Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

I remember. I just forgot.

“I will send a team with you to Shinovar,” Dalinar said. “As soon as we return to our camp.”

“No,” Szeth said. “No. I must go alone, but not yet. I must prepare. I have … something important to do. He knew. He should not have known.…”

Storms. Dalinar wasn’t certain who was more insane: Szeth or the sword. The combination was particularly unnerving.

Without them, you would be dead, the Stormfather said, and I’d be bonded against my will. This Shin man is dangerous, but I fear Ishar more.

“Sigzil,” Dalinar called. “I don’t think he’s going to return anytime soon. Take us down. Let’s see if he left anything of value in that tent.”

* * *

Adin raised the spear he’d found in the atrium. People were crying, surrounded by fearspren, as the group of beleaguered humans and singers together made a circle around their wounded. They pushed the elderly and the children to the center, but Adin didn’t go with those. The spren watching would see that he wasn’t the type to hide. Even women had picked up weapons, including the surgeon’s wife, who had given her son to one of the young girls at the center to hold. War was a masculine art, but when you started attacking women, you’d stopped engaging in war. You deserved anything that happened to you after that point.

Adin’s father was among the wounded. Alive, bless the Heralds, but bleeding badly. He’d fought for the Radiants, when Adin … Adin had hidden in the hallway.

Storm him, he wasn’t going to be a coward again. He … he wasn’t. Adin fell into line beside a fearsome parshman in incredible carapace armor, then tried to position himself with his spear out, in that parshman’s same posture.

The stormforms marched in, singing a terrible song. Adin found himself trembling, his hands slick on his spear.

Oh, storms.

In that moment, he didn’t want to earn a spren. He didn’t want to fight. He wanted to be home making plates, listening to his father hum. He didn’t want to be standing here, knowing that they were all … all going to …

A hand took Adin by the shoulder and moved him backward. Not all the way back, but enough for the figure to stand in front of him. It was the quiet bridgeman, Dabbid. Adin didn’t complain, not after seeing those stormforms. Felt good to have someone in front of him, though the bridgeman’s spear shook. He was acting afraid to fool the enemy, right?

The stormforms didn’t release lightning, which was good. The others had thought they might not, because of the marketplace. Their powers were too wild. Regardless, there seemed to be … be hundreds of them. A call came from somewhere behind, and they came charging in—rippling with red lightning that flashed when they touched something.

In seconds, everything was chaos. Adin screamed, squeezing his eyes shut, holding out his spear and shaking.

No, he had to fight. He had to—

Something knocked into him from behind, throwing him forward. The strike dazed him, and he lost his spear. When he rolled over, a Voidbringer with red eyes stood above him. The creature casually speared downward.

Adin didn’t even have time to scream before—

Clink.

Clink?

The stormform cocked his head, humming an odd song. He stabbed at Adin’s chest, but the spear stopped short again. Adin looked at his body as he lay prone on the floor.

His torso was surrounded by glittering blue armor. He raised his hands, and found them covered in gauntlets.

He was in Shardplate.

He was in SHARDPLATE.

“Ha!” he shouted, and kicked at the stormform. The creature went flying, soaring twenty feet and slamming into a wall. Adin had barely felt any resistance. It was like he’d always imagined. It …

The Shardplate vanished off him and turned into a group of windspren, which soared over to Dabbid, who was about to take an axe to the head.

Clink.

Both combatants—the human now shrouded in Shardplate, and the enemy who had hit him—froze in place, stunned. The enemy backed away, and the Plate flew off again, this time surrounding the lead Heavenly One. She’d been spearing at a stormform who released a flash of lightning that enveloped her.

When Adin’s eyes cleared, he saw her floating in Shardplate, staring at her hands in obvious wonder. Confused, the stormforms began calling out, disengaging and re-forming into ranks.

The armor burst apart, forming those strange windspren who flew into the air overhead before latching on to a figure hovering above the buildings.

The Plate had fit everyone, but him it matched. A brilliant Knight Radiant in glowing armor, holding aloft an intricate Shardspear. He left the helmet off so they could all see. Kaladin Stormblessed, bright as the sun.

“I bring word from the Sibling!” he shouted. “They don’t remember inviting you in. And considering that they aren’t merely the master of this house, they literally are this house, your actions are quite the insult.”

Brilliant lights suddenly began running up the walls, making the very core of the stones glow as if molten in the center. Similar lights burst to life in the ceiling.

The ground trembled, as if the entire mountain were shaking. Clanking sounds rang in the hallways, like distant machines, and wind began to blow in the vast chamber—which now was as bright as day. Most amazing, the lightning on the stormforms went out.

Deepest Ones, who had been clawing out of the ground and grabbing at the feet of soldiers, began screaming and going limp, trapped in the stone. The Heavenly Ones who had been helping dropped to the ground suddenly, then collapsed, unconscious.

Groans sounded from behind. The Radiants on the floor at the center of the circle began stirring. They were awake!

“You may turn in your weapons,” Stormblessed said to the enemy. “And return to your kind unharmed, so long as you promise me one thing.” He smiled. “Tell him that I’m particularly going to enjoy hearing what he looked like when he found out what happened here today.”

* * *

A strange, unpleasant stench struck Dalinar as he stepped into Ishar’s pavilion.

The odor was chemically harsh, and he felt a faint burning in his eyes. He blinked in the dim light, finding a large chamber filled with slab tables and sheets shrouding something atop them. Bodies? The Windrunners had gone in first, of course, but they were busy inspecting the recesses of the tent to check for an ambush.

Dalinar walked up to one of the slabs and yanked off the shroud. He simply found a body underneath, an incision in its abdomen made with clean surgical precision. Male, with the clothing cut off and lying beside the body. Very pale skin and stark white hair—in death, the hair and skin seemed almost the same color. That skin had a blue cast to it; probably a Natan person.

So Ishar was a butcher, a mad surgeon as well as a crazed theocrat. For some reason, that relieved Dalinar. It was disgusting, but this was an ordinary kind of evil. He’d expected something worse.

“Sir?” Mela the Windrunner called from across the room. “You should see this.”

Dalinar walked over to Mela, who stood beside one of the other slabs. Szeth remained in the doorway to the pavilion, seated on the ground, holding his sheathed sword across his lap. He seemed not to care about the investigation.

Another corpse—half revealed by a drawn-back sheet—was on the slab in front of Mela, though this one was far stranger. The elongated body had a black shell covering most of it, from neck to feet. That had been cut free to open up the chest. Dalinar couldn’t make sense of the shell. It looked like clothing, kind of, but was hard like singer carapace—and had apparently been attached to the skin.