Brandon Sanderson - Warbreaker

Bluefingers looked to the side in alarm, glancing toward several of his scribes. They shook their heads in confusion.

“Earthquake?” one asked.

The floor began to turn white. The color moved like a wave of sunlight crossing the land as the sun rose above the mountains. The walls, the ceiling, the floor—all of the black stone faded. The priests stepped away from it, looking frightened, one hopping onto a rug to keep from touching the strange white stones.

Bluefingers looked at her, confused. The ground continued to tremble, but he raised his blade anyway, held in fingers that had been stained repeatedly by ink. And, strangely, Siri saw the whites of his eyes bend and release a rainbow of colors.

The entire room burst with color, the white stones fuzzing and splitting, like light through a prism. The doors to the room exploded. A twisting mass of colorful cloths shot through it, like the countless tentacles of an enraged sea leviathan. They churned and curled, and Siri recognized tapestries, carpets, and long lengths of silk from the palace decorations.

Awakened cloth slapped aside Lifeless, curling around them, tossing them into the air. Priests cried out as they were snatched up, and a long, thin length of violet cloth snapped forward and wrapped around Bluefingers’s arm.

The surging mass undulated, churning, and Siri could finally see a figure walking in the middle of it. A man of epic proportions. Black of hair, pale of face, youthful in appearance, but of great age. Bluefingers struggled to ram his knife into Siri’s chest, but the God King raised a hand.

“You will stop !” Susebron said in a clear voice.

Bluefingers froze, looking toward the God King in amazement. The dagger slipped from his stunned fingers as an Awakened carpet twisted around him, pulling him away from Siri.

Siri stood, dumbfounded. Susebron’s cloths lifted him up and over beside her, and a pair of small silken handkerchiefs reached forward, sliding around the ropes binding her hands, untying them with ease.

Freed, she grabbed him and let him lift her into his arms, weeping.

The closet door opened, letting in lanternlight. Vivenna looked up, gagged and bound, at Vasher’s silhouette. He dragged Nightblood behind him, covered—as usual—by his silver sheath.

Looking very tired, Vasher knelt and undid her gag.

“About time,” she noted.

He smiled wanly. “I don’t have any Breath remaining,” he said quietly. “It was very hard to locate you.”

“Where did it all go?” she asked as he undid the ropes on her hands.

“Nightblood devoured most of it.”

I don’t believe him , Nightblood said happily. I . . . can’t really remember what happened. But we did slay a lot of evil!

“You drew him?” Vivenna asked as Vasher untied her feet.

Vasher nodded.

Vivenna rubbed her hands. “Denth?”

“Dead,” Vasher said. “No sign of Tonk Fah or the woman, Jewels. I think they took their money and fled.”

“So it’s over.”

Vasher nodded, sliding down to seat himself, resting his head against the wall. “And we lost.”

She frowned, grimacing at the pain of her wounded shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“Denth was being employed by some of the Pahn Kahl scribes in the palace,” Vasher said. “They wanted to start a war between Idris and Hallandren in the hope that it would weaken both kingdoms and let Pahn Kahl gain independence.”

“So? Denth is dead now.”

“So are the scribes who had the Command phrases for the Lifeless armies,” Vasher said. “And they already dispatched the troops. The Lifeless left the city over an hour ago, charging for Idris.”

Vivenna fell silent.

“All of this fighting, everything with Denth, that was secondary,” Vasher said, knocking his head back against the wall. “It distracted us. I couldn’t get to the Lifeless in time. The war has begun. There’s no way to stop it.”

SUSEBRON LED SIRI DOWN into the depths of the palace. Siri walked beside him, carefully cradled in his arm, a hundred twisting lengths of cloth spinning around them.

Even with that many things Awakened, he still had enough Breath to make every color they passed glow brightly. Of course, that didn’t work for many of the stones they passed. Though large chunks of the building were still black, at least half of it had been turned white.

Not just the grey of normal Awakening. They had been made bone white. And, becoming that white, they now reacted to his incredible BioChroma, splitting back into colors. Like a circle, somehow , she thought. Colorful, then white, then back to color .

He led her into a particular chamber, and she saw what he’d told her to expect. Scribes crushed by the carpets that he’d awakened, bars ripped from their mountings, walls broken down. A ribbon shot from Susebron, turning over a body so that she wouldn’t have to see its wound. She wasn’t paying much attention. In the midst of the rubble were a pair of corpses. One was Blushweaver, bloody and red, facedown. The other was Lightsong, his entire body drained of color. As if he were a Lifeless.

His eyes were closed, and he seemed to sleep, as if at peace. A man sat next to him—Lightsong’s high priest, holding the god’s head in his lap.

The priest looked up. He smiled, though she could see tears in his eyes.

“I don’t understand,” she said, looking at Susebron.

“Lightsong gave his life to heal me,” the God King said. “He somehow knew that my tongue had been removed.”

“The Returned can heal one person,” the priest said, looking down at his god. “It’s their duty to decide who and when. They come back for this purpose, some say. To give life to one person who needs it.”

“I never knew him,” Susebron said.

“He was a very good person,” Siri said.

“I realize that. Though I never spoke to him, somehow he was noble enough to die so that I might live.”

The priest smiled down. “The amazing thing is,” he said, “Lightsong did that twice.”

He told me that I couldn’t depend on him in the end , Siri thought, smiling slightly, though sorrowful at the same time. I guess he lied about that. How very like him .

“Come,” Susebron said. “We must gather what is left of my priests. We have to find a way to stop our armies from destroying your people.”

“THERE HAS TO BE a way, Vasher,” Vivenna said. She knelt next to him.

He tried to push down his rage, his anger at himself. He’d come to the city to stop a war. Once again, he’d been too late.

“Forty thousand Lifeless,” he said, pounding his fist against the floor. “I can’t stop that many. Not even with Nightblood and the Breaths of every person in the city. Even if I could somehow keep up with their marching, one would eventually get in a lucky strike and kill me.”

“There has to be a way,” Vivenna said.

Has to be a way .

“I thought the same thing before,” he said, putting his head in his hands. “I wanted to stop it. But by the time I realized what was happening, it had gone too far. It had taken on a life of its own.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Manywar,” Vasher whispered.

Silence.

“Who are you?”

He kept his eyes closed.

They used to call him Talaxin , Nightblood said.

“Talaxin,” Vivenna said, amused. “Nightblood, that’s one of the Five Scholars. He . . .”

She trailed off.

“. . . he lived over three hundred years ago,” she finally said.

“BioChroma can keep a man alive a long time,” Vasher said, sighing and opening his eyes. She didn’t argue.