“What do you want from us?” she shouted. “Answer me, Rider! Spren of the storm! You’re a traitor like us, aren’t you? Is that why you sent Venli those little spren?”
The wind blasted her, as if to push her off balance. Debris spun and sputtered in the wind, spiraling around her—the lightning making each piece seem frozen in the moment. A quick sequence of bolts struck nearby, and the thunder vibrated and rattled her carapace. Absolute darkness followed.
At first she thought maybe the Rider of Storms had chosen to appear to her. However, this darkness was ordinary. She could still feel the wind, rain, and debris.
“What kind of choice is this?” she demanded. “Either we let the humans destroy us, or we turn away from the one thing that defines us? The one value that matters?”
Darkness. Rain. Wind. But no reply.
What had she expected? An actual answer? Was this a prayer, then? Didn’t make a lot of sense, considering that the very thing she resisted was a return to her people’s old gods.
Those gods had never deserved reverence. What was a god who only made demands? Nothing but a tyrant with a different name.
“Everything I’ve done,” she said into the wind, “has been to ensure we remain our own people. That’s all I want. I gave up my dreams. But I will not give up our minds.”
Brave words. Useless words. They would have to take Venli’s discovery to the Five, and they would have to let her test it. Eshonai knew that as well as she knew the Rhythm of Peace. They couldn’t reject a potential new form now.
She turned to go, then heard something. Rock scraping on rock? Was the plateau cracking? Though she could barely hear it, the noise must be quite loud to reach her over the din of the tempest.
Eshonai stepped backward—but her footing seemed unsteady, and she didn’t want to move without a flash of lightning to guide her. What if—
Branching light flashed in the heavens far to the east. It lit the sky white, highlighting debris, illuminating the land around her. Everything except for an enormous shadow silhouetted in front of her.
Eshonai’s breath caught. The rhythms froze in her head. That shape … sinuous, yet massive. Claws as thick as her body gripping the rim of the chasm mere feet in front of her. It couldn’t be—
Lightning flashed again, and she saw its face. A chasmfiend snout, with jagged swords for teeth, head cocked to the side to watch her.
She didn’t run. If it wanted her, she was already dead. Prey ran, and the beasts were known to play with things that acted like prey, even if they weren’t hungry. Still, standing there in pitch-darkness—not daring to attune a rhythm—was the hardest thing she’d ever done.
When the lightning next flashed, the chasmfiend had lowered its incredible head toward her, its eye close enough that she could have stabbed it without needing to lunge.
Darkness fell. Then a small burst of light appeared directly ahead of her. A small spren made of white fire. It zipped forward, trailing an afterimage. Like a falling star. It moved closer, then spun around her.
By its light, she could see the chasmfiend slowly retreat into the chasm, its spikelike claws leaving scores on the stone. Her heart beating like thunder, Eshonai attuned Anxiety and hurried home. The strange little spren followed her.
Instead I think, if I were to remember my life in detail, I would become even worse. Paralyzed by my terrible actions. I should not like to remember all those I have failed.
Days passed. Navani barely noticed.
For the first time in her life, she let go completely. No worries about Dalinar or Jasnah. No worries about the tower. No thoughts about the million other things she should be doing.
This was what she should be doing.
Or so she allowed herself to believe. She let herself be free. In her little room of a laboratory, everything fit together. She’d met scholars who claimed they needed chaos to function. Perhaps that was true for some, but in her experience, good science wasn’t about sloppy inspiration. It was about meticulous incrementalization.
With no distractions, she was able to draw up precise experiments—charts, careful measurements, lines. Science was all about lines, about imposing order on chaos. Navani reveled in her careful preparations, without anyone to tease her for keeping her charts so neat or for refusing to skip any steps.
Sometimes Raboniel visited and joined in the research, writing her own musings alongside Navani’s in their notebook. Two opposing forces in harmony, focused on a single goal.
Raboniel gave her the strange black sand, explaining the difference between static and kinetic Investiture. Navani observed and measured, learning for herself. The sand slowly turned white when exposed to Stormlight or Voidlight. However, if a fabrial was using the Light, the sand changed faster.
You could wet the sand to reset it to black, though it had to be dry again before it could turn white. It was a useful way to measure how much Light a given fabrial was using. She noticed that it also changed colors in the presence of spren. This was a slow change too, but she could measure it.
Anything you could measure was useful to science. But for these few blessed days, it seemed like time was not properly measurable—for hours passed like minutes. And Navani, despite the circumstances, found herself loving the experience.
* * *
“I don’t know exactly where the sand comes from,” Raboniel said, settled on her stool beside the wall, flipping through Navani’s latest set of charts. “Offworld somewhere.”
“Offworld?” Navani asked, looking up from the fabrial she’d been housing. “As in … another … planet?”
Raboniel hummed absently. A confirmation? Navani felt she could tell what this rhythm meant.
“I wanted to go, for years,” Raboniel said. “Visit the place myself. Unfortunately, I learned it wasn’t possible. I’m trapped in this system, my soul bound to Braize—you call it Damnation—a planet farther out in orbit around the sun.”
To hear her speak of such things so casually amazed Navani. Other worlds. The best telescopes couldn’t do more than confirm the existence of other celestial bodies, but here she was, speaking to someone who had visited one of them.
We came from another, Navani reminded herself. Humans, migrating to Roshar. It was so strange for her to think about, to align the mythos of the Tranquiline Halls with an actual location.
“Could … I visit them?” Navani asked. “These other worlds?”
“Likely—though I’d stay away from Braize. You’d have to get through the storm to travel there anyway.”
“The Everstorm?”
Raboniel hummed to an amused rhythm. “No, no, Navani. You can’t travel to Braize in the Physical Realm. That would take … well, I have no idea how long. Plus there’s no air in the space between planets. We sent Heavenly Ones to try it once. No air, and worse, the strange pressures required them to carry a large supply of Voidlight for healing. Even so prepared, they died within hours.
“One instead travels to other worlds through Shadesmar. But again, stay away from Braize. Even if you could get through the barrier storm, the place is barren, devoid of life. Merely a dark sky, endless windswept crags, and a broken landscape. And a lot of souls. A lot of not particularly sane souls.”
“I’ll … remember that.”