You … just want … to live.
“Don’t you?”
The Sibling’s voice grew too soft to hear. Moash looked down the hallway toward Navani.
So she closed her eyes and tried to hum. She tried to find Stormlight’s tone, pure and vibrant. But she faltered. Navani couldn’t hear that tone, not right now. Not with everything falling apart, not with her life seeping away.
She found herself humming a different tone instead. The one Raboniel had always given her, with its chaotic rhythm. Yes, this close to death, Navani could only hear that. His tone. Eager to claim her.
The Sibling whimpered.
And Navani inverted the tone.
All it took was Intent. Odium gave her the song, but she twisted it back upon him. She hummed the song of anti-Voidlight, her hand pressed to the pillar.
Navani! the Sibling said, voice growing stronger. The darkness retreats ever so slightly. What are you doing?
“I … created this for you…” Navani said. “I tried to…”
Navani? the Sibling said. Navani, it’s not enough. The song isn’t loud enough. It seems to be hurting that man though. He has frozen in place. Navani?
Her voice faltered. Her bloody hand slipped down to her side, leaving marks on the pillar.
I can hear my mother’s tone, the Sibling said. But not my tone. I think it’s because my father is dead.
“Honor…” Navani whispered. “Honor is not … dead. He lives inside the hearts … of his children.…”
Does he? Truly? It seemed a plea, not a challenge.
Does he? Navani searched deep. Was what she’d been doing honorable? Creating fabrials? Imprisoning spren? Could she really say that? Odium’s tone rang in her ears, though she’d stopped humming its inverse.
Then, a pure song. Rising up from within her. Orderly, powerful. Had she done harm without realizing it? Possibly. Had she made mistakes? Certainly. But she’d been trying to help. That was her journey. A journey to discover, learn, and make the world better.
Honor’s song welled up inside her, and she sang it. The pillar began to vibrate as the Sibling sang Cultivation’s song. The pure sound of Lifelight. The sound began to shift, and Navani modulated her tone, inching it closer and closer to …
The two snapped into harmony. The boundless energy of Cultivation, always growing and changing, and the calm solidity of Honor—organized, structured. They vibrated together. Structure and nature. Knowledge and wonder. Mixing.
The song of science itself.
That is it, the Sibling whispered to the Rhythm of the Tower. My song.
“Our emulsifier,” Navani whispered to the Rhythm of the Tower.
The common ground, the Sibling said. Between humans and spren. That is … that is why I was created, so long ago.…
A rough hand grabbed Navani and spun her around, then pressed her against the pillar. Moash raised his Blade.
Navani, the Sibling said. I accept your Words.
Power flooded Navani. Infused her, making her pain evaporate like water on a hotplate. Together, she and the Sibling created Light. The energy surged through her so fully, she felt it bursting from her eyes and mouth as she looked up at Moash and spoke.
“Journey before destination, you bastard.”
* * *
Lirin hung in the air, his eyes squeezed closed, trembling. He remembered falling, and the awful tempest. Darkness.
It had all vanished. Something had yanked on his arm—slowing him carefully enough to not rip his arm off, but jarringly enough that it ached.
Stillness. In a storm. Was he dead?
He opened his eyes and searched upward to find a column of radiant light stretching hundreds of feet in the air, holding back the storm. Windspren? Thousands upon thousands of them.
Lirin dangled from the gauntleted fist of a Shardbearer in resplendent Shardplate. Armor that seemed alive as it glowed a vibrant blue at the seams, Bridge Four glyphs emblazoned across the chest.
A flying Shardbearer. Storms. It was him.
Kaladin proved it by rotating so that they were right-side up—then hoisting Lirin into a tight embrace. Remarkably, as Lirin touched the Plate, he couldn’t feel it. It became completely transparent—barely visible, in fact, as a faint outline around Kaladin.
“I’m sorry, Father,” Kaladin said.
“Sorry? For … for what?”
“I thought your way might be correct,” Kaladin said. “And that I’d been wrong. But I don’t think it’s that simple. I think we’re both correct. For us.”
“I think perhaps I can accept that,” Lirin said.
Kaladin leaned back—still holding him as they dangled barely twenty feet above the rocks. Storms. Was that how close they’d come? “Cutting it a little tight, don’t you think, son?”
“A surgeon must be timely and precise.”
“This is timely?” Lirin said.
“Well, you do hate it when people waste time,” Kaladin said, grinning. Then he paused, letting go of Lirin with one arm—which was somewhat disconcerting, though Lirin now seemed to be floating on his own. Kaladin touched Lirin’s forehead with fingers that felt normal, despite being faintly outlined by the gauntlet.
“What is this?” Kaladin asked.
Lirin remembered, with some embarrassment, what he’d finally let that one-armed fool Noril do to him. A painted shash glyph on Lirin’s forehead.
“I figured,” Lirin said, “that if an entire tower was going to show faith in my son, I could maybe try to do the same. I’m sorry, son. For my part.” He reached up and brushed aside Kaladin’s hair to see the brand there.
But as he did, he found scabs flaking away, the brands falling off to the stones below like a shell outgrown, discarded. Clean, smooth skin was left behind.
Kaladin reached to his forehead in shock. He prodded at the skin, as if amazed. Then he laughed, grabbing Lirin in a tighter embrace.
“Careful, son,” Lirin said. “I’m not a Radiant. We mortals break.”
“Radiants break too,” Kaladin whispered. “But then, fortunately, we fill the cracks with something stronger. Come on. We need to protect the people in that tower. You in your way. Me in mine.”
And so I am not at all dissatisfied with recent events.
—Musings of El, on the first of the Final Ten Days
Dalinar returned from the Stormfather’s vision and found himself still flying with the Windrunners—face mask in place, wrapped in several layers of protective clothing.
He felt clunky and slow after being the winds moments ago. But he reveled in what he’d heard and felt. What he’d said.
These Words are accepted.
Whatever was happening at Urithiru, Kaladin would face it standing up straight. God Beyond bless it to be enough, and that the Windrunner could reach Navani. For now, Dalinar had to focus on his current task.
He urged his speed to increase, but of course that did nothing. He had no control over this lesser flight; in it, Dalinar was little more than an arrow propelled through the air by someone else’s power—buffeted by the jealous winds, which did not want him invading their sky.
A part of him acknowledged the puerile nature of these complaints. He was flying. Covering a hundred miles in less than half an hour. His current travel was a wonder, an incredible achievement. But for a brief time he’d known something better.