The Way of Kings

Lamaril’s soldiers looked to their leader. The lighteyed man scowled. “Beat him,” he said, “but don’t kill him.” He turned and marched back toward the Alethi reserve lines.

The beefy spearmen walked up to Kaladin. They were darkeyed, but they might as well have been Parshendi for all the sympathy they would show him. Kaladin closed his eyes and steeled himself. He couldn’t fight them all off. Not and remain with Bridge Four.

A spear butt to the gut knocked him to the ground, and he gasped as the soldiers began to kick. One booted foot tore open his belt pouch. His spheres – too precious to leave in the barrack – scattered across the stones. They had somehow lost their Stormlight, and were now dun, their life run out.

The soldiers kept kicking.

The Kabsal’s Notes

Analysis of four world cities and their underlying forms based on the city plans found in the archives of the Palanaeum, Kharbaranth.

When one removes the current streets and main byways of Akinah, Thaylen City, Vedenar, and Kholinar and combines the street blocks into larger shapes, leaving behind the natural rock formations upon which these cities were originally built, the underlying pattern of the stone becomes more clear.

The divine ten-part symmetry of Akinah is accentuated when the shape of the city is viewed from above. Amidst the lines of Thaylen City a star pattern emerges. Twisting streets of Vedenar become an organized pattern of arrows and circles.

In case of Kholinar, even the city walls follow the contour of the subcartographal rock formations known as the Windblades. The walls incorporate the formations, using them to augment the defensive strength of the city.

I am left wondering if this is a strange coincidence. And if not, then what does it all mean?

The scholar, Kabsal

33 Cymatics

“They changed, even as we fought them. Like shadows they were, that can transform as the flame dances. Never underestimate them because of what you first see.”

– Purports to be a scrap collected from Talatin, a Radiant of the Order of Stonewards. The source – Guvlow’s Incarnate – is generally held as reliable, though this is from a copied fragment of “The Poem of the Seventh Morning,” which has been lost.

Sometimes, when Shallan walked into the Palanaeum proper – the grand storehouse of books, manuscripts, and scrolls beyond the study areas of the Veil – she grew so distracted by the beauty and scope of it that she forgot everything else.

The Palanaeum was shaped like an inverted pyramid carved down into the rock. It had balcony walkways suspended around its perimeter. Slanted gently downward, they ran around all four walls to form a majestic square spiral, a giant staircase pointing toward the center of Roshar. A series of lifts provided a quicker method of descending.

Standing at the top level’s railing, Shallan could see only halfway to the bottom. This place seemed too large, too grand, to have been shaped by the hands of men. How had the terraced levels been aligned so perfectly? Had Soulcasters been used to create the open spaces? How many gemstones would that have taken?

The lighting was dim; there was no general illumination, only small emerald lamps focused to illuminate the walkway floors. Ardents from the Devotary of Insight periodically moved through the levels, changing the spheres. There had to be hundreds upon hundreds of the emeralds here; apparently, they made up the Kharbranthian royal treasury. What better place for them than the extremely secure Palanaeum? Here they could both be protected and serve to illuminate the enormous library.