Words of Radiance

Then, incredibly, she started to move toward the sounds. Still holding the spheres awkwardly with one hand, he reached out with the other and snatched her.

She turned back to him, then looked down. Inadvertently, he’d grabbed her by the safehand. He let go immediately.

“I have to see it,” Shallan whispered to him. “We’re so close.”

“Are you insane?”

“Probably.” She continued toward the beast.

Kaladin debated, cursing her in his mind. Finally, he put his spear down and dropped her pack and satchel over its spheres to muffle the light. Then he followed. What else could he do? Explain to Adolin? Yes, princeling. I let your betrothed wander off alone in the darkness to get eaten by a chasmfiend. No, I didn’t go with her. Yes, I’m a coward.

There was light ahead. It showed Shallan—her outline, at least—crouching beside a turn in the chasm, peeking around. Kaladin stepped up to her, crouching down and taking a look.

There it was.

The beast filled the chasm. Long and narrow, it wasn’t bulbous or bulky, like some small cremlings. It was sinuous, sleek, with that arrowlike face and sharp mandibles.

It was also wrong. Wrong in a way difficult to describe. Big creatures were supposed to be slow and docile, like chulls. Yet this enormous beast moved with ease, its legs up on the sides of the chasm, holding it so that its body barely touched the ground. It ate the corpse of a fallen soldier, grasping the body in smaller claws by its mouth, then ripping it in half with a gruesome bite.

That face was like something from a nightmare. Evil, powerful, almost intelligent.

“Those spren,” Shallan whispered, so soft he could barely hear. “I’ve seen those…”

They danced around the chasmfiend, and were the source of the light. They looked like small glowing arrows, and they surrounded the beast in schools, though occasionally one would drift away from the others and then vanish like a small plume of smoke rising into the air.

“Skyeels,” Shallan whispered. “They follow skyeels too. The chasmfiend likes corpses. Could its kind be carrion feeders by nature? No, those claws, they look like they’re meant for breaking shells. I suspect we’d find herds of wild chulls near where these things live naturally. But they come to the Shattered Plains to pupate, and here there’s very little food, which is why they attack men. Why has this one remained after pupating?”

The chasmfiend was almost done with its meal. Kaladin took her by the shoulder, and she allowed him—with obvious reluctance—to pull her away.

They returned to their things, gathered them up, and—as silently as possible—retreated farther into the darkness.

* * *

They walked for hours, going in a completely different direction from the one they’d taken before. Shallan allowed Kaladin to lead again, though she tried her best to keep track of the chasms. She’d need to draw it out to be certain of their location.

Images of the chasmfiend tumbled in her head. What a majestic animal! Her fingers practically itched to sketch it from the Memory she’d taken. The legs were larger than she’d imagined; not like a legger, with spindly little spinelike legs holding up a thick body. This creature had exuded power. Like the whitespine, only enormous and more alien.

They were far from it now. Hopefully that meant they were safe. The night was dragging on her, after she’d risen early to get moving on the expedition.

She covertly checked the spheres in her pouch. She’d drained them all dun in their flight. Bless the Almighty for the Stormlight—she would need to make a glyphward in thanks. Without the strength and endurance it lent, she’d never have been able to keep up with Kaladin longlegs.

Now, however, she was storming exhausted. As if the Light had inflated her capacity, but now left her deflated and worn out.

At the next intersection, Kaladin paused and looked her over.

She gave him a weak smile.

“We’ll need to stop for the night,” he said.

“Sorry.”

“It’s not just you,” he said, looking up at the sky. “I honestly have no idea if we’re going the right direction or not. I’m all turned around. If we can get an idea in the morning of where the sun is rising, it will tell us which direction to walk.”

She nodded.

“We should still be able to get back in plenty of time,” he added. “No need to worry.”

The way he said it immediately made her start worrying. Still, she helped him find a relatively dry portion of ground, and they settled down, spheres in the center like a little mock fire. Kaladin dug in the pack she’d found—she’d taken it off a dead soldier—and came out with some rations of flatbread and dried chull jerky. Not the most appetizing of food by any stretch, but it was something.