Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

Syl darted over a moment later. He could see her in the darkness, but she didn’t illuminate things around her. He shoved his other hand in his pocket, tightly holding the sphere so it couldn’t give off any betraying illumination.

“What?” Syl asked.

Kaladin shook his head. He didn’t know, but didn’t want to speak. He huddled there—hoping Teft wouldn’t mutter or shift too loudly—his own heartbeat thumping in his ears.

Then, faint red light crept into the hallway he’d left. Syl immediately zipped to hide her light behind Kaladin’s dark form.

The light approached, revealing a single ruby along with a pair of glowing red eyes. Those illuminated a terrible face. Pure black, with hints of marbled red under the eyes. Long dark hair, which appeared woven into his simple wrap of clothing. It was the creature Kaladin had fought in Hearthstone, the one he’d killed in the burning room of the mansion. Though the Fused had been reborn into a new body, Kaladin knew from the skin patterns that it was the same individual. Come for revenge.

The Fused didn’t seem to spot Kaladin hiding in the darkness, though he did pause at the intersection for an extended period of time. He moved on, thankfully, going deeper along the path Kaladin had been taking.

Storms … Kaladin had defeated the thing last time without any Stormlight, but he had done so by playing on its arrogance. Kaladin doubted it would let him get such an easy kill again.

Those singers in the clinic … one of them mentioned that a Fused was looking for me. They called him the Pursuer. This thing … it had come to the tower specifically to find Kaladin.

“Follow it,” he mouthed, turning to Syl, counting on her to understand his meaning. “I’ll find someplace more secluded to hide.”

She wove her line of light into a brief luminescent representation of a kejeh glyph—meaning “affirmative”—then zipped after the Pursuer. She couldn’t get too far from Kaladin anymore, but she should be able to follow for a while. Hopefully she could do so circumspectly, as some of the Fused could see spren.

Kaladin hauled Teft back up onto his shoulders, then struck out into the darkness, barely allowing himself any light. There was always something oppressive about being deep in the tower, feeling so far away from the sky and the wind—but it was worse in the darkness. He could all too easily imagine himself trapped in here without spheres, left to wander forever in a tomb of stone.

He wove through a few more turns, hoping to find a stairwell up to another floor. Unfortunately, Teft started muttering again. Gritting his teeth, Kaladin ducked into the first room he found—a place with a narrow doorway. Here he set Teft down, then tried to stifle his noises.

Syl darted into the room a moment later, which made Kaladin jump.

“He’s coming,” she hissed. “He went only a short distance down the wrong hallway before he stopped, inspected the ground, then doubled back. I don’t think he saw me. I followed long enough to see him stop at the place where you hid a bit ago. He found a little smear of blood on the wall there. I hurried ahead of him, but he knows you’re nearby.”

Storms. Kaladin glanced at his bloody clothing, then at Teft—who was muttering despite Kaladin’s attempts to quiet him.

“We need to lead the Pursuer away,” Kaladin whispered. “Be ready to distract him.”

She made another affirmative signal. Kaladin left his friend as a restless lump in the darkness, then backtracked a little. He pulled up near an intersection, gripping his scalpel. He allowed no light other than Syl’s, his few remaining infused spheres tucked away in his black pouch.

He took a few deep breaths, then mouthed his plan to Syl. She sailed farther away through the black corridor, leaving Kaladin in total darkness.

He’d never been able to find the pure emptiness of mind that some soldiers claimed to adopt in battle. He wasn’t certain he’d ever want something like that. However, he did compose himself, making his breathing shallow, and came fully alert, listening.

Loose, relaxed, but ready to come alight. Like tinder waiting for the spark. He was ready to breathe in his last spheres of Stormlight, but wouldn’t until the last moment.

Footsteps scraped the corridor to Kaladin’s right, and the walls slowly bled with red light. Kaladin held his breath, ready, his back to the wall.

The Pursuer froze just before reaching the intersection, and Kaladin knew the creature had spotted Syl, who would have zipped past in the distance. A heartbeat later, scraping noises announced the Pursuer dropping his body as a husk—and a red ribbon of light rushed after Syl. The distraction had worked. Syl would lead him away.

As far as they knew, the Fused couldn’t harm spren naturally—the only way to do so was with a Shardblade. Even that was temporary; cut spren with a Shardblade, even rip them to pieces, and they eventually re-formed in the Cognitive Realm. Experiments had proven that the only way to keep them divided was to store separate halves in gemstones.

Kaladin gave it ten heartbeats, then brought out a small sphere for light and dashed into the corridor—sparing a brief glance at the Pursuer’s discarded body—before running for the room where he’d put Teft.

It was amazing what a jolt of energy came from being so close to a fight. He heaved Teft on his shoulders without trouble, then was jogging away in moments—almost as if he were infused with Stormlight again. Using the light of the sphere, he soon found a stairwell. He almost rushed up it, but a faint light from above made him stop fast.

Voices speaking to rhythms echoed from above. And from below, he realized. He left that stairwell, but two hallways over he saw distant lights and shadows. He pulled into a side corridor, sweating in streams, fearspren—like globs of goo—writhing up through the stone beneath him.

He knew this feeling. Scurrying through the darkness. People with lights searching in a pattern, hunting him. Breathing heavily, he hauled Teft through a different side passage, but soon spotted lights in that direction as well.

The enemy was forming a noose, slowly tightening around his position. That knowledge sent him into flashbacks of the night when he’d failed Nalma and the others. A night when, like so many other times, he’d survived when everyone else had died. Kaladin wasn’t a runaway slave anymore, but the sensation was the same.

“Kaladin!” Syl said, zipping up to him. “I was leading him toward the edge of the level, but we ran into some regular soldiers and he turned back. He seemed to figure out I was trying to distract him.”

“There are multiple squads up here,” Kaladin said, pulling into the darkness. “Maybe a full company. Storms. The Pursuer must have repurposed the entire force sent to go through homes on the sixth floor.”

He was shocked at the speed with which they’d set up the trap. He had to admit that was likely the result of him letting a soldier run and tell the others.

Well, he doubted the enemy had found the time to appropriate one of Navani’s maps of this level. They couldn’t have managed to place people in every hallway or stairwell. The net closing around him had to have gaps.

He began searching. Down a side corridor, he found shadowy figures approaching. And in the next stairwell. They were relentless, and everywhere. Plus, he didn’t know this area any better than they did. He twisted around through a group of corridors until he reached a dead end. A quick search of the nearby rooms showed no other exits, and he looked over his shoulder, hearing voices calling to one another. They spoke Azish, he thought—and to the rhythms.