Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

THE END OF

Part Two

Vyre was unchained.

Moash, the man he’d once been, had lived his entire life chained up and never known it. Oh, he’d recognized the bonds the lighteyes used on him. He’d experienced their tyranny both directly and indirectly—most painfully in the deaths of those he loved, left locked away in their dungeons.

But he hadn’t recognized the truer chains. The ones that bound his soul, constraining him to mere mortality, when he could always have been so much more.

Vyre threw his Shardblade with a wide, overhand throw. Sunlight flashed along the spinning blade as it soared across the quarry and then clanged against a large rock before bouncing free, tearing a gash in the ground, then finally coming to a rest wedged in the stone.

“I … still don’t understand what you’re doing, Vyre,” Khen said to Confusion. Warform suited her. It always had. “That weapon was not meant to be thrown.”

They worked together in the quarry—which had been created by mining through the crem many feet down to reach marble—outside of Kholinar. As usual, his small band of singers went where he did, and started working—quietly—as he did. Moments earlier, Vyre had been cutting stones out with this Blade.

Now, his attention had turned inward. Toward chains, and bindings, and prisons unseen. He gestured, and the distant Shardblade vanished to mist. Yet it took him ten heartbeats to summon it again.

“I saw Prince Adolin throw his Blade,” Vyre said. “Three months ago, on the battlefield in northern Jah Keved. He is no Radiant, yet his Blade responds to him as if he were one.…”

“Maybe it was just a lucky throw.”

Vyre threw his Blade again. It clanged uselessly off his target. He narrowed his eyes, then dismissed it into a puff of mist.

“No,” Vyre said. “He must be able to change the balance to allow for this maneuver. And it returned to him faster than ten heartbeats, even accounting for the accelerated pulse of battle.”

Vyre waited until the weapon appeared in his grip. This was an ancient weapon, one of the mighty Honorblades. Yet it was inferior. It couldn’t change shape, and cost far more Stormlight to use, often crusting his clothing with frost when he used it too quickly.

He didn’t feel anger at his Blade’s inferiority. Or humiliation. The lack of those emotions let him consider the situation clearly, fueling his curiosity, his determination. This was what it was like to be unchained. To be freed from captivity.

To never again feel guilt.

He strode through the quarry. A thousand clinks of metal on stone surrounded him, like the dancing feet of cremlings. An overcast sky and a calm wind chilled his skin as he picked a new section of the quarry in which to work. He began slicing at the wall to cut free another large block of the precious marble.

“Vyre,” Khen said. To Determination. Curious. What did she want that made her so afraid? “I … I am leaving.”

“Very well,” Vyre said, working.

“You’re … not angry?”

“I can’t be angry,” he said, truthfully. “Nor can I feel disappointment.”

After all these months together, she still didn’t understand—because she rushed to explain, worried he’d be upset, despite what he’d said. “I don’t want to go on these raids and fight anymore, Vyre. I feel like I woke up to life, and then immediately started killing. I want to see what it is like to live. Really live. With my own mind, my own Passions.”

“Very well,” Vyre said.

She hummed to Reconciliation.

“You are chained, Khen,” Vyre explained. “You haven’t given your negative emotions to him. Your insecurities. Your fears. Your pain. I was like you for many years.” He narrowed his eyes, turning and looking to the west. Toward him. “Then I took the chains off and saw what I could truly become.”

She hummed to … was that Curiosity? Yes, he thought it was.

“What?” Vyre asked.

“You say you’re unburdened, Vyre,” she said. “That you don’t care anymore. But you keep hunting him. The Windrunner.”

At the mention of Kaladin, Moash felt a hint of old, painful emotions—though Odium quickly sucked them away. “Kaladin is a friend,” Moash said. “It is important to me that he find his freedom. Go your way, Khen. If you become unchained in the future, seek me out. You are a capable warrior, and I would fight beside you again.”

Vyre heaved a rock onto his right shoulder and began hauling it out of the quarry. The others remained in place, working.

Vyre enjoyed hauling rocks. Simple work was best to pass the time. It reminded him of days spent walking with caravans. Except this was better, because it tired out his body, but left him capable of thinking on his curious state. His new state.

Large stone settled on his shoulder, he hiked steadily up the path toward Kholinar. The marble was heavy, but not so much that he needed Stormlight or supernatural help. That would defeat the purpose. For a time, he walked, happy with his status. And he thought about Kaladin.

Poor Kaladin. There was freedom available for his old friend. Two freedoms, in fact. But he doubted Kaladin would ever accept the same freedom as Vyre, so he offered the other one. The sweet peace of nonexistence.

Khen was correct in questioning Vyre. So many things that had once been important didn’t bother him any longer, so why did Kaladin tease at him, draw his attention? Why did Kaladin always make the old emotions churn again, if briefly?

There was one chain still holding to him, Vyre admitted. That of his friend. I have to be right, Vyre thought. And he has to be wrong. Kaladin had to acknowledge that Vyre was right. Until he did …

Until he did, that last chain would remain.

Vyre eventually reached Kholinar and passed through the gates. The city had well and truly settled into its new existence. The peoples intermixed, though singers were properly given deference. They were models of behavior the humans needed to learn to follow. When disputes happened, the singers forced men to be fair to one another. After all, when the parents came home, it was their duty to remove privileges if they found a mess. Humankind had been given millennia to prove they could self-govern properly, and they had failed.

People stared at him. He wasn’t wearing his uniform, and he’d covered his Bridge Four shoulder tattoo with elbow-length sleeves. He was not distinctive. Yet he was. For they knew him; they whispered of him. Vyre. He Who Quiets.

He who hauls rocks.

Vyre soon reached a building site near the District of Colors. Here, workers were constructing special housing for some of the Deepest Ones. Each brand of Fused had its particularities. These liked to have homes without floors, so they could touch the natural stone ground with their unshod feet. They could move through other materials too, so long as they were solid, but they liked the feeling of uncut stone underfoot, stretching to the heart of Roshar. So Vyre’s marble would be used for the walls.

Vyre hadn’t been asked to help with this job. If negative emotions could rule him, he suspected he’d have been annoyed at their neglect. Hard labor in the city? Not telling him was like hiding sweets from a child. Fortunately, he’d found out about it a few days ago, and had started cutting his own rocks and hauling them.