Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

He swung out and around, then onto the balcony below. This one, unfortunately, was occupied. So after he recovered his rope, he charged through a family’s room—leaping and sliding across their dinner table. He was out the door a moment later, spear in hand. He heard a distant shout of anger from outside the balcony, as the singers above realized he’d gone a way they couldn’t follow.

The tower’s spren found him here and began guiding him. The strata and lines of crystal didn’t always run directly down the corridors, so sometimes the light would spiral around him, following the grain of the stone. Other times the light would vanish when there was no direct path for it, but it would always appear ahead of him again, glowing on the floor or wall, urging him onward.

He drew attention, naturally. The late hour meant that he didn’t encounter crowds to slow him, but it also meant there wasn’t much else to distract the guard patrols. He infused and tossed his spear at a pair of guards who stumbled into the hallway ahead of him—then stole one of their dropped weapons as they struggled and cursed, trying to get his old weapon to stop sticking to their fingers.

The next set weren’t so easily defeated. He found them organizing hastily at an intersection—one he had to pass through, or endure a long detour. Kaladin slowed in the corridor, watching them form up with nets in hand. His first instinct was to take to the walls and disorient them. But of course he didn’t have access to that ability—he suspected it would be a long time before he internalized that gravitational Lashings didn’t work.

He took his spear in a one-handed grip, the butt tucked under his arm, then nodded to Syl. Together, they rushed the blockade. A few soldiers had crossbows, so he infused the wall with his free hand. When those loosed, the bolts swerved toward the stone.

The group with the nets hung back behind singers with axes. The weapons reminded him of the Parshendi, but the singers were dressed like the Azish, with colorful coats, no gemstones woven into the malens’ beards.

They knew how to fight Radiants. The axe wielders came in quickly, forcing him to engage, and then the nets started flying. Kaladin swiped one away with his spear, but that exposed him, and an axe bit him in the side—the kind of wound that would spell death for an ordinary soldier.

Kaladin pulled himself free of the axe, the biting pain fading as his Stormlight healed him, but another net came soaring overhead. They wouldn’t mind if they caught some of their number in it, so long as they tangled Kaladin long enough for them to start hacking at him.

Feeling his solitude more than ever, Kaladin dodged the net by retreating. He wanted to infuse one of the nets and stick it to the floor so it couldn’t be recovered, but he couldn’t bend over to touch it.

Maybe I should remove my boots, he thought. That idea flew counter to all of his training, but he didn’t fight like he once had. These days, a stubbed toe would be healed instantly—while being able to infuse the ground he walked on would be a huge advantage.

He kept the singers at bay with some careful lunges, then backed up before a net could catch him. Unfortunately, this group was probably meant to stall him while Regals and Fused could be mustered. It was working perfectly. Without a Shardblade, Kaladin was far from unstoppable. He was forced away until he reached another intersection.

“Kaladin,” Syl said, hovering beside his head as a ribbon of light. “To your left.”

He spared a glance to see a flashing garnet light on the wall farther down the left-hand corridor. Well, he certainly wasn’t going to push through these soldiers anytime soon. He took off in a dash toward the light, and the soldiers—rightly timid when facing a Radiant—followed more cautiously. That gave Kaladin time to kick open a door, following the light, and enter an upscale glassmaker’s shop.

It seemed like a dead end until he spotted the hint of a gemstone set into the wall behind the counter. He leaped over it and infused the stone, and was rewarded as the wall parted. He slipped through the opening, then set the thing closing behind him.

This put him in a second, larger shop, filled with half-finished dressing dummies. He startled a late-night worker, a human with a Thaylen naval mustache and curled eyebrows. He dropped his adze and leaped to his feet, then clapped his hands.

“Brightlord Stormblessed!” he exclaimed.

“Quietly,” Kaladin said, crossing the room and cracking the door to peek out. “You need to hide. When they come asking, you didn’t see me.”

The hallway outside was clear, and Kaladin was pretty sure he knew where he was. This shortcut had completely circumvented the blockade. Hopefully that would confuse the soldiers as they tried to track him. Kaladin moved to sneak out the door, but the woodworker caught him by the arm.

“Radiant,” he said. “How? How do you still fight?”

“The same way you do,” Kaladin said. “One day at a time, always taking the next step.” He took the man’s wrist with his hand. “Don’t get yourself killed. But also don’t give up hope.”

The man nodded.

“Hide,” Kaladin said. “They’ll come searching for me.”

He pulled free and joined Syl. After about ten minutes of jogging, he heard shouting to his right, but nobody came running—and he realized where they thought he was heading: to a set of stairs that led directly toward the larger stairwell, which in turn led to the basement. They thought he was trying to rescue the queen, or maybe reach the crystal pillar.

Their error let him follow some back pathways without meeting any patrols, until he finally drew near the atrium. He’d managed to cross the entire floor, but he was now so deeply embedded within the tower that he was essentially surrounded.

The light led him around to the northern side of the tower, through some residential hallways, with lights under the doors. Rooms near the atrium and its grand window were popular—here, people could still see sunlight, but the atrium was generally warmer than the perimeter, with easy access to lifts.

The area was unnaturally silent, perhaps under curfew. He was used to the atrium region being alive with the sound of people talking all hours of the day, the lifts clanking faintly as they moved. Tonight it was hushed. He crept along the tower spren’s path, wondering when he’d find resistance. Surely someone would have put together what he was doing. Surely they would …

He stopped in the hallway as he saw bright light ahead. He could have sworn he’d reached the furthermost edge of the tower, the place near the enormous glass window that looked out to the east. There shouldn’t be any more rooms here, but ahead and to his right, moonlight spilled through an opening.

He inched up to find the area strewn with rubble. A secret door in the wall had been broken open; when he peeked through, he saw a short tunnel that ended at open air. This was the eastern wall of the tower, the flat side of Urithiru. The secret tunnel here was old, not newly cut, and had been created open to the air of the mountains.

The Pursuer was here, standing with another Fused and inspecting a strange device at the end of the short tunnel, right where it ended and opened to the air. A glowing sapphire, easily as large as a chasmfiend’s gemheart, had been set into a built-in stand rising from the floor. The entire mechanism was covered over in crem, so it had been here a while, and the Fused had needed to break off a crem crust to reach the gemstone.