Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

Though he had once crawled before the Nightwatcher to beg for release, he no longer wished to forget. “I embrace you,” he said. “I accept what I was.”

The Thrill colored his sight red, inflicting a deep longing for the fight, the conflict, the challenge. If he rejected it, he would drive the Thrill away.

“Thank you,” Dalinar said, “for giving me strength when I needed it.”

The Thrill thrummed with a pleased sound. It drew in closer to him, the faces of red mist grinning with excitement and glee. Charging horses screamed and died. Men laughed as they were cut down.

Dalinar was once again walking on the stone toward the Rift, intent on murdering everyone inside. He felt the heat of anger. The yearning so powerful, it made him ache.

“I was that man,” Dalinar said. “I understand you.”

* * *

Venli crept away from the battlefield. She left the humans to struggle against shadows in a mess of anger and lust. She walked deeper into the darkness beneath Odium’s storm, feeling strangely sick.

The rhythms were going crazy inside her, merging and fighting. A fragment from Craving blended into Fury, into Ridicule.

She passed Fused arguing about what to do, now that Odium had withdrawn. Did they send the parshmen in to fight? They couldn’t control the humans, consumed by one of the Unmade as they were.

Rhythms piled over rhythms.

Agony. Conceit. Destruction. Lost—

There! Venli thought. Grab that!

She attuned the Rhythm of the Lost. She clung to the solemn beat, desperate—a rhythm one attuned to remember those you missed. Those who had gone before.

Timbre thrummed to the same rhythm. Why did that feel different from before? Timbre vibrated through Venli’s entire being.

Lost. What had Venli lost?

Venli missed being someone who cared about something other than power. Knowledge, favoritism, forms, wealth—it was all the same to her. Where had she gone wrong?

Timbre pulsed. Venli dropped to her knees. Cold stone reflected lightning from above, red and garish.

But her own eyes … she could see her own eyes in the polished wet rock.

There wasn’t a hint of red in them.

“Life…” she whispered.

The king of the Alethi had reached out toward her. Dalinar Kholin, the man whose brother they’d killed. But he’d reached from the pillar of gloryspren all the same, and spoken to her.

You can change.

“Life before death.”

You can become a better person.

“Strength before … before weakness…”

I did.

“Jou—”

Someone grabbed Venli roughly and spun her over, slamming her to the ground. A Fused with the form that grew carapace armor like Shardplate. He looked Venli up and down, and for a panicked moment she was sure he’d kill her.

The Fused seized her pouch, the one that hid Timbre. She screamed and clawed at his hands, but he shoved her back, then ripped open the pouch.

Then he turned it inside out.

“I could have sworn…” he said in their language. He tossed the pouch aside. “You failed to obey the Word of Passion. You did not attack the enemy when commanded.”

“I … I was frightened,” Venli said. “And weak.”

“You cannot be weak in his service. You must choose who you will serve.”

“I choose,” she said, then shouted, “I choose!”

He nodded, evidently impressed by her Passion, then stalked back toward the battlefield.

Venli climbed to her feet and made her way to one of the ships. She stumbled up the gangway—yet felt crisper, more awake, than she’d been in a long, long time.

In her mind played the Rhythm of Joy. One of the old rhythms her people had learned long ago—after casting out their gods.

Timbre pulsed from within her. Inside her gemheart.

“I’m still wearing one of their forms,” Venli said. “There was a Voidspren in my gemheart. How?”

Timbre pulsed to Resolve.

“You’ve done what?” Venli hissed, stopping on the deck.

Resolve again.

“But how can you…” She trailed off, then hunched over, speaking more softly. “How can you keep a Voidspren captive?”

Timbre pulsed to Victory within her. Venli rushed toward the ship’s cabin. A parshman tried to forbid her, but she glared him to submission, then took the ruby sphere from his lantern and went inside, slamming the door and locking it.

She held up the sphere, and then—heart fluttering—she drank it in. Her skin started glowing with a soft white light.

“Journey before destination.”

* * *

Adolin was confronted by a figure in glistening black Shardplate, a large hammer strapped to its back. The helm had stylized eyebrows like knives sweeping backward, and the Plate was skirted with a triangular pattern of interlocking scales. Cvaderln, he thought, remembering his lists of Thaylen Shards. It meant, roughly, “shell of Cva.”

“Are you Tshadr?” Adolin guessed.

“No, Hrdalm,” the Shardbearer said in a thick Thaylen accent. “Tshadr holds Court Square. I come, stop monster.”

Adolin nodded. Outside, the thing sounded its angry call, confronting the remaining Thaylen troops.

“We need to get out and help those men,” Adolin said. “Can you distract the monster? My Blade can cut, while you can take hits.”

“Yes,” Hrdalm said. “Yes, good.”

Adolin quickly helped Hrdalm get the hammer untied. Hrdalm hefted it, then pointed at the window. “Go there.”

Adolin nodded, waiting by the window as Hrdalm charged out the doorway and went running straight for the thunderclast, shouting a Thaylen battle cry. When the thing turned toward Hrdalm, Adolin leaped out the window and charged around the other side.

Two flying Fused swooped in behind Hrdalm, slamming spears into his back, tossing him forward. Plate ground against stone as he fell, face-first. Adolin ran for the thunderclast’s leg—but the creature ignored Hrdalm and fixated on Adolin. It crashed a palm down on the ground nearby, forcing Adolin to dance backward.

Hrdalm stood up, but a Fused swooped down and kicked him over. The other landed on his chest and began pounding on his helm with a hammer, cracking it. As Hrdalm tried to grab her and throw her free, the other one swooped down and used a spear to pin the hand down. Damnation!

“All right, Maya,” Adolin said. “We’ve practiced this.”

He wound up, then hurled the Shardblade, which spun in a gleaming arc before slamming into the Fused on Hrdalm’s chest, piercing her straight through. Dark smoke trailed from her eyes as they burned away.

Hrdalm sat up, sweeping away the other Fused with a Shard-enhanced punch. He turned toward the dead one, then looked back at Adolin with a posture that somehow expressed amazement.

The thunderclast called, sending a wave of sound across the street, rattling chips of stone. Adolin swallowed, then started counting heartbeats as he dashed away. The monster crashed along the street behind—but Adolin soon pulled to a stop in front of a large section of rubble, which blocked the street. Storms, he’d run the wrong way.

He shouted, spinning around. He hit a count of ten, and Maya returned to him.

The thunderclast loomed overhead. It thrust its palm down, and Adolin managed to judge the shadow and dodge between two fingers. As its palm crashed to the ground, Adolin leaped, trying to avoid being knocked over. He grabbed a massive finger with his left arm, desperately holding Maya to the side in his right.