Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last week, we enjoyed story-time with Kaladin and Wit – at least, we enjoyed it apart from Kaladin’s anger at the rest of the world for his current situation; that part, we had to debate. This week, Shallan sets out to do Scholarship, and ends up doing Lightweaving, while Pattern develops his sense of humor.

This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here.

Click on through to join the discussion!

Chapter 60: Veil Walks

Point of View: Shallan
Setting: Shallan’s room in Sebarial’s manor
Symbology: Pattern, Palah, Chach

IN WHICH Shallan compares maps, searching for hints of Urithiru; small foreshadowings are dropped; Pattern attempts to comprehend human complexities like sleep and humor; he suggests that she once knew how to make her Illusions produce sound, and she goes blank; Shallan returns to her maps, presenting an argument for interpreting Stormseat to be in the middle of the Shattered Plains; she is convinced that the way to Urithiru is via Oathgate, and that there should be one in the ruins of Stormseat; Pattern again urges her to remember the skills she once knew, and she blanks again; he doesn’t let up this time, and she creates an Illusion of the broken, wretched girl she believes she would be if she let herself remember; she turns away again from the possibility of remembering, and draws Veil again, then turns her into an Illusion; when she walks away, the Illusion goes fuzzy; with instinct, experimentation, and leaps of intuition, she feeds Stormlight into Pattern and attaches the Illusion to him… and now it can move.

Quote of the Week

“Shallan,” Pattern said, moving closer to her. “I know that you have forgotten much of what once was. Those lies attracted me. But you cannot continue like this; you must admit the truth about me. About what I can do, and what we have done. Mmm … More, you must know yourself. And remember.”

She sat cross-legged on the too-nice bed. Memories tried to claw their way out of the boxes inside her head. Those memories all pointed one way, toward carpet bloodied. And carpet … not.

“You wish to help,” Pattern said. “You wish to prepare for the Everstorm, the spren of the unnatural one. You must become something. I did not come to you merely to teach you tricks of light.”

“You came to learn,” Shallan said, staring at her map. “That’s what you said.”

“I came to learn. We became to do something greater.”

“Would you have me unable to laugh?” she demanded, suddenly holding back tears. “Would you have me crippled? That is what those memories would do to me. I can be what I am because I cut them off.”

An image formed in front of her, born of Stormlight, created by instinct. She hadn’t needed to draw this image first, for she knew it too well.

The image was of herself. Shallan, as she should be. Curled in a huddle on the bed, unable to weep for she had long since run out of tears. This girl … not a woman, a girl … flinched whenever spoken to. She expected everyone to shout at her. She could not laugh, for laughter had been squeezed from her by a childhood of darkness and pain.

That was the real Shallan. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name. The person she had become instead was a lie, one she had fabricated in the name of survival. To remember herself as a child, discovering Light in the gardens, Patterns in the stonework, and dreams that became real …

…

“Mmmm … Such a deep lie,” Pattern whispered. “A deep lie indeed. But still, you must obtain your abilities. Learn again, if you have to.”

A long, long time ago, people used to dislike Shallan because she was a spoiled, entitled, flippant little brat. I remember thinking after the beta read that they might not necessarily like her after reading WoR, but they would certainly see her differently.

Yup.

Commentary

I find it oddly amusing that some of the information that will be crucial to the endgame of this book is slipped into this chapter so casually, and is so quickly covered up by other events. We don’t have the old maps of Natanatan showing a presumed location for Stormseat, but we do have a map of the Silver Kingdoms (front endpapers of TWoK); we also have the new map of the Unclaimed Hills & Shattered Plains – the back endpapers and the map on pp 14-15 of WoR, which sound exactly like what Pattern is describing. Shallan has obviously overlaid the two, recognized that the Shattered Plains & Unclaimed Hills form what was once Natanatan… and made the connection that the capital city might likely be on the (pre-shattered) plains rather than in the mountains.

As it turns out, of course, not only is Stormseat on the Plains, it seems to have been the focal point for whatever shattered them.

The copy of the copy of the copy of the mosaic, while it looks like a pretty but mostly artsy representation of the city, turns out to be absolutely critical in the end, identifying the tower that still stands and the relative off-center location of that perfectly round plateau. (It’s also interesting to look at this map in light of the last Eshonai interlude – the tower where the Five meet, the round plateau that forms the practice grounds, etc. ::sigh::)

Other tidbits that get dropped here: Adolin is preoccupied with something; Dalinar is “sick” and being attended by Navani; Shallan has slipped hints about “something valuable” into  her reports to Palona, hoping to interest Sebarial in an expedition; and Shallan’s brothers have failed to respond to her letters asking them to join her.

On to the central focus of the chapter, though… This is the first time, IIRC, that Shallan directly confronts the fact that she is deliberately blocking her memories. Then again, it’s also the first time Pattern presses her on it and refuses to back off when she blanks out. And blank she does – three times in as many minutes, I think. At long last, though, Pattern ignores her attempts to ignore him and divert the discussion, and presses her to remember; she simply can’t afford to cripple herself by this continued hiding from her memories.

It doesn’t entirely work; while she finally faces the knowledge that she is deliberately blocking her memories, she doesn’t stop blocking them. I think, though, that this is the beginning of her eventual readiness to face the past and then move on.

Stormwatch

This chapter takes place four days after the previous one; coincidentally, the same day as the Eshonai interlude we covered a couple of weeks ago. There are 22 days left in the countdown.

Sprenspotting

Pattern is such a hoot. Humor FTW. One of my favorite exchanges in the whole book is right here:

“Annoying!” she snapped.

Pattern hummed. “I’m sorry that your mystical, godlike powers do not instantly work as you would like them to.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “I thought you didn’t understand humor.”

“I do. I just explained . . .” He paused for a moment. “Was I being funny? Sarcasm. I was sarcastic. By accident!” He seemed surprised, even gleeful.

This is, of course, after the conversation where she made a smart remark and Pattern got into a dissection of humor, making it as not-funny as possible.

Ars Arcanum

Since Shallan can’t/won’t confront her actual memories, she’s pretty intent on starting from scratch rather than remembering the things she used to do. Apparently, in so doing she actually discovers something she hadn’t been able to do before – at least, it doesn’t appear to be something familiar to Pattern. At one time, she’d been able to make her Illusions speak. Now, she can make them move without her direct intervention (by attaching them to Pattern), and she can make them stable at a distance by giving Pattern extra Investiture to support them. It’s really pretty cool, because you can envision all sorts of tricks. She hasn’t done it yet, but I’d love to read a scene where she creates one Illusion for Pattern to carry, and another for herself, and then walks down the street having a conversation between the two of them. Heh. It would be so much fun. And just think of all the ways Pattern could tell her off! Or tell her jokes. Whichever.

Heraldic Symbolism

Palah is clearly here as the Scholar; she might also be shown as the patron of Elsecallers, pointing up  Shallan’s thoughts about Jasnah’s studies and conclusions. Chach isn’t quite so clear, but oddly enough, I think she might represent Pattern’s role in his bond with Shallan at this point… though I just realized that I can’t possibly articulate what I mean by that. Sorry…

Shipping Wars

I’m amused that Shallan begins this chapter focusing on scholarship, because Adolin is “preoccupied” with something else. Heh. But we’re not talking about that yet, la-la-la-la.

There. That ought to keep us busy until next week, when we go flash back to one of those blocked memories… I’d forgotten how depressing this section of the book could be!

Alice Arneson is a long-time Tor.com commenter and Sanderson beta-reader. She would like to present her apologies for being most notable by her absence in the comments for a stretch here; there’s kind of a pile of work going on right now. But y’all are so awesome she’s not even feeling bad about it. Carry on!

Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last week, Shallan practiced her scholarship and her Lightweaving, and perhaps took a small step toward confronting her memories. This week, we go back in time to watch sixteen-year-old Shallan struggle with the balance between helping her father and helping, well, everyone else.

This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here.

Click on through to join the discussion!

Chapter 61: Obedience

Point of View: Li’l Shallan
Setting: Davar estate
Symbology: Inverse Pattern, Chach, Nalan

IN WHICH Shallan has become the perfect, quiet, obedient daughter; the Davar fortunes are slowly changing, but Father is not happier as a result; he forbids Balat’s courtship of Eylita; in retribution for defiance, Father has Balat’s new pod of axehound pups slaughtered; Father has not only a new steward, but a whole new batch of frightening guards; Helaran has returned to the area briefly, but will soon be gone for a long time (!); Balat suggests that he, Eylita, and Shallan run away and find work in Vedenar; Shallan thinks that perhaps Balat should leave, but she herself must stay; Lord Davar orders one of his men to find and kill Helaran, promising the Shardblade as his reward; Malise confronts him, and a shouting match ensues; Lord Davar stomps out, complaining that it’s all everyone else’s fault because no one in this house obeys him.

Quote of the Week

“Would you go with me? If I took Eylita and left? You could be a scribe. Earn your own way, be free of Father.”

“I … No. I need to stay.”

“Why?”

“Something has hold of Father, something awful. If we all leave, we give him to it. Someone has to help him.”

“Why do you defend him so? You know what he did.”

“He didn’t do it.”

“You can’t remember,” Balat said. “You’ve told me over and over that your mind blanks. You saw him kill her, but you don’t want to admit that you witnessed it. Storms, Shallan. You’re as broken as Wikim and Jushu. As … as I am sometimes …”

While I do understand and sympathize with the need for Li’l Shallan to block her memories, I can’t help thinking that life would have been a lot better for the rest of the family if they’d known the truth. The brothers wouldn’t have to hate their father; their father wouldn’t have to bear Shallan’s secret alone; they could all work together to protect Shallan from the other crazies out there; the internal pressure wouldn’t have to drive them all into their own special form of insanity. *sigh*

But then there wouldn’t be much of a story, so there’s that, I guess. All right, I don’t really want to care less about the characters in a book, or I wouldn’t love the book so much. Even so.

SANDERSOOOOONNNNNN! You make my heart hurt!

Commentary

And so we return to the depressive atmosphere of the Davar estate. Last time we were here, Lord Davar had refused to pay Jushu’s gambling debts—mostly because he had no money to do so, though he wouldn’t admit it. Defying her father’s orders to go to her room, Shallan offered up what little she and her brothers had to buy Jushu back, and for the first time (IIRC) we saw someone else beaten specifically for something Shallan had done.

Now we find that the pattern has been established: when she in any way angers her father, he beats someone else in her name. The only defense a 14-year-old has in that case, I think, is the one Shallan has used for the past 15 months: she became a “perfect” daughter so that no one else would get hurt.

What would happen if Balat left? He backed down from fights with Father, but at least he resisted. Wikim merely did what he was told, and Jushu was still a mess. We have to just weather this, Shallan thought. Stop provoking Father, let him relax. Then he’ll come back….

It’s certainly what I’d have done. “Let’s all just do what he wants, stop resisting, and maybe he’ll get better.” Unfortunately, their attempts at passivity don’t seem to have helped Lin any, and it seems pretty clear that Balat’s pitiful resistance is not enough to have the spiraling negative effects that are in evidence. That’s because they are, of course, reckoning without the influence of Odium on their father, plus whatever manipulation the Ghostbloods are doing. He’s getting worse and worse.

To rub salt in the wound, there’s another reminder that Lin Davar wasn’t always a bad-tempered man:

Surely that would make him start laughing again. Surely that would drive the darkness from his eyes.

Shallan unmistakably remembers a time when her father laughed often, and was the kind of man who loved and enjoyed his little daughter as much as she loved and enjoyed him. Whether that was a daddy-daughter link that excluded his sons, we really don’t know; they don’t seem to have the same loving memories of earlier years, but it’s possible that all their earlier memories are tainted by the belief that he murdered their mother. Shallan knows that not only did he not commit murder, he’s allowing them to think he did because he’s protecting his little girl… so her memories of a devoted father are unaffected.

::sniffle:: Gah! Every time I think about that particular dynamic, it makes me even sadder.

ANYWAY. The topic of contention today is Balat’s declared intent to marry Eylita, who Lin has decided is much too low-ranked for him. No, his son and avowed heir must marry up, and as high up as he can manage. (I wonder if anyone at all besides the now-twisted Lin Davar would be serious about marrying the 21-year-old Balat to Highprince Valam’s fifty-something daughter. Oy.)

Sadly, Balat’s attempt to stand up for himself on this particular day has two very negative results: One, Lord Davar uses Balat’s one healthy pursuit (breeding axehounds) against him, tainting the only thing besides Eylita that was holding him together. Two, Balat spills a secret not meant to be shared by telling his father that Helaran is back… thereby setting up an assassination attempt on Helaran, and a new hostility between Lin and Malise. And we know where that’s going to end.

Speaking of Malise, though, this is the first time she’s felt like more than a bland placeholder. I could love her solely for this:

“How dare you,” said a feminine voice from within.

Stunned silence followed. Shallan edged back to look into the room. Malise, her stepmother, stood in the doorway between the bedroom and the sitting room. The small, plump woman had never seemed threatening to Shallan before. But the storm on her face today could have frightened a whitespine.

“Your own son,” Malise said. “Have you no morals left? Have you no compassion?”

*sigh* This glimpse of backbone was sweet at the time, even though she did follow it up with, “It is one thing to beat the servants, but to kill your own son?” (Eurgh!) There was some hope for her to turn out well, for a few minutes here…

Stormwatch

This takes place one and a half years prior to the “present” action, and about one and a half years after the previous flashback, when Shallan bought Jushu back from his creditors. Shallan is about a week past her sixteenth birthday in this scene.

Sprenspotting

Painspren, for Balat’s anguish over the pitiful remains of the axehound pups he’d been breeding. That is all.

All Creatures Shelled and Feathered

Stepping back from Balat’s reaction to the fate of his latest batch of pups, there are a couple of interesting notes. One is simply that one of the ways Balat has been coping with life has been to develop an interest in breeding axehounds. In focusing on the creation of new life, he’s made progress against his old habits of destroying life; now, he rarely hurts anything larger than a cremling. Which… is still a bit creepy, but it’s better than relishing axehound fights. I guess.

Anyway, the other interesting thing is that axehounds apparently produce pups in pods. The question I have now is this: Is “pod” a nomenclature thing, like a pod of whales? Or is it a physical thing, like the egg case of a locust? Just for the sake of Rosharan ecological weirdness, I’m guessing it’s the latter. But I think I’d prefer the former.

Ars Mechanica

While there’s no direct mention of the Soulcaster yet, I think it’s hinted here for the first time, suitably accompanied a few paragraphs later by the first appearance of the new steward Luesh.

But surely… surely things would get better now. Indeed, as Shallan was involved more by the ardents in accounts, she noted a shrewdness to the way her father stopped being bullied by other lighteyes and started playing them against each other. He impressed her, but frightened her, in how he seized for power. Father’s fortunes changed further when a new marble deposit was discovered on his lands—providing resources to keep up with his promises, bribes, and deals.

Whether Davar’s new shrewdness was the cause or the result of Ghostblood attentions isn’t entirely clear, though I think it reads more like the former. In either case, the new marble deposit is certainly the latter, and is plainly instrumental in encouraging his ambitions.

Heraldic Symbolism

Chach and Nalan grace the arch for this poor chapter. I believe Chach is partly for Obedience, and partly for Shallan’s odd role (the youngest child, and the only girl) as Guard for her family. Regarding Nalan, though, I am—as usual—less certain. Is it simply the references to Helaran and his yet-unknown association with the Skybreakers? Is it the twisting of Justice? The new Confidence of Shallan’s father? I’m really open to suggestions here, folks.

Shipping Wars

Am I the only person who thinks that Eylita is crazy to take Balat? Not only is he the scion of a fairly questionable house—even if he is several dahn above her—but he’s certifiably nuts. I feel sorry for him, very much, but I can’t help thinking this has to be a very unhealthy relationship.

Just Sayin’

Favorite metaphor:

She entered the manor, but couldn’t help feeling that she was trying to hold together a carpet as dozens of people pulled out threads from the sides.

That sounds like fun, eh?

Well. On that cheery note, I’ll see you in the comments for your reactions. That ought to keep us busy until next week time, when we return to Kaladin’s prison cell for further ill-timed revelations. Yeah, sorry, no sunshine there either.

Editing to add: There will be no reread post next week, November 26. I’m taking Thanksgiving week off. So for all you USA types, happy Thanksgiving! For everyone else… uh… sorry? (Now I sound Canadian!) Anyway… use the opportunity to dig deeply into the flashbacks, or go reread both epigraph-letters, or something else fun. Back in two weeks!

Alice Arneson is a long-time Tor.com commenter and Sanderson beta-reader, who likes to take these opportunities to point out that we’re following one of the most prolific SFF writers going these days. With Shadows of Self out just recently, and The Bands of Mourning as well as Calamity coming out in the near future, this is a good time to be a reader. And Sanderson has been tracking progress on Stormlight 3 for NaNoWriMo; his progress bar is now at 28%. Just sayin’… it’s a good time to be a fan.

Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last week, we revisited the Davar estate, with sixteen-year-old Shallan trying hard to be obedient. This week, it’s back to Kaladin’s prison cell for a fateful conversation.

This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here.

Click on through to join the discussion!

Chapter 62: The One Who Killed Promises

Point of View: Kaladin
Setting: Kholin warcamp prison
Symbology: Spears, Nalan

IN WHICH Kaladin grumbles at the sameness of the days in prison; Syl has been hiding from him; she speaks of seeing a Cryptic at the fight, and that she recognizes signs that they are looking for someone to bond; Dalinar enters the room, and Kaladin salutes despite himself; Dalinar assures him that he’ll be out in a few more days, but Kaladin expresses doubt, given Elhokar’s history; Dalinar knows immediately that he’s speaking of the silversmiths in Kholinar, and mentions the Roshone affair; Kaladin asks for further information, and Dalinar gives him a brief version; Kaladin phrases his response in terms that fail to allow Dalinar to understand the personal impact Roshone’s exile had on him; Dalinar reminds Kaladin that, however things should work, the way they do work means that challenging Amaram was an ineffective approach to changing them; Dalinar leaves, and Kaladin focuses only on the fact that Elhokar’s poor decision-making inadvertently cost his family their comfortable position in Hearthstone, and decides that it would be best for the kingdom if Elhokar were removed.

Quote of the Week

“I gave you a position no darkeyes has ever held in this army. I let you into conferences with the king, and I listened when you spoke. Do not make me regret those decisions, soldier.”

“You don’t already?” Kaladin asked.

“I’ve come close,” Dalinar said. “I understand, though. If you truly believe what you told me about Amaram … well, if I’d been in your place, I’d have been hard pressed not to do the same thing you did. But storm it, man, you’re still a darkeyes.”

“It shouldn’t matter.”

“Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does. You want to change that? Well, you’re not going to do it by screaming like a lunatic and challenging men like Amaram to duels. You’ll do it by distinguishing yourself in the position I gave you. Be the kind of man that others admire, whether they be lighteyed or dark. Convince Elhokar that a darkeyes can lead. That will change the world.”

Hmm. I’d forgotten that Dalinar says this so clearly. “Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does.” This is what I keep trying to say: when things don’t work the way they should, by all means you should work to change them – but ignoring the way they work won’t change anything… except changing your status from “free” to “in prison.”

Commentary

This is really the meat of the chapter, as Dalinar unwittingly fills in the final arc that brings Kaladin’s and Moash’s backstories into a loop.

“The Roshone affair.” I’m reminded of Chapter 37 in The Way of Kings, when Lirin said, “I still don’t know which highlord was behind sending him here to torment us, though I wish I had him for a few moments in a dark room….” Now Kaladin knows, and I suppose with the backdrop of Lirin’s anger at whatever highlord inflicted Roshone on them, it’s no wonder he holds Elhokar partially to blame for what his family suffered from Roshone’s malice.

Questions:

• Was it a good thing for Kaladin to bring up Elhokar’s past errors? Is his own situation (keeping Dalinar in mind, here) sufficient justification for more or less accusing Elhokar of intending to leave him to die in prison?
• Should he have told Dalinar about his own Roshone connection? Would Dalinar have done anything differently? Would telling the story have changed Kaladin’s perspective? Would it have made any difference in Kaladin’s decision to support Moash’s assassination plans?
• Is this an overuse of the lack-of-communication plot device, or is it a justified use, or is the device irrelevant to the situation? (I.e., lack of communication isn’t really the problem here.)

I, of course, have my own opinions on these things, but I’d really like to hear your discussions.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I think it’s worth pointing out now that we’re here. Dalinar’s reaction to Kaladin’s claim that Elhokar “has a history of letting inconvenient people rot in dungeons until they die” should reveal something to Kaladin and to us. That was an isolated incident. While Elhokar does indeed have a real history of taking advice from the wrong people and making truly atrocious leadership decisions, this is not one he repeated.  Dalinar instantly knew exactly who Kaladin was talking about: the silversmiths back in Kholinar… meaning it only happened that one time.

Which is not to say that he didn’t have other people unjustly imprisoned, or that he didn’t thoughtlessly make a mess of many lives by doing favors for those who flattered him enough. I’m just saying that clearly someone learned something from that debacle, and either Elhokar was smart enough not to repeat it, or Dalinar (and/or Gavilar) was smart enough to keep a better eye on the crown prince.

Kaladin, of course, only sees that Elhokar’s past foolishness ended with his own family’s maltreatment by Roshone, and connects it with the tantrum Elhokar threw after the big fight and his own imprisonment. As a result – despite Dalinar’s wise words about loyalty and generosity and the flaws of all men – Kaladin decides he’s qualified to determine the course that will be best for the welfare of the kingdom and Dalinar himself.

Just a bit arrogant, m’lad. Just a bit.

Also: if Dalinar’s “I was … away at the time” is referring to his trip to the Nightwatcher, said trip had nothing to do with Gavilar’s death. (I seem to recall recent speculation along that line, right?)

Stormwatch: This is Kaladin’s tenth day in prison.

Sprenspotting: Kaladin sees captivity-spren! Pretty sure that’s what they are, “strange spren like taut wires crossing before him.” I have a theory that Axies never saw them because being imprisoned just never bothered him enough. Could have something to do with the length of the imprisonment, though, I suppose.

In other news, Syl has become very hard to spot – which I assume is largely a matter of her discomfort with Kaladin’s current attitude and the distance he’s put between them. However, she’s still talking to him.

“There was a Cryptic at the fight,” her voice said softly.

“You mentioned those before, didn’t you? A type of spren?”

“A revolting type.” She paused. “But not evil, I don’t think.” She sounded begrudging. “I was going to follow it, as it fled, but you needed me. When I went back to look, it had hidden from me.”

“What does it mean?” Kaladin asked, frowning.

“Cryptics like to plan,” Syl said slowly, as if recalling something long lost. “Yes … I remember. They debate and watch and never do anything. But …”

“What?” Kaladin asked, rising.

“They’re looking for someone,” Syl said. “I’ve seen the signs. Soon, you might not be alone, Kaladin.”

Looking for someone. To choose, like him, as a Surgebinder. What kind of Knight Radiant had been made by a group of spren Syl so obviously detested? It didn’t seem like someone he’d want to get to know.

Oh, storms, Kaladin thought, sitting back down. If they choose Adolin …

The thought should have made him sick. Instead, he found Syl’s revelation oddly comforting. Not being alone, even if it did turn out to be Adolin, made him feel better and drove away some small measure of his gloom.

I’m… just going to leave that there for you to discuss. I can’t seem to phrase my comments coherently, but this conversation seems Significant.

All Creatures Shelled and Feathered

No, this has neither shell nor feather, and in fact isn’t in this chapter at all. I include it anyway, and my reasons are twofold: One, I miss Carl around here. Two, this chapter could seriously use some levity. Or levitation. Either one.

Also: Snuhr. I want some this year!

Heraldic Symbolism: Nalan. I would venture to guess that his presence reflects Kaladin’s conclusion that “justice” requires getting rid of the king, presuming to know what’s best for the kingdom.

There. That ought to keep us depressed until next week, when Shallan gets all clever and outwits a Ghostblood or something. See you in the comments!

Alice Arneson is a long-time Tor.com commenter and Sanderson beta-reader. She is currently up to her ears in Christmas preparations, now that the Calamity proofreading is complete.

Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last week, Kaladin learned of the disturbing connection between his own past and that of Moash, with predictably negative results. This week, we rejoin Shallan as she attempts to outwit the Ghostbloods, and has an unnerving encounter with a (presumed) Herald.

This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here.

Click on through to join the discussion!

Chapter 63: A Burning World

Point of View: Shallan
Setting: Sebarial & Kholin warcamps
Symbology: Pattern, Shalash, Talenel

IN WHICH Shallan converses via spanreed with Adolin, who is mysteriously occupied; at the same time, she is attempting to spy on the Ghostbloods who are attempting to spy on her; she finally figures it out and sends Pattern to find the spy; he then carries a Veil illusion and draws the spy out of her hiding place; getting the drop on said spy, Shallan-as-Veil initiates a conversation, resulting in the two proceeding together on the mission rather than Iyatil sneaking along spying on Veil; a little sleight-of-Illusion gets them into Dalinar’s warcamp without Iyatil seeing the means Shallan uses; once they enter the temple grounds, Shallan gets them into the monastery building by claiming that Iyatil is her sister and is doing seriously weird things with this mask gig; Iyatil reluctantly plays along, keeping the ardents occupied while Shallan seeks out her quarry—the man who calls himself Talanel-Elin; he recites his muttered litany about Desolations and loss, bronze and steel, preparations and training; Shallan writes it all down and double-checks it, since he says the same thing every time; when she draws in Stormlight to replace her disguise, however, he comes unglued and grabs her; he seems to recognize her as a Knight Radiant, though he can’t quite put all the pieces together, but then gives up and settles back into his repetitions; as she again attempts to slip out the door, she sees a group coming right to this same cell, and one of them is Amaram.

Quote of the Week

“My name,” the woman said. “Iyatil.”

“I’ve never heard one like it.”

“Unsurprising. Your task today was to investigate a certain new arrival into Dalinar’s camp. We wish to know about this person, and Dalinar’s allegiances are uncertain.”

“He’s loyal to the king and the Throne.”

“Outwardly,” the woman said. “His brother knew things of an extraordinary nature. We are uncertain if Dalinar was told of these things or not, and his interactions with Amaram worry us. This newcomer is linked.”

“Amaram is making maps of the Shattered Plains,” Shallan said. “Why? What is out there that he wants?” And why would he want to return the Voidbringers?

Iyatil didn’t answer.

Somehow I don’t think Iyatil cares about Dalinar’s allegiance to king and throne; she’s obviously more concerned about his possible involvement with one of the “secret society” organizations we’ve been glimpsing. Which makes me wonder… was Gavilar actively committed to the goals of only one group, or was he linked to several of them? These shadowy groups make my head hurt; there are too many of them, with overlapping and contradictory goals. And I don’t know quite enough about any of them… which is a little odd, considering how much more we learned about them in this book.

Commentary

The plot thickens… The Ghostbloods, whoever they are, are now very interested in Dalinar’s “madman”—mostly because of Dalinar’s connections to Gavilar and Amaram. I find it mildly amusing that neither the Ghostbloods nor Dalinar know/believe who the guy is—but his (assumed) identity is far more critical to current events than they seem to realize. The “Sons of Honor,” on the other hand, believe he is who he claims to be, and take it as a sign that their purpose will be fulfilled—but they don’t seem to realize what horrible things may have been unleashed. But… that’s probably a discussion for another time.

There’s a lovely little worldbuilding sidelight slipped in here, as Shallan and Iyatil approach Dalinar’s temple. Apparently, along with prayer and counseling, the ardents provide both trade school and liberal arts education. (I’m using “liberal arts” in the original sense—the arts worthy of a free person, to enable him or her to take an active part in civic life.)

Darkeyes from almost any nahn could come to be taught a trade, exercising their divine Right to Learn, as mandated by the Heralds. Lesser lighteyes came to learn trades as well, and the higher dahns came to learn the arts or progress in their Callings to please the Almighty.

A large population of ardents like this one would have true masters in every art and trade. Perhaps she should come and seek Dalinar’s artists for training.

So (almost*) any person in Alethkar could go to the ardents to learn any trade appropriate to their means and skills, and those of sufficient rank or wealth to not need a trade could still come to be educated in the arts. Visual arts, music, logic, rhetoric, philosophy, astronomy, mathematics—it would have been available in the level and form suitable to the individual’s skills and inclinations. Despite our earlier conversations about Adolin’s lack of education, I’m suspicious that he’s not necessarily so lacking as we thought—or any absence is more attributable to lack of interest than lack of opportunity.

*almost any person… I assume this excludes those which the Copperminds identifies thus:

While those at the lowest level of nahn without the right of travel are essentially serfs tied to the land they are currently on, this is relatively rare. Many more people are at the slightly higher levels of nahn that include the right of travel.

So there are a few whose right of travel is so restricted that they would not be able to seek out the ardentia for training, but it’s not all that common. WoB is that “To be lower ranked than that, something has to have gone wrong for your ancestors and that sort of thing.” I hadn’t really noted this particular tidbit before, but thanks to some of our discussions, I found it very interesting now.

Last but not least is Shallan’s brief interaction with Talenel’Elin. Most of it is the same old stuff he’s repeated every time we’ve seen him, with two exceptions: Early on, she whispers, “Who are you?” and he gives his name and cognomen. Later, as she prepares to resume her ardent disguise, something about it gets his undivided attention—to the point where she summons her Blade—but after a few mutters about “Ishar’s Knights” he gives up and goes back to his bed. Something I just now noticed, though:

Shallan inched forward, and found he was back to whispering the same things as before. She dismissed the Blade.

Mother’s soul …

“Shallan?” Pattern asked. “Shallan, are you mad?”

She shook herself. How much time had passed?

She just blanked out again, didn’t she? Why did I never see that before? So then the question is: did Pattern ask if she was mad because she summoned her Blade, or because she went blank after she dismissed him? And did he use “mad” in the sense of “angry” or “broken in the head”?

Stormwatch

This is the day after Dalinar’s visit to Kaladin; there are 18 days left in the countdown.

All Creatures Shelled and Feathered

The gnarly tree needs to be mentioned here. Shallan thinks of it as sort of a cross between a dendrolith (literally, treestone) and a dalewillow (valley willow?). In any case, it’s a clever place to hide something when you want to be sure you see who picks it up; they either have to approach slowly, which is rather obvious, or the tree will pull in its fronds, which is also rather obvious. (Of course, if you really don’t want anyone to see what you’re using it for, maybe it’s not such a good choice. Either way you approach, it’s obvious. I don’t think the Ghostbloods really care about that aspect, though; they just want to be sure they see her pick up the instructions, so they can follow her.)

Ars Arcanum

Pattern and Shallan really get their Lightweaving on, this time. It’s fun to watch as they put to use the things they were discovering last time we saw them. They’ve now moved from simply attaching a picture to Pattern, to a sequence of movement allowing him to “walk” the Illusion where others will see it and not be suspicious.

First, though, there was the neat trick with her hideout; arriving in the dark to create an extension of the shed on top of the building—and this time, with a missing brick or two so she can see out. Clever girl. Points, also, for realizing that they were watching for her; fortunately, they don’t know that she has several ways of getting around their precautions. Sending Pattern to find the spy was genius—and a very Shallan thing to do.

She’s getting quite deft at disguises, our girl. Two versions of Veil, a quick switch from Veil to Shallan and back to Veil, the ardent in the monastery, and Veil again. She must have had a whole sleeve-full of infused spheres to fuel all that! This is where I start thinking, “Don’t get cocky, now, there are still dangers! And don’t forget who you’re supposed to be for each scene!”

Shallan took a deep breath and pulled on her hat, breathing out a second image, one that covered her over and transformed her into Veil. The one on Pattern would remain so long as he had Stormlight. That Stormlight drained from him a lot faster than it did from Shallan, though. She didn’t know why.

Do we know why the Stormlight drains from Pattern so much faster than from Shallan? I think I should know, but tonight I’m drawing a blank. Help me out here, friends.

Haven’t We Met Somewhere Before?

Oh, Iyatil. Shall we start a betting pool on what world she’s from?

She’s obviously baffled and intrigued by Shallan’s—or should I say Veil’s—methods; “I sent a double” can cover Pattern-Veil’s trip to the cache, but getting into the Kholin warcamp isn’t so easily explained. (Shallan is wise not to try, and lucky that her persona would be disinclined to share such secrets.) So here’s my big question: if Iyatil found out what Shallan was doing, would she be more interested in the Lightweaving itself, or in how to use it to accomplish her goals here on Roshar?

We know she’s a world-hopper; what we don’t know is why she’s here, why she’s teaching Mraize, whether she’s part of one of the inter-world organizations we (sort of) know about, which one, and what their ultimate goals are.

“Why the mask?” Shallan asked, leaning forward. “What does it mean? Why do you hide?”

“I have many times asked myself,” Iyatil said, “why those of you here go about so brazenly with features exposed to all who would see them. My mask reserves my self. Besides, it gives me the ability to adapt.”

Hmmm…

It disturbs me to know that it will be many, many years before Brandon gets enough of the Cosmere story out there to answer this kind of question. I’m not getting any younger, here, you know! Well, some answers will come sooner than others, I suppose.

Heraldic Symbolism

Shalash and Talenel are here for fairly obvious reasons: Shalash, for her Lightweaver-in-training and all the clever Illusions being wrought; and Talenel for, well, himself. I know Brandon’s been a bit cagey about whether or not this person really is Taln, but I’m going to assume that he is, at least until I see textual evidence that he isn’t. It’s just easier that way.

I’m guessing that the title “A Burning World” is something to do with the reality that Taln has known for the last 4500 years? That, or what he expects to be happening on Roshar in the near future.

Shipping Wars

Awww, they’re texting!! Isn’t that sweet? Although Shallan is just a little too good at lying to her betrothed, she could hardly tell him what she’s really doing at this point. Still, they’re awfully cute. The whole thing made me grin—especially the part where he has to have an ardent to do the reading and writing for him, and teases the ardent in the process.

She’s clearly new to the courting game (well, we know she is! duh!); she’s bemused that Adolin seems so surprised at her lack of jealousy. I find it amusing that his reputation is largely what makes the women he’s courted so wary of any attention he pays anyone else—but at the same time, their jealousy is also part of what destroys any real relationship that could have otherwise developed. Frankly, this is one of the reasons I love the Shallan-Adolin ship—she’s a perfect, refreshing change from everything he’s known before. She’s willing to actually trust him.

Perhaps she should cling more firmly, but the thought of it nauseated her. Such behavior reminded her of Father, holding so tightly to everything that he eventually broke it all.

… No, Father’s way was not right. If she wanted to keep Adolin, she had to try something far more difficult than just clinging to him. She’d have to be so irresistible that he didn’t want to let go.

Way to go, girl! (It does remind me of “She’d have to rely, instead, upon her feminine wiles. She wished she knew if she had any.” Poor girl.)

Incidentally, a couple of small bombshells are slipped in here, ready to explode downstream. Adolin is bored; he can’t leave his current location, but he could have a visitor. Heh. I wonder where he is! Also, Dalinar is feeling much better now, thank you… Just a head cold or something, you know? Nothing to worry about, all back to normal. Ya, shurr, you betcha.

There. That ought to keep us busy until next week, when Kaladin continues to be frustrated in prison, while Shallan resolves this chapter’s cliffhanger.

Alice Arneson is a long-time Tor.com commenter and Sanderson beta-reader. What a ride!

Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last week, Shallan played hide-and-seek with the Ghostbloods and a Herald. This week, she hides from Amaram while Kaladin hides from depression. It’s a cheerful sort of chapter.

This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here.

Click on through to join the discussion!

Chapter 64: Treasures

Point of View: Kaladin, Shallan
Setting: Kholin warcamp: prison & monastery
Symbology: Pattern, Ishar, Shalash

IN WHICH Kaladin is giving in to depression, as he finds himself slipping into the mode of not eating, not caring, not thinking; desperate, he reaches for Stormlight, praying to not go back into the darkness; the Light resists, but finally comes to him; Sylphrena is worried that he’s becoming darker; he says it’s only the cage; she begins to argue, but then goes off to giggle at a little cremling, while Kaladin thinks how childlike she is. Meanwhile Shallan, trying not to panic as Amaram approaches Talenel’s cell, wraps herself in Stormlight, turns herself black, and hides in the darkest corner; as always, she’s angry at the sight of him, but reason tempers her anger; Amaram speaks to Taln, who merely continues his repetiti0ns; Bordin reiterates his earlier report of a cache of Shardblades, which Amaram assumes to be the Honorblades; he tries to get Taln to speak of them again, but his litany remains the same; Bordin acts nervous, and Amaram finally agrees to leave, to seek out this treasure of Blades; Shallan finally breathes, feeling that she is very much out of her depth, but replaces her Veil illusion and returns to Iyatil; as she prepares to leave, she slips Iyatil the paper transcribing Taln’s ramblings and promises a full report later; Iyatil questions who she really is, but Shallan, though thrilled by the respect shown her, says only that she seeks the truth; later, having sent the promised report, she receives a message from Mraize, informing her of her change of status and welcoming her to the Ghostbloods.

Quote of the Week

Shallan breathed out a long, deep breath, slumping down to the floor. “It’s like that sea of spheres.”

“Shallan?” Pattern asked.

“I’ve fallen in,” she said, “and it isn’t that the water is over my head— it’s that the stuff isn’t even water, and I have no idea how to swim in it.”

That is an excellent simile. Oh, what a feeling…

Commentary

First, a quick housekeeping note. Since next Thursday is Christmas Eve, there will be no post that day. The following Thursday is New Year’s Eve, but since the post goes up early and the partying won’t start until later (theoretically), I’m shooting to reread Chapter 65 on December 31^st. Send the old year out with a bang, finish strong, all that good stuff.

To the Reread!! Onward, ho! We start off the chapter in an incredibly cheerful mood, as Kaladin ignores his food and thinks about how much he loves being caged, how this is just as much fun as his slave days, and compares it to adventures in mountain-climbing.

Oh, wait. Never mind. Reset.

Yeah… So here’s Kaladin, demonstrating classic signs of depression: lack of appetite, lack of energy, lack of interest. Combined with the recent discussion of whether Kaladin has an over-inflated estimate of his own importance, I’m now beginning to wonder if he’s bipolar; a list of symptoms for the “manic” aspect of bipolar disorder includes “feeling extremely irritable, aggressive, and “wired”; thinking of yourself as overly important, gifted, or special; making poor judgments, such as with money, relationships, or gambling; engaging in risky behavior or taking more risks than you ordinarily would.” That… sounds pretty much like Kaladin during/after the duel. Well, I don’t recall hearing Brandon mention anything beyond seasonal depression, so he’s probably not intentionally written that way. It was just hard to miss the coincidence.

This short scene with Kaladin leaves me with very mixed feelings, though. One, depression is just not fun. At all. No matter what the cause. Two, his desperate reaching for Stormlight, praying to the Almighty that the darkness would not take him again, hoping that his prayer will be heard despite the lack of someone to write and burn the prayer for him—all this makes me so sad for him. Three, I’m creeped out a little by the way the Stormlight resists him, and then gives in. Four, I’m even more weirded out by the way he thinks of it straining against him, trying to escape once he’s got it. Five, his attitude toward Syl is just bizarre, and her behavior reflects that. And he doesn’t even notice that there’s anything wrong with her behavior. I come out of this scene sad and extremely uncomfortable.

Shallan, despite her own desperate situation, is actually a breath of fresh air after that. How much is quick thinking, and how much just a lucky instinct, I don’t know—but she immediately does the only thing likely to work. This just makes me smile: turn everything about yourself black and stand quietly in the darkest corner. No one expects you to be there, so no one notices you. Slick.

In what I’m coming to see as typical Shallan fashion, reason again informs—or at least tempers—emotion: though Amaram is “still a bastard, of course” (which he is!) she recognizes that he was probably just defending himself when “he” killed Helaran. Apparently there is a certain amount of mostly-true information readily available regarding the event; she’s put together enough information to know that when Helaran left Jah Keved—and left his siblings to their father’s mercies—it was to kill Amaram.

Other quick notes on the Talenel scene:

Amaram is immediately convinced that this is indeed one of the Heralds, and his reaction is to say, “Gavilar, we have done it. We have finally done it.” “It” is presumably their goal of bringing the Heralds back, and I have to wonder just what they did to try to reach their goal. I’m almost certain that nothing they did had anything to do with Taln’s return, though Amaram clearly thinks it did. I rather hope we get to see his reaction when he learns that whatever they did was a complete waste, and Taln has only returned because he finally broke under four and a half millennia of torture.

Bordin has planted the rumor about a cache of Shardblades, making sure it went straight to Amaram’s ears. Amaram, for reasons only he knows, leaps to the conclusion that they must be the Honorblades. I wonder if any of them are Honorblades. I have other questions, too: Was there actually more than one Blade in the stash Dalinar planted there? If so, where did they come from? If not, why was Amaram not more perturbed about there only being one, when there were supposed to be a cache? Was one of them the Blade Taln arrived with at the end of TWoK? Or did Taln actually talk about a cache of Blades? So much we don’t know.

Amaram promises Bordin a “reward” for helping him find this cache of supposed Honorblades. Heh. Clearly he doesn’t understand Bordin, or for that matter anything about the loyalty of Team Kholin, at all…

And then Shallan becomes a full-fledged Ghostblood, except that somehow she never gets around to getting that tattoo done.

Stormwatch

This is the same day as Chapter 63, one day after Kaladin’s last chapter; it is his 11^th day in prison, counting the day of the duel.

Sprenspotting

It’s rather agonizing to watch Syl regress—and it’s really, really annoying that Kaladin doesn’t even register the change.

“I’m worried about you.” Syl’s voice. “You’re growing dark.”

Kaladin opened his eyes and finally found her, sitting between two of the bars as if on a swing.

“I’ll be all right,” Kaladin said, letting Stormlight rise from his lips like smoke. “I just need to get out of this cage.”

“It’s worse than that. It’s the darkness … the darkness …” She looked to the side, then giggled suddenly, streaking off to inspect something on the floor. A little cremling that was creeping along the edge of the room. She stood over it, eyes widening at the stark red and violet color of its shell.

Kaladin smiled. She was still a spren. Childlike. The world was a place of wonder to Syl. What would that be like?

Patronizing git.

I want to get angry and smack Kaladin around a bit… but at the same time, I understand all too well the depression, and the way it can twist your perceptions. It seems to me, though, that the difference between Syl two weeks ago and Syl now should be totally obvious; he’s just too self-absorbed to realize it. (And yes, self-absorption is a notable aspect of depression, so don’t tell me I’m being insensitive.)

I’m wondering, now, though: how much does he realize about his effect on her? IIRC, by now they’ve had enough conversations that he knows her increasing “maturity”—or understanding, anyway—is an artifact of their bond. But does he have any real concept that his mindset can affect that bond, and through it affect her mental state? (Does it even make sense to talk about the mental state of a cognitive phenomenon? Heh.)

Also: is “the darkness… the darkness…” referring to the mental/emotional darkness of his depression, or is there something else here, too?

All Creatures Shelled and Feathered

Speaking of Syl and the cremling, is there anything unusual about a little cremling with a shell colored “stark red and violet”?

Ars Arcanum

It’s interesting to note that when Kaladin attempts to draw in Stormlight from the lamp, it seems to resist him. I assume that’s a result of the damage his drive for revenge is doing to his bond with Syl… but then why does it suddenly relent? And his reaction… it’s like an addict getting a fix. It’s creepy.

Shallan’s Surgebinding, on the other hand, is totally useful and not at all creepy—unless you think that turning her skin, hair, and clothing all black might have just a little creep factor. Still, it’s useful; she can stand silently in a dark corner and not be seen, plus the Illusion uses up the Stormlight that would normally escape and give her away.

It’s also worth pointing out that she uses Illusion twice in this chapter—to turn black, and to turn back into Veil—and neither time does Taln react like he did previously, when he scared the living daylights out of her. Just guessing, but I suppose that having identified her as “one of Ishar’s Knights,” he has a niche for her, and her Surgebinding is an accepted part of that.

Haven’t We Met Somewhere Before?

There’s not a lot new to say about Iyatil-and-Mraize-the-Worldhoppers, but it’s interesting to note her comments on her own and Mraize’s past experience:

“You caught me in stealth spying upon you, and you can lose me in the streets. This is not easily accomplished. Your clever drawings fascinate Mraize, another near-impossible task, considering all that he has seen. Now what you have done today.”

It’s also interesting to note Shallan’s response:

Shallan felt a thrill. Why should she feel so excited to have the respect of these people? They were murderers.

But storms take her, she had earned that respect.

As always, contemplation of the Ghostbloods brings me back around to wondering what their real purpose is and where they originate. Why would they have been working through a relatively obscure rural Veden lord, and what were they going to use him to accomplish? Why were they trying to kill Jasnah? Who are these people?

Heraldic Symbolism

Ishar and Shalash stand watch over this chapter, for reasons best known to Team Dragonsteel… but my best guess is that Ishar the Priest, pious and guiding, reflects Kaladin’s desperate prayer against the darkness. Shalash is probably there for her little Lightweaver Shallan, with her several uses of Illusion.

Just Sayin’

“Almighty above, ten names, all true.” Well, that sounds pretty emphatic…

Once again, there will be no post next week on Christmas Eve. We’ll be back on the last day of the year with another uneasy visit to the Davar estate, and then we can start the new year on a brighter note.

Alice Arneson is a long-time Tor.com commenter and Sanderson beta-reader. She wishes you all a very merry Christmas full of blessings and fudge. (Umm… those might be the same thing…)

Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last time, Kaladin seemed to be fighting depression, Shallan hid in the darkness while Amaram attempted to interview Talenel, and as a result of her work she was welcomed into the Ghostbloods. This week, we go back in time again, as Shallan tries to make a difference for her family.

This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here.

Click on through to join the discussion!

Chapter 65: The One Who Deserves It

Point of View: Li’l Shallan
Setting: Davar Estate, Jah Keved
Symbology: Inverse Pattern, Palah, Vedel

IN WHICH Shallan marvels at the concept of freely choosing one’s own role; encouraged by the thought, she begins to take action and develops her plan for Balat, Eylita and Malise to get away from the danger and gloom of the Davar estate; as she cares for Malise’s injuries, she reveals her plan for them to escape; Malise is doubtful and bitter.

Quote of the Week

“If I go,” Malise whispered, “and Balat with me, who will he hate? Who will he hit? Maybe you, finally? The one who actually deserves it?”

“Maybe,” Shallan whispered, then left.

This conversation always makes me wonder… Does Malise know anything about the past? Does she know that Shallan, and not her father, killed the previous Lady Davar? If she doesn’t, why does she think Shallan is the one who actually deserves it? Shallan’s “infractions” for the past 15 months or so have been minimal, in order to avoid anyone else being hurt in her name. Does Malise see indications that Lin turns any developing anger at Shallan toward herself and/or Balat? Or does she just think it’s unfair that Shallan apparently never gets in trouble?

I’ll probably never know.

Commentary

Oddly—or perhaps not—I find the section from Jasnah’s book and Shallan’s response to be the most compelling aspect of this chapter.

I say that there is no role for women—there is, instead, a role for each woman, and she must make it for herself. For some, it will be the role of scholar; for others, it will be the role of wife. For others, it will be both. For yet others, it will be neither.

Shallan’s reaction strongly demonstrates the differences between their personalities and their backgrounds:

Highlady Kholin talked about the nobility of choice, as if every woman had such opportunity. The decision between being a mother or a scholar seemed a difficult decision in Jasnah’s estimation. That wasn’t a difficult choice at all! That seemed like a grand place to be! Either would be delightful when compared to a life of fear in a house seething with anger, depression, and hopelessness.

Not to diminish Jasnah’s work to free herself from the tyranny of Expectations, but it makes me itch just a little to smack her upside the head and remind her that she’s had it pretty easy, all in all. And of course, the same question comes in other flavors: not merely whether a woman should have the freedom to choose her place, but a darkeyed farmboy, or a lighteyed artist, or… you could supply plenty of other examples, amiright? For that matter, a highprince’s sons are pretty restricted, too.

The thing is, as nice as Jasnah’s ideology sounds, there are things I don’t think she understands. Or she doesn’t accept them, maybe. People don’t function that way very well, and societies even less so. One reason, I suppose, is that people as a whole are too ready to believe that they have no power to choose. More importantly, though, many people actively and deliberately accept the responsibilities they were born into, and however unhappy they might be in their work, they stay because other people—family—depend on them. (Jasnah doesn’t actually have that kind of experience…) Still and all, people tend to like to know where they’re supposed to fit. Then if they’re unhappy, they can blame it on whatever superficial factors keep them there, without having to actually make the choice and the related sacrifices to do something they claim they would rather do.

One philosopher I know has said that we always choose what we most want, and on the whole I believe he’s right. Many a morning I thought what I most wanted was to stay in bed, certainly way more than I wanted to get up, put my face on, and get dressed… but it turned out that I wanted a paycheck more than I wanted the extra sleep. I chose the thing I wanted most overall, not merely for the moment; I think the same can be said of all choices we make. Unfortunately for Jasnah’s philosophy, what people mostly want is to be accepted and approved by society, or their chosen subgroup of society.

And… I’m about to stray into social criticism, so we’ll head that off now.

There are, however, things that we could all learn from her ideals:

Do not mistake me in assuming I value one woman’s role above another. My point is not to stratify our society—we have done that far too well already—my point is to diversify our discourse.

This is an area where I think our modern society fails miserably. And… I have so much to say about it, that I’m not going to say anything at all. Just that we need to stop with the idea that someone is “wasting his/her life” by making a choice that doesn’t appeal to our own priorities.

Moving on with the story… It strikes me again that Shallan doesn’t realize what is behind her father’s “self-control” toward her. She honestly thinks it’s because he loves her so much that he restrains himself for her sake—a Moral Event Horizon of sorts, perhaps. While I do think that was his original position, it doesn’t appear to have ever crossed Shallan’s mind that her father is afraid of her. He knows, if she doesn’t, that if he threatens her to the point of injury or death, she could pull a Shardblade on him. Deep down, of course, she knows she could do that—but she’s never made the connection from her Blade to her father’s fear-instilled self-restraint.

Speaking of her father, this rather gives me the shivers:

He looked up as she walked back into the feast hall. She set the cup before him, looking into his eyes. No darkness there today. Just him. That was very rare, these days.

Even with “no darkness, just him,” he’s pretty scary by now. He’s been twisted and wrung out so hard. I still feel sorry for him, but he’s gotten bad. Right here, he’s trying hard to rationalize what he’s doing when the darkness is there, but the fact that he’s trying to justify his earlier actions is… creepy. “No one will listen. The litter was all runts anyway.” It’s all someone else’s fault. Pretty sure he knows it’s not, though, or he wouldn’t have to try so hard.

Poor Balat. This was just too much. He’s back to… well, not quite to where he was, reveling in the violence of the axehound fights, but back to petty cruelties against small critters. He doesn’t have the backbone to stand up to his father, and he doesn’t have the skill to do it even if he did have the spine. All he can do is shiver, tear apart cremlings, and hope his little sister can figure it out for him. He’s not someone I can like, but I do feel sorry for him.

Then there’s Malise. At this point, I feel sorrier for her than anyone. She’s been in this family for two and a half years now, and she’s done her level best to make it work. She’s tried to be a decent mother and wife, in a very strange situation. Now she’s got a broken arm and assorted minor injuries, her husband apparently hates everyone but his young daughter, and her only hope is for that daughter to create a way for her to escape.

What a broken, irrational household.

Stormwatch

This is the same day as the previous flashback in Chapter 61, and takes place just a few hours later. For the record, Shallan has recently turned sixteen.

Spren-Spotting

Okay, we don’t actually see Pattern in this chapter, but Shallan “sees” his light blazing from behind the painting which covers Father’s strongbox. It’s a pretty potent visual: she finds it blindingly bright—and yet she still can’t get past “not since… not since…” when she thinks of how long it’s been since she entered this room.

Heraldic Symbolism

Palah, I believe, represents Jasnah’s scholarship as displayed at the beginning of the chapter. Quite possibly, also, she reflects the “learning” Shallan does in this chapter (and will further in a year or so), as well as the “giving” aspect of Shallan’s planning for Balat and Malise to escape, knowing she will remain in this “house seething with anger, depression, and hopelessness” when they leave. Vedel usually represents healing, which is appropriate to Shallan’s ministrations to Malise; she also denotes loving—which, again, fits the planning for everyone else to escape even though she can’t. Or won’t.

Sigh. Now I’m gloomy too. Maybe rejoining Kaladin in prison will cheer me up.

Oh, hey, next week does get better, because Kaladin’s imprisonment is over! Yay!! Come back next week and we’ll have a happy dance party and smile again!

Alice Arneson is a long-time Tor.com commenter and Sanderson beta-reader, who is snickering freely about the fact that there is a new Sanderson book coming out in less than three weeks, and another three weeks after that. Ain’t it fun, being a fan of such a prolific writer?

Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last week, Shallan took further steps to protect her family members from her father’s insanity, despite the probable cost to herself. This week, Kaladin is released from prison, is rewarded for his part in the duel, and displays singularly bad judgement. In my opinion.

This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here.

Click on through to join the discussion!

Chapter 66: Stormblessings

Point of View: Kaladin
Setting: Kholin warcamp prison
Symbology: Spears, Talenel, Nalan

IN WHICH Kaladin continues to spiral down in depression until he is suddenly released from prison; on his way out, he discovers that Adolin has insisted on sharing the incarceration; the two seem to reach a mutual understanding; Kaladin is rewarded for his part in the duel by being given a full set of Shards; he in turn gives them to Moash; Adolin reluctantly agrees to this disposal; Kaladin and Adolin, accompanied by Bridge Four, leave the prison to the sound of cheers from the soldiers and other bridgemen; as they prepare to return to the barracks for the celebration, Kaladin returns to help Moash with his Plate; Kaladin asserts his judgement that Alethkar will be better off if Elhokar is assassinated, and Moash is delighted with the whole thing.

Quote of the Week

Kaladin jogged up to the man. “Why?”

“Didn’t seem right, you in here,” Adolin said, eyes forward.

“I ruined your chance to duel Sadeas.”

“I’d be crippled or dead without you,” Adolin said. “So I wouldn’t have had the chance to fight Sadeas anyway.” The prince stopped in the hallway, and looked at Kaladin. “Besides. You saved Renarin.”

“It’s my job,” Kaladin said.

“Then we need to pay you more, bridgeboy,” Adolin said. “Because I don’t know if I’ve ever met another man who would jump, unarmored, into a fight among six Shardbearers.”

Kaladin frowned. “Wait. Are you wearing cologne? In prison?”

“Well, there was no need to be barbaric, just because I was incarcerated.”

“Storms, you’re spoiled,” Kaladin said, smiling.

“I’m refined, you insolent farmer,” Adolin said. Then he grinned. “Besides, I’ll have you know that I had to use cold water for my baths while here.”

“Poor boy.”

“I know.” Adolin hesitated, then held out a hand.

I don’t know if that’s the most significant conversation in this chapter—there are a lot of those—but it’s still my favorite. This, right here, is the moment when these two men acknowledge their respect for one another. They’ll still give each other a hard time, but now the sting is gone out of it. This is a wonderful, warm moment in a sea of hard, cold events and decisions.

I needed that.

Commentary

This chapter is an exercise in whiplash. It picks up with Kaladin continuing his depression death spiral, starting to believe all sorts of things that are totally not true. Then… Click. The door opens, he’s free, and all the depression starts to fall away. (Honestly, I have to wonder if there isn’t something else going on here, but I don’t quite know what to suggest. It just seems a little… much—that a few steps, a window, and a breath of fresh air could make quite that difference. Then again, I’ve never been in prison, and I rather like being alone, so… maybe my reaction isn’t worth much.) Anyway…

The next scene is really like that breath of fresh air, in the context of what has felt like so many pages of gloom. I’m pretty sure I laughed like a hyena over finding out Adolin had imprisoned himself, and Kaladin’s reaction to it. It was such a delightful scene, with Adolin totally owning the high ground over everyone. I could have included several pages in the QOTW—the whole thing, from when the jailer first says “Your Highness” to when Moash picks up the Blade. I’ll toss in a couple of the more significant sections, just because they really need to be pointed out for discussion:

… “I’m sorry,” he said. “For ruining the plan.”

“Bah, you didn’t ruin it,” Adolin said. “Elhokar did that. You think he couldn’t have simply ignored your request and proceeded, letting me expand on my challenge to Sadeas? He threw a tantrum instead of taking control of the crowd and pushing forward. Storming man.”

According to Adolin, Elhokar bears the primary responsibility for screwing it up. I think I’d agree, but it does my heart good to see Kaladin acknowledge that he was wrong.

“The things you said about Amaram,” Adolin said. “Were they true?”

“Every one.”

Adolin nodded. “I’ve always wondered what that man was hiding.” He continued walking.

“Wait,” Kaladin said, jogging to catch up, “you believe me?”

“My father,” Adolin said, “is the best man I know, perhaps the best man alive. Even he loses his temper, makes bad judgment calls, and has a troubled past. Amaram never seems to do anything wrong. If you listen to the stories about him, it’s like everyone expects him to glow in the dark and piss nectar. That stinks, to me, of someone who works too hard to maintain his reputation.”

Well, someone taught the boy to think, because that’s downright insightful—one of the many evidences I have for thinking that Adolin is so much more than the dumb-jock type he likes to pretend to be. He’s way smarter than he admits. The thing that hurts most is that this should have done SO much to restore Kaladin’s faith that something could and would be done, but he doesn’t even think about it.

On that subject, then:

“Your father says I shouldn’t have tried to duel him.”

“Yeah,” Adolin said, reaching the door at the end of the hallway. “Dueling is formalized in a way I suspect you just don’t get. A darkeyes can’t challenge a man like Amaram, and you certainly shouldn’t have done it like you did. It embarrassed the king, like spitting on a gift he’d given you.”

I don’t know how you go about learning that what you don’t know can kill you, when you don’t even know how much there is you don’t know, but Kaladin is finally having to realize that he just doesn’t know everything. For all his big ideas, there really are things about the rest of the world that can’t be understood from the perspective of his own life experience. What he did was incredibly presumptuous, but it never even occurred to him that he didn’t know all the rules.

There’s so much more I’d like to talk about here: Kaladin’s gut-wrenched reaction to the Shards, the echo of his earlier attempt when he assigns them to Moash, the distinctly different reaction of Adolin from the way Amaram had responded, Kaladin’s reasoning to persuade Adolin that it would be a good thing. And more: Teft’s confidence that things would be fine, his leadership in Kaladin’s absence, the curiosity about Amaram and Kaladin’s past.

A couple things I will mention, though. When they finally leave the building and go outside:

Adolin moved to join his father, but Dalinar watched Kaladin. What did that look mean? So pensive.

If only they had talked right here. Dalinar has given Amaram four days to find that Blade they hid, retrieve it, and then come talk to him about it… and clearly he’s heard nothing from Amaram about that subject at all. From what we learn later, at this point Dalinar has good reason to suspect that Kaladin might be telling the truth, rather than Amaram, but he’s still waiting for Amaram to make a move.

And so. I don’t know if it would have mattered at this point anyway. Kaladin had already made up his mind that Elhokar was a bad king and ought to be got out of the kingdom’s way. IIRC, last time we talked about this subject, I was thinking that Kaladin showed pretty poor judgement, trusting the Shards to a man he knew was part of an attempt to murder the king, but in rereading I realized that he knew exactly what he was doing: he was giving the perfect weapon to a man in the perfect position to commit the murder, and setting him up with the perfect alibi. What Kaladin did here could, I think, justifiably be called treason.

It’s too bad that this particular decision didn’t get thrown away with the rest of the captivity-induced lies he was telling himself.

Stormwatch

This was Kaladin’s fifteenth day in prison; there are fourteen days left on the countdown. Ba-DUM.

Sprenspotting

There are two notable spren incidents in this chapter. One is the appearance of a veritable cloud of gloryspren around Moash when he picks up his new Blade:

The tall bridgeman walked to the side of the room, reaching out a hand to rest his fingers on the Shardblade. He ran those fingers all the way down to the hilt, then seized it, lifting the Blade in awe. Like most, it was enormous, but Moash held it easily in one hand. The heliodor set into the pommel flashed with a burst of light.

Moash looked to the others of Bridge Four, a sea of wide eyes and speechless mouths. Gloryspren rose around him, a spinning mass of at least two dozen spheres of light.

I know there has been a lot of debate about the terminology of these little guys, but I still like the term gloryspren. It makes use of a less-familiar sense of “glory” but one that really works for me. Besides, it sounds better than “wowspren.” I suppose in a way, “exaltationspren” would be slightly easier to comprehend, but it just doesn’t have the right ring to it.

Anyway. The other incident is more the absence of a spren:

… “I had a lot of time to think, in there,” Kaladin said.

“I can imagine.”

“The time led me to a few decisions,” Kaladin said as the section of Plate locked into place. “One is that your friends are right.”

Moash turned to him sharply. “So…”

“So tell them I agree with their plan,” Kaladin said. “I’ll do what they want me to in order to help them… accomplish their task.”

The room grew strangely still.

I don’t know exactly what happened there, but something did, and I think it was the Nahel bond being stretched nearly to the breaking point.

Ars Mechanica

This is as good a place as any to point out a detail about the Shardblades. At this point, no one in-story really knows for sure whether or not a darkeyed man will become lighteyed if he bonds a Blade, but one thing happens immediately: he becomes fourth dahn. While it doesn’t sound like much on the surface—fourth dahn, out of ten—as Adolin points out, it ranks you above roughly ninety percent of Alethkar… and I suspect the number is actually higher. If only the king, queen, and the heir apparent are in the first dahn, and the second is made up of the highprinces and (presumably) their wives and heirs, that makes a total of at most 33 people in the top two ranks. The third dahn would be made up of the rest of the highprinces’ children, along with their spouses and children, plus an assortment of other landholders. On a guess, maybe a few hundred people? (I wonder how far you can carry the order-of-magnitude progression before it becomes outrageous…) Anyway that leaves Moash ranked equal to or higher than all but a few hundred people in Alethkar. I find this disturbing—but only because it’s Moash. In general, I suppose it makes in-world sense.

Oh, and just for reference, the Blade itself:

… a shimmering silvery Blade. Edged on both sides, a pattern of twisting vines ran up its center.

Do you suppose it’s another Edgedancer Blade?

You Have to Break a Lot of Rockbuds

Rock’s stew sounds… frightening, frankly! (It reminds me of the old Dixie’s BBQ here in Bellevue. The proprietor had a pot of “barbecue sauce” he referred to as The Man and it was literally too hot to eat, which meant that it was a local tradition to take out-of-town business guests there to “meet the Man.” Rumor has it that he never emptied the pot, just kept it simmering, and added more chilies when it started to get low.) This stuff of Rock’s has been simmering for three weeks now; it could be deadly.

Heraldic Symbolism

Talenel, the Soldier, the Herald of War; Nalan, the Judge, the Herald of Justice. I’m honestly not sure why Talenel is used here, other than perhaps the new solidarity of two soldiers or the making of a new Shardbearer. Nalan, on the other hand, I’m reasonably sure is here to “honor” Kaladin’s judgement that the king should be killed for the good of Alethkar and maybe the world.

Shipping Wars

Stop it. They’re like brothers now, or maybe cousins. Friends and comrades-in-arms—or they would be if Kaladin weren’t secretly conspiring to assassinate Adolin’s real cousin.

Just Sayin’

“Enough of this!” Rock said as the armorers began to work, his voice filling the room like captive thunder.

I love this. “Filling the room like captive thunder.” Love this. It’s so perfect for my mental image of Rock.

There. That ought to keep us busy until next week, when we rejoin Dalinar and Navani as they face rumors and lies in the high court. Have a good week, and I’ll see you in the comments!

Alice Arneson is a long-time Tor.com commenter and Sanderson beta-reader, and is now eagerly counting down to the release of The Bands of Mourning. Not long now… and there will be a spoiler discussion thread ready and waiting. Be sure to join in on all the shouting and screaming. There will be shouting and screaming.

Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last week, Kaladin was released from prison, was awarded a full set of Shards which he promptly gave away, and declared his support for the planned assassination of the king.  This week, Dalinar faces an unsubtle attempt to make him look foolish, and turns the tables to render the attack powerless.

This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here.

Click on through to join the discussion!

Chapter 67: Spit and Bile

Point of View: Dalinar
Setting: The Pinnacle and the Feasting Basin
Symbology: Kholin glyphpair, Ishar, Joker

IN WHICH Dalinar and Navani stroll toward another feast they’d rather not attend; Navani natters about fabrials while Dalinar’s mind wanders to his upcoming expedition; he finally registers that she’s rambling about her work because it takes her mind off Jasnah, at which point she breaks down and cries; they proceed to the feasting basin; Wit has returned; people are behaving oddly, but no one will let Dalinar in on the joke; Amaram arrives, and tells Dalinar that someone has leaked Navani’s accounts of his visions; Navani herself rejoins them, telling Dalinar that they have twisted her reports to make him look foolish; he refuses to be embarrassed, and climbs up on a table to tell them it’s all true; he then spends the rest of the evening confounding their expectations; the evening wraps up in a troubling conversation with Wit.

Quote of the Week

Amaram seemed so earnest. Why didn’t he help your sons? Kaladin’s voice rang in Dalinar’s mind. Amaram had come to him that day, of course, professing his apologies and explaining that— with his appointment as a Radiant—he couldn’t possibly have helped one faction against another. He said he needed to be above the squabbles between highprinces, even when it pained him.

“And the supposed Herald?” Dalinar asked. “The thing I asked you about?”

“I am still investigating.”

Dalinar nodded.

Another cryptic little exchange, which will be clarified later. In retrospect, though, it’s almost funny how obvious it is that Dalinar has, however reluctantly, concluded that Amaram is not all he pretends to be.

Commentary

This feels like two separate chapters, for some reason. There’s the whole scene with Dalinar and Navani strolling along, talking about fabrials, Shardblades, and bereavement. Then there’s the whole scene at the feast, with someone trying to discredit Dalinar’s visions, integrity, and authority.

Dalinar’s response is pure gold:

“I am not a youth, nervous at his first feast. Sadeas makes a mistake in believing I will respond to this as he would. Unlike a sword, scorn has only the bite you give it.”

Not that it’s quite so easy as all that, but this is really the only appropriate reaction to this scenario. I will confess to a gleeful grin when Dalinar climbed onto the food table with the thought that

Making a spectacle of oneself in this way was not done in Alethkar. He, however, had already been this evening’s spectacle.

Might as well take advantage of the spotlight to let it shine on the truth, eh? And he does exactly that, as he points out the truth of the visions and promises to share any new ones immediately. And then… then he proceeds to ignore the whole “visions” thing, instead exploiting his position as the center of attention to work people over in support of his up-coming Weeping-time expedition to the center of the Shattered Plains. Cleverly done, and I do most dearly love to see tables turned on Sadeas.

He had pointedly ignored the pages with his visions on them, except when asked direct questions about what he’d seen. Instead, he had presented them with a forceful, confident man—the Blackthorn turned politician. Let them chew on that and compare him to the frail madman the falsified transcripts would make him out to be.

The primary drawback is the one he notes at the end of the evening: that he has essentially ignored the structure he and Gavilar claimed to have established, and has taken the reins in his own hands after all. Elhokar may wear the crown and bear the title, but when real action is needed, it’s up to Dalinar to keep the whole thing from falling apart. It’s a lousy dilemma; under normal circumstances I’d say he really ought to back off and let Elhokar be king. These are not, however, “normal circumstances,” and Elhokar is dismally ill-equipped to lead when the fate of the world is on the line.

Stormwatch

These events take place three days after Kaladin’s release from jail; eleven days remain in the countdown. It comes. It comes!

::cue ominous music::

Sprenspotting

Politicking is hard work: the only spren in this entire chapter are the exhaustionspren Dalinar draws after an evening spent drumming up support for his Plains excursion.

Ars Mechanica

It always amazes me how much substance Sanderson slips into what is really a very short conversation about fabrial construction. Of course, since we know so little, any is a lot more. Navani muses on how to make fabrial pumps, and on the way by we learn a bit more about using gemstones to attract or repel specific substances.

The big revelation, of course, is the part about the Shardblades; it’s almost funny to look back and realize that when we read this the first time, we didn’t know what Shardblades really were. This was one of the early hints that the Blades are not fabrials – in the ordinary sense – at all, though I know I didn’t register that. In fact, I was thinking that the gemstones must (like all fabrial gemstones) contain a captive spren which was somehow forced to bond with whoever picked up the Blade. And… well… sorta… but not really. It involves a captive spren, all right, it’s just not trapped in the stone.

Someone was wondering why the Blades originally shifted to accept the stones, back in the day; I now suspect that the opportunity for some kind of return to sentience, however limited, was enticement enough. It still makes me hurt to think of all those spren, forever trapped in Blade form, only able to be a little bit themselves when someone bonds and summons them.

You Have to Break a Lot of Rockbuds

I dunno how many rockbuds they broke for this feast, but Dalinar sure didn’t get to eat much. At least his guards got a chance at it.

Haven’t We Met Somewhere Before?

And here’s everyone’s favorite Worldhopper. Ain’t that a surprise. For reasons I can’t explain, I’ve begun to think a little less highly of Hoid, but he’s an absolute gem in this chapter. The snarky remarks to/about Amaram, who has most people fooled, are pretty rich, and definitely reflect Adolin’s comments about him in the previous chapter. I have two favorites, though, and the first is this:

Dalinar gave no reply as Navani strode across the short bridge onto their island. Wit started to proclaim an insult, but she swatted him in the face with a stack of papers, giving him barely a glance as she continued on toward Dalinar. Wit watched after, rubbing his cheek, and grinned.

The visualization is priceless, and makes me snicker every single time I read it.

The other is that whole conversation at the end of the chapter. Wit’s acknowledgement of Dalinar’s skill was a nice moment, but the significant piece is in Dalinar’s understanding of the problems inherent in the manner of “unification” he and Gavilar forced on Alethkar. While Wit may say that “it is an era for tyrants” and that “a benevolent tyrant is preferable to the disaster of weak rule,” and he may be correct, Dalinar is wise to see the shortcomings of his past actions. The question now is, what effect should that have on his decisions and actions in the coming days? Is this the time to try to deal with the problems?

Finally, there’s the wider Cosmere view hinted at in this exchange:

Wit smiled. “I am but a man, Dalinar, so much as I wish it were not true at times. I am no Radiant. And while I am your friend, please understand that our goals do not completely align. You must not trust yourself with me. If I have to watch this world crumble and burn to get what I need, I will do so. With tears, yes, but I would let it happen.”

Dalinar frowned.

“I will do what I can to help,” Wit said, “and for that reason, I must go. I cannot risk too much, because if he finds me, then I become nothing— a soul shredded and broken into pieces that cannot be reassembled. What I do here is more dangerous than you could ever know.”

He turned to go.

“Wit,” Dalinar called.

“Yes?”

“If who finds you?”

“The one you fight, Dalinar Kholin. The father of hatred.” Wit saluted, then jogged off.

I’ll… just leave that there for you. Odium.

::shudder::

Heraldic Symbolism

I suspect that Ishar is here to reflect both the “guiding” aspect of Dalinar’s relationship to Alethkar, and the evening activities of his Bondsmith-to-be. The Joker, as is most common, is associated with Hoid’s presence, but in this case it’s extraordinarily appropriate. He’s the wild card in play.

Shipping Wars

Dalinar & Navani make me happy, even when they’re sad. Awkward moments, though, what with Navani’s implicit admission that she didn’t feel terribly bereaved when Gavilar died, and Dalinar’s inability to explain that thinking of his wife isn’t so much painful as, well, impossible. Someday he’s going to have to tell her about that.

Next week… Next week is crazy full. At this point, I’m still planning to do a reread post next week, but that may change. If I don’t, it will be because of activities surrounding the release of The Bands of Mourning.” If I do, we’ll be joining Kaladin, Dalinar, Adolin, and company on a brief excursion out onto the Plains.

Alice Arneson is a long-time Tor.com commenter and Sanderson beta-reader. She eagerly awaits the release of the latest Mistborn story next week. She’s looking forward to the shrieking, to be perfectly honest.

Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last week, Dalinar was forced to play politics, acknowledging his visions and drumming up support for his upcoming expedition. This week, he takes a smaller force out on an exploratory mission… which takes an abrupt downward turn.

This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. For the time being, though, The Bands of Mourning and the surprise novella are off limits for the WoR reread. Let’s give people a chance to catch up without risking spoilers for a while. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here.

Click on through to join the discussion!

Chapter 68: Bridges

Point of View: Kaladin
Setting: the Shattered Plains
Symbology: Spears, Palah, Kalak

IN WHICH Team Kholin heads out on the Shattered Plains on an expedition, ostensibly to observe a chasmfiend chrysalis; Kaladin tries and fails to draw in Stormlight, and has a small altercation with Syl about it; he converses for a few minute with the bridgemen, Dalinar, and then Adolin; he repeats the failure and altercation routine, with perhaps a slightly better understanding; as Shallan sketches an unfolding mobile bridge, Kaladin recognizes one of the carpenters, but can’t place him; he is approached by Moash, who informs Kaladin that the assassination attempt is almost ready, and Kaladin’s betrayal will be super simple and easy; Kaladin is gladly distracted by Adolin, with conversation about the Assassin in White, women, and an attempt to figure out Kaladin’s powers; Kaladin admits nothing, but the two share a momentary camaraderie all the same; they attend Shallan as she sketches; Adolin teases Kaladin goodnaturedly, but Kaladin’s return is rather barbed, and Shallan catches it; she has Adolin slay the rock for her, revealing the oddity of the stone under the crem build-up; after Adolin wanders off, she censures Kaladin for his ungracious attitude and his attempt to shift the blame onto Adolin; he can’t answer her reproaches, and stomps off to join Bridge Four, carrying their bridge out across the Plains; near the farthest reach of the planned excursion, Kaladin converses with Dalinar about a feasible way to use the more mobile bridges without making the bearers so vulnerable; he watches Dalinar recrossing the last bridge in response to a call, and suddenly recognizes the carpenter as belonging to Sadeas; he charges screaming toward the bridge and Dalinar, causing Adolin to abandon Shallan in the middle of the bridge as he, too turns to run toward whatever danger Kaladin has spotted; too late to stop the carpenter, Adolin reaches Dalinar at about the same Kaladin reaches Shallan, and the bridge collapses.

Quote of the Week

“Yes,” Kaladin said. “He’s always so munificent to all of the little darkeyes who flock around to worship him.”

Shallan snapped her pencil against the page. “You really are a hateful man, aren’t you? Underneath the mock boredom, the dangerous glares, the growls— you just hate people, is that it?”

“What? No, I—”

“Adolin is trying. He feels bad for what happened to you, and he’s doing what he can to make up for it. He is a good man. Is it too much for you to stop provoking him?”

“He calls me bridgeboy,” Kaladin said, feeling stubborn. “He’s been provoking me.”

“Yes, because he is the one storming around with alternating scowls and insults,” Shallan said. “Adolin Kholin, the most difficult man to get along with on the Shattered Plains. I mean look at him! He’s so unlikable!”

She gestured with the pencil toward where Adolin was laughing with the darkeyed water boys. The groom walked up with Adolin’s horse, and Adolin took his Shardplate helm off the carrying post, handing it over, letting one of the water boys try it on. It was ridiculously large on the lad.

Kaladin flushed as the boy took a Shardbearer’s pose, and they all laughed again. Kaladin looked back to Shallan, who folded her arms, drawing pad resting on the flat-topped cut rock before her. She smirked at him.

I don’t really have anything particular to say about it. I just like this conversation. Shallan can sometimes be grating with her snark, but in this case it was well-deserved, IMO.

Commentary

There’s a lot of disparate stuff going on in this chapter, though most of it is merely setting the stage. The growing friendship between Adolin and Kaladin is fun to watch, at least until Kaladin starts taking his frustrations out on Adolin. It’s also rather fun to watch Kaladin’s embarrassment when the scouts tell Dalinar about the glowing man who was flying around out here a while back.

In a minor foreshadowing moment, Shallan is fascinated by the rock formations and asks Adolin to “slay this moss” for her—revealing that there is more to the random landscape than others assumed. It is indeed, as she had suspected, the ruins of ancient city. This will come into play again, but not for a while; one of those tidbits that you just have to tuck in your pocket for later, and hope you don’t lose it.

The main focus of the chapter, though, is the attenuation of the bond between Kaladin and Syl, setting up the disaster to come. Three times in this chapter, Kaladin attempts to draw in Stormlight, only to find that it won’t obey him. Harking back to the conversations in the comments a couple of weeks ago, this is where Kaladin finally starts trying to figure out what’s wrong with his bond. Too little, too late—and in the wrong direction, besides.

In all fairness to Kaladin, there’s a certain drawback to being the first Windrunner in centuries (or millennia, whichever it is): there’s no one to train him, no one to teach him the precepts, except for the lone spren who is attempting to reestablish the Order and whose effective intellect is strongly dependent on his following the precepts he’s supposed to be learning. It’s not entirely his fault that he doesn’t get it right, and I understand that.

Be that as it may, it’s bizarre to watch his thought processes, from the vantage point of those who know more than he does about the Nahel bonding. For one thing, there’s his assumption that the powers he’s been learning are his powers. He blames himself for losing bridgemen because he didn’t accept his powers soon enough. Then he blames Syl for capriciously withholding his powers when he doesn’t behave the way she wants him to. And… that’s what I want to explore today.

Sylphrena is a spren, not a human; she doesn’t get to rationalize and assimilate concepts to come up with her own understanding of honor the way Kaladin does. The way I see it, there are two possible sources for Syl’s “stupid, simplistic morality.”

1) She is a Splinter of Honor, and as such her standard of honor is, in a real sense, the definition of Honor in the entire Cosmere. The intent of a Shard of Adonalsium could, I think, be accepted as the definitive version of an attribute.

2) She is a spren, the physical manifestation of a Cognitive Ideal. This could possibly be characterized as either a) the general Rosharan ideal of Honor or b) Kaladin’s own ideal of Honor.

It’s even possible that more than one of these come into play. What’s not remotely part of the picture, though, is that any of it is her own capricious or simplistic definition.

Whatever the source, she is irrevocably defined by a power not her own, and she is bound to precepts beyond her control. When Kaladin behaves in ways that do not conform to the Ideal—whether that’s the Shard’s Intent, the Vorin idealization of honor, Kaladin’s own understanding of honor, or some combination—she has no choice and no power over what happens to the bond. Kaladin’s decisions violate the precepts which give her strength and sentience in the Physical Realm, resulting in her reversion toward a simple windspren and in his loss of access to the Surges the growing bond had given him.

He explains it to himself by assuming that the problem is having made two mutually-exclusive promises; I think he’s wrong. His first promise to Dalinar, to guard and protect the Kholin family (including the king), was in line with the precepts of Honor and with the Windrunner’s Ideal of protecting those who cannot protect themselves. The second promise, the one causing the problem, is not merely in conflict with the first; it’s in conflict with the Ideals he’s already spoken—and that’s the real issue.

When he offers support to the assassination of the king, it is a direct violation of both the First and Second Ideals he’s spoken so far. He rationalizes it by telling himself it’s about justice and honor, since the king is responsible—through indifference or incompetence—for the deaths of many people, and therefore needs to be removed. The problem is that Windrunner Ideals aren’t about punishing people for past actions: they are about protecting people now. He doesn’t have the authority to look back and deal out his own vigilante “justice” for the past; even in the heyday of the Knights Radiant, that would have been a task for the Skybreakers, not the Windrunners. The fact that there are no qualified Skybreakers (that we know of) doesn’t change the fact that the Windrunner Ideals simply don’t give him that option.

Kaladin’s loss of power, then, is not a matter of short-sightedly making conflicting promises. It’s a matter of making a promise which conflicts with the Ideals he’s sworn to, and moreover one which leads in a direction away from the next Ideal he needs to pursue. If he were honest with himself, he’d recognize that the assassination is not about protecting anyone. Given the current situation, Elhokar’s ability to further endanger people through the aforementioned indifference and incompetence is severely curtailed. With both Dalinar and Navani on hand, to say nothing of his other wise generals and advisors, the chances of a repeat of anything like “the Roshone affair” are slim. This isn’t about prevention or protection; it’s about revenge.

As I said, it’s tough on both of them that Syl can’t remember things until Kaladin progresses, and it’s hard for him to progress without more guidance. However, his accusation that Syl would “yank his powers away every time he did something that risked offending her” is inconsistent with his own experiences. It may, to some extent, be understandable in a human being; that doesn’t necessarily make it either right or justifiable.

Well, that’s enough to be going on with; I hope it makes some sort of sense. If not, I’ll have to try to sort it out in the comments!

Stormwatch

This takes place the day following the feast of the previous chapter; there are ten days left of the countdown.

All Creatures Shelled and Feathered

Shallan really, really wants to see a chasmfiend up close and personal. Well, she’ll get her chance, but not this week.

Heraldic Symbolism

By my best guess, Palah reflects Shallan’s researches and studies. I’m not quite sure what to think about Kalak, though. Maker? Resolute/Builder? Willshaper? I’m kind of at a loss here.

Shipping Wars

Adolin and Shallan are so very cute. Each of them is so worried over how to keep the other interested, and there’s approximately zero chance of either of them losing interest.

Also, I really want to know a little more about Tarah, and the mistakes Kaladin made with her.

There. That should stir up enough of a hornets’ nest to keep us busy for a while. Next week, we’ll return to watch the effects of the bridge collapse. Fun fun fun!

Alice Arneson is a long-time Tor.com commenter and Sanderson beta-reader. She hopes you have all had a chance to read The Bands of Mourning and have discovered the prize at the end of the book. Do everyone a favor, though, and keep those discussions to the respective spoiler threads for a month or so yet.

Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last week, a tentative expedition to observe a chasmfiend chrysalis and gather information ended in an unexpected Parshendi sighting and a collapsing bridge. This week, Kaladin and Shallan find themselves the only two who somehow survived the fall, with one day to make their way back through the chasms to the warcamp before the next highstorm hits. No pressure, though.

This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here.

Click on through to join the discussion!

Chapter 69: Nothing

Point of View: Kaladin, Shallan
Setting: the chasms
Symbology: Pattern, Jezrien, Shalash

IN WHICH Kaladin falls; Syl screams; Kaladin gets a rush of Stormlight and hits the bottom; he wakes, hurting but alive; Shallan Davar appears around a corner, and they scare the daylights out of one another; she explains the bridge’s emergency latch; they search the bodies nearby, but no one else survived the 200-foot fall; Kaladin mendaciously credits windspren for protecting the two of them, though privately he wonders how he saved her as well as himself; they confirm that neither Dalinar nor Adolin are among the corpses; however, there are dead spearmen and Parshendi, verifying that there was a skirmish of some sort; they determine that a highstorm is due the following night, and that they should try to get back to the warcamps through the chasms; Shallan reflects on the fall, and Pattern’s speculation that the Stormlight had somehow kept her alive; she assumes that somehow she’d inadvertently saved Kaladin, too, and is grateful that he’s superstitious enough to believe the folktales about the windspren; as they trek through the chasm, Shallan can’t keep from noticing the beauty of the plant life here in the chasm; Kaladin is less than chivalrous, but finally takes Shallan’s pack of waterskins while she carries her satchel; Shallan tries to be pleasant—if snarky—and Kaladin snarls back; they snap back and forth and toss accusations at each other, getting louder and louder until they hear a noise that puts a stop to it: the sound of an approaching chasmfiend; they run.

Quote of the Week

“Storms,” she said, hurrying to catch up. “That was supposed to be lighthearted. What would it take to make you relax, bridgeboy?”

“I guess I’m just a… what was it again? A ‘hateful man’?”

“I haven’t seen any proof to the contrary.”

“That’s because you don’t care to look, lighteyes. Everyone beneath you is just a plaything.”

“What?” she said, taking it like a slap to the face. “Where would you get that idea?”

“It’s obvious.”

“To whom? To you only? When have you seen me treat someone of a lesser station like a plaything? Give me one example.”

“When I was imprisoned,” he said immediately, “for doing what any lighteyes would have been applauded for doing.”

“And that was my fault?” she demanded.

“It’s the fault of your entire class. Each time one of us is defrauded, enslaved, beaten, or broken, the blame rests upon all of you who support it. Even indirectly.”

“Oh please,” she said. “The world isn’t fair? What a huge revelation! Some people in power abuse those they have power over? Amazing! When did this start happening?”

I really do like Kaladin. Honest, I do. But this particular attitude annoys me no end and makes me want to pound on his head. Honestly, how can his imprisonment possibly be construed as an example of her treating people of lesser station as playthings? Later in the conversation he brings up the boots, which she acknowledges as a fair point, but her point is much stronger: he’s looking for excuses to do what he wants to do and blame someone else for “making him” that way. Which is the whole root of what’s going on with him right now.

Commentary

This really launches the worst stretch of Kaladin’s arc, in my mind. He no longer has access to Stormlight, or to his constant companion, confidant, adviser, and sense of humor. Arguably, with the loss of Syl’s company, his sense of perspective—already skewed by imprisonment—suffers almost irreparable damage.

If you were following the discussion this past week, a very cogent statement was made regarding the Windrunner bond. To boil it way down, the synergy between the behavior and the relationship is one of constructive interference—but it goes both ways. The desired behavior reinforces the budding relationship, and the strengthening relationship reinforces the desired behavior, and it’s just not possible to have one without the other. But “constructive interference” can be a two-edged sword—when the results are undesirable, it’s also known as a vicious cycle.

Allow me to tell a story, completely unrelated to epic fantasy. Many years ago, I was working on an aerospace project, and we got word that the test flight was returning in… interesting condition. When the aircraft came in for its landing, the guys in the control tower burst out laughing and asked the flight crew incredulously what on earth they’d done with their tail. The flight crew was baffled—they hadn’t known anything was wrong, though the rudder had seemed a bit sluggish on the way in. Turned out that in the testing, the last event in the kick test had set up a harmonic oscillation in the rudder that essentially tore the tail off. (Let me tell you, it’s a weird feeling to look at a 707 whose tail fin appears to have been ripped away like a piece of paper. From then on, the call sign for the aircraft series was “Gecko”—because how many airplanes can still fly with 1/3 of a tail?) But the point is, this test has been done with dozens and dozens of aircraft; this one was structured a little differently, and when the rudder was kicked under certain conditions, instead of coming back to a center balance, each flip of the rudder created further momentum, until it was flipping back and forth so hard the metal couldn’t take the strain, and it tore apart.

I’m sure you can see the analogy. When things were going well, every honorable thing Kaladin did reinforced his bond with Syl, and as she got stronger, his powers and his ability to do honorable things increased. But when things went badly, each vengeful impulse tore at the bond, weakening it; the less she could influence him, the more his instincts turned from honor to vengeance. Finally, it’s torn, and there’s no more Stormlight. No more tiny piece of a god to tweak his nose when his thoughts turn sour. No more Windrunning, no more incredible healing, no more Kaladin Stormblessed.

Stormwatch

This is, of course, the same day as the previous chapter. The countdown is at ten.

Sprenspotting

I have to start this with a series of quotations:

Syl screamed, a terrified, painful sound that vibrated Kaladin’s very bones. In that moment, he got a breath of Stormlight, life itself.

—-

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? The distant voice sounded like rumbling thunder.

—-

I got some Stormlight right at the end, he thought. I survived. But that scream! It haunted him, echoing in his mind. It had sounded too much like the scream he’d heard when touching the duelist’s Shardblade in the arena.

The following is speculation, of course, but I have suspected that what happened here was Sylphrena voluntarily spending her last remaining Physical connection to grant Kaladin the Stormlight he would need to survive and heal from the fall. Without sufficient autonomy to determine for herself what “honor” looks like, she had yet enough autonomy to make the choice to sacrifice herself to save his life. I think that the rumbling-thunder-voice is the Stormfather speaking to Syl in the Cognitive realm, because he doesn’t think the outcome was worth the price.

However… I feel like I’m missing something; I can’t quite put my finger on some elusive piece. Why did her choice have a result so similar to the Recreance? Or am I wrong? Did Kaladin manage to pull the Stormlight through her, against her will, and destroy her Physical presence in the process?

Gah. I’m missing something; I think there’s something about this event that should give us a clue as to what really happened at the Recreance. What we’ve actually been told so far came from either handed-down tradition (in-world “Words of Radiance”), or the external observation of a soldier (Dalinar’s vision). I think there’s a hint in here of the spren’s perspective on what the Recreance was about, and I can’t tease it out.

*sigh*

Help a girl out here, folks. Pummel this around and see if you can get hold of a thread to pull.

And having now mixed my metaphors into a muddy brown paste, let’s move on, shall we?

All Creatures Shelled and Feathered

Trust Shallan to get distracted by the local flora at a time like this! To be fair, though, this would be a unique experience for her. Kaladin has been in the chasms many times before, and besides, he’s not that interested in plants unless he can use them (see: knobweed). Given Shallan’s interests, of course she’s going to be fascinated: while some of these plants are varieties of plants she’s known elsewhere, some may be unique to the chasms. It’s a good thing she has her Memories, because there’s really not a lot of time for study just now.

Ars Arcanum

It’s notable that Pattern could only speculate as to how the Stormlight was able to preserve Shallan despite a fall of 200+ feet. As she says, it proved how little she—or he—knew about her abilities. It doesn’t help matters to have a false data point, either; she’s trying to not only account for saving herself, but for somehow saving Kaladin as well.

It does make me wonder, though. What are the mechanics of an event like this? Did she fall and then heal? Or did the Stormlight somehow protect her from injury in the first place? The same questions should probably apply to Kaladin, but I can at least think that Windrunner reflexes would let him use Stormlight to slow the fall, and then heal himself from whatever other injuries were sustained. But what does a Lightweaver have in that regard? She’s got Illumination and Transformation; how do those help? Or… is it like the explanation in the (officially not-yet-canonical) Jasnah excerpt, where someone holding enough Stormlight will just immediately and automatically heal from any injury short of a crushing blow to the head?

Heraldic Symbolism

The Heralds for this chapter are, appropriately enough, those associated with the respective Orders of our two would-be (or wouldn’t-be) Radiants: Jezrien for the Windrunner and Shalash for the Lightweaver. Suitable, since it’s only their bonds that allowed them to survive. They’re also singularly apt in the roles these two take, however faulty their execution: Kaladin takes the lead (though he doesn’t do much protecting), while Shallan is both bluntly honest and determinedly artistic despite the desperate situation.

Shipping Wars

And thus begins the series of events leading to the Kaladin/Shallan ship—a ship which I most fervently disavow. While the trope of “they fight and fight and all of a sudden they’re in love” is a staple of romance novels, and is not infrequently seen in fantasy, it’s hard to write believably, IMO. This is one (of many) reasons that I really hope Sanderson doesn’t decide to bring Kaladin and Shallan together; all wishful fanfic aside included, it would be bloody awful trying to make these two complement one other while maintaining both continuity and any semblance of credibility.

There. That ought to keep us busy until next week, when these crazy kids have a narrow escape from a nightmare.

Alice Arneson is a long-time Tor.com commenter and Sanderson beta-reader. Believe it or not, she used to be an engineer, which is how she realized that she loved writing. Go figure.

Stormlight Archive book 4, where we can expect to see Hoid front and center, and where Coca-Cola comes from… Audible hosted a live chat with author Brandon Sanderson on Thursday, February 4, and we’ve assembled his answers about Mistborn, Stormlight, The Reckoners, and more below!

Jump to:

• Mistborn
• Elantris
• Steelheart / The Reckoners
• The Wheel of Time
• The Stormlight Archive
• The Cosmere
• Alcatraz
• Brandon-verse

Mistborn

Did Trell ever have any pre-Ascension Terris worshippers?

Yes.

Did any of Tindwyl’s daughter’s survive the Catacendre?Did Sazed ever meet any of them, after his Ascension?

Yes. And RAFO. :)

Just to be sure. Wax is wrong, and jumped on conclusions about how Excisors work. Right?

He did jump to some conclusions. Whether he’s right or not will have to wait for future books.

Did Elend or Vin ever consider parenthood, or was that never a priority for them?

Not a priority at all, considering their situation. Neither really gave it much thought.

Is there are metal that can grant Feruchemy, a la lerasium/Allomancy?

Another RAFO. (Sorry.)

Is the metal on Scadrial specially invested? Can an Allomancer use metals from other planets?

Metal is a key, not the source of power itself. Most is not specially invested. It glows because of the power seeking to come through it, not because of the power within it.

Was Atium truly one of the 16 metals, or can it be used by anyone just like Lerasium?

Atium has some screwy things going on. It’s not one of the 16, but not just anybody could use it.

If Kelsier had visited Roshar, what spren would have been attracted to his character?

Gloryspren because he pretty much always feels like he’s done something awesome. :)

Will there be a sequal to Mistborn: Secret History?

Yes, I plan a sequence of these.

If someone was tapping gold, would spiking a separate ability out of them kill them? Or would it work at all?

It IS possible to spike someone without killing them. But they’d never be the same. It would be worse than being a drab.

Is it known to most people in Elendel that Ranette has a girlfriend? Or are they hiding?

They don’t need to hide in particular in Elendel.

Elantris

What inspired you to write about immortality in Elantris?

Honestly, it was zombie stories. I wondered what it would actually feel like.

Is “Galladon” Galladon’s true name?

It is his birth name, if that’s what you’re asking.

I had this crazy idea about people need to have an Aon in the name to be chosen by the Shaod and Galladon hasn’t it.

Ah, that’s an excellent guess. But no, that isn’t the case. It’s more about Connection.

Steelheart / The Reckoners

Can you tell us anything about Night’s Sorrow?

Almost nobody has ever seen Night’s Sorrow.

Can you tell us the name of factory from which Tia gets her Cola pouches? And perhaps the city?

Factory is one that doesn’t exist in our world, but I believe I have it in Chattanooga.

Will you ever do any more in the Reckoners world after CALAMITY?

Ask me this again after you’ve read Calamity, and I might have more info I can give.

I know they are not a part of the Cosmere, but does the Reckonersverse follow the rules of Realmatic theory?

No. Instead, it follows quantum multiverse theory.

The Wheel of Time

Why did Mat never meet up with the Band again?

RJ’s notes had them going on separate paths, specifically because he wanted Mat to go to Seanchan. But after events of AMoL, you can assume he dropped in to check on them.

Are there any characters that were particularly difficult for you to work with?

Cadsuane from the WoT was the one that comes to mind.

The Stormlight Archive

Can you give us an Oath that hasn’t been revealed in the story yet?

No. You’ll have to wait for the stories to get those.

Epigraphs in Mistborn & Stormlight: did you wrote them before, during or after writing the rest of the book?

Almost always after the book is done, with notes before certain chapters of what to include above that one.

If a large group of windrunners lashed enough mass towards a single point, could they create a black hole?

Offhand, I think that would be theoretically possible, though in practicality impossible. We’d need Peter Ahlstrom to do some math.

Can you tell us who wrote the words on the back cover of Way of Kings?

Not yet, but it will come out before too much longer.

Who provoked the confrontation, Tanavast or Rayse?

RAFO.

In Stormlight Archives what inspired u to come up with the idea of bridges & how they carry it across chasms?

I wanted a form of siege warfare that was different from anything that readers had seen before, but had the same despair to it.

Which of your characters required the most research beforehand in order to write?

Kaladin took some research into field medicine and depression. He probably took the most.

Are either the blue-skinned Natans or blue-veined Babatharnams human-Aimian hybrids?

Yes.

Who’s the flashback character for Book 4?

I’m planning it to be Eshonai.

The Cosmere

A being with a lot of Investiture worldhops, then dies. What happens to the Investiture that was part of them?

Most likely, it returns to the Spiritual Realm, where all places are one, and where you were is irrelevant.

What are the chances we can see a Wayne / Lift crossover short story? :)

Not terribly good at the moment. :)

Hoid has never drawn his sword on Roshar, which looks similar to Nightblood. Is Hoid’s sword also Awakened?

That is a RAFO, I’m afraid!

Will you ever do a crossover novel with different characters/worlds?

Yes, I will. The final Mistborn books will have this. There’s already some in novellas like Secret History and Sixth of the Dusk.

Have you considered writing a book explaining the Cosmere and world building?

Some day, we will probably do this. But I want more of the different worlds fleshed out first.

Any chance we can get a new Shard named?

No, I’m afraid. I’ve got WAY too much longer to be writing this all to give that away now.

Could a sentient invested object take up a shard?

Highly unlikely, probably impossible–but impossibility is hard to judge.

Will we get a star chart for the whole Cosmere sometime soon?

The Cosmere short fiction collection, which we hope to release in the fall, should have one.

Hoid, Wayne, Kelsier and Wax are playing cards. How many aces are there?

Only Wayne and Hoid are likely to cheat, and they’d be in cahoots.

Is Edgli going to make an appearance (or be mentioned in) another book? I want to know more about Edgli!

Yes, this will be answered eventually.

How well does Khriss know Hoid?

Depends on which book you’re referencing. By the W&W era, they’ve known each other for a long, loooong time.

Could you Awaken an Honorblade?

It would take a Looooooot of power. (A near impossible amount.)

Regarding the Ire: did they set out into the Cosmere pre- or post-Reod?

RAFO! :)

Is there a plan for a book focusing on Hoid or will he always remain an enigma?

The final Mistborn sequence will have him as a main character, as will the Dragonsteel prequel novels.

Did Nazh fall in with Khriss before or after the Forests of Hell were colonized by Patience’s people?

RAFO. (Sorry. I am toying with a book on Threnody, and don’t want to lock myself into anything yet.)

Has one world’s magic systems been used in battles/wars on another worlds? Such as Allomancy used on Roshar?

Not in anything large scale.

Alcatraz

Why isn’t Alcatraz part of the Cosmere? The lenses seem like they could be investiture-related.

I didn’t want Alcatraz to have to follow Cosmere continuity and rules. Yes, the magic could work in the Cosmere.

Brandon-verse

Any updates on movie/tv/video game adaptions?

Nothing big. Steelheart has a script. It’s the only one so far to hit that stage.

Do you always know the ending of the stories when you begin them?

Almost always. I’m a planner. Once in a while, I do a short story where I don’t. Even that is rare, though.

Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last week, Kaladin and Shallan acrimoniously began their trek through the chasms back to the warcamps.  This week, once Shallan finds a way to distract the chasmfiend from trying to eat them, they plod mistrustfully on together.

This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here.

Click on through to join the discussion!

Chapter 70: From a Nightmare

Point of View: Kaladin, Shallan
Setting: the Chasms
Symbology: Spears, Chach, Kalak

IN WHICH Kaladin leads a mad dash through the chasms to escape the beast chasing them; Shallan suddenly goes the other way, forcing Kaladin to follow; she leads them back to where they first fell, distracting the chasmfiend with easy food; Shallan sneaks a peek while it’s feeding; they retreat and walk for hours in the darkness, trying to get as far away as possible; when they finally stop, Shallan draws a map of the chasms and begins the chasmfiend Memory drawing; after a few hours of sleep, they continue on, using her map to correct their direction; they continue the badinage, though with less hostility and more honesty; Shallan solemnly promises Kaladin that she means no harm to Adolin or his family; sunlight reveals that they’re going the wrong way again.

Quote of the Week

“All right,” Kaladin said. “Here it is. I can imagine how the world must appear to someone like you. Growing up pampered, with everything you want. To someone like you, life is wonderful and sunny and worth laughing over. That’s not your fault, and I shouldn’t blame you. You haven’t had to deal with pain or death like I have. Sorrow is not your companion.”

Silence. Shallan didn’t reply. How could she reply to that?

“What?” Kaladin finally asked.

“I’m trying to decide how to react,” Shallan said. “You see, you just said something very, very funny.”

“Then why aren’t you laughing?”

“Well, it isn’t that kind of funny.”

Oh, the irony. No, it isn’t that kind of funny at all. *sigh*

Not to thrash the expired steed, but I can’t wait until next week’s QOTW. Just sayin’. Kaladin’s blind assumptions about other people’s lives don’t stack up well against reality, and it’s about time he learned that.

Commentary

Before we talk about this chapter, I just remembered something I left out of last week’s discussion, and it’s bugging me. Who were the Parshendi that showed up just as the bridge was dumped? Were they some of Eshonai’s stormforms out for a practice run? Were they Thude’s company of dissenters who refused stormform? Will we ever know? Does it matter?

Okay, now I’ve got that out of my system…

Here we go, running through the chasms, chased by a nightmare beastie that makes a noise like a thousand horns being blown. That would be… unnerving. Shallan has enough presence of mind to recognize when they’re close to the original landing area, and distracts the fiend with fresh corpses while she gets a good look and a Memory. Kaladin, meanwhile, sticks close to her because he refuses to abandon Adolin’s betrothed, and every time he stands still, he thinks about Sylphrena and how he can’t even feel the Stormlight in the spheres he’s holding.

I do feel sorry for him.

That said, as usual lately, I still want to smack him. He can be so infuriatingly ungracious for no reason. On the bright side, it gives Shallan the “bridgeman grunt language” for a running joke, so there’s that.

The shared terror of the chasmfiend chase, and the resulting exhaustion, seems to have a more salutary effect on them than merely sharing impossible survival from a 200-foot drop did. At least, they’ve stopped yelling, and while they’re still sniping at each other, neither of them is going at it wholeheartedly any more.

And really, they do begin to get on better. Their snark gets more… personal? Not sure what the word I’m looking for is, here, but over these few hours, the things they say are both more individualized and less hurtful—the kind of stuff you toss around when you’re just taking the mickey out of someone. It’s very, very like the best of the times she had with her brothers in the flashbacks, really, when a smart remark would pop into her head and they’d insist that she say it. Odd, in a way, that Kaladin should be the first person she can play this game with since she left home. She played it a little, with the sailors on the Wind’s Pleasure, but other than that, she’s really had to watch her tongue most of the time. Now, probably to distract herself, she’s treating Kaladin very much like a brother.

As their morning conversation reveals, Kaladin’s assessment of Shallan has been limited to a) flaky spoiled lighteyed woman or b) clever sneaky impostor threat. (How he reconciles those two is beyond me, though.) Anyway, down here in the chasms, with her hair frazzled, her dress torn and bedraggled, wearing boots because she put sanity before vanity, toughing it out right alongside him… he’s finally seeing her as a human being, not just an object of suspicion or class hatred. I suspect that Shallan’s ability to draw out a perfect map of where they’ve been—and the obvious value of that skill—is also a step in Kaladin seeing her as an actual person.

The reverse is also true: As they talk, she realizes that not only is he taciturn, he’s a contradiction. He’s clearly had a good education, demonstrated by the way he thinks and the way he speaks, and that really doesn’t jibe with the slave marks or the shash brand. Even though she continues to make jokes of everything, she does begin to see him as a person, not just “Adolin’s grumpy guard captain.”

It’s a start.

Before the chapter’s over, they’ll get downright honest with each other. To wit: He finally tells her point-blank that he doesn’t trust her, and she tells him a little of why she’s actually there, at the Shattered Plains—because of Jasnah’s research. Since the guards reported her asking Adolin about getting rid of the parshmen, that comes up too, and further conversation—actual conversation!—ensues on that subject before it fades back to the snarkfest. And then they have the conversation quoted above, in which Kaladin displays a complete (and unjustifiable, IMO) class-based analysis of her character and her past, telling her how wonderful and easy her life has been. The irony…

We could have a big knock-down drag-out fight about whose backstory is the more tragic or traumatic or painful, but that’s not the point. Both of them have horrible things in their past, and both of them have legitimate reasons to feel that life has been less than kind to them. As far as I’m concerned, the more important question is how they deal with the pain of past tragedy, and in this case I find Shallan stronger than Kaladin.

While Shallan has blocked out the first, worst event, she hasn’t blocked out all the years since then—all the years as her father spiraled downward, her brothers went psychotic, her family split, servants were abused, her stepmother was murdered, and she herself killed her father to try to save the rest. Those events are all in her active memory, and she deals with it by maintaining (some would say exaggerating) her sense of humor and by choosing to do what she can to fix things. It’s probable that she subconsciously holds herself responsible for all of it, without knowing quite why.

Kaladin, meanwhile, deals with his past by overtly holding all lighteyes responsible for everything bad that’s ever happened to him. This… bugs me. No end. It’s totally a realistic behavior, of course—it’s just not entirely valid, either for Kaladin or in real life. But… I’ve said all that before. One thing to add, though, which we’ll hit in more detail next week: Under his surface resentment of lighteyes, he half-unconsciously holds himself responsible for all of the bad things, whether they were really his fault or not.

Personalities. Human nature is just weird, you know?

Stormwatch

Same night, and into the following day. At the end of this chapter, there are nine days left in the countdown. (We’ll just take several months to cover those nine days…)

Sprenspotting

“Those spren,” Shallan whispered, so soft he could barely hear. “I’ve seen those…”

They danced around the chasmfiend, and were the source of the light. They looked like small glowing arrows, and they surrounded the beast in schools, though occasionally one would drift away from the others and then vanish like a small plume of smoke rising into the air.

“Skyeels,” Shallan whispered. “They follow skyeels too…”

Referring back to Shallan’s skyeel sketches from The Way of Kings, the sailors call these “luckspren,” though she doubts that is their true name. So… what is their true name? Predatorspren?

Next question: are they the same as the spren that float away from the carcass of a dead chasmfiend? Those are described like wisps of smoke from a snuffed candle; these are like “small glowing arrows”… until they drift too far away. Then they sound like the same thing, vanishing like “a small plume of smoke.” Huh.

All Creatures Shelled and Feathered

The chasmfiend gets the title for this chapter; it looks like something from a nightmare, according to Kaladin:

The beast filled the chasm. Long and narrow, it wasn’t bulbous or bulky, like some small cremlings. It was sinuous, sleek, with that arrowlike face and sharp mandibles.

It was also wrong. Wrong in a way difficult to describe. Big creatures were supposed to be slow and docile, like chulls. Yet this enormous beast moved with ease, its legs up on the sides of the chasm, holding it so that its body barely touched the ground. It ate the corpse of a fallen soldier, grasping the body in smaller claws by its mouth, then ripping it in half with a gruesome bite.

That face was like something from a nightmare. Evil, powerful, almost intelligent.

Seriously. What kind of mind dreams up critters like this?? I think I agree with Kaladin about the nightmare thing.

Shallan, of course, turns on her natural-history-scholar mode, and observes that although it eats carrion, it’s got all the equipment to be a predator. What it doesn’t appear to have is a reason to be hanging around the chasms after pupating. I can’t help wondering if this will prove to be Significant… Or maybe it’s just something that happens near the Weeping for some reason.

Ars Arcanum

While we don’t see any Lightweaving, we certainly see the effects of Shallan’s bond with Pattern. The only way she kept ahead of the chasmfiend was by using Stormlight for agility, speed, and endurance. The only way they’re getting out alive is by using a map created with her bond-enhanced visual memory. So… I guess that qualifies as magic arts, okay?

You Have to Break a Lot of Rockbuds

Heh. No rockbuds were broken in the making of this chapter. It’s a good thing soldiers tend to be careful about carrying rations everywhere they go, even though chull-jerky doesn’t sound all that appetizing. I guess it keeps body and soul together. That’s not nothing.

Heraldic Symbolism

Chach: Brave/Obedient, Guard. Kalak: Resolute/Builder, Maker. What do they have to do with this chapter? These are not Heralds normally associated with either Kaladin or Shallan, really. Chach-the-Guard represents Kaladin-the-bodyguard once in a while, but he’s not on duty here. Except… he repeatedly thinks of Shallan in terms of “Adolin’s betrothed” and, conversely, as a potential threat/spy/infiltrator to the Kholin family. So I guess Guard makes some sense? As for Kalak, “resolute” probably fits their determination to survive. Maybe? That’s all I’ve got for him.

Shipping Wars

Nah, I’m not gonna go there. Y’all know how I feel about it.

Well, that ought to keep us busy until next week, when we’ll dodge back to the warcamp with Teft, Sigzil, and Dalinar for a bit, before we return to the chasms, a few of my favorite moments, and… the chasmfiend. Big, big chapter next week.

Alice Arneson is a long-time Tor.com commenter and Sanderson beta-reader. She’s both excited and highly amused that yet another Sanderson book is releasing next week, only three weeks after The Bands of Mourning. This time, it’s Calamity, the final book of The Reckoners trilogy, releasing next Tuesday. If you’re going to the Seattle signing at the University Bookstore next Wednesday, please be sure to say hello! She’ll be the tall master-servant accompanied by the somewhat shorter Mistborn.

Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last week, Kaladin and Shallan escaped from the chasmfiend by leading it to the corpses where they fell from the bridge, then began the trek back anew, sniping at each other most of the time. This week, we glimpse Teft’s past before we return to a very gloomy Kaladin, an intent Shallan, moments of stunning openness, and the return of the chasmfiend.

This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here.

Click on through to join the discussion!

Chapter 71: Vigil

Point of View: Teft, Kaladin
Setting: Edge of the Warcamp, the Chasms
Symbology: Spears, Ishar, Vedel

IN WHICH Teft, Sigzil, and Renarin sit near the edge of the warcamp, keeping watch for Kaladin; Teft reluctantly but compulsively tells the story of his family, the Envisagers, and his own betrayal of them; Dalinar approaches; though Teft and Sigzil are defensive about what they’re doing, Dalinar merely enjoins them not to skip meals and not to try to wait through the highstorm. While Shallan draws her map, Kaladin chastises himself for getting lost and calls ineffectually for Sylphrena; he ponders his involuntary animosity toward Shallan; Syl’s scream still haunts him; Shallan insists on drawing a picture instead of just sketching a map; when he comments on her accuracy, she admits that she underplayed her memory skills; observation and exploration indicate that the plateaus surrounding them are the mirror image of a group farther north; Kaladin says that the Plains are symmetrical, though he says he saw it in a dream; Shallan recognizes that cymatics may be involved, and realizes that she knows exactly where the Oathgate is; getting this information back to the warcamps becomes even more important than mere survival; she takes the lead, and while Kaladin smiles and jokes with her about their directional skills, he blames himself for failing; they walk as fast as they can, but Shallan has to keep stopping to update her map so they don’t get off track again; now within range of Dalinar’s scouts, Kaladin periodically shouts for help; he also calls for Syl, but there is no response, and he can’t feel the Stormlight in his sphere; as they continue, Kaladin claims that it’s all his fault; Shallan tries to be optimistic, but Kaladin is gloomy; Shallan reveals her bone-deep understanding of brokenness and crushing guilt; Kaladin finally comprehends that he’s not alone, and though drained, he feels better; Shallan starts a “think-positive” verbal fencing match, but Kaladin isn’t very good at it; they stop again to update the map and shout for the scouts, but this time the answer is the sound of the approaching chasmfiend; they squeeze into a crack where the chasmfiend can’t reach them, but it settles down to wait them out; Shallan is fascinated by its apparent intelligence, but the approaching highstorms means they can’t afford to wait it out; Kaladin prepares to rush out and “distract” it while Shallan escapes the other way; Kaladin acknowledges that Adolin is a good person, and asks her to apologize for him; Shallan asks him to “at least take this”—and summons her Shardblade.

Quote of the Week

“You still think I’m too optimistic, don’t you?” Shallan said.

“It’s not your fault,” Kaladin said. “I’d rather be like you. I’d rather not have lived the life I have. I would that the world was only full of people like you, Shallan Davar.”

“People who don’t understand pain.”

“Oh, all people understand pain,” Kaladin said. “That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s…”

“The sorrow,” Shallan said softly, “of watching a life crumble? Of struggling to grab it and hold on, but feeling hope become stringy sinew and blood beneath your fingers as everything collapses?”

“Yes.”

“The sensation— it’s not sorrow, but something deeper— of being broken. Of being crushed so often, and so hatefully, that emotion becomes something you can only wish for. If only you could cry, because then you’d feel something. Instead, you feel nothing. Just . . . haze and smoke inside. Like you’re already dead.”

He stopped in the chasm.

She turned and looked to him. “The crushing guilt,” she said, “of being powerless. Of wishing they’d hurt you instead of those around you. Of screaming and scrambling and hating as those you love are ruined, popped like a boil. And you have to watch their joy seeping away while you can’t do anything. They break the ones you love, and not you. And you plead. Can’t you just beat me instead?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

Shallan nodded, holding his eyes. “Yes. It would be nice if nobody in the world knew of those things, Kaladin Stormblessed. I agree. With everything I have.”

He saw it in her eyes. The anguish, the frustration. The terrible nothing that clawed inside and sought to smother her. She knew. It was there, inside. She had been broken.

Then she smiled. Oh, storms. She smiled anyway.

It was the single most beautiful thing he’d seen in his entire life.

This scene does it to me every time. I’m sitting here with tears running down my face. Again. You’re not alone, Kaladin. You’re not alone.

Commentary

Storms, this was a long chapter! One of my favorites, but it’s long—and it’s packed full of Stuff We Must Discuss, too! Once again, I’ll have to assign some of the discussion point to the commenters, or this will be a novella in itself. Please—there’s a lot I didn’t even touch, so please bring it up in the comments.

For starters, Teft. He’s out there watching for Kaladin, to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. I can’t help wondering if he’d come completely unglued if Kaladin had died; he seems to have pinned sanity and all on Kaladin’s powers. Then again, given his story of the Envisagers, it makes sense, though it’s hard to say whether knowledge of Radiants returning would make him feel better or worse about having betrayed the Envisagers to the citylord way back when.

I have to wonder if there was a connection between the Envisagers and any of the current secret groups trying to bring back the Heralds/Radiants. They had rather an odd way of going about it—put your life in real mortal danger, in the hopes that you would display superpowers at the last second?—but I can’t think it’s any weirder or stupider than trying to bring back the Voidbringers as a way of forcing the Heralds to intervene.

Back to Kaladin and Shallan, then: Kaladin spends the first chunk of the chapter kicking himself around for failing in all manner of things over which he had no control, in an ironic contrast to the previous chapter where he blamed Shallan for things that were mostly results of his own choices and nothing to do with her. *sigh* Kaladin, dear, I love you very much, but sometimes you can be amazingly contrary.

Moving on, this bit was very interesting, and also raises questions:

…He shouldn’t let her provoke him so. He could hold in the retorts against other, far more annoying lighteyes. Why did he lose control when talking with her?

Should have learned my lesson, he thought as she sketched, her expression growing intense. She’s won every argument so far, hands down.

He leaned against a section of the chasm wall, spear in the crook of his arm, light shining from the spheres tied tightly at its head. He had made invalid assumptions about her, as she had so poignantly noted. Again and again. It was like a part of him frantically wanted to dislike her.

So is that part of an instinctive Windrunner-vs.-Lightweaver attitude reflecting the antagonism of their spren, or is it a psychological reaction to… Adolin’s fiancé? A lighteyed woman? A pretty woman? Or is it something else?

Meanwhile, Shallan is so focused on her scholarship that she’s completely oblivious to Kaladin’s angst-ridden pacing. It’s almost comical; he finally ceases active hostility, and she doesn’t even notice that they’re carrying on an actual conversation. She’s busy trying to solve a puzzle, and she automatically draws him into the process like an extra brain.

The moment where she stops teasing him and goes serious, when she lets him really see how much she does understand what he’s gone through… that has to be one of my very favorite scenes ever. As noted, even after all this time, I cannot read that passage without getting teary, and the effect on Kaladin is beautiful. Just knowing that someone else gets it is enough to change his whole demeanor, and it’s the turning point he’s been needing to reach.

And then the chasmfiend shows up, and things get crowded real fast. The mental image of that huge eye watching them from above? Officially uncomfortable.

Kaladin is wonderful here, and I think it’s the earlier conversation that frees him to do what he does next. As he points out, Shallan has (a) the ability to find her way back, and (b) information Dalinar needs. He, on the other hand, has neither of those—but unlike Shallan, he has something resembling a fighting chance to distract and maybe, maybe even escape from the chasmfiend. So he does what he does at his best: he identifies the plan with the best chance of success, and puts it in place without fear of personal consequences. In the process, he takes a huge step forward: he acknowledges that lighteyed people are, oddly enough, people, and that his attitude toward Adolin was based on prejudice against lighteyes.

I’ve been fighting with how to express this concept for… longer than I care to admit, and it’s nearly 2:00 a.m., and I can’t find a way to do it without someone misinterpreting what I want to say about it. So I’ll just say it.

Kaladin has been in a blue funk for a long time, his thinking twisted by a combination of personality, circumstance, and malice, to the point that despite amazing positive experiences, his negative mental state placed unbearable strain on his Nahel bond. He has created superfluous enmities for himself because he needed someone to blame, while at the same time blaming himself for things he could not have changed. And in one lightning moment, facing the realization that he wasn’t the only one who was broken, but also that there were other ways to deal with it—in that moment, I believe, he let go of his obsessive need for a culprit, and his whole world got brighter. (He’s not fully recovered yet, as we’ll see in a few chapters, but he’s heading up instead of down, finally.) Momentarily free of the bitterness that has colored his outlook, he’s able to accept another human being (in this case, Adolin) on his own merits rather than holding him responsible for every real or imagined wrong done by lighteyes. Whether that changes anything outside himself is debatable—but it changes him, and it’s a beautiful thing to behold.

And then Shallan offers him a Shardblade.

Stormwatch

This is, of course, the same day as the previous chapter, and there are still nine days left in the countdown.

Sprenspotting

The spren are mostly notable by their—or rather, her—absence, as Kaladin continues to worry about Syl and still can’t access Stormlight. One fun little note, though, is that when Kaladin overhears Shallan apparently carrying on a conversation, he begins to suspect something.

Still, Syl had seen several strange spren about.

Yes, indeed.

Ars Arcanum

Despite her best intentions, Shallan just can’t keep her skills hidden—and it’s just as well. In order for her to recognize the reflected image, to trigger Kaladin’s memory of the symmetry of the Plains, to connect that symmetry to Kabsal’s lecture on cymatics, to register the location of Stormseat and the Oathgate… the whole sequence depends on her extraordinary memory and Kaladin’s recognition of the accuracy of her drawings.

Incidentally, in case anyone else was wondering: I couldn’t remember whether Kaladin had seen the symmetry during his flight or during his highstorm vision, so I looked it up. Turns out, it’s both—when he was flying and saw the pattern, he remembered seeing it previously, in a dream. Now you know.

Heraldic Symbolism

Ishar: Pious/Guiding, Priest. I’m going with “guiding” here—as in, Shallan understanding the symmetry of the Plains and the significance of that symmetry, and realizing that it will lead her to the Oathgate they so badly need to find. Vedel: Loving/Healing, Healer. I’m thinking this has to do with the effect of the QOTW conversation on Kaladin—that life suddenly seems brighter, the way Tien used to make it.

Just Sayin’

Kaladin felt like one of the ten fools. Actually, he felt like all of them. Ten times an idiot. But most specifically Eshu, who spoke of things he did not understand in front of those who did.

Heh. Love this line. I would also love to know more about the rest of the ten fools, but I suppose we’ll get there in time.

There. That ought to keep us busy until next week, when Kaladin has to risk touching a Blade in order to have a fighting chance to rescue them both from the chasmfiend.

Alice Arneson is a long-time Tor.com commenter and Sanderson beta-reader, and she had a great time at the signing last night. If you see a young Mistborn on Brandon’s blog or twitter feed, it just might be her daughter.

It’s been almost two years since Words of Radiance lashed itself onto our hearts, and as Brandon has put several projects to rest, his increasing time on Stormlight Book 3, currently titled Oathbringer, has Sanderfans everywhere shaking with anticipation.

Oathbringer is still very much in-process, and a release date is unknown, but that hasn’t stopped Sanderson from reading first drafts of chapters, or releasing rough snippets online! So just how much has been revealed so far from the third book in the Stormlight Archive series?

Spoilers ahead, of course.

Some of the below info is gleaned from how Words of Radiance ends, but others are informed from the early selections of Oathbringer that Brandon has released, either directly online or through readings at events. If you’re interested in keeping track of Oathbringer revelations, try joining up with online Sanderson hotspots 17th Shard, the Stormlight subreddit, and The Coppermind. If you know of any more, from readings, signings, or other currently undocumented events, feel free to add your information in the comments.

Kaladin Stormblessed

By the end of Words of Radiance, our resident Windrunner finally begins to understand the full extent of his abilities, and what his purpose is here on Roshar. After reaffirming his bond with Syl and embracing his role as a Radiant, Kaladin now possesses a higher level ability, as well as his own Shardblade in the form of Syl. With the Everstorm—the enormous magical storm that sweeps the globe in the opposite direction of regular highstorms—now unleashed by the Parshendi, Kaladin’s thoughts turn to his parents and the Parshendi he has been battling in the series thus far. He’s now in a race against the Everstorm, to prevent it from killing his parents, and to prevent it from infecting more parshmen with the hate-inducing stormspren that it carries.

What We Can Expect: Kaladin is the world’s first fully-fledged Windrunner that we know of, and the first Radiant to travel outside of the small cadre at Urithuru. He’s headed to the heart of Alethi civilization and he doesn’t give a damn about hiding who and what he is. His presence in the rigid, structured, warmongering Alethkar can only serve to upset the status quo. Plus, he’ll need to face his parents for the first time since he lost his brother Tien in the war. Kaladin has his work cut out for him.

Shallan Davar

Lightweaver and liar extraordinaire, Shallan’s journey throughout Words of Radiance is all about coming to accepting the fallacies that have propped up her life. Having deduced where the ancient city of Urithuru was, and having infiltrated the Ghostbloods, an organization dedicated to finding the secrets of Roshar, you’d think Shallan would be happy to rest, but alas, there’s no such thing as “rest” on Roshar. Especially not after becoming betrothed to the swaggering soldier, Adolin.

What We Can Expect: Shallan is pretty deep within the Ghostbloods’ organization now, and her thirst for knowledge is going to make her a pretty useful asset in a city of burgeoning Radiants. She’s already shown what she’s willing to sacrifice to learn more, and unfortunately, if the Ghostbloods offer her a good deal, she may end up becoming a double agent. Her deepening relationship with Adolin, her bond with Dalinar and Navani, and her growing talents as a Lightweaver all indicate that Shallan’s loyalties are going to be tested to their limits in the next book.

Adolin Kholin

In Words of Radiance, Adolin dedicated himself to defending his father, and helping him convince the other squabbling Highprinces of the true threat on the Shattered Plains. He gained some much-needed depth through his noble and deadly Shardblade battles–and his growing love for Shallan–as well as his grudging respect and friendship for Kaladin. Then he put a knife through the eye of his father’s greatest enemy, Sadeas.

What We Can Expect: Fallout, and big time. There’s no way Adolin doesn’t get caught for the murder of Sadeas, and where he goes from here is going to be interesting. He didn’t seem apologetic and something tells me he’s not planning on begging for forgiveness. Will he be exiled? Will he be rewarded? Sanderson has vaguely mentioned the class of Radiant that Adolin’s blade used to belong to, and there have been hints that Adolin may soon join their ranks. How does the cold-blooded murder of a commander affect that?

Dalinar Kholin

Plagued by memory loss, visions of the past, and ominous words from the sky, Dalinar seems as if he’s been slowly going insane over the course of the series thus far. After embracing his mission–one originally meant for his brother, King Galivar—Dalinar came clean with the Alethi people of the Shattered Plains, and led them in a successful mission against the corrupted Parshendi. Now, housed in the ancient city of Urithuru and bonded to the Stormfather, Dalinar is the first Bondsmith in centuries, and must lead his new Radiants and people against the forces trying to plunge Roshar into chaos.

What We Can Expect: Newly bonded to a splinter of the Almighty/Honor, Dalinar is going to have his hands full reigning in the Stormfather, and figuring out his new duties as a Bondsmith. Not only will he have to bring the Radiants together, he’ll need to keep his people in the city from falling apart, especially after he usurped control of them from his nephew Elhokar. Dalinar will need to balance this all while encouraging his youngest son, Renarin, into learning how to control his own Radiant abilities, and while managing the fallout of the actions of his oldest son, Adolin.

As the current working title for Stormlight Book 3 suggests, Oathbringer will feature Dalinar as its central character, flashing back to his earlier days before the first book. We’re finally going to see how Dalinar, a wise, powerful, and respected highprince of Alethkar, grew from his initial identity as the bloody brute of Blackthorn. Something tells me it ain’t going to be pretty.

Jasnah Kholin

Seen very briefly, Jasnah was believed dead for the entirety of Words of Radiance.

But it’s hard to keep a good Radiant down! At the tail end of the book, Jasnah reappears with a backpack, a bandolier, and a message that’s far too late in coming.

What We Can Expect: Jasnah is not one to miss a party, and her being out of commission for Words of Radiance hopefully means a larger presence for her in Oathbringer. Now sporting a metallic bandolier (oh, where else have we seen metal in the Cosmere, hmm?) it’s obvious she’s been on some adventures. She’s not only going to have knowledge of the Cosmere, but also the politics of the Spren and their own governance in the Cognitive Realm.

Szeth Skybreaker

In Words of Radiance, Szeth’s sanity started to unravel even further. The countless murders he’d caused were catching up to his fragile psyche, and when facing Kaladin for the first time, he learned that the Radiants were in fact returning, and that the reason he’d been deemed Truthless in his own country wasn’t true. Learning that his entire reason for suffering was a lie, he gave up, and let himself be swallowed by the Everstorm, destined for death.

Except the world wasn’t done with him. Szeth was returned to life by Nalan, the Herald of Justice and Law, and told that despite the horror he had caused, Szeth was still a man of his word and that was admirable. Nalan recruits Szeth into the Skybreakers, a deadly class of Radiants, and the assassin is now set on revenging himself upon those who originally deemed him Truthless. To assist his efforts, Nalan gives Szeth a very special shardblade, one whose blade is black and smokes, and very much wants to destroy evil, thank you.

What We Can Expect: Nalan just brought a psychopath back to life, gave him a sword that’s also essentially insane, pointed him in the direction of his homeland, and said, “Go for it.” Wielding the sword Nightblood, if Warbreaker is any indication, isn’t going to make Szeth anymore stable. He’ll first be headed back to Shinovar where the other Honorblades are being held. These powerful artifacts grant Radiant abilities without Radiant or spren limits, so expect a lot of magic, a lot of mayhem, a lot of Shinovar, and a lot of blood.

Eshonai

This Parshendi explorer and soldier only wanted to save her people from the encroaching Alethi forces, but in her pursuit of peace she found the one thing her people had been running from: Odium. The discovery seems to twist the noble and honorable soldier into a force of darkness and hate, and the last we saw of Eshonai, she had been leading her soldiers against the Alethi, ultimately raising the Everstorm against them. Even though she went over a cliff at the end of Words of Radiance, I doubt it’s the last we’ve seen of her.

What We Can Expect: The Eshonai we know and love is still in there, somewhere beneath the stormspren and Odium’s influence. Most likely she’ll be gathering her people to her and preparing them to invade Alethkar. I’ll be very curious to see if Eshonai can break free of Odium, and what will happen if she does. It is rumored that the fourth Stormlight book will focus on her, so fingers crossed!

Wit a.k.a. Hoid

Meddled all throughout Words of Radiance.

What We Can Expect: More meddling. It’s kind of his thing.

The Side-Players

Oh man, let’s see, what do we have here…

• Elhokar is being housed by a Herdazian family, has to take back his throne from his bossy uncle, and deal with his own possible burgeoning Radiant powers.
• The nation of Alethkar is in the throes of civil war, and what better time for a Radiant like Kaladin to come on through?
• The Ghostbloods Mraize and Iyatil have their own agenda, and they’re sure as hell going to pursue it, no matter what.
• About that insane man claiming to be Taln, one of the original Heralds and the only one abandoned in Hell…is he the real thing? Time will tell.
• Amaram stole Taln and smuggled him away to his group, The Sons of Honor, for some strange reason I’m sure we’ll find out. Wait, how many secret societies are on Roshar anyway?
• More than you thought! The Mad King Taravangian, whose intelligence differs day by day thanks to a deal he made with the Nightmother, is in the throes of his plan, The Diagram, which details how the next few years will go, and what maneuvers he must make in order to ensure survival.
• Also, we can’t forget Lift, Moash, our worldhoppers looking for Hoid, Shallan’s family, ardents studying spren, our trader on the Greatshell island, Axies our spren cataloguer, the plague at the Purelake, and more.

There’s a lot to look forward to in Oathbringer, and I can’t wait to see what Sanderson delivers!

Martin Cahill is a contributor for Tor.com, Book Riot, and Strange Horizons. You can find him on Twitter @McflyCahill90. Tweet him about delicious east coast IPAs, ideas on who Rey’s parents are, and your worries about the DC Movie Universe.

Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last week, we checked in briefly with Bridge Four before joining Kaladin and Shallan for further adventures in the chasms. This week, they have to deal with the chasmfiend before they can get ready for the highstorm, which doesn’t leave much time for either activity.

This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here.

Click on through to join the discussion!

Chapter 72: Selfish Reasons

Point of View: Kaladin, Shallan
Setting: the Chasms
Symbology: Pattern, Talenel, Kalak

IN WHICH Shallan’s Blade fails to scream at Kaladin; he takes the Blade and leaps out to face the chasmfiend, leading it away from Shallan; he thinks this must be what a Voidbringer looks like, then is too busy staying alive to think any more; he’s frustratingly slow without Stormlight, but still scores several hits on the chasmfiend before getting a severe leg wound; just before it finishes him, Shallan distracts it with an Illusion of herself; Kaladin tries and fails to pull in some Stormlight; Shallan distracts the chasmfiend with a larger-than-life Illusion of Kaladin, giving him time to position himself; Kaladin thrusts the Blade up through the chasmfiend’s mouth and into its brain, killing it. Shallan moves in to find Kaladin trapped, half-inside the beast’s mouth; she summons her Blade and cuts him loose, but is appalled at his condition; his leg reminds her of Balat, but she follows his instructions to bind his wounds with pieces torn from her dress; once done, they still have a highstorm to face, so Shallan uses her Blade to cut a ladder into the chasm wall and a tiny cave for them to shelter from the worst of the storm; Kaladin is resigned to letting the storm wash him away, knowing that Shallan will be (relatively) safe, but she insists that he make the effort; she makes it up to the cubby and he is almost there when the stormwall hits.

Quote of the Week

Kaladin struggled to his feet. The monster stopped smashing against the ground and with a trump surged toward him. Kaladin gripped the sword in two hands, then wavered. His leg buckled beneath him. He tried to go down on one knee, but the leg gave out completely, and he slumped to the side and narrowly avoided slicing himself with the Shardblade.

He splashed into a pool of water. In front of him, one of the spheres he’d tossed shone with a bright white light.

He reached into the water, snatching it, clutching the chilled glass. He needed that Light. Storms, his life depended on it.

Please.

The chasmfiend loomed above. Kaladin sucked in a breath, straining, like a man gasping for air. He heard… as if distantly…

Weeping.

No power entered him.

Pretty sure I expected him to at least get a trickle here, the first time I read this. And it almost broke my heart that it didn’t happen. In retrospect, though, this is at least a hint that she’s still there somewhere.

Weeping.

Commentary

This is such a great chapter. Well, a great sequence, it’s just broken up into chapters.

Whether it’s the shared danger, or a bit of clearing the air from the previous chapter, Kaladin finally relaxes (if that’s the right word!) into the verbal fencing. It’s not like he can’t do it—we’ve seen him sparring with words ever since the beginning, whether it was with Tvlakv, Syl, the bridgemen, or during his flashbacks. He’s just always been too stiff with Shallan to ever take part. So there are some great sections of dialog—banter mixed with information mixed with… just normal conversation. (Well, normal considering the setting, anyway!)

As noted above, I really almost expected Kaladin to get his powers back in this chapter. He fought with all he had to protect someone he wasn’t even sure he liked; despite his excellent instincts, there’s only so much an unenhanced human should be able to do against a chasmfiend. If ever there was a battle that ought to be rewarded by a level-up, this seemed like it… but there’s nothing. He has to fight it with nothing but human skill… and a Shardblade he doesn’t understand. Luckily, the Blade understands him!

In fact, I suppose I should be bothered by the fact that, even with the Blade and with Shallan’s Illusions to distract the beast, he actually killed a chasmfiend—something that took the best combined efforts of Dalinar, Adolin, Elhokar, and Sadeas to do. There are two justifications I set against that, though: One, the relatively close confines keep the chasmfiend from making full use of its normal agility and speed. Two, see Sanderson’s Zeroth Law: Err on the Side of Awesome.

There were so many things I want to quote, because I love the things that are happening here. I’ll limit myself to two three.

Falling stone made a beating sound on the dead chasmfiend’s armor. “You’re doing great!” Kaladin called up to her. “Keep at it!”

“When did you get so peppy?” she shouted.

“Ever since I assumed I was dead, then I suddenly wasn’t.”

“Then remind me to try to kill you once in a while,” she snapped. “If I succeed, it will make me feel better, and if I fail, it will make you feel better. Everyone wins!”

Then:

“Done?” Kaladin called up from the chasm floor.

“No,” Shallan said, “but close enough. I think we might fit.”

Kaladin was silent.

“You are coming up into the hole I just cut, Kaladin bridgeboy, chasmfiend-slayer and gloombringer.” She leaned over the side of the chasmfiend to look at him. “We are not having another stupid conversation about you dying in here while I bravely continue on. Understand?”

“I’m not sure if I can walk, Shallan,” Kaladin said with a sigh. “Let alone climb.”

“You’re going,” Shallan said, “if I have to carry you.”

He looked up, then grinned, face covered in dried violet ichor that he’d wiped away as best he could. “I’d like to see that.”

And finally this:

He looked up at the ladder cut into the rock. “You’re really going to make me climb that.”

“Yes,” she said. “For perfectly selfish reasons.”

He looked to her.

“I’m not going to have your last sight in life be a view of me standing in half a filthy dress, covered in purple blood, my hair an utter mess. It’s undignified. On your feet, bridgeboy.”

When Kaladin first had the idea to use the Shardblade to cut out the cubbyhole and the ladder to get to it, he probably did have the idea of “saving ourselves.” But I can’t help wondering if it was at the point where he started cheering her on, when he concluded that he was never going to make it, and he needed to keep faking it long enough for Shallan to make the preparations that would keep her alive.

Of course, he reckoned without Shallan’s stubbornness…

While I realize that your mileage may vary, I feel that Sanderson did a believable job of taking these two young hotheads and bringing them from yelling at each other to cooperation, and even to mutual concern and aid for one another, even given the short timeframe. Somehow, it just works for me.

Also, as was pointed out last week, Kaladin has definitely progressed toward the next Ideal, though he doesn’t know it yet. He’s now willing to fight for and protect someone he very recently loathed, all while still feeling ambivalent toward her. This is the Kaladin I love: the one who will do everything in his power to protect, even to the point of willingly sacrificing his life for someone else to live.

Stormwatch

T-minus nine days and holding…

Sprenspotting

Well, this chapter answered a question I asked two weeks ago.

The chasmfiend’s head lay nearby, massive eyes cloudy. Spren started to rise from it, like trails of smoke. The same ones as before, only… leaving?

I’m almost positive this is Significant; I just don’t know how. Are they leaving because it doesn’t need them any longer, or because whatever drew them in the first place is now gone? Or is it both?

All Creatures Shelled and Feathered

“Smells awful in here,” Kaladin said weakly. “Almost as bad as you do.”

“Be glad,” Shallan said as she worked. “Here, I have a reasonably perfect specimen of a chasmfiend—with only a minor case of being dead—and I’m chopping it apart for you instead of studying it.”

“I’m eternally grateful.”

…

“We actually killed the thing.”

“Sad, I know,” she said, feeling depressed. “It was beautiful.”

Oh, Shallan. I keep trying to understand the depth of fascination which would lead her to call a critter like this “beautiful,” and how she could be so enthralled with it that she could set aside the terror of the situation to admire it. I’m sure there are people who can relate to this, but… I’m not really one of them.

I’m more in line with Kaladin’s reaction:

Looking up at the rearing, alien silhouette before him—with its too many legs, its twisted head, its segmented armor—Kaladin thought he must know what a Voidbringer looked like. Surely nothing more terrible than this could exist.

Back in TWoK, Jasnah sent Dalinar a picture from an ancient book which depicted a chasmfiend and called it a Voidbringer. Her evaluation at the time was that the artist, not knowing what a Voidbringer really looked like, had simply drawn the most horrific thing she knew of. This could either be reinforcement of that idea, or they could both be foreshadowings.

Ars Arcanum

Lots of Arcanum happening this week, starting with Shallan’s Shardblade. Now that we know about the Blades, it’s funny to read Kaladin’s thoughts; the first time around, though, this was Foreshadowing of the kind that you don’t even notice until it comes around behind and smacks you in the back of the head… many chapters later.

At least this told him one thing—Shallan wasn’t likely to be a Surgebinder. Otherwise, he suspected she’d hate this Blade as much as he did.

Makes perfect sense, as long as you don’t know what Blades are really made of, and what the difference is between this one and all the rest. There are also a couple of other hints dropped about this one being different, primarily to do with the patterns (Patterns!) which glow along the Blade. Kaladin notes it, but only thinks that he’s never seen one in the dark before. Hah!

There were some other, sadder things about this, though.

The screech he had heard in his mind when fighting alongside Adolin did not recur. It seemed a very bad sign to him. Though he did not know the meaning of that terrible sound, it was related to his bond with Syl.

Yes, it was related… Although he’s wrong about why this one doesn’t scream, he’s quite right that he only hears it from other Blades because of Syl. This, and the QOTW, just make me sad. (Fortunately for me, they also make the later resolution that much sweeter!)

The last one I have to quote (on this subject) is this:

He hesitated, regarding his face reflected in its metal. He saw corpses, friends with burning eyes. He’d refused these weapons each time one was offered to him.

But always before, it had been after the fight, or at least on the practice grounds. This was different. Besides, he wasn’t choosing to become a Shardbearer; he would only use this weapon to protect someone’s life.

Oddly enough—or maybe not—he will also finally acquire his own true Blade only when he needs it to protect another life.

Back to the arcane action… I remember thinking it was a little selfish of Shallan to insist on retrieving her satchel just so she wouldn’t lose all her drawings again—unless there was some significance to it. Which, of course, there was, and in the heat of the moment, Kaladin noticed and then forgot things. Shallan turned herself and her clothing black, to hide in the shadows—just like she did in “Taln’s” monastery cell—though of course Kaladin didn’t get to see that at all. Then she sent out the Illusion of herself, which Kaladin thought “echoed oddly” but (I suppose reasonably, in the circumstances) didn’t dwell on. I’m more surprised that he didn’t wonder about the Illusion of himself; he only thought briefly “What had he done? How had he done it?” and then apparently forgot about it. Again, I suppose it’s more or less reasonable for him to think it was something he had done inadvertently; he’s not very well educated on the various Radiant skillsets, and he’d just got what seemed convincing proof that Shallan was definitely not a Radiant. If anything, he’d gotten more accustomed to strange things happening and figuring out what he’d done later, so, okay, this could have been more of the same. It wasn’t, but it could have been.

Oh, and one more thing:

She started climbing them. Standing on one and clinging to the highest one, she summoned the Blade again and tried to cut a step even higher, but the thing was just so blasted long.

Obligingly, it shrank in her hand to the size of a much shorter sword, really a big knife.

Thank you, she thought, then cut out the next line of rock.

In retrospect, it’s so obvious! First time through, though, I was flabbergasted by that one. The whole Blade changed size for her convenience. How did it do that?? Yet another hint dropped.

Heraldic Symbolism

Talenel, the soldier: dependable, resourceful. Wow, that’s got just a few applications here! Between the fighting, the distractions, and the clever carve-out-a-cave-with-your-Shardblade notion, these two would make Talenel proud.
Kalak, the maker: resolute, builder. This is a little less obvious, but there was certainly a great deal of resolute effort to avoid dying by either of two encounters which are generally expected to be fatal.

Shipping Wars

Okay, I’ll point it out. Right at the beginning of the chapter, Kaladin shows a certain awareness of Shallan’s physical presence:

He was suddenly aware of her pressed against his back. Holding him, breath warm on his neck. She trembled, and he thought he could hear in her voice both terror and fascination at their situation.

While I personally don’t find this a very solid foundation for an actual romance, it’s there. Make of it what you will. I know, you always do… :)

There. That ought to keep us busy until next week, when we return to the Davar home for the last time, in Shallan’s final flashback chapter. See you in the comments!

Alice Arneson is a long-time Tor.com commenter and Sanderson beta-reader. She is currently fighting off a cold, so if things don’t make sense, cut her some slack. They made sense when she wrote them… for some definition of the word “sense,” anyway.

Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last week, we left Kaladin hanging on the side of a chasm as the highstorm struck.  This week, we still leave him hanging, as we return to the Davar estate, one year ago, for Shallan’s final flashback chapter.

This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here.

Click on through to join the discussion!

Chapter 73: A Thousand Scurrying Creatures

Point of View: Li’l Shallan
Setting: the Davar Estate, Jah Keved
Symbology: Inverse Pattern, Nalan

IN WHICH siblings conspire uneasily; an elder brother cannot be found; increased wealth has not increased happiness; a fiancé arrives unexpectedly; a pouch is fetched; a son confronts his father; a brother and a stepmother are dead; the son draws his sword, and is contemptuously disarmed; poisoned wine is proffered; the son is beaten; the father collapses; a broken Soulcaster is discovered; the father is not dead; a song is sung; a daughter kills her father.

Quote of the Week

Now go to sleep, in chasms deep, with darkness all around you…
Though rock and dread may be your bed, so sleep my baby dear.
Now comes the storm, but you’ll be warm,
The wind will rock your basket…
The crystals fine will glow sublime…
And with a song… you’ll sleep… my baby dear.

It’s come back around. “The lie becomes the truth.” Some part of Shallan acknowledges beyond any shadow of doubt that her father did not kill his wife; that story was a lie. But now it’s become the truth; he’s killed his wife, and it’s too much.

Commentary

Word of warning: Lots and lots and lots of quotations today. This chapter demands it.

These poor, inept plotters. I can only assume that their inquiries about Helaran were a little too obvious; in any case, Lord Davar knew that they couldn’t find him. What I really wonder, now, is how he knew what had happened. “He found his own death on a battlefield in Alethkar.” On a guess, maybe the Ghostbloods sent word?

At any rate, once he knew they were trying to contact Helaran, his suspicions were raised, and their planning was in vain. It’s probably not surprising; Balat sounds like he’s as good at scheming as he is at everything else: which is to say, not at all. I found it terribly disturbing to read his solution to the atmosphere of the household:

“I’m tired of the fear,” Balat said to her. “I’m tired of being a coward. If Helaran has vanished, then I really am eldest. Time to show it. I won’t just run, spending my life wondering if Father’s minions are hunting us. This way… this way it will be over. Decided.”

He’s tired of the fear and of being a coward… so he’s going to run away? Sure, he’s going to run to the highprince and hope that someone there still cares about the old rumors of murder… but he’s still running away. He’s going to take his fiancé – whose ability to handle the escape I seriously question, and whose presence is completely unrequired for the ostensible mission – from her parents’ comfortable home, and drag her along with him. But he’s going to leave his little sister and his younger brothers in the house with their terrifying father, to face his wrath when Balat’s disappearance becomes known.

Oh, Balat. I pity you, but you’re a weakling and a fool.

Well, it’s too late now. They’ve been discovered, the entire plan tortured out of Malise, and Eylita sent for under some pretext or other. He must have made it sound like he was approving of the marriage? Otherwise, I can’t think why she would actually come. Then again, she’s not all that bright either, so maybe she wasn’t too hard to convince.

And there they all are: Wikim and Jushu hiding outside the door, Balat and Eylita attempting to face it out, Malise dead on the floor, and Lord Davar in a cold, contemptuous fury. He and Shallan are the only ones moderately functional… but she has a pouch of well-aged blackbane.

Last week in the comments, FenrirMoridin observed that “Shallan is colder and more calculating when she is under stress and having to focus on doing something even though what she wants is to curl up into a ball and ride things out.” Ironically, when I saw that comment, I had just finished reading this:

Shallan felt cold as she stepped into the hallway. That coldness… was that panic? Overwhelming panic, so sharp and strong it washed away everything else.

This had been coming. She’d known this had been coming. They tried to hide, they tried to flee. Of course that wouldn’t work.

It hadn’t worked with Mother either.

(This is the point at which they’d just learned that Lord Davar had sent for Eylita.) I’d like to know a little more about that last statement, though I suppose I never will. Was the hiding and fleeing just that one afternoon when they tried to kill Shallan? Or was it built up over time, attempting to hide her Lightweaving from Mother over a period of weeks or months?

Shallan forced herself to her feet. Coldness. Yes, she recognized that coldness inside of her now. She’d felt it before, on the day when she’d lost her mother.

Lord Davar has just collapsed from the drugged wine, and she turns away, believing him dead – by her hand, just like her mother, though she won’t acknowledge the similarity. She thinks of it only in terms of “the day when she’d lost her mother.” (Would she, had she been free to do so, have stashed this in the Closed section of her mind, and only thought of it as “the day when she’d lost her father”?) In the coldness of her panic, she thinks extremely clearly and acts decisively.

Shallan rubbed her thumb across the metal. She couldn’t think. Numbness… shock. That was it. Shock.

I killed Father.

This is just before they realize that he’s coming around; while she considers herself “in shock” she’s really still being all analytical and effective. The earlier observation is accurate: when Shallan panics, she goes cold, and then she does everything skillfully, efficiently, and emotionlessly. Or… not everything:

“Now go to sleep,” she whispered, “in chasms deep, with darkness all around you…”

A lullaby. Shallan spoke the song through her tears—the song he’d sung for her as a child, when she was frightened.

Not quite everything.

Stormwatch

One year ago, on the night of the last highstorm before the Weeping (which is not necessarily the same date), Shallan’s life turns inside out once more.

Ars Mechanica

This is the first time we’ve visited the Davar family since the Ghostbloods decided he was worth their active support. For the first time in years, they are not only solvent, but actually wealthy:

“Does it feel odd to anyone else,” Jushu said, “to be this rich? How many deposits of valuable stone are there on our lands?”

We already knew about the Soulcasting of rich stone deposits, but they clearly didn’t. They thought it was just dumb luck that so many were being found. We don’t actually know when Luesh told them the truth of what was going on, or how much truth they had to tell him about their father’s death. There are still a lot of aspects to Shallan’s past that we don’t know. But now we finally know for sure a) how & when the kids got hold of the Soulcaster and b) how it got damaged:

Shallan glanced over to see Jushu pulling something silvery from Father’s coat pocket. It was shrouded in a small black bag, mildly wet with blood, only pieces of it showing from where Balat’s sword had struck.

“Oh, Stormfather,” Jushu said, pulling it out. The device consisted of several chains of silvery metal connecting three large gemstones, one of which was cracked, its glow lost. “Is this what I think it is?”

“A Soulcaster,” Shallan said.

…

Shallan stood, wiping bloodied hands on her dress, and took the Soulcaster from Jushu. The delicate metal was broken where the sword had struck it.

So, despite all the theorizing, and despite all the times this was used as “proof” that Shallan had killed her father with her Shardblade, it turns out that the fabrial is simply susceptible to ordinary damage from ordinary tools.

Side note: I suspect, personally, that the reason all the wealth isn’t making their father happier is that every favor from the Ghostbloods comes with a price attached, and while he’s free to spend the new wealth on dresses for Shallan and parading for the highprince, it’s still all in service to someone else’s goals. (And there’s Odium, of course.)

Heraldic Symbolism

Well, this is pretty obvious. The Judge, Nalan, is here to serve justice on Lin Davar, abuser and murderer. And poor little sixteen-year-old Shallan has to be the one to carry out the sentence.

I mentioned all the expectation during the TWoK discussions, that Shallan had killed her father with her Shardblade, and that it was probably self-defense. The truth was… a distinct shock. I could wish for her sake that the expectations had been correct; a sudden death from a Shardblade wielded in self-defense would be bad enough, but this? This is the kind of thing that makes her “It helps if you’re crazy” crack seem all too bitterly true. How could she be anything other than crazy, after this?

Did it really have to be done? Yes, he’d killed Malise, and had he not been poisoned he probably would have killed Eylita and possibly Balat. But once he was down and helpless, was it really necessary to strangle him to death? I can certainly see an argument for it. I can also see an argument against it. Try to be polite to each other when you debate this question.

Just Sayin’

First, a bit of levity, because we need it now, Balat’s opinion notwithstanding.

Shallan eyed the bundles Balat had been preparing. “Good thing Father never checks in on you, Balat. Those bundles look so fishy, we could make a stew out of them.”

The second is not so much funny, as a brilliant bit of word-painting:

Rain pelted the roof. It sounded like a thousand scurrying creatures looking for a way into the building.

Umm… that’s not creepy or anything, right?

Final notes: Words of Radiance was released exactly two years ago today. Woot! And on a much more sober personal note, my own father passed away five days before the release; this was a very difficult chapter to deal with this week. (Not to worry – there were no parallels. He was 97 years old; I just sat with him for most of his last few days, and sang to him a lot.)

Okay, enough. Play nice in the comments, and then be sure to come back next week so we can finally resolve Kaladin’s cliffhanging. Good thing he has such great upper body strength.

Alice Arneson is a long-time Tor.com commenter and Sanderson beta-reader, and she completely failed to ask any questions at the Calamity signing event. Fortunately, other people asked plenty! Check out Braid_Tug’s report at #30 and sheiglagh’s at #35 and 36 on Chapter 72 of the reread; for more signing reports, check out 17thshard.

Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last week, we spent a somber evening in the Davar home for the last of Shallan’s flashbacks. This week, we’ll finally get Kaladin off that cliff he’s been hanging on, as the final highstorm before the Weeping goes surreal on our young protagonists.

This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here.

Click on through to join the discussion!

Chapter 74: Striding the Storm

Point of View: Kaladin
Setting: In a cubby, In a chasm, Excavated with a Blade…
Symbology: Spears, Vedel, Palah

IN WHICH Kaladin is pulled to safety; the storm pounds the plateaus and the water rises abruptly; bodies float by; strange things are seen in the storm; stories of past traumas are exchanged; the Stormfather comes; a Realization occurs; Kaladin is condemned; spheres are now charged, and silence falls between the two; the storm ends, and sleep descends.

Quote of the Week

“Syl,” Kaladin said, looking back to the face. The plateaus in front of him had vanished. It was just him and the face. He had to ask. It hurt him, but he had to. “What have I done to her?”

YOU HAVE KILLED HER. The voice shook everything. It was as if… as if the shaking of the plateau and his own body made the sounds for the voice.

“No,” Kaladin whispered. “No!”

IT HAPPENED AS IT ONCE DID, the Stormfather said, angry. A human emotion. Kaladin recognized it. MEN CANNOT BE TRUSTED, CHILD OF TANAVAST. YOU HAVE TAKEN HER FROM ME. MY BELOVED ONE.

The face seemed to withdraw, fading.

“Please!” Kaladin screamed. “How can I fix it? What can I do?”

IT CANNOT BE FIXED. SHE IS BROKEN. YOU ARE LIKE THE ONES WHO CAME BEFORE, THE ONES WHO KILLED SO MANY OF THOSE I LOVE. FAREWELL, SON OF HONOR. YOU WILL NOT RIDE MY WINDS AGAIN.

Oh, agony. I think it was this point where I slowly, reluctantly, began to believe that she really might be gone for good—although my response in the beta read was on the order of, “No. I refuse to accept this. Syl is not dead. She can’t be.” The “weeping” Kaladin had heard still gave me hope, but this… this is the Stormfather saying that it’s all over. I think it was also here that I began to wonder if Kaladin was going to die by the end of the book. Without Syl to make him a Radiant, what forward path did he have?

Commentary

This is another chapter where I’m having to forcibly restrain myself from copying whole pages of text, because there are Important Things to be noted. Such as this:

A crash of thunder, accompanied by a blinding flash of light, sent him stuttering. Shallan pulled more tightly against him, fingers digging into his arm. The light left an afterimage in his eyes.

Storms. He could swear that afterimage was a face, horribly twisted, the mouth pulled open. The next lightning bolt lit the flood just outside with a sequence of crackling light, and it showed water bobbing with corpses. Dozens of them pulled past in the current, dead eyes toward the sky, many just empty sockets. Men and Parshendi.

So, two things. One, What is with that afterimage? That’s creepy. And, as noted, surreal. I can only surmise… and I can’t even make a coherent statement about the potential answers. I just hope we learn someday.

And two: What’s with the bodies? I assume that these are the corpses from the most recent fighting, the day they fell into the chasm. I also assume that the empty eye sockets mean that those people were killed with Shardblades, which means Eshonai had to have been involved. But I thought they weren’t doing that any more, unless there are other Parshendi out there that no one knows about. I’m so confused…

Then there’s this bit:

Light came from above, too steady to be lightning. Something was glowing on the plateau. Something that moved. It was hard to see, since water streamed off the side of the plateau above, falling in a sheet before their refuge. He swore he saw an enormous figure walking up there, a glowing inhuman form, followed by another, alien and sleek. Striding the storm. Leg after leg, until the glow passed.

As Alcatraz would say, “Gak!” What. Are. These.

I can’t quite tell from the description if there are two huge beings with multiple legs, or multiple bipedal forms, or multiple beings with multiple legs. Either way, GAK! I have no informed opinion on what these might be, other than perhaps some of the Unmade. I don’t know if that even makes sense, but it’s the only thing I can think of. The Heralds are normal-sized people, and all the other humanoid species we’ve met on Roshar seem to be roughly the same size. So what are these enormous glowing figures?

The odd thing is that I don’t actually remember wondering about it too hard on previous reads—I would note them, but then forget about them in the avalanche of Things Happening. I even went back to look in the beta discussion—we were all so caught in the Stormfather conversation that we didn’t even mention this. A question to ask Brandon, I guess.

Moving right along: We all know the stories that Kaladin and Shallan tell one another, but this is the first time either of them have told the story to anyone who didn’t live through it with them. (Side note: I love the way they need the conversation when it’s all darkness and lightning, but once Shallan’s sphere is recharged and they have a steady light, the need to talk fades away. It’s very real.)

Kaladin is habitually careful: he doesn’t ever say that he killed the Shardbearer, because that’s gotten him in trouble before; and he doesn’t talk about Syl because he’s used to keeping her a secret, and because it’s a painful subject right now. So he tells Shallan enough to understand most of where he’s been. She reciprocates:

“My father was a violent, angry man,” Shallan said. “A murderer. I loved him. And I strangled him as he lay on the floor, watching me, unable to move. I killed my own father…”

And finally Kaladin understands something that he’s never really grasped before: it could have been So. Much. Worse.

Kaladin had thought his life terrible, but there was one thing he’d had, and perhaps not cherished enough: parents who loved him. Roshone had brought Damnation itself to Hearthstone, but at least Kaladin’s mother and father had always been there to rely upon.

What would he have done, if his father had been like the abusive, hateful man Shallan described? If his mother had died before his own eyes? What would he have done if, instead of living off Tien’s light, he had been required to bring light to the family?

Incidentally, given the wording of that last paragraph, I have to wonder what Shallan actually told him about her mother’s death. Clearly not that she herself had killed her mother in self-defense… so probably one of the various stories her father had given. Anything but the truth, on this subject.

For what it’s worth, I don’t believe that killing her father was ever part of the experience she locked up in the “Never Remember” part of her mind. For one thing, there’s no way to pretend to her three brothers (or the fiancée) that she didn’t do it. For another, she’s quite a bit older now, and has lived with enough horror that this doesn’t send her catatonic. So, while I’m sure she hasn’t talked about it with anyone outside those four people, I don’t think she did the selective amnesia thing with this. She deliberately avoided thinking about it, yes, but it didn’t send her into a blank stare when the thought crossed her mind.

And then Stormfather shows up.

Stormwatch

This is the last highstorm before the Weeping begins. The countdown is rapidly winding down; as has been the case for the last month of reread, there are only nine days left! Umm… Yeah.

Sprenspotting

Creepy spren: “red and violet and reminiscent of lightning.” Are these stormspren? I assume so—or perhaps stormspren and another, related spren. In any case, these just cannot be a good thing, all out and about in the highstorm. And another thing: what’s with the chanting out there in the storm? My first thought was the Parshendi, but why on earth would they come most of the way across the Plains, nearly to the warcamps themselves, to bond their stormspren? Are they out here doing maneuvers? Or is the chanting being done by those other… things?

Also, hello, mighty one. Who’s the biggest spren of all?

“Stormfather,” Kaladin said. Some named him Jezerezeh, Herald. This didn’t fit what Kaladin had heard of any Herald, however. Was the Stormfather a spren, perhaps? A god? It seemed to stretch forever, yet he could see it, make out the face in its infinite expanse.

All Creatures Shelled and Feathered

Okay, that’s one big ugly.

Also, I still need to ask Brandon about these spren, which seem to connect the skyeels, the santhidyn, and the chasmfiends. The more I think about it, the more I think they have some kind of anti-gravitational effect; the only problem is that I’m still used to thinking of spren as being drawn to things, not causing things. Are there some spren that do one, some do the other, and some do both? Or are these “anti-grav spren” more closely related to the bonding spren—i.e., do they grant a limited Surgebinding to these creatures? How much intelligence is actually required for a bond like that?

Ars Arcanum

Kaladin finally puts it together and recognizes that Shallan is a Surgebinder. We’re not told exactly what makes it all click for him, but there have been inexplicable phenomena galore. Most recently, she managed to pull him up to the cubby with a strength that simply doesn’t match her size—and then of course there’s the sphere that suddenly went dark. The storm prevents him from arguing with her when she claims she must have dropped it, but apparently he didn’t forget after all.

It must be an odd feeling. He had thought himself alone, and had become accustomed to crediting his Surgebinding for every odd thing that happened, from things unexpectedly sticking together, to not dying when he fell several hundred feet to what should have been his death. In Chapter 72, he even assumed that the giant-Kaladin-Illusion was something he had somehow done. Then Shallan does something he was used to doing: she gained sudden, impossible strength and a sphere went dun… and it sinks in. None of it was his own doing; she survived the fall on her own, and her skill made it possible for him to kill the chasmfiend.

He even confirms her Radiant status with the Stormfather… but in a wrenching counterpoint, just as he learns he wasn’t alone as a Radiant, he also learns that he’s not a Radiant any longer. Not only did Shallan do all that on her own—he will apparently never do anything like it again.

Bitter timing.

Heraldic Symbolism

I’m not quite sure why Vedel and Palah grace this particular chapter… but then, I’m not sure who I think would make any more sense. So Vedel the Healer and Palah the Scholar watch over the exchange of histories and the revelations of pain and heartache. Kaladin and Shallan have to come away from this with a greater understanding of one another, and probably the world at large and their small place in it. (Well, okay, Radiants aren’t exactly a small part of what’s coming, but setting that aspect aside for a moment…) A couple of young people from the backwaters of their respective nations are not normally going to be all that significant on the world stage. Their sorrow, however, is substantial to them personally, and it’s a bit of a stunner to realize that other insignificant people also suffer and mourn. Sometimes a person needs this kind of lesson to realize that he’s just not such a special snowflake after all… and sometimes he needs it to realize that he’s not alone. This situation, I think, may be both—for both of them.

Shipping Wars

And here’s another couple of arrows for the shipping-war ballistas.

With his hands around her waist, hers around him, it was as close as he’d held a woman since Tarah.

I really, really want to know more about Tarah someday. Then, later, there’s this one.

For now, he wanted to think—though he was still glad for her presence. And aware of it in more ways than one, pushed against him and wearing the wet, increasingly tattered dress.

His conversation with the Stormfather, however, drew his attention away from that sort of thought.

My take on this is that, oh surprise, Kaladin is human. He’s physically aware of this sopping-wet woman wearing, as she phrased it earlier, “half a filthy dress”—though it’s probably slightly cleaner by now, her right sleeve and the bottom part of her are making bandages for Kaladin. Anyway, he could hardly be unaware of her, but at this moment, he has something far more problematic on his mind, and his attention is elsewhere.

I do understand the argument, as well as the wish and/or expectation some people have, that this night of shared danger, backstories, and physical proximity could naturally serve as a starting point for mutual romantic interest. I just… don’t think there’s much argument that it does. Certainly they show signs of awareness later—but they also each have other priorities which, IMO, turn this into a passing attraction. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

There. That ought to keep us busy until next week, when Dalinar’s preparations for the Big Expotition are disrupted by the return of our two wanderers: soggy, dirty, but alive.

Alice Arneson is a long-time Tor.com commenter and Sanderson beta-reader. She is very much looking forward to her first JordanCon, where she will be one of the Sanderson Track panelists. Y’all should come. It’ll be fun.

Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last week, we sat out the final highstorm of the year in a tiny Shardblade-carved cave, while Shallan and Kaladin exchanged backstories. This week, they finally return to the warcamp, scruffy but triumphant, bringing a gemheart and a perfect map to contribute to the upcoming expedition.

This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here.

Click on through to join the discussion!

Chapter 75: True Glory

Point of View: Dalinar, Shallan
Setting: the Warcamp
Symbology: Kholin Glyphpair, Jezrien, Vedel

IN WHICH Amaram attempts to intercede with Dalinar for Sadeas as supplies and soldiers are staged for the march; Dalinar refuses to treat with Sadeas, despite Amaram’s chiding about authority; a messenger brings word—Stormblessed has come out of the chasms; Kaladin delivers the gemheart, and Shallan lies about how they got it; Navani arrives and promptly adopts Shallan; Dalinar confronts Kaladin about being a Knight Radiant, but Kaladin denies it; Shallan, having reported to Dalinar & Navani, listens to Pattern report on the conversation they held while she bathed; trying to determine whether she’s Radiant enough to open the Oathgate, Pattern reveals some surprises about spren and the Recreance; Adolin arrives suddenly, and much affection is expressed (!); he promises to protect her forever, and things get tense; Dalinar and Navani enter, and Shallan requests that she be allowed to accompany the expedition; she also recommends that the parshmen be left behind, and Dalinar agrees to both.

Quote of the Week

“I will make sure you aren’t ever hurt,” Adolin said fiercely. “I should have realized that you could be caught in an assassination attempt intended for Father. We’ll have to make it so that you aren’t ever in that kind of position again.”

She pulled away from him.

“Shallan?” Adolin said. “Don’t worry, they won’t get to you. I’ll protect you. I—”

“Don’t say things like that,” she hissed.

“What?” He ran his hand through his hair.

“Just don’t,” Shallan said, shivering.

“The man who did this, who threw that lever, is dead now,” Adolin said. “Is that what you’re worried about? He was poisoned before we could get answers—though we’re sure he belonged to Sadeas—but you don’t need to worry about him.”

“I will worry about what I wish to worry about,” Shallan said. “I don’t need to be protected.”

“But—”

“I don’t!” Shallan said. She breathed in and out, calming herself. She reached out and took him by the hand. “I won’t be locked away again, Adolin.”

“Again?”

“It’s not important.” Shallan raised his hand and wove his fingers between her own. “I appreciate the concern. That’s all that matters.”

But I won’t let you, or anyone else, treat me like a thing to be hidden away. Never, never again.

Well. Talk about communication issues! Shallan has the nightmare of her past fresh on her mind, from having talked it all out last night during the storm… but she was talking to Kaladin. Adolin hasn’t an earthly (Rosharly?), but she rather lights into him anyway. Okay, I don’t blame her for feeling this way, not at all—she spent a good chunk of her life being “sheltered” and “protected,” and it was a prison of constant, terrified anticipation of what would go wrong next. Still, it’s hardly fair to hiss at Adolin about it. For the past two days, she’s been alive and working hard to stay that way; he’s been grieving the “death” of someone he was (IMO) honestly coming to love, and feeling guilty that he was running the other direction (no matter how worthy the cause) when she fell to her presumed fate.

This will come up again…

Commentary

Once in a while, I suspect that I might not be entirely fair to Amaram; my view is colored by Kaladin’s experience. He apparently thinks he’s doing the right thing overall, that all of the wrong things are done in service of the greater good, and so the sacrifice even of his own honor is necessary for the sake of The Cause.

On the other hand… Nope. It’s one thing to recruit people to give their lives in a cause; it’s another to decide to sacrifice them for something that a) they don’t even know about and b) might not agree with. Especially when they joined you for one cause, and you sacrifice them for a different one.

I find him difficult to deal with, especially in this chapter. On the surface of it, he has embraced the task Dalinar has given him and takes his responsibility seriously. He is concerned with unifying Alethkar, and with advising Dalinar well, and he really, really is serious—and correct—about the Voidbringers coming. He even has some good advice: that if Dalinar is going to give people authority, he needs to let it stay given instead of reclaiming it whenever he wants. But. But Amaram has other motivations, and he’s actively trying to deceive the man who gave him his lofty position. And… that’s all I’ll say on that subject until we get to Chapter 76; at this point we didn’t know the test Dalinar had set up for him. For now, I’ll contain my burning desire to cause Amaram severe pain.

So I’ll balance the annoyance with amusement over Kaladin’s “melodrama” and Shallan’s much greater experience with lying. It’s a little bit of a bummer that he gets to present Dalinar with the gemheart of the chasmfiend he killed but can’t tell the true story. But explanations would be distinctly awkward, especially for Shallan. It’s no wonder she lies about it—she’s not supposed to have a Shardblade!—and it’s easy, because the lie is far more believable than the truth. At some point, I think it would be nice if they were able to tell someone the real story of the chasmfiend fight, just for fun, but I doubt it will happen. By the time they could tell the story freely, there are much more important, world-shattering issues to deal with. Oh well.

Jumping forward, I do love Navani. After all the time of grief and denial, Shallan is suddenly and fiercely claimed, and that’s that. Partly, I suspect she first had to come to terms with her loss, and then she needed a stimulus to provoke her to active acceptance. Clearly, the sight of Shallan “in half a filthy dress” (I do love that line!) was enough of a trigger; from there, there’s no going back. I wonder how much of it was to do with Jasnah, how much with Adolin’s obvious grief, and how much simple maternal instinct. In any case, I like the outcome.

Last note. Every time I read this bit, it almost breaks my heart again:

“I’ve been searching for you, haven’t I?” Dalinar said. “All this time, without seeing it.”

Kaladin looked away. “No, sir. Maybe once, but… I’m just what you see, and not what you think. I’m sorry.”

Sigh.

Stormwatch

Yay! It’s the next day, finally! Uh… it’s the next day. There are now only 8 days left in the countdown, and they still don’t know what they’re counting down to.

Sprenspotting

We’ve had the conversation about gloryspren before, and whether or not they are appropriately named. Feel free to have the debate again, if you wish, but I would first remind you that the name is the one used by Rosharans, or at least Alethi, and they aren’t always fully aware of what specifically attracts a spren. They’re called “gloryspren” because they show up when someone is reveling in or being lauded for a major accomplishment; whether they’re drawn to that concept of “glory” per se, or whether it’s the approval (from oneself or others), or… something else, we may never know. But they’re called gloryspren, and they show up to replace Kaladin’s exhaustionspren when he reveals the gemheart he and Shallan brought back with them. One way or another, that really is quite an accomplishment!

There’s something more significant than gloryspren revealed in this chapter, though.

“I was not me when the Knights Radiant existed. It is complex to explain. I have always existed. We are not ‘born’ as men are, and we cannot truly die as men do. Patterns are eternal, as is fire, as is the wind. As are all spren. Yet, I was not in this state. I was not… aware.”

“You were a mindless spren?” Shallan said. “Like the ones that gather around me when I draw?”

“Less than that,” Pattern said. “I was… everything. In everything. I cannot explain it. Language is insufficient. I would need numbers.”

“Surely there are others among you, though,” Shallan said. “Older Cryptics? Who were alive back then?”

“No,” Pattern said softly. “None who experienced the bond.”

“Not a single one?”

“All dead,” Pattern said. “To us, this means they are mindless—as a force cannot truly be destroyed. These old ones are patterns in nature now, like Cryptics unborn. We have tried to restore them. It does not work. Mmmm. Perhaps if their knights still lived, something could be done…”

Stormfather. Shallan pulled the blanket around her closer. “An entire people, all killed?”

“Not just one people,” Pattern said, solemn. “Many. Spren with minds were less plentiful then, and the majorities of several spren peoples were all bonded. There were very few survivors. The one you call Stormfather lived. Some others. The rest, thousands of us, were killed when the event happened. You call it the Recreance.”

I… don’t quite know what to say about this. In one sense, spren aren’t living beings; they’re the personification of ideas. But in another sense, some spren become sentient individuals as well. And now we learn that at the peak of the Radiants’ power, just before the Recreance, nearly every spren who could be bonded, was bonded. It’s no wonder the Stormfather hates and distrusts those who would bond the spren; last time such bonds existed, almost all of the sentient-individual-spren died.

I must admit that I’m a little baffled by the statement that “These old ones are patterns in nature now, like Cryptics unborn.” Is that a reference to Shardblades? It sure doesn’t sound like it to me. Or have some portion of the betrayed spren been somehow released from Blade form, to become non-sentient natural spren again? That would explain why there are less than a hundred known Blades, instead of the many hundreds that should have been left if all the Radiants abandoned their spren in Blade form. Alternatively, on the assumption that the Lightweavers weren’t necessarily primarily fighters, were the Cryptics left in another form? And if so, what other Orders might have left their spren in differing forms?

And of course, at this point in the book, we still didn’t know that the spren became the Blades, so it was necessary to keep things as ambiguous as possible. Even cryptic, one might say.

All Creatures Shelled and Feathered

There’s really nothing new to be said here, other than to point out the rather obvious detail that when Kaladin & Shallan woke up and climbed down from their cubby, they took time to dismantle the chasmfiend far enough to retrieve the gemheart. Also, Shallan must have summoned her Blade again to do so; she’s beginning to get more comfortable with the notion, maybe.

Ars Arcanum

Not a lot of Arcanum going around this time, either, except Pattern’s willingness to function as an intelligent and independently-mobile recording device. That would be downright handy sometimes, but I’d hate to see the capability in the hands of the government. Which… actually makes me view Shallan’s usage of her little spy-spren in a different light.

It’s worth noting, though, that the source of the above-quoted conversation with Pattern was the question of whether Shallan is enough of a Radiant to operate the Oathgate if they find it. While he can’t quite remember what else needs to happen, he’s doing all he can to urge her toward understanding herself better… and that means remembering. Not just the stuff she told Kaladin last night, which IMO she’d never forgotten, but all the way back through her mother’s death and to the time before, when she was newly bonded. When she can remember all of that and face it unflinching, I suspect she’ll be a true Knight Radiant.

Heraldic Symbolism

Jezrien has plenty of reason to be here. Dalinar is exercising leadership, Amaram is parading around in his head-of-the-Knights-Radiant cloak, and Kaladin the erstwhile Windrunner has returned from the chasms. Pick your reason. Vedel, on the other hand, seems most likely to reflect the activity of the surgeons, and perhaps Navani’s change of heart toward Shallan.

Shipping Wars

Adolin and Shallan are just so cute!! Adolin has been out delivering Dalinar’s ultimatum to the other highprinces, in an effort to stay busy and not think too much about Shallan.

I do feel sorry for him; he ran for Dalinar, as the obvious target of an assassination attempt, but he lost Shallan in the process. He couldn’t possibly have known that the bridge would collapse; Kaladin was yelling and running toward someone on the far side of the chasm, and his instinct was to protect his father and highprince from an attack. I’m pretty sure that didn’t make him feel any better; he’d saved his father, but his betrothed and an assortment of other men and women fell to their deaths in the failed assassination. He can hardly be blamed for promising that he’ll never let it happen again, can he?

Just Sayin’

The mother axehound had finally emerged. Shallan was apparently no longer an outsider, but one of Navani’s clutch—and Chana help the man or woman who stood between Navani and one of her own.

“Mother axehound.” “Clutch.” “Chana help them.” These are the fun little world-fitting idioms I love to notice.

Thus endeth the novella comprising Part Four. That ought to keep us busy until next week, when we’ll take a good hard look at the letter which has made up the epigraphs, and see what kind of Cosmere connections may be hidden therein.

Completely unrelated to the chapter, I do have another request for y’all. I’m taking part in some panels for the Sanderson track at JordanCon this year. One is on the Stormlight Archive but with no Cosmere connection, and one is on Cosmere speculation. If you were going attend one of those panel discussions, what particular subjects would you be hoping someone would address?

Alice Arneson is a long-time Tor.com commenter and Sanderson beta-reader, and soon-to-be panelist for the SanderTrack at her first-ever JordanCon. Woot!

Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last week, we finished off Part Four, when Kaladin and Shallan returned from the chasms with their contributions for the upcoming expedition to the center of the plateaus. This week, we’ll take a step back and examine the letter comprising the epigraphs of Part Four.

This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. In particular, this discussion will contain spoilers for Mistborn: Secret History, as it contains particularly relevant information. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here.

Click on through to join the discussion!

Part Four: The Approach
Epigraphs, The Return Letter

IN WHICH we find a response to the letter of the epigraphs in Part Two of The Way of Kings, and we still don’t know who wrote it.

The Text

I’ll address this letter to my “old friend,” as I have no idea what name you’re using currently. / Have you given up on the gemstone, now that it is dead? And do you no longer hide behind the name of your old master? I am told that in your current incarnation you’ve taken a name that references what you presume to be one of your virtues. / This is, I suspect, a little like a skunk naming itself for its stench.

Now, look what you’ve made me say. You’ve always been able to bring out the most extreme in me, old friend. And I do still name you a friend, for all that you weary me. / Yes, I’m disappointed. Perpetually, as you put it. / Is not the destruction we have wrought enough? The worlds you now tread bear the touch and design of Adonalsium. Our interference so far has brought nothing but pain.

My path has been chosen very deliberately. Yes, I agree with everything you have said about Rayse, including the severe danger he presents. / However, it seems to me that all things have been set up for a purpose, and if we— as infants— stumble through the workshop, we risk exacerbating, not preventing, a problem.

Rayse is captive. He cannot leave the system he now inhabits. His destructive potential is, therefore, inhibited. / Whether this was Tanavast’s design or not, millennia have passed without the death of one of the sixteen. While I mourn for the great suffering Rayse has caused, I do not believe we could hope for a better outcome than this. / He bears the weight of God’s own divine hatred, separated from the virtues that gave it context. He is what we made him to be, old friend. And that is what he, unfortunately, wished to become. / I suspect that he is more a force than an individual now, despite your insistence to the contrary. That force is contained, and an equilibrium reached.

You, however, have never been a force for equilibrium. You tow chaos behind you like a corpse dragged by one leg through the snow. Please, hearken to my plea. Leave that place and join me in my oath of nonintervention. / The cosmere itself may depend upon our restraint.

Commentary

First, a word of warning. As noted above, I will be referring to comments made in Mistborn: Secret History as I discuss this letter. I may also refer to various Words of Brandon, and I expect that both will be referenced in the comments section as well. I’m sorry, but there it is; we can’t do the job right without it. You stand warned.

Second, just in case you missed it or want to refresh your memory, you may want to review Carl’s discussion of the first letter; they are clearly connected.

Now, on to the letter. Word of Brandon has implicitly confirmed that Hoid is one of the correspondents; we still don’t know who the other is. He (and explicitly he) is from a world we haven’t seen yet, but that’s not much to go on. Sazed is ruled out, both implicitly (we’ve seen his world) and then explicitly. Khriss is also ruled out, being female. There is speculation that the character Frost, from the yet-unpublished book/series Dragonsteel, is the second person; I tend to agree, as Brandon has identified him as “the oldest character we know.” Not that we know much about him…

As to the contents, I’m completely baffled by the first query: “Have you given up on the gemstone, now that it is dead?” Is this referring to the same item as the previous letter, which referred to an “element”? That was, IIRC, confirmed to be the bead of lerasium Hoid swiped from Scadrial; is this supposed to be the same item? Because… I don’t get why it should be “dead”—or if the writer only assumes that it’s dead, perhaps because Leras is. I also don’t get why a bead of lerasium would be referred to as a “gemstone.” So, yeah. I don’t understand this one at all. Anyone else?

So then we have a bit of recriminatory fluff that will, someday, make perfect sense and be so meaningful… presumably. He pokes fun at Hoid calling himself “Wit” and then feels bad about his irritation and insult, but then we get into the meaty bits:

“Is not the destruction we have wrought enough?” I have to assume this refers to certain events described in M:SH—

“Anyway, there was a God. Adonalsium. I don’t know if it was a force or a being, though I suspect the latter. Sixteen people, together, killed Adonalsium, ripping it apart and dividing its essence between them, becoming the first who Ascended.”

“… Some wished for the power; others saw killing Adonalsium as the only good option left to them. Together they murdered a deity, and became divine themselves.” …

“So . . . my world, and everyone I know, is the creation of a pair of… half gods?”

“More like fractional gods. And ones with no particular qualifications for deityhood, other than being conniving enough to murder the guy who had the job before.”

It’s been verified that Hoid was actually present at Adonalsium’s Shattering; my guess is that the author of this letter was there too, and is still feeling guilty about it for more reasons than one. Side note: I also begin to suspect that, while the sixteen people referenced above (and perhaps some others) were instrumental in the Shattering, it may have been Adonalsium’s own plan they were carrying out, whether they knew it or not. Just a hunch, though, so I won’t try to defend it as a theory. Yet.

However… if that theory is correct, it’s possible that Hoid is on the wrong end of things with whatever he’s trying to do, and that the letter-writer is justified in admonishing Hoid that they are like children stumbling around in the workshop, and may well do more harm than good. Then again, it’s just as likely that whatever Hoid is trying to do is exactly what Adonalsium expected and intended to be done. Well, that won’t get us anywhere… we just don’t know enough about the long-ago.

Hoid is trying to accomplish something here on Roshar, and something that he thinks is the most important purpose he’s ever had; his “old friend” remains unconvinced. Note, though, that he says, “The worlds you now tread bear the touch and design of Adonalsium.” Does this imply that Hoid has been on the planets Braize and Ashyn as well? Or merely that his friend thinks of them as a group? Or… something else, which is a good possibility too.

In any case, Rayse is somehow restricted to the Rosharan system of planets, seemingly due to something Tanavast did, and cannot at this time escape to destroy any more Shards. While this may indeed be a good thing, so far as it goes, I have to wonder if it actually goes far enough. I can’t help thinking that by the end of the Stormlight Archive, Odium will get loose… Here I have to insert the theory proposed by Naïve_masanthrope in last week’s discussion, because it’s been lurking around in my head and gaining a real foothold in this context:

What if it is possible for Odium to be defeated somehow—not just pushed back for a time but eliminated as a threat—but his defeat would also destroy Roshar? … Your heroes are false, your fight is never-ending, your victory would destroy the world.

The suggestion was made in the context of the Recreance, but it’s been itching at me while researching this letter. What if? What if fighting the battle against Odium, or taking it to the next level of confronting him on Braize, is exactly what’s needed for him to break free? This could indeed create the dilemma Hoid mentioned to Dalinar, about letting Roshar burn if that’s what is needed to accomplish his purpose.

I have a bad feeling about this…

Oh. Wrong universe. Sorry.

There’s also an interesting view into Rayse/Odium, which might create some sympathy—the kind where you feel bad about having to put a rabid animal down. “He bears the weight of God’s own divine hatred, separated from the virtues that gave it context.” The fact that Rayse wanted to become what he is, while it may mitigate the responsibility, apparently doesn’t reduce the guilt felt by one of those instrumental in making it happen.

We just don’t have enough information to be confident about any of this, but it sure makes for some fun speculation. I may have to make something of this in the Cosmere Speculation discussion… (and no stealing my plan, you other panelists!)

There’s a whole separate area of discussion to be had, regarding the relevance of each snippet to the chapter it begins… but I’m going to let y’all play that game. I’d love to see what you come up with! (Okay, I really meant to do that, but this is getting lengthy as it is. And you good people are likely to come up with great insights, so I’m putting you to work!)

Stormwatch

The “Stormwatch” isn’t actually relevant here, but I wanted to note that we really don’t have reliable information (at least, not to the best of my knowledge) regarding the timing of this letter. Given that the previous letter remarked on the author’s being chased by members of the 17^th Shard, and we had an interlude in which Hoid was being sought by same, it seems logical to conclude that the first letter was written by Hoid sometime during the events of TWoK. It would seem equally logical to assume, for the time being, that this letter is the reply to Hoid, and that it was written and received sometime during the events of WoR. That’s the assumption I’ll hold to until I’m given a reason to believe otherwise.

Thus endeth Part Four: The Approach. Considering that it was in large part a novella chronicling Kaladin’s descent from aspiring Knight Radiant to broken, sprenless, ordinary spearman, “The Approach” seems either incongruous, hopeful, or terribly ominous.

Check back next week, when we’ll examine the next two Interludes with Lhan and Eshonai.

Alice Arneson is a long-time Tor.com commenter and Sanderson beta-reader, and is inordinately excited about her upcoming first-ever JordanCon.

Has Funko POP started making figurines of the characters from Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive?! Sadly, no—this is the handiwork of the talented Jenny Slife. A graphic designer and illustrator, Slife has crafted many a custom-made Funko POP figure, including this excellent take on Kaladin Stormblessed. She even made a cute animation of the moment in Words of Radiance when Syl becomes Kal’s Shardblade.

Kal is the only Stormlight Archive character that Slife has made thus far (here he is chilling with Jon Snow), but she has amassed quite the exclusive collection. Take a spin through her Instagram and you’ll find figures of George R.R. Martin, General Hux, Imperator Furiosa (with her new buddy Pascal from Tangled)—in short, all the Funko POP figures you wish existed. Unfortunately, Slife is not currently taking commissions for custom figurines, though that may change in the future.