You were never free while you ran; you felt as if the open sky and the endless fields were a torment. You could feel the pursuit following, and each morning you awoke expecting to find yourself surrounded.
Until one day you were right.
But parshmen? He’d accepted Shen into Bridge Four, yes. But accepting that a sole parshman could be a bridgeman was starkly different from accepting the entire people as … well, human.
As the column stopped to distribute waterskins to the children, Kaladin felt at his forehead, tracing the scarred shape of the glyphs there.
They took our minds.…
They’d tried to take his mind too. They’d beaten him to the stones, stolen everything he loved, and murdered his brother. Left him unable to think straight. Life had become a blur until one day he’d found himself standing over a ledge, watching raindrops die and struggling to summon the motivation to end his life.
Syl soared past in the shape of a shimmering ribbon.
“Syl,” Kaladin hissed. “I need to talk to you. This isn’t the time for—”
“Hush,” she said, then giggled and zipped around him before flitting over and doing the same to his captor.
Kaladin frowned. She was acting so carefree. Too carefree? Like she’d been back before they forged their bond?
No. It couldn’t be.
“Syl?” he begged as she returned. “Is something wrong with the bond? Please, I didn’t—”
“It’s not that,” she said, speaking in a furious whisper. “I think parshmen might be able to see me. Some, at least. And that other spren is still here too. A higher spren, like me.”
“Where?” Kaladin asked, twisting.
“She’s invisible to you,” Syl said, becoming a group of leaves and blowing around him. “I think I’ve fooled her into thinking I’m just a windspren.”
She zipped away, leaving a dozen unanswered questions on Kaladin’s lips. Storms … is that spren how they know where to go?
The column started again, and Kaladin walked for a good hour in silence before Syl next decided to come back to him. She landed on his shoulder, becoming the image of a young woman in her whimsical skirt. “She’s gone ahead for a little bit,” she said. “And the parshmen aren’t looking.”
“The spren is guiding them,” Kaladin said under his breath. “Syl, this spren must be…”
“From him,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around herself and growing small—actively shrinking to about two-thirds her normal size. “Voidspren.”
“There’s more,” Kaladin said. “These parshmen … how do they know how to talk, how to act? Yes, they’ve spent their lives around society—but to be this, well, normal after such a long time half asleep?”
“The Everstorm,” Syl said. “Power has filled the holes in their souls, bridging the gaps. They didn’t just wake, Kaladin. They’ve been healed, Connection refounded, Identity restored. There’s more to this than we ever realized. Somehow when you conquered them, you stole their ability to change forms. You literally ripped off a piece of their souls and locked it away.” She turned sharply. “She’s coming back. I will stay nearby, in case you need a Blade.”
She left, zipping straight into the air as a ribbon of light. Kaladin continued to shuffle behind the column, chewing on her words, before speeding up and stepping beside his captor.
“You’re being smart, in some ways,” Kaladin said. “It’s good to travel at night. But you’re following the riverbed over there. I know it makes for more trees, and more secure camping, but this is literally the first place someone would look for you.”
Several of the other parshmen gave him glances from nearby. His captor didn’t say anything.
“The big group is an issue too,” Kaladin added. “You should break into smaller groups and meet up each morning, so if you get spotted you’ll seem less threatening. You can say you were sent somewhere by a lighteyes, and travelers might let you go. If they run across all seventy of you together, there’s no chance of that. This is all assuming, of course, you don’t want to fight—which you don’t. If you fight, they’ll call out the highlords against you. For now they’ve got bigger problems.”
His captor grunted.
“I can help you,” Kaladin said. “I might not understand what you’ve been through, but I do know what it feels like to run.”
“You think I’d trust you?” the parshman finally said. “You will want us to be caught.”
“I’m not sure I do,” Kaladin said, truthful.
His captor said nothing more and Kaladin sighed, dropping back into position behind. Why had the Everstorm not granted these parshmen powers like those on the Shattered Plains? What of the stories of scripture and lore? The Desolations?
They eventually stopped for another break, and Kaladin found himself a smooth rock to sit against, nestled into the stone. His captor tied the rope to a nearby lonely tree, then went to confer with the others. Kaladin leaned back, lost in thought until he heard a sound. He was surprised to find his captor’s daughter approaching. She carried a waterskin in two hands, and stopped right beyond his reach.
She didn’t have shoes, and the walk so far had not been kind to her feet, which—though tough with calluses—were still scored by scratches and scrapes. She timidly set the waterskin down, then backed away. She didn’t flee, as Kaladin might have expected, when he reached for the water.
“Thank you,” he said, then took a mouthful. It was pure and clear—apparently the parshmen knew how to settle and scoop their water. He ignored the rumbling of his stomach.
“Will they really chase us?” the girl asked.
By Mishim’s pale green light, he decided this girl was not as timid as he had assumed. She was nervous, but she met his eyes with hers.
“Why can’t they just let us go?” she asked. “Could you go back and tell them? We don’t want trouble. We just want to go away.”
“They’ll come,” Kaladin said. “I’m sorry. They have a lot of work to do in rebuilding, and they’ll want the extra hands. You are a … resource they can’t simply ignore.”
The humans he’d visited hadn’t known to expect some terrible Voidbringer force; many thought their parshmen had merely run off in the chaos.
“But why?” she said, sniffling. “What did we do to them?”
“You tried to destroy them.”
“No. We’re nice. We’ve always been nice. I never hit anyone, even when I was mad.”
“I didn’t mean you specifically,” Kaladin said. “Your ancestors—the people like you from long ago. There was a war, and…”
Storms. How did you explain slavery to a seven-year-old? He tossed the waterskin to her, and she scampered back to her father—who had only just noticed her absence. He stood, a stark silhouette in the night, studying Kaladin.
“They’re talking about making camp,” Syl whispered from nearby. She had crawled into a crack in the rock. “The Voidspren wants them to march on through the day, but I don’t think they’re going to. They’re worried about their grain spoiling.”