Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

“Where are Ma and Seland?” Veil asked. She had prepared packages for the two women who stayed here with Grund.

“Moved out to the old tinker’s place,” Grund said. He thumbed upward, toward the sagging ceiling. “Thought this place was getting too dangerous.”

“You sure you don’t want to do the same?”

“Nah,” he said. “I can finally move without kicking someone.”

She left him and shoved her hands in her pockets, wearing her new coat and hat against the cool air. She’d hoped that Kholinar would prove to be warmer, after so long on the Shattered Plains or Urithiru. But it was cold here too, suffering a season of winter weather. Perhaps the arrival of the Everstorm was to be blamed.

She checked in on Muri next, the former seamstress with three daughters. She was of second nahn, high ranking for a darkeyes, and had run a successful business in a town near Revolar. Now she trolled the water ditches following storms for the corpses of rats and cremlings.

Muri always had some gossip that was amusing but generally pointless. Veil left about an hour later and made her way out of the market, dropping her last package in the lap of a random beggar.

The old beggar sniffed the package, then whooped with excitement. “The Swiftspren!” he said, nudging one of the other beggars. “Look, the Swiftspren!” He cackled, digging into the package, and his friend roused from his sleep and snatched some flatbread.

“Swiftspren?” Veil asked.

“That’s you!” he said. “Yup, yup! I heard of you. Robbing rich folk all through the city, you do! And nobody can stop you, ’cuz you’re a spren. Can walk through walls, you can. White hat, white coat. Don’t always appear the same, do ya?”

The beggar started stuffing his face. Veil smiled—her reputation was spreading. She’d enhanced it by sending Ishnah and Vathah out, wearing illusions to look like Veil, giving away food. Surely, the cult couldn’t ignore her much longer. Pattern hummed as she stretched, exhaustionspren—all of the corrupted variety—spinning about her in the air, little red whirlwinds. The merchant she’d stolen from earlier had chased her away himself, and had been nimble for his age.

“Why?” Pattern asked.

“Why what?” Veil asked. “Why is the sky blue, the sun bright? Why do storms blow, or rains fall?”

“Mmmm … Why are you so happy about feeding so few?”

“Feeding these few is something we can do.”

“So is jumping from a building,” he said—frank, as if he didn’t understand the sarcasm he used. “But we do not do this. You lie, Shallan.”

“Veil.”

“Your lies wrap other lies. Mmm…” He sounded drowsy. Could spren get drowsy? “Remember your Ideal, the truth you spoke.”

She shoved hands in her pockets. Evening was coming, the sun slipping toward the western horizon. As if it were running from the Origin and the storms.

It was the individual touch, the light in the eyes of people she gave to, that really excited her. Feeding them felt so much more real than the rest of the plan to infiltrate the cult and investigate the Oathgate.

It’s too small, she thought. That was what Jasnah would say. I’m thinking too small.

Along the street, she passed people who whimpered and suffered. Far too many hungerspren in the air, and fearspren at nearly every corner. She had to do something to help.

Like throwing a thimbleful of water onto a bonfire.

She stood at an intersection, head bowed, as the shadows grew long, reaching toward night. Chanting broke her out of her trance. How long had she been standing there?

Flickering light, orange and primal, painted a street to her left. No sphere glowed that color. She walked toward it, pulling off her hat and sucking in Stormlight. She released it in a puff, then stepped through, trailing tendrils that wrapped around her and transformed her shape.

People had gathered, as they usually did, when the Cult of Moments paraded. Swiftspren broke through them, wearing the costume of a spren from her notes—notes she’d lost to the sea. A spren shaped like a glowing arrowhead that wove through the sky around skyeels.

Golden tassels streamed from her back, long, with arrowhead shapes at the ends. Her entire front was wrapped in cloth that trailed behind, her arms, legs, and face covered. Swiftspren flowed among the cultists, and drew stares even from them.

I have to do more, she thought. I have to think grander schemes.

Could Shallan’s lies help her be something more than a broken girl from rural Jah Keved? A girl who was, deep down, terrified that she had no idea what she was doing.

The cultists chanted softly, repeating the words of the leaders at the front.

“Our time has passed.”

“Our time has passed.”

“The spren have come.”

“The spren have come.”

“Give them our sins.”

“Give them our sins.…”

Yes … she could feel it. The freedom these people felt. It was the peace of surrender. They coursed down the street, proffering their torches and lanterns toward the sky, wearing the garb of spren. Why worry? Embrace the release, embrace the transition, embrace the coming of storm and spren.

Embrace the end.

Swiftspren breathed in their chants and saturated herself with their ideas. She became them, and she could hear it, whispering in the back of her mind.

Surrender.

Give me your passion. Your pain. Your love.

Give up your guilt.

Embrace the end.

Shallan, I’m not your enemy.

That last one stood out, like a scar on a beautiful man’s face. Jarring.

She came to herself. Storms. She’d initially thought that this group might lead her up to the revel on the Oathgate platform, but … she’d let herself be carried away by the darkness. Trembling, she stopped in place.

The others stopped around her. The illusion—the sprenlike tassels behind her—continued to stream, even when she wasn’t walking. There was no wind.

The cultists’ chanting broke off, and corrupted awespren exploded around several of their heads. Soot-black puffs. Some fell to their knees. To them—wrapped in streaming cloth, face obscured, ignoring wind and gravity—she would look like an actual spren.

“There are spren,” Shallan said to the gathered crowd, using Lightweaving to twist and warp her voice, “and there are spren. You followed the dark ones. They whisper for you to abandon yourselves. They lie.”

The cultists gasped.

“We do not want your devotion. When have spren ever demanded your devotion? Stop dancing in the streets and be men and women again. Strip off those idiotic costumes and return to your families!”

They didn’t move quickly enough, so she sent her tassels streaming upward, curling about one another, lengthening. A powerful light flashed from her.

“Go!” she shouted.

They fled, some throwing off their costumes as they went. Shallan waited, trembling, until she was alone. She let the glow vanish and shrouded herself in blackness, then stepped off the street.

When she emerged from the blackness, she looked like Veil again. Storms. She’d … she’d become one of them so easily. Was her mind so quickly corrupted?

She wrapped her arms around herself, trailing through streets and markets. Jasnah would have been strong enough to keep going with them until reaching the platform. And if these hadn’t been allowed up—most that wandered the streets weren’t privileged enough to join the feast—then she’d have done something else. Perhaps take the place of one of the feast guards.