Words of Radiance

Shallan blinked out tears. Against her will, the room started to change. White carpet appeared. A picture on the wall. Furniture. Walls painted light blue.

Two corpses.

Shallan stepped over one, though it was just an illusion, and walked to the wall. A painting had appeared, part of the illusion, and it was outlined with a white glow. Something was hidden behind it. She pulled aside the picture, or tried to. Her fingers only made the illusion blur.

This was nothing. Just a re-creation of a memory she wished she didn’t have.

“Mmm… A better lie, Shallan.”

She blinked away tears. Her fingers lifted, and she pressed them against the wall again. This time, she could feel the painting’s frame. It wasn’t real. For the moment, she pretended that it was, and let the image capture her.

“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.