Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

On and on and on. She could deal with it. She always had. It wasn’t an honorspren thing though. The others weren’t like her, except maybe Rua.

Puffs of steam rose from the cook pot, and Syl became the same shape: a puff of steam rising toward the ceiling. When that got boring—it took only a few seconds—she soared up into the air to listen to the music. The storm wasn’t near enough yet. She wouldn’t be able to see it.

Still, she zipped out onto the balcony and flitted along the outside of the tower, searching for Kaladin’s room.

The tower was dead. She barely remembered the place from before, when she’d bonded her old wonderful knight. He’d spent most of his life traveling to little villages, using her as a Shardblade to cut cisterns or aqueducts for the people. She remembered coming to Urithiru with him once … and the tower had been bright with lights.… A strange kind of light …

She stopped in the air, realizing she’d flown up seventeen stories. Silly spren. Don’t let the child be in charge. She darted down and found Kaladin’s window, then squeezed through the shutters, which had just enough space between them for her to enter.

In the dark room beyond, he slept. She didn’t need to come look to know that. She’d have felt if he’d woken. But …

He has two brains too, she thought. A light brain and a dark brain. She wished she could understand him. He needed help. Maybe this new duty would be all he needed. She so profoundly hoped that it would. But she worried it wouldn’t be enough.

He needed her help, and she couldn’t give it. She couldn’t understand.

The storm! The storm was here.

She slipped back outside, though the responsible brain managed to keep her attention. Kaladin. She needed to help Kaladin. Perhaps he would be satisfied as a surgeon, and it would be good for him to not have to kill anymore. However, there was a reason he’d had difficulties as a surgeon in the past. He would continue to have the dark brain. This wasn’t a solution. She needed a solution.

She kept hold of that idea, not letting it evaporate like steam above a cauldron. She held to it even as the stormwall hit, washing around the base of the tower from the east. Hundreds of windspren flew before it in a multitude of shapes. She joined them, laughing and becoming like them. She loved her little cousins for their joy, their simple excitement.

As always, small thoughts bombarded her as she flew between them, waving, smiling, changing shapes repeatedly from one moment to the next. Honorspren—all of the intelligent spren—were something new to Roshar. Well, new as in ten-thousand-years-old new. So … newer.

How had the first honorspren—or cultivationspren, or inkspren, or peakspren, or any of the other intelligent ones—been created? Had they been shaped from raw Investiture by Honor himself? Had they grown out of these, their cousins? She felt so much kinship with them, though they were clearly different. Not as smart. Could she help them become smart?

These were heavy thoughts when she just wanted to soar. The music, the cataclysm of the storm was … strangely peaceful. She often had trouble in a room full of talking people, whether they were humans or spren. She would be intrigued by every conversation, her attention diverted constantly.

One might have thought the storm would be the same way, but it wasn’t loudness that bothered her—it was a diversity of loudnesses. The storm was a single voice. A majestic, powerful voice singing a song with its own harmonies. In here she could simply enjoy the song and relax, renewed.

She sang with the thunder. She danced with the lightning. She became debris and let herself be pushed along. She zipped into the inmost, darkest part of the storm, and she became its heartbeat. Light-thunder. Light-thunder. Light-thunder.

Then blackness took her. A fuller blackness than the absence of light. It was the split moment that her father could create. Time was a funny thing. It was always flowing along in the background like a river, but bring too much power to bear, and it warped. It slowed; it wanted to pause and take a look. Anytime too much power—too much Investiture, too much self—congregated, realms became porous and time behaved oddly.

He didn’t need to make a face in the sky for her as he did for mortals. She could feel his attention like the sun’s own heat.

CHILD. REBELLIOUS CHILD. YOU HAVE COME TO ME WISHING.

“I want to understand him,” Syl said, revealing the thought she’d been holding—protecting—and sheltering. “Will you make me feel the darkness he does, so I can understand it? I can help him better if I know him better.”

YOU GIVE TOO MUCH OF YOURSELF TO THAT HUMAN.

“Isn’t that why we exist?”

NO. YOU HAVE ALWAYS MISUNDERSTOOD THIS. YOU DO NOT EXIST FOR THEM. YOU EXIST FOR YOU. YOU EXIST TO CHOOSE.

“And do you exist for you, Father?” she demanded, standing in blackness—insisting on holding her human form. She stared up at the deep eternity. “You never make choices. You merely blow as you always do.”

I AM BUT THE STORM. YOU ARE MORE.

“You avoid responsibility,” she said. “You claim you do only what a storm must, but then act like I’m somehow wrong for doing what I feel I must! You tell me I can make choices, then berate me when I make ones you do not like.”

YOU REFUSE TO ADMIT THAT YOU ARE MORE THAN AN APPENDAGE TO A HUMAN. SPREN ONCE LET THEMSELVES BECOME CONSUMED BY THE NEEDS OF THE RADIANTS, AND THAT KILLED THEM. NOW, MANY OF MY CHILDREN HAVE FOLLOWED YOUR FOOLISH PATH, AND ARE IN GREAT DANGER.

THIS IS OUR WORLD. IT BELONGS TO THE SPREN.

“It belongs to everyone,” Syl said. “Spren, humans, even the singers. So we need to figure out how to live together.”

THE ENEMY WILL NOT ALLOW IT.

“The enemy is going to be defeated by Dalinar Kholin,” Syl said. “And so we need to have his champion ready.”

YOU ARE SO CERTAIN THAT YOUR HUMAN IS THE CHAMPION, the Stormfather said. I DO NOT THINK THE WORLD WILL BEND TO YOUR WISHES.

“Regardless, I need to understand him so I can help him,” Syl said. “Not because I’m going to be consumed by his desires, but because this is what I want to do. So I ask again. Will you make me capable of feeling what he does?”

I CANNOT DO THIS THING, the Stormfather said. YOUR WISHES ARE NOT EVIL, SYLPHRENA, BUT THEY ARE DANGEROUS.

“You cannot? Or you will not?”

I HAVE THE POWER, BUT NOT THE ABILITY.

The time between ended abruptly, dumping her back into the storm. Windspren spiraled around her, laughing and calling, mimicking the words, “You cannot, you cannot, you cannot!” Insufferable things. As bad as she was sometimes.

Syl kept hold of the idea, cradling it, then let herself be otherwise distracted by the storm. She danced for its entire passing, though she couldn’t leave with it. She needed to stay within a few miles of Kaladin, or her Connection to the Physical Realm would start to fade and her mind would weaken.

She enjoyed this time, an hour passing in moments. When the riddens finally approached, she stopped in eager anticipation, overjoyed. Up here in the mountains, the end of the storm made snow. By now, the storm had dropped all its crem-laced water, so the snow was white and pure. Each snowflake was so magnificent! She wished she could talk to objects like Shallan did, and hear each one’s story.

She fell with the flakes, imitating them—and creating patterns unique to her. She could be herself, not only live for some human. The thing was, Kaladin wasn’t just some human. She’d picked him deliberately out of millions and millions. Her job was to help him. As powerful a duty as the Stormfather’s duty to drop water and crem to give life to Roshar.