Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Taravangian stood at the edge of infinity, gazing out into the brilliant, shifting patterns of boundless possibility.

Time had no meaning to Taravangian anymore, although he knew that by mortal reckoning he hadn’t been standing here long. He didn’t think that he would ever tire of contemplating the vista that stretched endlessly before him. It was surprising. It was fascinating. It was hopelessly complex. Even he, with his newly expanded perception, couldn’t grasp everything all at once. Part of him felt that he could be content if he could just stand here for a few millennia.

However, another part of him--the impatient, passionate part, knew that there was work to be done.

Taravangian reluctantly looked away from the expanse of potential futures, and summoned Rayse’s master plan. Pane upon pane of glass surrounded him, the rows stretching out into eternity in all directions. Each pane was carefully etched, glowing with golden writing. The symbols came from a thousand different languages--some currently in use around the cosmere, others long dead, and others yet to be invented. Taravangian could read them all, he could encompass them all. Before his ascension, Taravangian hadn’t had the capacity to understand it, to fully appreciate it. He understood everything now.

Rayse had made so many mistakes.

The one that had been most costly, the one that in fact had been his undoing, was that Rayse had underestimated the effects of minute details that escaped his control. Taravangian focused on a small area of blacked-out letters in the master plan. The blacked-out letters originated from a single point—a spot that triggered cascading ripples of blindness stretching out to eternity. It was the section of writing corrupted by the Blackthorn’s younger son, Renarin Kholin.

It vexed Taravangian, that this one tiny region of his godly futuresight was compromised. He could not overlook it, the way his predecessor had. Before, that blind spot had hidden Szeth and the sword Szeth carried. It had even partly concealed the actions of Taravangian’s mortal form. How many of the actions of others were shielded from Taravangian the Vessel? Who else did that black spot hide, even now?

Even as he watched, Taravangian saw that small, seemingly insignificant section slowly creeping, slowly spreading. The blackness was infecting and disrupting the surrounding gold writing, one tiny letter at a time.

As someone who had once spent many of his lucid mortal moments caught up in the predictions and plots of the Diagram, Taravangian appreciated the understated brilliance of those small, careful counter-moves. After all, those efforts had brought him to where he was now.  Unfortunately, he just couldn’t allow it to continue.

He absently waved a hand, and the glass panes of the master plan faded away. There were rules that bound the Shard of Odium, and those directives limited Taravangian’s ability to intervene himself. However, there were still plenty of ways for him to influence events. One thing Rayse had done right was to establish human agents on Roshar, contacts that Taravangian had inherited. Those mortal hands and minds provided a pathway for him to act.

He’s just a boy, a small part of him whispered. His intervention saved you. Taravangian pushed that voice aside. He paid that old version of himself less and less attention. He had no need for compassion or sentimentality now.

…Not when he could finally accomplish so much.

*       *       *

Rlain stood among the fields out on of one of Urithiru’s agricultural plates, watching as a group of ardents carted away the last of the drums. It hadn’t taken long for them to clear the stone pathways. Soldiers had been out here earlier this morning, removing the remaining emeralds and bringing them back to the treasury. The only holdover from the work that they’d been doing over the last few months were the iron posts that had held the gems, still bolted into the rock. The plan was to have a group of artifabrians come out and remove them tomorrow.

Rlain found himself attuned to the Rhythm of Mourning, a slow, sorrowful cadence. All the work that they had accomplished, all the progress that they had made in these fields, now seemed redundant at best. With the revival of the spren that controlled the tower, the agricultural systems had become fully operational. Rlain understood that different plates could be set for different conditions, so that crops from Thaylenah to the Reshi Isles could be grown under ideal temperature and humidity conditions.

There wasn’t any need for Stormlight-filled emeralds or lifespren or drums anymore. No more need for Rlain’s unique skills. Now that the Sibling was awake, Rlain would have to find something else to do to stay useful. He sighed. He supposed that being a Knight Radiant was going to be his new full-time job. Although… to be honest, he was a little murky on exactly what it was that Enlightened Truthwatchers did all day.

As had become his habit, Rlain turned his steps outward away from the tower, walking among the green and growing fields. The ardents with the drums had all gone inside, and the agricultural plate was deserted now. That gave him uninterrupted space to reflect.

Rlain had a lot to think about, and he found himself attuning the Rhythm of Tension. A troubling vision had come to him earlier this morning, as he’d been getting ready to leave the Bridge Four barracks. It was only the second one he’d experienced since becoming a Truthwatcher, and he still wasn’t entirely sure what to do about it.

I have captured it, Tumi said, pulsing to the Rhythm of Satisfaction. You would see it again?

Rlain attuned Confusion. You can do that?  They had learned of Glys’ ability to replay visions only yesterday.

Remembering that conversation, thinking back on that unexpected encounter with Renarin the evening before, Rlain experienced a radiating warmth in his chest. Even now, many hours later, he still felt a dazed sense of wonder at the realization that the feelings that he’d been harboring these past few months had been mutual. That sensation of happiness was still so new, so fragile. It was easy to lose himself in it.

Don’t get distracted, he chided himself. He’d see Renarin again soon enough.

With effort, Rlain re-focused his thoughts. The vision. From the explanation Renarin had given, Rlain understood that replaying a vision took Stormlight. Rlain had plenty of infused gems at the moment. …But still, he hesitated to let Tumi act. Rlain had trained himself to recall important details back when he’d been working as a listener spy. He attuned Resolve. I want to try and remember, first.

Coming to a halt, Rlain closed his eyes and mentally reconstructed the event. The first of the stained glass windows he’d seen had shown him mostly darkness, although one part of the panel had been brightly lit.  It had been as if spherelight were shining through a partially open door. Fragments of glass had recreated a slice of a room with gently curving walls. Those walls had been decorated with a riot of green tile in a staggering number of shades and varieties, and Rlain had experienced a sense of deja-vu at the sight. He felt as if he had been in the room before, although he couldn’t quite place it without seeing more of that space.

The next window had shown him a lighteyed Alethi man, his nondescript brown clothing replicated in triangular shards of stained glass. Rlain had received some sentry training as a member of Dalinar Kholin’s honor guard--back before Bridge Four had evolved into a unit of Windrunner squires. The furtive expression on the human’s face as he appeared poised to duck behind a plain tan curtain prompted an immediate surge of suspicion. …All the moreso when the third and final glass pane of the vision revealed an open pouch filled with diamond broams, set down on a table next to several bundles of blue cloth.

Cloth of Kholin blue. The fabric bundle on the top of the stack bore a military patch of the exact type worn by members of the Cobalt Guard.

Rlain found himself attuning Tension again. Was this the enemy forces at work? If so, what was the goal? He couldn’t help but remember that the last time a Kholin uniform jacket had fallen into enemy hands, an Honorblade had been stolen.

Rlain had stopped by the quartermaster’s office on the way out to the fields earlier this morning, prompted by a deep sense of unease about what he had seen. His inquiries had earned him suspicious looks from the portly man on duty, as well as loud grumbling at his highly unusual request. However, the Bridge Four patch that Rlain wore on his shoulder carried some clout, and eventually the quartermaster’s assistant had given in and checked the stocks.

All of the spare Kholin uniforms and uniform patches were accounted for, he reported. When Rlain had suggested that he keep a close watch on the supplies the next few days, the man had given Rlain a long-suffering look, clearly irritated to be told how to do his job. However, in the end he had grudgingly agreed.

After that, Rlain had tried to see Fisk, the current Captain of the Cobalt Guard. He’d been turned away by some subordinates who had said that the Captain was occupied. They’d suggested that he come back again in the afternoon.

It hasn’t happened yet, Rlain finally decided. He wished that he had a better understanding of what the events in the vision might mean. What he really wanted was to talk to Renarin about it—but he already knew that Renarin was busy with other duties this morning.

As if on cue, Rlain caught a flash of light out of the corner of his eye.  He turned, looking towards the Oathgate plateau. From his vantage point near the outer edge of the agricultural plate, he saw the visible light ring that marked a successful transfer expand out from the Azimir Oathgate, and then dissipate.

The delegation from Emul had arrived.

*       *       *

It was the second of the final ten days.

Dalinar Kholin stood at parade rest, backed by small contingent of the Cobalt Guard and Windrunners. To Dalinar’s right, Navani was her usual regal and elegant self in a full-skirted gold havah that was a striking color contrast to his own formal Kholin military jacket. To his left stood Renarin, dressed for diplomatic functions in the attire of a Kholin prince rather than the Bridge Four uniform that he favored. He stood quietly, although he had a slim length of gold chain with him that he ran back and forth between his fingers as they waited.

A party of visitors was assembling at the other end of the Oathgate platform, just outside the control building for the Oathgate to the capitol city of Azimir. In Dalinar’s opinion, it was taking far longer than it should for the group to get organized. He sighed in irritation. He had never been a patient man.

There was so little time left. To prepare for the contest of champions. To master his Bondsmith’s powers. Companylord Sigzil and a group of his hand-picked Windrunners had been dispatched at dawn this morning, speeding to Shinovar with instructions to try and unlock and activate the Oathgate if possible. Dalinar still wasn’t sure that he understood what a “Worldsinger” was, but he had it on good authority that the current leader of the Windrunners would be the person best-suited to successfully navigate Shin customs.

Under more ideal circumstances, the advance party would open up the Oathgate and then everyone else could travel directly from Urithiru through the unlocked portal. That strategy had worked well for the connection to Thaylen City. However, on this occasion Dalinar couldn’t spare the time to see if Sigzil’s group would be successful. The contest of champions was only eight days away.

Dalinar itched to be in the air, to be speeding to Shinovar with his own contingent of Windrunners for the promised rendezvous with Ishar. There was so little time. …And yet, he’d been counselled to delay for just a few hours.

Renarin had said that the meeting with the Emuli was important, although he’d admitted that he didn’t entirely know why. Renarin had been right before, when he had prompted Dalinar to finalize the contract for the contest of champions. More and more, Dalinar was realizing that he needed to pay heed to his younger son’s instincts and his odd powers. Dalinar couldn’t afford to ignore those unpredictable glimpses of the future. He was trying to oppose the will a god, and he needed every advantage he could get.

Finally, finally the diplomatic party approached across the plateau, closing the distance from the Azimir Oathgate. At the front of the delegation was the head Vizier of the Emuli Prime, wearing fine robes patterned in bright colors and flanked by two honor guard soldiers bearing halberds.

“Your Majesties,” the man stopped a respectful distance away and bowed deeply before Dalinar and Navani. “His most honored excellency Vexil the Wise, Prime of Emul, sends greetings. He regrets that he could not be here himself, but with the recent success of the coalition forces in Emul, he finds himself beset by a number of urgent matters of state.”

Dalinar inclined his head. “Understandable, your Grace. A representative of the Prime is an honored guest. We are pleased to welcome you back to Urithiru.”

What followed next was a semi-scripted exchange of pleasantries, a part of political maneuverings that Dalinar had never enjoyed. Navani rescued him, fielding most of the conversation with her natural poise and grace. The respite allowed Dalinar to listen to the conversation with only one small part of his attention.

He found his mind settling on the map of Roshar that he had been studying earlier that morning. The Misted Mountains separated the country of Shinovar from the rest of the continent. There were passes and gaps that formed narrow pathways through the mountains, but Dalinar wasn’t sure how easily his group of Windrunners would be able to navigate them. Should they fly due west over Yezier? …Or take a more southerly route to Alm and approach Shinovar over water in order to avoid the mountains entirely?

Navani nudged Dalinar surreptitiously in the ribs, recalling his attention to the present. He realized that the small talk had ceased. The Emuli Vizier motioned one of his honor guard forward. The man carried a large bundle, wrapped in yellow seasilk.

Renarin suddenly straightened up with interest. He slipped the chain that he’d been fiddling with into the pocket of his open-fronted uniform coat. A glance showed Dalinar that the bundle had his son’s full attention.

“In gratitude to the coalition for the liberation of our homeland, our esteemed Prime wishes to present a gift.” The Vizier reached out and unwrapped the top of the bundle. The silk fell away, to reveal a huge gemstone.

It was an emerald, cut in a flat, circular shape.  Triangular facets had been laid down in perfect rows all along the curving edge, and it was nearly as wide across as a dinner plate. The chasmfiend that had grown it as a raw gemheart must have been enormous—larger than most of the greatshells Dalinar had seen during his time on the Shattered Plains.

Gazing at the gem, Dalinar felt a sense of reverence in spite of himself. Usually when he saw an emerald, his mind immediately went to supply lines and logistics. How much Soulcast food could be produced to feed soldiers before the gemstone cracked? This gem was different, however--shining almost blindingly bright with stored Stormlight.

This emerald was too valuable to use for Soulcasting. This was a perfect gem.

“This is one of the crown jewels of Emul. A gem of great value. Also, as you can see, a bountiful source of Stormlight. As a sign of our appreciation for all that has been done to assist our homeland, it is the decision of our esteemed Prime that this gem should be given to the Knights Radiant, to help with the war effort and assist the liberation of other countries.”

Dalinar wasn’t very optimistic about the amount of liberating that could be done in eight days, especially considering that the Mink was still in Emul, attending to some remaining pockets of unrest. He refrained from saying so, appreciating the gesture, nonetheless. Renarin seemed to think that the gem was important. Perhaps it would play a role in the upcoming contest.

The Emuli soldier stepped forward, and Dalinar gravely accepted the gem. He nodded to the Vizier. “We are honored by this magnificent gift. Please convey our sincere appreciation to the Prime.”

There was only one safe place to put a treasure of this magnitude. The gem would have to be stored in the fabrial-locked vault located in the heart of the Urithiru Treasury. It was a precaution they’d adopted after the robbery at the Thalen Gemstone Reserve had become public. Queen Fen had so far politely declined to share the technological secrets that had gone into the new and improved anti-shardblade design. However, she’d been willing to sell them a vault that had already been constructed, as a way to raise capital for the restoration of Thaylen City.

“Renarin!”

“Sir!” His second son stepped forward and turned to face him, saluting smartly.

Dalinar passed off the bundle containing the perfect gem. “Take an escort and deposit this in the royal vault in the treasury. I suspect that it will be put to good use soon.”

“Yes, Sir!” Renarin saluted again, the bundle cradled in the crook of his arm. Four members of the Cobalt Guard separated from the others and fell in around him as he departed for the main entrance of the tower.

“…And now,” the Vizier said quickly, “If I might request a small portion of his Majesty’s valuable time….”

Dalinar sighed inwardly. Politics. It was a tried and true tactic. Bring a gift, and then ask for stuff. He suspected that he wouldn’t like what was coming. “You can ask.”

“There are some matters of import that we should discuss regarding the forces still stationed in our homeland.” He motioned, and an Emuli scribe stepped forward, bearing a dauntingly thick sheaf of official-looking documents.

Emul had been fully restored as a member-country of the Azish Empire. Of course there would be paperwork.

“You’re correct in saying that my time is valuable.” Dalinar looked at his fabrial watch. “I can give you one hour to discuss any military matters. After that, I will turn any remaining business over to Urithiru’s very capable queen, who can address any non-military concerns.”

The Vizier bowed low, his aides and scribes following suit.

Navani gave Dalinar a look as she took his arm, bending close to his ear. “Thanks,” she whispered in a dry undertone.

That one word prompted an immediate guilty reaction. With everything else on his mind, Dalinar had forgotten that she’d been planning to spend time on her scholarly pursuits later today. He wasn’t fond of public displays of affection, but the Emuli diplomats were all still bowing, so… he brushed his lips gently against her forehead. “I’ll make it up to you, my dear,” he whispered back.

“Hmm. I’ll remember that you said that.”

Putting on a pleasant smile, Navani looked back at their visitors. “Let’s retire to the Gallery of Maps,” she said graciously. “Refreshments will be brought, and I’m sure we can accomplish much during the time that we have.”

*       *       *

Dabbid stood placidly to one side of the Oathgate plateau, feeling the morning sun upon his upturned face. The sky was a nice shade of blue today.  The air was very clear.  If he squinted just right, he thought he could see the thin, bright shape of a skyeel off in the distance.

Behind him, the important people were leaving, heading into the tower. Yake and Lyn from Bridge Four were going with them, as well as the rest of the Cobalt Guard.

Skar was in charge of Bridge Four since Sigzil had left on his mission. The other Windrunners clustered around Skar, all chattering about Shinovar. Dabbid wasn’t going with them, but that was okay. He liked being here at the tower.

Bridge Four all knew that he could talk, now. They had reacted the same way that Rlain had--wondering why he’d kept it a secret for so long. They didn’t tease him about not being smart, and they weren’t mean. That made him feel good. Even if he was different from everybody else, he still belonged with Bridge Four.

The skyeel shape turned and dove downwards. It was orange, and that made it a little easier for Dabbid to see against the sky. He watched it until it sank down below the level of the Oathgate plateau, disappearing behind one of the control buildings.

That was when Dabbid saw the strange man.

Most of the people still out on the plateau were by the Azir Oathgate, on the platform the important people had come from. …But the strange man was on the right-hand side, on a platform that was closer to the tower.  The man wasn’t wearing a uniform and he wasn’t wearing important person clothing. He looked like a common darkeyed worker.  Dabbid had spent plenty of time as a darkeyed laborer himself, and he could tell that this man didn’t act right.  He was standing up against the wall in the shadow of one of the control buildings.  It was like he didn’t want to be seen.

How had the man gotten out onto the Oathgate plateau? There were a lot of guards around. They usually stopped people from coming out here. As Dabbid watched, the man slipped inside the building.

Dabbid frowned. He wasn’t smart, but he knew the rules. Only certain people were allowed inside those buildings. The stranger didn’t belong over there.

Dabbid looked over at Skar, but the lieutenant was busy talking to Kara and Peet. Dabbid shuffled from one foot to the other, waiting to be noticed.  Unfortunately, he was easy to overlook.  The Windrunners kept talking.  It sounded important, and Dabbid couldn’t bring himself to interrupt.

He looked back over in the direction of the Oathgate building, trying to decide what to do.  After a long moment of hesitation, he finally straightened his shoulders and started forward.

*       *       *

Go ahead and replay the vision from this morning, Rlain thought to Tumi. He’d been walking again, following the curve of the railing at the far edge of the fields. He needed to see if he’d missed any important details. Then he decided that he would try again to see Captain Fisk.

Tumi hummed to the Rhythm of Determination, and Rlain stepped forward. As had happened before, the ground beneath his boot fractured into dark glass; black with red light shining up through the cracks. The shards shifted, and as some sections rose up, groups of glass fragments changed their shape and flooded with color, piecing themselves together to form large stained glass windows.

Tumi…. Rlain attuned Confusion, staring as the image in the first of the panels began to resolve itself front of him, glowing softly as if lit from within.

This is not me, Tumi said, also to the Rhythm of Confusion. This is us. This is new.

In the new stained glass panel, the circular room that Rlain had seen earlier was now better lit. Spheres had been placed in eleven sconces mounted along the wall. Rlain could now identify the space as one of the Oathgate control buildings, although he hadn’t seen the green murals that decorated the walls of the Shinovar Oathgate in well over a year. Also depicted in the window was a shiny gray box, about the size of a footstool, with strange indentations in the top. Rlain had never seen anything like it before. He didn’t think that it was supposed to be there, placed right next to the Oathgate keyhole.

Rlain stepped forward. In the next window, that lighteyed man was back, wearing different clothing this time. A different day from the image before? Again, he was disappearing behind a tan curtain, and now Rlain saw the area in front of the curtain more clearly. Tables that were little more than rough-hewn boards propped up on sawhorses had been set up within a roped off area that was topped with strung tarps. The tables were piled with folded bunches of cloth in a variety of colors, stacked row after row. If Rlain had to guess, this looked like it might be a cloth merchant’s stall from one of the seedier sections of the Breakaway market.

When, when will this happen?

Renarin had said that the visions most often showed the future, but that they sometimes could show the present or even the past. There was writing around the edge of the window, but Rlain couldn’t understand it. Tumi, do you know what it says?

The spren hummed to the Rhythm of Anxiety. I… I do not know.

Rlain attuned Determination. He had considered it before this, but now he was certain. He was absolutely going to need to learn how to read.

Rlain stepped forward again, and again the next panel diverged from his earlier vision. The wooden table was still there. However, now instead of seeing a pouch full of currency next to stacked blue uniforms, he saw instead a flat wooden box lying next to a goblet of lit spheres. Rlain frowned, noting the height of the goblet, the diameter of the spheres. Based on those points of reference, he’d estimate that the box measured maybe a foot and a half long.

A fourth window formed, rising up from the fractured glass on the ground.  This stained glass window was taller and wider than the previous three. The final image showed the same table again, but now the wooden box lay open, the contents clearly visible.

Rlain approached the window with a rising sense of foreboding. Nestled in white cloth on the inside of the box was a pair of daggers with curving, leaf-like blades. The daggers were identical to each other except for the gemstones set into the pommels. The gem in the dagger on the left shone faintly with a strange violet-black light. The gem on the right glowed blue-white. Both gems caused ripples in the surface of the stained glass shards immediately surrounding them. …As if the very existence of the gems somehow warped the air.

Rlain instantly recognized what it meant. The Radiants in the tower had been told what to look for. Queen Navani had warned them all.

Two anti-Light daggers. Two. Rlain felt a sharp spike of visceral fear.

How does one destroy a spren that is partly of Honor and partly of Odium?

Rlain’s Nahel bond was only a few days old. Hardly anyone even knew about Tumi yet. Rlain was sure that his own spren was not the target.

Tumi pulsed to Anxiety, reaching the exact same conclusion at nearly the same time. Glys….

Suddenly the when of this vision didn’t matter anymore. Rlain didn’t stop to watch as the windows of the vision began to break apart and disintegrate around him. He spun in the direction of the tower, sucked in Stormlight from the spheres in his pocket, and ran.

Chapter Text

ELEVEN MONTHS AGO

Renarin Kholin stood nervously in front of a plain wooden door. 

The stone hallway to either side of him was deserted.  Most of the people who lived in this particular wing of Urithiru were gone for the day, either out on the training grounds or working in the large gathering spaces that had come to serve as temples within the tower city.  Ardent Ivis had cheerfully given him directions to get here, and Renarin was certain that he’d followed them exactly. 

However, now that he was here he just couldn’t seem to bring himself to reach out and knock. 

Renarin had been working up the courage for this meeting ever since the Battle of Thaylen Field.  Earlier today, he’d thought that he was finally prepared.  Standing here now, however, he found himself rocking anxiously on his feet--leaning forward, then backward.  He just couldn’t seem to make himself stop.  His heartbeat pounded in his ears, while the familiar twisting black crosses of anxietyspren clustered all around him. 

He’d turned 20 just a few weeks ago.  His Nahel bond seemed to have completely cured his epilepsy and his eyesight.  However, it had done absolutely nothing to fix his irrational fear of confrontations.

…Or in the case of this particular confrontation, his not-so-irrational fear.

Renarin wished that he’d had some say in how the Nahel bond had healed him.  He hadn’t minded wearing spectacles.  He’d have taken back the bad eyesight in a heartbeat if he could trade away these bouts of intense anxiety.     

The anxietyspren continued to writhe and twist, and there seemed to be more of them with each passing minute.  This was getting a little ridiculous.  He couldn’t just stand here in the hallway all afternoon. 

Closing his eyes to shut out his surroundings, Renarin deliberately ran through the steps of a Riran meditative exercise that his mother had taught him years ago.  He focused his attention on his breathing, matching inhalations and exhalations to a slow count in his head.  A few minutes passed.  The exercise didn’t make the anxiety go away, but it released some of the paralysis that gripped him.  He drew in a last deep breath.  Steeling himself, he raised a hand to knock on the door.

His knuckles met nothing but empty air as the door abruptly opened, and a dark shape materialized right in front of him.  Backlit by the spherelight of the room beyond, the person’s features were hidden in deep shadow.  Biting back a yelp of surprise, Renarin stumbled backwards, coming up hard against the opposite wall of the corridor as the last of the anxietyspren finally scattered away from him.

“Prince Renarin,” said a familiar, gravelly voice.  The door opened wider, and Swordmaster Zahel looked down the hallway to the left and to the right, verifying that Renarin was alone.  “This is highly unusual.  To what do I owe the honor?”

Renarin pushed off the wall and self-consciously straightened his uniform, trying to regain his equilibrium.  Before he could lose his momentum completely, he blurted out “I would like to resume training with you, Swordmaster Zahel.”

Zahel’s dark eyebrows rose higher.  “Huh.  You know, it’s my day off.”  Abruptly, the eyebrows drew down again.   “Ivis sent you here, didn’t she?  …Storming woman.”

“Yes, master Zahel.”

Zahel held up an admonishing index finger.  “Don’t say ‘master’ to me.  I haven’t said yes to your request.”

“Yes, Swordmaster.” 

Renarin had a hard time interpreting the look that Zahel leveled at him, but he didn’t exactly appear to be pleased.  Renarin lifted his chin under the weight of that gaze, staring fixedly at a point just over the swordmaster’s shoulder.  Eventually, Zahel sighed and gestured with his hand.  “All right, all right.  Since you’re here, you might as well come in.”

He followed Zahel into a small, spare room.  The only pieces of furniture were a trunk, a cot and a stool.  Zahel had been holding a wooden practice sword in his right hand.  The swordmaster turned it point-down, stowing it in the corner behind the rough-hewn wooden clothing chest.  He waved for Renarin to take a seat.  Renarin perched awkwardly on the stool as the Swordmaster settled onto the cot.

“You’ve got a gold streak a mile wide,” Zahel said without preamble.

Renarin was taken off-guard by the words.  “I… what?”

Zahel made a noise that sounded like irritation, muttering under his breath about the Alethi language.  More loudly, he said, “Nerve, kid.  You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here after skipping out on me for months.  The ardents talk, you know.  I heard that you started manifesting your own Radiant blade shortly after everyone moved to the tower.  Why didn’t you try to see me back then?”

Because you’re terrifying?  It didn’t really seem like an appropriate response.  To be fair, swordmaster was demanding, but he had accepted Renarin’s clumsy first efforts during their early training sessions, and finally given him a chance to be a real student.  It wasn’t entirely Zahel’s fierce reputation or his unorthadox methods that had caused Renarin to wait so long. 

Renarin fidgeted uncomfortably, stopping himself two different times before he could reach into his pocket for his metal box.  He thought ardent Zahel might think even less of the truth about why he’d never gone back to training with shards. 

…Once he’d started having visions that foretold his own impending death in Thaylen City, there hadn’t really seemed to be much point. 

Against all expectation, he’d survived that day.  Ever since Jasnah has spared his life, Renarin had been contemplating how to move forward from that point of divergence.  Thinking about how to prepare, as he began to see new pieces of the events that were to come. 

He had to be ready.  More and more, he was convinced of the importance of resuming his training, of learning how to fight.  Glys could become a living shardblade now, and if Renarin was able to progress as a Knight Radiant he might someday earn his own Radiant shardplate.  He had to know how to use them; had to learn how to become the best Knight Radiant that he could.

Zahel was still waiting for an answer.  Renarin drew in a deep breath.  “I wasn’t ready, then,” he said simply.  “I am now.”

Zahel grunted.  “Fair enough.” 

Abruptly the swordmaster leaned forward with an elbow on one knee, fixing him with an unnervingly direct gaze.  Renarin found the depths of those brown eyes to be more than a little disturbing, and he rapidly blinked and looked away. 

“Is it true what the rumors say?  You see the future?”

Renarin hesitated.  He was aware that there were written records of his predictions of the Everstorm.  He had also heard that there were some new rumors about him circulating in the tower after the events in Thalen City.  There wasn’t any point to deny it.  He’d just been trying to keep things a secret so long that it was difficult to bring himself to actually admit.  “…Yes.”

Zahel was silent for a while.  “You know, the ardents don’t quite know what to do about you.  Half of them think you should be excommunicated from the Vorin church, like your father was.  There are a few who are already trying to compile evidence of your heresy to send to the council of curates.  That, by the way, is a task you’ll make a lot easier for them if you go around admitting that the rumors are true.”  Zahel sighed.  “The other ardents seem reluctant to go that far at the moment, but that doesn’t stop them from and muttering about evil influences and worrying that you’re going to turn into some kind of ‘Voidbringer’.” 

Renarin flushed.  He’d always done his best to be a devout Vorin in spite of the fact that he had never been able to live up to the Vorin ideals.  If he were honest with himself, he had been expecting trouble with the ardents ever since the Everstorm visions became known in scholarly circles--but hearing the confirmation still stung.    

Perhaps approaching Zahel--who was an ardent, after all--hadn’t been as good an idea as he’d thought.  Suddenly, a part of Renarin wanted to get up and walk out.  He set his jaw and stubbornly stayed where he was.

“Relax,” Zahel chided.  “As it happens, I don’t belong to either group, so you’ve got nothing to worry about from me.”  He continued to study Renarin, who tried not to fidget under that observant gaze.  Eventually, the swordmaster sat back, folding his arms across his chest. 

“You have unique strategic importance, son.  Your father doesn’t understand that yet, but he will.  So will his enemies.  Eventually one of those enemies is going to try to kill you.”

Renarin blinked in surprise.  That… was not a direction he had expected this conversation to take.  It hadn’t really occurred to him before this, but what Zahel said made sense.  Storms, Jasnah had nearly killed him because of the threat that his powers posed.

Renarin had no doubt that if Zahel thought somebody was going to try to assassinate him, then someone almost certainly would.  “I’m a Knight Radiant,” he said slowly, forcing himself to think through the situation in order to keep a sudden surge of anxiety under control.  Surviving the fight with the Thunderclast in Thalen City had finally made him understand what being a Radiant meant.  “Shouldn’t Progression make k-killing me difficult?”

“With ordinary weapons, yes,” Zahel said soberly.  “But your powers won’t help against a shardblade strike that sunders the soul from the body.  …And they won’t help against weapons that can slay gods.  Those do actually exist.  You’re not as invincible as you might think.”

“So…” Renarin was confused, although he thought he followed the swordmaster’s meaning.  “You agree that I need training?”

Zahel snorted.  “You don’t need to paint the door twice.” 

Renarin had absolutely no idea how to respond to that statement.  He had never been good with figures of speech.  His mind always insisted on interpreting them literally even when he understood that the phrases had an alternate meaning to everyone else.  Renarin could only navigate idioms in polite conversation because he’d memorized all of the common ones. 

Zahel’s figures of speech, however… they had always baffled Renarin. 

The swordmaster seemed to take note of his confusion, and waved an impatient hand.  “Yes.  It’s obvious that you need training.  …And for what it’s worth, I formally agree to take you on as a student again.  You’ve still been practicing the spear with the Windrunners?”

“Yes, master Zahel,” Renarin said, perking up.  He suddenly felt hopeful, for the first time since Zahel had opened the door.

“Report to the training grounds tomorrow morning.  Spending time training in the arena is likely to have another benefit for you.  If the other ardents see you working hard and being obedient to the instructions of a master, maybe that firsthand knowledge will gain you some goodwill and help push back against the rumors.  Bring that suit of gray shardplate with you.  You’ll want to learn to use the armor as well as your blade.”

It sounded like a dismissal, and Renarin got up from the stool and gave the proper bow of a student to a master.  “Thank you.”

Zahel held up a hand.  “One moment.”  He paused then, as if carefully considering his next words.  “In addition, I think we should arrange some custom training sessions for you—sessions it would be best you didn’t tell anyone about.  I want you to get some practice using your Radiant powers when you fight.”

Renarin looked at him dubiously.  “I’m not like the Windrunners.  I can’t even manage to make illusions, like the Lightweavers.  The things I can do, they aren’t very useful in combat.”

“I think you might be surprised at what can be useful in combat.”  He took note of Renarin’s uncertain expression, and added, “Let me tell you something, son.  Hired killers don’t pay attention to the niceties of dueling conventions and traditional battlefield maneuvers.  In fact, they’ll do their best to make sure that it’s not a fair fight.  You’ll have the best chance in those types of situations if you have a few extra tricks that an attacker might not be expecting.  Understood?”

“Yes, master Zahel.”

“Good.” 

As Renarin let himself out, Zahel’s last words followed him out into the hallway. 

“…I’ll do what I can to try and help you stay alive.” 

Chapter Text

Too many crowded hallways and corridors stood between Rlain and the doors that led out onto the Oathgate plateau.  In his hurry, he took a shortcut.

Warform wasn’t fast, but it was strong.  Especially if augmented with Stormlight.  Rlain breathed in light as he sprinted along the stone paths as fast as his legs would carry him, following the slight curve of the tower and heading for the railing at the edge of the agricultural plate. 

This was the last gap he had to cross to reach the Oathgate plateau, and the distance was greater than the plate-to-plate gap he’d already jumped.  The soles of his boots beat a frantic rhythm against the stone as he closed the distance, and he took a deep breath of the thin air, reaching within himself for a last reserve of strength.  He vaulted up onto the railing.  His right foot landed squarely on wide stone bar and then he was pushing off, gaining both height and momentum.

He kept his eyes forward, refusing to look down at the sheer cliffs below as the mountainside dropped away beneath him.  For a moment it was if he had travelled back in time, to those days of jumping chasms with Thude and Eshonai as the three of them gloried in the strength and power of warform.  He tried not to think about the fact that the altitude here meant that it was much, much farther to fall.

The agricultural plate was at the same level as the Oathgate plateau.  As Rlain sailed out over open space, he saw a cluster of figures in blue uniforms standing together.  One of them looked over as Rlain cleared the plateau railing and landed, hardly breaking stride as he continued to run, rapidly closing the gap between himself and the group.

“Rlain?” Leyten’s loud voice.  Even at this distance, his expression was clearly dumbfounded.  The other members of Bridge Four broke off their conversation and turned. 

Rlain didn’t wait until he’d reached them.  “Renarin,” he shouted to them.  “Where’s Renarin?”  He could tell at a glance that Renarin wasn’t on the plateau anymore.  So much for finding him quickly.  Rlain didn’t have enough spare air in his lungs to hum, but his breathing settled into the Rhythm of Anxiety.

Leyten exchanged glances with Skar.  “He went to deliver an item to the treasury,” he called back.  He took a few steps in Rlain’s direction.  “What’s wrong?”

Rlain pounded up to the group and stumbled to a halt just as his Stormlight ran out.  Exhaustion hit him.  Warform was strong, but it consumed a lot of energy.  He found himself bending at the waist, gasping for breath in the high-altitude air.

“He’s… he’s in danger,” he panted.  “I saw… an assassin.”

Blessedly, Skar chose to act first and ask questions later.  “Bisig, Leyten, Kara, Peet,” he ordered, “Get to the treasury as fast as you can.”  The four of them lashed themselves into the air practically before he finished speaking, hurtling towards the main entrance to the tower.

A moment later, Rlain felt the weight of a hand on the carapace of his shoulder. “You okay?” Skar asked with concern.

Rlain nodded.  “I want to go, too.  Can someone use Stormlight to get me there?”

“I’ll do it, but take a moment.”

“There’s more,” Rlain said, still short of breath as he straightened up again.  “I think something’s going to happen to one of the Oathgates, the one to Shinovar.”

Skar glanced around at the remaining group of Windrunners standing on the platform.  “Lopen.  Laran.  Go check things out.”

“Sure thing, gancho.”  The two Windrunners breathed in Stormlight and fell rapidly in the direction of the control building for the Shinovar Oathgate.

Skar started to turn back to Rlain, but then stopped and squinted out across the Oathgate plateau, instead.

“What’s Dabbid doing over there?”

     *      *      *

The spiral staircase that led down to the Urithiru treasury was well-lit by spheres in glass lamps set into the walls, the steps circling around the inside of a large, cylindrical room.  A wooden railing had been installed here several months ago, and the stone stairs were wide enough for two men to easily walk side-by-side.  Two of the Cobalt Guard preceded Renarin as he descended the stairs, carrying the wrapped bundle of the Emuli perfect gem tucked into the crook of his left arm.  The other two men of the honor guard followed a few steps behind.  Renarin glanced upwards, and saw faces peering down at them.  The guards from the checkpoint in the room above were watching them as they made their way to the bottom of the stairs. 

Shortly after the discovery of the Urithiru Pillar room and the battle with Re-Shephir, scouts exploring the tower had found this and three other hidden spiral staircases leading down to lower-level rooms.  Their defensibility made them prime areas for the storage of valuable materials, and this one had been converted to serve as the treasury for the reigning monarchs of Urithiru.  These stairs didn’t go as far down as the ones that led to the Pillar room.  The descent was only about three stories deep.

Six Kholin spearmen were on duty at the bottom of the stairs, spaced evenly around the circumference of the room.  Usually the Cobalt Guardsman who supervised them was stationed right at the base of the stairs.  Today, however, the supervisor had moved back and was standing just inside the shadows of a stone archway--the entrance to the corridor that lead to the treasury itself. 

“Prince Renarin is here to deposit an item into the royal vault,” one of his honorguard announced as they approached the arch.

His guards parted and Renarin stepped forward, shifting the seasilk bundle containing the Emuli perfect gem.  He extended his left hand in order to allow the Cobalt Guardsman to perform his due diligence and examine the signet ring that identified Renarin as a Kholin prince.   

Adolin had designed a beautiful glyphpair for himself when he became Kholin Highprince.  It was the Kholin tower, matched with a stylized version of his shardblade, Maya.  Renarin hadn’t come up with anything nearly so personalized.  His signet still bore his father’s tower and crown glyphpair, with the few extra lines added in that identified him as second son.

As the guard reached for his signet ring, Renarin happened to glance at the man’s left hand.

When Renarin was growing up, he’d often overheard his tutors complaining to his mother about how distracted he was all the time.  It didn’t seem to matter that he learned what they taught and answered all of their questions perfectly when they quizzed him.  Apparently, being a good student meant that he was supposed to focus on them all the time, with all of his attention.  Anything less, and he just wasn’t trying hard enough.

The tutors thought his distraction prevented him from seeing properly.  …But that wasn’t how it worked at all.  He was distracted because he saw too much.  Little things that other people didn’t seem to notice were always catching his attention.

…And so that was the reason, as the Cobalt Guardsman inspected his signet, that Renarin’s gaze sharpened suddenly.  Falling on an old, faint scar located in the indentation between the first and second knuckle of that hand.  A thin raised line in the shape of a fishhook.  A scar that Renarin had seen before, in another place and time.

He looked up then, catching an impression of swarthy skin that should have been several shades lighter, and short-cropped black hair on a head that should have been clean-shaved.

Swordmaster Zahel’s words came to him then.  Even the best assassins make mistakes.  The surest way to foil an assassination attempt is to see one coming before it actually happens.

*      *      *

Dabbid peered around the open doorframe, looking at the inside of the Oathgate control building. 

It was lit.  Spheres had been placed in each of the lamps around the room.  The stranger that he’d seen earlier was in there.  He had his back to Dabbid, crouching down on the floor in front of a big metal box.  The box lid was open, and the man was taking out flat pieces of metal.  He was fitting them together into a longer pole-like shape.  Then he lifted a coil of metal out of the box.  He unrolled the thin strip and began to push it down into a groove built into the pole. 

As Dabbid watched, the man looked up.  He was staring at the wall in front of him.  No, not staring at the wall.  Staring at the star-shaped metal plate.  The keyhole that was supposed to fit a shardblade.

The man got to his feet, lifting the flat pole by one end.  Held like that, the pole kind of looked like a sword.

Before Dabbid could think to do or say anything, the man swung the fake sword up towards the keyhole, and pushed it halfway in. 

Nothing happened. 

Dabbid’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement.  Of course nothing happened.  A metal pole wasn’t a shardblade.

The man pulled the metal pole free of the keyhole.  Then he reached down into the box again, and this time he took out a large gemstone, as big as his fist.  The gemstone was set into a metal clamp.  The man slid the clamp onto the end of the pole.  It wobbled a bit, and the man paused to adjust some screws.

The gem shone with a light that made Dabbid’s eyes feel blurry.  One of the queen’s scholars had visited Bridge Four and had showed them gems like this.  These gems were bad.  They hurt spren, the scholar had said.

Dabbid’s mind moved slowly.  It took him a while to connect different thoughts--longer than it would have for other people.  He could still make connections, however. 

The gems with bad light hurt spren. 

The Oathgates had spren.

This man was going to hurt the tower.

A gust of mountain wind pushed against Dabbid as he stood there in the doorway, and suddenly he found himself surrounded by dancing windspren in the form of tumbling leaves and ribbons of light.  Most of them flew past him, following the invisible currents of the air.  One, however, lingered; spinning idly in an eddy right beside the doorframe.

It had been nearly three weeks ago that Dabbid had held a spear for the first time with the intent to fight.  The Sibling’s third node had been discovered.  He hadn’t been able to wake Kaladin.  Dabbid had forced himself to pick up Kaladin’s spear and the flying fabrial, and leave the hidden room in Urithiru.  The Sibling had been in danger.  There hadn’t been anyone else to help.

This was no different.  He’d been willing to try and face the Fused before to protect the tower.  Why should he be afraid now?

His hand tightened on the doorframe.  The lone windspren continued to spin slowly in the air beside him.  Dabbid stepped forward.

Dabbid would protect the tower.  The tower was his home.

*      *      *

The man inspecting Renarin’s signet ring was not a member of the Cobalt Guard.

About eight months into his training, Zahel had arranged for him to spend several days sparring with other ardents who were working as swordmasters within the tower city of Urithiru—even some owned by other highprinces.  Once Renarin knew the basics of the stances, master Zahel said that he’d wanted to show Renarin how different people used them, since each person nearly always developed an individual style that favored some stances and strikes over others.

Renarin couldn’t have said for sure what alerted him to the fact that the man was about to move.  It wasn’t his futuresight.  He hadn’t been able to see his own future since the Battle of Thaylen Field.  …But something about the way the man stood, the way his shoulders shifted as he acknowledged Renarin’s signet, was wrong.  It added to the incongruity of seeing a man whom he knew had been one of Highprince Ruthar’s swordmaster ardents, dressed as a member of the Cobalt Guard.

Training, Master Zahel had said, Is about teaching your body to react without thinking.  In a fight, there’s no time to stop and figure things out.

Renarin instinctively drew in Stormlight from the Emuli gem that he held.  He wasn’t a Windrunner, but that didn’t matter.  He was still Radiant.  The light flowed into him, speeding his reaction time and helping him move faster.  He twisted to one side, shifting the seasilk bundle that he held and bracing it in place with his right hand as his left arm came up in a block.  His forearm intercepted the other man’s as it suddenly extended.  Renarin didn’t try to stop the attack, he just directed it away and past the place he had been a moment ago. 

It was only then that Renarin saw the dagger.  He felt a rush of fear as he identified the warped blue light shining out from the gemstone in the pommel.  His aunt… Renarin still found himself using the term “aunt” out of habit--Aunt Navani had shown all of the Kholins a similar gem the evening they had returned to Urithiru. 

Anti-Stormlight.  The blade likely would have found its mark if Renarin hadn’t already been in motion.

Glys dropped into his right hand in the form of a long knife for close-quarters fighting.  The blade flashed upward, dripping condensation.  The assassin tried to jerk his arm up out of the way, but the Glysblade lengthened to compensate--passing through the assassin’s arm high above the elbow.  The man cursed as his arm went dead.  The dagger that he’d tried to stab Renarin with flew into the air, released from suddenly nerveless fingers.  It clattered to the ground beyond the archway and went skittering across the floor of the cylindrical room.

There were yells of surprise from the honor guard that had accompanied Renarin, and the sound of swords being drawn.  Without being asked, Glys fully extended into his preferred form--a slim shardblade with a very slight crossguard, undulating patterns of bright silver and charcoal gray rippling along the metal of the blade.  The assassin took a step back as he used his left hand to free his side-sword from its scabbard.

“Prince Renarin!”  Hands grabbed his shoulders as he started to advance, hauling him backwards out of the archway.  “You have to get back!”

“I can fight!”  He tried to wrench free, but the person restraining him had him in a wrestling grip, and he watched in frustration as another one of his honor guard stepped into the tunnel, engaging the assassin in his place.

He was still staring down the corridor when arrows suddenly rained down from above.

*      *      *

Dabbid shuffled forward into the Oathgate control room, trying to hide his trembling.  The man on the opposite side of the room was focused on his work.  He didn’t seem to notice Dabbid at all.

“You can’t… be in here,” Dabbid said, as he reached the center of the large room.  It came out so very softly that the man didn’t even seem to hear him.  Dabbid took a deep breath and tried again, putting more force into his voice.  “H-hey.  You’re not s-s-s’posed to be here.”

The man by the Oathgate keyhole jumped with surprise and spun to face him.  For a moment he looked afraid, and he fumbled with the pole he was holding to hide it behind his back.  Then he took a second, closer look at Dabbid, looking at his Bridge Four uniform and then at his face.  His eyes narrowed suspiciously.  “Who are you?  You’re no soldier.  You don’t even have a weapon.”  He peered more closely at Dabbid’s face.  “What are you, a simpleton or something?”

Maybe Dabbid shouldn’t have spoken.  People always knew that he was different when he spoke.  “You’re not… s’posed to be here,” he said stubbornly.  “Only certain people can come in here.”

The man got a hard look on his face.  “This isn’t your business, dummy.  Go away.”

“N-no.” Dabbid knew he had to keep moving forward.  He was a little surprised when his legs obeyed.  The distance between himself and the other man was getting smaller and smaller.  “You go away.”

The man took a step towards him and raised his arms to make himself look bigger.  He waved at Dabbid as if he were a chull that had gotten into the wrong part of the market.  His voice got louder and meaner.  “Go on, get out of here!”

“No,” Dabbid repeated again.  “You.  Get out.”

The man raised his pole threateningly, as if he was going to hit Dabbid with it.  People did things like that.  They often tried to hurt him once they found out that he was different.  Dabbid couldn’t help but flinch at the sight of it.  Still, he didn’t back away.  He reached out, trying to grab the pole. 

The man did hit him then.  The pole was hard, and it hurt when it struck him on the shoulder, and then in the face.  Dabbid raised his hands to protect his head, and that only seemed to make the man want to hit him more.

Dabbid was wiry, but he wasn’t weak.  He’d spent years doing manual labor for a living—chopping up rockbud husks for firewood and hauling laundry; later running bridges; still later moving Rock’s heavy stew pots around and carrying water for Rlain.  He managed to grab the rod as the man hit him again.  The man looked surprised when he wasn’t able to yank it free from Dabbid’s grip. 

“I won’t… let you,” Dabbid said haltingly.  “…hurt the tower.”  He drew himself up to his full height and took in a deep breath.

Stormlight flowed into him.

*      *      *

The Cobalt Guardsman holding Renarin abruptly let go with a yell as arrows struck him in the back, punching through the lighter armoring there.  Renarin dismissed Glys and turned around.  He was still holding the Emuli perfect gem.  He shoved the seasilk bundle down the front of his uniform waistcoat to free up his hands.  The gem came to rest against his belt, held in place near his stomach.  He breathed in Stormlight, and a flood of light from the gem filled him.  He reached out, touching two of his guards who had taken arrows, infusing them with light.

The other guard was too far away from him, and dropped under a second volley.

Renarin staggered back as he was struck hard in the shoulder, chest and leg.  His Progression recognized the arrows as foreign, and pushed them out, healing the wounds instantly.  His guards weren’t so lucky, they had each been pierced by multiple arrows.  Renarin scrambled forward to lay hands on them again, re-infusing them as their light started to fade.

“Pull the arrows out!” he commanded them, striving to imitate the no-nonsense intonation he’d heard his father use thousands of times.  “You’ll heal if the wounds are cleared.” 

Bloodied and white-faced, they obeyed.  Renarin yanked out the arrows that had struck them in the back, healing the wounds left behind.

A third volley fell, more arrows finding their mark.  However, even the most serious of the injuries they caused were quickly mended with Stormlight.  The archers finally seemed to recognize the futility of taking their targets down with arrows in light of Renarin’s Radiant healing.  One of the men at the top of the stairs shouted down to the spearmen below, giving a hand signal as the archers put up their bows. 

The six spearmen who had been standing back out of the way until now lowered their spears and advanced. 

*      *      *

Ever since the spren of the tower had told Dabbid that he might be able to become a Radiant, Dabbid had been practicing.

He knew that a person didn’t need to bond a spren to be a Windrunner squire.  Kara and Laran had even taken the Second Oath as squires.  Dabbid always carried spheres with him, and tried to practice being a squire every day.  He never seemed to get the trick of drawing in Stormlight, but he hadn’t gotten discouraged.  He knew it would take longer for him than for everybody else.  He figured someday it would happen if he kept trying.  …And he’d been right.    

The man who’d hit Dabbid yelled out in disbelief as Stormlight streamed into Dabbid from the two closest gemstone lanterns.  “No!  It’s not possible!”  He raised a hand in front of himself as if to ward Dabbid away.  “You can’t be one of them!”  

The man still had his other hand wrapped around the end of the pole.  He gave it a wrench.  The top section came off in his grip, and he staggered away from Dabbid, backing into the wall.  When he realized there was no place else to go, he slid along the wall, keeping as far away from Dabbid as he could.  He was staring wide-eyed, as if Dabbid were a chull that had suddenly turned into a whitespine.

Dabbid had first spoken the Immortal Words over a year ago, whispering them softly to himself that day out on the Shattered Plains.  The day Bridge Four learned to draw in Stormlight, and took the first step in learning to fly.  Now, he stepped forward to stand between the man and the star-shaped metal plate that controlled the Oathgate.  In front of the invisible Oathgate spren. 

“I will protect,” Dabbid said slowly, but clearly, “The ones who can’t… protect themselves.”

A voice rumbled in the back of his mind like distant thunder.  THESE WORDS ARE ACCEPTED.

A burst of brilliant whiteness engulfed the room as Dabbid came fully alight.

*      *      *

There was a yell from behind him in the tunnel.  Renarin turned in time to see the swordmaster assassin finish a slashing strike that opened the throat of the Cobalt Guardsman he had been fighting.  Renarin met the assassin’s eyes as the guardsman’s body dropped to the floor.  The assassin kicked at the body, rolling it off to one side. 

Renarin entered the hallway and walked towards him, summoning Glys.  We can fight.  Deep down, some part of him recognized the insanity of trying to take on a full swordmaster when he’d only been training with a shardblade for a little over a year.  …The insanity of facing someone who was clearly skilled enough to kill a well-trained Cobalt Guard soldier using only his off-hand. 

Renarin had always been good at ignoring that rational piece of himself.

The swordmaster fell into Smokestance, the tip of his blade pointed at Renarin’s heart.  Swallowing his fear, Renarin responded by taking up a position in Flamestance.

Renarin didn’t give himself time to hesitate or second-guess.  He immediately pressed the attack. 

His adversary seemed to be expecting it, and stepped back to avoid the first swing, holding his sword in a guard position that Renarin recognized.  Glys flashed out a second time.  The assassin’s sword was a standard Cobalt Guard side-sword and not a shardblade.  A quick parry failed as Glys’ sharp edge cut diagonally across the metal at a steep angle, shearing it off and leaving behind about a foot of sharply-pointed blade.

The assassin brought the fragment of sword around and Renarin swung to intercept again, aiming to cut the rest of the blade off at the hilt.  To his surprise, the assassin dropped his sword at the last second.  As Glys swung past him, the man took a step forward and grabbed Renarin’s arm at the elbow, twisting hard.  It was a move Renarin had never seen and for which he had no counter.  He gasped as a painful numbness shot up his arm.  His grip on his shardblade faltered, and the Glysblade puffed away into mist. 

A clenched fist swung at him, and Renarin breathed in Stormlight and dodged.  He summoned Glys again a heartbeat later, but by that time the one-armed assassin had already darted past him.  The man dove as the Glysblade whistled over his head.  He held his dead arm close to his chest as he rolled beyond the two Cobalt guardsmen who were valiantly standing their ground against enemy spearmen just outside the archway.

Renarin stepped forward to follow, and nearly lost his balance as his boot heel came down on the hilt of the sword that the assassin had dropped under his feet.  Sparks flew as metal skidded across the stone.  Renarin recovered and gave the broken weapon a hard kick to get it out of the way, sending it sliding down the length of the hallway.  He heard the hilt thunk against the heavy wooden gate that sealed off the far end of the corridor as he turned to face the archway again.

The assassin had recovered the anti-Stormlight knife that had been lying abandoned in the middle of the floor.  Renarin saw him stoop down next to the body of a compatriot who had fallen, pulling a second, nearly identical dagger from the dead man’s belt.  This dagger had a gemstone in the pommel that shone with violet-black light.  Even at this distance, Renarin could see the warping effect that the gemstone had on the air.  

This, Glys observed, as the man thrust the anti-Voidlight dagger through his own belt and rose to his feet  …Would be bad.

Agreed. 

The two soldiers of Renarin’s remaining honor guard were fighting hard, but they were vastly outnumbered, and they weren’t going to make it if he didn’t do something quickly.  They needed reinforcements.

The Sibling.  What was it Rlain had said about Dabbid’s communication with the Sibling?  Renarin’s eyes searched for and found a garnet vein running along the wall of the corridor.  He brushed his fingers across the stone.  He’d never tried to talk to the spren of the tower before, and didn’t know if they would answer.  Sibling, he thought.  He closed his eyes and poured all of his concentration into the words, as if by will alone he could reach through stone.  Please, tell Aunt Navani.

Blessedly, a voice answered him.  I will, it spoke into his mind.  …But she is in the Gallery of Maps, far from this place.  There was a pause, and then the voice said, Windrunners are on the way. 

Oh, thank the Almighty. 

Renarin pushed away from the wall.  He saw that three of the six enemy spearmen were down now, but even as he watched, a spear punched right through the metal breastplate of one of his two remaining guards.  The man fell dead before Renarin could cross the few feet necessary to get there.  Renarin stepped into his place.  He touched the surviving guard on the back, infusing him with light and healing his wounds even as he swung Glys hard to intercept a spear coming in at him from the side.

His shardblade struck the incoming spear haft right between the attacker’s hands.  Renarin expected to cut the weapon in half and was unprepared for the recoil that traveled back through the Glysblade.  It was then that he registered the glitter of gems, bright with Stormlight, embedded in the wood.

Stormfather, he thought, feeling his heart sink as the full extent of their preparations became clear.  Those are half-shards.

*      *      *

The man who had been trying to hurt the Oathgate spren looked around frantically, then dashed away from Dabbid, pulling the bad gem free of the clamp as he went.  He dropped the piece of metal pole on the ground as he ran towards the door.  No, not towards the door.  He veered towards the nearest lamp bracket that still had lit spheres.  He tossed the gemstone up into the sconce.  Then he bolted for the exit. 

The gem with its warped light sat on top of the bowl-like fixture, like a big egg on top of a nest.  As Dabbid watched, he saw streamers of Stormlight rise up from the spheres underneath.  The light flowed into the much larger gem.  Slowly at first, then faster.  The gemstone with the warped light began to glow more and more.  By the time ten heartbeats had passed, the bad gem had become impossibly bright, as if it were white-hot.

Dabbid caught a brief glance of the windspren again.  It was still with him, it had followed him all the way across the room.  The windspren took on the form of falling leaves, a tumbling square of cloth, then a skyeel--all the while spinning furiously in the air.  As he watched, it twisted and widened in front of him, becoming vaguely star-shaped.  For a moment, it looked almost like a tiny person, arms spread wide.

That was all he had time to see before the gem in the sconce exploded into a raging fireball that expanded outward with incredible force.  Dabbid barely had time to throw up his arms up in front of his face as he was hit by the expanding wave of fire and flung back against the wall.

*      *      *

Renarin had never before been in a situation where he’d had to fight for his own life. 

In the past during dangerous encounters, he’d always been kept back.  Others with more skill and experience had inevitably taken on the burden of defending him.  It had made him feel helpless whenever he was in the middle of active combat--powerless to do anything more than watch.

Today that was no longer an option.  Zahel’s training took over, and Renarin found himself recognizing patterns of attack movements and responding to openings rapidly and automatically.  He didn’t freeze up, he didn’t hold back, and in spite of the dire situation a part of him exhilarated at finally, finally being able to contribute rather than being a useless bystander.

Even as he clashed with the group of spearmen surrounding the archway, Renarin kept an eye on the swordmaster with the anti-Light daggers.  For now, the assassin with the dead arm seemed content to stand back, observing the fighting intently.  Renarin spared a glance upwards.  The archers who had fired on them earlier seemed to be holding their position against reinforcements.  So far, they hadn’t advanced to form a second wave.

The last remaining Cobalt Guardsman looked over and did a double-take as he saw Renarin, glowing with Stormlight, beside him.  He let out a faint curse.  “Your Highness, we can’t continue out in the open, we need to fall back!”

Renarin’s first instinct was to rebel against the idea of a retreat.  However, he’d watched Adolin practice with 2-on-1 fighting and occasionally 3-on-2 fighting in the arena.  They’d spoken about it, in the early days of Renarin’s training. 

In battle, sometimes you have to make the smart choice instead of the brave one.  Especially if that choice affects other people, his older brother had said.  Don’t let your enemy pick your ground for you. That’s doubly true if you’re outnumbered.

Renarin gave a tight nod.  He chose a moment when one of their opponents had over-reached and another was setting up for a spear thrust, then he disengaged and backed into the corridor.  The Cobalt Guardsman followed, keeping himself between the enemy spearmen and Renarin.  They retreated past the body of the Cobalt Guardsman with the slashed throat, and together they took up a new defensive position about a third of the way down the tunnel.

The hallway was too narrow for two men to fight side-by-side.  Fortunately, Renarin had training in second-rank fighting thanks to his time spent with Bridge Four.  Glys lengthened and shifted shape in Renarin’s hands into the familiar form of a sleek spear made entirely of the same light-and-dark folded metal that graced his blade form.  Renarin timed a series of jabs past the Cobalt Guardsman, wounding the frontline enemy soldier in the leg, and helping to keep the enemy from forcing an advance.

Metal weapons collided with Stormlight-enhanced wood as the two of them held there in the corridor for one minute, then another.  Renarin began to hope that they would be able to hold out until the Windrunners arrived.  However, though Renarin had Stormlight to keep him going, his guard was visibly tiring.  The intermittent Stormlight healing could not replenish his strength.

The frontline enemy spearman feinted, and the flagging guard fell for the ruse.  He lunged too far forward on his counterattack, and failed to see the enemy spear that darted out to low trip him up.  A hand grabbed the collar of his uniform, yanking him completely off balance, and a startled yell of surprise echoed down the corridor as the guard pitched forward.  Before he had even hit the floor, a half-shard spear drove down through the back of his neck, killing him almost instantly. 

Renarin was alone.

The bloody spear tip came up again, glinting in the spherelight of the hallway.  The enemy soldier leveled his weapon at Renarin and stepped forward.  Two other enemy spearmen stood at the ready behind him.  Beyond them was the swordmaster ardent--the man who carried both of the daggers with the anti-Light gems.

Renarin responded by breathing in deeply, replenishing his Stormlight.  Glys shifted in his hands to resume his shardblade form.  Renarin carefully set his stance, facing his attackers.  He was a Knight Radiant and the Blackthorn’s son. 

This time he refused to back down. 

Chapter Text

ONE AND A HALF YEARS AGO

Renarin halted in front of the stone archway that formed the entrance to the Kholin warcamp training grounds, fighting down the usual surge of anxiety. 

The Bridge Four soldier who had been walking ahead of him didn’t notice until he’d gone a few steps farther ahead.  The lanky blond man glanced back over his shoulder.  When he realized that he wasn’t being followed anymore, he stopped and turned back to face Renarin. 

“Brightlord?”  The man said.  He spoke the word as if it felt foreign in his mouth.  Only a few weeks had passed since the arrival of the bridgemen in the Kholin warcamp, and none of them were used to having to address members of the Alethi nobility.

Renarin still wasn’t comfortable around the members of his honor guard.  He was a private person, and having people near him all the time was… tiring.  It probably wasn’t intentional, but the bridgemen often gave him odd looks, and some of them even stared.  Renarin was very aware that he came across as strange compared to other people.  It was unpleasant to be reminded of it all the time. 

He’d taken to shutting himself in his room within the mound-like bunker complex at the center of the warcamp, leaving the bridgemen on guard outside his door whenever he could.  Unfortunately, he couldn’t stay in his room forever.

The pair of bridgeman that were assigned to him were still waiting.  Renarin forced himself to step out onto the sunlit sand, and their small group headed towards the shaded wooden walkway that lined three sides of the open courtyard. 

Faces turned in Renarin’s direction, of course.  They always did.  Brightlords and ardents alike.  Renarin did his best to ignore the looks.  They all knew who he was.

Dalinar Kholin’s second son.  The one who couldn’t fight.

The stares were particularly pointed today, hidden behind the halfhearted salutes and bows.  They had all undoubtedly heard the rumors.  Highprince Kholin had done the unthinkable and given up his iconic suit of slate gray shardplate, passing it on to his sickly younger son.  It was just one more sign that the Blackthorn had gone well and truly crazy—wasting such a priceless item on someone who was so obviously unfit for war.

Renarin’s resolve hardened.  It didn’t matter what they thought.  The ardents had refused to train him for years, because of his blood weakness.  Some of them had even wanted to bar him from the training grounds entirely.  …But they had never been able to stop him from being here.  Couldn’t stop him from coming to watch. 

They wouldn’t be able to stop him from training now, either.  Not now that he had gained his father’s support.  Three different people had already approached him with the suggestion that he should loan his shardplate to one of the Kholin military commanders.  He had refused each time.  The shardplate was legally Renarin’s by right of bestowal; it was up to him to choose who would wear it.  He was unwavering in the decision to use it himself--and this left the ardents who opposed the idea with little choice. 

Shardbearers were relegated to a back corner of the training grounds, separate from the areas where ardents instructed young lighteyed children, teens, or adults.  There were a handful of shardbearers practicing today, and it was easy to spot Adolin’s striking blue armor.  Renarin’s older brother was currently moving through a series of different stances, practicing a complex kata. 

One of the bridgemen assigned to Adolin stood by a pillar, out of the way of the flashing shardblade.  Renarin’s group moved forward in that direction, their boots thumping against the wooden planks.  There should have been a second bridgeman somewhere.  Renarin looked around, peering surreptitiously over the top edge of his spectacles.  Ah, there.  He spotted the man on the far side of the courtyard, making a circuit up on the training grounds roof.

Renarin pushed the spectacles up on his nose, and then a moment later adjusted them down again.  They were becoming inconvenient.  His distance vision was always blurry now that the lenses over-corrected his eyesight.  Glys had been ecstatic over that new development, saying that it was because they had formed a proper bond.  …Whatever that meant.  The odd, talking spren had insisted that Renarin wouldn’t need to wear spectacles anymore.  Still, Renarin kept the lenses on, because he’d rather have blurry vision than be faced with questions that would be impossible to answer.  

They reached the part of the walkway adjacent to the shardbearer practice area.  The ardents had become used to the visits of the younger Kholin prince, and presently one of their young helpers trotted over with a stool for him.  Renarin nodded his thanks, but didn’t sit.  He was feeling well enough to stand at the moment. 

He had actually been feeling well for quite some time, now that he thought about it.  His last epileptic fit had been… he paused to count up the days in his head.  Storms, had it really been almost eight weeks ago?  The last one had been pretty mild, and he had recovered unusually quickly.

It probably meant that he was due for a bad one at any time.  So he kept the stool close by even as he made the choice to stay standing. 

The bridgemen assigned to Renarin conferred quietly off to his left.  After a minute of discussion, one of Renarin’s honor guard jogged back the way they had come to cover the main entrance to the building.  The other went to join Adolin’s guard by the pillar, giving Renarin some space but staying nearby.

Renarin’s eyes were drawn back to the flash of shardmetal and the glint of sunlight on blue armor.  Adolin was… amazing.  He was always amazing, but Renarin thought that today he was particularly good.  Renarin understood better than anyone how much it meant to his brother, to be given permission to begin dueling again after so long.

Adolin was an expert in all of the stances, and could move seamlessly from one to another when he fought.  He particularly liked Windstance with its wide, sweeping blows and powerful bladework, but he wasn’t limited to it--unlike some of the other brightlords who specialized in only one or two combat styles.  That flexibility gave Adolin a significant edge during duels.

Renarin had been coming to watch his brother practice nearly since he could walk.  He knew the kata that Adolin was practicing.  He had seen this particular exercise hundreds of times and had each motion memorized.  He supposed that if remembering the patterns and theory of swordfighting was all that was needed to learn the skill, he might be a decent soldier by now.  Unfortunately it wasn’t that simple.  Renarin had had no opportunity to develop the hands-on skill, combat instincts or muscle memory that were required of a shardbearer.  He expected that trying to learn those things at this stage of his life was going to be an uphill fight.  

An ardent approached Adolin cautiously as the kata ended, waiting at a safe distance until the shardblade was dismissed.  The two of them exchanged a few quiet words, and Adolin nodded.  Then the ardent strode back the way he had come, moving towards a man who was warming up with one of the King’s Blades.  The man wore a suit of maroon shardplate, and the color told Renarin that this was Taladan, one of Brightlord Marakal’s sons.   Adolin greeted Taladan warmly as the other man walked over to him.  Apparently, he had just agreed to a practice duel. 

The two shardbearers separated, moving several paces apart from each other and readying their weapons for the start of a bout.  The ardent who had brokered the match took a position off to the side, acting as highjudge.  He signaled for the combat to begin.

Adolin allowed the other man advance, keeping his sword at the ready.  His distinctive wavy-edged shardblade flashed and rippled in the sun, almost as if it were alive.  Taladan faced him with Firestorm, the shardblade that had once belonged to King Gavilar.  The broad, double-edged weapon measured over 6 feet, giving its wielder a small advantage in reach for this fight. 

Taladan obligingly closed the distance between himself and Adolin, taking his time and making a few exploratory jabs.  Then, the maroon shardbearer abruptly lunged forward, shifting into a series of swift Windstance attacks.  Adolin stepped back to avoid the first sweeping blow, parrying the next and sidestepping a third.  Taladan swung wide, and Adolin stepped inside his guard.  His shardblade hit a plate on Taladan’s upper arm and there was a sharp noise as the plate cracked and began to leak a small amount of Stormlight. 

Taladan stepped back to give himself some room to swing, adopting Smokestance and trying for a hit on Adolin’s vambrace.  Adolin’s blade caught the ringing blow and deflected it.  While Taladan was still recovering, Adolin used a Windstance sweep to strike his shoulder pauldron.  The plate didn’t crack this time, but Taladan staggered back from the force of the hit.  Adolin gave him time to reset his stance, then he closed in with his blade held close to his head in Ironstance.  A series of overhead blows battered at Taladan’s defense.  The other man tried valiantly to turn the attacks aside, and managed with most, but his parries grew clumsier with each strike.  Finally, he jumped backwards about 10 feet in order to avoid a downward attack that would have cracked his breastplate.

Watching the two combatants engage in the deadly dance, Renarin couldn’t help but wonder if he would ever become so skilled.  He was starting so late, had missed years of practice.  There was so much he had to learn to catch up. 

Adolin had suggested that he would win a shardblade for his younger brother.  Could Renarin even imagine himself as a full shardbearer?  Carrying a newly-won shardblade and wearing the slate gray shardplate that had been his father’s?

Glys reacted to the thought, shifting restlessly deep within Renarin’s chest.    

Renarin resisted the impulse to reach up and place a hand over his heart at the odd sensation.  Carrying a spren around all the time was still such a strange experience.  He had always been touch-averse, and he still wasn’t entirely sure what had possessed him to allow another creature to take up residence inside of him.  Glys stayed quiescent most of the time.  Yet every time he moved or spoke, Renarin was reminded abruptly that he was still there.

Glys clearly had an opinion, and Renarin waited for the spren to speak in his mind the way he sometimes did.  However, this time Glys just stayed silent.

The duel continued.  Taladan’s skill with shardplate clearly showed in the way he moved.  His bladework, however, was clumsy by comparison.  Adolin closed the distance between them, shifting back into the wide sweeps of Windstance against a defensive Vinestance.  Firestorm parried two attacks and moved to intercept a third—but that was a feint.  Adolin’s sword dropped down at the last moment and slammed against Taladan’s thigh, cracking one of the tassets and causing it to leak Stormlight.  From his position on the wooden walkway, Renarin heard Taladan curse.

Getting desperate now, Taladan switched into Bloodstance.  He brought his blade around in a furious series of cuts, aiming for the left side of Adolin’s shardplate.  Adolin parried again and again, striking back as the opportunity presented itself.  Taladan didn’t try to block any of the incoming blows, but shifted expertly so that the hits glanced off his armor.  None of the impacts landed hard enough to crack the maroon plate. 

Taladan lunged forward after one such attack, swinging his massive blade around.  Adolin raised his own blade in a move that was almost impossibly quick, and metal screeched against metal.  The two shardblades locked momentarily, and then with abrupt wrench, Adolin twisted Firestorm free of Taladan’s grip.  His own blade followed through with a powerful hit to the cracked maroon arm plate, and the piece of armor exploded into shards of light.  Taladan lost his balance and tipped over onto the sands with a loud clatter.  A few moments later Firestorm landed point-down nearby, sinking into the ground halfway up the blade.

Adolin dismissed his shardblade, put up his faceplate, and laughingly helped the other man to his feet.  They had drawn close enough that Renarin could easily overhear their conversation from his potion on the walkway.  “Best two out of three?” Adolin asked cheerfully.

Taladan shook his head.  “You’re out of my league, Your Highness.  I can see that I need to practice against less-skilled opponents before I attempt another practice duel with you!”

Adolin clapped him on the back and thanked him for the match.  As the other man reclaimed the dropped shardblade and clanked off, Adolin turned towards the walkway and noticed Renarin.  He raised a hand in greeting and started over. 

It was always a bit disconcerting to see how lightly a man in shardplate could move.  Adolin was quick and graceful, and if he was tired from practicing all morning, it didn’t show.  It was as if Adolin was wearing a heavy coat or robe, not hundreds of pounds of metal.

Adolin stopped next to a nearby rain barrel that collected water from the training ground roof.  He nodded to Renarin.  “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Renarin responded.  “Looks like you need to find yourself a new partner.”

“Kelerand said that he’ll request the King’s Plate for a bout in the afternoon.  That should give me a challenge.”  Adolin removed his helm and held it out to Renarin, who quickly reached to assist.  Adolin removed a gauntlet and hooked it to a latch at his waist that was meant for that purpose.  He ran his hand through his sweaty blond and black hair, then reached for the handle of the wooden water dipper that hung over the side of the rain barrel.  He scooped up a ladleful of clear crem-free water and took a drink.

The blue helm in Renarin’s hands was perfect, unmarred by countless battles.  It had belonged to their mother, part of the plate she had brought with her from Rira.  Father hadn’t kept any momentos of her.  For that reason, Renarin couldn’t help but think of his mother when he saw the shardplate. 

Evi Kholin had never admitted to wearing the shardplate herself, nor had Uncle Toh.  However, now that Renarin was older, he did wonder about that long-ago flight from their homeland.  Shardplate was so heavy.  It was far easier to move it by wearing it then carrying it—and it wasn’t a stretch to imagine that this suit of shardplate might have helped the two of them escape from Rira. 

The shardplate had become Adolin’s at birth.  He had begun training with it at sixteen, and had mastered it by eighteen.  Adolin moved in it as naturally as if it were a second skin. 

The blue surface of the helm had a polished sheen that reflected Renarin’s own bespectacled face back at him, slightly distorted by the curve of the metal.  It made him think of that same sheen on the surface of a helm that was slate gray.

Renarin shifted his grip on the shardplate helm, turning it, running its smooth surface under his fingers.  “Adolin, what are we waiting for?”

“Hm?  What do you mean?”

“Father’s plate,” Renarin reminded him.  “My training.  Why are we waiting?”

“Oh.”  His brother dipped more water and took another drink.  “Don’t worry about it.  It’ll happen soon.”  He dumped a third dipper of water over his head, then bent to the side, away from Renarin, to shake out his wet hair.

Renarin was usually a patient person, but nearly two weeks had passed since he’d been given his own suit of shardplate.  So far it had just been gathering dust.  Renarin fiddled with the helm some more, turning it over and over in his hands.  “I just don’t understand why it’s so important to wait.”

Adolin looked over at his brother, and for the first time seemed to register his unhappiness at the delay.  “Master Zahel isn’t here.”

Renarin recognized the name immediately.  “Your former master?”

“Yeah.  I asked around.  He’s travelling, or something.  Supposedly he’ll be back in a few days.”

Renarin had grown up watching Zahel train Adolin.  Zahel was one of the best, if not the best, of Dalinar Kholin’s swordmaster ardents.  “I can’t even use the basic moves.  He won’t take me on as a student.”

“He will.” Adolin swallowed down another ladleful of water.  “You’ll see.”

Renarin stared down at the helm.  He wished that he had Adolin’s easy certainty in the matter.  The truth was, he wasn’t sure if any of the ardents would be able to view him as anything but a liability.  An ardent who spent time training Renarin sacrificed time that could be used to train a more fit combatant.  It was selfish of him. 

…And yet, he had worked for so long, trying to convince his father.  Trying to find ways to make himself useful so that those around him might see his potential.  He couldn’t back down now that he finally had the opportunity.

“Renarin.”  Adolin waited for him to look up before he reached out and laid a hand on Renarin’s shoulder.  “You trust me, don’t you?”

Renarin was silent for a few heartbeats, not quite able to meet his brother’s eyes.  Trust was too weak a word.  It failed to encompass Renarin’s complete and utter faith in his older brother.  Adolin had always looked out for him, wholeheartedly and without hesitation.  The multitude of kindnesses he had shown his sickly younger sibling in the years following their mother’s death were something that Renarin would never forget and knew he couldn’t even begin to repay. 

“Of course I do,” he managed finally.  “It’s just…” he trailed off.

“Trust me on this, it’s important.”  Adolin’s other hand, the one still sheathed in a blue gauntlet, closed on Renarin’s other shoulder with the surprising gentleness of perfectly controlled plate.  “…Too important to leave to just anyone.  We’re going to wait until Zahel gets back, and I’ll introduce you then.  I know Swordmaster Zahel.  He might grumble and roll his eyes at first.  But he will take you on as a student.”

Renarin nodded.  His eyes strayed back out to the sands of the training grounds, filled as they were with brightlords and shardbearers and ardents.

“Hey,” Adolin said, leaning closer and peering into his face, his gaze earnest and unavoidable.  “You’ve got this.  A few years of training with Master Zahel, and nobody will be able to tell that you got a late start.”

How did Adolin always manage to do that?  The certainty in his words, the strength.  He inspired others and gave them confidence--somehow always saying just the right thing.  Renarin drew in a deep breath and straightened his shoulders.  “I’ll try.”

Adolin grinned and clapped Renarin on the shoulder with his unarmored right hand.  “You’re a Kholin.  You’ll do more than just try,” he insisted, with the unfailing confidence in Renarin that only he seemed able to muster.  

“You’ll show them all.”

Chapter Text

Renarin was no champion duelist.  He didn’t have the weight or the upper body strength.  Shardplate helped, but he wasn’t wearing shardplate now.

He wasn’t a duelist.  But he’d watched his brother dueling and training the entire time he was growing up.  Renarin was observant and he remembered, his sharp mind keeping track of even the smallest details.  His potential with a blade had never been in question.  His own father had recognized as much.  It had always been his blood weakness that had held him back. 

He stood in the hallway that led towards the treasury.  The corridor ended abruptly about twenty feet behind him, sealed shut with a heavy iron-bound wooden door.  Four men stood between him and the archway exit, blocking any chance of escape.

Four.  Renarin didn’t like his chances, taking on four assassins on his own.  …Even if the narrowness of the hallway meant that he would be fighting only one at a time.  Fortunately, he didn’t have to defeat them.  He just had to delay them.  The Sibling had said that the Windrunners were on the way.

Renarin drew in a deep breath, then slowly let it out again, feeling his muscles of his shoulders grudgingly relax.  You couldn’t fight tense.  Adolin’s advice.  Renarin deliberately set himself in Vinestance. 

Once he’d begun training with his Radiant shardblade in earnest, he’d taken to the repetitive patterns of katas and attack and block sequences naturally.  As a result, his execution of the stances was nearly perfect.  It allowed him an economy of movement, a conservation of momentum and optimization of blade position that some of the other fighters, even those who had been training for many more years, couldn’t match.

Glys was in shardblade form, glinting in the spherelight from the corridor lamps as Renarin held the slender hilt with both hands.  The two-handed stances always worked best for him—Windstance and Vinestance and Bloodstance.  Using two hands lent more strength to his offensive swings, and allowed him to brace his blade more effectively to deflect attacks. 

Even after training for a year, Renarin still wasn’t physically strong.  However, Zahel had pointed out that effectiveness with a shardblade didn’t always have to rely on strength.  None of Renarin’s current opponents were wearing shardplate.

The assassin in the lead took a step forward.  His spear glinted red with the blood of the Cobalt Guardsman that he had just killed.  He stabbed outward.  Renarin angled his blade to catch the wooden haft of the weapon, directing it just past his right side.  Another jab, another parry, and the spear tip deflected to the left.  Renarin breathed in and breathed out.  He had this.  He could fight.

The spearman became more aggressive, striking harder, trying to force Renarin back down the corridor.  Renarin stood his ground, and in response shifted into Bloodstance.  The Glysblade darted out in a series of slashing cuts that took the assassin by surprise and made him go on the defensive.  Bloodstance was a form that was all offense and no defense—the stance of someone who didn’t care if they got hit.  Zahel had just shaken his head when it became clear that the stance came more naturally to Renarin than any other.  Using Bloodstance was to his advantage, since few opponents had practice facing it.  It was a stance that few fighters used regularly

Between one strike and the next, Glys flowed smoothly from a shardblade into spear, a move that Kaladin had taught all of the Knights Radiant of Bridge Four.  The sudden increase in reach allowed Renarin to get in a well-placed slash through his opponent’s chest with the long rippling blade of the Glysspear.  The shard weapon cut cleanly through the metal of the breastplate as if it had hardly any substance at all.  The portion of the blade that touched flesh fuzzed into insubstantiality, passing through the spine and vital organs and severing their connection as it went.  The bottom half of the soldier’s breastplate clattered to the floor as the man’s eyes burned out.  A moment later, the man’s body collapsed to the floor.

Renarin had no time to think about or process that he’d just killed for the first time.  The next assassin stepped over the body.  This man was more cautious as he raised his weapon against the glowing Glysspear, and he waited to fully engage.  The man immediately behind him formed up into a second rank, and Renarin found himself facing two spears at once.  The two men had clearly trained together, and fought with some synergy.  The second-rank spear acted as a distraction while the front spear came in at an angle, attempting to push him back into one of the side walls.  Renarin recognized that these men were trying to pin him, to stop him from moving.  That would allow the man with the anti-Light daggers to move forward and attack.

Glys shifted back into shardblade form again.  Renarin resumed Bloodstance, which helped to keep his attackers on the defensive.  Like most sane people, they had a healthy fear of shardblades.  When an opening appeared, Renarin didn’t hesitate.  He breathed in Stormlight and lunged forward onto the end of the front man’s spear.

The first-rank assassin’s eyes widened.  He was so shocked to see Renarin impale himself that he froze up.  He tried to raise his weapon, but found that his spear was rendered useless, lodged just above Renarin’s belt, deep in his side.  The Glysblade flashed forward, closing the rest of the remaining distance.  It passed effortlessly through the man’s neck.  His eyes burned out and he fell.

Gritting his teeth from the burning pain in his wounded side, Renarin retreated two steps in quick succession in order to avoid a spear jab from the man’s companion.  He gave a soft grunt as he yanked the spear free left-handed—tossing it point-first down the corridor behind him and using a flood of Stormlight to heal.  The maneuver had been effective in eliminating one of his opponents, though it was unlikely that the trick would work a second time.  He shot a quick glance backwards over his shoulder towards the end of the corridor, keenly aware of how easy it would be to run out of space. 

That one, Glys murmured in his mind.

I know.  The swordmaster holding the anti-Stormlight dagger hovered only a few steps back from the fighting.  Each person Renarin defeated brought him, and more importantly brought Glys, closer to the enemy who was the true threat.

Renarin breathed in, taking in so much Stormlight from the perfect gem tucked into his uniform that the two remaining assassins squinted as they looked in his direction.  He shifted the Glysblade to his left hand and reached sideways with his right.  Reaching out into the fabric of reality, he touched something vast, something eternal.  As he had done only a few times in the past, he purposefully grasped the Spiritual Realm. 

His glow became a blaze, filling the hallway with a brilliant white light. 

The light was bright and warm.  It didn’t cause any harm.  However, Renarin knew that it made him much more difficult to see, and therefore more difficult to attack.  His assailants shielded their eyes with shouts of alarm, buying him some breathing space.  Renarin knew from his limited practice with this ability that he couldn’t maintain his grip on the Spiritual Realm indefinitely.  Before the contact could falter, or the assassins tried to rush him blindly, he used the Stormlight raging in his body to give the power a little twist.

Renarin’s glowing figure stepped forward as the white light faded to a less-dazzling intensity.  Metal coalesced from mist, forming out of thin air.  A bulky and yet intricate suit of shardplate glimmered and solidified around him.  It was green and gold in the Truthwatcher colors, shining brightly with emerald light at the joints. 

The heavily armored form adopted Vinestance for defense and extended strikes, the long Glysblade coming down perfectly into a two-handed guard position. 

The remaining spearman took a step back, for the first time his expression showed fear.  “We’ve failed, we can’t fight that!”

He tried to move back down the tunnel towards the entrance.  However, the assassin with the dead arm, the one who had been an ardent, blocked the only avenue of retreat.  If he was phased by the new development, he didn’t show it.  With a cool and professional detachment, he thrust the anti-Stormlight dagger hilt-first towards his companion.  “You don’t have to get through the armor,” he said harshly, “You just have to hit the sword.”

*      *      *

Black smoke billowed from the doorway of the Oathgate control building as Rlain and Skar hurtled towards it.  Skar signaled in advance that he was going to lash them to a halt, but Rlain’s stomach still lurched at the sharp change in direction.  He bent his knees to absorb the impact as the ground came up under his feet.

“Lopen?” Skar called into the building, “Laran?”

Rlain squinted.  The smoke was so thick it was hard to see, and it had a sharpness to it that made it hurt to breathe.  There wasn’t much inside the control building that could burn.  It was like the air itself had been soulcast, turning it directly into the pure essence of smoke.

Rlain saw Rua first.  Listeners could see partly into the Cognative Realm, and so he could make out Rua’s glow even if he were invisible to Skar.  The spren made it free of the smoke, darting back and forth, waving two sets of arms as he zigzagged out the doorway.  Laran’s spren followed closely after, flying backwards with a worried expression.  A few steps behind came Laran and Lopen, both glowing with Stormlight in order to hold their breath.  Between them they half-dragged, half-carried a figure whose clothing and hair was charred and smoking, skin blackened and blistered in big patches. 

Rlain attuned the Rhythm of Alarm, as Skar said, “Dabbid?”

Large chunks of the roof of the Oathgate control building had been blown free and were lying all over the ground.  Lopen and Laran made it to the first semi-clear space and eased Dabbid down onto the stone floor of the Oathgate plateau.  They each bore gashes from flying rock, though the wounds were closing even now as they healed with Stormlight.  Rlain immediately dropped down beside Dabbid.  He’d used up the Stormlight in his own pouch getting to the Oathgate platform.  Now he breathed in Stormlight from Lopen’s and Laran’s sphere pouches, belatedly hoping that they wouldn’t mind. 

Rlain reached out to touch Dabbid’s shoulder.  He’d never tried to use Progression before, but Renarin had explained that it was straightforward.  Truthwatchers and Edgedancers could simply infuse someone else with Stormlight and their own body would do the rest.  Rlain tried to direct the Stormlight down his arm and into Dabbid.  He felt a warmth as the chill Stormlight flowed out of him.  Dabbid began to glow.

It was working.  Rlain could see the blackened flesh flaking off, with new skin underneath.  Dabbid’s chest rose and fell once, then he inhaled sharply—and to Rlain’s shock, Stormlight began to stream from Lopen and Laran’s sphere pouches directly into him.

Dabbid was… healing himself?

The double dose of healing Stormlight healed burns and restored damaged tissue.  Even Dabbid’s hair grew back in the patches where it had been missing.  Rlain attuned to the Rhythm of Awe, letting the last of his Stormlight dissipate. 

Dabbid had finally become a Windrunner squire. 

Dabbid coughed and then blinked up at them with dazed eyes.  He looked first at Rlain, then slowly at each of the three Windrunners in turn.  He gave another little cough, then spoke faintly in a voice hoarse with smoke.

“Bridge Four.”

*      *      *

The assassin swung out with the dagger, trying to connect with the tip of the shardblade.  The two weapons came into contact, and one touch was all it took. 

The perfect version of Renarin Kholin—Knight Radiant abruptly flared and burned, evaporating outward in a silent explosion of force as Stormlight met anti-Stormlight. 

The assassin crouched down, nearly blown over backwards from the impact of it, shielding his eyes from the light.

As the light intensified then faded, it left behind the real Renarin, wide-eyed but unharmed, standing in plain view a few steps further down the hallway.

“Illusion,” the spearman with the dagger yelled in surprise.  He looked back over his shoulder at the swordmaster standing behind him.  “It was an illusion!”

Renarin took advantage of his distraction and dismissed the Glysblade.  Then he copied a move he’d seen Kaladin perform a hundred times, one that he’d practiced in the privacy of his own rooms more times than he could count.  Without looking away from the assassin, Renarin kicked one of the half-shard spears from his fallen attackers up into his left hand, maintaining his contact with the Spiritual Realm with the right.  He felt a surge of grim satisfaction as his fingers curved closed around the smooth wood.

We will… fight? Glys asked.

Stay hidden, Renarin thought back at him.  That dagger kills spren.

Glys vibrated with worry and agitation.  He didn’t need to point out the fact that he was hidden inside Renarin; an injury to one of them would injure them both.

Odium watches, Odium waits, Glys said.  Sja-anat’s touch had changed Glys, turned him into a spren that was partially of Odium.  If he left his hiding place, if he moved too far from his chosen Knight Radiant, Odium would see.  Glys had always feared this.  Odium would unmake him if given the chance.

Stay hidden, Renarin repeated.

If it were just him, he would have charged at the assassins without a second thought.  …But it wasn’t, and he didn’t.  His first responsibility was to protect Glys. 

Renarin breathed in Stormlight from the Emuli gemstone again, engaging one of the only forms of Illumination that had ever worked for him.  One at a time, as he retreated slowly before the assassin’s advance, he spun out perfect versions of himself.  The images glowed incandescently, each one so dense with Stormlight that it appeared almost solid.  Each of the figures represented a future version of himself.  A person he could choose to become.

The soldier.  The illusory figure of Renarin was older, in its late-thirties.  The Battalionlord’s uniform with its gold braid was bright and immaculate, the black boots polished to a high sheen.  As the image stepped forward with a determined expression, an illusory version of Glys as a shardspear materialized in its grasp. 

The scholar.  This perfect self was older still, black and blond hair going gray at the temples.  Renarin had never set foot inside the odd architecture of the Palanaeum, but the vision somehow replicated it.  The figure stood among rows of misty shelving, near a railing that bordered a section of a vast underground atrium, with levels descending downward like the steps of an upside-down pyramid.  The illusionary image held a large leather-bound volume in both hands, and as the assassin moved to attack it, the figure raised the book up like a shield. 

The assassin knew that all of the likenesses were illusions now.  Each time the dagger connected with one, the brightly glowing image exploded silently outward in a burst of burning light.  The insubstantial figures no longer worked as a ruse.  …But fooling the assassin into thinking they were real wasn’t actually the point.

The seer.  This final, glowing version of Renarin was nearly identical to his current self.  The figure stood with hands empty and down at his sides, making no move in his own defense.  His chin was lifted, his gaze distant--while all around him the future unfolded in a half-dozen windows of stained glass. 

The assassin growled to see it.  “Abomination!” he yelled.  The anti-Light dagger swiped back and forth through the image, trailing streamers of mist as the anti-Stormlight exploded it.

…And then the man drew in a horrible, gurgling breath as Renarin’s half-shard spear stabbed through the fading burst of light and punched through the metal of his breastplate, taking the assassin right in the chest. 

The man convulsed as he died, tipping over backwards.  The back edge of the spearhead in his chest lodged against a rib and refused to pull free.  Before Renarin could manage to catch it, the man’s dead weight jerked the handle of the spear right out of his grip.  The body hit the ground with a clatter.

Stormfather.  Renarin’s retreat had brought him most of the way down the hallway.  He now stood right in front of the heavy wooden gate that blocked the entrance to the treasury room.  It had been deliberately made so that it took two men to open it, and the Cobalt Guardsman on duty had the only key.  Renarin could have cut a hole in the gate with his shardblade, but he didn’t want to risk summoning Glys right now.  He had stopped between two heavy wooden support beams.

For a breathless moment, Renarin and the final assassin stared at each other over the corpse of the fallen man, both of them empty-handed.  Renarin shifted, and he nearly stepped on the needle-like blade of the broken sword again.  It lay on the floor right next to the locked gate, where it had come to rest after he’d kicked it earlier.  Renarin didn’t look down at it, not daring to take his eyes off the swordmaster assassin.  It was reassurance enough to know that he still had a weapon close by without needing to summon his spren as a shardblade. 

The final assassin bent at the knees, not looking away from Renarin.  His dead right arm, the one he had lost to Glys’ first strike, hung useless at his side.  The left arm reached cautiously forward, and a moment later the assassin rose again, having recovered the anti-Stormlight dagger.  He held the knife by the leaf-like blade, keeping it pinched between his thumb and forefinger.

Renarin immediately noticed that the warped light shining from the pommel gem had become visibly fainter.  During the fight, the dagger had allowed the assassins to dispel Renarin’s Stormlight-filled illusions.  As he had hoped, doing so had drained away a significant portion of the anti-Stormlight. 

Unfortunately, Renarin’s efforts hadn’t been able to neutralize the dagger completely.  The gemstone set into the pommel still glowed.  The assassin continued to gaze steadily in Renarin’s direction, and he didn’t seem to have noticed the difference in the intensity of the light.

Faint alarmed shouts echoed down into the hallway.  There was the clash of metal and the sound of distant fighting. The group of enemy fighters posted at the top of the stairs were engaging incoming soldiers. The Windrunners.  Renarin felt a flood of relief.  He looked to the mouth of the corridor, hoping for a glimpse of a blue Bridge Four uniform. 

The assassin also glanced back over his shoulder.  If the soldiers of Bridge Four were here, they would be arriving any minute.  There weren’t any other exits from the hallway.  Now it was the assassin who would have no escape. 

Then the assassin deliberately turned back to face Renarin, raising his left arm and drawing it back.  Too late, Renarin realized what he was doing.  In a move almost too fast to see, the assassin whipped his left arm forward, and suddenly a silver blur was flying through the air, crossing the scant few paces of distance between them.  Renarin started to take in a sharp breath of Stormlight, but there just wasn’t enough time to react.

The flying object smacked Renarin hard in the ribs, lodging in place.  To his surprise and dismay, he saw that the hilt of the assassin’s dagger now protruded from the front of his uniform.  The point was buried deep in his chest.

In his heart.

The anti-Stormlight in the gem discharged out through the blade, and a burst of sickening wrongness ripped through him.  Glys suddenly shrieked inside his head, and Renarin’s whole world went white with pain.

*      *      *

When Rlain had thought about becoming a Radiant, he had always pictured himself bonding an honorspren and joining the Windrunner order with the rest of Bridge Four.  He should have known better.  Those first few times in warform, jumping chasms with Thude and Eshonai should have been a clue.  He had always lagged behind in their races and been the last to jump the most difficult gaps.  Speed was definitely not his thing. 

Now wind whipped past Rlain’s face as Skar held on to his elbow and lashed them both through the tower.  They threaded the crowded corridors like a needle flashing through fabric, skimming above the heads of innocent civilians.  Rlain’s stomach was doing somersaults as they took corners at full speed.  …But Rlain didn’t once call out to Skar to slow down.

The situation at the Shinovar Oathgate had brought home to him the seriousness of the enemy’s two-pronged attack.  The force of the explosion had shaken the entire plateau, and Rlain wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that tremors had been felt within the tower.  As the black smoke had started to clear, it had become obvious that the control building had sustained heavy damage.  In addition to the repairs that would be needed for the roof, the mosaics on the walls had been mostly ruined, and large sections of the tile floor ripped free.  At least one of the sphere lamps that powered the Oathgate was gone--it had melted completely. 

Laran had gotten a good look at the part of the control building where they’d found Dabbid, and she had reported that the Oathgate keyhole had been intact.  There had been a strange pattern of scorch marks all along the wall there.  She’d said that it almost looked as if some of the force of the explosion had been diverted away from Dabbid and from the keyhole itself. 

It would take Queen Navani’s engineers some time to examine the building carefully and to determine whether the Oathgate was still functional.

Lopen had said there had been another person in the room when he’d looked in seconds before the explosion happened, but there hadn’t been any sign of a body when they’d gone back in to investigate.  It was as if the other man had been completely vaporized.

Skar and Rlain hit the central atrium of Urithiru, its huge windows letting in streams of natural light.  Skar lashed them higher to make use of the open space above, and together they made a straight shot diagonally across the enormous space, heading in the direction of the treasury.  Soon they were passing over the Ten Rings section of the Breakaway market, where milling customers looked up in surprise as they flashed by overhead.  Then they were angling downward, passing under an archway, and were engulfed by the warren of stone corridors again.

Rlain silently hummed to Anxiety, the not-knowing about Renarin’s fate causing a painful knot in his chest.  The Windrunners should have gotten there by now, he thought.  Please let help have arrived in time.

*      *      *

Renarin’s vision slowly cleared, and he found himself crouched on his knees on the stone floor, head bowed, his hands clutching at the hilt of the dagger in his chest.  Every heartbeat was agony as his wounded heart tried to function.  He attempted to draw in Stormlight and found that he couldn’t.  For a bewildered moment, he couldn’t fathom why he was still alive.

Then he saw it, the thin thread of violet-on-black light.  It was flowing into him, emanating from some spheres held in his pocket.

Voidlight.

Oh.

Renarin knew that the Fused used Voidlight to fuel their Surges.  It allowed them to operate in the presence of Stormlight suppression devices.  It had occurred to Renarin, given the unusual nature of his corrupted spren, that he might also be able to access his Surges under Stormlight suppression.  He had surreptitiously borrowed a handful of Voidlight spheres from his aunt’s scholars, and started carrying them around.  …Waiting for an opportunity to test whether the idea worked.

He hadn’t yet gotten the chance to try it out.  Until now.  The thin stream of Voidlight was powering a fraction of his Progression ability.  That was what was keeping him alive.

Glys. 

Silence answered him.  Renarin closed his eyes against a surge of pain and despair, hearing again the awful sound of his spren’s anguished cry.  …And yet, the fact that Renarin was able to draw in Voidlight told him that some part of Glys still survived. 

His spren survived, but was deeply or perhaps mortally, wounded.  Renarin felt the consequences of that injury, as well.   Like rips in the fabric of his own soul--as if something vital had been torn away.  It had left behind rifts of terrible, agonizing emptiness that were somehow worse than the knife to the heart.  

There was the scuff of a booted foot in the hallway, the rasp of a blade being pulled free of a leather belt.  The sounds brought Renarin instantly back to the present.  The last assassin was approaching.

Renarin raised his head.  The Voidlight that he was drawing in resonated with something deep inside of him.  It was different than holding Stormlight.  Stormlight affected Renarin just as it did other Radiants--made him want to move, to act.  It affected physical aspects of the body. 

The Voidlight instead touched his emotions, rousing them, enflaming them.  It drove back the pain and fed his anger at being ambushed and cornered, at having his spren targeted.  It stoked his desire to go on the offensive, to attack. 

He had read his father’s description of what it was like to embrace the Thrill in his book, Oathbringer.  Renarin imagined that being touched by the Thrill might have felt a lot like this. 

He gritted his teeth, hissing out a loud breath as he eased the spent anti-Stormlight dagger free from between his ribs.  Blood splashed to the stone floor beneath him even as Progression worked with painstaking slowness to knit the wound closed.  He ignored the injury as the flow of Voidlight blocked the pain and fed his anger.  He felt a burning rage, yes, rage at this traitor who had given himself over to the enemy.  Who had dared to attack him, to attack Glys, here within the boundaries of Urithiru.

The assassin now held the other anti-Light dagger in his hand, its pommel bright with warped purple-black light.  Anti-Voidlight.  If that second blade struck true, Glys was finished. 

Renarin wouldn’t allow that to happen.

“Red,” the assassin growled, stepping forward over the body of his comrade.  “You won’t meet my gaze, but I can see the glint of red in your eyes.  Voidbringer.  We were right to eliminate you.”

Renarin choked back a snarl at the words, forcing himself to stay silent.  He kept to his hunched-over position, deliberately denying the assassin a second clear shot with a thrown knife.

The assassin stepped forward again.  …Then he abruptly lunged at Renarin with all of the swiftness of an attacking whitespine.

Renarin suddenly understood why Zahel had him train with all of the different swordmaster ardents of Urithiru.  He had sparred with this man, and remembered his style.  As the assassin closed the distance between them in a matter of seconds, Renarin recognized the overhand strike aimed at his bent back as a feint.  It allowed him to anticipate the sudden shift in the direction of the anti-Voidlight dagger as it dropped down low, aiming once again for his heart.  Aiming for Glys.

All his life he had been weak.  All his life he had been useless.  Unable to defend himself, unable to fight.

Renarin straightened up on his knees and swayed backwards a few inches to avoid the thrust of the assassin’s blade.  As the blade missed him by a hair’s breadth, Renarin suddenly lurched forward again. Letting out a roar of pent-up fury, Renarin stabbed outward with his own weapon in a tight arc.  He aimed not for the assassin’s dagger to parry, but for the assassin’s arm.  The spent anti-Stormlight dagger was razor-sharp, and it pierced the flesh between the bones of the assassin’s forearm and slid easily and deeply into the thick wooden post beyond, abruptly halting the assassin’s momentum and pinning his left arm against the beam.

There was the sound of metal on stone then, as Renarin bent and wrapped both of his hands around the hilt of the broken sword lying beside him on the floor.  The assassin’s eyes widened, and he moved to block the strike that he saw coming.  However, the arm he tried to raise was the dead right arm, the one that Glys had sliced through at the beginning of the ambush.  Renarin pushed past the clumsy block easily.  The broken sword drove upward, the wicked point entering underneath the assassin’s chin and ramming up into his skull.

The man spasmed, his death throes jerking the sword hilt free of Renarin’s grasp. 

Something in Renarin’s chest that had been partially healed had ripped open again as he had moved.  He felt a wash of black exhaustion as his life’s blood began to run freely from the wound.  Desperately he tried to breathe in Voidlight to fuel his Radiant healing.  However, as before, only a thread of light responded.  He was like a drowning man, thrashing to the surface of the water long enough to gasp in a tiny bit of air, only to be pulled back down into the depths again.  The Voidlight trickling into him was no longer enough. 

Motion caught his attention at the end of the corridor, as a figure in Kholin blue rounded the corner into the hallway.  An enemy?  No, Renarin caught a glimpse of the white shoulder patch of Bridge Four.  

Rlain…. 

Rlain was the only other member of Bridge Four who could use the Surge of Progression.  …But Renarin knew even as the thought occurred to him that the listener he loved was far from here, working out in the fields.  This figure had the tan skin of an Alethi, and was speeding through the air a foot off the ground.  The person blurred before Renarin could identify them, his vision darkening.  No, he thought with desperation, as the strata of the stone hallway began to tilt dizzyingly around him.  Not yet…not….

*      *      *

Skar cursed, and as Rlain rounded the corner, he saw why.  A body in Kholin blue lay in the hallway, half-in, half-out of the doorway that led to the treasury complex.  It was not a Windrunner and not anyone Rlain recognized.  A dropped spear lay on the ground beside the man, and he had burned-out eyes.  Skar didn’t stop.  He lashed them both through the open doorway and across an upper platform which held four more corpses.  There were stairs leading down into the cylindrical room below, but Skar didn’t take them.  Instead, he lashed them over the railing of the upper level, and Rlain’s stomach lurched yet again as they dropped down the three stories towards the circular floor at the base of the spiral staircase. 

Five more bodies were lying on the ground here, and Rlain saw the sky blue shoulder patch of the Cobalt Guard on at least one of them.  None of them were moving.  Skar changed direction and the two of them went shooting through an archway and down the hall beyond, heading towards a cluster of figures standing at the far end.  More fallen men littered the ground here, and Rlain’s frantic gaze searched the bodies as they passed, just to be sure--looking for the gold shoulder cords that marked a prince’s uniform, or streaks of blond mixed into black Alethi hair.       

He didn’t see either until they reached the far end of the hallway, where Skar let them both touch down.  Rlain looked past Leyten and Kara, to where Bisig crouched on the stone floor, kneeling over a figure lying unmoving on the floor.

Renarin….

Bisig had the front of Renarin’s uniform open, and had removed his own shirt to staunch a chest wound.  He was leaning most of his weight on locked arms, but even so the wadded cloth was nearly dyed red with human blood, with more of it pooling on the floor.  The scent of it stung Rlain’s nose with the sharp metallic tang of iron.  Renarin’s still face was shockingly pale, his skin had an unnatural, almost translucent cast to it. 

“Still nothing.”  Kara was leaning over Bisig’s shoulders.  Purple fearspren wiggled on the ground all around both of them.  Kara had a pile of bright spheres in her cupped hands and was holding them over Renarin.  “Ash’s eyes!  Renarin, please.  You have to heal!”

Glys!  Tumi pulsed to the Rhythm of Anxiety.  Glys has been hurt!

Rlain pushed past Leyten and staggered across the handful of intervening steps, dropping to his knees across from Bisig.  A cremling that was lurking near Renarin’s shoulder skittered away at the disturbance, climbing up and across the wall.

“Rlain!” Bisig exclaimed.  “Thank the Heralds!  Peet went to fetch an Edgedancer, but….”  He didn’t finish.  It was obvious that Peet hadn’t yet returned.

Rlain was already reaching out, laying a hand over Renarin’s bare collarbone.  He had used up all of the Stormlight in his spheres earlier, getting to the Oathgate plateau.  However, as Rlain breathed in, a powerful surge of Stormlight filled him from a bundle of sodden red cloth, yellow at the edges, lying abandoned on the floor.  Through the folds of the fabric, the glint of an enormous green gemstone was visible. 

Voidlight, Tumi pulsed to the Rhythm of Tension.  It sustains him.

Rlain saw it, a barely-visible purple-on-black thread.  Rlain didn’t understand how, but Renarin was unconsciously drawing it in from his pocket, where he must have some spheres.  The thread of light was flickering even now.  The Voidlight had nearly run out.

Rlain took in as much Stormlight as he could manage and began pouring it into Renarin.

Please, he thought desperately, fighting to contain his anguish and humming to the Rhythm of Determination.  Please let this be in time. 

The healing took a lot of Stormlight, far more than it had taken to heal Dabbid.  After long minutes that felt like an eternity, Rlain sensed the flow of Light into Renarin slowing to a trickle, and then it ceased entirely.  He nodded to Bisig, who relaxed pressure on Renarin’s chest.  Hesitantly the Alethi man moved the blood-soaked shirt away.

Renarin didn’t wake.  The deathly pallor had retreated, some of his natural color returning.  However, the healing had left behind an angry, knotted scar which stood out against the skin of his chest over his heart.  The Surge of Progression wasn’t supposed to leave scars behind.  It seemed like an ominous sign to Rlain that the area hadn’t been completely restored.

Drawing on Kaladin’s early lessons on battlefield medicine, Rlain briefly lifted one unresponsive eyelid, then the other.  The blue eyes hadn’t turned white, as he’d heard happened with the Fused.  They were just glassy and unseeing, the pupils blown wide with shock.  Rlain reached for the pulse point at the side of Renarin’s neck.  A weak rhythm throbbed against the pads of Rlain’s fingers, uneven and too fast.  He held there for a minute, and to his immense relief he found that the faint heartbeat was stabilizing.

Renarin was alive.  Alive but still hurt.  Rlain had somehow sensed that deeper injury through the Surge of Progression, a wound that Rlain’s new powers just couldn’t heal. 

His bond, Tumi pulsed to Mourning.  Glys.

Rlain attuned Mourning as well.  It unnerved him deeply to realize how close Renarin had come to the brink of death.  The assassins had almost succeeded in their mission.  He lost touch with the Rhythm of Mourning then, and found himself attuned to Pain, instead.  Our Radiant abilities are still too new.  I should have realized sooner, and acted more quickly.  We almost lost them both. 

Heedless of his human audience, Rlain reached out and claimed one of Renarin’s lax hands, lacing the fingers with his own and raising it to his chest to press it against his breastbone, over his gemheart.  It was a deeply personal gesture in listener culture.  One shared only between two who had become a pair.  I’m here, he thought, as if by will alone he could make Renarin hear the words.   I wasn’t fast enough.  I didn’t understand soon enough.  …But I’m here now.   

He heard Bisig’s sharp inhalation, quickly followed by a shocked whisper.  “Rlain!”  

Rlain blinked and realized then that he was drawing anguishspren.  Listeners didn’t attract spren as frequently as humans did.  It was a testament to the depths of Rlain’s emotions that they now clustered all along the wall of the corridor behind him, looking disturbingly like teeth as they jutted randomly out from the strata.

Bisig hadn’t known, Rlain realized belatedly.  Bisig hadn’t known that he and Renarin were now a pair.

Skar didn’t seem surprised by it, however.  The interim leader of the Windrunners didn’t hesitate as he rested a hand on Rlain’s shoulder in a gesture of solidarity and support. 

Rlain gently released Renarin’s hand, then reached up and undid the fastenings of his own uniform coat, slipping the garment off his shoulders.  It retained the heat from his own body, and no one objected as he laid the jacket carefully over Renarin like a blanket to help keep him warm.

“Why didn’t he wake up?” Kara asked in a subdued voice.  “Will he be all right?”

Rlain cleared his throat.  Focus.  With an effort, he forced himself to reach for a more neutral Rhythm.  He couldn’t manage Peace right now, so attuned Determination again, instead.  “His spren is hurt.”  It was more difficult than he expected to have to say the words out loud.  “They were targeting Glys.  He… they… it was anti-Stormlight.”

He heard at least one sharp intake of breath at that, and a few orange painspren rose up from the floor.  The permanent loss of Teft’s spren, Phendorana, had happened only a few days ago.  All of Bridge Four understood the dangers of anti-Stormlight for a spren.   

Rlain didn’t have to look far to see the dagger with the dun gem, pinning the dead assassin’s arm to the wall.  Rlain could see the dead man’s face in profile.  He was dismayed but not surprised to recognize him as the lighteyed man from his visions.  

That man and Renarin were the only two who had made it this far down the hallway.  There was absolutely no question who had driven a weapon up into the assassin’s skull.  Renarin had fought, and fought well.  …As Rlain knew he would. 

“There should be a second dagger,” Rlain said, still attuned to Determination.  “One with anti-Voidlight.”

Kara spotted it first.  The blade was lying on the ground near the closed wooden gate that led to the treasury.  The gemstone in the dagger was still bright with violet-black light.  The tension in Rlain’s shoulders eased somewhat at the knowledge that it hadn’t been discharged in the fight.  He resolved to ask later if any of the others had noticed Renarin drawing in Voidlight. 

A tiny clamp secured the pommel stone to the dagger.  Kara opened it and removed the anti-Voidlight gemstone, holding it out to Skar.  He gestured for her to tuck it into one of her pouches for safekeeping. 

“That should be delivered to the Queen,” Skar said.  “Take it to her scholars; they can keep it locked up in their workrooms.  But first go directly to Commander Fisk’s office.  The Cobalt Guard will want to get down here and begin investigating immediately.”   

Kara saluted, breathed in Stormlight, and sped off down the hall.

“Can he be moved?” Skar asked Rlain.

Rlain hesitated, then reached out to check Renarin’s heartbeat again.  He could tell that it was stronger.  The lingering effect of the vast amount of Stormlight that he’d been infused with was helping, even now.  “He seems to be stable.” Rlain said after a moment.  “We should be able to get him someplace where he can rest comfortably.”

“The Edgedancer clinic?” Leyten asked.

“It’ll be more secure if he’s moved to his own rooms.” Skar said.  “The Kholins have their own surgeon on call.  Though,” he glanced down at Renarin, his face clouded with concern, “I’m not sure what a surgeon can do at this point.    Will he be okay if he gets rest?”

He directed this last question to Rlain, who shrugged reluctantly.  Rlain didn’t know.  What he had sensed when he had healed Renarin led him to believe that sleep wasn’t the only thing Renarin needed.  …And he had no idea how to help Glys.

Tumi, can spren heal themselves if they are able to rest?

Within his chest, Tumi pulsed to the Rhythm of Anxiety.  In the Cognitive Realm?  This can be.  In the Physical Realm?  With this new type of injury?  …I do not know.

“Should we go get a stretcher?” Bisig asked dubiously.  “It’ll take more time.”  It wasn’t so easy to move an unconscious person by lashing them directly.  It was best to have some kind of support, to provide more stability. 

“No need,” Rlain said firmly.  “I’ve got him.” 

He gathered Renarin’s lanky frame up into his arms.  Then he paused there for just a few heartbeats--holding him close and grounding himself in the rise and fall of the quiet breathing that was proof that Renarin had survived the attack.  The blanketing jacket covered any evidence of injury, and Rlain could almost fool himself into thinking that Renarin was only sleeping, although he was still much too pale.  It was a strange and terrifying sensation, this attachment and this worry.  He desperately wanted Renarin to be all right.  For all of his abilities as a brand new Radiant, Rlain felt powerless and completely out of his depth. 

Skar stepped forward to touch Renarin’s upraised knee, infusing him with Stormlight and using a quarter lashing to relieve some of the weight as Rlain gained his feet. 

Quietly, Skar gave orders to Leyten and Bisig to secure the area and wait until Commander Fisk arrived.  They both saluted and then took in Stormlight, heading out to station themselves near the top of the spiral staircase.  Skar nodded to Rlain, laying hands on him and Renarin and infusing them both with Light. 

They came out into the large cylindrical room, and Skar looked up and immediately slowed their forward motion, signaling Rlain to let him know that they were dropping down to the floor.  As he touched down he came to attention and saluted, and Rlain immediately saw why.  Barreling towards them from above was Yake and Lyn, and with them….  Rlain’s arms tightened involuntarily, drawing Renarin possessively against his chest.

…With them was Dalinar Kholin.

Chapter Text

FIVE YEARS AGO

Renarin Kholin hurried through the hallways of his father’s enclave in the warcamps, the thumping of hard boot soles against the stone floors sounding uncomfortably loud in his ears.  It wasn’t quite a run--he didn’t dare exert himself that much.  The surgeons were always warning him that any kind of physical activity might bring on one of his epileptic fits. 

Today he’d decided it was worth the risk. 

He’d already visited Dalinar Kholin’s personal training room and his living quarters, as well as the Kholin training grounds and Gallant’s stall in the stables.  His father hadn’t been in any of those places.  Now Renarin found himself retracing his steps through the Kholin bunker complex, moving towards the suite of rooms designated for strategy meetings.

His forward momentum caused him to slide a little as he turned the last corner to get to his destination, and Renarin had to put out his arms to steady himself.  Before him was a promising sight.  Two men in Kholin blue guarded the entrance to the meeting suite, and both wore the sky blue shoulder patches of the Cobalt Guard. 

“Whoa, Prince Renarin!  Where are you off to in such a hurry?”  Renarin didn’t recognize the man on the left.  However, the other man who’d called out to him was very familiar. 

“Captain Niter,” Renarin responded as he approached the honor guard, dropping back into his normal, careful walk.  He only now realized how breathless he’d become from the pace he’d set.  “Is Father still here?”

The leader of the Cobalt Guard inclined his head.  “The planning meeting for the next plateau run finished a while ago, but your father stayed behind.  I think General Khal is with him.”

“Oh,” Some of the enthusiasm Renarin had felt at finally locating his father left him, and he deflated a little.  “He’s busy, then.”

Niter scratched thoughtfully at the edge of his short black beard.  “Your father and the General sometimes talk informally after meetings are over.  They never seem to mind being interrupted if a runner arrives for one of the other of them.”

Renarin brightened, still flushed and overheated from his haste.  “Oh, uh, okay.  It would be good if I could ask him now.”

The captain gave a curt nod.  As if the hesitant words had been an order, he swung open the door at his back and gestured for Renarin to enter.  “The meeting was in the War Room.  You’ll find your father at the end of the hall.” 

Renarin shifted from one foot to the other.  “Thanks,” he said a bit awkwardly

Niter saluted sharply and after a moment, the other man who was standing guard saluted as well.  Renarin felt his heart lift a little at the sight, and the corners of his mouth crooked upwards in a hint of a smile.  His father’s honor guard had only just started to salute him on a regular basis, as befitted his rank as the son of a highprince.  He’d had a growth spurt recently, and it pleased him that at least some of his father’s soldiers were taking him seriously, despite the medical condition kept him from the fighting.

Renarin passed through the entryway and into the hall beyond, as the door closed behind him with a soft click.  Plain wooden doors were spaced every ten paces or so along the walls, each one with lit spherelamps mounted to either side.  All of the doors were closed save for one at the end of the corridor that had been left slightly ajar.   Muted, indistinct voices drifted out into the corridor through that gap. 

Renarin did his best to step gingerly here, attempting to muffle his footsteps in order to avoid announcing his presence.  He slowed as he neared the end of the corridor.  He absently adjusted his spectacles, nervous now that he was faced with actually voicing the question he’d come to ask.  He didn’t often bother his father during the day.  It was understood that the Kholin Highprince needed to keep his attention focused on the war. 

Adolin had invited Renarin to ride out with him this afternoon, as he and a contingent of Kholin soldiers headed out along the caravan routes to meet fresh troops that were arriving from Kholinar.  The new troops were being assigned to Adolin’s command for the next few months, and he’d wanted to greet them personally.  It meant a lot to Renarin to be asked to come along.  To know that his older brother trusted him to keep up with the group. 

When Renarin was younger, he’d been forbidden to take riding lessons.  The surgeons had always worried that he’d have an epileptic fit and injure himself in a fall from his horse.  Renarin had listened to reason, back then.  Even though it meant that he was always getting left behind. 

It was Adolin who had first encouraged him to take lessons.  Only Adolin had seemed to recognize the freedom Renarin gained by learning to ride.  With a horse, he could no longer be left behind in the Kholin bunker when Dalinar and his sons were summoned to the royal palace, or when the king called for a greatshell hunt.  Renarin could be a part of things, in a way that he never could while he was limited to walking.  He was grateful to Adolin for that.

Adolin’s group was leaving in a little under two hours.  Renarin very much wanted to go with them.  However, the group would be traveling outside the boundaries of the Alethi warcamps.  As a result, Renarin needed to get his father’s permission, first. 

Bright spherelight was shining out from the open doorway of the war conference room.  The voices were much louder now, and he recognized his father’s voice as well as General Khal’s deep rumble.  Anxiety at the thought of interrupting the conversation rose up inside Renarin like an approaching stormwall.  Part of him was tempted to just turn and go.  Instead, he steeled himself and lifted a hand to knock.

“…Renarin.”

Renarin froze with his knuckles still half a foot away from the surface of the door.  The name hadn’t been directed at him, but had clearly been about him.  He was ashamed of eavesdropping, but was also intensely curious--to the best of his knowledge, his famous father rarely mentioned him to other people.  He took a half-step sideways and peered in through the crack between the door and its frame.

The two men sat informally on the other side of a long conference table, facing the roaring fire in the room’s single hearth.  Their backs were turned towards Renarin.  They must not have heard the door open and close at the end of the hall.

“He just turned fourteen, didn’t he?” General Khal was speaking.

“Sixteen,” his father replied.

“Ah,” General Khal took the correction in stride.  “They grow up so fast.  Have you asked him?”

“It hasn’t come up yet.” Dalinar was staring fixedly into the fire.  “I already know the answer, however.  He doesn’t want to go back to Kholinar.”

Renarin felt his shoulders stiffen at the words.  He tried to relax, to keep his breathing even and soft so that he didn’t alert the two men to his presence.  It was difficult.  His father was absolutely right, he didn’t want to return to Kholinar.  The empty stone corridors of the palace in the capital had only ever been a home to him while his mother was alive. 

Why was his father talking about this now?

Renarin reached into his pocket, pulling out the metal box that he always carried around with him.  He was afraid the clicking of the lid would make too much noise, so he didn’t open and close the box.  Instead he rubbed his fingers over the smooth sides and traced the angular corners with the pad of his thumb.  The sensation grounded him, giving him something to focus on and preventing his anxious feelings from rising and overwhelming him.

“Aesudan was the one who suggested it.  She thinks that….” Dalinar began, then trailed off.  “Well.  She’s offered to take responsibility for Renarin.  To supervise the last bit of his education.  She’s been quick to point out that second sons don’t inherit lands or title.”

“Second sons,” General Khal observed, “Usually make their fortune in war.”

“Yes,” Dalinar agreed dryly.  “I know.”  He took a drink of wine from a tumbler that was beaded with condensation, then set it aside and rose to his feet.  Renarin ducked back from the crack in the door, fearing discovery.  However, his father only started to pace, moving restlessly back and forth in front of the hearth.

“I’m a little surprised at the Queen’s interest,” Khal said eventually. “I would expect that she would be focused on the impending arrival of her own firstborn child.”

“Aesudan is Aesudan.  Even Elhokar admits that she’s ambitious.  Though how she’d benefit from helping Renarin reach his potential, I have no idea.  There must be something she expects to gain in return.”

General Khal gave a quiet “hm”, and declined to voice an opinion on the matter.

“The queen’s most recent spanreed message outlines her concerns for the succession.  Renarin is second in line for the title of Kholin Highprince.”  Dalinar stopped, staring pensively down at the dancing flamespren in the hearth.  “She makes a good point.  There’s no question that there are dangers here on the Shattered Plains.  It would be safer for him in Kholinar, away from the war.” 

Renarin felt a hint of bitterness rise at the back of his throat.  Of course.  He was the spare.  The back-up plan.  The one who could easily be sent away.  Nevermind that his father was healthy and well, thank the Almighty, and that when Adolin married his own sons would inherit.  The chances that Renarin would ever become highprince were very, very small.  It was much more likely that he would wind up like his Uncle Toh, living a life of quiet seclusion somewhere along the northern coast. 

Wouldn’t that be better?  Away from the crowds and the constant demands of the Alethi court?  Renarin had never been good with people, and the thought of dealing with all of the stresses that a highprince had to handle made his stomach tie itself in knots. 

The problem was that Renarin had never been able to pursue the Calling he truly wanted—the only Calling that his father actually prized.  He’d been forced to settle for avoiding all of the things that he didn’t want to do.  Near the top of that list was not wanting to go back to Kholinar. 

“It’s no kindness to keep him here,” his father continued, his back to Renarin as he focused on the hearth.  “He’ll never be a soldier.  I have… not been as firm as I should have been in this matter, and perhaps it’s time for him to make a clean break with the idea.  If he stays here in the warcamps, he’ll just constantly be surrounded by others who are living a life that he can’t have.

“On the other hand, if I do send him back to Kholinar, I worry that he’ll become isolated.  Life at court requires skills that Renarin just doesn’t possess.  He only manages to navigate court functions here at the Shattered Plains because he’s constantly tagging after Adolin.  I don’t believe that Aesudan will be inclined to look after him in the same way.”

Renarin felt heat flushing his face.  A few shamespren, like red and white flower petals, fluttered down around him.  His father’s words stung because they were true.  Once again, it occurred to Renarin that he should leave, that he shouldn’t be listening in on this conversation.  …Yet still he couldn’t tear himself away.

“If it was Adolin who was second-born, it would be a different matter.  Adolin knows how to handle other high dahn lighteyes.  He makes friends easily, and can navigate the simpering and the scheming of the court.”

“If Adolin had been the second son,” General Khal said, “We would be having a very different conversation.”

“Agreed.”  For a moment it seemed as if Renarin’s father would say more, but then he only reached for the wine tumbler on the table to take another drink.  Dalinar set the cup down again with more force than he’d obviously intended, some of the orange sloshing out of the container and onto the wood.  A few frustrationspren, appeared in the air around him.  “Stormfather, he’s so timid!  He and Adolin are like night and day.”

Out in the hallway, Renarin grimaced.  Night and day.  Renarin was familiar with that figure of speech.  It was painfully obvious to him which son was supposed to be which.

“It’s the Almighty’s own mystery how those boys ever grew so close.  They have so little in common.  Adolin is the perfect Alethi heir, strong and capable.  A natural military leader.   Renarin is… none of those things.  I hardly see anything of myself in him.”  Dalinar sighed, and his voice suddenly dropped to a level that was barely audible.  “Some days I wonder how he can even be my son.”

For a moment, Renarin was sure that he couldn’t possibly have heard correctly.  Then the implications sank in, and the unexpected and careless words struck him like a physical blow. 

No.  Thoughts blew through his mind like leaves before the highstorm; here one second and gone the next.  He didn’t mean to.  Things are different now.  He can’t have meant it like that.

It was one thing to rationalize to himself.  It was quite another to attempt to calm the emotions that rose up inside to overwhelm him.  Renarin wrapped his arms around his chest, breathing unsteadily as he partly doubled-over.  He found himself gazing at the upside down faces of agonyspren that surfaced out of the floor to stare at him.  He squeezed his eyes shut.  His father’s casual rejection hurt, far more than he would have thought possible.

You brought this on yourself, he thought bitterly, listening in on conversations that weren’t meant for you.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t heard similar words before.  It was an easy conclusion to make.  The taunts of young peers, preserved unpleasantly in his own memories, rang loudly in his head. 

The Blackthorn is a hero, not a sickly weakling!  I bet he’s not even your real father!

That type of insult had stopped abruptly once Adolin had gotten wind of it.  Dueling between minors was technically not allowed, but that didn’t stop lighteyed teens from imitating their parents in secret—beating the crem out of each other with non-lethal practice weapons.  Young Adolin had made sure that the perpetrators knew there were consequences for slandering anyone in his family.

General Khal’s voice rose in a question, and his father responded with a low-voiced answer.  The meaning of the sounds escaped Renarin.  He couldn’t bring himself to focus, overwhelmed by intense feelings of betrayal and hurt.  Hot tears began to spill down his cheeks.  He blinked rapidly, trying without success to make them stop. 

Yes, he’d heard those words before.  But he’d never heard them spoken by his own father. 

Never doubt that you are Dalinar Kholin’s son.  A memory of his mother’s voice came to him then--firm and resolute.  The words were as clear as if she were standing there beside him.  Anyone who implies otherwise is wrong.

He believed his mother wholeheartedly--and he understood that the taunts and the whispers had hurt her, too.  Still, knowing the truth didn’t banish the pain that he felt at overhearing his father’s words.  A few water droplets splashed to the floor beneath him, making dark blotchy circles against the stone floor. 

Looking down at those wet marks and the emotionspren that clustered around them, it occurred to Renarin that he was just proving his father’s point.  Dalinar Kholin had transformed himself into a man who was disciplined and controlled, a man who kept his emotions in check rather than letting them rule him.  Angrily, Renarin pulled off his spectacles and scrubbed at his face with a shaking hand, dashing the tears away.  He did his best to even out his unsteady breathing, to regain his composure before the noise could give him away.

Stumpweight logs popped and crackled in the hearth.  Eventually, General Khal broke the silence.  “Dalinar.  Speaking as one parent to another, and also as your friend--you and Renarin are more alike than you think.”

That got Renarin’s attention. 

His father’s only response was to make a noise that sounded skeptical.    

“It’s true.  You really don’t see it?  I used to think that your younger son was a daydreamer--that he never paid attention to anything.  I don’t think that anymore.”  Wood creaked as General Khal shifted his weight in his chair.  “In my experience, Renarin listens keenly to conversations that interest him.  He doesn’t speak up often.  But when he does, he says exactly what’s on his mind.  There are times when he displays an admirable level of insight and forward thinking.  I also get the sense that he has a quick mind and an impressive memory.”

“Yes, well.  Those qualities are exactly what makes him an ideal candidate for the ardentia.  The ardents are practically tripping over themselves to offer Renarin a place in the devotaries.  I just can’t understand why he’s so reluctant to pursue that path.  It seems like it would be a perfect fit.”

The agonyspren had slowly been fading away as the conversation continued.  Renarin dared to shift his position so that he could look through the crack in the door again, bringing the two men back into view.     

Dalinar continued.  “Heralds know I’ve tried so many times in the past few years to get him to consider the ardentia.  The more I push him, the more he just digs in his heels.”

A warm, reverberating sound filled the other room--an unexpected chuckle from the general.  “You say that you don’t see anything of yourself in Renarin.  But that sheer pig-headed stubbornness?  That inability to be diverted once a decision has been made?  That’s pure you, my friend.”     

Perhaps unwilling to push his luck too far with his highprince, Khal abruptly took a different track.  “To return to the beginning of this conversation; Renarin is sixteen now, he’s practically an adult.  If he’s not cut out to be a soldier and he refuses to be an ardent, how do you expect him to make his way in the world?  You won’t always be around to look out for him, you know.” 

“It makes the most sense for Renarin to wind up as a citylord somewhere in the Kholin territory.  He has the rank for it.  That’s one of the reasons Aesudan suggested that he spend time Kholinar, gaining some experience with how a city is run.  Being appointed as a citylord would be a logical choice, though I have concerns about that path.”  Dalinar sighed.  “I suppose that if he winds up being terrible at it, then at least Adolin will be Kholin Highprince someday.  The boys get along well.  Always have.  Adolin would find a place for him, I’m sure of it.” 

General Khal seemed to consider that for a long moment.  “The warcamps have grown significantly since the beginning of the war.  They are transforming from temporary encampments into proper permanent settlements.  Managing a warcamp is not so different than running a large city.”  General Khal shifted thoughtfully.  “In that case, perhaps the question is not ‘why won’t he go to Kholinar?’ but instead ‘what can he learn in Kholinar that he can’t learn here?’.  If the answer to that second question is ‘not much’, then why not let him stay?”

Dalinar remained silent, and the general leaned forward--clearly taking it as a sign that he could continue his line of thinking.

“I’m not suggesting that you put him in charge of soldiers—it’s obvious that he doesn’t have the right temperament for command.  Instead, why don’t you let him get some experience helping you in your duties as Highprince?  The responsibility would do him some good.  Maybe it would do you some good to have someone close by that you can rely on.  Someone who can run important errands and pass information along the chain of command.  Someone who can remember the details of reports and the discussions that go on during all of these strategy meetings,” the general waved a hand around at the nearly empty War Room to emphasize the point.  “Renarin’s assistance could be valuable to you, especially now that Adolin is taking on more responsibility on the battlefield.”

“Hmm,” Dalinar mused.  He was quiet for several heartbeats.  “I suppose that it would be a way for him to gain some experience and start to learn about leadership.  Aside from that, he’d probably jump at the chance to be included in the war planning.  Attending the meetings would provide a way for him to learn of warfare and strategy firsthand, without needing to be directly involved in the fighting.” 

He glanced back over at Khal, and the general nodded encouragingly.  “Very well,” Dalinar said.  “I’ll give this suggestion some thought.” 

For the first time since he’d entered the corridor, Renarin started to actually feel hopeful.  It was beginning to sound like his father might not send him back to Kholinar after all.

“Now,” General Khal said, “About these rumors we’ve been getting out of Highprince Sadeas’ warcamp….”

Renarin knew enough to wait and let the conversation turn to other topics before drawing attention to his presence.  He stayed discreetly in the hallway while the general described some recent intelligence reports.  Sadeas was apparently working on a new type of bridge that would help him cross plateaus and get to the gemhearts faster.  These were different than the bridges carried by armored enlisted men, or the chull-pulled siege bridges that some of Dalinar’s scholars were in the process of designing.  They were something new.  Something that Highprince Sadeas was taking great pains to keep a secret.  There had been a recent influx of slaves into his camp, but how they were being put to work on the project hadn’t yet been made clear.

“I’ll believe in speedy bridges when I see them,” Khal concluded at last.

It was time.  Renarin had lingered in the corridor long enough.  He tucked his metal box away in the pocket of his uniform jacket.  He took in a few deep breaths in an attempt to slow his racing heart, then deliberately lifted his chin and squared his shoulders.   

His father thought of him as timid, did he?  Well, that was a part of himself that Renarin could do something about. 

He raised his hand to the door, and rapped on it loudly three times.

Dalinar responded to the knock, calling for him to enter.  Renarin pushed the door open and stepped inside, reminding himself to stand tall and act his age.  I am not timid.  I am not timid.  He saluted.

“Renarin,” his father sounded surprised.  “What is it?”

“Sir,” Renarin said formally, “Adolin is riding out to meet the new troops this afternoon and… um, he asked me to go with him.  We wanted to check with you first.  To ask if that’s all right.”

Dalinar drew in a breath to reply, then he stopped and shot a sideways glance at General Khal.  “They usually go down to that area with the tall rock formations.  The one the caravan merchants call the Six Spires.  That’s a pretty far distance from here.”

It wasn’t a no.  Renarin tried to draw encouragement from that.  “It’s far, but the road is good.  It’s easy traveling.  The group is leaving soon, and there will be plenty of time for everyone to get back to the warcamps before dark.”    

Renarin could almost see the calculations going on in the back of his father’s head.  He knew that Renarin wasn’t always well.  How safe would it be for his younger son to cover the distance on horseback?  How safe for him to travel partway out into the Unclaimed Hills?  Even for groups accompanied by well-armed professional soldiers, the caravan routes could be dangerous.  His son’s unpredictable medical condition made the journey even more of a risk.

“My new horse, the roan mare,” Renarin added in a rush.  “She’s been working out really well.  Stablemaster Jenet has her trained to stay in place in case… in case I have a fit, so there’s a better chance to stay in the saddle while recovering.  The new tack has been helping, too.”

“New… tack?” his father clearly didn’t remember, although he’d given permission for the project a little over a year ago.

“The altered saddle,” Renarin explained.   “The saddlemakers… they made some adjustments, to make it safer.  To help compensate for my blood weakness.”  In truth, the saddlemakers had been hesitant to take on the project, at first.  They’d come around eventually, once they’d understood the types of alterations that would help Renarin the most.  They’d designed a saddle with a handholds built directly into the structure of it to provide some stability.  The stirrups were also partially open on the sides so there was less chance that they would tangle around a rider’s feet, in the event that Renarin lost his balance during a fit and fell.

Renarin didn’t want to worry his father, and so he chose not to mention that he’d already had more than one epileptic episode while riding during the past few months.  The weakness had come over him, and most of the time he’d managed to stay in the saddle.  The training of his horse and the redesigned tack had done their job in helping him to avoid serious injury.

“I’ve already been to a place that’s farther away than the Six Spires.  Farther away from the warcamps,” Renarin added quickly, before his father could offer any counter arguments.  “…On one of the king’s greatshell hunts.  It was a greater distance, that day, riding out onto the Shattered Plains to get near the larger chasmfiends.  There’s a higher risk of ambush out on the plateaus, as well.” 

Dalinar remained dauntingly silent, brows drawn downward.  Perhaps he was dwelling on the possible risks to the succession that he and Khal had been discussing earlier.  Renarin drew in a breath and resolutely plowed onward.  “Adolin says that he wouldn’t have asked me to go if he didn’t think I was up to it.  He says the area around the warcamps and along the road have gotten safer lately, now that there are regular patrols.  Also, he… um, thought I could ride up front with him, at the head of the column where it’s most heavily guarded.  He plans to bring his shards, and he said he’ll keep an eye on me.  …That I should tell you that, if you have concerns.”  

Renarin wound down and abruptly lapsed into stillness, having reached the end of the list of points he’d planned to make.  He waited anxiously, stubbornly resisting the urge to rock on his feet.  He kept expecting his father to say something.  Anything.  Still, the silence between them stretched. 

As he waited, Renarin found himself studying the man on the other side of the table, a man he had known for years, but in some ways he still didn’t feel that he knew very well.  He suddenly realized that the Kholin Highprince was standing stiffly, awkward in a social situation that was strange and uncomfortable for him.  He was conflicted, clearly not quite sure which actions or words would be the right ones.  I know what that’s like, Renarin thought.  A sudden warmth suffused his chest in spite of his anxiety, and he felt an odd sort of kinship with his father, in a way that he hadn’t felt before.  

“Hm.” Dalinar looked at him then.  Really looked at him.  Not a passing glance, not a belated afterthought.  Renarin had always struggled to interpret other people’s facial expressions, and he couldn’t read Dalinar’s right now.  Nonetheless, he got the impression that his father was seeing his younger son, really seeing him, as if for the very first time.

“Yes,” Dalinar said finally.  “I always enjoyed riding out to meet the troops when I was younger.  It inspires the men to get to meet the brightlords that they’ll be fighting for.  They’ll be able to tell their loved ones that they saw the Kholin princes as soon as they arrived at the Shattered Plains.  Yes, you can go.”

For a moment Renarin could only blink in surprise.  It had worked.  He’d managed to be convincing enough.  His father had actually said yes.  Renarin let out a breath that he hadn’t realized that he had been holding.  He felt himself starting to smile and had to duck his head down, unable to make himself stop.

“Now,” Dalinar said more sternly, “remember that you’re going to be an emissary of House Kholin.  As the son of a highprince, I expect that you will represent the princedom well.”

“Yes, sir!” Renarin looked up again, unable to hold back a triumphant grin.  “I will sir!”

“Good.  Adolin’s group is leaving soon?”

“Yes.  Uh, about an hour and a half from now.”

“You’d better join them, then,” his father said.  “It wouldn’t do to be late.”

Renarin saluted.  “Yes, sir!”  Relieved that he’d just been handed an easy way to extricate himself from the conversation, Renarin didn’t hesitate.  He let himself out of the War Room and swung the door shut behind him. 

The moment the latch clicked closed, Renarin leaned back against the wooden planks and let the door support most of his weight.  Elation washed over him.  He’d done it.  He’d taken a risk, refused to let himself be intimidated by the situation, and pushed past his anxiety.  His father had agreed to let him do something that might be dangerous.  Renarin wasn’t going to be left behind again.

More than that, it seemed Dalinar Kholin had finally begun to understand that his younger son was growing up.  Perhaps he was even beginning to realize that it wasn’t necessary for Renarin to be constantly sheltered and protected and treated as an invalid.  That there were ways Renarin could actually help.

It was a start.

Chapter Text

Rlain stood at attention outside the door to Renarin’s rooms, humming to the Rhythm of Tension and fighting the urge to pace.

Skar hadn’t exactly assigned him to this duty.  However, when Rlain had finished changing out of his bloodied uniform and then returned to take up this post by the door, Skar hadn’t ordered him to leave.  The man had just gripped Rlain’s shoulder and nodded once, before he and the other Windrunners had departed to help with the investigation currently ongoing at the Treasury.

The Cobalt Guard had locked down this entire wing of the tower, so that only those with close connections to the royal family could enter or leave.  The King and Queen of Urithiru were currently closeted within Renarin’s rooms, and the Kholin surgeon had come and gone twice while Rlain had been standing here.  Lift had visited briefly as well.  Apparently, the king had sent for her, thinking that her Lifelight-powered Progression might hold the answer to whatever still ailed Renarin.  She had left the room again after only ten minutes, her young face unusually serious.  Rlain hadn’t realized that her visit had gotten his hopes up, until he felt the pain of having them dashed again.  Lift had paused long enough to pat him on the arm awkwardly before somberly walking away.

Rlain had been left standing here on the outside.  He looked over at the closed door and gripped his spear tightly, the wood creaking in protest.  It had been two hours since they’d returned Renarin to his rooms, and Rlain had no idea how he was doing.  He knew that the assassination attempt had been a near thing–it had taken a very large amount of Stormlight to heal Renarin.  Was he getting better?  Was he worse?  It wasn’t Rlain’s place to barge into Renarin’s rooms and disturb his family, but the anxiety of not knowing was becoming unbearable.

Rlain found himself glaring at the door, humming loudly to the Rhythm of Irritation.  Outside.  Always on the outside. 

Rlain should be in there with Renarin.  They were two halves of a pair.  Unfortunately, no one except the members of Bridge Four understood that.  Rlain grimaced to himself.  He could just imagine how well the news of their pairing would go over with the King and Queen of Urithiru. 

It was far better that they didn’t know.

Rlain bowed his head as Irritation gave way to the Rhythm of Pain.  Kelek’s Breath.  How could this have happened?  He and Renarin had found happiness together as a pair for one storming day.  The injustice of it ripped him up inside. 

He was still half-lost in his own distressed thoughts when Dabbid arrived.  The quiet man greeted Rlain with the Bridge Four salute. 

“Shouldn’t you be resting?” Rlain asked him with some concern.  “The explosion….”

“I am good,” Dabbid said.  He absently patted himself over as if checking for any lingering wounds.  His jacket was whole and unsinged—Rlain wasn’t the only one who had taken the time to change his uniform.  “All good now.”

The short bridgeman parked himself near Rlain on the other side of the doorway.  His eyes were down and his shoulders were slightly hunched, but aside from that, his posture was a reasonable imitation of standing at attention.  Rlain realized belatedly that the man intended to keep him company.  He hummed briefly to Appreciation.  Then, because he knew that Dabbid wouldn’t understand the Rhythm, he caught the man’s eye and smiled in a way that he hoped showed his gratitude.

“How is Renarin?” Dabbid asked softly, after a few minutes of silence.

Rlain found himself immediately attuning Anxiety.  “I’m not sure,” he admitted.  “Lift was here, but I don’t think she could help him.  I don’t think the surgeon has been able to help either.”  Something seemed to catch in his throat, and Rlain cleared it with difficulty. 

“I think something is wrong,” he finally admitted, putting his nebulous worries into words.  “Renarin was better after Progression healed him.  However, if everything was fine now, I think the king would have already left for his meeting with Ishar in Shinovar.  The fact that the king is still here is not a good sign.”

A light touch on the carapace of his upper arm drew him out of his unpleasant thoughts, and looked down with surprise.  Dabbid had never reached out to him before.  Dabbid let his hand rest there a few more moments before self-consciously withdrawing again.

“He’ll be okay.  He’s strong,” Dabbid murmured.  He didn’t look at Rlain, his gaze fixed on the opposite side of the hallway.  He tapped his own chest.  “Inside.”

Rlain forced himself to nod in agreement, unable to bring himself to speak.  However, he couldn’t help but think back to his conversation with Venli about Eshonai’s death. 

Eshonai.  General.  Warleader.  Shardbearer.  Tossed from a plateau and drowned in a powerful storm’s floodwaters. 

Sometimes being strong wasn’t enough.

He was distracted from that somber line of thinking as he caught a flicker of motion from behind Dabbid.  The motion was caused by a blue glow, barely visible behind Dabbid’s far shoulder.  It was part of a ribbon of light that was twirling slowly, though there wasn’t any breeze in the hallway.  It appeared to be a lone windspren.

As a listener, Rlain could partially see into the Cognitive Realm.  He blinked.  That… didn’t look like an ordinary windspren.  It had more substance, somehow.  As it hovered and spun near Dabbid, Rlain caught a glimpse of the spren’s true form peeking back at him–an impression of disordered curly locks, a round face and wide eyes.

Dabbid’s survival of the explosion that damaged the Shinovar Oathgate had been nothing short of miraculous.  Maybe there was a reason why.  Rlain spared a moment to attune Hope.  He trusted that the spren’s appearance here was a sign that Highprince Adolin had been successful in his mission to Lasting Integrity. 

A set of approaching footsteps sounded from further down the hallway, and a moment later a spindly brown haired man in a Bridge Four uniform appeared around the corner. 

“You are hereby relieved of duty,” Lopen announced.  He came to a halt in front of Rlain.  “No pesky assassins will dare show their faces around here now that the Lopen has arrived.  Oh, and—here.”  He thrust a paper-wrapped object towards Rlain.

Rlain accepted the bundle.  He’d had enough experience with chouta that he could recognize it when he saw it.  He realized then that he had completely missed the mid-day meal.

“Thanks,” Rlain managed, though he didn’t have any appetite at the moment.

“That there is, sure, the best chouta in the Breakaway Market.  I said to myself ‘Lopen, what’s the best way to help out after a scary life-threatening attack’.  Then my stomach growled and I said ‘Of course!  Can’t hold off murderous crazy people on an empty stomach’!” Lopen patted the front of his uniform in satisfaction.  Then he frowned and made a shooing gesture at Rlain.  “Now step aside.”

Bemused, Rlain took two steps to the right.  True to his word, Lopen immediately moved into the space that Rlain had vacated, putting his back towards the wall and summoning Rua as a shardspear.  The weapon that solidified from mist was silvery and ornate, and was that…?  The haft of the spear just below the blade was shaped into the form of a small statuette.  The figure was that of a grinning young man with multiple arms who was making a rude gesture down the hallway in both directions, as if to preemptively insult any would-be attackers.

“I… don’t think you can carry Rua in that form while you’re on duty,” Rlain said carefully.

“Who’s on duty?  I’m not on duty,” Lopen said.  “I’m on my own time.  Just like you and Dabbid.  Now eat up or the chouta will get cold.”

Rlain wasn’t hungry.  Still, any soldier knew to eat when food was available.  He tucked the haft of his spear into the crook of his elbow, and unwrapped the bundle carefully--mindful of the savory gravy that drenched the soulcast meat.  He took a bite of the still-warm food.  He preferred the type of chouta made with crab claws, but the bread of this one was crisp and the gravy was thick and flavorful.  He found that the simple food fortified him in a way that he hadn’t expected.

He was just rolling the empty paper up into a ball to tuck into his pocket, when a hint of motion farther down the hallway caught the corner of his eye.  Rlain tensed and turned abruptly in that direction before realizing that the movement wasn’t a person, just a cremling crawling along the opposite wall at about shoulder height.  Rlain started to turn away again, then stopped and looked back at it more carefully.  The small animal was plain and nondescript.  Just an ordinary brown cremling. 

…A brown cremling that looked strangely familiar to him.  Wasn’t that the cremling that had followed him around during the occupation of Urithiru? 

Wasn’t that… Tumi’s cremling?

As if the cremling felt his eyes on it, it sped up.  It climbed upward, towards a shadowed area between two Stormlight gemstone lanterns.  The shadows there appeared to be moving.  Squinting, Rlain took a step forward.  To his dismay and disgust, he realized that the shadows were filled with a seething mass of cremlings.  Now that he knew they were there, he could hear them faintly clicking and chittering.  A few appeared to have arranged themselves side-by-side so that their smooth shells were even with each other, forming a flat surface.

Rlain raised his spear, intending to poke at and try and disperse the mass.  Even as he did so, he noted more and more of the cremlings were… forming up?  It seemed as if they were deliberately placing themselves so that the edges of their shells fit together.  Rlain lowered his spear, staring.  He’d never seen anything like it before.  It was… deeply disturbing, and Rlain found himself repulsed by the whole cremling assembly process.  The carapace of the cremlings blended together into a shape that was nearly a perfect oval; and it had indentations and hollows almost like… a face?

Carapace shifted, and Rlain suddenly found himself looking into humanoid eyes set into a dark brown visage that appeared to be hanging on the wall near the ceiling.

Rlain raised his spear again.  “What,” he said flatly, “Are you?”  

“Oh!”  Lopen leaned forward without moving away from his guard position by the door, peering up at the disembodied face.  “It’s one of them Aimians.  They, sure, tried to kill us all on that Thaylen expedition.  But it’s all right, we’re friends now.”

“Dawnchild,” the mouth moved as the eyes fixed on Rlain, and it spoke in a low, almost buzzing tone.  It was a male or malen voice.  “I bring greetings from the Taker of Secrets.  She has decided that it is time for us to meet.”

Rlain was instantly wary.  However, within Rlain’s chest, Tumi pulsed to the Rhythm of Hope.  Mother reaches out to us, Tumi spoke in Rlain’s mind.  Perhaps Mother can help Glys.

You know this being?  Rlain asked Tumi.

This one allowed me to hide, shielded from the voidspren and the eyes of Odium.  Helped me to be, in spite of the danger.  A friend.

“You have found a bond,” the Aimian said, and Rlain realized he was speaking directly to Tumi.  “You have made your own choice.  Sja-anat is pleased.  She says to tell you that she is proud of your success.”

Tumi pulsed to Confidence, and Rlain cautiously he relaxed his death grip on his spear.  He was still unsettled by this strange creature.  However, after all of his experience with prejudice among the Alethi, Rlain was the very last person who would ever judge another based solely on their looks.  “You’ve traveled to Urithiru from wherever Sja-anat is?  Carrying her message?”

“She is among others of my hordelings right now.  We share one mind, and so I can relay her words to you.  Likewise, your words will be delivered directly to her.”

“One of the Unmade needs to use an intermediary?”

The Aimian gave a buzzing chuckle.  “How else do you think the Blackthorn’s son has been able to communicate with Sja-anat across great distances during the past few years?  It is true that the Unmade are powerful, but they still have their limits.  Even if Sja-anat wanted to visit directly, she would not be able to now.  The Sibling is awake, and the tower’s protections prevent her from manifesting here.”  

A shiver seemed to pass from one side of the face to the other.  A propagating wave, as cremlings rose and then settled together into a more stable assemblage.  “Like you, I am an outsider, too.  Outcast.  My kind has a policy of non-interference, with which I do not agree.  I have been exiled from my people, but it has worked to my advantage.  It has allowed my alliance with Sja-anat, and by extension, with you.”

Rlain still wasn’t sure that he wanted to be allied with this strange being.  But Tumi continued beating to Confidence inside his chest, and Rlain knew that he couldn’t squander this chance for more information.  “Does Sja-anat know about what’s happened to Renarin and Glys?”

The face looked at the wall beside Rlain, and he had the disturbing impression that it was looking right through the stone and into Renarin’s rooms.  “Hmm.  Yes.  The human prince was clever in his use of Stormlight.  He was able to negate some of the anti-Stormlight before the assassin’s dagger struck.  As a result, part of his spren remains intact.  However, the spren has been gravely wounded.”  The Aimian focused on Rlain again, meeting his eyes.  “Sja-anat is dismayed and deeply saddened by this injury to one of her children.  He is not lost yet, but she fears that he will not survive.”

Rlain and Tumi both attuned the Rhythm of Alarm at the Amian’s words.  Rlain couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to Renarin, if Glys died. 

“Can Sja-anat heal them, somehow?”

The creature paused, and Rlain got the sense that it was relaying the question.  “Sja-anat cannot recreate what anti-Stormlight has destroyed.” the Aimian said finally.  “It grieves her greatly to speak of this.  She says that even if her first son and the human he has bonded both live and recover, they will not be what they were.  You and your spren must take their places as the ones who watch, the ones who see.  The ones who can act without Odium’s knowledge.”

No.  Rlain rejected this conclusion with every fiber of his being.  “There must be a way to help them.”

“Sometimes what is lost is lost,” the Aimian said dispassionately.  “There is nothing to do but accept and move on.”

Rlain attuned Resolve.  “I don’t agree.”  

His words seemed to lend strength to Tumi, who had begun to pulse to Mourning within his chest.  Tumi caught the beat of Rlain’s Rhythm, and in response, the spren attuned Resolve as well.

“You are young.  Perhaps if you lived as long as I have, you’d be more pragmatic.” 

The eyes of the face rolled, then--looking at all three of them in turn.  The Aimian seemed to linger on the Bridge Four patches that marked their uniforms.  Then the enigmatic gaze settled on Rlain again.  “I will leave you with this warning.  There has been a shift recently.  The Taker of Secrets refuses to speak of it aloud, and even I myself do not fully understand what has transpired.  However, the Unmade are marshalling.  Sja-anat expects new orders to be issued to all of them soon.  She may not be able to pass on a warning when things begin to move in earnest.  Watch for the signs, and be on your guard.” 

The face in the corner of the ceiling rippled again, the forehead and nose beginning to dissolve into individual cremlings.  “We will meet again, Dawnchild,” the mouth continued to move, the buzzing voice still emanating from it.  “Sja-anat will want to keep in touch with her second son.  And with you.”

The mouth collapsed as the creatures that formed it dispersed.  Cremlings streamed away, crawling down the wall and across the ceiling.  Rlain caught sight of Tumi’s cremling again.  It scurried along the wall and across the floor to Rlain’s left.  Then as Rlain watched, it disappeared through the crack at the bottom of Renarin’s door. 

Dabbid was staring at the retreating creatures, wide-eyed.  “That was… different,” he said slowly.

“You’ll never look at cremlings the same way again,” Lopen agreed

*  *  *

Dalinar Kholin was not the type of man who had the patience to sit at someone else’s bedside, waiting.  Yet here he was.  Perched on a desk chair that had been dragged over to the side of the bed, elbows on his knees and hands clasped.  Watching his younger son breathing after he’d survived being stabbed in the heart.

The Parshendi soldier, Rlain, had been the one to warn the Windrunners.  I’m like your son, sir, he’d said.  Another corrupted Truthwatcher.  Another person who could see the future.  When Renarin had first broached the subject to him during the campaign in Emul, Dalinar hadn’t exactly endorsed the idea.  However, he also hadn’t forbidden it, and it seemed like Renarin hadn’t wasted any time.

Dalinar couldn’t be upset about that now, not when the Parshendi’s foreknowledge had gotten Windrunners to the treasury so quickly, and not when his use Progression had healed Renarin immediately after the attack.  Dalinar’s son was still alive because of what Rlain had done.  Alive, even if he clearly was not well.

When Renarin had first been brought to his rooms, Dalinar had been optimistic about his recovery--Knights Radiant were very hard to kill.  There was still a visible scar on Renarin’s chest from the knife, but the wound had healed over and he appeared to be resting comfortably.  Dalinar had stayed with him, and early on a flurry of runners had come and gone from the room as Dalinar moved forward with plans for the departure to Shinovar. 

That had been three hours ago.  Since then, Renarin seemed to have taken a turn for the worse.  The color that had returned to his skin after Progression had healed him was slowly leaching away again.  The surgeon reported that his heartbeat had grown slower and weaker.  His breathing was audibly labored. 

Renarin had woken once, shortly after he’d been settled into his room.   He’d been distraught over the injury to his spren, and had seemed to be experiencing physical pain in spite of the fact that the wound in his chest had already been healed.  Immediately, Navani had sent for a painrial.  The moment she had affixed the tiny metal claws to the clean fabric of Renarin’s shirt the fabrial had eased him, and he had become visibly more comfortable.

He’d reached out then, grasping at Dalinar’s arm.  Help Glys, he’d said urgently.  Father, you have to help Glys. Shortly afterwards, Renarin had drifted off again.  He hadn’t woken a second time.

Navani sat beside him now, her safehand resting lightly on Dalinar’s back.  Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she twisted a handkerchief in her freehand.  She’d had an uneasy relationship with her nephew-turned-stepson as the true nature of his Radiant powers became clear.  She remained deeply unsettled by Glys and the visions granted by his bond--however Dalinar knew in his heart that his wife had never wished the spren harm. 

Navani’s own research into anti-Light had made the attack possible.  In trying to understand Light and in unlocking the secrets of anti-Light, she had inadvertently provided tools to the enemy.  Navani obviously felt responsible for the assassination attempt--but Dalinar didn’t blame her.  Advances in technology were neither good nor evil.  Those labels belonged instead to the individuals that used the knowledge to further their own goals. 

The anti-Light daggers that had been used in the attack had been secured under lock and key.  The anti-Voidlight dagger remained separated into two pieces to nullify its power, and the gemstone of the anti-Stormlight dagger had been completely drained.  According to the Sibling, Renarin had tried to discharge some of the anti-Stormlight in the fighting, using his Radiant abilities and stored power from the Emuli perfect gem he’d been carrying, before he had been stabbed.

Renarin had killed four of the assassins on his own after his honor guard had been dispatched--including one assassin who had apparently served for several years as a swordmaster under Highprince Ruthar.  Dalinar had been surprised and a bit skeptical of the report at first, but the Sibling confirmed it.  He realized then that he had underestimated his younger son.  Again.

Dalinar had been unfair to Renarin for most of his life.  Focusing on his shortcomings, blind to his strengths.  He’d been trying to do better.

The outer door to Renarin’s suite opened and closed.  A few moments later, a knock sounded on the doorframe of Renarin’s bedroom.  As Navani and Dalinar both turned in that direction, Kaladin Stormblessed stepped into the room.  “You sent for me, sir?”

“Yes,” Dalinar said.  He rose from his seat and turned towards the former highmarshal.  “Yesterday I asked you to travel to Shinovar with a small group to seek out the Herald Ishar.  I had intended to go with you.  However, in light of recent events, I’ve had to revise those plans.”

Kaladin looked past Dalinar to where Renarin lay resting quietly.  His face became grave.  “I understand, sir.  How is he?”

“I’ve had three different surgeons come in to evaluate my son’s condition.”  Dalinar gestured towards the bed.  “I understand that you trained as a surgeon.  I’d appreciate your assessment, if you’re willing to give it.”

“I apprenticed as a surgeon, only,” Kaladin said warily.  “I never completed that training.”

“Still,” Dalinar said.  “I value your opinion.  And the opinion of your spren.”

Kaladin nodded, and Syl manifested near his shoulder in the form of a young woman in a blue dress whose hem faded away into mist.  She flitted back and forth as Kaladin carried out his examination.  It was thorough and brief.  By the time Kaladin finished, his expression had become even more grim.

Dalinar didn’t wait for him to speak.  “The situation is growing more serious, isn’t it?”  His voice was blunt.

“I wasn’t present right after the attack, so I can’t really say.” Kaladin’s voice was cautious.  “The wound seems to be fully healed, and Stormlight has cured the effects of blood loss.  As for the effects of the anti-Stormlight,” Kaladin paused and looked at his spren.  “Syl says that this is similar to what happened with Phendorana and… Teft.”

Speaking the name of the Windrunner lieutenant clearly pained Kaladin.  The loss was far too fresh.  He may have spoken the Fourth Ideal and accepted that there would be those he couldn’t protect, but the reality of it still hurt him deeply.

“The Parshendi from Bridge Four said something similar, earlier.”

“There really isn’t any aspect of modern surgery that can anticipate the outcome of this type of injury.  I don’t think this ever happened with the original Radiants and their spren.”  Kaladin shook his head.  “We may have no choice but to wait and see.”

Dalinar understood Kaladin’s reluctance to offer a prognosis.  Still he’d visited many soldiers in many surgeon’s tents in his long military career, and he could see the state of things with his own eyes.  Glys had been hurt deeply and somehow Renarin was weakening as a result.  Dalinar understood that it was because something was wrong with their Nahel bond.

Well, Dalinar Kholin was a Bondsmith.  Maybe he could do something about that, himself.

As Kaladin stepped back, Dalinar stepped up to the side of the bed.  He settled back down onto the desk chair that he had vacated earlier, and breathed in Stormlight from a goblet of spheres that had been placed on the bedside table—spheres that had remained bright despite earlier efforts to get Renarin to draw in the Light.   Feeling the surge of the Stormlight within him, Dalinar leaned forward and laid his hand in the center of Renarin’s chest, forging a Connection to his younger son.  As had happened weeks ago, when he touched Nale in Emul, he saw visions of the past.

Flash.

He saw a younger Kaladin Stormblessed, dressed in a captain’s uniform.  The man had his arms crossed in front of his chest as he gave Dalinar’s younger son a disgruntled look. 

Renarin faced him, looking half-terrified but also resolute.  “I will obey your commands.  Treat me like a new recruit.  When I’m here, I’m not a prince’s son, I’m not a lighteyes.  I’m just another soldier.  Please.  I want to be part of it.”

Flash.

“What if I hurt someone, or ruin things?”  Renarin was holding up one hand, Stormlight trailing from his fingers like smoke. 

“You’re not going to,” Adolin said firmly.  “Renarin, that’s the power of the Almighty himself.”

Renarin didn’t respond.  So Adolin reached out without hesitation and grasped that glowing hand, holding on tightly.  “This is good.  You’re not going to hurt anyone.  You’re here to save us.”

Flash.

“When Glys and I bonded, we became… something new.”  Dalinar had heard Renarin speak these words once before, on a quiet night in Emul.  “We see the future.  At first I was confused at my place—but I’ve come to understand.  What I see interferes with Odium’s ability.  Because I can see possibilities of the future, my knowledge changes what I will do.  Therefore, his ability to see my future is obscured.  Anyone close to me is difficult for him to read.”

“I find that comforting.”  In the vision, Dalinar put his arm around Renarin’s shoulders.  “Whatever you are son, it’s a blessing.  You might be a different kind of Radiant, but you’re Radiant all the same.  You shouldn’t feel the need to hide this or your spren.”

Flash.

“I adore you.” 

Renarin and the Parshendi soldier sat side-by-side with their backs to the outer wall of the tower, lit by moonlight.  Parshendi never seemed to display much in the way of emotion—but this one was gazing at Renarin with a look that could only be described as ‘tender’.

Renarin blushed at the words.  “Are you sure?” he said.  “I’m… strange.  In case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I noticed.”  Rlain reached for Renarin’s hand, lacing their fingers together.  “…And I’m sure.” 

Dalinar was halfway to his feet before he even realized it.  The yellow triangles of shockspren materialized and broke in the air around him, even as he lost contact with Renarin and the vision faded from his sight.  “Blood of my fathers!!!”

“What’s wrong?” Navani said immediately, her voice tense with concern.  “Dalinar?”

What in the name of Roshar was that?

On second thought, it had been pretty clear what that was.  The way Renarin and the Parshendi soldier had been looking at each other… it was obvious that the two of them were courting. 

Do I really know my son so little, after all?

“Sir?” Kaladin spoke up from behind him.

Dalinar made an absent gesture, indicating that he should stand down.  A line of light remained, connecting Dalinar and Renarin.  It showed him that his Bondsmith’s powers were still active. 

You see bonds, the Stormfather rumbled in the back of his mind.  Some are more obvious than others.

He was right.  Dalinar saw it now.  There were more lines of light.  One of them in particular caught his attention.  One end of it linked to Renarin, with the other end crossing the room and vanishing into the wall beside the entrance to Renarin’s quarters.  Dalinar had seen the Parshendi soldier take up a guard position outside that door.  The bond that led in that direction was bright.  Acknowledged.  Mutual.

Dalinar shook his head, as if to clear away fog.  He’d always known Renarin was… odd.  But this?  A cross-species relationship?  Dalinar didn’t know much about natural history.  However, he’d learned enough from Navani’s scholars over the past few years to know that the warform Parshendi was a malen, for the Heralds sake.  How was such a thing even possible?

Back when they’d first been married and working on building their coalition, Navani had broached the idea of a political union for Renarin.  Dalinar’s own first marriage had been a political one, and he couldn’t deny the value.  He’d given her permission to explore the possibility.

What she had found was that too many people had heard too many rumors about the Blackthorn’s younger son.  In some cases it was the epilepsy he’d grown up with--a potential risk to lighteyed bloodlines.  Or it was the odd behaviors—his lack of social graces, or his strangeness.  Some heads of state who had particularly effective spies apparently had even heard the rumors of the Everstorm predictions.  That went beyond odd and straight into heretical territory. 

Even minor monarchs of distant kingdoms seemed unsettled enough by the stories they heard that they changed the subject whenever Navani had broached the topic of eligible daughters.  Ultimately, Navani had put the idea of a political match for Renarin on hold.

I keep trying to understand you, son, Dalinar thought, looking down at Renarin’s still face.  …But Damnation, I just can’t keep up.

This was not how Renarin would have wanted him to find out, Dalinar knew.  Reluctantly he sank back down in his chair, forcing himself to calm down, to put things in perspective.  Renarin had nearly been assassinated today, Dalinar had almost lost his younger son for good.  Compared to that, an unexpected courtship should be the least of his concerns.

Dalinar was still holding Stormlight, and he realized that he could see other bonds now, as well.  He remembered Evi telling him repeatedly of her concern that Renarin had never developed friendships with peers growing up.  He had always shadowed Adolin or other family members at social gatherings, or lurked in corners by himself.  Dalinar had never really paid much attention at the time, but he’d always understood that Renarin was something of a loner.

The number of bonds that he saw now surprised him.  Renarin had close bonds with family, and those showed up as bright lines, including a complex one that led to Dalinar himself.  But there was a whole other network that linked to him and through him.

Bridge Four, Dalinar realized.  If he had ever doubted the unit’s importance to Renarin, it was clear now to his Bondsmith’s sight.

Dalinar shifted his inner vision to Renarin’s Nahel bond--the reason he had engaged his Bondsmith powers in the first place.  He could see it.  There was still a bond, but looked… badly frayed.  Like a multi-stranded rope that had been cut nearly through, with only one thin piece still attached.

Dalinar attempted to gather up those severed threads, to try and re-forge the bond.  However, he found that there was nothing to connect them to.  Renarin’s spren, Dalinar saw, had been hurt severely in the attack.  Jasnah had described Glys as a spren made up of pieces of crystal, like a snowflake shimmering with red light. However, Dalinar saw that many of the crystals were broken, others looked to be crumbling.  Large pieces of the spren were completely missing. 

That wasn’t all.  Dalinar could see now that the injury ran both ways.  Gaping holes had been torn in the web of Renarin’s spirit--collateral damage from Glys’ injury.  The harm that it had caused was extensive.

Why?  How did this happen?

Unprompted, the Stormfather rumbled in the back of his mind.  Such is the bond between humans and spren.  The strongest bonds occur when there are many anchor points, many cracks in the spirit where a spren can attach and human and spren can integrate.  The strongest bonds cause the most harm when they are forcibly sundered. 

Can he heal from this injury?

Perhaps.  I cannot say for certain.  This type of wound is new, and the damage is to his spiritual self. 

Dalinar forced his inner vision away from Renarin’s injuries, focusing instead on the flickering red light of Renarin’s spren.  Glys was fading.  As Dalinar watched the rippling of the light, he realized that the ripples represented a direction of flow.  The bond was making it possible for strength to bleed away from Renarin and into his spren through what was left of their bond. 

That was why the surgeons were so troubled.  That was why Renarin wasn’t recovering.

How is his spren able to… feed on him, like that, Dalinar asked the Stormfather.  Is it because of the corruption?

No.  They still share a Nahel bond.  This could not happen without consent.  Your son has made the choice to fight.  To try and save his spren. 

Feeling shaken, Dalinar released the last of the Stormlight that he was holding.  The lines of light faded away.  He heard Kaladin shift behind him, and he recalled that he hadn’t yet told the Windrunner why he had been summoned. 

“I’m going to put you in charge of the second expedition traveling to Shinovar,” Dalinar said, turning and meeting Kaladin’s eyes.  He’d planned to go on this mission.  He’d planned for Renarin to go, as well--keeping him close by to cloud Odium’s vision.  “I cannot travel to Shinovar myself given the current situation here, and I have to send a leader that I can trust.  There is very little time.  It is essential that I gain access to Ishar’s knowledge and his wisdom before the Contest of Champions.  Since I cannot go to the Herald, Ishar must come to me.  You must convince him to return with you to Urithiru.”

“That’s a tall order, sir.”  Kaladin didn’t look or sound surprised.  “If I understand what I’ve been told, Ishar isn’t stable—and one doesn’t just order a Herald around.”

“It does add another element of difficulty, I agree.  Still, this mission is absolutely essential.  Any chance of success in the contest will depend on it.”

“Then I’ll do my best.”  Kaladin drew himself up.  “In that case, I’ll need to go now to oversee the preparations for our departure.”

“Understood.  Let the other Windrunners know that the main goal of the mission essentially remains unchanged.  My conversation with Ishar will just have to happen here, instead.”

Kaladin saluted, then turned to leave. 

As he reached the inner door, Dalinar found himself speaking again.  “Did you know?”

He hadn’t actually intended to ask the question out loud.  However, he was committed the moment he opened his mouth.  “Did you know that my son and the Parshendi soldier are… involved?”

There was a gasp from beside him, and more shockspren manifested as Navani raised her safehand sleeve to her face.

There was a long silence.  To his credit, Kaladin turned towards him and answered with unflinching honesty, a trait that Dalinar had come to admire and trust in the man.  “Back before the coalition forces deployed for Emul, some of the members of Bridge Four came to me to raise the concern that the two of them were becoming… close.  I wasn’t aware that it had progressed to anything more than that.”

“I see.”

“Sir,” Kaladin continued.  “Rlain and Renarin have both served under my command.  They’re both good men.  I know it’s a lot for a person to try and wrap their head around, and I certainly wouldn’t say that there’s no cause for concern.  But your son is smart, and from what I’ve seen he’s a decent judge of character.  Maybe you’ll just have to trust him on this.”

Navani somberly placed her hand on Dalinar’s knee as Kaladin let himself out.  Dalinar covered her delicate hand with his broad one, looking down at Renarin.  He’d been taken off-guard by what he’d seen in the visions--especially that last one, not knowing what Renarin’s strange courtship might mean.  However, it might be a moot point anyway.  What did a romantic entanglement matter, if Renarin didn’t survive?

The Stormfather had said that this attempt to preserve Glys had been Renarin’s choice.  He couldn’t have understood the consequences of that choice.  Could he?

Yes, yes he could.  He’d had years of wrestling with an illness which had forced him to come to terms with his own limits.  Renarin would have known that his supply of strength was not endless.  In addition, he’d always been heedless of his own personal safety.  Especially when someone he cared about was in danger.  This was exactly the sort of decision that Renarin would make.

What happens if I break their bond? Dalinar asked the Stormfather.  Isn’t that one of the things that Bondsmiths can do?  They forge bonds, but can also break them in a way that is controlled, safer?

Breaking a bond without consent, the Stormfather rumbled, troubled.  You would attempt what Ishar nearly succeeded in doing in Emul.

I would.  To preserve my son’s life.

It is possible.  However, if you break the bond the spren will die.  It would have happened already if not for your son’s intervention.  For that reason, once it is done it cannot be undone. 

Dalinar hesitated.  Part of him wanted to act immediately, before Glys drained away any more of Renarin’s strength.  The only thing that stayed his hand was the knowledge that the enemy had gone to a significant amount of trouble to remove Renarin’s spren from the field as an asset.  If Odium’s forces wanted Glys neutralized, that meant Dalinar needed to pursue every possible option to ensure Glys’ survival.

Dalinar’s mind churned.  There had to be another way. 

Can you heal my son and his spren?  he asked the Stormfather.

I was not created to heal, the Stormfather responded, sounding affronted.  That is not my purpose.  You will have to look elsewhere for your solution.

“Dalinar,” Navani’s soft voice recalled him to his surroundings.  “That look on your face.  What is the Stormfather saying?”

Dalinar found his hands curling into fists in frustration.  “The Stormfather says he can’t heal Renarin.  Somehow, Renarin is supporting his spren.  He’s keeping Glys alive, at cost to himself.” 

Navani recognized the full scope of the problem immediately, and she cast a worried look towards her sleeping nephew.  “That sounds very dangerous.  I don’t… I don’t think that what he’s doing will fix the problem.  He can’t keep going like this.” She frowned then, and said cautiously.  “What if we wake him?  The surgeon would have the right medicines.  We could talk to Renarin.  Tell him that it’s not going to work.  If we warn him of the consequences, perhaps he can be convinced to stop.”

Help Glys, Renarin had said.  He’d seemed to know that what he was doing would not be enough.  He also seemed to think that Dalinar could help--that if he could just hold out for long enough, his father would find a way to fix things.  Somehow. 

“He won’t.  He’s chosen this.” Dalinar knew it for truth as soon as he said it.  “He won’t give up as long as there’s a hope.  As long as there’s still a chance that his spren can be saved.”

“You’re certain?  How do you know?”

Dalinar started to answer her, stopped.  Then he just shook his head.  He glanced down, his gaze irresistibly drawn to the yellow locks peppered through Renarin’s black hair.  Pale yellow.  The same color that Evi’s had been.  Dalinar abruptly recalled his first wife’s selflessness, her perseverance. 

This was exactly the sort of decision that Renarin’s mother would have made.

“What about the Sibling?” he asked at length.  “Is there any way that they can help?”

Navani’s gaze went distant for a moment.  When her attention returned to him, her expression was regretful.  “The Sibling says that they can’t assist.  They say that healing is…” Navani trailed off, sudden realization dawning on her features.  Her hand clutched at his.  The look in her light violet eyes was worried, uncertain.  However, for the first time in hours, he saw a glint of hope.  “Dalinar, the Old Magic.  The Sibling says that healing is the domain of the Nightwatcher.” 

The name brought a visceral flash of memory to Dalinar’s mind.  A memory of being hemmed in by an overwhelming press of greenery, plants crowding in on all sides.  Of being surrounded by bobbing lifespren floating in air made heavy with the humidity.  Of kneeling in a clearing, lost in the depths of remorse and despair, while an alien creature made of green mist looped itself in a circle around him and spoke directly into his mind.

The Nightwatcher.  There were many old stories which told of miraculous recoveries; boons that came at a steep price.  More than any other spren on the face of Roshar, the Nightwatcher would have access to the power of Regrowth.  Dalinar didn’t trust the Nightwatcher’s motives—wasn’t sure if they could be understood by an ordinary human mind.  However, a visit to her valley provided a pathway of last resort.  A chance after all other options had failed.  

Renarin had bought them time.  Dalinar had to make sure that sacrifice wasn’t in vain.  He would bring Renarin to the Valley and pay any price that was required for the healing.  It was said that a person could seek the Nightwatcher only once in their lives, and Dalinar had already been to the Valley once before.  However, Dalinar’s boon all those years ago hadn’t come from the Nightwatcher.  Instead, it had come from Cultivation directly.  He hadn’t yet used up his chance. 

The Valley was located near the center of the Rosharan continent.  As the Windrunners traveled, it was only about an hour due south from Urithiru.  

“Do you still have that vehicle that you used to fly back from the town of Hearthstone?” he asked Navani.

“The sky chariot prototype?  No, not anymore.  The ardents have been testing out a new and improved version lately.”

“Good.”  Dalinar rose to his feet.  Deep within, he felt the satisfaction of settling on a course of action, of committing to a plan.  

“I’m going to need to borrow the new one for a while.”

Chapter Text

TWELVE YEARS AGO

“Ardent Lhan?”

Renarin looked up from the map on the table at the sound of his older brother’s voice.  Adolin Kholin was sticking his tousled blond-and-black head through the open door frame, leaning partway into the library room.

“Yes?”  The portly ardent who tutored Renarin in history once a week looked up towards the doorway.  He had been retracing the path that the Sunmaker had taken in his conquest of Herdaz after the fall of the Hierocracy.  He straightened up when he saw who it was, “Your Highness!  You’re early.  What brings you here at this hour of the afternoon?”

“Well, I was at the training grounds, but everything was shut down for the rest of the day, so I’m done with practice.  I was wondering if maybe Renarin could finish up with his lessons, as well.”

Lighteyed sons began military training when they were six years old.  At twelve, Adolin had already spent years pursuing the masculine arts.  It showed in the way he held himself, the way he moved.  His shoulders were already starting to broaden as he put on height, and the adults all remarked on how he was strong for his age.    

By comparison, Renarin remained the skinny, sickly younger brother.  He was already two and a half years past the point where he should have begun training.  His mother had brought him to several different surgeons, and they all agreed that weapons instruction was off-limits due to his epilepsy. 

His mother and aunt had arranged these lessons instead.  Renarin was allowed to study the few scholarly subjects that could be included in the masculine arts.  Economics, political science, language and military history.  They were supposed to be a way to keep his mind occupied and fill the vacuum of his time. 

Ardent Lhan raised a hand and stroked his chin absently.  The ardent had admitted from the very beginning that he didn’t really consider himself to be much of a teacher.  Renarin was inclined to agree.  Oh, the stories about major battles in Alethi history were interesting enough.  However, more and more often lately, Lhan would set Renarin to looking at maps and tactical diagrams to keep him busy while the ardent stepped out of the room--only to come back half an hour later with food stains on his robes and smelling faintly of alcohol.  Other times Lhan would be settled into a comfortable chair in the library, talking about some aspect of Alethi history or another, and would nod off to sleep right in the middle of the lesson.

“Hmmm,” the ardent said.  “Yes, yes.  I suppose the Sunmaker’s conquests can wait until next week.  Actually, this is good.  This is better than good.  I have important work to do.”  He waved a hand, and seemed to be gesturing at the shelves of books, but Renarin noticed that he was eyeing the overstuffed armchair in the corner.

“Great!” Adolin said.  He looked over at Renarin, who grinned back at him and hopped out of his seat. 

“Swordmaster Zahel let you leave practice early?” Renarin asked, as they left the monastery building behind.  He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.

“Zahel’s not here right now.  He had to go somewhere else.  I was training with swordmaster Kelerand today.”  Adolin’s brow furrowed.  “There was a Shardblade incident this afternoon.  An edge guard broke during a practice bout, and one of the grown-ups got hurt.  The guard closed down the training arena, to interview everyone.  To investigate whether or not it was really an accident.”

“Oh.” 

Adolin didn’t volunteer any more information on the subject, and the two of them stepped out onto the Sunwalk.  It was a clear day, and the polished marble walkway that connected the Monastery Dais with the main level of the palace provided a panoramic view of the city of Kholinar.  When Renarin was smaller, this open-air walkway had frightened him.  Steep slopes fell away to either side towards the city below.  Now that he was bigger, he could enjoy this view of Kholinar and the curving fins of its protective windblades. 

They exited the Sunwalk, their boots echoing on the floor of the eastern gallery, gilded with gold beneath Soulcast rivulets of crystal.  Enormous carved pillars, each one a sculptor’s masterpiece, rose on either side in a long, impressive row.  Renarin always felt smaller than his almost nine years when he entered this part of the palace.  Everything was just so big. 

“The practice session this morning was great,” Adolin said exuberantly.  “Kelerand had us work in pairs, and we were trying disarming maneuvers with practice blades.  Can I show you?”

“Sure!”

Adolin jogged over to one of the hearths that provided heat to the enormous space during the weeks of winter.  He grabbed a poker and a set of fire tongs, and retraced his steps.  He handed the poker to Renarin.

Renarin looked at it dubiously.  “What do I do?”

“Grip it like this.  See?”  Adolin raised up the point of the poker so that it was at a slight angle to the floor.  “Just hold it there.”  As Renarin clutched at the poker in both hands, holding it in place, Adolin fell into a sword stance with the tongs extended forward.  He touched Renarin’s poker with the fire tongs, pushing the ends of the two metal tools upwards.  Then he lunged forward.

One moment Renarin was holding the poker, the next there was a sharp pressure on his wrists and the poker was torn free of his grip, leaving his fingers prickling with numbness.  The metal rod flew upwards, spinning end over end.  Both boys flinched as it hit one of the chandeliers, shaking the entire thing and causing a loud racket of chiming crystal.  The hook at the end of the poker caught on one of the supporting chains, and it slid down about a foot.  Then stuck in place, dangling far out of reach.

“Whoa,” Renarin said.  Blue smoke rippled out above his head from a single awespren.

“Oops,” said Adolin.

The noise drew attention, of course.  Almost immediately, a man in the black and white garb of a master-servant appeared from a side door that led to an event preparation area.  “Your highnesses!” he scolded, his eyes settling on Adolin, who was still in stance and wielding the fire tongs.  “The eastern gallery is not a training ground!  Stop at once or I will have to report this to your mother!”

“Sorry!”  Adolin sheepishly set the metal tongs down against one of the stone columns.  To Renarin, he said “C’mon!”  As the two brothers scrambled towards the double-doors on the far side of the room, Renarin looked back over his shoulder.  The master-servant now stood in the middle of the gallery, staring upwards at the dangling poker in consternation.

The two boys managed to keep mostly quiet as they hurried through the grand entryway and exited through the main doors of the palace, passing by several sets of guards in Kholin blue.  Past the thick columns that lined the palace façade and down the marble steps.  When they reached the broad cobblestone roadway, Renarin turned back to Adolin again.   

“How did you do that?” Renarin asked eagerly.  “It was so fast, I couldn’t even see!”

Adolin cast furtive looks to either side of the road.  The guard kept the area directly around the main entrance to the palace mostly free of traffic, and it was obvious that there weren’t any more nosy master servants lurking nearby.  Adolin turned back to Renarin excitedly.  “All right.  It goes like this.”  He mimed holding an invisible sword in an upright position, as if he had crossed blades with an opponent.  He made a slow motion step forward, bringing the back end of his imaginary sword around in a pommel strike.  Then he shifted his grip on the hilt so that his imaginary sword dropped downwards.  

“The opponent’s sword gets forced over sideways and their wrists cross, forcing them to drop their weapon to the ground so that you can kick it away.”  Adolin’s face reddened slightly as he added, “It’s not supposed to go flying in the air like that.  That was my fault.  I pulled back too quickly, and our weapons got tangled.” 

Undaunted by this admission, Adolin held up his imaginary sword again.  “Kelerand had me paired up with Taladan.   He’s a year older than me, and taller, too.  But I succeeded at the disarm on the very first try!”  Adolin demonstrated the maneuver a second time.  A single gloryspren appeared in the air above him, circling around his head.  “It worked, just like Kelerand said it would.  You should have seen Taladan’s face!  Just like a puff-fish from the Purelake!” 

His excitement was infectious and Renarin found himself giggling as the two of them continued forward down the road, walking the short distance to their father’s keep.  “Wish I could have seen that,” he said wistfully. 

“Windstance is the best!  The safest way to do this disarm is if you’re wearing Shardplate, of course.  That way you don’t accidentally injure your hands when they get close to your opponent’s blade.”  Adolin frowned.  “I wish Father would let me train with my Plate already.  Teleb doesn’t really need it for those border skirmishes with the Vedens.  But Father says I can’t have the Plate until I’m sixteen.  It’s not fair, I shouldn’t have to wait.”

Renarin nodded.  Shardplate changed its shape to fit the wearer.  If Adolin tried to don the armor, it would be able to adjust from full adult-size to something that would fit his shorter stature.  However, learning to use Shardplate could be dangerous.  People got strong, really strong when they wore it, and sometimes couldn’t handle their own strength. 

Adolin’s hand clenched into a fist.  “That’s why I’ve got to train hard, so I can show Father that I’m ready.”

They reached the grounds surrounding Dalinar Kholin’s keep.   Guards in Kholin blue were stationed all along the path that led from the main gate and up the carpeted main staircase to the family’s suite of rooms.  The guards at each checkpoint all knew them by sight, and waved them onward. 

Adolin pushed open the door to their family suite, and was immediately greeted by a flurry of activity within.  Renarin’s older brother paused for a moment, scanning the hustle and bustle and eagerly bouncing on his toes.  Then he hurried across the sitting room, dodging around a footman and a maid as he headed towards the open door to their parent’s rooms.  “Mother!” he called.  “Mother, guess what!”

Unlike his brother, Renarin stopped dead in the doorway, taking in the commotion with wide eyes.  Servants rushed back and forth, carrying clothing or linens or uniforms.  Two parshmen were moving a heavy trunk, and as Renarin watched, they set it down on top of two others that had been placed by the doorway.

That was when Renarin knew.

He stayed there, frozen in place, while the twisting black crosses of anxietyspren bloomed into being around him.  In the space of a heartbeat, his orderly routine melted away into terrifying chaos.  He hadn’t expected this, no one had warned him.  This shouldn’t be happening for a few more weeks.  

Inside his head, the voices of all the tutors who’d ever drilled him in the rules of Alethi propriety all seemed to be shouting at once.  Don’t make a scene.  Don’t make a scene.  DON’TMAKEASCENE…!!!

At that moment, Evi Kholin stepped out of the doorway to her rooms.  She absently held out her covered safehand, gesturing for Adolin to wait as she looked back over her shoulder to finish an instruction to one of the maids.  As she turned back towards Adolin, she noticed Renarin standing rigidly across the room.  A trio of shockspren appeared by her head, and as they broke and reformed, the expression on her face changed.  “Renarin….” She began.

The tide of rising emotions in his chest refused to be contained.  An incoherent wail clawed its way free from Renarin’s throat.  All motion in the rest of the room came to an abrupt halt, heads turning, eyes staring.  Everyone was looking at him.  Renarin’s vision blurred as the tears began.  It was too much, he couldn’t take it.

“Renarin!” his mother said again, taking a step towards him.

He didn’t wait to hear what she had to say.  Still howling out his distress and anguish at the top of his lungs, he turned and bolted for his room.

*    *    *

A few years ago, Renarin had found that if he lay down on his back, he could slide under the frame of his bed and into the dusty darkness underneath.  Then, if he turned onto his side, his shoulder pushed up against the slats on the underside of the bed.  The pressure of the bedframe helped him somehow, when he was upset or anxious.  He’d gotten bigger since then, and he had to roll his shoulders forward to make himself fit.  Jammed into the space underneath the bed, he pressed his face against the floor and sobbed.

It was happening again.  His mother and brother were leaving.  Each time, Renarin always hoped that it would be the last time.  That maybe from now on they would remain with him in Kholinar permanently.

Of course, it never worked out that way.  The hope was always a false one.  He was going to spend the next five months all alone.  Again.

Dimly, he heard doors opening and closing, and things grew quiet in the main room of the suite.  All the other people were being sent away.  Renarin curled in on himself in a knot of misery, and couldn’t bring himself to care.  Everyone would be back soon to finish with the packing.  It always happened like this.  Mother had decided to join Father on the border of Jah Keved, and this dismissal of the servants was just a minor delay.

The door to his room opened and then closed again.  Renarin blinked blurry eyes, and saw the pair of slippered feet standing beside the door frame.  Her feet.  He watched as they approached the bed.  The tears came again, prickling at sore eyelids, clouding his vision.

He was vaguely aware that she was speaking to him.  Her voice was soft, even and smooth.  He let the words flow over him without trying to make sense of their meaning.  When he looked again, he saw that she had settled onto the floor beside the bed. 

She let him be upset, for a time.  Allowed the tears to run their course, for the soft hiccupping sobs to fade to even quieter whimpers.  She was humming now, a soothing Riran melody.  Her freehand was resting on the floor just under the bed frame.

It took even more time before he was ready, but eventually he reached out and placed his smaller hand on top of hers.  He didn’t say anything, just let his fingers open and close a bit, feeling the familiar texture of her smooth skin, and the bumps and valleys formed by the bones and veins that ran underneath.

Softly his mother spoke to him in Riran, “Do you want to come out, so we can talk?”

Renarin didn’t want to.  However, he was old enough to know that hiding under his bed wouldn’t make the things that upset him go away.  Reluctantly, he un-wedged himself and wriggled out from under the bed frame.  As he sat up, his mother wordlessly proffered a handkerchief, and he obediently took it and began to wipe at his face.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t get the chance to talk to you earlier,” his mother continued.  “Things have been happening so quickly.  Your father had a message sent via spanreed—an invitation to join him at the Veden border.  He’s won new territory recently.  I was planning to pick you up from your lessons today, so we could talk about it then.”

Renarin’s mind went back to that stack of trunks beside the door, and he clutched at the damp handkerchief, fighting back a new wave of tears.  He answered her in Riran, his voice very small, almost unable to speak past the lump in his throat.  “I don’t want you to go.”

“If it were up to me, I’d choose to stay here.  But your father needs me.”

He wasn’t able to stop the whine that crept into his voice.  “I need you, too.”

“Renarin.”  She reached out to him, resting a hand lightly on his shoulder.  “I’ll take a spanreed with me again.  We’ll make arrangements with the scribes so that you’ll have messages that can be read to you every evening.” She leaned towards him.  “The ardents have told me how well you’re doing at your lessons.  You know, it’s important to keep working at them, so there won’t be any break in your studies.”

Renarin wasn’t fooled.  He knew that wasn’t the real reason.  Unable to hold back his anger or self-loathing, he said, “It’s because of my blood weakness, isn’t it?  My body doesn’t work right.  It’s my fault that I can’t go with you.”  The handkerchief fell to the floor and he began to rock back and forth, agitated and trying to soothe himself.  It didn’t work, the emotions were rising again and becoming too strong.  He reached up and tangled his fingers in his hair, pulling.  Pulling as if he could somehow counterbalance the emotional pain on the inside with purely physical pain.   “I hate it.  I hate it!”

“Stop.”  Firm hands closed over his fingers, twisting them free of his hair and holding them in gently closed fists.  “I understand that you’re upset.  But this won’t help.” 

Words became the only outlet for his pain and frustration.  “Why?  Why do things have to be this way?  Why can’t I be like Adolin?”  He loved his brother, and was glad that he wasn’t ill, too.  But it just wasn’t fair.

“Renarin, love.  You are exactly as you are supposed to be.  Exactly as the One intended.”

“I am not,” he replied hotly.  “It’s not supposed to be like this.  The Almighty must have made some kind of mistake.”

“Renarin.”  His mother tugged on his shirtsleeve.  “Hey.  Come over here.”

For a moment, he resisted the pull.  He was getting too big for this, he knew that he was getting too big.  Still, he slid over and climbed up into his mother’s lap, leaning back against her.  She wound her arms around his chest, the side of her face resting lightly against his.  The contact jangled against his nerves, but Renarin relaxed into it, relaxed into her.  He could manage this, for a little while.  In order to stay near to her. 

Pale gold hair draped downwards, glinting in the room’s spherelight.  He reached for it, letting himself be distracted.  No one in the palace had hair like his mother.  Except for Adolin.  …And himself, a little bit.  He lifted a lock of her hair, and watched as the light caused a shimmer along the strands as he let them run through his fingers.

“Everyone is always packing up and leaving,” Renarin said eventually, trying to fight back the hurt and disappointment.  “I’m always the one who gets left behind.”

“I understand,” his mother said gently.  She was rocking him a little, from side to side.  A gentle, calming motion.  “I’ve heard… there’s talk that the Vedens might come to the negotiating table.  A treaty would put an end to the fighting.  Then perhaps we could all stay here together in Kholinar.”

“Really?”  Renarin craned his head around to look back at her, a glimmer of excitement pushing past the frustration.  “You really think so?”

“I hope so.  With all my heart.”

He shifted, letting his head fall back against her shoulder again.  “Me too.”

A comfortable silence fell around the two of them, disrupted only by the rustle of cloth as his mother continued her rocking motions.  However, it wasn’t long before Renarin heard distant noises on the level below them--the slamming of a door and a voice calling out a series of questions.  The servants may have retreated from the family suite for the time being, but preparations for his mother’s and Adolin’s departure were still proceeding, regardless.   

“Tell me about Kurth,” he said suddenly, wanting the distraction.  Wanting to talk about anything other than the fact that she was going to be leaving.  Wanting to hear the soothing sound of her voice.

His mother chuckled.  “Again?  I must have told you at least ten times.  Ten times ten times.”

Renarin couldn’t hold back a little huff at the wordplay, a reluctant smile pulling at one side of his lips.  “No,” he corrected her.  “Not that many!”

Her chuckle turned into a wonderful lilting laugh.  “Okay, not that many.  But nearly.”

Renarin accepted that answer.  He absently ran a hand along her arm where it crossed over his chest.  It was the right one.  The one that was okay to touch.  “Again,” he insisted.  “Tell me about the City of Lightning.”

Even the sound of the name was enough to capture the interest of an inquisitive boy and fire his imagination.  Renarin pictured it like the artist’s paintings of Highstorms, but without the wind, just the electric blue bolts of energy forking downwards from a stormy sky.  The ardents said there was something about the ground in that region that pulled the lightning from the clouds.

“Your uncle and I first moved to Kurth when I was about your age.  It is a splendid city.  In a way, it’s similar to Kholinar, because the layout of the city makes a pattern.  Kurth doesn’t have the windblades, but there are tall peaks at each of the city’s three corners with another one at the center.  If you climb the steps of the palace to the top of one of the red-tiled towers, you can open the shutters and look out over the entire capital.  

“On the western side of the city, you can easily see the ocean.  When the weather is clear and not too humid, it’s possible to look across the strait to the west and see the lush greenery of the Riran peninsula.  If you turn in the other direction and face eastward, you can look out over the sunken forests.  They are beautiful places, deep and ancient.”

“With trees,” Renarin interrupted, “that can survive the Highstorms.”

“Yes.  The forests are sheltered behind tall embankments that follow the coastline, and the trees grow stronger and healthier than any I’ve seen here in the East.”

Renarin listened contentedly as she described the gardens and the markets and the houses of the nobility.  He never tired of hearing her describe the city of Kurth and all of its wonders.  It was so different from his life here in Kholinar.  His mother’s words allowed him to experience at least a little of what it might be like to live in that far away place, making it real.

“Why did you leave?”

The words dropped away into silence, swallowed like a stone tossed into a deep cistern.  It had been the wrong thing to say.  Renarin could tell, because his mother’s gentle rocking motion stilled.

He immediately felt bad about it.  Renarin was always doing that, somehow--saying the exact wrong thing.  Causing other people to get upset.  As a result, he was learning to speak up less and less as he got older, especially around strangers. 

But still….  He had asked because he genuinely wanted to know.  Nobody ever talked about it.  Not his mother, not his uncles, not his cousins.  Renarin understood from his geography lessons that Rira was thousands of miles away, practically on the other side of the continent.  That kind of journey took months.  There must have been a good reason to travel all that way to Alethkar.

“As you get older,” his mother said softly, “You’ll find that life is full of choices.  Some of the choices you’ll make will be easy.  Others will be incredibly difficult.”

Renarin shifted uncomfortably at that, suddenly restless in his mother’s embrace.  He knew that his mother didn’t strictly follow all of the Vorin teachings.  However, he also knew for certain that the ardents didn’t like that kind of talk.

His mother took note of his discomfort.  “It’s not predicting the future,” she said matter-of-factly.  “Everyone has to make decisions, sometimes.  It’s simply part of life.”  She paused, as if contemplating her words carefully before continuing to speak.  “It’s easy to be afraid of making difficult choices.  However, sometimes a person has to step into the unknown.  To take a risk.  To leave what once was safe behind.  The Almighty relies on us to gather new experiences.  A choice that is scary, branching off in a strange new direction… that might be exactly the path we’re supposed to take.”

“But how did you know that leaving Rira was the right choice?” he asked.

“I didn’t, at first.  But that choice brought me here.  That choice gave me… you.  So it must have been the right one.”  Her arms tightened and she hugged him warmly, planting a very un-Alethi kiss on the top of his head.  Renarin let out an indignant noise, and this time he really did squirm away, sliding out from under her arms and off of her lap.  She let him go, but he saw that she was smiling all the same.

“Your uncle Toh and I were very lucky,” she said, as if he hadn’t moved at all.  She drew one knee up to her chest, smoothing the long skirts of her havah into place.  “We were able to arrange passage with a kindly trademaster and his niece who happened to be in port.  The Thaylens were returning from a trade expedition to Quili, in the Reshi Isles.  Their flotilla had unloaded some goods in Kurth, and that had freed up just enough space in one of the catamarans to accommodate two paying passengers.  So we were able to travel east across the Reshi Sea to a destination in Northern Jah Keved.  From there, we joined a caravan, and were able to make our way overland to Alethkar.”

Renarin settled back against the side of his bed.  “Were there bandits?  And wild animals?”

“Yes, and yes.  It was not an easy journey.  However, eventually we arrived in Kholinar safely.”

He pondered that.  “Would you ever want to go back to Rira again?  To visit someday?”

His mother started to answer, but her voice seemed to catch in her throat.  When Renarin looked up, he saw that she’d turned partway away from him, blinking at the corner of the room.  He craned his head to see what she might be looking at, but that part of the room was empty. 

A tattered gray streamer wound up from the floor in the space between them, fluttering as if in an unseen wind.  It swayed, then drifted around his mother in a loose circle, dipping under the bedframe then back out into the open again. 

Was that a gloomspren?  Renarin was fascinated.  He didn’t think he’d ever seen one of those before.  Of course, the appearance of the spren meant that he’d done it again.  He’d upset her without meaning to.  Should he apologize? 

His mother noticed the spren as it made a second circuit.  She quickly raised a hand to her face, briefly touching the corners of her eyes with her safehand sleeve.  The ragged spren lingered a few moments, eddying around her before fading away.  

“Your uncle and I aren’t welcome there now,” she said at last, in answer to his questions.

“Because of Adolin’s Shardplate,” Renarin observed.  Elhokar had told him that once.  Some other people thought the Shardplate belonged to them, and they were mad that it had been brought to Alethkar.  “It’s okay, I already know about that part, so we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“Because of Adolin’s Shardplate.”  His mother said the words with a sad little smile.  “Your uncle and I are exiles now.  We can’t ever go back to Rira again.”  She sighed and shook her head.  “There’s so much that I’d love to be able to share with you, if only we could travel together to Rira as a family. I wish such things were possible.  I’d have liked that very much.”

“I would too,” Renarin said softly.  It would be nice to travel.  To spend time somewhere else.  He imagined seeing the ocean.  Imagined visiting a palace on a mountain peak.

His mother reached out gingerly and touched his hair, running a hand through the black and blond strands.  “That’s the reason I would like to go back the most.  So that you could see it.  Half of your heritage is there.  Yours and Adolin’s, both.”

He nodded.  “But not yet,” he felt the need to remind her.  He plucked disconsolately at one of his pant legs to adjust a troublesome seam.  “I can’t go there, because I can’t go anywhere.  I have to stay here in Kholinar.”

“For now,” she agreed.  “Brightlady Relnah is already on the way here from the family estate.  She’ll be arriving tomorrow.  You know her, she’s looked after you before.”

Renarin sighed glumly.  He supposed that distant cousin of his father’s was all right.  But she didn’t understand him the way his mother did.  No one understood him the way his mother did.

“Hey,” his mother said as the silence stretched.  She shifted to bump her knee against his.  “You hungry?  The cook made a big batch of Thaylen bread this morning, and mentioned finding bluebar jam at the market today.”

“Oh.  Really?” Renarin didn’t like most jam.  It was very sweet--and though children were allowed to eat such things, it was most definitely not men’s food. 

He made an exception for bluebar jam, though.  That was a special treat.  Maybe he wasn’t quite too old for it yet.  …And he was a little bit hungry. 

He didn’t move immediately, though.  “You really have to go, don’t you?” he said at last, the words pulled from him slowly, one by one.

“It’s my duty,” Evi replied softly.

“To go stay with Father, at his warcamp.”

His mother nodded.  “Duty is about doing what needs to be done, even when it’s hard.  Especially when it’s hard.  It’s something you’ll come to understand as you get older.”

He gave a stiff little nod.  However, she was wrong about one thing.  He understood the concept already.  He supposed it was his duty to stay here in Kholinar, for now.  Even if he didn’t like it one bit.

“You’ll send a spanreed message every night?” he asked, wanting to be sure.

“Every night.  I promise.”  She held out her freehand to him, and after a moment he laid his own, smaller hand in her palm.  She curled her fingers over it.  “You’re my son.  Know that I love you and will always love you.

“…Even when we’re very far apart.” 

Chapter Text

The Nightwatcher’s Valley was just as Dalinar remembered.  The bright expanse of emerald stood out against the otherwise drab and desolate landscape, practically bursting from the sheltered base of the mountains of Greater Hexi.  Dalinar studied the thick forest before him, giving it the same attention he might devote to a battlefield on the eve of a major offensive.  At this distance, a few hundred feet away from the edge of the forest, he saw no hint of vulnerability—and no trace of the path he had used nearly seven years ago. 

Dalinar couldn’t help but remember the man he had been, the last time he’d stood here.  Hounded by memories, blinded by drink.  Those memories seemed to belong to an entirely different person, a different lifetime. 

This time, he wasn’t here for himself.

Behind him, he could hear the familiar sounds of tents being set up and stones being placed for the fire pit at the center of a temporary camp.  Kaladin Stormblessed had trained his soldiers well.  They divided up tasks and went about their work quickly and efficiently, requiring no input or oversight from Dalinar.

Lieutenant Skar had selected a handful of representatives from Bridge Four to make this trip.  He hadn’t lacked for volunteers.  When Dalinar’s group had departed earlier this afternoon, every last remaining member of Bridge Four had emerged onto the vast plateau that held Urithiru’s ten Oathgates.  They had lined up in perfect ranks and stood solemnly at attention as the smaller group had departed.  It had been obvious that--in spite of the unnerving stories about the Nightwatcher’s valley, each and every one of those men and women had been ready to take part in the mission to aid one of their own. 

Dalinar hadn’t questioned the final makeup of the delegation that had traveled southward towards the valley.  Although he had some suspicions, he kept them to himself.  

He turned away from the wall of green that marked the boundary of the Nightwatcher’s domain, and stepped around Navani’s grounded sky carriage.  The plush chair and writing table had been removed from the interior of the pod to create enough passenger space, and Lieutenant Drehy had reported that the stubby wings of the improved prototype had made the sky carriage much easier to maneuver in flight.

As Dalinar drew close to the fire, Drehy rose from where he’d been laying slivered rockbud husks into the fire pit as kindling.  Mela and Rlain turned in his direction as well, tent poles forgotten in their hands.  Natam had just returned from a nearby rocky outcrop, where he had been scavenging storm-blown brushwood for the fire.  He set down his armload of broken branches onto a larger pile and paused attentively.  The four of them had kept themselves busy long enough, and were waiting for Dalinar’s lead.

Dalinar couldn’t help but to glance over towards the nearest of the tents, where a military stretcher and its sleeping passenger rested on a patch of flat stony ground.  Navani had persuaded him to bring the stretcher along.  She had spoken with several of her scholars, and none had been able to guess what effect the strange magic of the Nightwatcher’s Valley might have on Surgebinding.  Their unanimous recommendation was to avoid relying on Lashings to transport Renarin into the Valley.

“You’ll want to take two of us, sir,” the Riran lieutenant spoke up somberly as the silence lengthened, turning to follow Dalinar’s gaze.  “You said yourself that you don’t know how far in you’ll need to go.  If two soldiers accompany you, we can carry the stretcher while you locate the correct path.”

Felt had warned Dalinar all those years ago that the Nightwatcher avoided groups.  However, a stretcher required more than one bearer.  The lieutenant was right, going in by himself wouldn’t be an option this time.

“I understand that you’re a Windrunner of the Third Ideal, Lieutenant,” Dalinar said.  “Radiant powers might not function normally where we’re going, and I won’t command anyone to enter the valley against their will.  All the same, I would appreciate the assistance of you and your spren.”

Drehy glanced to the side, no doubt carrying on a silent conversation with his invisible honorspren.  It didn’t take long.  He looked back at Dalinar and nodded sharply.  “Yes, sir.  We’ll go.”   

“Thank you.  Is there a second volunteer?”  It wasn’t his imagination—he caught both Mela and Natam casting furtive glances towards Rlain.  They know, Dalinar thought, remembering his revelation from earlier in the day.  They all know.

The Parshendi soldier took a confident step forward as if he’d been biding his time, just waiting for Dalinar to ask.  “Sir,” Rlain said, inclining his head respectfully, “I volunteer.  The form I wear is strong, and doesn’t tire easily.”  He looked up again, his gaze resting on the verdant wall of green beyond the camp.  “There are ancient listener songs that speak of this place.  Some of what I remember might be useful in there.” 

Dalinar favored the Parshendi with a measuring look.  This was the individual that his son had chosen to court.  Setting aside the visual differences—the orange-red carapace, the black and red marbled skin--Rlain had the appearance of a model Alethi soldier.  He stood tall and straight under Dalinar’s scrutiny, his uniform neat and well-cared for, despite the alterations that allowed it to fit around warform’s carapace plates.  Dalinar recalled that Kaladin Stormblessed had always vouched for the Parshendi’s character, and Navani had spoken highly of his actions during the occupation of Urithiru.

Rlain continued to focus just over Dalinar’s shoulder, his black eyes alert and his face impassive.  As moments passed, the determined tune that Rlain had been humming changed to something quicker, with a more pronounced beat.

“Thank you, soldier,” Dalinar said finally, and meant it.  He would worry about the chasmfiend’s nest of complications caused by Renarin’s eccentric courtship another day. 

All those years ago, Felt had told Dalinar that it was best to enter the Nightwatcher’s domain after it grew dark.  Dalinar marked the position of the sun in the sky.  It was still about two hours till sundown, and he couldn’t afford to wait.  “Gather anything that you plan to take with you.  We leave immediately.”

As Dalinar’s small group approached the trees, a network of vines and branches formed a vivid green barrier, one that appeared to be dense and impenetrable.  However, as had happened before, when Dalinar drew close to the boundary between the plains and the valley, the plant life moved away in front of him.  Warm, humid air--thick with the scent of flowers and decaying leaves, washed over him.  He began to see paths open up beneath the trees, half-hidden by low-hanging moss.  

He reached out to the Stormfather.  Any words of advice?

No.  This is not my domain. 

The Nightwatcher is a Bondsmith spren.  Surely you must have some suggestions for how to approach her.

The Stormfather rumbled distantly.  I do not.  The Nightwatcher and I are not alike at all.  She is erratic, and unpredictable.  I have already counseled against this course of action.   I do not think you will succeed.

Dalinar should have known better than to expect the Stormfather to be helpful.  With a sigh, he stepped forward onto the widest of the nearby paths and took a few steps through the underbrush.  He paused there a moment, looking back over his shoulder at the stretcher-bearers.  He half expected that the forest would somehow close up behind him, and not allow the others to enter.  Fortunately, the path stayed clear and visible as first Drehy and then Rlain stepped onto it, carrying the stretcher that supported Renarin between them.

Vines and branches continued to bend away as Dalinar moved forward cautiously, wary of getting separated from his son.  The dense, timeless nature of the forest made itself apparent as the light continued to fade the further inward they traveled.  It didn’t become dark immediately.  Instead it felt like a kind of suspended, eternal twilight.

They walked for a long while in the dimness and humidity.  It was impossible to monitor the passage of time here in this place, but it became harder and harder to see through the gloom beneath the trees.  The sun must have already set outside the valley. 

Dalinar reached into his pocket, fishing for a Stormlight-filled sphere to illuminate the path before him.  Then he paused, as he heard a faint sound somewhere ahead of him in the underbrush.  The noise was definitely not caused by the movements of an animal or the flow of air through leaves. 

He listened intently, and the noise increased in volume as if it were drawing closer.  It sounded like… it sounded almost like the squalling of an infant.  Dalinar pulled up short as the noise triggered a memory.  Of being at Evi’s side, in Kholinar.  Of cradling his newborn son in his arms. 

But no.  These cries were not hale and loud as Adolin’s cries had been, but softer, fussier.  Dalinar remembered abruptly that he hadn’t been in Kholinar when Renarin was born.  He hadn’t even met his younger son until Renarin was almost a year old.

“Sir?” Drehy spoke up from behind him, his voice concerned.  “Is everything all right?”

“Do you hear that?” Dalinar asked.

Drehy paused for a moment.  “The trees?” he asked, sounding puzzled.  “The wind?”

Dalinar shook his head.  He took out a diamond broam, its light reflecting garishly off of the obscuring streamers of moss and the dense network of ferns surrounding them.  Even as he squinted forward, the noises faded from hearing, lost in the creaking of tree boughs and the sigh of the wind.

“Let’s find a place to set down the stretcher,” he said to the others.  “It’s time to take a break.”

With the spherelight to guide them, they located a straight stretch of trail and lowered Renarin down onto the carpet of fallen leaves.  As they broke out water canteens and wiped away sweat from the dampness, Dalinar’s gaze lingered on his son.  Renarin had not improved during the journey into the Valley.  If anything, he looked worse in the harsh light—with circles darkening under his closed eyes and a worrisome grayish tinge to his skin.  The effort of supporting his injured spren was continuing to cost him.

As Dalinar replaced the top on his canteen, he noticed Rlain looking off to the left, deeper into the trees.  “What is it, soldier?”

Rlain seemed to ponder the question a moment.  Then he inclined his head in that same direction, his words emerging in a halting cadence.  “The Rhythms, sir.”  He hesitated, then added, “This entire valley magnifies the sound of them.  But they seem even stronger in that direction.” 

Dalinar stared into the dense network of greenery in the direction that the Parshendi indicated.  That way didn’t look any different from the forest on the opposite side of the path.  Furthermore, he could see no visible route forward in that direction. 

He thought back to his previous visit, all those years ago.  He had started into the valley on a path just like this one.  But as he had gone deeper, he had been affected by… visions? Hallucinations?  He had drawn Oathbringer and… left the trail.  It was only after he’d cut his way through the forest that he had stumbled upon the clearing where he’d met the Nightwatcher.

Dalinar no longer had a Shardblade that he could call upon, but he didn’t need one.  He handed his light source over to Drehy.  “Summon your Shardblade, Lieutenant.  Clear us a path.”

The blond man looked distinctly nervous at the suggestion, but he schooled his expression quickly.  He held his hand out to the side, and a short, curved blade materialized there, glowing softly with blue light.  Dalinar motioned for Rlain to take Drehy’s position at the head of the stretcher so that he could guide the lieutenant in the right direction.  Dalinar himself moved to the foot of the stretcher and took Rlain’s place.  In unison, he and Rlain lifted Renarin’s stretcher together. 

The Riran lieutenant raised his short blade.  A few anxietyspren flickered into being around him as his Shardblade swung out twice in quick succession--first cutting the soul of a vine and leaving a gray patch across the green, then severing the dead portion of vine entirely before the vine could fully retreat.  The vine parted cleanly, the two ends rustling noisily as they slithered backwards into the brush. 

Drehy waited.  When nothing else seemed to happen as a result of severing the vine, he raised his arm again and proceeded to cut a careful swath through the forest.

The night around them grew darker, and then darker still.  Never one for second-guessing, Dalinar became troubled by a growing sense of unease.  Again, his mind strayed back to his conversation with Felt, before he’d entered the valley that first time. 

When you came before, what did you see?

To be frank, sir, nothing.  She didn’t come to me.  Doesn’t visit everyone, you see.

Time was not on their side.  Dalinar was painfully aware that the window for restoring Renarin and his spren was rapidly vanishing.  He grimly continued to press forward--refusing to consider the possibility that they’d come all this way for nothing.  …That there was nothing that could be done for his injured son.

He pushed through a stand of ferns, the fronds parting before him like the flaps of a battlefield command tent.  Suddenly it was as if he were back there again--on campaign at the Veden border.  A coach had arrived from Kholinar, Evi’s coach… and she’d brought the boys with her to visit.  He hadn’t wanted them to come, but Evi had been adamant.  She insisted on staying with him for three whole months that year. 

Adolin had been eight, and was bursting with eagerness to show his father all of the things he was learning in his sword training.  Dalinar recalled that, even amid all of his pressing duties as a battlefield commander, he had found time to spend with his older son.  The boy had natural skill and boundless enthusiasm.  It had been easy to be proud of Adolin, even back then.  …And a part of Dalinar basked in the hero worship he saw in those young eyes.

Evi had refused to let him focus only on Adolin, however.  At her insistence, Dalinar had again found himself confronted with his second son.  

Where Adolin had been boisterously fighting flying chulls at four years of age, Renarin was like a ghost of a child.  Eerily silent, always shadowing his mother or brother.  When Dalinar attempted to speak directly to him, Renarin’s gaze skittered sideways.  He’d be more interested in a cremling climbing up a nearby rock than in paying attention to his own father.

The following year, Evi didn’t bring Renarin along with her when she visited.  He’d been ill, she’d explained, her voice troubled.  She had taken Adolin back to Kholinar early that year.

Dalinar didn’t think anything more of it.  Seasons changed, and so did the battle fronts.  Then one day Evi had sent him a surgeon’s report.  The document had been full of surgeon-speak, but he understood the jist of what the scribe read to him.  “Seizures” and “disability” and the damning final conclusion “unfit for military training”.

Past him had turned away from the scribe, dismissing her curtly.  Dalinar was ashamed to remember his own reactions.  The unexpected feeling of loss, of disappointment.  The concern about what his elites and his rank-and-file officers might think once they heard the news.  The struggle to grasp onto the positive: Renarin would never amount to anything--but at least he still had Adolin.

Dalinar tightened his grip on the handles of the stretcher, giving his head a little shake to clear his mind of the entangling threads of the past.  This was a test, he realized.  Like the last time he had visited the valley. 

I have changed, Dalinar thought grimly, as if by doing so he could communicate the words directly to the power that ruled here.  Show me parts of my life if you will.  But judge me on the whole of it. 

I am here because I care about my son.

Ahead of them, the forest suddenly seemed less dense, as if the trees were beginning to thin out.  A minute more, and Drehy’s blade sliced an opening through the greenery.  The group emerged into a small clearing.  It was full night, now.  The scattering of stars that made up Taln’s Scar was visible above the treetops, and the first of the moons glowed against the black sky.  There was the hint of an oddly familiar scent in the air here.  Complex and floral.  Dalinar couldn’t place it.

Softly, Dalinar gave the command to lower the stretcher.  Once it was settled on a patch of mossy ground, he moved forward.  He spared a glance at the two who had made the journey with him.  Drehy’s Riran features looked more pale than normal.  Rlain’s expression was impassive, but the tone of his quiet humming seemed forced.  Had they heard things, seen things, while walking through the forest?   Dalinar did not ask.  It was too private, too personal to speak of in this place.

“Sir?” Drehy said softly, as Dalinar passed him.  He still held Dalinar’s diamond broam in one hand and his living Shardblade in the other.

“Put away the light.  Dismiss your weapon.  And stay back to guard Renarin.”

The clearing was plunged into darkness as Drehy obeyed.  Dalinar halted where he stood, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

Salas shone in the sky above, casting a violet light that painted the edges of vines and tree trunks.  Indistinct shapes became clearer to Dalinar’s vision the longer he waited.  The tiny green glow of lifespren bobbed and drifted everywhere among the plant life, though they were too tiny to provide any real illumination.  Dalinar peered ahead, looking for motion in the shadows.  Searching for any hint of movement at all, other than the swaying of plant life in the breeze.

A startled exclamation came from behind him.  Drehy’s voice.  Dalinar turned, and immediately saw the source of the alarm.

It was the Nightwatcher.  She had not changed at all in the years since Dalinar had last come to the valley.  A large and vaguely humanoid being composed of green mist, drifting above the ground.  She had emerged silently from the side of the clearing, pulling herself forward on too-long arms. 

She was slowly heading towards Rlain.

Singer, the whispering voice that was a multitude of voices brushed against Dalinar’s mind—though it was obvious that the Nightwatcher was not speaking to him.  It has been millennia since one of your kind has visited.  What is it you wish of me?

The Nightwatcher continued to stream forward, meandering from side to side as if following the path of a lazy river.  She paid no heed at all to anything else in the clearing, her deep black eyes focused entirely on Rlain. 

The Parshendi looked utterly taken aback at being the center of the ancient spren’s attention.  One hand was on the haft of the regulation shortspear strapped across his back, ready to draw it at a moment’s notice.  The knuckles of that hand stood out against the wooden haft, an indication of the tightness of his grip.  He shifted his weight, as if he were considering taking a step away from her.  Then he set his jaw and stayed where he was, holding his position between the Nightwatcher and Renarin.

Speak, the Nightwatcher prodded, drifting closer.  What is it that you want, what is your heart’s desire?  Riches and title?  A home to return to?  Vengeance on those who have harmed you and your kin?

Rlain looked away from her sharply, tension written in every line of his body.  He cast about the clearing as if looking for something, anything, to focus on instead of meeting the eyes of the ancient spren. 

The Parshendi’s unsettled gaze fell on Dalinar, and stuck there.  Even from this distance, Dalinar could hear the low sound of his humming.  A frantic, chaotic beat.  Curious, the Nightwatcher followed his line of sight.  Then she tilted her head, inspecting Dalinar with her liquid black eyes.

Dalinar stepped forward, asserting control over the situation.  “Nightwatcher.  I am the one who has come to you with a petition.”

As he closed the short distance between them, the Nightwatcher moved again.  Rising, this time.  Rearing up to twice his height, her inscrutable feminine face ascending on a pillar of mist framed by two abnormally lengthened arms that nearly brushed against the ground.

I know you, that familiar, whispering voice crept into his mind, speaking directly to him now.  It was a voice comprised of many voices, overlapping.  It had the effect of causing the edges of the individual words to blur together, though he was still able to understand them.  You have come to me before.

“I have,” Dalinar said carefully.  “I came to this valley seven years ago.  The boon that I asked for could not be granted.  But I was still able to receive help in this place.”

I remember. The elongated, stick-like fingers fanned out, and Dalinar saw tiny hands made of mist forming at the sides of the Nightwatcher’s face as she arched down towards him.  You have grown.  Bondsmith.  Why have you come here?  Your request from before has already been answered.

“I seek a boon for my son.”  Dalinar gestured back towards the stretcher.  Rlain and Drehy stood side-by-side in front of Renarin now, their postures tense and alert.  “I ask for the boon of healing.  I will accept the curse, in return.”

The Nightwatcher stared at him with those alien, unblinking eyes.  She did not even glance in Renarin’s direction.  Instead, she straightened up again, looming over him.  The tiny hands at the sides of her face retracted and then vanished. 

This petition….  It cannot be granted. 

A single shockspren burst into being near Dalinar’s head.  Cannot…what?  “Why not?” Dalinar demanded, his hands clenching into fists.

Choices must be freely made.  With Intent, human.  One cannot request a boon or take on a curse for another.

“My son can’t ask this for himself,” Dalinar said stubbornly.  “I’m his father.  That should be enough.”

It is not.  The words were flat and emotionless, carrying a harsh ring of finality. 

For a moment Dalinar could only stand there, struggling to process the simple statement.  Not enough?  How could it not be enough?

The Nightwatcher didn’t wait for him to marshal his thoughts.  Soundlessly, her misty form collapsed back towards the ground.  She began to flow away from him, wisps of her being trailing out behind her like tendrils of low-lying fog. 

Curious, the Nightwatcher whispered, and her shimmering black eyes found Rlain’s once again.  The Parshendi had removed his hand from the haft of his spear, but had not relaxed his stance.  His normally quiet humming was sharp and his expression was openly conflicted.  She meandered in his direction, passing so close to him that he could have reached out and touched her vaporous substance.  I was certain….  But I have been mistaken before.  Once or twice.

Her form coiled back on itself, and she turned away from her visitors.  Making her way towards the trees at the edge of the clearing.  Returning to the forest.

“Wait!” Dalinar said desperately.  He couldn’t walk away empty handed.  There was too much at stake.  This was the last chance to heal what the anti-Stormlight had done to Renarin.  The last chance to restore Renarin’s spren. 

“Please,” Dalinar said, his voice sounding raw and despairing in his own ears.  It caused the Nightwatcher to pause.  As she looked back towards him, he sank to his knees on the damp forest floor.  “If you do not intervene, a Radiant spren will die.  It’s what Odium wants.  Please.  Help us.”

I cannot.  The Nightwatcher’s misty form eddied again.  Bondsmith.  The Stormfather must have told you before.  Even the Shards themselves are bound by rules that cannot be broken. 

THAT IS TRUE, a new voice emerged from the darkness under the trees.  It was a voice of mountains shifting, of boulders tumbling.  This voice, too, Dalinar had heard before.

“Cultivation,” he whispered, his throat suddenly as dry as the plains of Greater Hexi. 

She stepped out into the moonlight.  A matronly woman all in rich shades of brown--her hair, her skin, her sweeping dress.  Her figure was stout and should have been unimposing.  Yet there was something majestic in her bearing--and Dalinar knew that she encompassed far more than what his eyes could see.  The clearing suddenly felt much too small for her presence.

She continued forward in silence, walking in a measured, stately gait.  Not towards him.  Belatedly, Dalinar realized that she was advancing towards Renarin.  He made an abrupt motion for Drehy and Rlain to step back, and they reluctantly did so--fanning out to either side of the stretcher.

The Nightwatcher flowed forward at Cultivation’s heels, curling around the voluminous skirts as the woman came to a halt beside the stretcher.  She gazed serenely down at Renarin, who still showed no signs of waking. 

“Can you help him?” Dalinar asked, and then quickly added, “what must I do?”

THIS IS NOT YOUR PRICE TO PAY, the being that was Cultivation replied evenly, her words confirming what the Nightwatcher had said.  NOT YOUR BOON AND CURSE.

“Not my…” Dalinar floundered.  

YOU DID WELL TO BRING THEM HERE.  HOWEVER, YOUR PARTICIPATION IS NO LONGER REQUIRED.  YOU MAY GO.

The calm words struck Dalinar like a physical blow.  He felt heat rise in his face, the heat of anger and humiliation at being so lightly dismissed.  He rose to his feet.  “Go?  What do you mean, go?”

YOU WILL GO BACK TO YOUR CAMP OUTSIDE THE VALLEY AND YOU WILL WAIT.  YOUR SON WILL RETURN TO YOU.  Cultivation turned slightly in his direction, and deep brown eyes caught and held Dalinar’s gaze.  OR HE WILL NOT.  THE OUTCOME WILL BE BASED ON HIS CHOICE.

Dalinar’s momentary anger was swept away by a sudden icy chill as fear ran cold fingers down his spine.  Since when was Renarin NOT RETURNING an option?  With words like that, how could she possibly expect him to just leave??

Parental instincts that he hadn’t even known that he possessed surged to the forefront.  His mind clamored at him that this was a fool’s choice.  That abandoning his son here would be unforgivable.  That he should immediately signal to the stretcher bearers to retrieve their burden and carry Renarin far from this place.     

And yet.

Renarin was out of options.  Dalinar knew it.  He understood that he could still use his Bondsmith’s powers to remove Renarin’s Nahel bond.  He could sacrifice Glys to save Renarin’s life.  However, Dalinar also knew that simply breaking the bond would not heal the deep injuries that the anti-Stormlight had left in Renarin’s spiritweb.  He knew of nothing else that could.

He took a step towards the ancient entity who stood over his unconscious son, fists clenched, feeling betrayed. “This isn’t how things are supposed to happen.  This isn’t what I intended!”

Cultivation’s generous lips curved in something that might have been a smile.  SO SAY MANY WHO ENTER THIS VALLEY.  TELL ME, DALINAR KHOLIN.  DO YOU TRUST THE MAN YOUR SON HAS BECOME? 

For a moment, he was taken aback by the question.  “I do,” he said, trying not to sound defensive about it.  “Of course I do!”

THEN TRUST HIM.

Dalinar waited, expecting her to say more.  However, she just continued to study him, completely and utterly silent.  Emotionless and immovable as a statue carved entirely from the heart of an ancient darkwood tree.  He could not out-wait this being, who had existed for millennia.  The implication was clear.  If Dalinar wished for her to heal Renarin, he would have to accept her terms.

In that moment, he couldn’t help but remember that Odium had warned him about Cultivation, during a vision over a year ago.

Cultivation only wants to see transformation.  Growth.  It can be good or bad, for all she cares.  The pain of men is nothing to her.  …I think you’ll find me the better choice.

Oddly, that fragment of memory broke through his uncertainty, providing a catalyst for his decision.  Dalinar didn’t understand Cultivation, and he certainly didn’t know anything about her motives.  But he also knew that he couldn’t trust anything that Odium said. 

Cultivation had helped Dalinar, when he had come to the valley seven years ago.  It had not been the outcome he had expected--but he had to admit that her intervention had been what he had needed to stand against Odium at Thaylen Field.  Dalinar didn’t understand, couldn’t understand Cultivation’s motives.  All he could do was have faith that she understood the value of Renarin’s Radiant powers in the fight against Odium.  That her goals of thwarting the god of passions aligned with his goals at the moment. 

…And then hope that faith was not misplaced.

With a heavy heart, Dalinar cast one last look at his injured son.  His emotions seethed, chaotic and conflicted.  He drew in a deep breath, then forced himself to let go.  Off to his left, the opening that Drehy had cut into the clearing was still visible.  Dalinar retreated towards it, gesturing for his soldiers to do the same.  Neither the Nightwatcher nor Cultivation made any move to stop him.  Dalinar turned away from them both, and began the long walk back to the temporary camp outside the valley.

*    *    *

Still deeply shaken from his interaction with the Nightwatcher, Rlain did not immediately move to follow.  The clearing--and the being that stood within it, disoriented his senses.  The Rhythm that pervaded this entire valley was loudest here, in this place.  An ancient Rhythm of Roshar.  Rlain could feel it in his very bones.

Drehy brushed past Rlain, heading towards the patch of disturbed branches that marked the place where they had entered the clearing.  Rlain knew that he should follow, but he remained rooted to the spot.  Renarin still lay insensate on the stretcher, Cultivation standing over him.  It struck a sour note for Rlain.  His heart rebelled at the idea of leaving Renarin here all alone.

And what can you do?  Here, at the epicenter of an ancient being’s power.  Did he think he could protect Renarin somehow?  Even with his brand new Radiant powers, to think he could help Renarin in this place was insanity.  …And even a well-intentioned disruption might wreck Glys and Renarin’s hope for recovery. 

You have to let this happen.  This is Renarin’s best chance.

Within him, Tumi pulsed to Consolation.  Rlain took a deep breath, then reluctantly turned to follow after Drehy.  The lanky Windrunner had already moved past a curtain of trailing vines and vanished into the greenery.

WAIT.

Rlain stopped.  He looked back over his shoulder.  Cultivation was looking right at him, one hand threaded idly through the strands of the Nightwatcher’s misty hair.  Hesitantly, he turned to face the two of them.

A MOMENT, LISTENER.  I WOULD HAVE WORDS WITH YOU.  AND….

Those deep, dark eyes flickered downwards, coming to rest on the point that marked the center of Rlain’s sternum.  The location of his gemheart. 

Within his chest, Tumi suddenly began to tremble to the Rhythm of the Terrors.

Cultivation made an open-handed, inviting gesture.  Then she paused expectantly.

Tumi slowly emerged from Rlain’s chest, floating in the air.  The spren vibrated visibly, as if shivering.  Several silent heartbeats passed, and Tumi made a heroic effort and attuned to the Rhythm of Resolve.

I WOULD SPEAK WITH YOU ALSO, CHILD OF SJA-ANAT.

*    *    *

Renarin woke to the scent of his mother’s incense.

He opened his eyes.  Above him was a cloudless blue sky, framed by thick branches bearing vibrant green leaves.  It took a moment for Renarin to realize that they were the tops of enormous trees.  He blinked and turned his head, disoriented.  An abundance of plant life surrounded him in every direction.  He was… in a forest? 

Yes, he seemed to be lying in some kind of forest clearing, cushioned on a bed of thick moss and ringed with bushes and trees.  Lifespren drifted calmly in the sunlit air around him.  He’d never seen a place so lush and green.  

Two tall shrubs loomed to either side of him, separated from the rest of the trees and brush that ringed the clearing.  The plant to his right was one that Renarin recognized as native to Alethkar.  Bark so dark that it was nearly the color of ebony.  Thick, inflexible branches, heavy and unyielding.  …And long dark thorns extending beyond the olive-colored leaves, each one piercing the air like the shaft of an arrow. 

The plant to his left was a vibrant green, with unfamiliar teardrop-shaped leaves.  The leaves looked so thin, vulnerable and delicate.  Renarin couldn’t see how they retracted to protect themselves from Highstorms.  There were flowers, also.  Wide, with an impossible number of petals forming each blossom.  Pale yellow, the color of his mother’s hair.  The air was thick with the scent of those flowers--the aroma of Evi Kholin’s incense.

This second bush also had thorns, arrayed along the sides of the branches and mostly hidden by the fragile-looking leaves.  These thorns were thick and curved, like a whitespine’s hind claws, and they looked just as sharp.  Renarin saw hints of movement as he studied the plant.  A trio of mink kits played near a burrow formed from the tangle of roots, and higher up Renarin caught a glimpse of a tiny green chicken sitting on a nest cradled among the branches.  In a world where hungry grazers would consume a plant and kill it without a second thought, thorns were protection—for the plant itself and for a variety of vulnerable creatures who might otherwise fall to predators.   

Renarin shifted his gaze to the surrounding clearing.  Ancient tree trunks stood like sentinels around the cleared space in the forest, which was carpeted with grasses and flowers.  This place was unlike any he’d seen before.  He was abruptly reminded of his mother’s stories of the sunken forests of Rira. 

Experimentally, Renarin shifted his limbs.  After a lifetime spent struggling with a weakness-inducing illness, he knew to test his strength before moving.  Surprisingly, he felt well.  Slowly, he sat up, taking stock of himself, causing the grassy plants immediately surrounding him to retreat into their burrows in a wave. 

…Then he stilled abruptly as he caught sight of a series of jagged lines that appeared to have been bleached at random intervals across the blue cloth of his Bridge Four uniform.  Colorless, looking like ash.  He raised his hands up before his face, and saw that the marks extended even across his own skin.  The marks didn’t hurt, but they were dull, lifeless--as if they’d been created by the edge of a Shardblade.  The network of trails traced back and converged at a splotchy area at the center of his chest, where the front of his uniform had turned that same ashen gray.  A patch centered directly over his heart.

Memory returned to him in a rush.  The ambush.  The assassins.  The daggers with anti-Light.

Glys?  As before, Renarin’s anxious query received no answer.  His spren had gone completely silent since the assassin’s strike.

Except once.  Renarin had reached out to Glys when he had first awakened back in his own room at Urithiru.  The barest hint of a reply had brushed against the fringes of his thoughts.

Goodbye.  Renarin. 

The words had an unmistakable ring of finality, and had triggered a tidal wave of visceral fear.  Where once Renarin might have given in to that panic—to the looming prospect of losing someone he cared about and being left alone yet again… this time the fear gave way to an unyielding determination.  He had spoken the ancient oath of the Knights Radiant--the First Ideal.  Strength before weakness.  As soon as he’d thought it, Renarin had felt something leave him.  Flowing down the bond between himself and Glys, taking the both of them by surprise.  Strength to sustain, to help his spren persist.

Renarin took a second, longer look around the forest clearing.  He saw nothing of note save for the glowing green motes of lifespren drifting everywhere in the still air.  Curious, he reached out towards the fragile plant on his left.  The flowers of the vibrant plant didn’t withdraw from him.  The soft yellow petals were smooth and cool to the touch. 

What is this place?

Abruptly, Renarin became aware that he was not alone, after all.  A figure now stood at the edge of the clearing. 

She was an older woman.  Dark skinned, like the Azish.  She had tightly curled black hair without a hint of gray in it and fathomless dark eyes.  But he understood immediately that she encompassed far more than the little that was revealed to him.  He got the sense of an immense, unknowable presence.  Of a being whose essence stretched out to eternity, touching all of Roshar with vast spreading wings.

Renarin averted his gaze, suddenly afraid that he would become lost in that infinite presence if he looked too long.

“You are….” He stopped.  The third one.  It would probably sound rude to say that out loud.  Instead he said, “My mother spoke of you.  When she talked of the Old Magic.”

He thought that he’d caught glimpses of her interference, in his visions.  Odium couldn’t see Cultivation—not directly.  However, the god of passions obsessively searched for signs that she might thwart his plans.  Some of that obsession had bled over into Renarin’s void-touched visions.

“This is a dream,” he murmured aloud.

“No.  This is real.  Though this place exists outside of the Physical Realm.”  Cultivation turned away from him.  “You may attend me, Renarin Kholin.” 

Without another word, she strode out of the clearing and into the forest. 

That had not been a request.  Heart suddenly racing in his chest, Renarin scrambled to his feet and hurried to catch up.  However, he hesitated at the threshold at the clearing’s edge, looking back at the two tall shrubs that stood at the center.  Their leaves were fully unfurled in the sunlight, their strong roots digging down into the crem beneath, anchoring them in place.  Renarin drew in a deep breath and tore his gaze away from them, following Cultivation into the woods.

He caught up quickly, falling in half a step behind her and purposefully shortening his stride.  There was a trail here, and as he moved the surrounding vines and ferns pulled away from him, clearing a path.  A million questions buzzed in his head, but he didn’t ask any of them.  Instead, he stepped carefully through the forest, waiting for Cultivation to speak.

“Do you know why you are here?” she asked at length.

Renarin looked down, focusing on palms that were marked with those crooked trails of gray.

“That is a manifestation of your current state.  Cracks in the spirit from old trauma.  They had become stabilized as your Radiant bond developed.  However, the anti-Light that targeted your spren has fractured them anew.”

“Is Glys also here, in this vision?”

“Not this vision, no.  Though I am speaking with him.  He has his own choice to make.”

Choice?  Renarin thought with a start.

She glanced towards him.  “You already know the rules.  What is asked of those who arrive at this valley.” 

“A boon and a curse.”

She inclined her head.

He looked down again at the meandering gray trails that marked his skin and uniform.  “Is it possible to cure this injury?”

“That depends on you.  I cannot change the experiences that have shaped you.  The fractures themselves will not go away, although they can be… patched.  One way to accomplish this is to forget, like your father did.”

Renarin didn’t like that idea at all.  “That won’t help Glys.”

“It will not.”  Cultivation drew to a halt.  She swept a hand out before her.  The forest floor immediately before them fell away.

What lay beyond was light.  A changing, seething ocean of light.  It was too bright to look upon directly.  Renarin automatically raised a hand, turning his face away and shielding his eyes.

Nearly a year ago, Jasnah had presented him with a copy of Gavarah’s treatise on the Three Realms.  He had read the volume cover to cover multiple times.  He had then proceeded to read every philosophical and religious text he could get his hands on that was even remotely related to the Spiritual Realm.  The realm of timelessness, the realm that Glys claimed was the origin of their stained-glass visions.

That churning light made up the raw fabric of the Spiritual Realm.  Renarin understood then that the entire forest that surrounded him was a construct, an organized framework with which he could interact--to prevent his mind from being overwhelmed.

…And it was overwhelming.  Even a brief hint of it was too much.  The human mind couldn’t encompass even a fraction of it.  A person would go mad from trying.

Then it was gone.  Blinking watering eyes, Renarin cautiously lowered his arm.  The opening into the Spiritual Realm had vanished, now masked with the appearance of a quiet woodland pool.  He stared down at the deceptively calm water, still dazed and shaken from that one momentary glimpse of the well of power beyond.

The few last ripples in the water stilled.  Renarin was standing so close to the edge that he could see his own reflection staring back.  The mirror image was missing the gray marks that currently crisscrossed his skin and clothing--suggesting that this was a reflection of himself in the Physical Realm.  He saw a face that was too thin, by Alethi standards.  Narrow shoulders and a build that was slender, even frail.  Even after all this time it was still odd to catch a glimpse of his own features without the spectacles.

A breath of wind disrupted the pool, sending shimmering ripples across the water.  When the surface cleared again, the face remained his--but the figure now wore a suit of Shardplate.  The slate-gray Shardplate that had once belonged to Dalinar Kholin. 

The reflection gripped the Shardplate helm with one gauntleted hand, and held the hilt of a Shardblade in the other.  Not the Glysblade.  This was the weapon that Adolin had won in a duel back at the warcamps.  The blade that Renarin had bonded.  The one that had screamed in his head every time he had summoned it.  The reflected version of himself stood calmly, without any sign of discomfort.  Not a Radiant, then.  A Shardbearer.

He understood the message.  He didn’t need to be a Radiant to be a soldier. 

Renarin’s heart rebelled against this possibility.  This might be a possible outcome for him, but this future—one without Glys, was one that he didn’t want.

He shifted, and a loose stone dislodged beneath his foot, falling into the pool.  The disturbance sent out ripples that shattered the image of the Shardbearer into shimmering concentric rings.

Renarin couldn’t bring himself to look away from the water.  The wavelets expanded outward, growing smaller and smaller.  When the surface of the pond cleared, he was not surprised to see that the reflection had changed again.

There was no armor this time.  Instead, his reflection wore the formal uniform of a high-ranking lighteyes.  Hovering in the air nearby was a familiar crystalline shape that dripped red light upwards.  Renarin let out a quiet breath.  This reflection indicated that there was at least one possible future where Glys was able to survive and recover.  Absently he noted that the pool no longer reflected the surrounding trees in the background, but instead showed a sphere-lit room with patterns of colored strata on the stone walls.  There was a large desk in the reflection, the surface strewn with papers.  Each page held lines upon lines of mathematical calculations, penned in his own messy writing.

“Be forewarned,” Cultivation’s rich voice startled him.  She still stood a short distance away.  “Such a path will not be straightforward.  It will contain many consequential branches.” 

She was right.  The backdrop of the image abruptly fractured, forming fragments of other images.  Reflections of reflections that stretched to infinity.  Each shadow reflection was different.   Renarin’s visions always manifested in stained glass, abstract in their structure.  But these were more like misty windows that looked out onto specific moving scenes.  Moments of captured time.  Glimpses of possibility. 

In one, he approached Jasnah, who was wearing the full ceremonial regalia of her royal station.  As Renarin watched, he saw himself go down on one knee before her as if preparing to swear fealty--his expression resigned and a little grim.   In another, he traveled with Rlain and a group of listener scouts within the Shattered Plains, moving among plateaus so worn by wind and water that all that remained were thin spires towering high overhead.  In yet another, he stood alone above a city laid out in a cymatic pattern, at the edge of a circular platform built into the side of a mountain peak.

Other images were more unsettling.  He was moving furtively down a darkened corridor, following a yellow ribbon of light that looked like a windspren but wasn’t—pausing beside an open doorway to eavesdrop on a conversation taking place beyond.  He was standing just outside of the windblades at Kholinar, with an unfamiliar Heavenly One hovering in the air above.  As he watched, the Fused descended and touched his shoulder, and then Lashed them both up into the sky.  He was on the deck of a ship as sailors pulled up a fishing net from the depths—a net that contained a large and brightly glowing ruby.  Renarin immediately recognized it as the King’s Drop, the prison of Nergaoul.

Beyond those scenes was an image where he held a double handful of spheres infused with Voidlight in cupped hands.  The reflected version of Renarin breathed in, and a wide band of violet-black light streamed into him.  It began curling off his skin in purple-white wisps.  The eyes that stared out of the pool at him became a brilliant and corrupted red.

Suddenly, that image was the only one he could see.  It loomed larger, eclipsing all of the other reflections.  Lesser voidspren gathered around the figure, nine different kinds.  They sublimated into streamers of mist, weaving together and coalescing into a suit of something like Shardplate.  Stark black and light-absorbing, the massive pieces fit together perfectly, hinting at strength and speed greater than even Radiant plate.  His spren materialized from mist in a black-gauntleted hand--and now the Glysblade shone a brilliant, blood red.  A color that was matched by the ruby light emanating from the eye slits of the black helm. 

Renarin took an involuntary step back from the pool, shaking his head and closing his eyes.  “N-no,” he said, voice sounding weakly in his own ears.

“No?” Cultivation asked smoothly.  “You already understand that this future is possible.  In the past, you’ve agonized over it yourself.  It is the risk you have taken--one of many, in bonding a corrupted spren.  The god of hatred has sought to eliminate Glys.  His next step would be to destroy everything that you love in order to make this future a reality.”

The matter-of-fact statement chilled him to the core.  Renarin remembered vividly how it had felt, to draw in and hold Voidlight.  How it had provoked and amplified his emotions.  How it had blocked out pain and allowed him to continue fighting against the lead assassin who’d been sent to kill him, even as his heart had been failing.  If he and Glys were both fully healed, and he tried to use Voidlight to his full capacity, what would happen then?  The thought of it terrified him.  Caught up in a deluge of emotion, he understood how easy it would be to lose control.  

The old hopelessness, the old self-loathing, rose up inside of him.  The emotions were as familiar as breathing.  He’d felt them most of the days of his life.  “So Jasnah was right after all, when she tried to kill me.  Glys and I, together we’re too dangerous to be allowed to live.”

Cultivation gave no response to the words.  The waters of the pool melted away, becoming unbroken forest floor again.

Renarin continued to stare at the spot where he’d seen all those images, feeling sick.  He’d thought many times about the possibility that he might become an instrument of Odium’s.  Actually seeing it in a vision had brought home to him the perilous nature of his position as an Enlightened Radiant.  Renarin knew that Sja-anat was seeking to free herself from the yoke of Odium’s will.  He also knew that at this time, she was not free. 

…And neither was Glys.

Renarin had spoken oaths.  He hadn’t known what he was doing, in the beginning—hadn’t understood that Glys was not like other Radiant spren.  Once he had realized… well.  He had been prepared to make the noble sacrifice at Thaylen Field.  To let Jasnah slay him without lifting a hand in his own defense.  All in order to prevent the corruption from growing and spreading and possibly consuming him.  Jasnah had stood over him with her Shardblade raised, and he had met her eyes and nodded to her, acknowledging that her killing blow would be for the best.

And then she hadn’t killed him.

Here in this moment, that thought suddenly steadied him.  Giving up now would be a statement that Jasnah’s faith in him was misplaced.  That he wasn’t as strong as she thought he was.  That he was making the choice to concede before even attempting to try.

That wasn’t him.  It had never been him.  He didn’t run from situations just because they were dangerous.  It was the same instinct that had made him rush out without a weapon onto a plateau that held a chasmfiend.  The same impulse that had prompted him to step into the arena during Adolin’s disadvantaged duel.  The same compulsion that had driven him to walk alone towards the twelve Fused who had guarded the Oathgate during the Battle of Thaylen Field.

Renarin could give up now, too paralyzed by the fear of what he might become to move forward.  Or he could take the next step.

“What I see… it can be wrong,” he said slowly.  “Even the things I’ve seen here are only a fraction of the possibilities that exist.  Some of them might come true.  Some of them will come true.  However, just because I’ve seen it doesn’t mean that it will happen.  …And even if a vision shows me something terrible, there’s still the possibility that it can be changed.”

Renarin turned towards Cultivation, his resolve solidifying despite his anxiety.  “Glys and I, we’re worth saving.  More than that, we’re needed.  Otherwise, we would never have been a target for assassination in the first place.”

Cultivation didn’t move and her expression didn’t change.  Renarin had no way to gauge her reaction to the statement.  He soldiered onward anyway, raising his chin as he studied at the infinite being before him. 

“A healing,” he said.  “That’s the boon.  What’s the curse?”

“You will see,” she replied.  “Farther and more clearly than you have at any point in the past.  My access to Fortune exceeds that of any other.  My power is infused with it.  You understand the nature of this curse.” 

He did.  Oh yes, he did.

“Be sure that you are willing to accept this cost.”

His mind was already made up, and the serene words did nothing to dampen his determination.  “I accept.”

Cultivation’s full lips curved upwards in the barest hint of a smile.  “Very well.  Your spren also accepts my intervention.  Though be forewarned, this will not be the last attempt on your life.”

Before he could think of any kind of response, she extended a hand towards him, palm up and fingers curling inward.  As if mirroring the gesture, the branches of the surrounding trees extended, vines slithering forward over the bark.  At the same time, the anchoring roots of shrubs and rockbuds crept towards him through the thick carpet of fallen leaves.  They grasped at the heels and the toes of his boots.  Vinebud plants sprouted up from the rocky forest floor and climbed up over those roots, curling around his calves and snaking upwards. 

Renarin had read his father’s account of what he had experienced years ago on his own trip to the Nightwatcher’s valley, and he understood what must be happening.  Even so, the sight of all that plant life closing in was more than a little alarming, and he had to steel himself to avoid flinching away.  The vines continued to move inward, twining around his shoulders, legs and waist.  The fronds of nearby ferns curled around him, and the hard fingers of tree branches shook as they reached out to grasp at his arms.  The touch of the plants was unsettling and should have made his skin crawl—though his anxiety about it here in the Spiritual Realm seemed muffled and oddly distant. 

Desperate for something to take his mind off his situation, he blurted out the question he most wanted to ask.  “Glys says that most types of Radiant spren are a mixture of Cultivation and Honor.  They contain the power of more than one Shard.  But these other spren aren’t red, like Glys.  Why is that?”

Cultivation closed the distance between them. Her outstretched hand hovered a few inches away from the front of Renarin’s chest, without touching the fabric.  Hovering above the gray patch over his heart. 

She smiled, but otherwise seemed to ignore his question.  Instead, she asked, “do you know the meaning of your name?”

Renarin did.  One who is born unto himself. 

He remembered overhearing a conversation several years ago, where Evi Kholin had admitted that her husband hadn’t thought much of the name.  However, as Renarin was growing up, as he was trying to find his own identity apart from the bullying of peers and the discomfort and frustration he experienced around adults, eventually the meaning of his name had given him strength.

The vines and branches reached the center of his chest.  Then, as he watched, they sank into the grayed-out patch over his heart.  The cloth of his uniform didn’t rip, and there was no blood.  Likewise, there was no pain—this was the Spiritual Realm, and here he had no physical form.  However, he could still feel the tendrils moving disconcertingly, reaching deeper, beginning to curl around his heart. 

He didn’t have a body in this place—he knew that he didn’t.  Even so, it was immensely unnerving to look at the spot where the vines vanished into his chest, to feel them moving inside of him.  He closed his eyes. 

“It is within my power to heal you,” Cultivation said.  “Your spren is Enlightened, infused with the power of Odium.  Also, like most humans of Roshar, you carry within a trace of the Pure Tone of Honor, which the anti-Stormlight dagger was not able to fully destroy.  These tones can guide the healing of your spren.  So, I ask one last time.  Shall I continue?” 

Renarin didn’t hesitate.  “Yes.”

He heard something then.  A faint sound.  A pure musical note, held effortlessly, but pulsing in a deliberate way.  Moving to a slow, stately rhythm.

“Son of Thorns.”  The leaves of the forest floor rustled as Cultivation took one final step towards him.  “An apt title.  Though a limiting one.  Children are more than the sum of their parents.  Their lives and choices do not define you.” 

More creeping fronds snaked up his neck, twisting through his hair.  Renarin felt leaves, long and thin as if from stumpweight trees, brush against his temples and gently wrap over his eyes.

He heard the slow, stately Rhythm grow slightly louder.  It was joined a few moments later by a second Rhythm.  One that started slowly, but then built, growing.  Then a third, chaotic, demanding.  Odium’s Rhythm.  Supplied by Glys?  The three Rhythms swirled around him.  Discordant.  Fighting one another. 

“Let us complete the work that Sja-anat began.”