In other circumstances, I would be fascinated by this sand to the point of abandoning all other rational pursuits. What is it? Where did it come from?
—From Rhythm of War, page 13
Finally, at long last, Navani heard Kaladin’s voice.
I’m sorry, Brightness, he said, his voice transmitted via the Sibling to Navani. I collapsed when I got back last night, and fell asleep. I didn’t intentionally keep you waiting.
Upon arriving at the chamber of scholars in the morning, Navani had discovered—via the Sibling—that she had slept through what had nearly been the end of their resistance. She had then waited several interminable hours to hear from the Windrunner.
“Don’t apologize,” Navani whispered, standing in her now customary place, her hands behind her, touching the line of crystal on the wall as she surveyed her working scholars. Guards stood at the door, and the strange insane Fused sat in her place by the far wall, but no one interfered directly with Navani. “You did what you had to—and you did well.”
I failed, Kaladin said.
“No,” Navani said softly, but firmly. “Highmarshal, your job is not to save the tower. Your job is to buy me time enough to reverse what has been done. You didn’t fail. You accomplished something incredible, and because of it we can still fight.”
His reply was long in coming. Thank you, he said, his voice bolstered. I needed to hear those words.
“They are true,” Navani said. “Given enough time, I’m confident I can flush the tower of the enemy’s Light, then instead prime it with the proper kind.”
It came down to the nature of Stormlight, Voidlight, and the way the Sibling worked. Navani needed to take a crash course in Light, and figure out exactly what had gone wrong.
Breaking the node seems to have made things worse, Kaladin said. Healing takes longer now. A Fused hit me with a knife, and it took a good ten minutes before my Stormlight fully healed the wound.
“I doubt that was due to the breaking of the node,” Navani said. “Raboniel was able to corrupt the Sibling further before you stopped her.”
Understood. I do feel bad I couldn’t protect the node, but Brightness, I think doing so would be impossible. If the others get discovered, we’ll have to destroy them too.
“I agree,” she said. “Do what you have to in order to give me more time. Anything else to report?”
Oh, right! Kaladin said. I couldn’t get to the Oathgates in time. I thought I’d be able to easily climb down to the ground floor, but it was a longer process than I imagined.
“You didn’t fly?”
Those Lashings don’t work, Brightness. I need to use Adhesion to make handholds. I’ll need to practice more—or find another way up and down—if you want me to try to reach the Oathgates. Regardless, I did snatch some spanreeds for you. Full sets, it turns out, twelve of them.
Syl has been inspecting them, and she thinks she knows the reason they work. Brightness, the spren inside have been corrupted, like Renarin’s spren. The rubies work on Voidlight now, as you suspected, and these spren must be the reason.
Navani let out a long breath. This had been one of her guesses; she hadn’t wanted it proven. If she needed to acquire corrupted spren, she was unlikely to be able to get any fabrials working without Raboniel knowing.
“Rest,” she told Kaladin, “and keep your strength up. I will figure out a path to reverse what is happening here.”
We need to warn Dalinar, Kaladin said. Maybe we could get half of one of these spanreeds to him.
“I don’t know how we’d accomplish that,” Navani said.
Well, I guess it depends on how far down the tower’s defenses go. It’s possible I could leap off a ledge, fall far enough to get outside the suppression, then activate my Lashings. But that would leave you without access to a Radiant. Honestly, I’m loath to suggest it. I don’t know if I could leave, considering how things are.
“Agreed,” Navani said. “For now, it’s more important that I have you here with me. Keep watch for Lift; the Sibling has lost track of her, but she was awake like you are.”
Understood, he said.
“Are you otherwise well? Do you have food?”
Yeah. I have another of my men helping me. He’s not a Radiant, but he’s a good man.
“The mute?” Navani guessed.
You know Dabbid?
“We’ve met. Give him my best.”
Will do, Brightness. Really though, I don’t think I can rest. I need to practice climbing the outside of the tower—but even with practice, I’m worried I won’t be fast enough. What if a node is discovered on the fortieth floor? It would take me hours to climb that high.
“A valid worry,” she said. “I’ll see if I can find a solution. Let’s talk tomorrow around this time.”
Understood.
She pushed off the wall and strolled through the room. She didn’t want to be seen talking to herself; surely the singers knew to watch for signs that someone was Radiant. She conversed softly with Rushu, explaining her plans for the next phase of time-wasting.
Rushu approved, but Navani felt annoyed as she moved on. I need to do more than waste time, Navani thought. I need to work toward our freedom.
She’d been formulating her plan. Step one was to continue making certain they didn’t lose ground, and Kaladin would have to handle that. Step two was getting word to Dalinar. Now that she had spanreeds, perhaps she could find a way.
It was the third step that currently concerned her. In talking to the Sibling, Navani had confirmed a number of things she’d previously suspected. The tower regulated pressure and heat for those living inside—and it had once done a far better job of this, along with performing a host of other vital functions.
Most of that, including the tower’s protections against Fused, had ended around the Recreance. The time when the Radiants had abandoned their oaths—and the time when the ancient singers had been transformed into parshmen, their songs and forms stolen. The actions of those ancient Radiants had somehow broken the tower—and Raboniel, by filling the tower with Voidlight, was starting to repair it in a twisted way.
Navani felt smothered by it all. She needed to fix a problem using mechanisms she didn’t understand—and indeed had learned about only days ago. She paced, massaging her temples. She needed a smaller problem she could work on first, to give her brain some time away from the bigger problem.
What was a smaller problem she could fix? Helping Kaladin move faster up and down through the tower? Was there a hidden lift that she could …
Wait.
A way for one person to quickly get up and down, she thought. Storms. She turned on her heel and walked to the other side of the room, suppressing—as best she could—visible signs of her excitement.
The junior engineer Tomor had survived the initial assault. Navani had him recalculating the math on certain schematics. She leaned down beside the young ardent and pointed at his current project, but whispered something else.
“That glove you made,” she said. “The one that you wanted to use as a single-person lift. Where is it?”
“Brightness?” he asked, surprised. “In the boxes out in the hallway.”
“I need you to sneak it out,” she whispered, “when you leave today.”
The singers let her lesser scholars move more freely than Navani. What else could they do? Force three dozen people to sleep in this room, without facilities? A few of the key scholars—Navani, Rushu, Falilar—were always escorted, but the subordinates weren’t paid as much attention.
“Brightness?” Tomor said. “What if I get caught?”
“You might be killed,” she whispered. “But it is a risk we must take. A Radiant still fights, Tomor, and he needs your device to climb between floors.”
Tomor’s eyes lit up. “My device … Stormblessed needs it?”
“You know he’s the one?”
“Everyone’s talking about him,” Tomor said. “I thought it was a fanciful rumor.”
“Bring such rumors to me, fanciful or not,” Navani said. “For now, I need you to sneak that glove out and leave it hidden somewhere it won’t be discovered, but where Kaladin can reasonably retrieve it.”
“I’ll try, Brightness,” Tomor said, nervous. “But fabrials don’t work anymore.”
“Leave that to me,” she said. “Include a quick sketch of a map to the location of the weights on the twentieth floor, as he’ll need to visit those too.”
With the conjoined rubies Kaladin had stolen in those spanreeds, they could hopefully make the device function. She’d have to coach Kaladin through installing it all. And the rubies would be smaller than the ones Tomor had built into the device; would they be able to handle the weight? She’d need to do some calculations, but assuming Tomor had used the newer cages that didn’t stress the rubies as much, it should work.
She rose to go speak to some of the others in the same manner and posture, to hide the importance of her conversation with Tomor. During the second such conference, however, she noticed someone at the doorway.
Raboniel. Navani took a deep breath, composing herself and smothering her spike of anxiety. Raboniel would likely be unhappy about what had happened last night. Hopefully she didn’t suspect Navani’s part in it.
Unfortunately, a guard soon walked into the room, then made straight for Navani. Raboniel didn’t fetch an inferior personally. Navani couldn’t banish the anxietyspren that trailed her as she joined the Fused at the doorway.
Raboniel wore a gown today, though of no cut Navani recognized. Loose and formless, it felt like what an Alethi woman would wear to bed. Though the Fused wore it well with her tall figure, it was strangely off-putting to see her in something that seemed more regal than martial.
The Fused didn’t speak as Navani arrived. Instead she turned and walked out of the chamber with a relaxed gait. Navani followed, and they entered the hallway with the murals. Down to the left, the shield surrounding the crystal pillar glowed a soft blue.
“Your scholars,” Raboniel finally noted, “do not seem to be making much progress. They were to deliver up to my people fabrials to test.”
“My scholars are frightened and unnerved, Ancient One,” Navani said. “It might take weeks before they feel up to true studies again.”
“Yes, and longer, if you continue having them repeat work in an effort to not make progress.”
She figured that out faster than I anticipated, Navani thought as the two strolled along the hallway toward the shield. Here a common singer soldier in warform was working under the direction of several Fused. With a Shardblade.
They’d known the singers had claimed some Blades from the humans they’d fought—but Navani recognized this one. It had belonged to her son. Elhokar’s Blade, Sunraiser.
Navani kept her face impassive only with great effort, though the anxietyspren faded and an agonyspren arrived instead: an upside-down face carved from stone pressing out from the wall nearby. It betrayed her true emotions. That loss ran deep.
Raboniel glanced at it, but said nothing. Navani kept her eyes forward. Watching that horrible Blade in that awful creature’s hand. The warform held the weapon at the ready. It held no gemstone at its pommel; it seemed that the warform didn’t have it bonded. Or perhaps the summoning mechanism didn’t work in the tower, with the protections in place.
The warform attacked the shield—and contrary to Navani’s expectation, the Blade bit into the blue light. The warform carved off a chunk, which evaporated to nothing before it hit the floor—and the shield restored itself just as quickly. The warform tried again, attempting to dig faster. After a few minutes of watching, Navani could tell the effort was futile. The bubble regrew too quickly.
“Fascinating behavior, wouldn’t you say?” Raboniel asked Navani.
Navani turned toward Raboniel, steeling herself against the memories brought forth by the sight of the sword. She could cry for her child again tonight, as she had done many nights in the past. For now, she would not show these creatures her pain.
“I’ve never seen anything like that shield, Lady of Wishes,” she said. “I couldn’t begin to understand how it was created.”
“We could unravel its secrets, if we tried together,” Raboniel said, “instead of wasting our time watching one another for hidden motives.”
“This is true, Ancient One,” Navani said. “But if you want my cooperation and goodwill, perhaps you shouldn’t flaunt in front of me the Blade taken from the corpse of my son.”
Raboniel stiffened. She glanced at the warform with the weapon. “I did not know.”
Didn’t she? Or was this another game?
Raboniel turned, nodding for Navani to follow as they walked away from the shield.
“If I might ask, Ancient One,” Navani said, “why do you give the Blades you capture to common soldiers, and not keep them yourselves?”
Raboniel hummed to one of her rhythms, but Navani could never tell them apart. Singers seemed to be able to distinguish one rhythm from another after hearing a short word or a couple of seconds of humming.
“Some Fused do keep the Blades we capture,” Raboniel said. “The ones who enjoy the pain. Now, I fear I must make some changes in how you and your scholars operate. You are distracted, naturally, by preventing them from giving me too much information. I have unconsciously put you in a position where your obvious talents are wasted by foolish politicking.
“These are the new arrangements: You will work by yourself at my desk in a separate room from the other scholars. Twice a day, you may give them written directions, which I will personally vet. That should give you more time for worthwhile pursuits, and less for deceit.”
Navani drew her lips to a line. “I think that is unwise, Ancient One,” she said. “I am accustomed to working directly with my scholars. They are far more efficient when I am personally directing their efforts.”
“I find it difficult to imagine them being less efficient than they are currently, Navani,” Raboniel said. “We will work this way from now on. It is not a matter I care to debate.”
Raboniel had a long stride, and used it purposely to force Navani to hurry to match her. Upon reaching the scholars’ chambers, Raboniel turned left instead of right—entering the room Navani’s scholars had been using as a library.
Raboniel’s desk in this chamber had once belonged to Navani. The Fused gestured, and Navani sat as instructed. This was going to be inconvenient—but that was Raboniel’s intent.
The Fused went down on one knee, then picked through a box on the floor here. She set something on the desk. A glass globe? Yes, like the one that had been near the first node Navani had activated.
“When we discovered the node operating the field, this was connected to it,” Raboniel said. “Look closely. What do you see?”
Navani hesitantly picked up the globe, which was heavier than it appeared. Though it was made of solid glass, she spotted an unusual construction inside. Something she hadn’t noticed, or understood, the first time she’d seen one of these. The globe had a pillar rising through the center.…
“It’s a reproduction of the crystal pillar room,” Navani said, her eyes widening. “You don’t suppose…”
“That’s how the field is created,” Raboniel said, tapping the globe with an orange carapace fingernail. “It’s a type of Soulcasting. The fabrial is persuading the air in a sphere around the pillar to think it is solid glass. That’s why cutting off a piece accomplishes nothing.”
“That’s incredible,” Navani said. “An application of the Surge I never anticipated. It’s not a full transformation, but a half state somehow. Kept in perpetual stasis, using this globe as a model to mimic…”
“There must be similar globes at the other nodes.”
“Clearly,” Navani said. “After this one was detached, did it make the shield seem weaker than before?”
“Not that we can tell,” Raboniel said. “One node must be enough to perpetuate the transformation.”
“Fascinating…”
Don’t get taken in, Navani. She wants you to think like a scholar, not like a queen. She wants you working for her, not against her.
That focus was even more difficult to maintain as Raboniel set something else on the table. A small diamond the size of Navani’s thumb, full of Stormlight. But … was the hue faintly off? Navani held it up, frowning, turning it over in her fingers. She couldn’t tell without a Stormlight sphere to compare it to, but it did seem this color was faintly teal.
“It’s not Stormlight, is it?” she asked. “Nor Voidlight?”
Raboniel hummed a rhythm. Then, realizing Navani wouldn’t understand, said, “No.”
“The third Light. I knew it. The moment I learned about Voidlight, I wondered. Three gods. Three types of Light.”
“Ah,” Raboniel said, “but this isn’t the third Light. We call that Lifelight. Cultivation’s power, distilled. This is something different. Something unique. It is the reason I came to this tower. It is a mixing of two. Stormlight and Lifelight. Like…”
“Like the Sibling is a child of both Honor and Cultivation,” Navani said.
Storms. That was what the Sibling had meant by their Light no longer working. They hadn’t been able to make the tower function any longer because something had happened to the tower’s Light.
“It came out in barely a trickle,” Raboniel said. “Something is wrong with the tower, preventing it from flowing.” Her rhythm grew more energetic. “But this is proof. I have long suspected that there must be a way to mix and change the various forms of Light. These three energies are the means by which all Surges work, and yet we know so little about them.
“What could we do with this power if we truly understood it? This Towerlight is proof that Stormlight and Lifelight can mix and create something new. Can the same be done with Stormlight and Voidlight? Or will that prove impossible, since the two are opposites?”
“Are they, though?” Navani asked.
“Yes. Like night and day or oil and water. But perhaps we can find a way to put them together. If so, it could be a … model, perhaps, of our peoples. A way toward unity instead of strife. Proof that we, although opposites, can coexist.”
Navani stared at the Towerlight sphere, and she felt compelled to correct one thing. “Oil and water aren’t opposites.”
“Of course they are,” Raboniel said. “This is a central tenet of philosophy. They cannot mix, but must remain ever separated.”
“Just because something doesn’t mix doesn’t make them opposites,” Navani said. “Sand and water don’t mix either, and you wouldn’t call them opposites. That’s beside the point. Oil and water can mix, if you have an emulsifier.”
“I do not know this word.”
“It’s a kind of binding agent, Ancient One,” Navani said, standing. If her things were still in here … yes, over at the side of the room, she found a crate holding simple materials for experiments.
She made up a vial with some oil and water, adding some stumpweight sap extract as a simple emulsifier. She shook the resulting solution and handed it to Raboniel. The Fused took it and held it up, waiting for the oil and water to separate. But of course they didn’t.
“Oil and water mix in nature all the time,” Navani said. “Sow’s milk has fat suspended in it, for example.”
“I … have accepted ancient philosophy as fact for too long, I see,” Raboniel said. “I call myself a scholar, but today I feel a fool.”
“Everyone has holes in their knowledge. There is no shame in ignorance. In any case, oil and water aren’t opposites. I’m not certain what the opposite of water would be, if the word even has meaning when applied to an element.”
“The various forms of Light do have opposites,” Raboniel said. “I am certain of it. Yet I must think on what you’ve shown me.” She reached over and tapped the sphere full of Towerlight. “For now, experiment with this Light. To keep you focused, I must insist you remain in this room until finished each day, except when accompanied to use the chamber.”
“Very well,” Navani said. “Though if you want my scholars to actually develop something for you, this idea of them drawing plans and you testing them is foolish. It won’t work, at least not well. Instead, Ancient One, I suggest you deliver to us gemstones that can power fabrials that work in the tower.”
Raboniel hummed for a moment, regarding the emulsion. “I will send such gems to your people as proof of my willingness to work together.” She turned to go. “If you intend to use ciphers to give hidden instructions to your scholars, kindly make them difficult ones. The spren I will use to unravel your true messages do like a challenge. It gives them more variety in existence.”
Raboniel set a guard at the door, but didn’t restrict Navani’s access within the room. It was otherwise unoccupied: it held only bookshelves, crates, and the occasional sphere lantern. There were no other exits, but near the rear of the room Navani found a vein of crystal hidden among the strata.
“Are you there?” she asked, touching it.
Yes, the Sibling replied. I am closer to death than ever. Surrounded by evils on all sides. Men and singers alike seeking to abuse me.
“Don’t create a false equivalency,” Navani said. “My kind might not understand the harm we’ve done to spren, but the enemy certainly knows the harm they cause in corrupting them.”
Regardless. I will soon die. Only two nodes remain, and the previous one was discovered so rapidly.
“More proof that you should be helping us, not them,” Navani whispered, peeking through the stacks to see that she hadn’t aroused the guard’s attention. “I need to understand more about how these various forms of Light work.”
I don’t think I can explain much, the Sibling said. For me, it all simply worked. Like a human child can breathe, so I used to make and use Light. And then … the tones went away … and the Light left me.
“All right,” Navani said. “We can talk on that more later. For now, you need to tell me where the other nodes are.”
No. Defend them once they are found.
“Sibling,” Navani said, “if Kaladin Stormblessed can’t protect a node, no one can. Our goal should be to distract and mislead, to prevent the Fused from ever finding them. To do this, I’ll need to know where the nodes are.”
You talk so well, the Sibling said. So frustratingly well. You humans always sound so reasonable. It’s only later, after the pain, that the truth comes out.
“Hide it if you wish,” Navani said. “But you have to know, after watching Kaladin fight for you, that we are severely outmatched. Our sole hope is to prevent the nodes from being located. If I knew where at least one of them was, I could come up with plots to deflect the enemy’s attention.”
Come up with those plots first, the Sibling said. Then talk to me again.
“Fine,” Navani said. She slipped a few books off the shelf to hide what she’d been doing, then walked to her seat. There, she began writing down everything she knew about light.