Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

“An enemy, yes,” Jezerezeh said. “But an enemy who was correct all along, making me the villain, not you. We will fix what we’ve broken. Ishar and I agreed. There is no person we would welcome more eagerly into this pact than you. You are the single most honorable man I have ever had the privilege of opposing.”

“I wish that were true,” Nale said. “But I will serve as best I can.”

The vision faded and Nale lurched away from Dalinar, gasping, his eyes wide. He left a line of light stretching between him and Dalinar.

Bondsmith, the Stormfather said in Dalinar’s mind. You forged a brief Connection with him. What did you see?

“His past, I think,” Dalinar whispered. “And now…”

Nale scratched at his head, and Dalinar saw a skeletal figure overlapping him. Like the echo of light that followed Szeth, only worn, dim. Dalinar stepped forward, walking among his stunned bodyguards, noting eight lines of light extending from Nale into the distance.

“I see the Oathpact, I think,” Dalinar said. “The thing that bound them together and made them capable of holding the enemy in Damnation.”

A cage, forged of their spirits, the Stormfather said in his mind. It was broken. Even before Jezrien’s death, they shattered it by what they did long ago.

“No, only one line of it is completely broken. The rest are there, but weak, impotent.” Dalinar pointed to one line, bright and powerful. “Except one. Still vibrant.”

Nale looked up at him, then ripped free of the line of light Connecting him to Dalinar and threw himself off the platform. The Herald burst alight and shot away as—belatedly—a few Windrunners came to Dalinar’s aid.

You wield the power of gods, Dalinar, the Stormfather said. I once thought I knew the extent of your abilities. I have abandoned that ignorant supposition.

“Could I reforge it?” Dalinar asked. “Could I remake the Oathpact, and bind the Fused away again?”

I do not know. It may be possible, but I have no idea how. Or if it would be wise. The Heralds suffer for what they did.

“I saw that in him,” Dalinar said, watching as Nale vanished in the distance. “He is burdened with a terrible pain that warps how he sees reality. An insanity unlike the ones that afflict ordinary men—an insanity that has to do with his worn soul…”

Szeth recovered his sword, seeming ashamed he’d been so easily bested. Dalinar did not fault him, nor the others, who insisted that he and the Mink retreat from the battlefield, now that the rout of Taravangian’s troops was fully in progress.

Dalinar let the Windrunners spirit him away. All the while, he was lost in thought.

He needed to understand his powers. His duty was no longer to stand with a sword held high, shouting orders on the battlefield. He instead needed to find a way to use his abilities to solve this war. Reforge the Oathpact, or barring that, find another solution—one that included binding Odium once and for all.

NINE YEARS AGO

There was more than one way to explore. It turned out you could do it from the center of your own tent, if a group of living relics walked out of the forest and came to visit.

The humans thrilled Eshonai. They hadn’t been destroyed after all. And their ways were so strange. They spoke without rhythm, and couldn’t hear the songs of Roshar. They made carapace out of metal and tied it to themselves. Though she first assumed they had lost their forms, she soon realized that they had only a single form, and could never change. They had to deal with the passions of mateform all the time.

More intriguing, they brought with them a tribe of dullform creatures who also had no songs. They had skin patterns like the listeners, but didn’t talk, let alone sing. Eshonai found them fascinating and disturbing. Where had the humans found such strange individuals?

The humans made camp across the river in the forest, and at first the Five let only a few listeners come to meet them. They worried about frightening away the strange humans if the entire family came to bother them.

Eshonai thought this foolish. The humans wouldn’t grow frightened. They knew ancient things. Methods of forging metal and of writing sounds on paper. Things that the listeners had forgotten during the long sleep, the time they’d spent wearing dullform, memorizing songs by sheer force of will.

Eshonai, Klade, and a few others joined a few human scholars, trying to decipher one another’s tongues. Preserved in the songs, fortunately, were human phrases. Perhaps her past with the songs was what helped Eshonai learn faster than the others. Or maybe it was her stubbornness. She spent evenings sitting with the humans, making them repeat sounds over and over late into the night by the light of their brilliant glowing gemstones.

That was another thing. Human gemstones glowed far more brightly than listener ones. It had to do with the way the gemstones were cut and shaped. Each day with the humans taught her something new.

Once the language barrier began to fall, the humans asked if they could be taken out onto the Shattered Plains. So it was that Eshonai led the way, though she kept them far from the ten ancient cities and the other listener families, for now.

Using one of Eshonai’s maps, they approached from the north and walked along the chasms until they reached an ancient listener bridge. The rift in the stone smelled of wet rotting plants. Pungent, but not unpleasant. Where plants rotted, others often soon grew, and the scent of death was the same as the scent of life.

The humans followed gingerly across the bridge of wood and rope, the guards going first—wearing their buffed metal carapace breastplates and caps. They seemed to expect the bridge to collapse at any moment.

Once across, Eshonai stepped up onto a boulder and took a deep breath, feeling the winds. Overhead, a few windspren swirled in the sky. Once the guards had crossed, some of the others started over as well. Everyone had wanted to come see the Plains where the monsters of the chasms lived.

One of the attendants was a curious woman who was the surgeon’s assistant. She climbed up onto the rock beside Eshonai, though her clothing—which enveloped her from neck to ankles and covered up her left hand for some reason—wasn’t particularly good for exploring. It was nice to see that there were some things that the listeners had figured out that the humans hadn’t.

“What do you see?” she asked Eshonai in the human tongue. “When you look at the spren?”

Eshonai hummed to Consideration. What did she mean? “I see spren,” Eshonai said, speaking slowly and deliberately, as her accent was sometimes bad.

“Yes, what do they look like?”

“Long white lines,” Eshonai said, pointing at the windspren. “Holes. Small holes? Is there a word?”

“Pinpricks, perhaps.”

“Pinpricks in sky,” Eshonai said. “And tails, long, very long.”

“Curious,” the woman said. She wore a lot of rings on her right hand, though Eshonai couldn’t tell why. It seemed like they would get caught on things. “It is different.”

“Different?” Eshonai said. “We see different?”

“Yes,” the woman said. “You seem to see the reality of the spren, or closer to it. Tell me. We have stories, among the humans, of windspren that act like people. Taking different shapes, playing tricks. Have you ever seen one like that?”