Trembling, Shallan closed her eyes and pressed her hand against the heart. It felt real, like warm flesh. Like in Urithiru, touching the thing let her sense it. Feel it. Know it.
It tried to sweep her away.
The queen sat at a vanity beside the wall.
She was much as Kaladin had anticipated. Younger than Elhokar, with long dark Alethi hair, which she was combing. Her song had fallen away to a hum.
“Aesudan?” Elhokar asked.
She looked away from the mirror, then smiled broadly. She had a narrow face, with prim lips painted a deep red. She rose from the seat and glided to him. “Husband! So it was you I heard. You have returned at last? Victorious over our enemies, your father avenged?”
“Yes,” Elhokar said, frowning. He moved to step toward her, but Kaladin grabbed him by the shoulder and held him back.
The queen focused on Kaladin. “New bodyguard, dear one? Far too scruffy; you should have consulted me. You have an image to maintain.”
“Where is Gav, Aesudan? Where is my son?”
“He’s playing with friends.”
Elhokar looked to Kaladin, and gestured to the side with his chin. See what you can find, it seemed to say.
“Keep alert,” Kaladin whispered, then began picking through the room. He passed the remnants of lavish meals only partially eaten. Pieces of fruit each with a single bite taken out of them. Cakes and pastries. Candied meats on sticks. It looked like it should have rotted, based on the decayspren he noticed, but it hadn’t.
“Dear one,” Elhokar said, keeping his distance from the queen, “we heard that the city has seen … trouble lately.”
“One of my ardents tried to refound the Hierocracy. We really should keep better watch on who joins them; not every man or woman is proper for service.”
“You had her executed.”
“Of course. She tried to overthrow us.”
Kaladin picked around a pile of musical instruments of the finest wood, sitting in a heap.
Here, Syl’s voice said in his mind. Across the room. Behind the dressing screen.
He passed the balcony to his left. If he remembered right—though the story had been told so often, he had heard a dozen differing versions—Gavilar and the assassin had fallen off that ledge during their struggles.
“Aesudan,” Elhokar said, his voice pained. He stepped forward, extending his hand. “You’re not well. Please, come with me.”
“Not well?”
“There’s an evil influence in the palace.”
“Evil? Husband, what a fool you are at times.”
Kaladin joined Syl and glanced behind the dressing screen, which had been pushed back against the wall to section off a small cubby. Here a child—two or three years old—huddled and trembled, clutching a stuffed soldier. Several spren with soft red glows were picking at him like cremlings at a corpse. The boy tried to turn his head, and the spren pulled on the back of his hair until he looked up, while others hovered in front of his face and took horrific shapes, like horses with melting faces.
Kaladin reacted with swift, immediate rage. He growled, seizing the Sylblade from the air, forming a small dagger from mist. He drove the dagger forward and caught one of the spren, pinning it to the wall’s wooden paneling. He had never known a Shardblade to cut a spren before, but this worked. The thing screamed in a soft voice, a hundred hands coming from its shape and scraping at the Blade, at the wall, until it seemed to rip into a thousand tiny pieces, then faded.
The other three red spren streaked away in a panic. In his hands, Kaladin felt Syl tremble, then groan softly. He released her, and she took the shape of a small woman. “That was … that was terrible,” she whispered, floating over to land on his shoulder. “Did we … just kill a spren?”
“The thing deserved it,” Kaladin said.
Syl just huddled on his shoulder, wrapping her arms around herself.
The child sniffled. He was dressed in a little uniform. Kaladin glanced back at the king and queen—he’d lost track of their conversation, but they spoke in hissing, furious tones.
“Oh, Elhokar,” the queen was saying. “You were ever so oblivious. Your father had grand plans, but you … all you ever wanted to do was sit in his shadow. It was for the best that you went off to play war.”
“So you could stay here and … and do this?” Elhokar said, waving toward the palace.
“I continued your father’s work! I found the secret, Elhokar. Spren, ancient spren. You can bond with them!”
“Bond…” Elhokar’s mouth worked, as if he couldn’t understand the very word he spoke.
“Have you seen my Radiants?” Aesudan asked. She grinned. “The Queen’s Guard? I’ve done what your father could not. Oh, he found one of the ancient spren, but he could never discover how to bond it. But I, I have solved the riddle.”
In the dim light of the royal chambers, Aesudan’s eyes glittered. Then started to glow a deep red.
“Storms!” Elhokar said, stepping back.
Time to go. Kaladin reached down to try to pick up the child, but the boy screamed and scrambled away from him. That, finally, drew the king’s attention. Elhokar rushed over, throwing aside the dressing screen. He gasped, then knelt beside his son.
The child, Gavinor, scooted away from his father, crying.
Kaladin looked back to the queen. “How long have you been planning this?”
“Planning for my husband’s return?”
“I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to the thing beyond you.”
She laughed. “Yelig-nar serves me. Or do you speak of the Heart of the Revel? Ashertmarn has no will; he is merely a force of consumption, mindless, to be harnessed.”
Elhokar whispered something to his son. Kaladin couldn’t hear the words, but the child stopped weeping. He looked up, blinked away tears, and finally let his father pick him up. Elhokar cradled the child, who in turn clutched his stuffed soldier. It wore blue armor.
“Out,” Kaladin said.
“But…” The king looked toward his wife.
“Elhokar,” Kaladin said, gripping the king’s shoulder. “Be a hero to the one you can save.”
The king met his eyes, then nodded, clutching the young child. He started toward the door, and Kaladin followed, keeping his eyes on the queen.
She sighed loudly, stepping after them. “I feared this.”
They rejoined their soldiers, then began to retreat down the hallway.
Aesudan stopped in the doorway to the king’s chambers. “I have outgrown you, Elhokar. I have taken the gemstone into me, and have harnessed Yelig-nar’s power.” Something started to twist around her, a black smoke, blown as if from an unseen wind.
“Double time,” Kaladin said to his men, drawing in Stormlight. He could feel it coming; he’d sensed where this would go the moment they’d started up the steps.
It was almost a relief when, at last, Aesudan shouted for her soldiers to attack.
* * *
Give it all to me, the voices whispered in Shallan’s mind. Give me your passion, your hunger, your longing, your loss. Surrender it. You are what you feel.
Shallan swam in it, lost, like in the depths of the ocean. The voices beset her from all sides. When one whispered that she was pain, Shallan became a weeping girl, singing as she twisted a chain tight around a thick neck. When another whispered that she was hunger, she became an urchin on the street, wearing rags for clothing.