Words of Radiance

“Yes, sir!” Cael said with a salute, fist to coat. With the other hand, however, he pointed over Dalinar’s shoulder. “Sir, have you seen that?”

He turned, looking back toward the west. Red light flashed, lightning coursing down in repeated blasts. The sky itself seemed to spasm as something built there, swirling in an enormous storm cell that was rapidly expanding outward.

“Almighty above…” Navani whispered.

Nearby another tent shook, its stakes coming undone. “Leave the tents, Cael,” Dalinar said. “Get everyone moving. Now. Navani, go to Brightness Shallan. Help her if you can.”

The officer leaped away and began shouting orders. Navani went with him, vanishing into the night, and a squad of soldiers chased after her to provide protection.

“And me, Dalinar?” Roion asked.

“We’ll need you to take command of your men and lead them to safety,” Dalinar said. “If such a thing can be found.”

That tent nearby shook again. Dalinar frowned. It didn’t seem to be moving along with the wind. And was that… shouting?

Adolin crashed through the tent’s fabric and skidded along the stones on his back, his armor leaking Light.

“Adolin!” Dalinar shouted, dashing to his son.

The young man was missing several segments of his armor. He looked up with gritted teeth, blood streaming from his nose. He said something, but it was lost to the wind. No helm, no left vambrace, the breastplate cracked just short of shattering, his right leg exposed. Who could have done such a thing to a Shardbearer?

Dalinar knew the answer immediately. He cradled Adolin, but looked up past the collapsed tent. It whipped in the storm and tore away as a man strode past it, glowing with spinning trails of Stormlight. Those foreign features, clothing all of white plastered to his body by the rain, a bowed, hairless head, shadows hiding eyes that glowed with Stormlight.

Gavilar’s murderer. Szeth, the Assassin in White.

* * *

Shallan worked through the inscriptions on the wall of the round chamber, frantically searching for some way to make the Oathgate function.

This had to work. It had to.

“This is all in the Dawnchant,” Inadara said. “I can’t make sense of any of it.”

The Knights Radiant are the key.

Shouldn’t Renarin’s sword have been enough? “What’s the pattern?” she whispered.

“Mmm…” Pattern said. “Perhaps you cannot see it because you are too close? Like the Shattered Plains?”

Shallan hesitated, then stood and walked to the center of the room, where the depictions of the Knights Radiant and their kingdoms met at a central point.

“Brightlord Renarin?” Inadara asked. “Is something wrong?” The young prince had fallen to his knees and was huddled next to the wall.

“I can see it,” Renarin answered feverishly, his voice echoing in the chamber. Ardents who had been studying part of the murals looked up at him. “I can see the future itself. Why? Why, Almighty? Why have you cursed me so?” He screamed a pleading cry, then stood and cracked something against the wall. A rock? Where had he gotten it? He gripped the thing in a gauntleted hand and began to write.

Shocked, Shallan took a step toward him. A sequence of numbers?

All zeros.

“It’s come,” Renarin whispered. “It’s come, it’s come, it’s come. We’re dead. We’re dead. We’re dead…”

* * *

Dalinar knelt beneath a fracturing sky, holding his son. Rainwater washed the blood from Adolin’s face, and the boy blinked, dazed from his thrashing.

“Father…” Adolin said.

The assassin stepped forward quietly, with no apparent urgency. The man seemed to glide through the rain.

“When you take the princedom, son,” Dalinar said, “don’t let them corrupt you. Don’t play their games. Lead. Don’t follow.”

“Father!” Adolin said, his eyes focusing.

Dalinar stood up. Adolin lurched over onto all fours and tried to get to his feet, but the assassin had broken one of Adolin’s greaves, which made it almost impossible to rise. The boy slipped back into the pooling water.

“You’ve been taught well, Adolin,” Dalinar said, eyes on that assassin. “You’re a better man than I am. I was always a tyrant who had to learn to be something else. But you, you’ve been a good man from the start. Lead them, Adolin. Unite them.”

“Father!”

Dalinar walked away from Adolin. Nearby, scribes and attendants, captains and enlisted men all shouted and scrambled, trying to find order in the chaos of the storm. They followed Dalinar’s order to evacuate, and most had yet to notice the figure in white.

The assassin stopped ten paces from Dalinar. Roion, pale-faced and stammering, backed away from the two of them and began shouting. “Assassin! Assassin!”

The rainfall was actually letting up a little. That didn’t bring Dalinar much hope; not with that red lightning on the horizon. Was that… a stormwall building at the front of the new storm? His efforts to disrupt the Parshendi had fallen short.

The Shin man didn’t strike. He stood opposite Dalinar, motionless, expressionless, water dripping down his face. Unnaturally calm.