Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

The dark mass pulsed and throbbed. Black veins as thick as a man’s leg ran from it and melded with the ground nearby. A heart. It beat an irregular rhythm, bum-ba-ba-bum instead of the common ba-bum of her own heartbeat.

Give in.

Join the revel.

Shallan, listen to me.

She shook herself. That last voice had been different. She’d heard it before, hadn’t she?

She looked to the side, and found her shadow on the ground, pointed the wrong way, toward the moonlight instead of away from it. The shadow crept up the wall, with eyes that were white holes, glowing faintly.

I’m not your enemy. But the heart is a trap. Take caution.

Distantly, drums started sounding on the top of the wall. The Voidbringers were attacking.

It all threatened to overwhelm her. The thumping heart, the strange processions in rings around it, the drums and the panic that the Fused were coming for her because she’d been seen.

Veil seized control. She’d accomplished her goal, she’d scouted the area, and she had information about the Oathgate. It was time to get out.

She turned and—forcibly—put on Kishi’s face. She crossed the stream of crawling, moaning people. She flowed back into the outer ring of revelers, before slipping out.

She didn’t check on her guide. She walked to the rim of the Oathgate platform and, without a look back, leaped off.

Our revelation is fueled by the theory that the Unmade can perhaps be captured like ordinary spren. It would require a special prison. And Melishi.

—From drawer 30-20, third emerald

Kaladin charged up the stairwell beside Highmarshal Azure, the sound of drums breaking the air like echoes of thunder from the departed storm. He counted the beats.

Storms. That’s my section under assault.

“Damnation these creatures!” Azure muttered. “I’m missing something. Like white on black…” She glanced at Kaladin. “Just tell me. Who are you?”

“Who are you?”

The two burst out of the stairwell onto the wall’s top, entering a scene of chaos. The soldiers on duty had lit the enormous oil lamps on the tops of the towers, giving light to the dark walls. Fused swooped between them, trailing dark violet light, attacking with long, bloodied lances.

Men lay screaming on the ground or huddled in pairs, holding up shields as if trying to hide from the nightmares above.

Kaladin and Azure exchanged a look, then nodded to one another. Later.

She broke left and Kaladin dashed right, shouting for men to form up. Syl spun around his head, concerned, anxious. Kaladin scooped a shield off the ground and seized a soldier by the arm, towing him around and locking shields. A swooping lance clanged off the metal, sending a jolt through Kaladin. The Voidbringer flew past.

Pained, Kaladin ignored the wounded and bleeding who crawled with corrupted painspren. He pulled the scattered remnants of the Eighth Platoon back together while his own men stumbled to a halt outside the stairwell. These were their friends, the people with whom they shared a barrack.

“To your right and up!” Syl shouted.

Kaladin set himself and used his shield to push aside the lance of a Voidbringer who soared past. A second Voidbringer followed, wearing a long skirt of rippling crimson cloth. The way she flew was almost mesmerizing.… Right up until her lance pinned Captain Deedanor against the wall’s battlements, then lifted him and tossed him over.

He screamed as he plummeted toward the ground below. Kaladin almost broke rank and ran for him, but held himself in the line by force. He reached, by instinct, for the Stormlight in his pouch—but held himself back. Using it for Lashing would attract screamers, and in this darkness, even drawing in a small amount would reveal him for what he was. The Fused would all attack him together; he would risk undermining the mission to save the entire city.

Today, he protected best through discipline, order, and keeping a level head. “Squads One and Two, with me!” he shouted. “Vardinar, you’ve got Five and Six; have your men hand out pikes, then grab bows and get to the tower’s top. Noro, take squads Three and Four and set up on the wall walk just past the tower. My men will hold here on this side. Go, go!”

Nobody voiced a complaint as they scrambled to do as he said. Kaladin heard shouts from the highmarshal farther down the wall, but didn’t have a chance to see how she was doing. As his two squads finally got a proper shield wall mounted, a human corpse slammed down onto the wall walk nearby. It had been dropped from very high up—or perhaps it had been Lashed into the sky and had only now fallen. Most of the wounded men were archers from the Eighth Platoon; it looked like they’d been swept from the top of the tower.

We can’t fight these things, Kaladin thought. The Voidbringers attacked in sweeping dives, coming in from all directions. It was impossible to maintain a normal formation beneath that assault.

Syl shifted into the shape of a girl and looked at him questioningly. He shook his head. He could fight without Stormlight. He’d protected people long before he could fly.

He started to call out orders, but a Fused passed by, slapping at their pikes with a large shield. Before the men could get them reoriented, another crashed down into the center of them, sending soldiers stumbling. A violet glow steamed from the creature’s body as it swept around with its lance, wielding it like an oversized staff.

Kaladin ducked by instinct, trying to maneuver his pike. The Fused grinned as the formation disintegrated. It was male, reminiscent of a Parshendi, with layered plates of chitin armor creeping down across its forehead and rising from cheeks that were marbled black and red.

Kaladin leveled his pike, but the creature lunged along it and pressed its hand against Kaladin’s chest. He felt himself grow lighter, but also suddenly begin to fall backward.

The creature had Lashed him.

Kaladin fell back, like he was toppling off a ledge, falling along the wall toward a group of his men. The Fused wanted Kaladin to crash into them, but it had made a mistake.

The sky was his.

Kaladin responded immediately to the Lashing, and reoriented himself in the blink of an eye. Down became the direction he was falling: along the walkway, toward the towering guard post. His men seemed to be stuck to the side of a cliff, turning toward him, horrified.

Kaladin was able to shove against the stone with the end of his pike, moving him to the side so he whooshed past his men instead of crashing into them. Syl joined him as a ribbon, and he twisted, falling feet-first along the walkway toward the guard tower below.

He was able to nudge himself so he fell right into the open doorway. He dropped the pike, then caught the lip of the doorway as he passed through it. He stopped with a jarring lurch, arms protesting with pain, but that maneuver slowed him enough. When he swung and let go, he dropped through the room—past the dining table, which seemed glued to the wall—and landed on the opposite wall, inside the building. He stepped over to the other doorway, which looked out onto the walk where he’d positioned Noro’s squad. Beard and Ved held pikes toward the sky, looking anxious.

“Kaladin!” Syl said. “Above!”

He looked upward and out the doorway he’d come through. The Voidbringer who had Lashed him came soaring downward, carrying a lance. It curved to bypass the tower, preparing to whip around and attack Beard and the men on the other side.