Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

At least he was safe. Adolin, Renarin, Jasnah, Dalinar, and little Gav. Her entire family safe from the invasion and the mess Navani had made. It was one small blessing she could thank the Almighty for sending her.

Raboniel had brought a stool—a low one, so that when she sat on it, she was at eye level with Navani. The Fused set a basket on the floor, then pulled out a bottle of burgundy wine. A Shin vintage, sweeter than traditional Alethi wines, known as an amosztha—a Shin wine made from grapes.

“Your journals,” Raboniel said, “indicate you are fond of this vintage.”

“You read my journals?” Navani said.

“Of course,” Raboniel said, setting out two glasses. “You would have wisely done the same in my position.” She uncorked the bottle and poured half a cup for Navani.

She didn’t drink. Raboniel didn’t force her, instead inspecting the wine with an expert eye, then taking a sip. “Ah, yes,” she said. “That is a taste infused with memory. Grapes. Your ancestors never could get them to live outside Shinovar. Too cold, I believe. Or perhaps it was the lack of soil. I found that explanation odd, as grapevines seem similar to many of our native plants.

“I wasn’t there when your kind came to our world. My grandmother, however, always mentioned the smoke. At first she thought you had strange skin patterns—but that was because so many human faces had been burned or marked by soot from the destruction of the world they left behind.

“She talked about the way your livestock moaned and cried from their burns. The result of humans Surgebinding without oaths, without checks. Of course, that was before any of us understood the Surges. Before the spren left us for you, before the war started.”

Navani felt the hair go up on the back of her neck as she listened. Storms. This creature … she had lived during the shadowdays, the time before history. They had no primary accounts of those days. Yet one sat before her, drinking wine from Navani’s secret stash, musing about the origins of humanity.

“So long ago,” Raboniel said, with a soft, almost indistinguishable cadence to her words. “So very, very long ago. What has it been? Seven thousand years? I don’t think you can comprehend how tired I am of this war, Navani. How tired all of us are. Your Heralds too.”

“Then let’s end it,” Navani said. “Declare peace. Withdraw from the tower and I will convince Dalinar to engage in talks.”

Raboniel turned her wine cup around, as if trying to see the liquid within from different angles. “You think talks haven’t been tried? We are born to fight one another, Navani. Opposites. At least so I thought. I always assumed that if Stormlight and Voidlight could be forced to truly mix, then … poof, they’d annihilate one another. Much as we’re doing to one another in this endless war…”

“Is that what this is all about?” Navani asked. “Why you want me to combine the Lights so badly?”

“I need to know if you’re right,” Raboniel said. “If you are, then so much of what I’ve planned will collapse. I wonder … whether sometimes I can’t see clearly anymore. Whether I assume what I want to be true is true. You live long enough, Navani, and you forget to be careful. You forget to question.”

Raboniel nodded toward Navani’s desk. “No luck today?”

“No interest,” Navani said. “I think it is time for me to accept your initial offer and start carrying water.”

“Why waste yourself like that?” Raboniel asked, her rhythm becoming intense. “Navani, you can still defeat me. If it wasn’t possible for humans to outthink the Fused, you’d have fallen during the first few Returns. The first few Desolations, as you call them.

“Instead you always pushed us back. You fought with stones, and you beat us. My kind pretends we know so much, but during many Returns, we’d find ourselves struggling to catch up to your kind. That is our terrible secret. We hear the rhythms, we understand Roshar and the spren. But the rhythms don’t change. The spren don’t change.

“If you and I discover this secret together, you’ll be able to use it better than I will. Watch and see. At the very least, prove me wrong. Show me that our two Lights can meld and mix as you theorize.”

Navani considered it, though storms, she knew she shouldn’t have. It was another trick—another catalyst added to the system to push the reaction forward. Yet Navani couldn’t lie to herself. She did want to know. As always, questions teased her. Questions were disorder awaiting organization. The more you understood, the more the world aligned. The more the chaos made sense, as all things should.

“I’ve run into a problem,” Navani said, finally taking a sip from her cup. “I can make the two Lights intersect—I can get them to pool around the same gemstone, swirling out like smoke caught in a current of air. But they won’t mix.”

“Opposites,” Raboniel said, leaning forward to look at the diagrams and notes Navani had made on each failed attempt.

“No, merely inert substances,” Navani said. “The vast majority of elements, when combined, produce no reaction. I’d have long ago named these two things immiscible if I hadn’t seen Towerlight.”

“It is what gave me the original idea,” Raboniel said. “I decided if there was a hybrid between Honor’s Light and Cultivation’s, there must be a reason no one had mixed Odium’s Light with either.”

“Questions are the soul of science,” Navani said, sipping her wine. “But assumptions must be proven, Ancient One. From my research I believe these two aren’t opposites, but it isn’t proven to me yet.”

“And to prove it?”

“We need an emulsifier,” Navani said. “Something that causes them to mix. Unfortunately, I can’t fathom what such an emulsifier would be, though it might be related to sound. I only recently learned that Stormlight responds to tones.”

“Yes,” Raboniel said, taking a sphere off the desk. “The sounds of Roshar.”

“Can you hear the Light?” Navani asked.

Raboniel hummed—then thought to nod—her response. She held up a diamond, crystalline and pure, filled with Stormlight from the highstorm the day before. “You have to concentrate, and know what you’re seeking, to hear it from a sphere. A pure tone, extremely soft.”

Navani hit the proper tuning fork, letting the tone ring in the room. Raboniel nodded. “Yes, that is it. Exactly the same. Only…”

Navani sat up. “Only?”

“The sphere’s tone has a rhythm to it,” Raboniel explained, eyes closed as she held the sphere. “Each Light has a rhythm. Honor’s is stately. Cultivation’s is stark and staccato, but builds.”

“And Odium’s?”

“Chaos,” she said, “but with a certain strange logic to it. The longer you listen, the more sense it makes.”

Navani sat back, sipping her wine, wishing she had access to Rushu and the other scholars. Raboniel had forbidden her from drawing on their expertise in this matter, giving the problem to Navani alone. Navani, who wasn’t a scholar.

What would Jasnah do in this situation? Well, other than find a way to kill Raboniel?

Navani felt the answers were right in front of her. So often, that was the case with science. The ancient humans had fought with stone weapons, but the secrets to metallurgy had been within their grasp.…