“Above the final void I hang, friends behind, friends before. The feast I must drink clings to their faces, and the words I must speak spark in my mind. The old oaths will be spoken anew.”
—Dated Betabanan, 1173, 45 seconds pre-death. Subject: a lighteyed child of five years. Diction improved remarkably when giving sample.
Kaladin glared at the three glowing topaz spheres on the ground in front of him. The barrack was dark, empty save for Teft and himself. Lopen leaned in the sunlit doorway, watching with a casual air. Outside, Rock called out commands to the other bridgemen. Kaladin had them working on battle formations. Nothing overt. It would be construed as practice for bridge carrying, but he was actually training them to obey orders and rearrange themselves efficiently.
The three little spheres—only chips—lit the stone ground around themselves in little tan rings. Kaladin focused on them, holding his breath,
willing the light into him.
Nothing happened.
He tried harder, staring into their depths.
Nothing happened.
He picked one up, cupping it in his palm, raising it so that he could see the light and nothing else. He could pick out the details of the storm, the
shifting, spinning vortex of light. He commanded it, willed it, begged it.
Nothing happened.
He groaned, lying back on the rock, staring at the ceiling.
“Maybe you don’t want it badly enough,” Teft said.
“I want it as badly as I know how. It won’t budge, Teft.”
Teft grunted and picked up one of the spheres.
“Maybe we’re wrong about me,” Kaladin said. It seemed poetically appropriate that the moment he accepted this strange, frightening part of himself, he couldn’t make it work. “It could have been a trick of the sunlight.”
“A trick of the sunlight,” Teft said flatly. “Sticking a bag to the barrel was a trick of the light.”
“All right. Then maybe it was some odd fluke, something that happened just that once.”
“And when you were wounded,” Teft said, “and whenever on a bridge run you needed an extra burst of strength or endurance.”
Kaladin let out a frustrated sigh and tapped his head back lightly against the rock floor a few times. “Well, if I’m one of these Radiants you keep talking about, why can’t I do anything?”
“I figure,” the grizzled bridgeman said, rolling the sphere in his fingers, “that you’re like a baby, making his legs work. At first it just kind of happens. Slowly, he figures how to make them move on purpose. You just need practice.”
“I’ve spent a week staring at spheres, Teft. How much practice can it take?”
“Well, more than you’ve had, obviously.”
Kaladin rolled his eyes and sat back up. “Why am I listening to you?
You’ve admitted that you don’t know any more than I do.”
“I don’t know anything about using the Stormlight,” Teft said, scowling.
“But I know what should happen.”
“According to stories that contradict one another. You’ve told me that the Radiants could fly and walk on walls.”
Teft nodded. “They sure could. And make stone melt by looking at it.
And move great distances in a single heartbeat. And command the sunlight.
And—”
“And why,” Kaladin said, “would they need to both walk on walls and fly? If they can fly, why would they bother running up walls?”
Teft said nothing.
“And why bother with either one,” Kaladin added, “if they can just
‘move great distances in a heartbeat’?”
“I’m not sure,” Teft admitted.
“We can’t trust the stories or legends,” Kaladin said. He glanced at Syl, who had landed beside one of the spheres, staring at it with childlike interest.
“Who knows what is true and what has been fabricated? The only thing we know for certain is this.” He plucked up one of the spheres and held it up in two fingers. “The Radiant sitting in this room is very, very tired of the color brown.”
Teft grunted. “You’re not a Radiant, lad.”
“Weren’t we just talking about—”
“Oh, you can infuse,” Teft said. “You can drink in the Stormlight and command it. But being a Radiant was more than that. It was their way of life, the things they did. The Immortal Words.”
“The what?”
Teft rolled his sphere between his fingers again, holding it up and staring into its depths. “Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination. That was their motto, and was the First Ideal of the Immortal Words. There were four others.”
Kaladin raised an eyebrow. “Which were?”
“I don’t actually know,” Teft said. “But the Immortal Words—these Ideals—guided everything they did. The four later Ideals were said to be different for every order of Radiants. But the First Ideal was the same for each of the ten: Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination.” He hesitated. “Or so I was told.”
“Yes, well, that seems a little obvious to me,” Kaladin said. “Life comes before death. Just like day comes before night, or one comes before two.
Obvious.”
“You’re not taking this seriously. Maybe that’s why the Stormlight refuses you.”
Kaladin stood and stretched. “I’m sorry, Teft. I’m just tired.”
“Life before death,” Teft said, wagging a finger at Kaladin. “The Radiant seeks to defend life, always. He never kills unnecessarily, and never risks his own life for frivolous reasons. Living is harder than dying. The Radiant’s duty is to live.
“Strength before weakness. All men are weak at some time in their lives.
The Radiant protects those who are weak, and uses his strength for others.
Strength does not make one capable of rule; it makes one capable of service.”
Teft picked up spheres, putting them in his pouch. He held the last one for a second, then tucked it away too. “Journey before destination. There are always several ways to achieve a goal. Failure is preferable to winning through unjust means. Protecting ten innocents is not worth killing one. In the end, all men die. How you lived will be far more important to the Almighty than what you accomplished.”
“The Almighty? So the knights were tied to religion?”
“Isn’t everything? There was some old king who came up with all this.
Had his wife write it in a book or something. My mother read it. The Radiants based the Ideals on what was written there.”
Kaladin shrugged, moving over to begin sorting through the pile of bridgemen’s leather vests. Ostensibly, he and Teft were here checking those over for tears or broken straps. After a few moments, Teft joined him.
“Do you actually believe that?” Kaladin asked, lifting up a vest, tugging on its straps. “That anyone would follow those vows, particularly a bunch of lighteyes?”
“They weren’t just lighteyes. They were Radiants.”
“They were people,” Kaladin said. “Men in power always pretend things like virtue, or divine guidance, some kind of mandate to ‘protect’ the rest of us. If we believe that the Almighty put them where they are, it’s easier for us to swallow what they do to us.”
Teft turned a vest over. It was beginning to tear beneath the left shoulder pad. “I never used to believe. And then… then I saw you infusing Light, and I began to wonder.”
“Stories and legends, Teft,” Kaladin said. “We want to believe that there were better men once. That makes us think it could be that way again. But people don’t change. They are corrupt now. They were corrupt then.”
“Maybe,” Teft said. “My parents believed in all of it. The Immortal Words, the Ideals, the Knights Radiant, the Almighty. Even old Vorinism. In fact, especially old Vorinism.”
“That led to the Hierocracy. The devotaries and the ardents shouldn’t hold land or property. It’s too dangerous.”
Teft snorted. “Why? You think they’d be worse at being in charge than the lighteyes?”
“Well, you’ve probably got a point there.” Kaladin frowned. He’d spent
so long assuming the Almighty had abandoned him, or even cursed him, that it was difficult to accept that maybe—as Syl had said—he’d instead been blessed. Yes, he’d been preserved, and he supposed he should be grateful for that. But what could be worse than being granted great power, yet still being too weak to save those he loved?
Further speculation was interrupted as Lopen stood up straight in the doorway, gesturing covertly to Kaladin and Teft. Fortunately, there wasn’t anything to hide anymore. In fact, there hadn’t ever been anything to hide, other than Kaladin sitting on the floor and staring at the spheres like an idiot.
He set aside the vest and walked to the entrance.
Hashal’s palanquin was being carried directly toward Kaladin’s barrack, her tall, oft-silent husband walking alongside. The sash at his neck was violet, as was the embroidery on the cuffs of his short, vestlike jacket. Gaz still hadn’t reappeared. It had been a week now, and no sign of him. Hashal and her husband—along with their lighteyed attendants—did what he’d once done, and they rebuffed any questions about the bridge sergeant.
“Storm it,” Teft said, stepping up beside Kaladin. “Those two make my skin itch, same way it does when I know someone’s got a knife and is standing behind me.”
Rock had the bridgemen lined up and waiting quietly, as if for inspection. Kaladin walked out to join them, Teft and Lopen following behind. The bearers set the palanquin down in front of Kaladin. Open-sided with only a small canopy on the top, it was little more than an armchair on a platform. Many of the lighteyed women used them in the warcamps.
Kaladin reluctantly gave Hashal a proper bow, prompting the other bridgemen to do so as well. Now was not the time to be beaten for insubordination.
“You have such a well-trained band, bridgeleader,” she said, idly scratching her cheek with a ruby-red nail, her elbow on her armrest. “So… efficient at bridge runs.”
“Thank you, Brightness Hashal,” Kaladin said, trying—but failing—to keep the stiff ness and hostility from his voice. “May I ask? Gaz hasn’t been seen for some days now. Is he well?”
“No.” Kaladin waited for further reply, but she didn’t give one. “My husband has made a decision. Your men are so good at bridge runs that you are a model to the other crews. As such, you will be on bridge duty every day from now on.”
Kaladin felt a chill. “And scavenging duty?”
“Oh, there will still be time for that. You need to take torches down anyway, and plateau runs never happen at night. So your men will sleep during the day—always on call—and will work the chasms at night. A much better use of your time.”
“Every bridge run,” Kaladin said. “You’re going to make us go on every one.”
“Yes,” she said idly, tapping for her bearers to raise her. “Your team is just too good. It must be used. You’ll start full-time bridge duty tomorrow.
Consider it an… honor.”
Kaladin inhaled sharply to keep himself from saying what he thought of her “honor.” He couldn’t bring himself to bow as she retreated, but she didn’t seem to care. Rock and the men started muttering.
Every bridge run. She’d just doubled the rate at which they’d be killed.
Kaladin’s team wouldn’t last another few weeks. They were already so low on members that losing one or two men on an assault would cause them to flounder. The Parshendi would focus on them then, cutting them down.
“Kelek’s breath!” Teft said. “She’ll see us dead!”
“It’s not fair,” Lopen added.
“We’re bridgemen,” Kaladin said, looking at them. “What made you think that any kind of ‘fairness’ applied to us?”
“She hasn’t killed us fast enough for Sadeas,” Moash said. “You know that soldiers have been beaten for coming to look for you, to see the man who survived the highstorm? He hasn’t forgotten about you, Kaladin.”
Teft was still swearing. He pulled Kaladin aside, Lopen following, but the others remained talking among themselves. “Damnation!” Teft said softly. “They like to pretend to be evenhanded with the bridge crews. Makes ’em seem fair. Looks like they gave up on that. Bastards.”
“What do we do, gancho?” Lopen asked.
“We go to the chasms,” Kaladin said. “Just like we’re scheduled to.
Then make sure we get some extra sleep tonight, as we’re apparently going to be staying up all night tomorrow.”
“The men will hate going into the chasms at night, lad,” Teft said.
“I know.”
“But we’re not ready for… what we need to do,” Teft said, looking to make sure nobody could hear. It was only him, Kaladin, and Lopen. “It will be another few weeks at least.”
“I know.”
“We won’t last another few weeks!” Teft said. “With Sadeas and Kholin working together, runs happen nearly every day. Just one bad run—one time with the Parshendi drawing bead on us—and it will all be over. We’ll be wiped out.”
“I know!” Kaladin said, frustrated, taking a deep breath and forming
fists to keep himself from exploding.
“Gancho!” Lopen said.
“What?” Kaladin snapped.
“It’s happening again.”
Kaladin froze, then looked down at his arms. Sure enough, he caught a hint of luminescent smoke rising from his skin. It was extremely faint—he didn’t have many gemstones near him—but it was there. The wisps faded quickly. Hopefully the other bridgemen hadn’t seen.
“Damnation. What did I do?”
“I don’t know,” Teft said. “Is it because you were angry at Hashal?”
“I was angry before.”
“You breathed it in,” Syl said eagerly, whipping around him in the air, a
ribbon of light.
“What?”
“I saw it.” She twisted herself around. “You were mad, you drew in a breath, and the Light… it came too.”
Kaladin glanced at Teft, but of course the older bridgeman hadn’t heard.
“Gather the men,” Kaladin said. “We’re going down to our chasm duty.”
“And what about what has happened?” Teft said. “Kaladin, we can’t go on that many bridge runs. We’ll be cut to pieces.”
“I’m doing something about it today. Gather the men. Syl, I need something from you.”
“What?” She landed in front of him and formed into a young woman.
“Go find us a place where some Parshendi corpses have fallen.”
“I thought you were going to do spear practice today.”
“That’s what the men will be doing,” Kaladin said. “I’ll get them organized first. After that, I have a different task.”
Kaladin clapped a quick signal, and the bridgemen made a decent arrowhead formation. They carried the spears they’d stashed in the chasm, secured in a large sack filled with stones and stuck in a crevice. He clapped his hands again, and they rearranged into a double-line wall formation. He clapped again, and they formed into a ring with one man standing behind every two as a quick step-in reserve.
The walls of the chasm dripped with water, and the bridgemen splashed through puddles. They were good. Better than they had any right to be, better —for their level of training—than any team he’d worked with.
But Teft was right. They still wouldn’t last long in a fight. A few more weeks and he’d have them practiced enough with thrusts and shielding one another that they’d begin to be dangerous. Until then, they were just bridgemen who could move in fancy patterns. They needed more time.
Kaladin had to buy them some.
“Teft,” Kaladin said. “Take over.”
The older bridgeman gave one of those cross-armed salutes.
“Syl,” Kaladin said to the spren, “let’s go see these bodies.”
“They’re close. Come on.” She zipped off down the chasm, a glowing
ribbon. Kaladin started after her.
“Sir,” Teft called.
Kaladin hesitated. When had Teft started calling him “sir”? Odd, how right that felt. “Yes?”
“You want an escort?” Teft stood at the head of the gathered bridgemen, who were looking more and more like soldiers, with their leather vests and
spears held in practiced grips.
Kaladin shook his head. “I’ll be fine.”
“Chasmfiends…”
“The lighteyes have killed any who prowl this close to our side. Besides, if I did run into one, what difference would two or three extra men make?”
Teft grimaced behind his short, greying beard, but offered no further objection. Kaladin continued to follow Syl. In his pouch, he carried the rest of the spheres they’d discovered on bodies while scavenging. They made a habit of keeping some of each discovery and sticking them to bridges, and with Syl helping at scavenging, they now found more than they used to. He had a small fortune in his pouch. That Stormlight—he hoped— would serve him well today.
He got out a sapphire mark for light, avoiding pools of water strewn
with bones. A skull protruded from one, wavy green moss growing across the scalp like hair, lifespren bobbing above. Perhaps it should have felt eerie to walk through these darkened slots alone, but they didn’t bother Kaladin. This was a sacred place, the sarcophagus of the lowly, the burial cavern of bridgemen and spearmen who died upon lighteyed edicts, spilling blood down the sides of these ragged walls. This place wasn’t eerie; it was holy.
He was actually glad to be alone with his silence and the remains of those who had died. These men hadn’t cared about the squabbles of those born with lighter eyes than they. These men had cared about their families or —at the very least—their sphere pouches. How many of them were trapped in this foreign land, these endless plateaus, too poor to escape back to Alethkar? Hundreds died each week, winning gems for men who were already rich, winning vengeance for a king long dead.
Kaladin passed another skull, missing its lower jaw, the crown split by an axe’s blow. The bones seemed to watch him, curious, the blue Stormlight in his hand giving a haunted cast to the uneven ground and walls.
The devotaries taught that when men died, the most valiant among them —the ones who fulfilled their Callings best—would rise to help reclaim heaven. Each man would do as he had done in life. Spearmen to fight, farmers to work spiritual farms, lighteyes to lead. The ardents were careful to point out that excellence in any Calling would bring power. A farmer would be able to wave his hand and create great fields of spiritual crops. A spearman would be a great warrior, able to cause thunder with his shield and lightning with his spear.
But what of the bridgemen? Would the Almighty demand that all of these fallen rise and continue their drudgery? Would Dunny and the others run bridges in the afterlife? No ardents came to them to test their abilities or grant them Elevations. Perhaps the bridgemen wouldn’t be needed in the War for Heaven. Only the very most skilled went there anyway. Others would simply slumber until the Tranquiline Halls were reclaimed.
So do I believe again now? He climbed over a boulder wedged in the chasm. Just like that? He wasn’t sure. But it didn’t matter. He would do the best he could for his bridgemen. If there was a Calling in that, so be it.
Of course, if he did escape with his team, Sadeas would replace them with others who would die in their stead.
I have to worry about what I can do, he told himself. Those other bridgemen aren’t my responsibility.
Teft talked about the Radiants, about ideals and stories. Why couldn’t men actually be like that? Why did they have to rely on dreams and fabrications for inspiration?
If you flee… you leave all the other bridgemen to be slaughtered, a voice whispered within him. There has to be something you can do for them.
No! he fought back. If I worry about that, I won’t be able to save Bridge Four. If I find a way out, we’re going.
If you leave, the voice seemed to say, then who will fight for them?
Nobody cares. Nobody….
What was it his father had said all those years ago? He did what he felt was right because someone had to start. Someone had to take the first step.
Kaladin’s hand felt warm. He stopped in the chasm, closing his eyes.
You couldn’t feel any heat from a sphere, usually, but the one in his hand seemed warm. And then—feeling completely natural about it—Kaladin breathed in deeply. The sphere grew cold and a wave of heat shot up his arm.
He opened his eyes. The sphere in his hand was dun and his fingers were crispy with frost. Light rose from him like smoke from a fire, white, pure.
He raised a hand and felt alive with energy. He had no need to breathe— in fact, he held the breath in, trapping the Stormlight. Syl zipped back down the corridor toward him. She twisted around him, then came to rest in the air, taking the form of a woman. “You did it. What happened?”
Kaladin shook his head, holding his breath. Something was surging within him, like… Like a storm. Raging inside his veins, a tempest sweeping about inside his chest cavity. It made him want to run, jump, yell. It almost made him want to burst. He felt as if he could walk on air. Or walls.
Yes! he thought. He broke into a run, leaping at the side of the chasm.
He hit feetfirst.
Then bounced off and slammed back into the ground. He was so stunned that he cried out, and he felt the storm within dampen as breath escaped.
He lay on his back as Stormlight rose from him more quickly now that he was breathing. He lay there as the last of it burned away.
Syl landed on his chest. “Kaladin? What was that?”
“Me being an idiot,” he replied, sitting up and feeling an ache in his back and a sharp pain in his elbow where he’d hit the ground. “Teft said that the Radiants were able to walk on walls, and I felt so alive….”
Syl walked on air, stepping as if down a set of stairs. “I don’t think
you’re ready for that yet. Don’t be so risky. If you die, I go stupid again, you know.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind,” Kaladin said, climbing to his feet.
“Maybe I’ll remove dying from my list of tasks to do this week.”
She snorted, zipping into the air, becoming a ribbon again. “Come on, hurry up.” She shot off down the chasm. Kaladin collected the dun sphere, then dug into the pouch for another one to provide light. Had he drained them all? No. The others still glowed strongly. He selected a ruby mark, then hurried after Syl.
She led him to a narrow chasm that contained a small group of fresh Parshendi corpses. “This is morbid, Kaladin,” Syl noted, standing above the
bodies.
“I know. Do you know where Lopen went?”
“I sent him scavenging nearby, fetching the things you asked him for.”
“Bring him, please.”
Syl sighed, but zipped away. She always got testy when he made her appear to someone other than him. Kaladin knelt down. Parshendi all looked so similar. That same square face, those blocky—almost rocklike—features.
Some had the beards with bits of gemstone tied in them. Those glowed, but not brightly. Cut gemstones held Stormlight better. Why was that?
Rumors in camp claimed that the Parshendi took the wounded humans away and ate them. Rumors also said they left their dead, not caring for the fallen, never building them proper pyres. But that last part was false. They did care about their dead. They all seemed to have the same sensibility that Shen did; he threw a fit every time one of the bridgemen so much as touched a Parshendi corpse.
I’d better be right about this, Kaladin thought grimly, slipping a knife off one of the Parshendi bodies. It was beautifully ornamented and forged, the steel lined with glyphs Kaladin didn’t recognize. He began to cut at the strange breastplate armor that grew from the corpse’s chest.
Kaladin quickly determined that Parshendi physiology was very different from human physiology. Small blue ligaments held the breastplate to the skin underneath. It was attached all the way across. He continued working. There wasn’t much blood; it had pooled at the corpse’s back or leaked away. His knife wasn’t a surgeon’s tool, but it did the job just fine. By the time Syl returned with Lopen, Kaladin had gotten the breastplate free and had moved on to the carapace helm. It was harder to remove; it had grown
into the skull in places, and he had to saw with the serrated section of the blade.
“Ho, gancho,” Lopen said, a sack slung over his shoulder. “You don’t like them at all, do you?”
Kaladin stood, wiping his hands on the Parshendi man’s skirt. “Did you find what I asked for?”
“Sure did,” Lopen said, letting down the sack and digging into it. He pulled out an armored leather vest and cap, the type that spearmen used. Then he took out some thin leather straps and a medium-sized wooden spearman’s shield. Finally came a series of deep red bones. Parshendi bones. At the very bottom of the sack was the rope, the one Lopen had bought and tossed into the chasm, then stashed down below.
“You haven’t lost your wits, have you?” Lopen asked, eyeing the bones.
“Because if you have, I’ve got a cousin who makes this drink for people who’ve lost their wits, and it might make you better, sure.”
“If I’d lost my wits,” Kaladin said, walking over to a pool of still water to wash off the carapace helm, “would I say that I had?”
“I don’t know,” Lopen said, leaning back. “Maybe. Guess it doesn’t
matter if you’re crazy or not.”
“You’d follow a crazy man into battle?”
“Sure,” Lopen said. “If you’re crazy, you’re a good type, and I like you.
Not a killing-people-in-their-sleep type of crazy.” He smiled. “Besides. We all follow crazies all the time. Do it every day with lighteyes.”
Kaladin chuckled.
“So what’s this all for?”
Kaladin didn’t answer. He brought the breastplate over to the leather vest, then tied it onto the front with some of the leather straps. He did the same with the cap and the helm, though he eventually had to saw some grooves into the helm with his knife to make it stay.
Once done, Kaladin used the last straps to tie the bones together and attach them to the front of the round wooden shield. The bones rattled as he lifted the shield, but he decided it was good enough.
He took shield, cap, and breastplate and put them all into Lopen’s sack.
They barely fit. “All right,” he said, standing up. “Syl, lead us to the short chasm.” They’d spent some time investigating, finding the best place to launch arrows into the bottom of permanent bridges. One bridge in particular was close to Sadeas’s warcamp—so they often traversed it on the way out on
a bridge run—and spanned a particularly shallow chasm. Only about forty feet deep, rather than the usual hundred or more.
She nodded, then zipped away, leading them there. Kaladin and Lopen followed. Teft had orders to lead the others back and meet Kaladin at the base of the ladder, but Kaladin and Lopen should be far ahead of them. He spent the hike listening with half an ear as Lopen talked about his extended family.
The more Kaladin thought about what he was planning, the more brazen it seemed. Perhaps Lopen was right to question his sanity. But Kaladin had tried being rational. He’d tried being careful. That had failed; now there wasn’t any more time for logic or care. Hashal obviously intended Bridge Four to be exterminated.
When clever, careful plans failed, it was time to try something desperate.
Lopen cut off suddenly. Kaladin hesitated. The Herdazian man had grown pale-faced and frozen in place. What was… Scraping. Kaladin froze as well, a panic rising in him. One of the side corridors echoed with a deep grinding sound. Kaladin turned slowly, just in time to catch sight of something large—no, something enormous— moving down the distant chasm. Shadows in the dim light, the sound of chitinous legs scratching on rock. Kaladin held his breath, sweating, but the beast didn’t come in their direction.
The scraping grew softer, then eventually faded. He and Lopen stood immobile for a long time after the last sound had vanished.
Finally, Lopen spoke. “Guess the nearby ones aren’t all dead, eh, gancho?”
“Yeah,” Kaladin said. He jumped suddenly as Syl zipped back to find them. He unconsciously sucked in Stormlight as he did so, and when she alighted in the air, she found him sheepishly glowing.
“What is going on?” she demanded, hands on hips.
“Chasmfiend,” Kaladin said.
“Really?” She sounded excited. “We should chase after it!”
“What?”
“Sure,” she said. “You could fight it, I’ll bet.”
“Syl…”
Her eyes were twinkling with amusement. Just a joke. “Come on.” She zipped away.
He and Lopen stepped more softly now. Eventually Syl landed on the side of the chasm, standing there as if in mockery of when Kaladin had tried
to walk up the wall.
Kaladin looked up at the shadow of a wooden bridge forty feet above.
This was the shallowest chasm they’d been able to find; they tended to get deeper and deeper the farther eastward you went. More and more, he was certain that trying to escape to the east was impossible. It was too far, and surviving the highstorm floods was too difficult a challenge. The original plan—fighting or bribing the guards, then running—was the best one.
But they needed to live long enough to try that. The bridge above offered an opportunity, if Kaladin could reach it. He hefted his small bag of spheres and his slung sack full of armor and bones over his shoulder. He’d originally intended to have Rock shoot an arrow with a rope tied to it over the bridge, then back down into the chasm. With some men holding one end, another could have climbed up and tied the sack to the bridge’s underside.
But that would risk letting an arrow shoot out of the chasm where scouts could see. They were said to be very keen-eyed, as the armies depended on them to spot chasmfiends making chrysalises.
Kaladin thought he had a better way than the arrow. Maybe. “We need rocks,” he said. “Fist-size ones. A lot of them.”
Lopen shrugged and began searching about. Kaladin joined him, fishing them out of puddles and pulling them from crevasses. There was no shortage of stones in the chasms. In a short time, he had a large pile of rocks in a sack.
He took the pouch of spheres in his hand and tried to think the same way he had earlier, when he’d drawn in the Stormlight. This is our last chance.
“Life before death,” he whispered. “Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.”
The First Ideal of the Knights Radiant. He breathed in deeply, and a thick jolt of power shot up his arm. His muscles burned with energy, with the desire to move. The tempest spread within, pushing at his skin, causing his blood to pump in a powerful rhythm. He opened his eyes. Glowing smoke rose around him. He was able to contain much of the Light, holding it in by holding his breath.
It’s like a storm inside me. It felt as if it would rip him apart.
He set the sack with the armor on the ground, but wound the rope around his arm and tied the sack of rocks to his belt. He took out a single fist- size stone and hefted it, feeling its storm-smoothed sides. This had better work….
He infused the stone with Stormlight, frost crystallizing on his arm. He
wasn’t sure how he did it, but it felt natural, like pouring liquid into a cup.
Light seemed to pool underneath the skin of his hand, then transfer to the rock—as if he were painting it with a vibrant, glowing liquid.
He pressed the stone to the rock wall. It fixed in place, leaking Stormlight, clinging so strongly that he couldn’t pry it free. He tested his weight on it, and it held. He placed another one a little lower, then another a little higher. Then, wishing he had someone to burn him a prayer for success, he started climbing.
He tried not to think about what he was doing. Climbing on rocks stuck to the wall by… what? Light? Spren? He kept on going. It was a lot like climbing the stone formations back near Hearthstone with Tien, except that he could make handholds exactly where he wanted.
Should have found some rock dust to cover my hands, he thought, pulling himself up, then taking another stone from his sack and sticking it into place.
Syl walked along beside him, her casual stroll seeming to mock the difficulty of his climb. As he shifted his weight to another rock, he heard an ominous click from below. He risked a glance downward. The first of his rocks had fallen free. The ones near it were leaking Stormlight only faintly now.
The rocks led up toward him like a set of burning footprints. The storm inside him had quieted, though it still blew and raged inside his veins, thrilling and distracting at the same time. What would happen if he ran out of Light before he reached the top?
The next rock fell free. The one beside it followed a few seconds later.
Lopen stood on the other side of the chasm bottom, leaning against the wall, interested but relaxed.
Keep moving! Kaladin thought, annoyed at himself for getting distracted. He turned back to his work.
Just as his arms were beginning to burn from the climb, he reached the underside of the bridge. He reached out as two more of his stones fell free.
The clatter of each one was louder now, as they fell a much larger distance.
Steadying himself on the bottom of the bridge with one hand, feet still pushing against the highest rocks, he looped the end of the rope around a wooden bridge support. He pulled it around and threaded it through again to make a makeshift knot. He left plenty of extra rope on the short end.
He let the rest of the rope slide free of his shoulder and drop to the floor
below. “Lopen,” he called. Light steamed from his mouth as he spoke. “Pull it tight.”
The Herdazian did so, and Kaladin held to his end, making the knot firm. Then he took hold of the long section of rope and let himself swing free, dangling from the bottom of the bridge. The knot held.
Kaladin relaxed. He was still steaming light, and—save for the call to Lopen—he’d been holding his breath for a good quarter hour. That could be handy, he thought, though his lungs were starting to burn, so he started to breathe normally. The Light didn’t leave him altogether, though it escaped faster.
“All right,” Kaladin said to Lopen. “Tie the other sack to the bottom of the rope.”
The rope wiggled, and a few moments later Lopen called up that it was done. Kaladin gripped the rope with his legs to hold himself in place, then used his hands to pull up the length underneath, hoisting up the sack full of armor. Using the rope on the short end of the knot, he slipped his pouch of dun spheres into the sack with the armor, then tied it into place underneath the bridge where—he hoped—Lopen and Dabbid would be able to get to it from above.
He looked down. The ground looked so much more distant than it would have from the bridge above. From this slightly different perspective, everything changed.
He didn’t get vertigo from the height. Instead, he felt a little surge of excitement. Something about him had always liked being up high. It felt natural. It was being below—trapped in holes and unable to see the world—
that was depressing.
He considered his next move.
“What?” Syl asked, stepping up to him, standing on air.
“If I leave the rope here, someone might spot it while crossing the
bridge.”
“So cut it free.”
He looked at her, raising an eyebrow. “While dangling from it?”
“You’ll be fine.”
“That’s a forty-foot drop! I’d break bones at the very least.”
“No,” Syl said. “I feel right about this, Kaladin. You’ll be fine. Trust me.”
“Trust you? Syl, you’ve said yourself that your memory is fractured!”
“You insulted me the other week,” she said, folding her arms. “I think you owe me an apology.”
“I’m supposed to apologize by cutting a rope and dropping forty feet?”
“No, you apologize by trusting me. I told you. I feel right about this.”
He sighed, looking down again. His Stormlight was running out. What else could he do? Leaving the rope would be foolish. Could he tie it in another knot, one he could shake free once at the bottom?
If that type of knot existed, he didn’t know how to tie it. He clenched his teeth. Then, as the last of his rocks fell off and clattered to the ground, he took a deep breath and pulled out the Parshendi knife he’d taken earlier. He moved swiftly, before he had a chance to reconsider, and sliced the rope free.
He dropped in a rush, one hand still holding the sliced rope, stomach lurching with the jarring distress of falling. The bridge shot away as if rising, and Kaladin’s panicked mind immediately sent his eyes downward. This wasn’t beautiful. This was terrifying. It was horrible. He was going to die! He
— It’s all right.
His emotions calmed in a heartbeat. Somehow, he knew what to do.
He twisted in the air, dropping the rope and hitting the ground with both feet down. He came to a crouch, resting one hand on the stone, a jolt of coldness shooting through him. His remaining Stormlight came out in a single burst, flung from his body in a luminescent smoke ring that crashed against the ground before spreading out, vanishing.
He stood up straight. Lopen gaped. Kaladin felt an ache in his legs from hitting, but it was like that of having leaped four or five feet.
“Like ten crashes of thunder on the mounts, gancho!” Lopen exclaimed.
“That was incredible!”
“Thank you,” Kaladin said. He raised a hand to his head, glancing at the rocks scattered about the base of the wall, then looking up at the armor tied securely up above.
“I told you,” Syl said, landing on his shoulder. She sounded triumphant.
“Lopen,” Kaladin said. “You think you can get that bundle of armor during the next bridge run?”
“Sure,” Lopen said. “Nobody will see. They ignore us Herdies, they ignore bridgemen, and they especially ignore cripples. To them, I’m so invisible I should be walking through walls.”
Kaladin nodded. “Get it. Hide it. Give it to me right before the final
plateau assault.”
“They aren’t going to like you going into a bridge run armored, gancho,” Lopen said. “I don’t think this will be any different from what you tried before.”
“We’ll see,” Kaladin said. “Just do it.”
