth, she’d never been proficient at battle, even during the days when she’d taken an appropriate form.

“At least let us try a negotiation,” he said. “Please.”

He didn’t sound very pleading. He’d grown stern, face like a stone, glaring. With the rhythms, you could infuse your tone with the mood you wished to convey, even if your emotions weren’t cooperating. Humans didn’t have that tool. They were as dull as the dullest slave.

A sudden thump resounded in the vision. Venli attuned Anxiety and rushed out onto the balcony. A half-destroyed city stretched below, where a battle had happened, dead heaped in piles.

That pounding sounded again. The … the air was breaking. The clouds and sky seemed to be a mural painted on an enormous dome ceiling, and as the pounds continued, a web of cracks appeared overhead.

Beyond them shone a vivid yellow light.

“He’s here,” she whispered, then waved toward it. “That’s why there can’t be a negotiation, human. He knows we don’t need one. You want peace? Surrender. Give yourselves up and hope that he doesn’t care to destroy you.”

A faint hope, considering what Rine had said to her about exterminating the humans.

With the next pound, the sky fractured and a hole appeared overhead, a powerful light shining beyond. The very shards of the air—broken like a mirror—were sucked into that light.

A pulse of power blasted from the hole, shaking the city with a terrible vibration. It tossed Venli to the balcony’s floor. Kholin reached to help her, but a second pulse caused him to fall as well.

The bricks in the room’s wall separated from one another and began to float apart. The boards that made up the balcony began to lift, nails floating into the sky. A guard ran to the balcony, but stumbled, and his very skin started to separate into water and a dried husk.

Everything just … came apart.

A wind rose around Venli, pulling debris toward that hole in the sky, and the brilliant, terrible light beyond. Boards shredded to splinters; bricks floated past her head. She growled, the Rhythm of Resolve thumping inside her as she grabbed and clung to parts of the floor that hadn’t yet separated.

That burning. She knew it well, the terrible pain of Odium’s heat scalding her skin, scorching her until her very bones—somehow still able to feel—became ash. It happened every time he gave her orders. What worse thing would he do if he found her fraternizing with the enemy?

She attuned Determination and crawled away from the light. Escape! She reached the chamber beyond the balcony and lurched to her feet, trying to run. The wind pulled at her, making each step a struggle.

Overhead, the ceiling separated in a single magnificent burst—each brick exploding away from the others, then streaming toward the void. The pieces of the unfortunate guard rose after them, a sack drained of grain, a puppet with no controlling hand.

Venli dropped to the ground again and continued crawling, but the stones of the floor separated, floating upward with her on them. Soon, she was scrambling precariously from one floating piece of stone to another. The Rhythm of Resolve still attuned, she dared to glance backward. The hole had widened, and the all-consuming light feasted on the streams of refuse.

She turned away, desperate to do what she could to delay her own burning. Then … she stopped and looked back again. Dalinar Kholin stood on the balcony. And he was glowing.

Neshua Kadal. Radiant Knight.

Without meaning to, she attuned the Rhythm of Awe. Around Kholin, the balcony was stable. Boards trembled and quivered at his feet, but did not move into the sky. The balcony railing had ripped apart to either side of him, but where he held to it with a firm grip, it remained secure.

He was her enemy, and yet …

Long ago, these humans had resisted her gods. Yes, the enslavement of her cousins—the singers—was impossible to ignore. Still, the humans had fought. And had won.

The listeners remembered this as a song sung to the Rhythm of Awe. Neshua Kadal.

The calm, gentle light spread from Dalinar Kholin’s hand to the railing, then down into the floor. Boards and stones sank down from the air, reknitting. Venli’s current block of stone settled back into place. All through the city, buildings burst apart and zoomed upward, but the walls of this tower returned to their positions.

Venli immediately made for the steps downward. If whatever Kholin was doing stopped, she wanted to be on solid rock. She wound her way to the ground floor, then—once on the street—she positioned herself near the balcony and Kholin’s influence.

Above, Odium’s light went out.

Stones and splinters rained down on the city, crashing about her. Dried bodies dropped like discarded clothing. Venli pressed back against the tower wall, attuning Anxiety, raising her arm against the dust of the debris.

The hole remained in the sky, though the light was gone from behind it. Below, the rubbled remains of the city seemed … a sham. No cries of fear, no moans of pain. Bodies were just husks, skins lying empty on the ground.

A sudden pounding broke the air behind her, opening another hole, lower down and near the edge of the city. The sky crumbled into the gap, revealing that hateful light again. It consumed everything near it—wall, buildings, even the ground disintegrating and flowing into the maw.

Dust and debris washed over Venli in a furious wind. She pressed against the stone wall, clinging to one of the balcony’s supports. Terrible heat washed across her from the distant hole.

Clamping her eyes shut, she tightened her grip. He could come claim her, but she would not let go.

And what of the grand purpose? What of the power he offers? Did she still want those things? Or was that merely something to grasp onto, now that she had brought about the end of her people?

She gritted her teeth. In the distance, she heard a quiet rhythm. Somehow it sounded over the roar of the wind, the clacking of dust and stones. The Rhythm of Anxiety?

She opened her eyes, and saw Timbre fighting against the wind in an attempt to reach her. Bursts of light exploded from the little spren in frantic rings.

Buildings crumbled along the street. The entire city was collapsing away—even the palace broke apart, all save this one patch near the balcony.

The little spren changed to the Rhythm of the Lost and began to slide backward.

Venli shouted and released the pillar. She immediately was pushed with the wind—but although she wasn’t in stormform any longer, this was a form of power, incredibly nimble. She controlled her fall, going down on her side and skidding on the stones, feet toward the oppressive light. As she neared the little spren, Venli jammed her foot into a cleft in the street, then grabbed a crack in a broken stone, pulling herself to a halt. With her other hand, she twisted and snatched Timbre from the air.