The Way of Kings

During Gavilar’s youth, only two things had thrilled him – conquest and hunting. When he hadn’t been seeking one, it had been the other. Suggesting the hunt had seemed rational at the time. Gavilar had been acting oddly, losing his thirst for battle. Men had started to say that he was weak. Dalinar had wanted to remind his brother of the good times in their youth. Hence the hunt for a legendary chasmfiend.

“Your father wasn’t with me when I ran across them,” Dalinar continued, thinking back. Camping on humid, forested hills. Interrogating Natan natives via translators. Looking for scat or broken trees. “I was leading scouts up a tributary of the Deathbend River while your father scouted downstream. We found the Parshendi camped on the other side. I didn’t believe it at first. Parshmen. Camped, free and organized. And they carried weapons. Not crude ones, either. Swords, spears with carved hafts…”

He trailed off. Gavilar hadn’t believed either, when Dalinar told him. There was no such thing as a free parshman tribe. They were servants, and always had been servants.

“‘Did they have Shardblades then?’” Danlan said. Dalinar hadn’t realized that Jasnah had made a response.

“No.”

A scratched reply eventually came. “‘But they have them now. When did you first see a Parshendi Shardbearer?’”

“After Gavilar’s death,” Dalinar said.

He made the connection. They’d always wondered why Gavilar had wanted a treaty with the Parshendi. They wouldn’t have needed one just to harvest the greatshells on the Shattered Plains; the Parshendi hadn’t lived on the Plains then.

Dalinar felt a chill. Could his brother have known that these Parshendi had access to Shardblades? Had he made the treaty hoping to get out of them where they’d found the weapons?

Is it his death? Dalinar wondered. Is that the secret Jasnah’s looking for? She’d never shown Elhokar’s dedication to vengeance, but she thought differently from her brother. Revenge wouldn’t drive her. But questions. Yes, questions would.

“‘One more thing, Uncle,’” Danlan read. “‘Then I can go back to digging through this labyrinth of a library. At times, I feel like a cairn robber, sifting through the bones of those long dead. Regardless. The Parshendi, you once mentioned how quickly they seemed to learn our language.’”

“Yes,” Dalinar said. “In a matter of days, we were speaking and communicating quite well. Remarkable.” Who would have thought that parshmen, of all people, had the wit for such a marvel? Most he’d known didn’t do much speaking at all.

“‘What were the first things they spoke to you about?’” Danlan said. “‘The very first questions they asked? Can you remember?’”

Dalinar closed his eyes, remembering days with the Parshendi camped just across the river from them. Gavilar had become fascinated by them. “They wanted to see our maps.”

“Did they mention the Voidbringers?”

Voidbringers? “Not that I recall. Why?”

“‘I’d rather not say right now. However, I want to show you something. Have your scribe get out a new sheet of paper.’”

Danlan affixed a new page to the writing board. She put the pen to the corner and let go. It rose and began to scratch back and forth in quick, bold strokes. It was a drawing. Dalinar stood up and stepped closer, and Adolin crowded near. Reed and ink wasn’t the best medium, and drawing across spans wasn’t precise. The pen leaked tiny globs of ink in places it wouldn’t have on the other side, and though the inkwell was in the exact same place – allowing Jasnah to re-ink both her reed and Dalinar’s at the same time – his reed sometimes ran out before the one on the other side.

Still, the picture was marvelous. This isn’t Jasnah, Dalinar realized. Whoever was doing the drawing was far, far more talented than his niece.

The picture resolved into a depiction of a tall shadow looming over some buildings. Hints of carapace and claws showed in the thin ink lines, and shadows were made by drawing finer lines close together.

Danlan set it aside, getting out a third sheet of paper. Dalinar held the drawing up, Adolin at his side. The nightmarish beast in the lines and shadows was faintly familiar. Like…

“It’s a chasmfiend,” Adolin said, pointing. “It’s distorted – far more menacing in the face and larger at the shoulders, and I don’t see its second set of foreclaws – but someone was obviously trying to draw one of them.”

“Yes,” Dalinar said, rubbing his chin.

“‘This is a depiction from one of the books here,’” Danlan read. “‘My new ward is quite skilled at drawing, and so I had her reproduce it for you. Tell me. Does it remind you of anything?’”

A new ward? Dalinar thought. It had been years since Jasnah had taken one. She always said she didn’t have the time. “This picture’s of a chasmfiend,” Dalinar said.