“Did you hide the other one too?” Navani asked. “The one in my traveling sphere? Speak, man. You’re in some serious trouble—but I will be lenient if you cooperate.”
The man trembled, but said nothing. The ruby started flashing in Navani’s fingers, indicating the phantom spren wished to talk with her. It might be a distraction, but in any case, she wanted to be in the presence of a Lightweaver when she replied this time—they had the ability to see spren in Shadesmar even when they were invisible to others.
“Bring him,” she said to the soldiers. “We’re going to my audience chamber for a proper interrogation. Isabi, please write to Kalami and have her meet me there.”
The young ward—who was among the increasingly large crowd of gawking scholars—hurried off. Navani gestured for the soldiers to tow the captive away, then moved to follow, but one of the other soldiers approached her.
“Brightness,” he whispered. “I think I recognize that fellow. He’s with the Radiants.”
“A squire?” Navani asked, surprised.
“More a servant, Brightness. He was there helping with meals when I tried out for the Windrunners last month.”
Well, that would explain how he’d gotten into her traveling sphere to place the first gemstone—the Windrunners often practiced with it, training to keep the device in the air. Was she wrong about her phantom spren correspondent? Was it possible they were an honorspren? Many of those did have a somewhat antagonistic relationship with the current Knights Radiant. She tucked the blinking gemstone away in her glove’s wrist pouch. You can wait, she thought to the phantom spren. I’m in control of this conversation now.
Unfortunately, as she was leaving, Navani noticed Isabi taking a message from one of her spanreeds and looking anxious. Navani stepped over to the girl’s table, mentally preparing herself. What would it be this time? More tariff complaints from the Thaylens?
She leaned in, reading over Isabi’s shoulder, and got to the words “explosion” and “dead” before she snapped alert and realized this was not what she’d been expecting.
* * *
The Everstorm didn’t arrive like a highstorm.
Honor’s storm would come as a violent tempest, with a crashing stormwall full of wind and fury. It was an abrupt scream, a battle cry, an intense moment of exultation.
Odium’s storm came as a slow, inevitable crescendo. Clouds boiled from one another, ever expanding, creeping forward until they smothered the sunlight. Like a single spark that grows to consume a forest. The Everstorm was a trance of extended passion—an experience, not an event.
Venli couldn’t say which she preferred. The highstorm was violent, but somehow trustworthy. It had proved the listeners for generations, granting safe forms, fulfilling the Rider’s ancient promise to her people. Allegiances might have changed, but that couldn’t separate the souls of her people from the storm that—in the ancient songs—was said to have given them birth.
Yet she couldn’t help but feel a thrill at the arrival of the Everstorm, with its vivid red lightning and its persistent energy. She hated Odium for what he’d done to her people, and for the constant lure he—even now—could place in her mind. Voidlight, the emotions it stoked, and the beauty of crossing the landscape by the light of crackling red fire upon the sky …
Beneath those irregular eyes of an angry deity, Venli joined the others in a quick jog. Their several-week journey was at an end, their food stores exhausted. They’d spent this last day hiding in a forest, waiting for the Everstorm. As it arrived, the mountain landscape took on a nightmare cast.
The company of five hundred scrambled up the final incline.
Flash.
A glimpse of gnarled trees casting long, terrible shadows.
Flash.
Rubble and broken stone on the slope ahead. Stones doused in fire-red light.
Flash.
Skin with vibrant patterns and wicked carapace, loping alongside her.
Each burst of lightning seemed to catch a moment frozen in time. Venli ran near the front, and though her form wasn’t as athletic as some, she held her own as the strike force reached the top of the slope.
Here they were confronted by a cliff face, more sheer than a normal mountain should have allowed. They were far, far below the tower. From this angle, she couldn’t see the city. Perhaps it was above the black clouds. If so … storms. Until this moment, she hadn’t been able to fully conceive of something inhabitable being built so far up.
One of the Deepest Ones glided toward Venli and Raboniel, her feet sunken in rock. She moved with an unnatural grace, as if her bones weren’t completely solid. This was the scout Raboniel had sent ahead this morning to search for a proper incursion point.
“Come,” she said to Command.
Venli followed, joining Raboniel, Rothan, three Deepest Ones, and a soldier she didn’t know. Raboniel didn’t forbid Venli, and none of the others seemed to care that she was there. They made their way around the side of the mountain, passing a pile of what looked like rotting grain and some broken wood boxes. Did humans travel this way?
No, she realized. This must have fallen from above. Perhaps a shipment of food, coming via Oathgate to the city.
“Here,” the Deepest One said, bringing out a Stormlight sphere to light a particular patch of rock. She then sank her hand into the stone as if it were liquid. Or … no, that wasn’t exactly correct. When the Deepest One put her hand into the ground, she didn’t displace anything, and the stone seemed to meld to her skin.
“The ancient protections have not been maintained,” the scout said. “I can feel that the ralkalest has fallen from the walls of the tunnel below. How could they allow this oversight?”
“These new Radiants know nothing,” another Deepest One said to Craving. “Raboniel, Lady of Wishes, you are correct in pushing to strike now. Yours is wisdom that the Nine do not share. They have been too timid.”
Venli did not miss the Fused using Raboniel’s title. All of them had similar formal names; the Deepest One using Raboniel’s here—to the Rhythm of Craving—conveyed respect.
“The Nine,” Raboniel said, “are taking care to not lose our footing in this world. We have waited thousands of years for this chance; they do not wish to trip by running too fast.”
She said it, however, to Satisfaction. Her words were respectful, but the tone of the rhythm was clear. She appreciated the compliment, and she agreed.
The other Fused with them hummed to Subservience, something Venli almost never heard from their kind.
“The Sibling sleeps,” the scout said. “Just as the Midnight Mother felt. Perhaps the Sibling has truly died. Permanently made into an unthinking creature.”
“No,” said another. “The Sibling lives.”
Venli started. The one she’d mistaken for a soldier earlier, in the dark, was something more. A Fused malen with rippling patterns that shifted and changed on his skin. That was the mark of the mavset-im, Those Ones of Masks. The Masked Ones, illusionists, had the power to change how they appeared.
“My form is disrupted,” the Masked One said. “The ralkalest might have fallen from the wall, but that is a mere physical barrier. The tower’s spiritual protections are at least partially in effect—and as we determined months ago, the mavset-im cannot bear our many images while near Urithiru.”