Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

He sat alone in a stormwagon, hands in his lap, surrounded by swirling brown exhaustionspren. The Everstorm was nearing its end. He was now to give the order for his men to betray the coalition. If Taravangian’s guesses were right, it also meant Odium had launched an attack on Urithiru.

Taravangian did not give the order yet. Odium had said he would come to confirm, and so far he hadn’t. Perhaps … perhaps Taravangian’s service wouldn’t be needed today. Perhaps the plan had changed.

Weak, frail hopes for a weak, frail man.

He so wished he could be smart. When had he last been intelligent? Not brilliant—he’d given up on feeling that way again—but merely smart? The last time had been … storms, over a year ago. When he’d planned how to destroy Dalinar.

That attempt had failed. Dalinar had refused to be broken. Smart Taravangian, for all his capacities, had proven insufficient.

Smart Taravangian came up with the plan that forced Odium to make a deal, he thought. That is enough.

And yet … and yet he wavered. Smart Taravangian had failed. Besides, he hadn’t just been made intelligent. He’d been given a boon and a curse. Intelligence on one side. Compassion on the other. When smart, he assumed the compassion was the curse. But was it really? Or was the curse that he could never have both at once?

He stood up in the wagon, and withstood the moment of dizziness that took him each time he stood these days: blackness creeping at the edges of his vision, like deathspren eager to claim him. He thought perhaps it was his heart, though he had not asked for a surgeon. Best not to trouble someone who could be helping wounded soldiers.

He breathed out in short breaths, listening to the soft cracks of the Everstorm outside. The thunder was ebbing. Almost at the end.

He shuffled the short distance to his trunk. Here, Taravangian forced himself to kneel. Storms, when had kneeling become so painful? His bones ground against one another like a pestle against its bowl.

Trying not to focus on the painspren, he fumbled at the lock’s combination with trembling fingers, then unhooked the lid. He undid the trunk’s lining on the top, reached to the secret compartment and flipped a hidden latch. That disengaged the small ink vial he’d rigged to spill and ruin the contents of the compartment if it was tampered with.

Only then could he feel around inside and locate the pages. He pulled them out with a tentative hand. A year ago, during his most recent bout of intelligence, he’d created this. A few pages from the Diagram, cut out and rearranged, with some scribbled notes. He’d burned his copy of the book itself, but had kept this excised section.

Exhausted, he crawled to his chair and struggled into the seat. Wheezing, he cradled the old sheets from the Diagram, then tried to shoo away the exhaustionspren.

When he’d created this little section, he hadn’t been as smart as he’d been on that singular day—now seven years gone—when he’d created the Diagram. On that day, he’d been a god. On the day when he’d created this fragment a year ago, he’d considered himself a prophet to that god.

So what was he now? A priest? A humble follower? A fool? In a way, it felt a betrayal to think in religious terms. This was not the act of gods, but men.

No. A god made you what you are.

He held up the pages and read through them, squinting without his reading spectacles. The cramped handwriting listed instructions, spliced together with original pieces of the Diagram. Most of it detailed the ploy to unseat Dalinar by the careful reveal of secrets—a plan designed to bring the poor man to his knees, to turn the coalition against him. In the end, that ploy had only galvanized the Blackthorn—and increased his suspicion of Taravangian. Before that day, they had been friends.

Taravangian turned this page over in his fingers, trying to understand the strange creature he became when intelligent. A being unburdened by empathy, capable of seeing straight to the heart of matters. Yet also a being who couldn’t understand the context of his efforts. He would work to preserve a people at the same time he casually ordered the deaths of children.

Smart Taravangian knew the how but not the why.

Dumb Taravangian didn’t make connections, didn’t remember things quickly, couldn’t compute in his head. In this document—intended to demoralize, defame, and destroy a man he dearly respected—dumb Taravangian found pain. He was weeping by the time he finished reading it, and the exhaustionspren had been replaced by the white petals of shamespren.

All this, he thought, to save a handful of people? He’d preserved Kharbranth by selling out the rest of humankind. He was certain Odium could not be defeated. And so, saving a remnant was the only logical path.

Right now, that seemed pathetic. Smart Taravangian considered himself so brilliant, so masterful, but this was the best he could do?

It was a dangerous line of thought. And pointless. Hadn’t he told off Mrall for making this very argument? They had to focus on what they could do. Smart Taravangian understood that, and had accomplished it.

Dumb Taravangian instead wept for all the people he had failed. All the people who would die when Odium scoured the world of humankind.

Taravangian looked back at the notes, and today saw something new in them. A small comment about a specific person. Why specifically can’t the Diagram see Renarin Kholin? the notes read. Why is he invisible?

Smart Taravangian had moved on quickly from this question. Why waste time on something minor that you couldn’t solve? Dumb Taravangian lingered on it, remembering a later time when he’d been visited by Odium. Odium had shown Taravangian something, and Renarin … Renarin Kholin had appeared as a chain of blacked-out futures, unseeable.

The wagon began to grow lighter around Taravangian. He cursed under his breath, quickly folding the papers together and hiding them in the pocket of his robes. In an instant, the stormwagon melted away—walls vanishing before a brilliant golden light. The floor changed, and Taravangian found himself sitting in his chair on a brilliant field, the ground made as if from solid gold.

A figure stood in front of him, a twenty-foot-tall human bearing a scepter. His features were Shin, and his hair and beard were completely gold, as if he were Iriali. Odium’s robes were more ornate than last time, red and gold, with a sword tied at the waist.

It was a presentation meant to stun and awe, and Taravangian couldn’t help but gasp. It was so gorgeous. He forced himself out of his seat, falling again on painful knees, bowing his head but unable to tear his eyes away from the magnificent display.

“I prefer you when you are like this, Taravangian,” Odium said with a powerful voice. “You may not think as quickly, but you do understand more quickly.”

“My lord,” Taravangian said. “Is it time?”

“Yes,” Odium said. “You are to send the orders.”

“It will be done.”

“Will they obey, Taravangian? You ask them to turn against their allies. To side with the enemy.”

“The Alethi are their enemies, Lord,” Taravangian said. “The Vedens have hated their neighbors for centuries. Plus their new leaders—installed by your own hand—are hungry for power. They believe you will reward them.”

They had not obtained promises. A god could be bound, but only by oaths. These foolish men believed that they’d be rewarded above the others, but Taravangian knew their entire country was doomed. Every human in those lands would eventually be destroyed.