Words of Radiance

“We’ll be fine,” Shallan said. “You’ll see.”

That darkened his mood further.

“You still think I’m too optimistic, don’t you?” Shallan said.

“It’s not your fault,” Kaladin said. “I’d rather be like you. I’d rather not have lived the life I have. I would that the world was only full of people like you, Shallan Davar.”

“People who don’t understand pain.”

“Oh, all people understand pain,” Kaladin said. “That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s…”

“The sorrow,” Shallan said softly, “of watching a life crumble? Of struggling to grab it and hold on, but feeling hope become stringy sinew and blood beneath your fingers as everything collapses?”

“Yes.”

“The sensation—it’s not sorrow, but something deeper—of being broken. Of being crushed so often, and so hatefully, that emotion becomes something you can only wish for. If only you could cry, because then you’d feel something. Instead, you feel nothing. Just… haze and smoke inside. Like you’re already dead.”

He stopped in the chasm.

She turned and looked to him. “The crushing guilt,” she said, “of being powerless. Of wishing they’d hurt you instead of those around you. Of screaming and scrambling and hating as those you love are ruined, popped like a boil. And you have to watch their joy seeping away while you can’t do anything. They break the ones you love, and not you. And you plead. Can’t you just beat me instead?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

Shallan nodded, holding his eyes. “Yes. It would be nice if nobody in the world knew of those things, Kaladin Stormblessed. I agree. With everything I have.”

He saw it in her eyes. The anguish, the frustration. The terrible nothing that clawed inside and sought to smother her. She knew. It was there, inside. She had been broken.

Then she smiled. Oh, storms. She smiled anyway.

It was the single most beautiful thing he’d seen in his entire life.

“How?” he asked.

She shrugged lightly. “Helps if you’re crazy. Come on. I do believe we’re under a slight time constraint…”

She started down the chasm. He stood behind, feeling drained. And oddly brightened.

He should feel like a fool. He’d done it again—he’d been telling her how easy her life was, while she’d had that hiding inside of her all along. This time, though, he didn’t feel like an idiot. He felt like he understood. Something. He didn’t know what. The chasm just seemed a little brighter.

Tien always did that to me… he thought. Even on the darkest day.

He stood still long enough that frillblooms opened around him, their wide, fanlike fronds displaying veined patterns of orange, red, and violet. He eventually jogged after Shallan, shocking the plants closed.

“I think,” she said, “we need to focus on the positive side of being down here in this terrible chasm.”

She eyed him. He didn’t say anything.

“Come on,” she said.

“I… have the sense that it would be better not to encourage you.”

“What’s the fun in that?”

“Well, we are about to get hit by a highstorm’s flood.”

“So our clothing will get washed,” she said with a grin. “See! Positive.”

He snorted.

“Ah, that bridgeman grunt dialect again,” she noted.

“That grunt meant,” he said, “that at least if the waters come, it will wash away some of your stench.”

“Ha! Mildly amusing, but no points to you. I already established that you’re the malodorous one. Reuse of jokes is strictly forbidden on pain of getting dunked in a highstorm.”

“All right then,” he said. “It’s a good thing we’re down here because I had guard duty tonight. Now I’m going to miss it. That is practically like getting the day off.”

“To go swimming, no less!”

He smiled.

“I,” she proclaimed, “am glad we are down here because the sun is far too bright up above, and it tends to give me a sunburn unless I wear a hat. It is much better to be down in the dank, dark, smelly, moldy, potentially life-threatening depths. No sunburns. Just monsters.”

“I’m glad to be down here,” he said, “because at least it was me, and not one of my men, who fell.”

She hopped over a puddle, then eyed him. “You’re not very good at this.”

“Sorry. I meant that I’m glad to be down here because when we get out, everyone will cheer me for being a hero for rescuing you.”

“Better,” Shallan said. “Except for the fact that I do believe that I am the one rescuing you.”

He glanced at her map. “Point.”

“I,” she said, “am glad to be down here because I’ve always wondered what it’s like to be a chunk of meat traveling through a digestive system, and these chasms remind me of the intestines.”

“I hope you’re not serious.”

“What?” She looked shocked. “Of course I’m not. Ew.”

“You really do try too hard.”

“It’s what keeps me insane.”

He scrambled up a large pile of debris, then offered a hand to help her. “I,” he said, “am happy to be here because it reminds me of how lucky I am to be free of Sadeas’s army.”

“Ah,” she said, stepping up to the top with him.