Words of Radiance

Then he dropped both darts and sat back down on his bed. His strange, unchanging mantra started over again, muttered. Amaram felt a chill run down his spine, but when he returned to the Herald, he could not get the man to respond.

With effort, he made the Herald rise again and ushered him to the coach.

* * *

Szeth opened his eyes.

He immediately squeezed them closed again. “No. I died. I died!”

He felt rock beneath him. Blasphemy. He heard water dripping and felt the sun on his face. “Why am I not dead?” he whispered. “The Shardblade pierced me. I fell. Why didn’t I die?”

“You did die.”

Szeth opened his eyes again. He lay on an empty rock expanse, his clothing a wet mess. The Frostlands? He felt cold, despite the heat of the sun.

A man stood before him, wearing a crisp black and silver uniform. He had dark brown skin like a man from the Makabaki region, but had a pale mark on his right cheek in the shape of a small hooked crescent. He held one hand behind his back, while his other hand tucked something away into his coat pocket. A fabrial of some sort? Glowing brightly?

“I recognize you,” Szeth realized. “I’ve seen you somewhere before.”

“You have.”

Szeth struggled to rise. He managed to make it to his knees, then knelt back on them. “How?” he asked.

“I waited until you crashed to the ground,” the man said, “until you were broken and mangled, your soul cut through, dead for certain. Then, I restored you.”

“Impossible.”

“Not if it is done before the brain dies. Like a drowned man restored to life with the proper ministrations, you could be restored with the right fabrial. If I had waited seconds longer, of course, it would have been too late.”

He spoke the words calmly, without emotion.

“Who are you?” Szeth asked.

“You spend this long obeying the precepts of your people and religion, yet you fail to recognize one of your gods?”

“My gods are the spirits of the stones,” Szeth whispered. “The sun and the stars. Not men.”

“Nonsense. Your people revere the spren of stone, but you do not worship them.”

That crescent… He recognized it, didn’t he?

“You, Szeth,” the man said, “worship order, do you not? You follow the laws of your society to perfection. This attracted me, though I worry that emotion has clouded your ability to discern. Your ability to… judge.”

Judgment.

“Nin,” he whispered. “The one they call Nalan, or Nale, here. Herald of Justice.”

Nin nodded.

“Why save me?” Szeth said. “Is my torment not enough?”

“Those words are foolishness,” Nin said. “Unbecoming of one who would study beneath me.”

“I don’t want to study,” Szeth said, curling up on the stone. “I want to be dead.”

“Is that it? Truly, that is what you wish most? I will give it to you, if it is your honest desire.”

Szeth squeezed his eyes shut. The screams awaited him in that darkness. The screams of those he’d killed.

I was not wrong, he thought. I was never Truthless.

“No,” Szeth whispered. “The Voidbringers have returned. I was right, and my people… they were wrong.”

“You were banished by petty men with no vision. I will teach you the path of one uncorrupted by sentiment. You will bring this back to your people, and you will carry with you justice for the leaders of the Shin.”

Szeth opened his eyes and looked up. “I am not worthy.”

Nin cocked his head. “You? Not worthy? I watched you destroy yourself in the name of order, watched you obey your personal code when others would have fled or crumbled. Szeth-son-Neturo, I watched you keep your word with perfection. This is a thing lost to most people—it is the only genuine beauty in the world. I doubt I have ever found a man more worthy of the Skybreakers than you.”

The Skybreakers? But that was an order of the Knights Radiant.

“I have destroyed myself,” Szeth whispered.

“You did, and you died. Your bond to your Blade severed, all ties—both spiritual and physical—undone. You are reborn. Come along. It is time to visit your people. Your training begins immediately.” Nin began to walk away, revealing that the thing he held behind his back was a sheathed sword.

You are reborn. Could he… could Szeth be reborn? Could he make the screams in the shadows go away?

You are a coward, the Radiant had said, the man who owned the winds. A small piece of Szeth thought it true. But Nin offered more. Something different.

Still kneeling, Szeth looked up after the man. “My people have the other Honorblades, and have kept them safe for millennia. If I am to bring judgment to them, I will face enemies with Shards and with power.”

“This is not a problem,” Nin said, looking back. “I have brought a Shardblade for you. One that is a perfect match for your task and temperament.” He tossed his large sword to the ground. It skidded on stone and came to a rest before Szeth.

He had not seen a sword with a metal sheath before. And who sheathed a Shardblade? And the Blade itself… was it black? An inch or so of it had emerged from the sheath as it slid on the rocks.