“I think, Honored One,” Sekeir said softly, “that you might be having another bout of your weakness. We shall have to sequester you, I’m afraid. For your own good…”

Nevertheless, I’m writing answers for you here, because something glimmers deep within me. A fragment of a memory of what I once was.

I was there when Ba-Ado-Mishram was captured. I know the truth of the Radiants, the Recreance, and the Nahel spren.

Adolin made no effort to arrive early to the last day of the trial. Indeed, each footstep felt leaden as he trudged toward the forum. He could see from a distance that the place was crowded—with even more spren gathered at the top of the steps than yesterday. Nearly every honorspren in the fortress had come to watch him be judged.

Though he didn’t relish facing them, he also couldn’t give up this opportunity. It was his last chance to speak for himself, for his people. He had to believe that some of them were listening.

And if he lost? If he was condemned to imprisonment? Would he let Shallan rescue him, as she’d offered?

If I did, he thought, I would prove what the leaders of the honorspren have been saying all along: Men aren’t worthy of trust. What if the only way to win here was to accept their judgment? To spend years in a cell?

After all, what else are you good for, Adolin? The world needed Radiants, not princes—particularly not ones who had refused the throne. Perhaps the best thing he could do for humanity was become a living testimony of their honor.

That thought troubled him as he reached the crowd. They parted for him, nudging one another, falling silent as he descended.

Storms, I wasn’t built for problems like this, Adolin thought. He hadn’t slept well—and he worried about the way Shallan had been acting lately. She wasn’t sitting in her spot, and neither was Pattern. Was she going to skip this most important day of the trial?

He was about halfway down the steps when he noticed another oddity: Kelek wasn’t there. Sekeir—the aged honorspren with the long beard—had taken his place. He waved for Adolin to continue.

Adolin reached the floor of the forum and walked over to the judge’s seat. “Where is Kelek?”

“The Holy One is indisposed,” Sekeir said. “Your wife went to him in secret and tried to influence the course of the trial.”

Adolin felt a spike of joy. So that was what she’d been up to.

“Do not smile,” Sekeir said. “We discovered a weapon of curious design, perhaps used to intimidate the Holy One. Your wife is being held, and the Holy One is … suffering from his long time as a Herald.

“We have relieved him as High Judge, and I will sit in his place. You will find the documentation on your seat, to be read to you if you wish. The trial will continue under my direction. I am a far lesser being, but I will not be as … lax as he was.”

Great, Adolin thought. Wonderful. He tried to find a way to use this to his advantage. Could he stall? Make some kind of plea? He looked at the audience and saw trouble, division. Perhaps he was a fool, but it seemed like some of them wanted to listen. Wanted to believe him. Those felt fewer than yesterday; so many others watched him with outright hostility.

So how could Adolin reach them?

Sekeir started the trial by calling for silence, something Kelek had never bothered to do. Apparently the hush that fell over the crowd wasn’t enough, for Sekeir had three different spren ejected for whispering to one another.

That done, the overstuffed spren stood up and read off a prepared speech. And storms, did it go on. Windy passages about how Adolin had brought this upon himself, about how it was good that humans finally had a chance to pay for their sins.

“Do we need this?” Adolin interrupted as Sekeir paused for effect. “We all know what you’re going to do. Be on with it.”

The new High Judge waved to the side. A spren stepped up beside Adolin, a white cloth in her hands. A gag. She pulled it tight between her hands, as if itching for a chance.

“You may speak during the questioning of the witness,” Sekeir said. “The defendant is not allowed to interrupt the judge.”

Fine. Adolin settled into parade rest. He didn’t have an enlisted man’s experience with standing at attention, but Zahel had forced him to learn this stance anyway. He could hold it. Let them see him bear their lashes without complaint.

His determination in that regard lasted until Sekeir, at long last, finished his speech and called for the final witness to be revealed.

It was Maya.

Amuna led her by the hand, forcing back the watching honorspren. Though Adolin had gone to see Maya each morning—and they’d let him do his exercises with her—bars had separated them. They hadn’t otherwise allowed him to interact with her, claiming deadeyes did best when it was quiet.

If so, why were they dragging her into the middle of a crowd? Adolin stepped forward, but the honorspren at his side snapped the gag in warning. He forced himself back into parade rest and clenched his jaw. Maya didn’t seem any worse for the attention. She walked with that customary sightless stare, completely oblivious to the whispering crowd.

Sekeir didn’t hush them this time. The bearded honorspren smiled as he regarded the stir Amuna and Maya made. They placed Maya on her podium, and she turned and seemed to notice Adolin, for she cocked her head. Then, as if only now aware of it, she regarded the crowded audience. She shrank down, hunching her shoulders, and glanced around with quick, jerky motions.

He tried to catch her gaze and reassure her with a smile, but she was too distracted. Damnation. Adolin hadn’t hated the honorspren, despite their tricks, but this started him seething. How dare they use Maya as part of their spectacle?

Not all of them, he reminded himself, reading the mood of the crowd. Some sat quietly, others whispered. And more than a few near the top wore stormy expressions. No, they didn’t care for this move either.

“You may speak now, prisoner,” Sekeir said to Adolin. “Do you recognize this deadeye?”

“Why are you questioning me?” Adolin said. “She is supposed to give witness, and I’m supposed to question her. Yet you’ve chosen a witness who cannot answer your questions.”

“I will guide this discussion,” Sekeir said. “As is my right as judge in the case of a witness too young or otherwise incapable of a traditional examination.”

Adolin sought out Blended, a single black figure in a sea of glowing white ones. She nodded. This was legal. There were so many laws she hadn’t had time to explain—but it wasn’t her fault. He suspected he couldn’t have understood every detail of the law even with years of preparation.

“Now,” Sekeir said, “do you know this spren?”

“You know I do,” Adolin snapped. “That is Mayalaran. She is my friend.”

“Your ‘friend,’ you say?” Sekeir asked. “And what does this friendship entail? Do you perhaps have dinner together? Participate in friendly chats around the campfire?”

“We exercise together.”

“Exercise?” Sekeir said, standing from his seat behind the judge’s table. “You made a weapon of her. She is not your friend, but a convenient tool. A weapon by which you slay other men. Your kind never asks permission of Shardblades; you take them as prizes won in battle, then apply them as you wish. She is not your friend, Adolin Kholin. She is your slave.”

Tags: Brandon Sanderson The Stormlight Archive Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net