Words of Radiance

“It is a pattern,” he said, then grew very small and moved into the keyhole. She’d had him try a few more times on locks back in her rooms, and he’d been able to unlock those as he had Tyn’s trunk.

The lock clicked, and she opened the door and slipped into the dark room. A sphere plucked from her dress pocket lit it for her.

The secret room. The room with shutters always closed, kept locked at all times. A room that the Ghostbloods wanted so desperately to see.

It was filled with maps.

* * *

The trick to jumping between surfaces wasn’t the landing, Kaladin discovered. It wasn’t about reflexes or timing. It wasn’t even about changing perspective.

It was about fear.

It was about that moment when, hanging in the air, his body lurched from being pulled down to being pulled sideways. His instincts weren’t equipped to deal with this shift. A primal part of him panicked every time down stopped being down.

He ran at the wall and jumped, throwing his feet to the side. He couldn’t hesitate, couldn’t be afraid, couldn’t flinch. It was like teaching himself to dive face-first onto a stone surface without raising his hands for protection.

He shifted his perspective and used Stormlight to make the wall become downward. He positioned his feet. Even still, in that brief moment, his instincts rebelled. The body knew, it knew, that he was going to fall back to the chasm floor. He would break bones, hit his head.

He landed on the wall without stumbling.

Kaladin stood up straight, surprised, and exhaled a deep breath, puffing with Stormlight.

“Nice!” Syl said, zipping around him.

“It’s unnatural,” Kaladin said.

“No. I could never be involved in anything unnatural. It’s just… extranatural.”

“You mean supernatural.”

“No I don’t.” She laughed and zipped on ahead of him.

It was unnatural—as walking wasn’t natural for a child who was just learning. It became natural over time. Kaladin was learning to crawl—and unfortunately, he’d soon be required to run. Like a child dropped in a whitespine’s lair. Learn quickly or be lunch.

He ran along the wall, hopping over a shalebark outcropping, then jumped to the side and shifted to the floor of the chasm. He landed with only a slight stumble.

Better. He ran after Syl and kept at it.

* * *

Maps.

Shallan crept forward, her solitary sphere revealing a room draped with maps and strewn with papers. They were covered in glyphs that had been scribbled quickly, not made to be beautiful. She could barely read most of them.

I’ve heard of this, she thought. The stormwarden script. The way they get around the restrictions on writing.

Amaram was a stormwarden? A chart of times on one wall, listing highstorms and calculations of their next arrival—written in the same hand as the notes on the maps—seemed proof of that. Perhaps this was what the Ghostbloods were seeking: blackmail material. Stormwardens, as male scholars, made most people uncomfortable. Their use of glyphs in a way that was basically the same as writing, their secretive nature… Amaram was one of the most accomplished generals in all of Alethkar. He was respected even by those he fought. Exposing him as a stormwarden could seriously damage his reputation.

Why would he bother with such strange hobbies? All of these maps faintly reminded her of the ones she’d discovered in her father’s study, after his death—though those had been of Jah Keved. “Watch outside, Pattern,” she said. “Bring me word quickly when Amaram returns to the building.”

“Mmmm,” he buzzed, withdrawing.

Aware that her time was short, Shallan hurried to the wall, holding up her sphere and taking Memories of the maps. The Shattered Plains? This map was far more extensive than any she’d seen before—and that included the Prime Map that she’d studied in the king’s Gallery of Maps.

How had Amaram obtained something so extensive? She tried to work out the use of glyphs—there was no grammar to them that she could see. Glyphs weren’t meant to be used that way. They conveyed a single idea, not a string of thoughts. She read a few in a row.

Origin… direction… uncertainty… The place of the center is uncertain? That was probably what it meant.

Other notes were similar, and she translated in her head. Perhaps pushing this direction will yield results. Warriors spotted watching from here. Other groupings of glyphs made no sense to her. This script was bizarre. Perhaps Pattern could translate it, but she certainly couldn’t.

Aside from the maps, the walls were covered in long sheets of paper filled with writing, figures, and diagrams. Amaram was working on something, something big—