Look. Fine clothing that hadn’t been taken out of its trunk in a long, long time. So old that it saw the dust as part of itself.
Withering fruit that understood its purpose: decompose and stick its seeds to the rock, where they could hopefully weather storms long enough to sprout and gain purchase.
Swords, recently swung and glorying in their purpose fulfilled. Other weapons belonged to dead men, blades that had the faintest inkling that they’d failed somehow.
Living souls bobbed around, a swarm of them entering the Oathgate control chamber. One brushed Shallan. Drehy the bridgeman. For a brief moment she felt what it was like to be him. Worried for Kaladin. Panicked that nobody was in charge, that he would have to take command. He wasn’t a commander. You couldn’t be a rebel if you were in charge. He liked being told what to do—that way he could find a method to do it with style.
Drehy’s worries caused her own to bubble up. The bridgemen’s powers will fade without Kaladin, she thought. What of Vathah, Red, and Ishnah? I didn’t—
Focus. Something reached out from the back of her mind, grabbed those thoughts and feelings, and yanked them into the darkness. Gone.
She brushed a bead with her fingers. A large door, like a keep’s gate. She grabbed the sphere and shifted it to her safehand. Unfortunately, the next bead she touched was the palace itself. Momentarily stunned by the majesty of it, Shallan gaped. She held the entire palace in her hand.
Too large. She dropped it and kept searching.
Trash that still saw itself as a child’s toy.
A goblet that had been made from melted-down nails, taken from an old building.
There. She seized hold of a sphere and pressed Stormlight into it. A building rose before her, made entirely out of beads: a copy of the Oathgate control building. She managed to make its top rise only a few feet above the surface, most of the building sinking into the depths. The rooftop was within reach.
“On top of it!” she shouted.
She held the replica in place as Pattern scrambled onto the roof. Adolin followed, trailed by that ghostly spren and Azure. Finally, Kaladin picked up his pack and walked with his spren onto the rooftop.
Shallan joined them with the aid of a hand from Adolin. She clutched the sphere that was the soul of the building, and tried to make the bead structure move through the sea like a raft.
It resisted, sitting there motionless. Well, she had another plan. She scurried to the other side of the roof and stretched down, held by Pattern, to touch the sea again. She used the soul of the large door to make another standing platform. Pattern jumped down, followed by Adolin and Azure.
Once they’d all piled precariously on the door, Shallan let go of the building. It crashed down behind them, beads falling in a tumult, frightening some of the little green spren crawling among the beads nearby.
Shallan reconstructed the building on the other side of the door, with only the rooftop showing. They filed across.
They progressed like that—following building with door and door with building—inching toward that distant land. Each iteration took Stormlight, though she could reclaim some from each creation before it collapsed. Some of the eel-like spren with the long antennae followed them, curious, but the rest of the varieties—and there were dozens—let them pass without much notice.
“Mmm…” Pattern said. “Much emotion on the other side. Yes, this is good. It distracts them.”
The work was tiring and tedious, but step by step, Shallan moved them away from the frothing mess of the city of Kholinar. They passed the frightened lights of souls, the hungry spren who feasted on the emotions from the other side.
“Mmm…” Pattern whispered to her. “Look, Shallan. The lights of souls are no longer disappearing. People must be surrendering in Kholinar. I know you do not like the destruction of your own.”
That was good, but not unexpected. The parshmen had never massacred civilians, though she couldn’t say for certain what happened to Azure’s soldiers. She hoped fervently they were able to either escape or surrender.
Shallan had to edge her group frighteningly close to two of the spines that had emerged from the depths. Those gave no sign of having noticed them. Beyond, they reached a calmer space out among the beads. A place where the only sound came from the clacking of glass.
“She corrupted them,” Kaladin’s spren whispered.
Shallan took a break, wiping her brow with a handkerchief from her satchel. They were distant enough that the lights of souls in Kholinar were just a general haze of light.
“What was that, spren?” Azure asked. “Corrupted?”
“That’s why we’re here. The Oathgate—do you remember those two spren in the sky? Those two are the gateway’s soul, but the red coloring … They must be His now. That’s why we ended up here, instead of going to Urithiru.”
Sja-anat, Shallan thought, said she was supposed to kill us. But that she’d try not to.
Shallan wiped her brow again, then got back to work.
* * *
Adolin felt useless.
All his life, he had understood. He’d taken easily to dueling. People naturally seemed to like him. Even in his darkest moment—standing on the battlefield and watching Sadeas’s armies retreat, abandoning him and his father—he’d understood what was happening to him.
Not today. Today he was just a confused little boy standing in Damnation.
Today, Adolin Kholin was nothing.
He stepped onto another copy of the door. They had to huddle together while Shallan dismissed the rooftop behind, sending it crashing down, then squeezed past everyone to raise another copy of the building.
Adolin felt small. So very small. He started toward the rooftop. Kaladin, however, remained standing on the door, staring sightlessly. Syl, his spren, tugged his hand.
“Kaladin?” Adolin asked.
Kaladin finally shook himself and gave in to Syl’s prodding. He walked onto the rooftop. Adolin followed, then took Kaladin’s pack—deliberately but firmly—and swung it over his own shoulder. Kaladin let him. Behind, the doorway shattered back into the ocean of beads.
“Hey,” Adolin said. “It will be all right.”
“I survived Bridge Four,” Kaladin growled. “I’m strong enough to survive this.”
“I’m pretty sure you could survive anything. Storms, bridgeboy, the Almighty used some of the same stuff he put into Shardblades when he made you.”
Kaladin shrugged. But as they walked onto the next platform, his expression grew distant again. He stood while the rest of them moved on. Almost like he was waiting for their bridge to dissolve and dump him into the sea.
“I couldn’t make them see,” Kaladin whispered. “I couldn’t … couldn’t protect them. I’m supposed to be able to protect people, aren’t I?”
“Hey,” Adolin said. “You really think that strange spren with the weird eyes is my sword?”
Kaladin started and focused on him, then scowled. “Yes, Adolin. I thought that was clear.”
“I was just wondering.” Adolin glanced over his shoulder and shivered. “What do you think about this place? Have you ever heard of anything like it?”
“Do you have to talk right now, Adolin?”
“I’m frightened. I talk when I’m frightened.”