“When was this?” Noura asked.
“Right before we left,” the guard said. “Sorry, Your Grace. I’ve been down since then, only now recovered.”
Yanagawn turned toward Noura. Surely now she would see the importance of returning. The storm had yet to advance. They could go back if …
Another figure approached the door, a woman in the robes and pattern of a second-level scribe, seventh circle. She entered and quickly gave the formal bows to Yanagawn, so hasty she forgot the third gesture of subservient obedience.
“Viziers,” she said, bowing in turn to them, then to Unoqua. “News from the city!”
“Good news?” Noura asked hopefully.
“The Alethi have turned against the Thaylens, and now seek to conquer them! They’ve been allied with the parshmen all along. Your Grace, by fleeing, we have narrowly avoided a trap!”
“Quickly,” Noura said. “Separate our ships from any that bear Alethi troops. We must not be caught unaware!”
They left, abandoning Yanagawn to the care of a dozen young scribes who were next in line for basking in his presence. He settled into his seat, worried and afraid, feeling a sickness in his gut. The Alethi, traitors?
Lift had been wrong. He had been wrong.
Yaezir bless them. This really was the end of days.
* * *
We are the gatekeepers, the two enormous spren said to Shallan, speaking with voices that overlapped, as if one. Though their mouths did not move, the voices reverberated through Shallan. Lightweaver, you have no permission to use this portal.
“But I need to get through,” Shallan cried up to them. “I have Stormlight to pay!”
Your payment will be refused. We are locked by the word of the parent.
“Your parent? Who?”
The parent is dead now.
“So…”
We are locked. Travel to and from Shadesmar was prohibited during the parent’s last days. We are bound to obey.
Behind Shallan, on the bridge, Adolin had devised a clever tactic. He acted like an illusion.
Her false people had instructions to act like they were fighting—though without her direct attention, that meant they just stood around and slashed at the air. To avoid revealing himself, Adolin had chosen to do the same, slashing about with his harpoon randomly. Pattern and Syl did likewise, while the two Fused hovered overhead. One held her arm, which had been hit—but now seemed to be healing. They knew someone in that mass was real, but they couldn’t ascertain who.
Shallan’s time was short. She looked back up at the gatekeepers. “Please. The other Oathgate—the one at Kholinar—let me through.”
Impossible, they said. We are bound by Honor, by rules spren cannot break. This portal is closed.
“Then why did you let those others through? The army that stood around here earlier?”
The souls of the dead? They did not need our portal. They were called by the enemy, pulled along ancient paths to waiting hosts. You living cannot do the same. You must seek the perpendicularity to transfer. The enormous spren cocked their heads in concert. We are apologetic. We have been … alone very long. We would enjoy granting passage to men again. But we cannot do that which was forbidden.
* * *
Szeth of the Skybreakers hovered far above the battlefield.
“The Alethi have changed sides, aboshi?” Szeth asked.
“They have seen the truth,” Nin said, hovering beside him. Only the two of them watched; Szeth did not know where the rest of the Skybreakers had gone.
Nearby, the Everstorm rumbled its discontent. Red lightning rippled across the surface, passing from one cloud to the next.
“All along,” Szeth said, “this world belonged to the parshmen. My people watched not for the return of an invading enemy, but for the masters of the house.”
“Yes,” Nin said.
“And you sought to stop them.”
“I knew what must happen if they returned.” Nin turned toward him. “Who has jurisdiction over this land, Szeth-son-Neturo? A man can rule his home until the citylord demands his taxes. The citylord controls his lands until the highlord, in turn, comes to him for payment. But the highlord must answer to the highprince, when war is called in his lands. And the king? He … must answer to God.”
“You said God was dead.”
“A god is dead. Another won the war by right of conquest. The original masters of this land have returned, as you so aptly made metaphor, with the keys to the house. So tell me, Szeth-son-Neturo—he who is about to swear the Third Ideal—whose law should the Skybreakers follow? That of humans, or that of the real owners of this land?”
There seemed to be no choice. Nin’s logic was sound. No choice at all …
Don’t be stupid, the sword said. Let’s go fight those guys.
“The parshmen? They are the rightful rulers of the land,” Szeth said.
Rightful? Who has a right to land? Humans are always claiming things. But nobody asks the things, now do they? Well, nobody owns me. Vivenna told me. I’m my own sword.
“I have no choice.”
Really? Didn’t you tell me you spent a thousand years following the instructions of a rock?
“More than seven years, sword-nimi. And I didn’t follow the rock, but the words of the one who held it. I…”
… Had no choice?
But it had always been nothing more than a rock.
* * *
Kaladin swooped downward and passed above the treetops, rattling the glass leaves, sending a spray of broken shards behind himself. He turned upward with the slope of the mountain, adding another Lashing to his speed, then another.
When he passed the tree line, he Lashed himself closer to the rock, skimming with obsidian only inches from his face. He used his arms to sculpt the wind around himself, angling toward a crack through the glossy black rock where two mountains met.
Alive with Light and wind, he didn’t care if the Fused were gaining on him or not.
Let them watch.
His angle was wrong to get through the crack, so Kaladin Lashed himself back away from the mountain slope in an enormous loop, continuously changing his Lashings one after another. He made a circle in the air, then darted past the Fused and straight through the crack, close enough to the walls that he could feel them pass.
He broke out the other side, exhilarated. Should he have run out of Stormlight by now? He didn’t use it up as quickly as he had during his early months training.
Kaladin dove along the slopes as three Fused popped out of the crack to follow him. He led them around the base of the obsidian mountain, then wound back toward the Oathgate to check on Shallan and the others. As he approached, he let himself drop among the trees, still moving at incredible speed. He oriented himself as if he were diving through the chasms. Dodging these trees wasn’t so different from that.
He wove between them, using his body more than Lashings to control his direction. His wake caused a melody of breaking glass. He exploded free of the forest, and found the fourth Fused—the one with his harpoon—waiting. The creature attacked, but Kaladin dodged and tore across the ground until he was passing over the sea of beads.
A quick glance showed him Shallan on the platform, waving her hands over her head—the prearranged signal that she needed more time.
Kaladin continued out over the sea, and beads reacted to his Stormlight, rattling and surging like a wave behind him. The last Fused slowed to hover in place, and the other three slowly emerged from the forest.