She’d been dropped beside a small line of corpses. There were seven of them, three male and four female, wearing fine clothing—but covered in rotspren, their flesh chewed at by cremlings.
Holding in a scream, she scrambled to her feet. Perhaps … perhaps these were some of those lighteyes who’d come to the palace to talk to the queen?
She snatched her hat and scrambled to the steps. This was the wine cellar, a stone vault cut right into the rock. At the door she finally heard Pattern, who had been talking, though his voice had seemed distant.
“Shallan? I felt what you told me. Don’t go. Shallan, are you well? Oh! The destruction. You destroy some things, but seeing others destroyed upsets you. Hmmmm.…” He seemed pleased to have figured it out.
She focused on his voice, something familiar. Not the memory of a sword protruding from her own chest, not the callous way she’d been dumped here and left to rot, not the line of corpses with exposed bones, haunted faces, chewed-out eyes …
Don’t think. Don’t see it.
She shoved it all away, and rested her forehead against the door. Then she carefully eased it open and found an empty stone hallway beyond, with more steps leading upward.
There were too many soldiers that way. She put on a new illusion, of a servant woman from her sketchbook. Maybe that would be less suspicious. It covered the blood, at least.
She didn’t head back upstairs, but instead took a separate path farther into the tunnels. This turned out to be the Kholin mausoleum, which was lined with another kind of corpse: old kings turned to statues. Their stone eyes chased her down empty tunnels until she found a door that, judging from the sunlight underneath, led out into the city.
“Pattern,” she whispered. “Check for guards outside.”
He hummed and slid under the door, then returned a moment later. “Mmm … There are two.”
“Go back, then along the wall slowly to the right,” she said, infusing him.
He did so, sliding under the door. A sound she’d created rose from him as he moved away, imitating the captainlord’s voice from above, calling for the guards. It wasn’t perfect, as she hadn’t sketched the man, but it seemed to work as she heard booted feet move off.
She slipped out, and found herself at the base of the rise that the palace sat upon, a cliff of some twenty feet above her. The guards were distracted, walking to her right, so Veil slipped onto a street nearby, then ran for a short time, thankful to finally have a chance to work off some of her energy.
She collapsed in the shadow of a hollow building, with the windows broken open and the door missing. Pattern scooted along the ground nearby, joining her. The guards didn’t seem to have noticed her.
“Go find Kaladin,” she said to Pattern. “Bring him here. Warn him that soldiers might be watching him from the palace, and they might come for him.”
“Mmmm.” Pattern slid away from her. She huddled against herself, back to a stone wall, her coat still covered in blood. After a nerve-racking wait, Kaladin stepped onto the street, then hurried up to her. “Storms!” he said, kneeling beside her. Pattern slipped off his coat, humming happily. “Shallan, what happened to you?”
“Well,” she said, “as a connoisseur of things that have killed me, I think a sword happened.”
“Shallan…”
“The evil force that rules the palace did not think highly of someone coming with a letter from the king.” She smiled at him. “You could say, um, it made that point quite clear.”
Smile. I need you to smile.
I need what happened to be all right. Something that can simply roll off me.
Please.
“Well…” Kaladin said. “I’m glad we … took a stab at this anyway.” He smiled.
It was all right. Just another day, another infiltration. He helped her to her feet, then looked to check on her wound, and she slapped his hand. The cut was not in an appropriate location.
“Sorry,” he said. “Surgeon’s instincts. Back to the hideout?”
“Yes, please,” she said. “I’d rather not be killed again today. It’s quite draining.…”
64. Binder of Gods
The disagreements between the Skybreakers and the Windrunners have grown to tragic levels. I plead with any who hear this to recognize you are not so different as you think.
Dalinar reached into the dark stone shaft where he’d hidden the assassin’s Honorblade. It was still there; he felt the hilt under the lip of stone.
He expected to feel more upon touching it. Power? A tingling? This was a weapon of Heralds, a thing so ancient that common Shardblades were young by comparison. Yet, as he slipped it free and stood up, the only thing he felt was his own anger. This was the weapon of the assassin who had killed his brother. The weapon used to terrorize Roshar, murder the lords of Jah Keved and Azir.
It was shortsighted of him to see such an ancient weapon merely as the sword of the Assassin in White. He stepped out into the larger room next door, then regarded the sword in the light of the spheres he had placed on a stone slab there. Sinuous and elegant, this was the weapon of a king. Jezerezeh’Elin.
“There are some who assumed you were one of the Heralds,” Dalinar noted to the Stormfather, who rumbled in the back of his mind. “Jezerezeh, Herald of Kings, Father of Storms.”
Men say many foolish things, the Stormfather replied. Some name Kelek Stormfather, others Jezrien. I am neither of them.
“But Jezerezeh was a Windrunner.”
He was before Windrunners. He was Jezrien, a man whose powers bore no name. They were simply him. The Windrunners were named only after Ishar founded the orders.
“Ishi’Elin,” Dalinar said. “Herald of Luck.”
Or of mysteries, the Stormfather said, or of priests. Or of a dozen other things, as men dubbed him. He is now as mad as the rest. More, perhaps.
Dalinar lowered the Honorblade, looking eastward toward the Origin. Even through the stone walls, he knew that was where to find the Stormfather. “Do you know where they are?”
I have told you. I do not see all. Only glimpses in the storms.
“Do you know where they are?”
Only one, he said with a rumble. I … have seen Ishar. He curses me at night, even as he names himself a god. He seeks death. His own. Perhaps that of every man.
It clicked. “Stormfather!”
Yes?
“Oh. Uh, that was a curse.… Never mind. Tezim, the god-priest of Tukar? Is it him? Ishi, Herald of Luck, is the man who has been waging war against Emul?”
Yes.
“For what purpose?”
He is insane. Do not look for meaning in his actions.
“When … when were you thinking of informing me of this?”