Words of Radiance

“I may have… underplayed my skill a little last night,” Shallan said. “I can remember things pretty well, though to be honest, I didn’t realize how far off our path was until I drew it. A lot of these plateau shapes are unfamiliar to me; we might be into the areas that haven’t been mapped yet.”

He looked to her. “You remember the shapes of all of the plateaus on the maps?”

“Uh… yes?”

“That’s incredible.”

She sat back on her knees, holding up her sketch. She brushed aside an unruly lock of red hair. “Maybe not. Something’s very odd here.”

“What?”

“I think my sketch must be off.” She stood up, looking troubled. “I need more information. I’m going to walk around one of the plateaus here.”

“All right…”

She started walking, still focused on her sketch, barely paying attention to where she was going as she stumbled over rocks and sticks. He kept up with ease, but didn’t bother her as she turned her eyes toward the rift ahead. She walked them all the way around the base of the plateau to their right.

It took a painfully long time, even walking quickly. They were losing minutes. Did she know where they were or not?

“Now that plateau,” she said, pointing to the next wall. She began walking around the base of that plateau.

“Shallan,” Kaladin said. “We don’t have—”

“This is important.”

“So is not getting crushed in a highstorm.”

“If we don’t find out where we are, we won’t ever escape,” she said, handing him the sheet of paper. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.” She jogged off, skirt swishing.

Kaladin stared at the paper, inspecting the path she’d drawn. Though they’d started the morning going the right way, it was as he’d feared—Kaladin had eventually wound them around until they were going directly south again. He’d even somehow turned them back going east for a while!

That put them even farther from Dalinar’s camp than when they’d begun the night before.

Please let her be wrong,

he thought, going around the plateau the other direction to meet her halfway.

But if she was wrong, they wouldn’t know where they were at all. Which option was worse?

He got a short distance down the chasm before freezing. The walls here were scraped free of moss, the debris on the floor pushed around and scratched. Storms, this was fresh. Since the last highstorm at least. The chasmfiend had come this way.

Maybe… maybe it had gone past on its way farther out into the chasms.

Shallan, distracted and muttering to herself, appeared around the other side of the plateau. She walked, still staring at the sky, muttering to herself. “… I know I said that I saw these patterns, but this is too grand a scale for me to know instinctively. You should have said something. I—”

She cut off abruptly, jumping as she saw Kaladin. He found himself narrowing his eyes. That had sounded like…

Don’t be silly. She’s no warrior. The Knights Radiant had been soldiers, hadn’t they? He didn’t really know much about them.

Still, Syl had seen several strange spren about.

Shallan gave a glance to the wall of the chasm and the scrapes. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Delightful. Here, give me that paper.”

He handed it back and she slipped a pencil out of her sleeve. He gave her the satchel, which she set on the floor, using the stiff side as a place to sketch. She filled in the two plateaus closest to them, the ones she’d walked around to get a full view.

“So is your drawing off or not?” Kaladin asked.

“It’s accurate,” Shallan said as she drew, “it’s just strange. From my memory of the maps, this set of plateaus nearest to us should be farther to the north. There is another group of them up there that are exactly the same shape, only mirrored.”

“You can remember the maps that well?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t press further. From what he’d seen, maybe she could do just that.

She shook her head. “What are the chances that a series of plateaus would take the exact same shape as those on another part of the Plains? Not just one, but an entire sequence…”

“The Plains are symmetrical,” Kaladin said.

She froze. “How do you know that?”

“I… it was a dream. I saw the plateaus arrayed in a wide symmetrical formation.”

She looked back at her map, then gasped. She began scribbling notes on the side. “Cymatics.”

“What?”

“I know where the Parshendi are.” Her eyes widened. “And the Oathgate. The center of the Shattered Plains. I can see it all—I can map almost the entire thing.”

He shivered. “You… what?”

She looked up sharply, meeting his eyes. “We have to get back.”

“Yes, I know. The highstorm.”

“More than that,” she said, standing. “I know too much now to die out here. The Shattered Plains are a pattern. This isn’t a natural rock formation.” Her eyes widened further. “At the center of these Plains was a city. Something broke it apart. A weapon… Vibrations? Like sand on a plate? An earthquake that could break rock… Stone became sand, and at the blowing of the highstorms, the cracks full of sand were hollowed out.”