Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

Touching Timbre felt like touching silk being blown by a wind. As Venli folded her left hand around the spren, she felt a pulsing warmth. Timbre pulsed to Praise as Venli pulled her close to her breast.

Great, Venli thought, lowering her head against the wind, her face against the ground, holding on to the cleft in the rock with her right hand. Now we can fall together.

She had one hope. To hold on, and hope that eventually …

The heat faded. The wind stilled. Debris came clattering back to the ground, though the fall was less clamorous this time. Not only had the wind been pulling sideways rather than up, there simply wasn’t much debris left.

Venli rose, covered in dust, her face and hands cut by chips of stone. Timbre pulsed softly in her hand.

The city was basically gone. No more than the occasional outline of a building foundation and the remains of the strange rock formations known as the windblades. Even those had been weathered down to knobs five or six feet tall. The only structure in the city that remained was a quarter of the tower where Kholin had been standing.

Behind her was a black, gaping hole into nothingness.

The ground trembled.

Oh no.

Something beat against the stones underneath her. The very ground began to shake and crumble. Venli ran toward the broken palace right as everything—at last—fell apart. The ground, the remaining foundations, even the air seemed to disintegrate.

A chasm opened beneath her, and Venli leaped, trying to reach the other side. She came up a few feet short, and plummeted into the hole. Falling, she twisted in the air, reaching for the collapsing sky with one hand and clutching Timbre in the other.

Above, the man in the blue uniform leaped into the chasm.

He fell beside the hole’s perimeter, and stretched one hand toward Venli. His other ground against the rock wall, hand scraping the stone. Something flashed around his arm. Lines of light, a framework that covered his body. His fingers didn’t bleed as they scraped the stone.

Around her, the rocks—the air itself—became more substantial. In defiance of the heat below, Venli slowed just enough that her fingers met those of Kholin.

Go.

She crashed to the floor of her cave back in Marat, the vision gone. Sweating, panting, she opened her left fist. To her relief, Timbre floated out, pulsing with a hesitant rhythm.

* * *

Dalinar dissolved into pure pain.

He felt himself being ripped apart, flayed, shredded. Each piece of him removed and allowed to hurt in isolation. A punishment, a retribution, a personalized torment.

It could have persisted for an eternity. Instead, blessedly, the agony faded, and he came to himself.

He knelt on an endless plain of glowing white stone. Light coalesced beside him, forming into a figure dressed in gold and white, holding a short scepter.

“What were you seeing?” Odium asked, curious. He tapped his scepter on the ground like a cane. Nohadon’s palace—where Dalinar had been moments before—materialized out of light beside them. “Ah, this one again? Looking for answers from the dead?”

Dalinar squeezed his eyes shut. What a fool he had been. If there had ever been a hope of peace, he’d probably destroyed it by pulling that Parshendi woman into a vision and subjecting her to Odium’s horrors.

“Dalinar, Dalinar,” Odium said. He settled down on a seat formed from light, then rested one hand on Dalinar’s shoulder. “It hurts, doesn’t it? Yes. I know pain. I am the only god who does. The only one who cares.”

“Can there be peace?” Dalinar asked, his voice ragged. Speaking was hard. He’d felt himself being ripped apart in the light moments before.

“Yes, Dalinar,” Odium said. “There can be. There will be.”

“After you destroy Roshar.”

“After you destroy it, Dalinar. I am the one who will rebuild it.”

“Agree to a contest between champions,” Dalinar forced out. “Let us … let us find a way to…” He trailed off.

How could he fight this thing?

Odium patted Dalinar’s shoulder. “Be strong, Dalinar. I have faith in you, even when you don’t have it in yourself. Though it will hurt for a time, there is an end. Peace is in your future. Push through the agony. Then you will be victorious, my son.”

The vision faded, and Dalinar found himself back in the upper room of Urithiru. He collapsed into the seat he’d placed there, Navani taking his arm, concerned.

Through his bond, Dalinar sensed weeping. The Stormfather had kept Odium back, but storms, he had paid a price. The most powerful spren on Roshar—embodiment of the tempest that shaped all life—was crying like a child, whispering that Odium was too strong.

The Midnight Mother created monsters of shadow and oil, dark imitations of creatures she saw or consumed. Their description matches no spren I can find in modern literature.

—From Hessi’s Mythica, page 252

Captain Notum gave the command, and two of the sailors unlatched a section of the hull, exposing the crashing waves of beads just beyond.

Shallan put her freehand on the frame of the open cargo door and leaned out over the churning depths. Adolin tried to tug her back, but she remained in place.

She’d chosen to wear Veil’s outfit today, in part for the pockets. She carried three larger gemstones; Kaladin carried four others. Their broams had all run out of Stormlight. Even these larger, unset gems were getting close to failing. Hopefully they would last long enough to get them to Thaylen City and the Oathgate.

Beyond the waves—so close that the sailors feared hidden rocks beneath the beads—a dark landscape interrupted the horizon. The inverse of Longbrow’s Straits, a place where trees grew tall, forming a black jungle of glass plants.

A sailor clomped down the steps into the hold and barked something at Captain Notum. “Your enemies are close now,” the captain translated.

Honor’s Path had made a heroic effort these last few hours, pushing its mandras to exhaustion—and it hadn’t been nearly enough. The Fused were slower than Kaladin could go, but they were still far faster than the ship.

Shallan looked at the captain; his bearded face, which glowed with a soft, phantom light, betrayed nothing of what must have been a powerful conflict for him. Turn over the captives to the enemy and perhaps save his crew? Or set them free, and hope the Ancient Daughter could escape?

A door at the back of the hold opened, and Kaladin led Syl from her cabin. The captain had only now given permission to release her, as if wishing to delay the decision until the last possible moment. Syl’s color seemed muted, and she clung to Kaladin’s arm, unsteady. Was she going to be able to make it to shore with them?

She’s a spren. She doesn’t need air. She’ll be fine. Hopefully.

“Go, then,” the captain said. “And be swift. I cannot promise that my crew, once captured, will be able to keep this secret for long.” Apparently it was difficult to kill spren, but hurting them was quite easy.

Another sailor released Adolin’s sword spren from her cabin. She didn’t look as weathered as Syl—one place seemed as good as another to her.

Kaladin led Syl over.

“Ancient Daughter,” the captain said, bowing his head.

“Won’t meet my eyes, Notum?” Syl said. “I suppose locking me away here isn’t too different from all those days you spent running about at Father’s whims back home.”