Words of Radiance

“I’m going to get into the back,” Shallan said. “I need to look something up. You can continue when I’m settled, but please stop and call to me once we’re near to the group ahead.”

He sighed, but stopped the chull with a few whacks on the shell. Shallan climbed down, then took the knobweed and notebook, moved to the back of the wagon. Once she was in, Bluth started up again immediately, shouting back to Tvlakv, who had demanded to know the meaning of the delay.

With the walls up her wagon was shaded and private, particularly with it being last in line so nobody could look in the back door at her. Unfortunately, riding in the back wasn’t as comfortable as riding in the front. Those tiny rockbuds caused a surprising amount of jarring and jolting.

Jasnah’s trunk was tied in place near the front wall. She opened the lid—letting the spheres inside provide dusky illumination—then settled back on her improvised cushion, a pile of the cloths Jasnah had used to wrap her books. The blanket she used at night—as Tvlakv had been unable to produce one for her—was the velvet lining she had ripped out of the trunk.

Settling back, she unwrapped her feet to apply the new knobweed. They were scabbed over and much improved from their condition just a day before. “Pattern?”

He vibrated from somewhere nearby. She’d asked him to remain in the back so as to not alarm Tvlakv and the guards.

“My feet are healing,” she said. “Did you do this?”

“Mmmm… I know almost nothing of why people break. I know less of why they… unbreak.”

“Your kind don’t get wounded?” she asked, snapping off a knobweed stem and squeezing the drops onto her left foot.

“We break. We just do it… differently than men do. And we do not unbreak without aid. I do not know why you unbreak. Why?”

“It is a natural function of our bodies,” she said. “Living things repair themselves automatically.” She held one of her spheres close, searching for signs of little red rotspren. Where she found a few of them along one cut, she was quick to apply sap and chase them off.

“I would like to know why things work,” Pattern said.

“So would many of us,” Shallan said, bent over. She grimaced as the wagon hit a particularly large rock. “I made myself glow last night, by the fire with Tvlakv.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know why?”

“Lies.”

“My dress changed,” Shallan said. “I swear the scuffs and rips were gone last night. They’ve returned now, though.”

“Mmm. Yes.”

“I have to be able to control this thing we can do. Jasnah called it Lightweaving. She implied it was far safer to practice than Soulcasting.”

“The book?”

Shallan frowned, sitting back against the bars on the side of the wagon. Beside her, a long line of scratches on the floor looked like they’d been made by fingernails. As if one of the slaves had tried, in a fit of madness, to claw his way to freedom.

The book Jasnah had given her, Words of Radiance, had been swallowed by the ocean. It seemed a greater loss than the other one Jasnah had given her, the Book of Endless Pages, which had strangely been blank. She didn’t understand the full significance of that yet.

“I never got a chance to actually read that book,” Shallan said. “We’ll need to see if we can find another copy once we reach the Shattered Plains.” Their destination being a warcamp, though, she doubted that many books would be for sale.

Shallan held one of her spheres up before herself. It was growing dim, and needed to be reinfused. What would happen if the highstorm came, and they hadn’t caught up to the group ahead? Would the deserters push through the storm itself to reach them? And, potentially, the safety of their wagons?

Storms, what a mess. She needed an edge. “The Knights Radiant formed a bond with spren,” Shallan said, more to herself than to Pattern. “It was a symbiotic relationship, like a little cremling who lives in the shalebark. The cremling cleans off the lichen, getting food, but also keeping the shalebark clean.”

Pattern buzzed in confusion. “Am I… the shalebark or the cremling?”

“Either,” Shallan said, turning the diamond sphere in her fingers—the tiny gemstone trapped inside glowed with a vigilant light, suspended in glass. “The Surges—the forces that run the world—are more pliable to spren. Or… well… since spren are pieces of those Surges, maybe it’s that the spren are better at influencing one another. Our bond gives me the ability to manipulate one of the Surges. In this case, light, the power of Illumination.”

“Lies,” Pattern whispered. “And truths.”

Shallan gripped the sphere in her fist, the light shining through her skin making her hand glow red. She willed the Light to enter her, but nothing happened. “So, how do I make it work?”

“Perhaps eat it?” Pattern said, moving over onto the wall beside her head.

“Eat it?” Shallan asked, skeptical. “I didn’t need to eat it before to get the Stormlight.”

“Might work, though. Try?”

“I doubt I could swallow an entire sphere,” Shallan said. “Even if I wanted to, which I distinctly do not.”