Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

TWENTY-FOUR YEARS AGO

Dalinar cursed as smoke billowed out of the fireplace. He shoved his weight against the lever and managed to budge it, reopening the chimney flue. He coughed, backing up and waving smoke away from his face.

“We are going to need to see that replaced,” Evi said from the sofa where she was doing needlework.

“Yeah,” Dalinar said, thumping down to the floor before the fire.

“At least you got to it quickly. Today we will not need to scrub the walls, and the life will be as white as a sun at night!”

Evi’s native idioms didn’t always translate well into Alethi.

The fire’s heat was welcome, as Dalinar’s clothing was still damp from the rains. He tried to ignore the ever-present sound of the Weeping’s rain outside, instead watching a pair of flamespren dance along one of the logs. These seemed vaguely human, with ever-shifting figures. He followed one with his eyes as it leaped toward the other.

He heard Evi rise, and thought she might be off to seek the privy again. She instead settled down next to him and took his arm, then sighed in contentment.

“That can’t be comfortable,” Dalinar said.

“And yet you are doing it.”

“I’m not the one who is…” He looked at her belly, which had begun to round.

Evi smiled. “My condition does not make me so frail that I risk breaking by sitting on the floor, beloved.” She pulled his arm tighter. “Look at them. They play so eagerly!”

“It’s like they’re sparring,” Dalinar said. “I can almost see the little blades in their hands.”

“Must everything be fighting to you?”

He shrugged.

She leaned her head on his arm. “Can’t you just enjoy it, Dalinar?”

“Enjoy what?”

“Your life. You went through so much to make this kingdom. Can’t you be satisfied, now that you’ve won?”

He stood up, pulling his arm from her grip, and crossed the chamber to pour himself a drink.

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed the way you act,” Evi said. “Perking up whenever the king speaks of the smallest conflict beyond our borders. Having the scribes read to you of great battles. Always talking about the next duel.”

“I’m not to have that much longer,” Dalinar grumbled, then took a sip of wine. “Gavilar says it’s foolish to endanger myself, says someone is bound to try to use one of those duels as a ploy against him. I’ll have to get a champion.” He stared at his wine.

He’d never had a high opinion of dueling. It was too fake, too sanitized. But at least it was something.

“It’s like you’re dead,” Evi said.

Dalinar looked over at her.

“It’s like you only live when you can fight,” she continued. “When you can kill. Like a blackness from old stories. You live only by taking lives from others.”

With that pale hair and light golden skin, she was like a glowing gemstone. She was a sweet, loving woman who deserved better than the treatment he gave her. He forced himself to go back and sit down beside her.

“I still think the flamespren are playing,” she said.

“I’ve always wondered,” Dalinar said. “Are they made of fire themselves? It looks like they are, and yet what of emotion spren? Are angerspren then made of anger?”

Evi nodded absently.

“And what of gloryspren?” Dalinar said. “Made of glory? What is glory? Could gloryspren appear around someone who is delusional, or perhaps very drunk—who only thinks they’ve accomplished something great, while everyone else is standing around mocking them?”

“A mystery,” she said, “sent by Shishi.”

“But don’t you ever wonder?”

“To what end?” Evi said. “We will know eventually, when we return to the One. No use troubling our minds now about things we cannot understand.”

Dalinar narrowed his eyes at the flamespren. That one did have a sword. A miniature Shardblade.

“This is why you brood so often, husband,” Evi said. “It isn’t healthy to have a stone curdling in your stomach, still wet with moss.”

“I … What?”

“You must not think such strange thoughts. Who put such things into your mind anyway?”

He shrugged, but thought of two nights before, staying up late and drinking wine beneath the rain canopy with Gavilar and Navani. She’d talked and talked about her research into spren, and Gavilar had simply grunted, while making notations in glyphs on a set of his maps. She’d spoken with such passion and excitement, and Gavilar had ignored her.

“Enjoy the moment,” Evi told him. “Close your eyes and contemplate what the One has given you. Seek the peace of oblivion, and bask in the joy of your own sensation.”

He closed his eyes as she suggested, and tried to simply enjoy being here with her. “Can a man actually change, Evi? Like those spren change?”

“We are all different aspects of the One.”

“Then can you change from one aspect to another?”

“Of course,” Evi said. “Is not your own doctrine about transformation? About a man being Soulcast from crass to glorious?”

“I don’t know if it’s working.”

“Then petition the One,” she said.

“In prayer? Through the ardents?”

“No, silly. Yourself.”

“In person?” Dalinar asked. “Like, at a temple?”

“If you wish to meet the One in person, you must travel to the Valley,” she said. “There you can speak with the One, or to his avatar, and be granted—”

“The Old Magic,” Dalinar hissed, opening his eyes. “The Nightwatcher. Evi, don’t say things like that.” Storms, her pagan heritage popped up at the strangest times. She could be talking good Vorin doctrine, then out came something like that.

Fortunately, she spoke of it no more. She closed her eyes and hummed softly. Finally, a knock came at the outer door to his rooms.

Hathan, his room steward, would answer that. Indeed, Dalinar heard the man’s voice outside, and that was followed by a light rap on the chamber door. “It is your brother, Brightlord,” Hathan said through the door.

Dalinar leaped, opening the door and passing the short master-servant. Evi followed, trailing along with one hand touching the wall, a habit of hers. They passed open windows that looked down upon a sodden Kholinar, flickering lanterns marking where people moved through the streets.

Gavilar waited in the sitting room, dressed in one of those new suits with the stiff jacket and buttons up the sides of the chest. His dark hair curled to his shoulders, and was matched by a fine beard.

Dalinar hated beards; they got caught in your helm. He couldn’t deny its effect on Gavilar though. Looking at Gavilar in his finery, one didn’t see a backwater thug—a barely civilized warlord who had crushed and conquered his way to the throne. No, this man was a king.

Gavilar rapped a set of papers against the palm of his hand.

“What?” Dalinar asked.

“Rathalas,” Gavilar said, shoving the papers toward Evi as she entered.

“Again!” Dalinar said. It had been years since he’d visited the Rift, that giant trench where he’d won his Shardblade.