Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

They descended past the top tier, and Adolin took up position by the railing, looking out over the central shaft with the window all along one side. They were starting to call it the atrium—though it was an atrium that ran up dozens upon dozens of floors.

“Kaladin’s not going to like this,” Adolin said. “Amaram as a highprince? The two of us spent weeks in jail because of the things that man did.”

“I think Amaram killed my brother.”

Adolin wheeled around to stare at her. “What?”

“Amaram has a Shardblade,” Shallan said. “I saw it previously in the hands of my brother, Helaran. He was older than I am, and left Jah Keved years ago. From what I can gather, he and Amaram fought at some point, and Amaram killed him—taking the Blade.”

“Shallan … that Blade. You know where Amaram got that, right?”

“On the battlefield?”

“From Kaladin.” Adolin raised his hand to his head. “The bridgeboy insisted that he’d saved Amaram’s life by killing a Shardbearer. Amaram then killed Kaladin’s squad and took the Shards for himself. That’s basically the entire reason the two hate each other.”

Shallan’s throat grew tight. “Oh.”

Tuck it away. Don’t think about it.

“Shallan,” Adolin said, stepping toward her. “Why would your brother try to kill Amaram? Did he maybe know the highlord was corrupt? Storms! Kaladin didn’t know any of that. Poor bridgeboy. Everyone would have been better off if he’d just let Amaram die.”

Don’t confront it. Don’t think about it.

“Yeah,” she said. “Huh.”

“But how did your brother know?” Adolin said, pacing across the balcony. “Did he say anything?”

“We didn’t talk much,” Shallan said, numb. “He left when I was young. I didn’t know him well.”

Anything to get off this topic. For this was something she could still tuck away in the back of her brain. She did not want to think about Kaladin and Helaran.…

It was a long, quiet ride to the bottom floors of the tower. Adolin wanted to go visit his father’s horse again, but she wasn’t interested in standing around smelling horse dung. She got off on the second level to make her way toward her rooms.

Secrets. There are more important things in this world, Helaran had said to her father. More important even than you and your crimes.

Mraize knew something about this. He was withholding the secrets from her like sweets to entice a child to obedience. But all he wanted her to do was investigate the oddities in Urithiru. That was a good thing, wasn’t it? She’d have done it anyway.

Shallan meandered through the hallways, following a path where Sebarial’s workers had affixed some sphere lanterns to hooks on the walls. Locked up and filled with only the cheapest diamond spheres, they shouldn’t be worth the effort to break into, but the light they gave was also rather dim.

She should have stayed above; her absence must have destroyed the illusion of the map. She felt bad about that. Was there a way she could learn to leave her illusions behind her? They’d need Stormlight to keep going.…

In any case, Shallan had needed to leave the meeting. The secrets this city hid were too engaging to ignore. She stopped in the hallway and dug out her sketchbook, flipping through pages, looking at the faces of the dead men.

Absently turning a page, she came across a sketch she didn’t recall making. A series of twisting, maddening lines, scribbled and unconnected.

She felt cold. “When did I draw this?”

Pattern moved up her dress, stopping under her neck. He hummed, an uncomfortable sound. “I do not remember.”

She flipped to the next page. Here she’d drawn a rush of lines sweeping out from a central point, confused and chaotic, transforming to the heads of horses with the flesh ripping off, their eyes wide, equine mouths screaming. It was grotesque, nauseating.

Oh Stormfather …

Her fingers trembled as she turned to the next page. She’d scribbled it entirely black, using a circular motion, spiraling toward the center point. A deep void, an endless corridor, something terrible and unknowable at the end.

She snapped the sketchbook shut. “What is happening to me?”

Pattern hummed in confusion. “Do we … run?”

“Where.”

“Away. Out of this place. Mmmmm.”

“No.”

She trembled, part of her terrified, but she couldn’t abandon those secrets. She had to have them, hold them, make them hers. She turned sharply in the corridor, taking a path away from her room. A short time later, she strode into the barracks where Sebarial housed his soldiers. There were plentiful spaces like this in the tower: vast networks of rooms with built-in stone bunks in the walls. Urithiru had been a military base; that much was evident from its ability to efficiently house tens of thousands of soldiers on the lower levels alone.

In the common room of the barracks, men lounged with coats off, playing with cards or knives. Her passing caused a stir as men gaped, then leaped to their feet, debating between buttoning their coats and saluting. Whispers of “Radiant” chased her as she walked into a corridor lined with rooms, where the individual platoons bunked. She counted off doorways marked by archaic Alethi numbers etched into the stone, then entered a specific one.

She burst in on Vathah and his team, who sat inside playing cards by the light of a few spheres. Poor Gaz sat on the chamber pot in a corner privy, and he yelped, pulling closed the cloth on the doorway.

Guess I should have anticipated that, Shallan thought, covering her blush by sucking in a burst of Stormlight. She folded her arms and regarded the others as they—lazily—climbed to their feet and saluted. They were only twelve men now. Some had made their way to other jobs. A few others had died in the Battle of Narak.

She’d kind of been hoping that they would all drift away—if only so she wouldn’t have to figure out what to do with them. She now realized that Adolin was right. That was a terrible attitude. These men were a resource and, all things considered, had been remarkably loyal.

“I,” Shallan told them, “have been an awful employer.”

“Don’t know about that, Brightness,” Red said—she still didn’t know how the tall, bearded man had gotten his nickname. “The pay has come on time and you haven’t gotten too many of us killed.”

“Oi got killed,” Shob said from his bunk, where he saluted—still lying down.

“Shut up, Shob,” Vathah said. “You’re not dead.”

“Oi’m dyin’ this time, Sarge. Oi’m sure of it.”

“Then at least you’ll be quiet,” Vathah said. “Brightness, I agree with Red. You’ve done right by us.”

“Yes, well, the free ride is over,” Shallan said. “I have work for you.”

Vathah shrugged, but some of the others looked disappointed. Maybe Adolin was right; maybe deep down, men like this did need something to do. They wouldn’t have admitted that fact, though.

“I’m afraid it might be dangerous,” Shallan said, then smiled. “And it will probably involve you getting a little drunk.”

Finally, I will confess my humanity. I have been named a monster, and do not deny those claims. I am the monster that I fear we all can become.