Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive 2)

Good.

Dalinar finally landed on the plateau with a soft step, and Kaladin’s Lashing ran out.

“Seek shelter,” Kaladin said, the tempest in his veins dampening further. “I flew over a storm on my way here… a big one. Coming from the west.”

“We’re in the process of withdrawing.”

“Hurry,” Kaladin said. “I will deal with our friend.”

“Kaladin?”

Kaladin turned, glancing at the highprince, who stood tall, despite cradling one arm against his chest. Dalinar met his eyes. “You are what I’ve been looking for.”

“Yes. Finally.”

Kaladin turned and strode toward the assassin. He passed Bridge Four in a tight formation, and the men—at a barked command from Teft—threw something down before Kaladin. Blue lanterns, lit by oversized gems that had lasted the Weeping.

Bless them. Stormlight streamed up as he passed, filling him. With a sinking feeling, however, he noticed two corpses with burned-out eyes at their feet. Pedin and Mart. Eth clutched his brother’s body, weeping. Other bridgemen had lost limbs.

Kaladin snarled. No more. He would lose no further men to this monster.

“You ready?” he whispered.

Of course, Syl said in his head. I’m not the one we’ve been waiting on.

Burning with Stormlight, enraged and alight, Kaladin launched himself at the assassin and met him Blade against Blade.

* * *

“We’re dead…” Renarin muttered.

“Someone shut him up,” Shallan snapped. “Gag him if you have to.” She pointedly turned around, ignoring the raving prince. She still stood in the center of the muraled chamber. The pattern. What was the pattern?

A circular room. A thing on one side that adapted to fit different Shardblades. Depictions of Knights on the floor, glowing with Stormlight, pointing at a tower city, just as the myths described. Ten lamps on the walls. The lock hung over what she thought was a depiction of Natanatan, the kingdom of the Shattered Plains. It—

Ten lamps. With gems in them. Latticework of metal enclosing each one.

Shallan blinked, a shock running through her.

“It’s a fabrial.”

* * *

The assassin hurtled into the air. Captain Kaladin flew upward, chasing him, trailing Light.

“Status of the retreat!” Dalinar bellowed, crossing the plateau, his ribs smarting like nothing else, his wound from before little better. Storms. That one had faded as he fought, but now it ached something fierce. “Someone get me information!”

Scribes and ardents appeared from the nearby wreckage of tents. Shouts rose from around the plateau. The wind started to pick up—their period of reprieve, the short calm, was over. They needed to escape these plateaus. Now.

Dalinar reached Adolin and helped the young man to his feet. He looked quite a bit worse for wear, bruised, battered, dizzy. He flexed his right hand and winced in pain, then gingerly let it relax.

“Damnation,” Adolin said. “That bridgeboy is really one of them? The Knights Radiant?”

“Yes.”

Oddly, Adolin smiled, seeming satisfied. “Ha! I knew there was something wrong with that man.”

“Go,” Dalinar said, pushing Adolin along. “We need to get the army to move two plateaus over, that direction, where Shallan waits. Get over there and organize what you can.” He looked westward as the wind whipped up further, with bursts of rain. “Time is short.”

Adolin shouted for the bridgemen to join him, which they did, helping their wounded—though they were unfortunately forced to leave their dead. Several of them carried Adolin’s Shardplate as well, which was apparently spent.

Dalinar limped eastward across the plateau as fast as he could manage in his condition, searching for…

Yes. The place where he’d left Gallant. The horse snorted, shaking a wet mane. “Bless you, old friend,” Dalinar said, reaching the Ryshadium. Through the thunder and the chaos, the horse had not fled.

Dalinar moved much more easily once in the saddle, and eventually found Roion’s army pouring southward toward Shallan’s plateau, in organized ranks. He allowed himself a sigh of relief at their orderly march; the majority of the army had already crossed to the southern plateau, only one away from Shallan’s round one. That was wonderful. He couldn’t remember where Captain Khal had been sent, but with Roion himself fallen, Dalinar had assumed he’d left this army in chaos.

“Dalinar!” a voice called.

He turned to find the utterly incongruous sight of Sebarial and his mistress sitting beneath a canopy, eating dried sellafruit off a plate held by an awkward-looking soldier.

Sebarial raised a cup of wine toward Dalinar. “Hope you don’t mind,” Sebarial said. “We liberated your stores. They were blowing past at the time, headed for certain doom.”

Dalinar stared at them. Palona even had a novel out and was reading.

“You did this?” Dalinar asked, nodding toward Roion’s army.

“They were making a racket,” Sebarial said. “Wandering around, shouting at one another, weeping and wailing. Very poetic. Figured someone should get them moving. My army is already off on that other plateau. It’s getting rather cramped there, you realize.”

Palona flipped the page in her novel, barely paying attention.

“Have you seen Aladar?” Dalinar asked.

Sebarial gestured with his wine. “He should be about finished crossing as well. You’ll find him that direction. Downwind, happily.”

“Don’t dally,” Dalinar said. “You remain here, and you’re a dead man.”

“Like Roion?” Sebarial asked.

“Unfortunately.”

“So it is true,” Sebarial said, standing up, brushing off his trousers—which were somehow still dry. “Who am I going to make fun of now?” He shook his head sadly.

Dalinar rode off in the direction indicated. He noticed that, incredibly, a pair of bridgemen were still tailing him, only now catching up to where he’d found Sebarial. They saluted as Dalinar noticed them.

He told them where he was going, then sped up. Storms. In terms of pain, riding with broken ribs wasn’t much better than walking with them. Worse, actually.

He did find Aladar on the next plateau over, supervising his army as it seeped onto the perfectly round plateau that Shallan had indicated. Rust Elthal was there as well, wearing his Plate—one of the suits Adolin had won—and guiding one of Dalinar’s large, mechanical bridges. It settled down next to two others that spanned the chasm here, crossing in places the smaller bridges wouldn’t have been able to.

The plateau everyone was crowding onto was relatively small, by the scale of the Shattered Plains—but it was still several hundred yards across. It would fit the armies, hopefully.

“Dalinar?” Aladar asked, trotting his horse over. Lit by a large diamond—stolen from one of Navani’s fabrial lights, it seemed—hanging from his saddle, Aladar sported a soaked uniform and a bandage on his forehead, but appeared otherwise unharmed. “What in Kelek’s tongue is going on out here? I can’t get a straight answer from anyone.”

“Roion is dead,” Dalinar said wearily, reining in Gallant. “He fell with honor, attacking the assassin. The assassin, hopefully, has been distracted for a time.”