Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

“Unfortunately, I’m certain I didn’t make the best choices I could,” Dalinar said.

“But you wouldn’t change them. If you did, you’d be a different person.”

I did change them, Dalinar thought. I erased them. And I did become a different person. Dalinar set the shield beside the old man.

“Tell me, Dalinar,” Taravangian said. “You’ve spoken of your disregard for your ancestor, the Sunmaker. You called him a tyrant.”

Like me.

“Let us say,” Taravangian continued, “you could snap your fingers and change history. Would you make it so that the Sunmaker lived longer and accomplished his desire, uniting all of Roshar under a single banner?”

“Turn him into more of a despot?” Dalinar said. “That would have meant him slaughtering his way all across Azir and into Iri. Of course I wouldn’t wish that.”

“But what if it left you, today, in command of a completely unified people? What if his slaughter let you save Roshar from the Voidbringer invasion?”

“I … You’d be asking me to consign millions of innocents to the pyre!”

“Those people are long dead,” Taravangian whispered. “What are they to you? Numbers in a scribe’s footnote. Yes, the Sunmaker was a monster. However, the current trade routes between Herdaz, Jah Keved, and Azir were forged by his tyranny. He brought culture and science back to Alethkar. Your modern Alethi cultural eruption can be traced directly back to what he did. Morality and law are built upon the bodies of the slain.”

“I can’t do anything about that.”

“No, no. Of course you can’t.” Taravangian tapped the half-shard shield. “Do you know how we capture spren for fabrials, Dalinar? From spanreeds to heatrials, it’s all the same. You lure the spren with something it loves. You give it something familiar to draw it in, something it knows deeply. In that moment, it becomes your slave.”

I … I really can’t think about this right now. “Excuse me,” Dalinar said, “I need to go check on Navani.”

He strode from the gazebo and down the steps, bustling past Rial and his other guards. They followed, towed in his wake like leaves after a strong gust of wind. He entered the city, but didn’t go looking for Navani. Perhaps he could visit the troops.

He walked back along the street, trying to ignore the destruction. Even without it though, this city felt off to him. The architecture was very like Alethi architecture, nothing like the flowery designs of Kharbranth or Thaylenah—but many buildings had plants draping and dangling from every window. It was strange to walk along streets full of people who looked Alethi but spoke a foreign tongue.

Eventually Dalinar reached the large stormshelters right inside the city walls. Soldiers had set up tent cities next to them, temporary bivouacs they could tear down and carry into one of the loaflike bunkers for storms. Dalinar found himself growing calmer as he walked among them. This was familiar; this was the peace of soldiers at work.

The officers here welcomed him, and generals took him on tours of the bunkers. They were impressed by his ability to speak their language—something he’d gained early in his visit to the city, using his Bondsmith abilities.

All Dalinar did was nod and ask the occasional question, but somehow he felt like he was accomplishing something. At the end, he entered a breezy tent near the city gates, where he met with a group of wounded soldiers. Each had survived when his entire platoon had fallen. Heroes, but not the conventional type. It took being a soldier to understand the heroism of simply being willing to continue after all your friends had died.

The last in line was an elderly veteran who wore a clean uniform and a patch for a defunct platoon. His right arm was missing, his jacket sleeve tied off, and a younger soldier led him up to Dalinar. “Look, Geved. The Blackthorn himself! Didn’t you always say you wanted to meet him?”

The older man had one of those stares that made him seem like he could see right through you. “Brightlord,” he said, and saluted. “I fought your army at Slickrock, sir. Brightlord Nalanar’s second infantry. Storming fine battle that was, sir.”

“Storming fine indeed,” Dalinar said, saluting him back. “I figured your forces had us at three different points.”

“Those were good times, Brightlord. Good times. Before everything went wrong…” His eyes glazed over.

“What was it like?” Dalinar asked softly. “The civil war, the battle here, at Vedenar?”

“It was a nightmare, sir.”

“Geved,” the younger man said. “Let’s go. They have food—”

“Didn’t you hear him?” Geved said, pulling his remaining arm out of the boy’s grip. “He asked. Everyone dances around me, ignoring it. Storms, sir. The civil war was a nightmare.”

“Fighting other Veden families,” Dalinar said, nodding.

“It wasn’t that,” Geved said. “Storms! We squabble as much as you do, sir. Pardon that. But I ain’t ever felt bad fighting my own. It’s what the Almighty wants, right? But that battle…” He shuddered. “Nobody would stop, Brightlord. Even when it should have been done. They just kept right on fighting. Killing because they felt like killing.”

“It burned in us,” another wounded man said from by the food table. The man wore an eye patch and looked like he hadn’t shaved since the battle. “You know it, Brightlord, don’t you? That river inside of you, pulling your blood all up into your head and making you love each swing. Making it so that you can’t stop, no matter how tired you are.”

The Thrill.

It started to glow inside Dalinar. So familiar, so warm, and so terrible. Dalinar felt it stir, like … like a favorite axehound, surprised to hear its master’s voice after so long.

He hadn’t felt it in what seemed like an eternity. Even back on the Shattered Plains, when he’d last felt it, it had seemed to be weakening. Suddenly that made sense. It wasn’t that he’d been learning to overcome the Thrill. Instead, it had left him.

To come here.

“Did others of you feel this?” Dalinar asked.

“We all did,” another of the men said, and Geved nodded. “The officers … they rode about with teeth clenched in rictus grins. Men shouted to keep the fight, maintain the momentum.”

It’s all about momentum.

Others agreed, talking about the remarkable haze that had covered the day.

Losing any sense of peace he’d gained from the inspections, Dalinar excused himself. His guards raced to keep up as he fled—moving even faster as a newly arrived messenger called to him, saying he was needed back at the gardens.

He wasn’t ready. He didn’t want to face Taravangian, or Navani, or especially Renarin. Instead, he climbed the city wall. Inspect … inspect the fortifications. That was why he’d come.

From the top, he could again see those large sections of the city, burned and broken in the war.

The Thrill called to him, distant and thin. No. No. Dalinar marched along the wall, passing soldiers. To his right, waves crashed against the rocks. Shadows moved in the shallows, beasts two or three times as big as a chull, their shells peeking from the depths between waves.

It seemed that Dalinar had been four people in his life. The bloodlusty warrior, who killed wherever he was pointed, and the consequences could go to Damnation.