* * *
The largest of the spren, the roiling mass of red light, vanished from Shadesmar.
Kaladin gasped and walked closer to the outer edge of the trees, feeling that power vacate this place and … go to the other?
“Something’s happening,” he said to Adolin and Shallan, who were still discussing what to do. “We might have an opening!”
They joined him and watched as the strange army of spren began to vanish too, winking out in waves.
“The Oathgate?” Shallan asked. “Maybe they’re using it?”
In moments, only the six Fused remained, guarding the bridge.
Six, Kaladin thought. Can I defeat six?
Did he need to?
“I can challenge them as a distraction,” he said to the others. “Maybe we can use some illusions as well? We can draw them off while Shallan sneaks over and figures out how to work the Oathgate.”
“I suppose we don’t have any other choice,” Adolin said. “But…”
“What?” Kaladin said, urgent.
“Aren’t you worried about where that army went?”
* * *
“Passion,” Odium said. “There is great Passion here.”
Venli felt cold.
“I’ve prepared these men for decades,” Odium said. “Men who want nothing so much as something to break, to gain vengeance against the one who killed their highprince. Let the singers watch and learn. I’ve prepared a different army to fight for us today.”
Ahead of them on the battlefield, the human ranks slumped, their banner wavering. A man in glittering Shardplate, sitting upon a white horse, led them.
Deep within his helm, something started glowing red.
The dark spren flew toward the men, finding welcoming bodies and willing flesh. The red mist made them lust, made their minds open. And the spren, then, bonded to the men, slipping into those open souls.
“Master, you have learned to inhabit humans?” Turash said to Subservience.
“Spren have always been able to bond with them, Turash,” Odium said. “It merely requires the right mindset and the right environment.”
Ten thousand Alethi in green uniforms gripped their weapons, their eyes glowing a deep, dangerous red.
“Go,” Odium whispered. “Kholin would have sacrificed you! Manifest your anger! Kill the Blackthorn, who murdered your highprince. Set your Passion free! Give me your pain, and seize this city in my name!”
The army turned and—led by a Shardbearer in gleaming Plate—attacked Thaylen City.
We took them in, as commanded by the gods. What else could we do? They were a people forlorn, without a home. Our pity destroyed us. For their betrayal extended even to our gods: to spren, stone, and wind.
—From the Eila Stele
Kaladin thought he could hear the wind as he stepped from beneath the obsidian trees. Syl said this place had no wind. Yet was that the tinkling of glass leaves as they quivered? Was that the sigh of cool, fresh air coursing around him?
He’d come far in the last half year. He seemed a man distant from the one who carried bridges against Parshendi arrows. That man had welcomed death, but now—even on the bad days, when everything was cast in greys—he defied death. It could not have him, for while life was painful, life was also sweet.
He had Syl. He had the men of Bridge Four. And most importantly, he had purpose.
Today, Kaladin would protect Dalinar Kholin.
He strode toward the sea of souls that marked the existence of Thaylen City on the other side. Many of those souls’ flames, in ranks, had turned sharply red. He shivered to think what that meant. He stepped up onto the bridge, beads churning below, and reached the highest point in its arc before the enemy noticed him.
Six Fused turned and rose into the air, arraying to regard him. They raised long spears, then looked to the sides, seeming shocked.
One man, alone?
Kaladin set one foot back—gently scraping the tip of his boot against the white marble bridge—and fell into a combat posture. He hooked the harpoon in a one-handed underarm grip, letting out a long breath.
Then he drew in all of his Stormlight, and burst alight.
Within the power’s embrace, a lifetime’s worth of moments seemed to snap into place. Throwing Gaz to the ground in the rain. Screaming in defiance while charging at the front of a bridge. Coming awake in the practice grounds during the Weeping. Fighting the assassin on the stormwall.
The Fused leaped for him, trailing long cloaks and robes. Kaladin Lashed himself straight upward, and took to the sky for the first time in what had been far, far too long.
* * *
Dalinar stumbled as the ground shook again. A second sequence of cracks sounded outside. He was too low down in the city now to see past the city wall, but he feared he knew what that breaking stone must signify. A second thunderclast.
Violet fearspren sprouted from the streets all around as civilians shouted and screamed. Dalinar had made his way down through the central section of the city—the part called the Ancient Ward—and had just entered the Low Ward, the bottom portion nearest the city wall. The steps behind him were filling with people who fled upward, toward the Oathgate.
As the trembling subsided, Dalinar grabbed the arm of a young mother who was pounding frantically on the door of a building. He sent her running up the steps with her child in her arms. He needed these people off the streets, preferably taking shelter at Urithiru, so they wouldn’t get caught between clashing armies.
Dalinar felt his age as he jogged past the next row of buildings, still clutching The Way of Kings under his arm. He had barely any spheres on him, an oversight, but neither did he have Plate or Blade. This would be his first battle in many, many years without Shards. He’d insisted on stepping out of those boots, and would have to let Amaram and other Shardbearers command the field.
How was Amaram faring? Last Dalinar had seen, the highprince had been arranging his archers—but from this low in the city, Dalinar couldn’t see the troops outside.
A sudden feeling slammed into him.
It was focus and passion. An eager energy, a warmth, a promise of strength.
Glory.
Life.
To Dalinar, this thirst for the battle felt like the attentions of a lover you’d turned away long ago. The Thrill was here. His old, dear friend.
“No,” he whispered, sagging against a wall. The emotion struck him harder than the earthquake had. “No.”
The taste was so, so appealing. It whispered that he could save this city all on his own. Let the Thrill in, and the Blackthorn could return. He didn’t need Shards. He only needed this passion. Sweeter than any wine.
No.
He shoved the Thrill aside, scrambling to his feet. As he did, however, a shadow moved beyond the wall. A monster of stone, one of the beasts from his visions, standing some thirty feet tall—looming over the twenty-foot city wall. The thunderclast clasped its hands together, then swung them low, crashing them through the city wall, flinging out chunks of stone.
Dalinar leaped toward cover, but a falling boulder pounded into him, crushing him into a wall.
Blackness.
Falling.
Power.
He gasped, and Stormlight flooded into him—he shook awake to find his arm pinned by the boulder, rocks and dust falling on a rubble-strewn street before him. And … not just rubble. He coughed, realizing some of those lumps were bodies coated in dust, lying motionless.