Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

—From the Eila Stele

“No,” Dalinar whispered again, voice ragged as the Thrill thrummed inside of him. “No. You are wrong.”

Odium gripped Dalinar’s shoulder. “What does she say?”

She?

He heard Evi crying. Screaming. Begging for her life as the flames took her.

“Don’t blame yourself,” Odium said as Dalinar winced. “I made you kill her, Dalinar. I caused all of this. Do you remember? I can help. Here.”

Memories flooded Dalinar’s mind, a devastating onslaught of images. He lived them all in detail, somehow squeezed into a moment, the Thrill raging inside of him.

He saw himself stab a poor soldier in the back. A young man trying to crawl to safety, crying for his mother …

“I was with you then,” Odium said.

He killed a far better man than himself, a highlord who had held Teleb’s loyalty. Dalinar knocked him to the ground, then slammed a poleaxe into his chest.

“I was with you then.”

Dalinar fought atop a strange rock formation, facing another man who knew the Thrill. Dalinar dropped him to the ground with burning eyes, and called it a mercy.

“I was with you then.”

He raged at Gavilar, anger and lust rising as twin emotions. He broke a man in a tavern, frustrated that he’d been held back from enjoying the fight. He fought on the borders of Jah Keved, laughing, corpses littering the ground. He remembered every moment of the carnage. He felt each death like a spike driven into his soul. He began to weep for the destruction.

“It’s what you needed to do, Dalinar,” Odium said. “You made a better kingdom!”

“So … much … pain.”

“Blame me, Dalinar. It wasn’t you! You saw red when you did those things! It was my fault. Accept that. You don’t have to hurt.”

Dalinar blinked, meeting Odium’s eyes.

“Let me have the pain, Dalinar,” Odium said. “Give it to me, and never feel guilty again.”

“No.” Dalinar hugged The Way of Kings close. “No. I can’t.”

“Oh, Dalinar. What does she say?”

No …

“Have you forgotten? Here, let me help.”

And he was back in that day. The day he killed Evi.

* * *

Szeth found purpose in wielding the sword.

It screamed at him to destroy evil, even if evil was obviously a concept that the sword itself could not understand. Its vision was occluded, like Szeth’s own. A metaphor.

How was a twisted soul like his to decide who should die? Impossible. And so he put his trust in someone else, someone whose light peeked through the shadow.

Dalinar Kholin. Knight Radiant. He would know.

This choice was not perfect. But … Stones Unhallowed … it was the best he could manage. It brought him some small measure of peace as he swept through the enemy army.

The sword screamed at him. DESTROY!

Anyone he so much as nicked popped into black smoke. Szeth laid waste to the red-eyed soldiers, who kept coming, showing no fear. Screaming, as if they thirsted for death.

It was a drink that Szeth was all too good at serving.

He wielded Stormlight in one hand, Lashing any men who drew too close, sending them flipping into the air or crashing backward into their fellows. With the other hand he swept the sword through their ranks. He moved on nimble feet, his own body Lashed upward just enough to lighten him. Skybreakers didn’t have access to all of the Lashings, but the most useful—and most deadly—were still his.

Remember the gemstone.

A phantom sense called to him, a desire to continue killing, to revel in the butchery. Szeth rejected it, sick. He had never enjoyed this. He could never enjoy this.

The Voidbringer with the gemstone had slipped away, moving on too-swift feet. Szeth pointed the sword—a piece of him terrified by how quickly it was chewing through his own Stormlight—and Lashed himself to follow. He plowed through soldiers, men bursting into smoke, seeking that one individual.

The Voidbringer turned at the last moment, dancing away from his sword. Szeth Lashed himself downward, then spun in a sweeping arc, towing black smoke—almost liquid—behind his sword as he destroyed men in a grand circle.

EVIL! the sword cried.

Szeth leaped for the Voidbringer woman, but she dropped to the ground and slid on the stone as if it were greased. His sword swung over her head, and she pushed herself backward toward him, sliding right past his legs. There, she swept gracefully to her feet and seized the sheath off Szeth’s back, where he’d tied it for safekeeping.

It broke free. When Szeth turned to attack, she blocked the sword with its own sheath. How had she done that? Was there something about the silvery metal that Szeth didn’t know?

She blocked his next few attacks, then ducked away from his attempts to Lash her.

The sword was growing frustrated. DESTROY, DESTROY, DESTROY! Black veins began to grow around Szeth’s hand, creeping toward his upper arm.

He struck again, but she simply slipped away, moving across the ground as if natural laws had no purchase on her. Other soldiers piled in, and the pain started up Szeth’s arm as he worked death among them.

* * *

Jasnah stopped one pace behind Renarin. She could hear his whispers clearly now. “Father. Oh, Father…” The young man whipped his head in one direction, then another, seeing things that weren’t there.

“He sees not what is, but what is to come,” Ivory said. “Odium’s power, Jasnah.”

* * *

“Taln,” Ash whispered, kneeling before him. “Oh, Taln…”

The Herald stared forward with dark eyes. “I am Talenel’Elin, Herald of War. The time of the Return, the Desolation, is near at hand.…”

“Taln?” Ash took his hand. “It’s me. It’s Ash.”

“We must prepare. You will have forgotten much.…”

“Please, Taln.”

“Kalak will teach you to cast bronze.…”

He just continued on, repeating the same words over and over and over.

* * *

Kaladin fell to his knees on the cold obsidian of Shadesmar.

Fused descended around them, six figures in brilliant, flapping clothing.

He had a single slim hope. Each Ideal he’d spoken had resulted in an outpouring of power and strength. He licked his lips and tried whispering it. “I … I will…”

He thought of friends lost. Malop. Jaks. Beld and Pedin.

Say it, storm you!

“I…”

Rod and Mart. Bridgemen he’d failed. And before them, slaves he’d tried to save. Goshel. Nalma, caught in a trap like a beast.

A windspren appeared near him, like a line of light. Then another.

A single hope.

The Words. Say the Words!

* * *

“Oh, Mother! Oh, Cultivation!” Wyndle cried as they watched the assassin murder his way across the field. “What have we done?”

“We’ve pointed him away from us,” Lift said as she perched on a boulder, her eyes wide. “You’d rather he was close by?”

Wyndle continued to whimper, and Lift kinda understood. That was a lot of killing that the assassin did. Red-eyed men who seemed to have no light left in them, true, but … storms.

She’d lost track of the woman with the gemstone, but at least the army seemed to be flowing away from Szeth, leaving him fewer people to kill. He stumbled, slowing, then dropped to his knees.