Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

She remembered love. Family. Grandparents, cousins. How had she forgotten? As a child, ambition and love had been like two sides of her face, each with its own vibrant pattern. To the sound of Odium’s rhythms, one side had shone, while the other withered. She had become a person who wanted only to achieve her goals—not because those goals would help others, but because of the goals themselves.

It was in that moment that Venli saw for herself the depth of his lies. He claimed to be of all Passions, and yet where was the love she’d once felt? The love for her mother? Her sister? Her friends? For a while, she’d even forgotten her love for Demid, though it had helped to awaken her.

It felt wrong to be using his Light to practice her Surgebinding, but the stones whispered that it was well. Odium and his tone had become part of Roshar, as Cultivation and Honor—who had not been created alongside the planet—had become part of it. His power was natural, and no more wrong or right than any other part of nature.

Venli searched for something else. The tone of Cultivation. Odium’s song could suffuse her, fueling her powers and enflaming her emotions, but that tone … that tone had belonged to her people long before he’d arrived. While she searched for it, she listened to her mother’s songs in her mind. Like chains, spiked into the stone so they’d remain strong during storms, they reached backward through time. Through generations.

To her people, leaving the battlefield. Walking away rather than continuing to squabble over the same ground over and over. They hadn’t merely rejected the singer gods, they’d rejected the conflict. Holding to family, singing to Love despite their dull forms, they’d left the war and gone a new way.

The tone snapped into her mind, Cultivation and Odium mixing into a harmony, and it thrummed through Venli. She opened her eyes as power spread from her through the stones. They began to shake and vibrate to the sound of her rhythm, liquid, forming peaks and valleys in time with the music. The floor, ceiling, and walls before her rippled, and a trail of people formed from the stone. Moving, alive again, as they strode away from pain, and war, and killing.

Freedom. The stones whispered to her of freedom. Rock seemed so stable, so unchangeable, but if you saw it on the timescale of spren, it was always changing. Deliberately. Over centuries. She had never known her ancestors, but she knew their songs. She could sing those and imitate their courage. Their love. Their wisdom.

The power slipped from her, as it always did. The tone faded, and her control over the stone ended. She needed more practice and more Light. Still, she didn’t need Timbre’s encouraging thrum to keep her spirits high as she stood. For she had in front of her, in miniature, a sculpture of her ancestors striking out toward the unknown.

More, she had their songs. Because of her mother’s diligent and insistent teaching, the songs had not died with the listeners.

* * *

An hour later, Venli walked the hallways much lower in the tower, waiting for Leshwi.

She met with the Heavenly One almost every day. Raboniel knew the meetings were happening, of course. And Leshwi knew that Raboniel knew. Still, Venli and Leshwi met in secret; it was all part of the dance of politics between the Fused.

They met as if by happenstance. Leshwi hovered solemnly through a corridor at the right time, her long black train rustling against the stone. Venli fell into step beside her mistress.

“The Pursuer has found the Windrunner’s parents, Ancient One,” Venli said. “I’m certain of it. He posted two nightform Regals at the Radiant infirmary.”

“Which ones?”

“Urialin and Nistar.”

“‘Light’ and ‘mystery,’” Leshwi said, translating their names from the ancient language. Like many of the Regals, they had taken new names for themselves upon their awakening. “Yes, this is a signal. But the Pursuer is not that subtle; if you look, I suspect that Raboniel is the one who suggested those two.”

“What do we do?” Venli said to Anxiety.

“Nothing, for now. My authority extends far enough to protect them. This is merely a warning.”

“Raboniel threatens to let the Pursuer have the humans,” Venli said. “That is why she posted those two guards. To lord her advantage over us.”

“Perhaps,” Leshwi said, floating with her hands behind her back. “Perhaps not. Raboniel does not think like other Fused, Venli. She hears a much grander song. A skewed and twisted one, but one she seeks to sing without traditional regard for Odium’s plans or those of Honor, now dead.”

“She makes her own side then,” Venli said. “She seeks to play both armies against one another and profit herself.”

“Do not transpose your mortal ambitions upon Raboniel,” Leshwi said to Ridicule. “You think too small, Venli, to understand her. I think too small to understand her. Regardless, you did well in bringing this to me. Watch for other signs like this.”

They reached the atrium, the hallway they’d been following merging with it like a river flowing into a sea. Here, Heavenly Ones soared up and down, delivering supplies to the scouts and Masked Ones on the upper floors. Those continued to keep watch for Windrunners. The charade was wearing thin at this point; Raboniel was certain Dalinar Kholin had seen through it and knew something very wrong was happening at the tower.

The supplies to the upper floors could have been delivered via the lifts. However, Raboniel had put the Heavenly Ones to work, making it very clear that she had both the authority and the inclination to keep them busy.

This had driven off many of them, who preferred their sanctuaries in Kholinar. Perhaps that had been the point. Leshwi instead did as she was asked. She floated up and over the railing, her long train slipping over and then falling to drift in the open air beneath her. Another Heavenly One soared upward past them, trailing cloth of gold and red.

“Ancient One,” Venli said to Craving, stepping up to the railing. “What are we watching Raboniel for, if not to understand how she’s trying to gain advantage over us? What is the purpose of my spying?”

“We watch,” Leshwi said, floating down to eye level with Venli, “because we are frightened. To Raboniel, the games of men and singers are petty things—but so are their lives. We watch her, Venli, because we want a world to remain when she is finished with her plots.”

Venli felt a chill, attuning the Terrors. As Leshwi flew off, Venli took a lift, haunted by those words. The games of men and singers are petty things … but so are their lives.…

The ominous words pulled Venli down from her earlier optimism. After stepping off the lift, she decided to stop and check on Rlain and the others. She couldn’t help attuning Agony at the idea of those Regals in the infirmary. At least the surgeon and his wife had the good sense to mostly stay out of sight.

Venli slipped into the draped-off section of the room, where Hesina was keeping watch today. She nodded as Venli entered, then grimaced and glanced toward the others inside. There was a new human here, one Venli didn’t recognize, who stood with his eyes down, not speaking.

A tension in the room was coming entirely from Lirin and Rlain, who faced off at the rear, Rlain humming softly to Betrayal. What on Roshar?

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” Rlain said. “I can’t believe it. He’s your son.”