I am told that it is not the sand itself, but something that grows upon it, that exhibits the strange properties. One can make more, with proper materials and a seed of the original.
—From Rhythm of War, page 13 undertext
Kaladin thrashed, sweating and trembling, his mind filled with visions of his friends dying. Of Rock frozen in the Peaks, of Lopen slain on a distant battlefield, of Teft dying alone, shriveled to bones, his eyes glazed over from repeated use of firemoss.
“No,” Kaladin screamed. “No!”
“Kaladin!” Syl said. She zipped around his head, filling his eyes with streaks of blue-white light. “You’re awake. You’re all right. Kaladin?”
He breathed in and out, taking deep lungfuls. The nightmares felt so real, and they lingered. Like the scent of blood on your clothing after a battle.
He forced himself to his feet, and was surprised to find a small bag of glowing gemstones on the room’s stone ledge.
“From Dabbid,” Syl said. “He left them a little earlier, along with some broth, then grabbed the jug to go get water.”
“How did he…” Maybe he’d gotten them from the ardent at the monastery? Or maybe he’d quietly taken them from somewhere else. Dabbid could move around the tower in ways that Kaladin couldn’t—people always looked at Kaladin, remembered him. It was the height, he guessed. Or maybe it was the way he held himself. He’d never learned to keep his head down properly, even when he’d been a slave.
Kaladin shook his head, then did his morning routine: stretches, exercises, then washing as best he could with a cloth and some water. After that he saw to Teft, washing him, then shifting the way the man was lying to help prevent bedsores. That all done, Kaladin knelt beside Teft’s bench with the syringe and broth, trying to find solace from his own mind through the calming act of feeding his friend.
Syl settled onto the stone bench beside Teft as Kaladin worked, wearing her girlish dress, sitting with her knees pulled up against her chest and her arms wrapped around them. Neither of them spoke for a long while as Kaladin worked.
“I wish he were awake,” Syl finally whispered. “There’s something happy about the way Teft is angry.”
Kaladin nodded.
“I went to Dalinar,” she said, “before he left. I asked him if he could make me feel like humans do. Sad sometimes.”
“What?” Kaladin asked. “Why in the Almighty’s tenth name would you do something like that?”
“I wanted to feel what you feel,” she said.
“Nobody should have to feel like I do.”
“I’m my own person, Kaladin. I can make decisions for myself.” She stared sightlessly past Teft and Kaladin. “It was in talking to him that I started remembering my old knight, like I told you. I think Dalinar did something. I wanted him to Connect me to you. He refused. But I think he somehow Connected me to who I was. Made me able to remember, and hurt again…”
Kaladin felt helpless. He had never been able to struggle through his own feelings of darkness. How did he help someone else?
Tien could do it, he thought. Tien would know what to say.
Storms, he missed his brother. Even after all these years.
“I think,” Syl said, “that we spren have a problem. We think we don’t change. You’ll hear us say it sometimes. ‘Men change. Singers change. Spren don’t.’ We think that because pieces of us are eternal, we are as well. But pieces of humans are eternal too.
“If we can choose, we can change. If we can’t change, then choice means nothing. I’m glad I feel this way, to remind me that I haven’t always felt the same. Been the same. It means that in coming here to find another Knight Radiant, I was deciding. Not simply doing what I was made to, but doing what I wanted to.”
Kaladin cocked his head, the syringe full of broth halfway to Teft’s lips. “When I’m at my worst, I feel like I can’t change. Like I’ve never changed. That I’ve always felt this way, and always will.”
“When you get like that,” Syl said, “let me know, all right? Maybe it will help to talk to me about it.”
“Yeah. All right.”
“And Kal?” she said. “Do the same for me.”
He nodded, and the two of them fell silent. Kaladin wanted to say more. He should have said more. But he felt so tired. Exhaustionspren swirled in the room, though he’d slept half the day.
He could see the signs. Or rather, he couldn’t ignore them anymore. He was deeply within the grip of battle shock, and the tower being under occupation didn’t magically fix that. It made things worse. More fighting. More time alone. More people depending on him.
Killing, loneliness, and stress. An unholy triumvirate, working together with spears and knives to corner him. Then they just. Kept. Stabbing.
“Kaladin?” Syl said.
He realized he’d been sitting there, not moving, for … how long? Storms. He quickly refilled the syringe and lifted it to Teft’s lips. The man was stirring again, muttering, and Kaladin could almost make out what he was saying. Something about his parents?
Soon the door opened and Dabbid entered. He gave Kaladin a quick salute, then hurried over to the bench near Teft and put something down on the stone. He gestured urgently.
“What’s this?” Kaladin asked, then unwrapped the cloth to reveal some kind of fabrial. It looked like a leather bracer, the type Dalinar and Navani wore to tell the time. Only the construction was different. It had long leather straps on it, and a metal portion—like a handle—that came up and went across the palm. Turning it over, Kaladin found ten rubies in the bracer portion, though they were dun.
“What on Roshar?” Kaladin asked.
Dabbid shrugged.
“The Sibling led you to this, I assume?”
Dabbid nodded.
“Navani must have sent it,” Kaladin said. “Syl, what time is it?”
“About a half hour before your meeting with the queen,” she said, looking upward toward the sky, occluded behind many feet of stone.
“Next highstorm?” Kaladin asked.
“Not sure, a few days at least. Why?”
“We’ll want to restore the dun gemstones I used in that fight with the Pursuer. Thanks for the new ones, by the way, Dabbid. We’ll need to find a way to hide the others outside to recharge though.”
Dabbid patted his chest. He’d do it.
“You seem to be doing better these days,” Kaladin said, settling down to finish feeding Teft.
Dabbid shrugged.
“Want to share your secret?” Kaladin asked.
Dabbid sat on the floor and put his hands in his lap. So Kaladin went back to his work. It proved surprisingly tiring—as he had to forcibly keep his attention from wandering to his nightmares. He was glad when, upon finishing, Syl told him the time had arrived for his check-in with Navani.
He walked to the side of the room, pressed his hand against the crystal vein, and waited for her to speak in his mind.
Highmarshal? she said a few minutes later.
“Here,” he replied. “But, since I was on my way to becoming a full-time surgeon, I’m not sure I still have that rank.”
I’m reinstating you. I managed to have one of my engineers sneak out a fabrial you might find useful. The Sibling should be able to guide you to it.
“I’ve got it already,” Kaladin said. “Though I have no idea what it’s supposed to do.”
It’s a personal lift, meant to levitate you up and down long distances. To help you travel the height of the tower.
“Interesting,” he said, glancing at the device laid out on the stone bench. “Though, I’m not one for technology, Brightness. Pardon, but I barely know how to turn on a heating fabrial.”
You’ll need to learn quickly then, Navani said. As you’ll need to replace the rubies in the fabrial with the Voidspren ones from the spanreeds you stole. We’ll need all twelve pairs. Do you see a map in with the device?
“Just a moment,” he said, digging in the sack and pulling out a small folded map. It led to a place on the twentieth floor, judging by the glyphs. “I’ve got it. I should be able to reach this place. The enemy isn’t guarding the upper floors.”
Excellent. There are weights in a shaft up there where you’ll need to install the other halves of those rubies. A mechanism on the fabrial bracer will drop one of those weights, and that force will transfer through the bracer. You’ll be pulled in whatever direction you’ve pointed the device.
“By my arm?” Kaladin asked. “That doesn’t sound comfortable.”
It isn’t. My engineer has been trying to fix that. There is a strap that winds around your arm and braces against your shoulder, which he thinks might help.
“All right…” he said. It was something to do, at least.
But fabrials? He’d always considered them toys for rich people. Though he supposed that was becoming less and less the case. Breeding projects were creating livestock with larger and larger ruby gemhearts, and fabrial creation methods were spreading. It seemed every third room had a heating fabrial these days, and spanreeds were cheap enough that even the enlisted men could afford to pay to send messages via one.
Navani coached him through replacing the rubies. Fortunately, the case of spanreeds he’d stolen included a few small tools for undoing casings. It wasn’t any more difficult than replacing the buckles on a leather jerkin.
Once it was done, he and Syl ventured out, sneaking up nine floors. He didn’t use any Stormlight; he didn’t have enough to waste. Besides, it felt good to work his body.
On the twentieth floor, the garnet light led him to the location the map had described. Inside he found the weights and the shaft, and Navani walked him through installing the matching rubies. He began to grasp how the device worked. The big weights were more than heavy enough to lift a man. Five of the rubies in his fabrial were connected to these weights, binding them together.
The other seven rubies were used to activate and control the weights. The intricate system of pulleys and mechanisms was far more complex than he could understand, but essentially it allowed him to switch to a different weight when one had dropped all the way. He could also slow the weight’s fall or stop it completely, modulating how quickly he was being pulled.
Each weight should be able to pull you hundreds of feet before running out, Navani said via a garnet vein on the wall. These shafts plunge all the way down to the aquifers at the base of the mountain. That means you should be able to soar all the way up from the ground floor to the top of the tower using one weight.
The bad news is that once all five weights have fallen, the device will be useless until you rewind them. There is a winch in the corner; it’s an arduous process, I’m afraid.
“That’s annoying,” Kaladin said.
Yes, it is mildly inconvenient that we have to wind a crank to experience the wonder of making a human being safely levitate hundreds of feet in the air.
“Pardon, Brightness, but I can usually do it with far less trouble.”
Which is meaningless right now, isn’t it?
“I suppose it is,” he said. He looked at the fabrial, now attached to his left arm, with the straps winding around all the way to his shoulder. It was a little constrictive, but otherwise fit quite well. “So, I point it where I want to go, activate it, and I’ll get pulled that way?”
Yes. But we made the device so that it won’t move if you let go—it was too dangerous otherwise. See the pressure spring across your palm? Ease off that, and the brake on the line will activate. Do you see?
“Yes,” Kaladin said, making a fist around the bar. It had a separate metal portion wrapped around it on one side, with a spring underneath. So the harder he squeezed, the faster the device would pull him. If he let go completely, he’d stop in place.
There are two steps to the fabrial’s use. First, you have to turn the device on—conjoining the rubies. The switch you can move with your thumb? That’s for this purpose. Once you flip it, your arm will be locked into its current orientation, and won’t be able to move the bracer in any direction except forward.
The second step is to start dropping a weight. If a weight falls all the way, swap to the next one using the dial on the back of your wrist. You see it?
“I do,” he said.
Once you stop, you’ll remain hanging until you disengage the device. But so long as you have another weight that hasn’t run out, you can turn the dial to that one, then continue moving upward. Or if you’re bold enough, you can disengage the device and fall for a second while you point it another direction, then engage it again and set it to pull you that way instead.
“That sounds dangerous,” Kaladin said. “If I’m up high in the air, and need to get over to a balcony or something, I have to drop into free fall for a bit to reset the direction of the device so it can pull me laterally instead of up and down?”
Yes, unfortunately. The engineer who created this has grand and lofty ideas—but not much practical sense. But it’s better than nothing, Highmarshal. And it’s the best I can do for you right now.
Kaladin took a deep breath. “Understood. I’m sorry if I sounded ungrateful, Brightness. It’s been a rough few days. I’m glad for the help. I’ll familiarize myself with it.”
Excellent. You shouldn’t have to worry about the Voidlight in the gemstones running out through practice—conjoined rubies don’t use much energy to maintain their connection. But they will run out naturally, over time. We’ll have to figure out what to do about that when it happens.
For now, I’m hoping the Sibling will soon trust me enough to tell me where to find the remaining nodes. Once I have that information, I can devise a plan to protect them, perhaps by distracting the enemy’s search toward a different region of the tower. It’s vital that you keep that shield in place as long as possible, to give me time to figure out what is wrong with the Light in the tower and its defenses.
“Any movement there?” Kaladin asked.
No, but I’m currently focused on filling holes in my understanding. Once I have the proper fundamentals on Stormlight and Voidlight, I hope I’ll make more rapid progress.
“Understood,” Kaladin said. “I’ll contact you again in a few hours, if you can make time, to discuss my experience with this device.”
Thank you.
He stepped away from the wall. Syl stood in the air beside him, inspecting the fabrial.
“So?” Kaladin asked her. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re going to look extremely silly using it. I can’t wait.”
He walked out to a nearby hallway. Up here on the twentieth floor, he should be safe practicing in the open—assuming he stayed away from the atrium. He walked the length of the hallway, setting out amethysts to light the way. Then he stood at one end, looking down the line of lights. The fabrial left his fingers free, but that bar in the center of his hand would interfere with fighting. He’d have to one-hand his spear, as if he were fighting with a shield.
“We’re going to try it here?” Syl asked, darting over to him. “Isn’t it for getting up and down?”
“Brightness Navani told me it pulls you in whatever direction you point it,” he said. “New Windrunners always want to go up with their Lashings—but the more experience you have, the more you realize you can accomplish far more if you think in three dimensions.”
He pointed his left hand down the hallway and opened his palm. Then, thinking it wise, he took in a little Stormlight. Finally, he used his thumb to flip the little lever and engage the mechanism. Nothing happened.
So far so good, he thought, trying to move his hand right or left. It resisted, held in place. Good.
He eased his hand into a fist, squeezing the bar across his palm, and was immediately pulled through the corridor. He skidded on his heels, and wasn’t able to slow himself at all. Those weights really were heavy.
Kaladin opened his hand, stopping in place. Because the device was still active, when he lifted his feet off the ground, he stayed in the air. However, this also put an incredible amount of stress on his arm, especially the elbow.
Yes, the device in its current state might be too dangerous for anyone without Stormlight to use. He put his feet back down and tapped the toggle with his thumb to disengage the device, and his arm immediately dropped free. The weight—when he went to check on it—was hanging a little further down into the shaft. As soon as he’d disengaged the device, the brakes had locked, holding the weight in place.
He went out into the hallway, engaged the device, and gripped the bar firmly. That sent him soaring forward. He tucked up his feet, straining—with effort—to keep himself otherwise upright. In that moment, difficult though the exercise was, he felt something come alive in him again. The wind in his hair. His body soaring, claiming the sky, albeit in an imperfect way. He found the experience familiar. Even intuitive.
That lasted right up until the moment when he noticed the quickly approaching far wall. He reacted a little too slowly, first trying to Lash himself backward by instinct. He slammed into the wall hand-first and felt his knuckles crunch. The device continued trying to go forward, crushing his mangled hand further, forcing it to keep the bar compressed. The device held him affixed to the wall until he managed to reach over with his other hand and flip the thumb switch, releasing the mechanism and setting him free.
He gasped in pain, sucking the Stormlight from a nearby amethyst on the floor. The healing happened slowly, as it had the other day. The pain was acute; he gritted his teeth while he waited—and split skin, broken by bones, made him bleed on the device, staining its leather.
Syl scowled at the painspren crawling around the floor. “Um, I was wrong. That wasn’t particularly funny.”
“Sorry,” Kaladin said, eyes watering from the pain.
“What happened?”
“Bad instincts,” he said. “Not the device’s fault. I just forgot what I was doing.”
He sat to wait, and he heard the joints popping and the bones grinding as the Stormlight reknit him. He’d come to rely on his near-instantaneous healing; this was agony.
It was a good five minutes before he shook out his healed hand and stretched it, good as new, other than some lingering phantom pain. “Right,” he said. “I’ll want to be more careful. I’m playing with some incredible forces in those weights.”
“At least you didn’t break the fabrial,” Syl said. “Strange as it is to say, it’s a lot easier to get you a new hand than a new device.”
“True,” he said, standing. He launched himself down the hallway back the way he had come, this time maintaining a careful speed, and slowed himself as he neared the other end.
Over the next half hour or so he crashed a few more times, though never as spectacularly as that first one. He needed to be very careful to point his hand straight down the center of the hallway, or else he’d drift to the side and end up scraping across the wall. He also had to be acutely aware of the device, as it was remarkably easy to flip the activation switch accidentally by brushing his hand against something.
He kept practicing, and was able to go back and forth for quite a while before the device stopped working. He lurched to a halt midflight, hanging in the center of the hallway.
He rested his feet on the ground and deactivated the device. The weight he’d been using had hit the bottom. That had lasted him quite a long time—though much of that time had been resetting and moving around. In actual free fall, he probably wouldn’t have longer than a few minutes of flight. But if he controlled the weight, using it in short bursts, he could make good use of those minutes.
He wouldn’t be soaring about fighting Heavenly Ones in swooping battles with this. But he could get an extra burst of speed in a fight, and maybe move in an unexpected direction. Navani intended him to use it as a lift. It would work for that, certainly. And he intended to practice going up and down outside once it was dark.
But Kaladin also saw martial applications. And all in all, the device worked better than he’d expected. So he walked to the end of the hallway to set up again.
“More?” Syl asked.
“You have an appointment or something?” Kaladin asked.
“Just a little bored.”
“I could crash into another wall, if you like.”
“Only if you promise to be amusing when you do it.”
“What? You want me to break more fingers?”
“No.” She zipped around him as a ribbon of light. “Breaking your hands isn’t very funny. Try a different body part. A funny one.”
“I’m going to stop trying to imagine how to manage that,” he said, “and get back to work.”
“And how long are we going to be doing this decidedly unfunny crashing?”
“Until we don’t crash, obviously,” Kaladin said. “I had months to train with my Lashings, and longer to prepare for my first fight as a spearman. Judging by how quickly the Fused found the first node, I suspect I’ll have only a few days to train on this device before I need to use it.”
When the time came—assuming Navani or the Sibling could give him warning—he wanted to be ready. He knew of at least one way to quiet the nightmares, the mounting pressure, and the mental exhaustion. He couldn’t do much about his situation, or the cracks that were ever widening inside him.
But he could stay busy, and in so doing, not let those cracks define him.