Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

Dalinar rubbed his chin. Most words in the script were the same as the ones from spoken conversation, but small additions—that you wouldn’t read out loud—changed the context. And that didn’t even count the undertext—the writer’s hidden commentary. Navani had explained, with some embarrassment, that that was never read to a man requesting a reading.

We took Shardblades from the women, he thought, glancing at the one hung on the wall above his desk. And they seized literacy from us. Who got the better deal, I wonder?

“Have you thought,” Navani said, “about how Kadash and the ardents will respond to you learning to read?”

“I’ve been excommunicated already. There’s not much more they could do.”

“They could leave.”

“No,” Dalinar said. “I don’t think they will. I actually think … I think I might be getting through to Kadash. Did you see him at the wedding? He’s been reading what the ancient theologians wrote, trying to find justification for modern Vorinism. He doesn’t want to believe me, but soon he won’t be able to help it.”

Navani seemed skeptical.

“Here,” Dalinar said. “How do I emphasize a word?”

“These marks here, above and below a word you want to stress.”

He nodded in thanks, dipped his pen, then rewrote what he’d given to Navani, substituting the proper changes.

The most important words a man can say are, “I will do better.” These are not the most important words any man can say. I am a man, and they are what I needed to say.

The ancient code of the Knights Radiant says “journey before destination.” Some may call it a simple platitude, but it is far more. A journey will have pain and failure. It is not only the steps forward that we must accept. It is the stumbles. The trials. The knowledge that we will fail. That we will hurt those around us.

But if we stop, if we accept the person we are when we fall, the journey ends. That failure becomes our destination.

To love the journey is to accept no such end. I have found, through painful experience, that the most important step a person can take is always the next one.

I’m certain some will feel threatened by this record. Some few may feel liberated. Most will simply feel that it should not exist.

I needed to write it anyway.

He sat back, pleased. It seemed that in opening this doorway, he had entered a new world. He could read The Way of Kings. He could read his niece’s biography of Gavilar. He could write down his own orders for men to follow.

Most importantly, he could write this. His thoughts. His pains. His life. He looked to the side, where Navani had placed the handful of blank pages he’d asked her to bring. Too few. Far, far too few.

He dipped his pen again. “Would you close the balcony doors again, gemheart?” he asked her. “The sunlight is distracting me from the other light.”

“Other light?”

He nodded absently. What next? He looked up again at the familiar Shardblade. Wide like him—and thick, also like him, at times—with a hook shape at the end. This was the best mark of both his honor and his disgrace. It should have belonged to Rock, the Horneater bridgeman. He’d killed Amaram and won it, along with two other Shards.

Rock had insisted that Dalinar take Oathbringer back. A debt repaid, the Windrunner had explained. Reluctantly, Dalinar had accepted, handling the Shardblade only through cloth.

As Navani shut the balcony doors, he closed his eyes and felt the warmth of a distant, unseen light. Then he smiled, and—with a hand still unsteady, like the legs of a child taking his first steps—he took another page and wrote a title for the book.

Oathbringer, My Glory and My Shame.

Written by the hand of Dalinar Kholin.

“All great art is hated,” Wit said.

He shuffled in line—along with a couple hundred other people—one dreary step.

“It is obscenely difficult—if not impossible—to make something that nobody hates,” Wit continued. “Conversely, it is incredibly easy—if not expected—to make something that nobody loves.”

Weeks after the fall of Kholinar, the place still smelled like smoke. Though the city’s new masters had moved tens of thousands of humans out to work farms, complete resettlement would take months, if not years.

Wit poked the man in front of him in the shoulder. “This makes sense, if you think about it. Art is about emotion, examination, and going places people have never gone before to discover and investigate new things. The only way to create something that nobody hates is to ensure that it can’t be loved either. Remove enough spice from soup, and you’ll just end up with water.”

The brutish man in front eyed him, then turned back to the line.

“Human taste is as varied as human fingerprints,” Wit said. “Nobody will like everything, everybody dislikes something, someone loves that thing you hate—but at least being hated is better than nothing. To risk metaphor, a grand painting is often about contrast: brightest brights, darkest darks. Not grey mush. That a thing is hated is not proof that it’s great art, but the lack of hatred is certainly proof that it is not.”

They shuffled forward another step.

He poked the man in the shoulder again. “And so, dear sir, when I say that you are the very embodiment of repulsiveness, I am merely looking to improve my art. You look so ugly, it seems that someone tried—and failed—to get the warts off your face through aggressive application of sandpaper. You are less a human being, and more a lump of dung with aspirations. If someone took a stick and beat you repeatedly, it could only serve to improve your features.

“Your face defies description, but only because it nauseated all the poets. You are what parents use to frighten children into obedience. I’d tell you to put a sack over your head, but think of the poor sack! Theologians use you as proof that God exists, because such hideousness can only be intentional.”

The man didn’t respond. Wit poked him again, and he muttered something in Thaylen.

“You … don’t speak Alethi, do you?” Wit asked. “Of course you don’t.” Figured.

Well, repeating all that in Thaylen would be monotonous. So Wit cut in front of the man in line. This finally provoked a response. The beefy man grabbed Wit and spun him around, then punched him right in the face.

Wit fell backward onto the stone ground. The line continued its shuffling motion, the occupants refusing to look at him. Cautiously, he prodded at his mouth. Yes … it seemed …

One of his teeth popped out. “Success!” he said in Thaylen, speaking with a faint lisp. “Thank you, dear man. I’m glad you appreciate my performance art, accomplished by cutting in front of you.”

Wit flicked the tooth aside and stood up, starting to dust off his clothing. He then stopped himself. After all, he’d worked hard to place that dust. He shoved hands in the pockets of his ragged brown coat, then slouched his way through an alley. He passed groaning humans crying for deliverance, for mercy. He absorbed that, letting it reflect in him.

Not a mask he put on. Real sorrow. Real pain. Weeping echoed around him as he moved into the section of town nearest the palace. Only the most desperate or the most broken dared remain here, nearest the invaders and their growing seat of power.