The Way of Kings

“Radiant / of birthplace / the announcer comes / to come announce / the birthplace of Radiants.”

– Though I am not overly fond of the ketek poetic form as a means of conveying information, this one by Allahn is often quoted in reference to Urithiru. I believe some mistook the home of the Radiants for their birthplace.

The towering walls of the chasm rising on either side of Kaladin dripped with greenish grey moss. His torch’s flames danced, light reflecting on slick, rain-wetted sections of stone. The humid air was chilly, and the highstorm had left puddles and ponds. Spindly bones – an ulna and a radius – poked from a deep puddle Kaladin passed. He didn’t look to see if the rest of the skeleton was there.

Flash floods, Kaladin thought, listening to the scraping steps of the bridgemen behind him. That water has to go somewhere, otherwise we’d have canals to cross instead of chasms.

Kaladin didn’t know if he could trust his dream or not, but he’d asked around, and it was true that the eastern edge of the Shattered Plains was more open than the western side. The plateaus had been worn away. If the bridgemen could get there, they might be able to flee to the east.

Might. Many chasmfiends lived in that area, and Alethi scouts patrolled the perimeter beyond. If Kaladin’s team met them, they would have trouble explaining what a group of armed men – many with slave brands – was doing there.

Syl walked along the wall of the chasm, about level with Kaladin’s head. Groundspren didn’t pull her downward as they did everything else. She walked with her hands clasped behind her back, her tiny, knee-length skirt fluttering in an intangible wind.

Escape to the east. It seemed unlikely. The highprinces had tried very hard to explore that way, looking for a route to the center of the Plains. They’d failed. Chasmfiends had killed some groups. Others had been caught in the chasms during highstorms, despite precautions. It was impossible to predict the storms perfectly.

Other scouting parties had avoided those two fates. They’d used enormous extensible ladders to climb atop plateaus during highstorms. They’d lost many men, though, as the plateau tops provided poor cover during storms, and you couldn’t bring wagons or other shelter with you into the chasms. The bigger problem, he’d heard, had been the Parshendi patrols. They’d found and killed dozens of scouting parties.

“Kaladin?” Teft asked, hustling up, splashing through a puddle where bits of empty cremling carapace floated. “You all right?”

“Fine.”

“You look thoughtful.”

“More breakfast-full,” Kaladin said. “That gruel was particularly dense this morning.”

Teft smiled. “I never took you for the glib type.”

“I used to be more so. I get it from my mother. You could rarely say anything to her without getting it twisted about and tossed back to you.”

Teft nodded. They walked in silence for a time, the bridgemen behind laughing as Dunny told a story about the first girl he’d ever kissed.

“Son,” Teft said, “have you felt anything strange lately?”

“Strange? What kind of strange?”

“I don’t know. Just… anything odd?” He coughed. “You know, like odd surges of strength? The… er, feeling that you’re light?”

“The feeling that I’m what?”

“Light. Er, maybe, like your head is light. Light-headed. That sort of thing. Storm it, boy, I’m just checking to see if you’re still sick. You were beat up pretty badly by that highstorm.”

“I’m fine,” Kaladin said. “Remarkably so, actually.”

“Odd, eh?”

It was odd. It fed his nagging worry that he was subject to some kind of supernatural curse of the type that were supposed to happen to people who sought the Old Magic. There were stories of evil men made immortal, then tortured over and over again – like Extes, who had his arms torn off each day for sacrificing his son to the Voidbringers in exchange for knowledge of the day of his death. It was just a tale, but tales came from somewhere.

Kaladin lived when everyone else died. Was that the work of some spren from Damnation, toying with him like a windspren, but infinitely more nefarious? Letting him think that he might be able to do some good, then killing everyone he tried to help? There were supposed to be thousands of kinds of spren, many that people never saw or didn’t know about. Syl followed him. Could some kind of evil spren be doing the same?

A very disturbing thought.