You can ride the storm with me, the Stormfather said. I have given others this privilege on occasion.
“Ride the storm with you?” Dalinar said.
It is like the visions that Honor instructed me to grant, only it is now. Come. See.
“Martra,” Dalinar said, looking to the scribe who had been assigned to him today. “I might act odd for a short time. Nothing is wrong, but if I am not myself when my next appointment begins, please make them wait.”
“Um … yes, Brightlord,” she said, hugging her ledger, eyes wide. “Should I, um, get you a chair?”
“That would be a good idea,” Dalinar said. He didn’t feel like being closed up inside. He liked the scent of the air, even if it was too muggy here, and the sight of the open sky.
Martra returned with a chair and Dalinar settled himself, facing eastward. Toward the Origin, toward the storms—though his view was blocked by the large stone stormbreak.
“Stormfather,” he said. “I’m—”
He became the storm.
Dalinar soared along the front of the stormwall, like a piece of debris. No … like a gust of wind blowing with the advent of the storm. He could see—comprehend—far more than when he’d flown under Windrunner power.
It was a great deal to take in. He surged across rolling hills with plants growing in the valleys between them. From up high it looked like a network of brown islands surrounded by greenery—each and every lowland portion filled to the brim with a snarl of underbrush. He’d never seen anything quite like it, the plants unfamiliar to him, though their density did faintly remind him of the Valley where he had met Cultivation.
He didn’t have a body, but he turned and saw that he towed a long shadow. The storm itself.
When the Windrunner flew on my winds, he zipped about, the Stormfather said, and Dalinar felt the sounds all around him. You simply think. You complain about meetings, but you are well suited to them.
“I grow,” Dalinar said. “I change. It is the mark of humanity, Stormfather, to change. A prime tenet of our religion. When I was Kaladin’s age, I suspect I would have acted as he.”
We approach the mountains, the Stormfather said. Urithiru will come soon. Be ready to watch.
A mountain range started to grow up to Dalinar’s right, and he realized where they must be—blowing through Triax or Tu Fallia, countries with which he had little experience. These weren’t the mountains where he’d find Urithiru, not yet. So he experimented with motion, soaring closer to the overgrown valleys.
Yes … this landscape was alien to him, the way the underbrush snarled together so green. Full of grass, broad leaves, and other stalks, all woven together with vines and bobbing with lifespren. The vines were a netting tying it all together, tight against storms.
He saw curious animals with long tentacles for arms and leathery skin instead of chitin. Malleable, they easily squeezed through holes in the underbrush and found tight pockets in which to hide as the stormwall hit. Strange that everything would be so different when it wasn’t that far from Alethkar. Only a little trip across the Tarat Sea.
He tried to hang back to inspect one of the animals.
No, the Stormfather said. Forward. Ever forward.
Dalinar let himself be encouraged onward, sweeping across the hills until he reached a place where the underbrush had been hollowed out to build homes. These valleys weren’t so narrow or deep that flooding would be a danger, and the buildings were built on stilts a few feet high anyway. They were grown over by the same vine netting, the edges of the buildings melding with the underbrush to borrow its strength.
Once, this village had likely been in an enviable location—protected by the surrounding plants. Unfortunately, as he blew past, he noted multiple burned-out buildings, the rest of the village in shambles.
The Everstorm. Dalinar’s people had adapted to it; large cities already had walls on all sides, and small villages had been able to rely upon their government’s stockpiles to help them survive this change in climate. But small, isolated villages like this had taken the brunt of the new storm with nobody to help. How many such places existed on Roshar, hovering on the edge of extinction?
Dalinar was past the place in a few heartbeats, but the memory lingered. Over the last two years, what cities and towns hadn’t been broken by the sudden departure of the parshmen had been relentlessly attacked by storm or battle. If they won—when they won—the war, they would have a great deal of work to do in rebuilding the world.
As he continued his flight, he saw something else discouraging: a pair of foragers trapped while making their way back toward their home. The ragged men huddled together in a too-shallow ravine. They wore clothing of thick woven fibers that looked like the rug material that came out of Marat, and their spears weren’t even metal.
“Take mercy upon them,” Dalinar said. “Temper your fury, Stormfather.”
It is not fury. It is me.
“Then protect them,” Dalinar said as the stormwall hit, plunging the ill-fated men into darkness.
Should I protect all who venture out into me?
“Yes.”
Then do I stop being a storm, stop being me?
“You can be a storm with mercy.”
That defies the definition and soul of a storm, the Stormfather said. I must blow. I make this land exist. I carry seeds; I birth plants; I make the landscape permanent with crem. I provide Light. Without me, Roshar withers.
“I’m not asking you to abandon Roshar, but to protect those men. Right here. Right now.”
I … the Stormfather rumbled. It is too late. They did not survive the stormwall. A large boulder crushed them soon after we began speaking.
Dalinar cursed, an action that translated as crackling lightning in the nearby air. “How can a being so close to divinity be so utterly lacking in honor?”
I am a storm. I cannot—
You are not merely a storm! Dalinar bellowed, his voice changing to rumbles of thunder. You are capable of choice! You hide from that, and in so doing, you are a COWARD!
The Stormfather did not respond. Dalinar felt him there, subdued—like a petulant child scolded for their foolishness. Good. Both Dalinar and the Stormfather were different from what they once had been. They had to be better. The world demanded that they be better.
Dalinar soared up higher, no longer wanting to see specifics—in case he was to witness more of the Stormfather’s unthinking brutality. Eventually they reached snow-dusted mountains, and Dalinar soared to the very top of the storm. Lately the storms had been creeping higher and higher in the sky—something people wouldn’t normally notice, but which was quite obvious in Urithiru.
It is natural, the Stormfather said. A cycle. I will go higher and higher until I am taller than the tower, then the next few storms will lower. The highstorm did this before the tower existed.
There seemed to be a timidity to the words, uncharacteristic of the Stormfather. Perhaps Dalinar had rattled him.
Soon he saw the tower approaching.
You can see it? the Stormfather said. The details?
“Yes,” Dalinar said.
Look quickly. We will pass rapidly.
Dalinar steered himself as a gust of wind, fixating upon Urithiru. Nothing seemed overtly wrong with it. There wasn’t anyone up on the Cloudwalk level, but with the storms growing higher, that wouldn’t be advisable anyway.