Dalinar sank back down into his chair.
“Almighty above,” Taravangian whispered, grey eyes reflecting the glow of the heating fabrial. “I am so, so sorry, Dalinar.”
Good night, dear Urithiru. Good night, sweet Sibling. Good night, Radiants.
—From drawer 29-29, ruby
The Oathgate’s control building shook like it had been hit by a boulder. Adolin stumbled, then fell to his knees.
The shaking was followed by a distinct ripping sound, and a blinding flash of light.
His stomach lurched.
He fell through the air.
Shallan screamed somewhere nearby.
Adolin struck a hard surface, and the impact was so jarring that he rolled to the side. That caused him to tumble off the edge of a white stone platform.
He fell into something that gave way beneath him. Water? No, it didn’t feel right. He twisted in it—not a liquid, but beads. Thousands upon thousands of glass beads, each smaller than a Stormlight sphere.
Adolin thrashed, panicked as he sank. He was dying! He was going to die and suffocate in this sea of endless beads. He—
Someone caught his hand. Azure pulled him up and helped him back onto the platform, beads rolling from his clothing. He coughed, feeling that he had been drowning, though he’d gotten only a few beads in his mouth.
Stormfather! He groaned, looking around. The sky overhead was wrong. Pitch-black, it was streaked with strange clouds that seemed to stretch forever into the distance—like roads in the sky. They led toward a small, distant sun.
The ocean of beads extended in every direction, and tiny lights hovered above them—thousands upon thousands, like candle flames. Shallan stepped over, kneeling beside him. Nearby, Kaladin was standing up, shaking himself. This circular stone platform was like an island in the ocean of beads, roughly where the control building had been.
Hovering in the air were two enormous spren—they looked like stretched-out versions of people, and stood some thirty feet tall, like sentinels. One was pitch-black in coloring, the other red. He thought them statues at first, but their clothing rippled in the air, and they shifted, one turning eyes down to look at him.
“Oh, this is bad,” someone said nearby. “So very, very bad.”
Adolin looked and found the speaker to be a creature in a stiff black costume, with a robe that seemed—somehow—to be made of stone. In place of its head was a shifting, changing ball of lines, angles, and impossible dimensions.
Adolin jumped to his feet, scrambling back. He almost collided with a young woman with blue-white skin, pale as snow, wearing a filmy dress that rippled in the wind. Another spren stood beside her, with ashen brown features that seemed to be made of tight cords, the thickness of hair. She wore ragged clothing, and her eyes had been scratched out, like a canvas that someone had taken a knife to.
Adolin looked around, counting them. Nobody else was here on the landing. Those two enormous spren in the sky, and the three smaller ones on the platform. Adolin, Shallan, Kaladin, and Azure.
It seemed the Oathgate had only taken those who had been inside the control building. But where had it taken them?
Azure looked up at the sky. “Damnation,” she said softly. “I hate this place.”
THE END OF
Part Three
Odium’s grand purpose for Venli meant turning her into a showpiece.
“Then, the humans waged a war of extermination against us,” she told the assembled crowd. “My sister tried to negotiate, to explain that we had no blame for the assassination of their king. They would not listen. They saw us only as slaves to be dominated.”
The wagon upon which she stood wasn’t a particularly inspiring dais, but it was better than the pile of boxes she’d used in the last town. At least her new form—envoyform—was tall, the tallest she’d ever worn. It was a form of power, and brought strange abilities, primarily the ability to speak and understand all languages.
That made it perfect for instructing the crowds of Alethi parshmen. “They fought for years to exterminate us,” she said to Command. “They could not suffer slaves who could think, who could resist. They worked to crush us, lest we inspire a revolution!”
The people gathered around the wagon bore thick lines of marbling—of red and either black or white. Venli’s own white and red was far more delicate, with intricate swirls.
She continued, speaking triumphantly to the Rhythm of Command, telling these people—as she’d told many others—her story. At least the version of it that Odium had instructed her to tell.
She told them she’d personally discovered new spren to bond, creating a form that would summon the Everstorm. The story left out that Ulim had done much of the work, giving her the secrets of stormform. Odium obviously wanted to paint the listeners as a heroic group, with Venli their brave leader. The listeners were to be the foundation myth of his growing empire: the last of the old generation, who had fought bravely against the Alethi, then sacrificed themselves to free their enslaved brothers and sisters.
Hauntingly, the narrative said that Venli’s people were now extinct, save herself.
The former slaves listened, rapt by her narrative. She told it well; she should, given how often she’d related it these last weeks. She ended with the call to action, as specifically instructed.
“My people have passed, joining the eternal songs of Roshar,” she said. “The day now belongs to you. We had named ourselves ‘listeners’ because of the songs we heard. These are your heritage, but you are not to merely listen, but sing. Adopt the rhythms of your ancestors and build a nation here! You must work. Not for the slavers who once held your minds, but for the future, for your children! And for us. Those who died that you might exist.”
They cheered to the Rhythm of Excitement. That was good to hear, even if it was an inferior rhythm. Venli heard something better now: new, powerful rhythms that accompanied forms of power.
Yet … hearing those old rhythms awakened something in her. A memory. She put her hand to the pouch at her belt.
How like the Alethi these people act, she thought. She had found humans to be … stern. Angry. Always walking about with their emotions worn openly, prisoners to what they felt. These former slaves were similar. Even their jokes were Alethi, often biting toward those to whom they were closest.
At the conclusion of her speech, an unfamiliar Voidspren ushered the people back to work. She’d learned there were three levels in the hierarchy of Odium’s people. There were these common singers, who wore the ordinary forms Venli’s people had used. Then there were those called Regals, like herself, who were distinguished by forms of power—created by bonding one of several varieties of Voidspren. At the top were the Fused—though she had trouble placing spren like Ulim and others. They obviously outranked the common singers, but what of the Regals?
She saw no humans in this town; those had been rounded up or chased off. She’d overheard some Fused saying that human armies still fought in western Alethkar, but this eastern section was completely singer controlled—remarkable, considering how the humans greatly outnumbered the singers. The Alethi collapse was due in part to the Everstorm, in part to the arrival of the Fused, and in part to the fact that the Alethi had repeatedly conscripted eligible men for their wars.