He turned and Lashed himself downward.
Into the clouds, down toward the plateau where Dalinar had gone.
* * *
Shallan rushed into the room as the storms crashed together outside.
What was she doing? There wasn’t time. Even if she could open a portal, those storms were here. She wouldn’t have time to get people through.
They were dead. All of them. Thousands had probably already been swept to their deaths by the stormwall.
She ran to the last lamp anyway, infusing its spheres.
The floor started to glow.
Ardents jumped to their feet in surprise and Inadara yelped. Adolin stumbled in through the doorway, a crashing wind and a spray of angry rain trailing him.
Beneath them, the intricate design shone from within. It looked almost like stained glass. Gesturing frantically for Adolin to join her, Shallan ran across to the lock on the wall.
“Sword,” she shouted at Adolin over the sounds of storms outside. “In there!” Renarin had long since dismissed his.
Adolin obeyed, scrambling forward, summoning his Shardblade. He rammed it into the slot, which again flowed to fit the weapon.
Nothing happened.
“It’s not working,” Adolin shouted.
Only one answer.
Shallan grabbed the hilt of his sword and whipped it out—ignoring the scream in her mind that came from touching it—then tossed it aside. Adolin’s sword vanished to mist.
A deep truth.
“There is something wrong with your Blade, and with all Blades.” She hesitated for just a second. “All but mine. Pattern!”
He formed in her hands, the Blade she’d used to kill. The hidden soul. Shallan rammed it into the slot, and the weapon vibrated in her hands and glowed. Something deep within the plateau unlocked.
Outside, lightning fell and men screamed.
Now the mechanism’s operation became clear to her. Shallan threw her weight against the sword, pushing it before her like the spoke on a mill. The inner wall of the building was like a ring inside a tube—it could rotate, while the outer wall remained in place. The sword moved the inner wall as she pushed on it, though it stuck at first, the fallen blocks of the cut doorway getting in the way. Adolin threw his weight against the sword with her, and together they pushed it around the circle until they were above the picture of Urithiru, half the circumference from Natanatan where she’d begun. She pulled her Blade free.
The ten lamps faded like closing eyes.
* * *
Kaladin followed Szeth into the storm, diving into the blackness, falling amid the churning winds and the blasting lightning. Wind attacked him, tossing him about, and no Lashings could prevent this. He might be master of the winds, but storms were another thing.
Take care, Syl sent. My father hates you. This is his domain. And it is mixed with something even more terrible, another storm. Their storm.
Nevertheless, the highstorms were the source of Stormlight—and being in here energized Kaladin. His reserves of Stormlight burst alight, as they obviously did for Szeth. The assassin suddenly reappeared as a stark white explosion that zoomed through the maelstrom toward the plateaus.
Kaladin growled, Lashing himself after Szeth. Lightning of a dozen colors flashed around him, red, violet, white, yellow. Rain soaked him. Rocks spun past him, some colliding, but the Stormlight healed him as quickly as the debris did damage.
Szeth moved along the plateaus, coursing just above them, and Kaladin followed with difficulty. This churning wind was tough to navigate, and the darkness was near absolute. Flashes lit the Plains in fitful bursts. Fortunately, Szeth’s glow could not be hidden, and Kaladin kept his attention on that blazing beacon.
Faster.
Just as Zahel had taught weeks ago, Szeth didn’t need to defeat Kaladin to win. He just had to get to those Kaladin protected.
Faster.
A burst of lightning illuminated the battle plateaus. And beyond them, Kaladin caught a glimpse of the army. Thousands of men huddled on the large circular plateau. Many hunkered down. Others panicked.
The lightning was gone in a moment, and the land became dark again, though Kaladin had seen enough to know this was a disaster. A cataclysm. Men being blown off the edge, others crushed by falling rocks. In minutes, the army would be gone. Storms, Kaladin wasn’t even certain if he could survive this nexus of destruction.
Szeth crashed down among them, a glowing light amid the blackness. As Kaladin Lashed himself down in that direction, lightning struck again.
Its light revealed Szeth standing on an empty plateau, baffled. The army was gone.
* * *
The sounds of the raging storm outside vanished. Shallan shivered, wet and cold.
“Almighty above…” Adolin breathed. “I’m almost scared of what we’ll find.”
Rotating the inside wall of the building had moved their doorway opposite hardened crem. Perhaps there had been a natural doorway here before; Adolin summoned his Blade to cut a hole.
Pattern… her Shardblade… vanished back to mist, and the room’s mechanisms settled down. She didn’t hear anything outside, no crashing of winds, no thunder.
Emotions fought inside of her. She’d saved herself and Adolin, it appeared. But the rest of the army… Adolin cut a doorway; sunlight spilled through it. Shallan walked to the opening, nervous, passing Inadara, who sat in the corner, looking overwhelmed.
At the doorway, Shallan looked out at the same plateau as before, only now it was sunlit and calm. Four armies’ worth of men and women crouched, soggy and wet, many holding their heads and hunkering down against wind that no longer blew. Nearby, two figures stood beside a massive Ryshadium stallion. Dalinar and Navani, who had apparently been on their way to the central building.
Beyond them spread the peaks of an unfamiliar mountain range. It was the same plateau, and here was in a ring with nine others. To Shallan’s left, an enormous ribbed tower—shaped like cups of increasingly smaller sizes stacked atop one another—broke the peaks. Urithiru.
The plateau hadn’t contained the portal.
The plateau was the portal.
* * *
Szeth screamed words at Kaladin, but those were lost in the tempest. Rocks crashed down around them, ripped from somewhere distant. Kaladin was sure he heard terrible screams over the winds, as red spren he’d never seen before—like small meteors, trailing light behind them—zipped around him.
Szeth screamed again. Kaladin caught the word this time. “How!”
Kaladin’s answer was to strike with his Blade. Szeth parried violently, and they clashed, two glowing figures in the blackness.
“I know this column!” Szeth screamed. “I have seen its like before! They went to the city, didn’t they!”
The assassin launched himself into the air. Kaladin was all too eager to follow. He wanted out of this tempest.
Szeth screamed away, heading westward, away from the storm with the red lightning—following the path of the common highstorm. That alone was dangerous enough.
Kaladin gave chase, but that proved difficult in the buffeting winds. It wasn’t that they served Szeth more than Kaladin; the tempest was simply unpredictable. They’d shove him one way and Szeth another.
What happened if Szeth lost him?
He knows where Dalinar went, Kaladin thought, gritting his teeth as a flash of sudden whiteness blinded him from one side. I don’t.
He couldn’t protect Dalinar if he couldn’t find the man. Unfortunately, a chase through this darkness favored the person who was trying to escape. Slowly, Szeth pulled ahead.