“Is that you, Stormfather?” Dalinar whispered. “This feeling of dread?”
This thing is not natural, the Stormfather said. It is unknown.
“It didn’t come before, during the earlier Desolations?”
No. It is new.
As always, the Stormfather’s voice was far off, like very distant thunder. The Stormfather didn’t always reply to Dalinar, and didn’t remain near him. That was to be expected; he was the soul of the storm. He could not—should not—be contained.
And yet, there was an almost childish petulance to the way he sometimes ignored Dalinar’s questions. It seemed that sometimes he did so merely because he didn’t want Dalinar to think that he would come whenever called.
The Everstorm appeared in the distance, its black clouds lit from within by crackling red lightning. It was low enough in the sky that—fortunately—its top wouldn’t reach Urithiru. It surged like a cavalry, trampling the calm, ordinary clouds below.
Dalinar forced himself to watch that wave of darkness flow around Urithiru’s plateau. Soon it seemed as if their lonely tower were a lighthouse looking over a dark, deadly sea.
It was hauntingly silent. Those red lightning bolts didn’t rumble with thunder in the proper way. He heard the occasional crack, stark and shocking, like a hundred branches snapping at once. But the sounds didn’t seem to match the flashes of red light that rose from deep within.
The storm was so quiet, in fact, that he was able to hear the telltale rustle of cloth as Navani slipped up behind him. She wrapped her arms around him, pressing against his back, resting her head against his shoulder. His eyes flickered down, and he noticed that she’d removed the glove from her safehand. It was barely visible in the dark: slender, gorgeous fingers—delicate, with the nails painted a blushing red. He saw it by the light of the first moon above, and by the intermittent flashes of the storm beneath.
“Any further word from the west?” Dalinar whispered. The Everstorm was slower than a highstorm, and had hit Shinovar many hours before. It did not recharge spheres, even if you left them out during the entire Everstorm.
“The spanreeds are abuzz. The monarchs are delaying a response, but I suspect that soon they’ll realize they have to listen to us.”
“I think you underestimate the stubbornness a crown can press into a man or woman’s mind, Navani.”
Dalinar had been out during his share of highstorms, particularly in his youth. He’d watched the chaos of the stormwall pushing rocks and refuse before it, the sky-splitting lightning, the claps of thunder. Highstorms were the ultimate expression of nature’s power: wild, untamed, sent to remind man of his insignificance.
However, highstorms never seemed hateful. This storm was different. It felt vengeful.
Staring into that blackness below, Dalinar thought he could see what it had done. A series of impressions, thrown at him in anger. The storm’s experiences as it had slowly crossed Roshar.
Houses ripped apart, screams of the occupants lost to the tempest.
People caught in their fields, running in a panic before the unpredicted storm.
Cities blasted with lightning. Towns cast into shadow. Fields swept barren.
And vast seas of glowing red eyes, coming awake like spheres suddenly renewed with Stormlight.
Dalinar hissed out a long, slow breath, the impressions fading. “Was that real?” he whispered.
Yes, the Stormfather said. The enemy rides this storm. He’s aware of you, Dalinar.
Not a vision of the past. Not some possibility of the future. His kingdom, his people, his entire world was being attacked. He drew a deep breath. At the very least, this wasn’t the singular tempest that they’d experienced when the Everstorm had clashed with the highstorm for the first time. This seemed less powerful. It wouldn’t tear down cities, but it did rain destruction upon them—and the winds would attack in bursts, hostile, even deliberate.
The enemy seemed more interested in preying upon the small towns. The fields. The people caught unaware.
Though it was not as destructive as he’d feared, it would still leave thousands dead. It would leave cities broken, particularly those without shelter to the west. More importantly, it would steal the parshmen laborers and turn them into Voidbringers, loosed on the public.
All in all, this storm would exact a price in blood from Roshar that hadn’t been seen since … well, since the Desolations.
He lifted his hand to grasp Navani’s, as she in turn held to him. “You did what you could, Dalinar,” she whispered after a time watching. “Don’t insist on carrying this failure as a burden.”
“I won’t.”
She released him and turned him around, away from the sight of the storm. She wore a dressing gown, not fit to go about in public, but also not precisely immodest.
Save for that hand, with which she caressed his chin. “I,” she whispered, “don’t believe you, Dalinar Kholin. I can read the truth in the tightness of your muscles, the set of your jaw. I know that you, while being crushed beneath a boulder, would insist that you’ve got it under control and ask to see field reports from your men.”
The scent of her was intoxicating. And those entrancing, brilliant violet eyes.
“You need to relax, Dalinar,” she said.
“Navani…” he said.
She looked at him, questioning, so beautiful. Far more gorgeous than when they’d been young. He’d swear it. For how could anyone be as beautiful as she was now?
He seized her by the back of the head and pulled her mouth to his own. Passion woke within him. She pressed her body to his, breasts pushing against him through the thin gown. He drank of her lips, her mouth, her scent. Passionspren fluttered around them like crystal flakes of snow.
Dalinar stopped himself and stepped back.
“Dalinar,” she said as he pulled away. “Your stubborn refusal to get seduced is making me question my feminine wiles.”
“Control is important to me, Navani,” he said, his voice hoarse. He gripped the stone balcony wall, white knuckled. “You know how I was, what I became, when I was a man with no control. I will not surrender now.”
She sighed and sidled up to him, pulling his arm free of the stone, then slipping under it. “I won’t push you, but I need to know. Is this how it’s going to continue? Teasing, dancing on the edge?”
“No,” he said, staring out over the darkness of the storm. “That would be an exercise in futility. A general knows not to set himself up for battles he cannot win.”
“Then what?”
“I’ll find a way to do it right. With oaths.”
The oaths were vital. The promise, the act of being bound together.
“How?” she said, then poked him in the chest. “I’m as religious as the next woman—more than most, actually. But Kadash turned us down, as did Ladent, even Rushu. She squeaked when I mentioned it and literally ran away.”
“Chanada,” Dalinar said, speaking of the senior ardent of the warcamps. “She spoke to Kadash, and had him go to each of the ardents. She probably did it the moment she heard we were courting.”
“So no ardent will marry us,” Navani said. “They consider us siblings. You’re stretching to find an impossible accommodation; continue with this, and it’s going to leave a lady wondering if you actually care.”