Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

“It’s the brand on … on the forehead of Kaladin Stormblessed.”

Ah … “He gives them hope.”

“That hope is going to get them killed,” Lirin said, lowering his voice. “This isn’t the way to fight, not with how brutal the Regals in the tower have started acting. My son may have gotten himself killed resisting them. Heralds send it isn’t true, but his example is going to cause trouble. Some of these might get the terrible idea of following in his steps, and that will inevitably provoke a massacre.”

“Maybe,” Venli said, letting him go. Timbre pulsed to an unfamiliar rhythm that echoed in her mind. What was it? She could swear she’d never heard it before. “Or maybe they simply need something to keep them going, surgeon. A symbol they can trust when they can’t trust their own hearts.”

The surgeon shook his head and turned away from the water carriers, instead focusing on his patients.

There was a time when others would approach me for help with a problem. A time when I was decisive. Capable. Even authoritative.

It was a crystalline day in Shadesmar as Adolin—guarded as always by two honorspren soldiers—climbed to the top of the walls of Lasting Integrity. During his weeks incarcerated in the fortress, he’d discovered that there were weather patterns in Shadesmar. They just weren’t the same type as in the Physical Realm.

When he reached the top of the wall, he could see a faint shimmer in the air. It was only visible if you could look a long distance. A kind of violet-pink haze. Crystalline, they called it. On days like these, plants in Shadesmar grew quickly enough to see the change with your eyes.

Other types of “weather” involved spren feeling invigorated or dreary, or certain types of smaller spren getting more agitated. It was never about temperature or precipitation.

From the top of the wall, he could really get a sense of the fortress’s size. Lasting Integrity was enormous, several hundred feet tall. It was also hollow, and had no roof. Rectangular and resting on the small side, all four of its walls were perfectly sheer, without windows. No human city would ever have been built this way; even Urithiru needed fields at its base and windows to keep the people from going mad.

But Lasting Integrity didn’t follow normal laws of nature. You could walk on the interior walls. Indeed, to reach the top, Adolin had strolled vertically up the inside of the fortress wall. His body thought he had been walking on the ground. However, at the end of the path, he’d reached the battlements. Getting onto them had required stepping off what seemed to be the edge of the ground.

As he’d done so, gravity had caught his foot, then propelled him over so he was now standing at the very top of the fortress. He felt vertigo as he glanced down along a wall he’d recently treated as the ground. In fact, he could see all the way to the floor hundreds of feet below.

Thinking about it gave him a headache. So he looked outward across the landscape. And the view … the view was spectacular. Lasting Integrity overlooked a sea of churning beads lit by the cold sun so they shimmered and sparkled, an entire ocean of captured stars. Huge swells washed through the bay and broke into crashing falls of tumbling beads.

It was mesmerizing, made all the more interesting by the lights that congregated and moved in the near distance. Tukar and the people who lived there, reflected in the Cognitive Realm.

The other direction had its own less dramatic charms. Rocky obsidian shores gave way to growing forests of glass, lifespren bobbing among the trees. Lifespren were larger here, though still small enough that he wouldn’t have been able to see them save for the bright green glow they gave off.

These lights blinked off and on, a behavior that seemed unique to this region of Shadesmar. Watching, Adolin could swear there was a coordination to their glows. They’d blink in rippling waves, synchronized. As if to a beat.

He took it in for a moment. The view wasn’t why he’d come, however. Not fully. Once he’d spent time drinking in the beauty, he scanned the nearby coast.

Their camp was still there, tucked away a short walk into the highlands, nearer the trees. Godeke, Felt, and Malli waited for the results of his trial. With some persuasion, the honorspren had allowed Godeke to come in, given him a little Stormlight, and let him heal Adolin’s wound. The honorspren had expelled Godeke soon after, but permitted Adolin to communicate with his team via letters.

They’d traded—with his permission—a few of his swords to a passing caravan of Reachers for more food and water. Non-manifested weapons were worth a lot in Shadesmar. The Stump, Zu, and the rest of Adolin’s soldiers had left to bring word to his father. Though Adolin had initially anticipated a quick and dramatic end to his incarceration, the honorspren hadn’t wanted an immediate trial. He should have realized the punctilious spren would want time to prepare.

Though aspects of the delay were frustrating, the wait favored him. The longer he spent among the honorspren, the more chance he had to persuade them. Theoretically. So far, the spren of this fortress seemed about as easy to persuade as rocks.

One other oddity was visible from this high perch. Gathering on the coast nearby was an unusual group of spren. It had begun about two weeks ago as a few scattered individuals, but those numbers grew each day. At this point, there had to be two hundred of them. They stood on the coast all hours of the day, motionless, speechless.

Deadeyes.

“Storms,” said Vaiu. “There are so many.”

Vaiu was Adolin’s primary jailer for excursions like this. He was a shorter honorspren and wore a full beard, squared like that of an ardent. Unlike many others, Vaiu preferred to go about bare-chested, wearing only an old-style skirt a little like an Alethi takama. With his winged spear, he seemed like a depiction of a Herald from some ancient painting.

“What happened to the ones you let in?” Adolin asked.

“We put them with the others,” Vaiu explained. “Everything about them seems normal, for deadeyes. Though we don’t have space left for more. We never expected…” He shook his head. There were no lights of souls near those deadeyes; this wasn’t a gathering of Shardbearers in the Physical Realm. The deadeyes were moving of their own accord, coming up from the depths to stand out here. Silent. Watching.

The fortress had quarters for deadeyes. Though Adolin had little love for these honorspren and their stubbornness, he had to admit there was honor in the way they treated fallen spren. The honorspren had dedicated themselves to finding and caring for as many as they could. Though they’d taken Maya and put her in with the others, they let Adolin visit her each morning to do their exercises together. While they wouldn’t let her wander free, she was treated quite well.

But what would they do with so many? The honorspren had taken in the first group, but as more and more deadeyes arrived, the fortress had reluctantly shut its gates to them.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Vaiu said. “They should all be wandering the oceans, not congregating here. What provoked this behavior?”

“Has anyone tried asking them?” Adolin asked.

“Deadeyes can’t talk.”

Adolin leaned forward. Around his hands on the railing, pink crystal fuzz began to grow: the Shadesmar version of moss, spreading because of the crystalline day.