Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive 2)

She settled back, thinking about the powers described. Would the others be appearing, then? As she and Jasnah had? Men who could glide elegantly across the ground as if they weighed nothing, women who could melt stone with a touch. Pattern had offered some few insights, but mostly he had been of use telling her what sounded likely to have been real, and what from the book was a mistake based on hearsay. His memory was spotty, but growing much better, and hearing what the book said often made him remember more.

Right now, he buzzed on the seat beside her in a contented way. The carriage hit a bump—it was rough out here—but at least in the coach, she could read and reference other books at the same time. That would have been practically impossible while riding.

The coach did make her feel shut away, though. Not everyone who tries to take care of you is trying to do what your father did, she told herself firmly.

Adolin’s warned-of soreness had never manifested, of course. Originally, she’d felt a small amount of pain in her thighs from holding herself in place in the saddle, but Stormlight had made it vanish.

“Mmm,” Pattern said, climbing onto the door of the carriage. “It comes.”

Shallan looked out the window and felt a drop of water sprinkle against her face. Rock darkened as rain coated it. Soon, the air filled with a steady drizzle, light and pleasant. Though colder, it reminded her of some of the rainfalls back in Jah Keved. Here in the stormlands, it seemed that rain was rarely this soft.

She pulled down the shades and scooted to the center of the seat so she wouldn’t get rained on. She soon found that the pleasing sound of water muffled the soldiers’ voices and the monotonous sound of marching feet, making it a nice accompaniment to reading. A quote sparked her interest, and so she dug out her sketch of the Shattered Plains and her old maps of Stormseat.

I need to find out how these maps relate, she thought. Multiple points of reference, preferably. If she could identify two places on the Shattered Plains that matched points on her map of Stormseat, she could judge how large Stormseat had been—the old map had no scale—and then overlay it on the map of the Shattered Plains. That would give them some context.

What really drew her attention was the Oathgate. On the map of Stormseat, Jasnah thought it was represented by a round disc, like a dais, on the southwestern side of the city. Was there a doorway there on that dais somewhere? A magical portal to Urithiru? How did one of the knights operate it?

“Mmm,” Pattern said.

Shallan’s carriage started to slow. She frowned, scooting to the door, meaning to peek out the window. The door opened, however, to reveal Highlady Navani standing outside, Dalinar himself holding up an umbrella for her.

“Would you mind company?” Navani asked.

“Not at all, Brightness,” Shallan said, scrambling to pick up her papers and books, which she’d spread about on all of the seats. Navani patted Dalinar fondly on the arm, then climbed into the coach, using a towel to dry her feet and legs. She sat once Dalinar shut the door.

They started rolling again, and Shallan fidgeted with her papers. What was her relationship with Navani? She was Adolin’s aunt, but she was romantically involved with his father. So she was kind of Shallan’s future mother-in-law, though by Vorin tradition Dalinar would never be allowed to marry her.

Shallan had tried for weeks to get this woman to listen to her, and had failed. Now, she seemed to have been forgiven for bearing the news of Jasnah’s death. Did that mean Navani… liked her?

“So,” Shallan said, feeling awkward, “did Dalinar exile you to the coach to protect you from getting sore, as Adolin did to me?”

“Sore? Heavens no. If anyone should be riding in the coach, it’s Dalinar. When there is fighting to be done, we’ll need him rested and ready. I came because it’s rather difficult to read while riding in the rain.”

“Oh.” Shallan shifted in her seat.

Navani studied her, then finally sighed. “I have been ignoring things,” the older woman said, “that I should not. Because they bring me pain.”

“I am sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for.” Navani held out her hand toward Shallan. “May I?”

Shallan looked at her handful of notes, diagrams, and maps. She hesitated.

“You are engaged in work you obviously think very important,” Navani said softly. “This city Jasnah was searching for, according to the notes you sent me? Perhaps I can help you interpret my daughter’s intentions.”

Was there anything in these pages that would incriminate Shallan and reveal her powers? Her activities as Veil?

She didn’t think so. She’d been studying the Knights Radiant as part of it, but she was searching for their center of power, so that made sense. Hesitant, she handed over the papers.

Navani leafed through them, reading by spherelight. “The organization of these notes is… interesting.”

Shallan blushed. The organization made sense to her. As Navani continued to look through the notes, Shallan found herself growing oddly anxious. She’d wanted Navani’s help—she’d all but begged for it. Now, however, she found herself feeling like this woman was intruding. This had become Shallan’s project, her duty and her quest. Now that Navani had apparently overcome her grief, would she insist on taking over completely?

“You think like an artist,” Navani said. “I can see it in the way you put the notes together. Well, I suppose I can’t expect everything you do to be annotated precisely as I’d wish. A magical portal to another city? Jasnah actually believed in this?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm,” Navani said. “Then it’s probably true. That girl never did have the decency to be wrong an appropriate amount of the time.”

Shallan nodded, glancing at the notes, feeling anxious.

“Oh, don’t get so touchy,” Navani said. “I’m not going to steal the project from you.”

“I’m that transparent?” Shallan said.

“This research is obviously very important to you. I assume Jasnah persuaded you that the fate of the world itself rested upon the answers you find?”

“She did.”

“Damnation,” Navani said, flipping to the next page. “I shouldn’t have ignored you. It was petty.”

“It was the act of a grieving mother.”

“Scholars don’t have time for such nonsense.” Navani blinked, and Shallan caught a tear in the woman’s eye.

“You’re still human,” Shallan said, reaching across, putting her hand on Navani’s knee. “We can’t all be emotionless chunks of rock like Jasnah.”

Navani smiled. “She sometimes had the empathy of a corpse, didn’t she?”

“Comes from being too brilliant,” Shallan said. “You grow accustomed to everyone else being something of an idiot, trying to keep up with you.”

“Chana knows, I wondered sometimes how I raised that child without strangling her. By age six, she was pointing out my logical fallacies as I tried to get her to go to bed on time.”

Shallan grinned. “I always just assumed she was born in her thirties.”

“Oh, she was. It just took thirty-some years for her body to catch up.” Navani smiled. “I won’t take this from you, but neither should I allow you to attempt a project so important on your own. I would be part. Figuring out the puzzles that captivated her… it will be like having her again. My little Jasnah, insufferable and wonderful.”