“This is as we anticipated,” Raboniel said. “And we do not need your mask to proceed. As long as the Deepest Ones can move through the tunnels, our mission is viable. Go. We will meet you at the southwest opening.”
The Deepest Ones dropped their robes, exposing naked skin and carapace-covered privates. Then they slid into the rock, sinking as if into a dark ocean up to their necks. Then, eyes closed, they vanished beneath the stone.
* * *
“I feel blind,” Lirin explained as Kaladin sat with him. Today Hesina was taking Kaladin’s patients—the ones with battle shock—to see the tower stables. She insisted that taking care of animals would help, though Kaladin couldn’t fathom how being around those beasts could help anyone’s mood. Still, several of the patients had expressed eagerness at the idea of going riding.
“Blind?” Kaladin asked.
“I’ve had seven textbooks on sanity read to me over the last week,” Lirin said. “I hadn’t realized how little most of them would say. Mostly the same few quotes repeated over and over, traced to fewer sources. I can’t believe that we have spent so long knowing so little, documenting nothing!”
“It’s not so odd,” Kaladin said, building a tower of blocks for his little brother to knock down. “Surgeons are looked at with suspicion even in some of the larger cities. Half the population thinks mental illness is caused by staying out in storms, or by taunting deathspren, or some nonsense.”
Lirin rested a hand on the charts on his lap. Oroden laughed, walking among the blocks and kicking them.
“I spent my entire life trying to help,” Lirin said softly. “And I thought that the best way to help lunatics was to send them to the ardents. Storms, I did it a few times. Lakin’s son, remember? I assumed they’d be specialists.…”
“Nobody knows anything,” Kaladin said. “Because they don’t want to know. People like me scare them.”
“Don’t include yourself in that group, son,” Lirin said, adjusting his spectacles as he held up a medical chart written in glyphs. His father read glyphs far better than Kaladin had ever known. Lirin used them like a stormwarden.
“Why shouldn’t I?” Kaladin asked, stacking blocks again.
“You’re not…” Lirin lowered the chart.
“Insane?” Kaladin asked. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? We don’t see them as our brothers, sisters, children. They make us feel helpless. We are afraid because we can’t bind a broken mind the way we do a broken finger.”
“So we pretend we’ve done the best we can by sending them away,” Lirin said. “Or we tell ourselves they’re not really hurt. Since we can’t see their wounds. You’re right, son. Thank you for challenging me.” He picked up another of his pages of notes, scribbled on in glyphs. Pictures, not letters, so it wasn’t actual writing.
Storms. This was wrong. Doctors couldn’t read about diagnoses on their own. Ardents were forced to take in patient after patient just so everyone else could breathe a little easier. Many people believed that seeing a surgeon was unnatural—that if the Almighty wanted them to heal, he’d see it done. The Edgedancers, ironically, were reinforcing that opinion.
“We need a medical revolution,” Kaladin said, starting another tower. Oroden stood hopping up and down, barely able to contain himself as it was built. “We need to change everything.”
“Change is hard, son,” Lirin said. “And little men like us don’t often get heard.…” He trailed off, perhaps realizing that excuse didn’t work any longer. Not when his son was one of the most powerful men alive—despite his retirement.
Kaladin could change things. He could get doctors some kind of religious appointment, so they could learn to read without feeling like they were breaking social mores. Everyone was saying it was okay for Dalinar because he was a Bondsmith, after all.
Kaladin could change the way people thought about those afflicted by battle shock or melancholia. Lirin’s textbooks listed no recommended medication other than sedatives. But no proper tests or research had been done to determine other options. There was so much here. So much to do. And as Kaladin thought about it, stacking block after block, it occurred to him that he was starting to see his oaths in a new way. He thought about that monastery with the sanitarium, and realized something chilling.
I could have ended up in there, Kaladin thought. The patients surrendered to the ardents, those were the ones who came from homes and cities where people cared enough to try something, even if it was the wrong thing. There was a chance that if he hadn’t gone to war, he’d have found his way to one of those dark, terrible rooms.
A low rumble shook him out of his reverie. Was that thunder outside? He stood up and glanced out the window. Dark clouds blanketed the horizon. The Everstorm. Right, he’d heard there would be one today. Up here it was easy to lose track.
Oroden dashed forward, smashing through the blocks. Kaladin smiled, then heard the outer door of the clinic open and shut. Teft marched into the room a moment later. “Kal, he ain’t at his quarters, and they say he ain’t come in for days.”
“What?” Kaladin asked. “When was the last time anyone saw him?”
“Three days ago.”
Three days?
“Who is this?” Lirin asked.
“Friend of ours,” Teft said. “Named Dabbid.”
“The nonverbal?” Lirin asked. “Badly battle shocked?”
“I thought maybe he’d do well meeting with the men I’m treating,” Kaladin said.
“Maybe,” Lirin said, “you shouldn’t have left someone that troubled without supervision.”
“He does fine on his own,” Kaladin said. “He’s not an invalid. He just doesn’t talk.” Or … well, that might be understating it.
“Let’s check with Rlain,” Teft said. “Dabbid goes to help in the fields sometimes.”
Kaladin had been delighted to find that Rlain had chosen to remain at the tower instead of going with the army. He thought his work in the fields was more useful than running water and things for the Windrunners, and Kaladin honestly couldn’t blame him. Being with your friends, watching them fly, but not being able to do so yourself … that had to be even worse than what Kaladin had been experiencing lately.
I should have gone to him more, Kaladin thought. Been a better friend. He thought he finally understood what Rlain must be feeling.
He stood up and nodded to Teft, who was again rubbing his forehead.
“You all right?” Kaladin asked.
“Fine,” Teft said.
“Cravings?” Kaladin guessed.
Teft shrugged. “Thought I’d gotten past the headaches a few months ago. Guess they’re back.”
* * *
Venli smashed the human soldier’s skull against the stone wall, and the bone cracked with a sickening sound—like a wooden shell breaking. In a flash of red lightning from one of the stormforms, she saw the soldier’s eyes cross, dilating. But he clung to her, his knife scraping her carapace, so—driven by the Rhythm of Panic—she slammed his head against the ground.
This time he fell still. She crouched above him, breathing heavily, then suddenly felt as if she couldn’t breathe. She gasped, hoarse, and pulled her hands away. For a moment, the only sound she could hear was her rhythm.