Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

More thunder sounded; she hoped that the continued noise was a good sign for Teofil and his men. Move faster, she willed the Stormlight. Unfortunately, something was odd about this gemstone. Though the new Thaylen method did indeed transfer Stormlight quickly, the strange fabrial seemed to be drinking far too much in. They’d emptied most of the spheres they’d brought, and still the sapphire barely glowed. They seemed to be injecting Light not just into the gemstone, but into the entire network of gemstones and crystal veins.

Was it actually a fabrial? Navani didn’t recognize the cage, though it did have metal wire running around it. And why did it have a glass globe, the size of her fist, set off to the side in its own nook and attached to the gemstone by wires?

As her scholars worked, emptying one gemstone after the other, Navani brushed the back of her freehand fingers against a vein of garnet in the wall.

You must move quickly, the Sibling said in her mind.

“We are going as fast as we can,” Navani whispered. “Are my soldiers still alive?”

I cannot see them, the Sibling said. My vision is limited, in ways that are confusing to me, as it was not always so. But I think the soldiers you sent are close. I can hear shouts nearby the crystal heart of the tower.

Navani closed her eyes, hoping the Almighty would accept a whispered prayer, as she had no glyphward to burn.

Hurry, the Sibling said. Hurry.

She glanced toward the pile of gemstones. Fortunately, the Thaylen method could move Stormlight between different types of polestone. “We are trying. Do you know why spren prefer different kinds of gemstones?”

Because they are different, the Sibling said. Why do humans prefer one kind of food to another?

“Yet foods dyed different colors—but with the same taste—are often equally acceptable to us.” Navani nodded to a small pile of emeralds. “Many gemstones are identical, at least by their structure. We think they might even have the same basic chemical composition.”

Color is like flavor to spren, the Sibling said. It is part of the soul of a thing.

Curious.

You must move quickly, the Sibling repeated. The Lady of Pains has the Surge of Transformation and dangerous knowledge. She will infuse my entire heart—the pillar—in the proper order, using her Voidlight. In so doing, she would corrupt me and leave me … leave me as one of the Unmade.…

“And what we do here will defend you?” Navani whispered.

Yes. It will erect a barrier, preventing anyone—human, Unmade, or singer—from reaching me.

“That would stop Teofil too,” Navani said. “From breaking the construction that is blocking our Radiants.”

Teofil is doomed, the Sibling said. You must hurry. Navani, they have activated the Oathgate again. Fresh enemy troops have arrived.

“How are they working it? They have Skybreakers, but they should be as limited as our Radiants, right?”

They brought a human with one of the Honorblades.

Moash. The murderer. Navani felt her anger rising. There was, unfortunately, little more she could do.

Quickly. Please. Quickly … The Sibling seemed to hesitate. Wait. Something has happened. The Lady of Pains has stopped.

* * *

Venli witnessed the last push of the human soldiers. She stood at the base of the steps—which were of an odd sort. The stairwell up to the ground floor was a large column of open space. Steps wound around the outside wall of the cylinder. They looked so narrow and uncertain, hanging as they did with a cavity of open space up the center.

It was pure madness to attempt to fight down such steep and uncertain footing while harried by Fused and Regals. Yet the humans made a valiant run of it. They locked shields and moved together with a precision that Venli’s sister had always admired. While listeners would fight as warpairs, in tune with one another and the rhythms of Roshar, humans seemed to have their own kind of symbiosis—forged from hours upon hours spent training.

A canopy of shields protected against Heavenly Ones, who hovered about the formation, trying to stab with their lances—but indoors, they didn’t have proper room to maneuver. Before beginning their assault, the humans had poured barrels of water into the breach here—and it had rained upon the stormform Regals below. Their powers reacted poorly around water, something Venli had always found somewhat ironic.

The descent was so dramatic that Venli sent for Raboniel, interrupting the Fused’s work with the pillar. Raboniel marched out and looked up with shock at how close the humans were.

“Quickly,” she snapped at the nearby stormforms. “Up those steps! Engage the soldiers directly!”

They obeyed, but with their powers dampened by the water, they were no match for the troops. The humans stabbed them dead or forced them off the sides of the steps, pushing ever downward, rounding the circular wall, grimly stepping over the bodies of their fallen comrades and maintaining a front line that was three men wide.

“Amazing,” Raboniel whispered. The humans fought like a great-shelled beast—a winding, relentless chasmfiend, all armor and teeth.

Raboniel waved for the rest of the Deepest Ones to join the fight—but even these proved ineffective. They had disrupted the formation a few times early on, shoving their hands out of walls to push men, or reaching out from the side to grab ankles. These soldiers, however, quickly adapted. The men closest to the wall now marched with swords out, watching for Deepest Ones. More than one disembodied arm dropped to the ground near Venli, joining the fallen men and Regals who had lost their footing.

Standing there beside an increasingly angry Raboniel, Venli thought the humans might make it. Led by a grizzled older soldier—and reduced from hundreds to just fifty—they barreled stubbornly onward. Venli found herself cheering them silently, Timbre exulting to the Rhythm of Hope. She cared little for the humans as a whole, but it was impossible to watch such a display of tenacity without being impressed.

This was why her people had dwindled, nearly vanished, during their years at war with the humans. It wasn’t entirely the human access to Shards, or their incredible resources. It was the way they, individually weaker than any listener, worked together. They had no forms, but compensated with training, sacrificing individuality until they were practically spren—having become so good at a single thing, they could never change to another purpose.

They rounded the next loop, only twenty feet from the ground, while Raboniel began shouting for more Deepest Ones. Then a red line of light zipped down from above. The Pursuer had arrived.

He materialized in the very center of the formation of humans, swinging out with arms bearing sharpened carapace. The formation shattered as the men frantically tried to reorient to this new foe—but of course the Pursuer zipped back into the air. He left behind a dummy, a fake carapace version of himself. The humans began stabbing it repeatedly as the real Pursuer appeared with a crash among another segment of the line.

As quickly as that, the tide changed.

The Heavenly Ones found holes in the shield wall to begin stabbing individual humans. The Deepest Ones used the confusion to grab sword arms or trip soldiers. A small group of humans, led by the older veteran, tried to surge forward and dash the rest of the way—but the Regals near Venli had toweled dry, and they managed to unleash a collective bolt of lightning that destroyed the steps in a wide gap right in front of the men.