Brandon SANDERSON: Words of Radiance

“Can’t I just keep pretending?”

“No.”

She was there, in her father’s room. Trembling, she pulled aside the picture, revealing the strongbox in the wall beyond. She raised the key, and hesitated. “Mother’s soul is inside.”

“Mmm… No. Not her soul. That which took her soul.”

Shallan unlocked the safe, then tugged it open, revealing the contents. A small Shardblade. Thrust into the strongbox hastily, tip piercing through the back, hilt toward her.

“This was you,” she whispered.

“Mmm… Yes.”

“Father took you from me,” Shallan said, “and tried to hide you in here. Of course, that was useless. You vanished as soon as he closed the strongbox. Faded to mist. He wasn’t thinking clearly. Neither of us were.”

She turned.

Red carpet. Once white. Her mother’s friend lay on the floor, bleeding from the arm, though that wound hadn’t killed him. Shallan walked to the other corpse, the one facedown in the beautiful dress of blue and gold. Red hair spilled out in a pattern around the head.

Shallan knelt and rolled over her mother’s corpse, confronting a skull with burned-out eyes.

“Why did she try to kill me, Pattern?” Shallan whispered.

“Mmm…”

“It started when she found out what I could do.”

She remembered it now. Her mother’s arrival, with a friend Shallan didn’t recognize, to confront her father. Her mother’s shouts, arguing with her father.

Mother calling Shallan one of them .

Her father barging in. Mother’s friend with a knife, the two struggling, the friend getting cut in the arm. Blood spilled on the carpet. The friend had won that fight, eventually holding Father down, pinned on the ground. Mother took the knife and came for Shallan.

And then…

And then a sword in Shallan’s hands.

“He let everyone believe that he’d killed her,” Shallan whispered. “That he’d murdered his wife and her lover in a rage, when I was the one who had actually killed them. He lied to protect me.”

“I know.”

“That secret destroyed him. It destroyed our entire family.”

“I know.”

“I hate you,” she whispered, staring into her mother’s dead eyes.

“I know.” Pattern buzzed softly. “Eventually, you will kill me, and you will have your revenge.”

“I don’t want revenge. I want my family.”

Shallan wrapped her arms around herself and buried her head in them, weeping as the illusion bled white smoke, then vanished, leaving her in an empty room.

I can only conclude, Amaram wrote hurriedly, the glyphs a mess of sloppy ink, that we have been successful, Restares. The reports from Dalinar’s army indicate that Voidbringers were not only spotted, but fought. Red eyes, ancient powers. They have apparently unleashed a new storm upon this world.

He looked up from his pad and peeked out the window. His carriage rattled down the roadway in Dalinar’s warcamp. All of his soldiers were away, and his remaining guards had gone to oversee the exodus. Even with Amaram’s reputation, he’d been able to pass into the camp with ease.

He turned back to his paper. I do not exult in this success, he wrote. Lives will be lost. It has ever been our burden as the Sons of Honor. To return the Heralds, to return the dominance of the Church, we had to put the world into a crisis.

That crisis we now have, a terrible one. The Heralds will return. How can they not, with the problems we now face? But many will die. So very many. Nalan send that it is worth the loss. Regardless, I will have more information soon. When I next write you, I hope to do so from Urithiru.

The coach pulled to a stop and Amaram pushed open the door. He handed the letter to the carriage driver, Pama. She took it and began digging in her satchel for the spanreed to send the communication to Restares. He would have done it himself, but you could not use a spanreed while moving.

She would destroy the papers when done. Amaram spared a glance for the trunks on the back of the coach; they contained a precious cargo, including all of his maps, notes, and theories. Should he have left those with his soldiers? Bringing the force of fifty into Dalinar’s warcamp would have drawn attention for certain, even with the chaos here, so he’d ordered them to meet him on the Plains.

He needed to keep moving. He strode away from the coach, pulling up the hood on his cloak. The grounds of Dalinar’s temple complex were even more frenzied than most of the warcamps, as many people had come to the ardents in this time of stress. He passed a mother begging for one of them to burn a prayer for her husband, who fought with Dalinar’s army. The ardent kept repeating that she should gather her things and join the caravans heading out across the Plains.

It was happening. It was really happening. The Sons of Honor had, at long last, achieved their goal. Gavilar would be proud. Amaram hastened his pace, turning as another ardent bustled up to him, to ask if he needed anything. Before she could look in his hood and recognize him, however, her attention was drawn by a pair of frightened youths who complained that their father was too old to make the trip, and begged for the ardents to help them carry him somehow.

He made it to the corner of the monastery building where they kept the insane and rounded to the back wall, out of sight, near the rim of the warcamp itself. He looked about, then summoned his Blade. A few swift slices would–

What was that?

He spun, certain he’d seen someone approach. But it was nothing. Shadows playing tricks on him. He made his slices in the wall and then carefully pushed open the hole he’d made. The Great One – Talenelat’Elin, Herald of War himself – sat in the dark room, in much the same posture he’d borne before. Perched on the end of his bed, slumped forward, head bowed.

“Why must they keep you in such darkness?” Amaram said, dismissing his Blade. “This is not fit for the lowliest of men, let alone one such as yourself. I will have words with Dalinar about the way the insane are–”

No, he would not. Dalinar thought him a murderer. Amaram drew in a long, deep breath. Prices would need to be paid to see the Heralds return, but by Jezerezeh himself, the loss of Dalinar’s friendship would be a stiff one indeed. Would that mercy had not stayed his hand, all those months ago, when he could have executed that spearman.

He hastened to the Herald’s side. “Great Prince,” Amaram whispered. “We must go.”

Talenelat did not move. He was whispering again, though. The same things as before. Amaram could not help being reminded of the last time he had visited this place, in the company of someone who had been playing him for one of the ten fools all along. Who knew that Dalinar had grown so crafty in his old age? Time had changed both of them.

“Please, Great Prince,” Amaram said, getting the Herald to his feet with some difficulty. The man was enormous, as tall as Amaram but built like a wall. The dark brown skin had surprised him the first time he’d seen the man – Amaram had, somewhat foolishly, expected that all of the Heralds would look Alethi.

The Herald’s dark eyes were, of course, some kind of disguise.

“The Desolation…” Talenelat whispered.

“Yes. It comes. And with it, your return to glory.” Amaram began to walk the Herald toward his opening. “We must get you to–”

The Herald’s hand snapped up in front of him.

Amaram started, freezing in place, as he saw something in the Herald’s fingers. A small dart, the tip dripping with some clear liquid.

Amaram glanced at the opening, which spilled sunlight into the room. A small figure there made a puffing sound, a blowgun held to lips beneath a half mask that covered the upper face.