Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

The right words. Dalinar would only respond to the right words. Plus, whatever Taravangian wrote seemed too much a risk to Kharbranth. He couldn’t sacrifice his home. He couldn’t.

Worse, each day he found time slipping away faster and faster. He’d wake from a nap in his chair and the entire day had passed. Usually it was the pain that woke him.

He wasn’t simply old. He wasn’t simply feeble. This was worse.

Today, Taravangian forced himself to move to keep from drifting off again. He hobbled through his prison of a house. Trying so hard to think. There had to be a solution!

Go to Dalinar, a part of him urged. Don’t write him. Talk to him. Was Taravangian actually waiting on the right words, or was there another reason he delayed? A willing disregard for the truth. The slightly smarter version of him didn’t want to give this up to the Blackthorn.

He shuffled toward the small bathroom on the main floor, leafing through his notebook, looking over hundreds of crossed-out notes and ideas. The answer was here. He felt it. It was so frustrating, knowing how smart he could be, yet living below that capacity so much of the time. Other people didn’t understand intelligence and stupidity. They assumed people who were stupid were somehow less human—less capable of making decisions or plans.

That wasn’t it at all. He could plan, he merely needed time. He could remember things, given a chance to drill them into his brain. Part of being smart, in his experience, was about speed more than capacity. That and the ability to memorize. When he’d created problems to test his daily intelligence, they had taken these dynamics into account, measuring how quickly he could do problems and how well he could remember the equations and principles needed to do so.

He had none of that ability now, but he needed none of it. The answer was here, in the notebook. He settled down on the stool in his bathroom—too tired to move the seat elsewhere—as he flipped through the pages.

Taravangian had a huge advantage over almost everyone else. Others, stupid or smart, tended to overestimate their abilities. Not Taravangian. He knew exactly how it felt to be both smart and stupid. He could use that.

He had to. He needed to use every advantage he had. He had to create a plan as daring as the Diagram—and do so without the gifts Cultivation had given him.

The plan of a man, not a god.

He racked his brain for anything in the Diagram relating to Nightblood, the sword. But there was nothing. They hadn’t anticipated the sword. Still, he had been given a report by agents he’d sent to research it by interviewing one of its former bearers. Taravangian pulled tidbits from that report from the recesses of his mind, then wrote them on a fresh page of his notebook.

The sword feeds on the essence that makes up all things, he wrote, scribbling by the light of a single ruby sphere. It will draw out Stormlight eagerly, feasting. But if there is no Stormlight, it will feed on one’s own soul. The agent had noted that Nightblood worked like a larkin, the beasts that could feed on Investiture.

What else did he know? What other clues could he give himself?

Odium has greatly expanded intelligence, he wrote. He can be in many places at once and can command the elements. But he feels the same way a man does. He can be tricked. And he seems to have a central … self, a core person.

Szeth had refused to listen to Taravangian. However, the man had come when Taravangian seeded the proper incentive out into the world. So maybe he didn’t need to make Szeth do anything other than arrive in the same place as Odium. The Shin assassin was reckless and unstable. Surely Szeth would strike out against Odium if he saw the god manifesting.

But how? How can I possibly make the timing work?

Taravangian sighed, his head thumping with pain. He looked across at the small hand mirror he’d set up on the counter. The ruby sphere he was using for light reflected in the mirror.

But his face did not reflect.

Instead he saw a shadowy figure, female, with long flowing black hair. The entire figure was a shadow, the eyes like white holes into nothingness. Taravangian blinked very slowly, then began to tremble with fear. Storms.

Storms.

He attempted to gather his wits and control his emotions. He probably would have run to hide if he had the strength. In this case, his weakening body served him, as it forced him to sit there until he could control himself.

“H … hello, Sja-anat,” he finally managed to say. “I had not realized any of the Un … Unmade were here.”

What is wrong with you? a voice said in his mind, warped and distorted, like a dozen voices overlapping. What has happened to you?

“This is how I am sometimes. It is … the Nightwatcher’s fault.”

No, the other one. The god. She touched three that I know. The child. The general. And you. The Old Magic … the Nightwatcher … I begin to wonder if it was all a cover, these many centuries. A way for her to secretly bring in people she wanted to touch. She has been playing a far more subtle game than Odium realized.

Why did you go to her? What did you ask?

“For the capacity to stop what was coming,” he said. He was too frightened to lie. Even the smart him hadn’t wanted to face one of these things.

She sows many seeds, Sja-anat said. Can you do it? Can you stop what is coming?

“I don’t know,” Taravangian whispered. “Can it be stopped? Can … he be stopped?”

I am uncertain. The power behind him is strong, but his mind is exposed. The mind and the power seek different goals. This leaves him … not weak, but vulnerable.

“I have wondered,” Taravangian said, glancing down at his notebook, “if he is merely playing with me. I assume he looks over my shoulder at everything I write.”

No. He is not everywhere. His power is, but he is not. There are limits, and his Voidspren eyes fear coming too close to a Bondsmith.

Something itched at Taravangian through the fear and confusion. Sja-anat … she spoke like she wanted Odium to fall. Wasn’t there something in the Diagram about this? He tried to remember.

Storms. Was she tricking him into confessing? Should he stay quiet and not say anything?

No. He had to try.

“I need a way to lure Odium to me,” Taravangian said. “At the right time.”

I will arrange for you to be given gemstones with two of my children inside, she said. Odium searches for them. He watches me, certain I will make a mistake and reveal my true intentions. We are Connected, so my children appearing will draw his attention.

Good luck, human, when he does come. You are not protected from him as many on this world are. You have made deals that exempt you from such safety.

She faded from the mirror, and Taravangian hunched over, trembling as he continued to write.

I look forward to ruling the humans.

—Musings of El, on the first of the Final Ten Days

To Dalinar, the scent of smoke was inexorably tied to that of blood. He would have trouble counting how many times he’d performed this same long hike across a fresh battlefield. It had become a habit to perform a kind of autopsy of the fighting as he surveyed its aftermath. One could read the movements of troops by the way the dead had fallen.

Swaths of singers there indicated a line had broken and chaos had ruled. Human corpses bunched up against the wide river showed the enemy had used the waters—sluggish, since it had been a few days since the last storm—to push an entire company onto poor footing. Bodies stuck with arrows in the front indicated the first beats of the battle—and arrows in the back indicated the last ones, as soldiers broke and fled. He passed many corpses stuck with arrows bearing white “goosefeathers,” a kind of fletching the Horneaters had delivered in batches to aid the war effort.