Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

Navani flipped the weapon over, feeling cold.

“We’ve used this metal for several Returns to drain Stormlight from Radiants,” Raboniel said. “It conducts Investiture, drawing it from a source and pulling it inward. We used it to fill gemstones, but didn’t realize until the fall of Ba-Ado-Mishram that capturing spren in gemstones was possible. It was then that one of us—She Who Dreams—realized it might be possible to trap a Herald’s soul in the same way.”

Navani licked her lips. So it was true. Shalash had told them Jezerezeh’Elin had fallen. They hadn’t realized how. This was better than absolute destruction though. Could he be recovered this way?

“What will you do with their souls?” Navani asked. “Once you have them?”

“Same thing you’ve done with the soul of Nergaoul,” Raboniel said. “Put them somewhere safe, so they can never be released again. Why did you want this metal? The guard told me you’d asked after it.”

“I thought,” Navani said, “this might be a better way to conduct Stormlight and Voidlight—to transfer it out of gemstones.”

“It would work,” Raboniel said. “But it isn’t terribly practical. Raysium is exceptionally difficult to obtain.” She nodded to the dagger she’d given Navani. “That specific weapon, you should know, contains only a small amount of the metal—not enough to harvest a Herald’s soul. It would not, therefore, be of any danger to me—should you consider trying such an act.”

“Understood, Ancient One,” Navani said. “I want it only for my experiments. Thank you.” She touched the tip of the dagger—with the white-gold metal—to one half of the divided ruby. Nothing happened.

“Generally, you need to stab someone with it for it to work,” Raboniel said. “You need to touch the soul.”

Navani nodded absently, resetting her equipment with the tuning fork and the magnifying lens, then watching the spren inside move to the sound. She set the tip of the dagger against it again, watching for any different behavior.

“You seem to be enjoying yourself,” Raboniel noted.

“I would enjoy myself more if my people were free, Lady of Wishes,” Navani said. “But I intend to use this time to some advantage.”

Their defense of the tower, frail though it was, had utterly collapsed. She couldn’t reach Kaladin, hear the Sibling, or plan with her scholars. There was only one node left to protect the heart of the tower from corruption.

Navani had a solitary hope remaining: that she could imitate a scholar well enough to build a new weapon. A weapon to kill a god.

In her experiment, nothing happened. The spren couldn’t get out of the ruby, even with the tone calling it. The spren was vivid blue, as it was corrupted, and appeared as half a spren: one arm, one leg. Why continue to manifest that way? Flamespren often changed forms—and they were infamous for noticing they were being watched. Navani had read some very interesting essays on the topic.

She picked up a small jeweler’s hammer. Carefully, she cracked the half ruby, letting the spren escape. It sprang free, but was immediately captured by the dagger. Light traveled along the blade, then the ruby at the base began to glow. Navani confirmed that the half spren was inside.

Interesting, Navani thought. So, what if I break the other half of the ruby and capture that half in the same gemstone? Excited, she reached to grab the other half of the ruby—but when she moved it, the dagger skidded across the table.

Navani froze. The two halves of the spren were still conjoined? She’d expected that to end once the original imprisonment did. Curious, she moved the dagger. The other half of the ruby flew out several feet toward the center of the room.

Too far. Much too far. She’d moved the dagger half a foot, while the paired ruby had moved three times as far. Navani stared at the hovering ruby, her eyes wide.

Raboniel hummed a loud rhythm, looking just as startled. “How?” she asked. “Is it because the spren is corrupted?”

“Possibly,” Navani said. “Though I’ve been experimenting with conjoined spren, and corrupted ones seem to generally behave the same as uncorrupted ones.” She eyed the dagger. “The gemstone on the dagger is larger than the one it was in before. Always before, you had to split a gemstone in two equal halves to conjoin them. Perhaps by moving one half to a larger gemstone, I have created something new.…”

“Force multiplication?” Raboniel asked. “Move a large gemstone a short distance, and cause the small gemstone to go a very long one?”

“Energy will be conserved, if our understanding of fabrial laws is correct,” Navani said. “Greater Light will be required, and moving the larger gemstone will be more difficult in equivalency to the work done by the smaller gemstone. But storms … the implications…”

“Write this down,” Raboniel said. “Record your observations. I will do the same.”

“Why?” Navani asked.

“The Rhythm of War, Navani,” Raboniel said as an explanation—though it didn’t seem one to Navani. “Do it. And continue your experiments.”

“I will,” she said. “But Lady of Wishes, I’m running into another problem. I need a way to measure the strength of Stormlight in a gemstone.”

Raboniel didn’t press for details. “There is sand that does this,” she said.

“Sand?”

“It is black naturally, but turns white in the presence of Stormlight. It can, therefore, be used to measure the strength of Investiture—the more powerful the source of power nearby, the quicker the sand changes. I will get some for you.” She hummed loudly. “This is amazing, Navani. I don’t think I’ve known a scholar so capable, not in many Returns.”

“I’m not a…” Navani trailed off. “Thank you,” she said instead.

Why would I want to remember?

Dabbid had been different all his life.

That was the word his mother had used. “Different.” He liked that word. It didn’t try to pretend. Something was different about him. He had been six when he started talking. He still couldn’t do adding in his head. He could follow instructions, but he forgot steps if they were too long.

He was different.

The surgeons hadn’t been able to say the reason. They said some people are just different. He was always going to be like this. The midwife, when she heard about him later, said the cord was wrapped around his neck when he was born. Maybe that was why.

When he’d been young, Dabbid had tried putting a rope around his neck to see how it felt. He hadn’t jumped off a ledge. He hadn’t tied the other end to anything. He hadn’t tried to die. He’d just tightened it a little, so he could know what baby Dabbid had felt.

When someone saw, everyone had panicked. They called him stupid. They took ropes away from him for years. They thought he was too dumb to know it would hurt him. He often got into trouble like that. Doing things others wouldn’t do. Not understanding it would make people panic. He had to be very careful not to make regular people frightened. They liked to be scared of him. He did not know why. He was different. But not scary different.

It had gotten worse when his mother died. People had become meaner on that day. It wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t even been there. But suddenly, everyone was meaner. He ended up at war, serving a lighteyes. Washing his clothing.