Words of Radiance

“So what kind of spren is it?” Thude asked to the slow Rhythm of Curiosity. He held up the gemstone, peering in at the smoky creature moving about inside.

“Stormspren, my sister says,” Eshonai replied as she leaned against the wall, arms folded.

The strands of Thude’s beard were tied with bits of raw gemstone that shook and twinkled as he rubbed his chin. He held the large cut gemstone up to Bila, who took it and tapped it with her finger.

They were a warpair of Eshonai’s own personal division. They dressed in simple garments that were tailored around the chitinous armor plates on their arms, legs, and chests. Thude also wore a long coat, but he wouldn’t take that to battle.

Eshonai, by contrast, wore her uniform—tight red cloth that stretched over her natural armor—and a cap on her skullplate. She never spoke of how that uniform imprisoned her, felt like manacles that tied her in place.

“A stormspren,” Bila said to the Rhythm of Skepticism as she turned the stone over in her fingers. “Will it help me kill humans? Otherwise, I don’t see why I should care.”

“This could change the world, Bila,” Eshonai said. “If Venli is right, and she can bond with this spren and come out with anything other than dullform… well, at the very least we will have an entirely new form to choose. At the greatest we will have power to control the storms and tap their energy.”

“So she will try this personally?” Thude asked to the Rhythm of Winds, the rhythm that they used to judge when a highstorm was near.

“If the Five give her permission.” They were to discuss it, and make their decision, today.

“That’s great,” Bila said, “but will it help me kill humans?”

Eshonai attuned Mourning. “If stormform is truly one of the ancient powers, Bila, then yes. It will help you kill humans. Many of them.”

“Good enough for me, then,” Bila said. “Why are you so worried?”

“The ancient powers are said to have come from our gods.”

“Who cares? If the gods would help us kill those armies out there, then I’d swear to them right now.”

“Don’t say that, Bila,” Eshonai said to Reprimand. “Never say anything like that.”

The woman quieted, tossing the stone onto the table. She hummed softly to Skepticism. That walked the line of insubordination. Eshonai met Bila’s eyes and found herself softly humming to Resolve.

Thude glanced from Bila to Eshonai. “Food?” he asked.

“Is that your answer to every disagreement?” Eshonai asked, breaking her song.

“It’s hard to argue with your mouth full,” Thude said.

“I’m sure I’ve seen you do just that,” Bila said. “Many times.”

“The arguments end happy, though,” Thude said. “Because everyone is full. So… food?”

“Fine,” Bila said, glancing at Eshonai.

The two withdrew. Eshonai sat down at the table, feeling drained. When had she started worrying if her friends were insubordinate? It was this horrid uniform.

She picked up the gemstone, staring into its depths. It was a large one, about a third the size of her fist, though gemstones didn’t have to be large to trap a spren inside.

She hated trapping them. The right way was to go into the highstorm with the proper attitude, singing the proper song to attract the proper spren. You bonded it in the fury of the raging storm and were reborn with a new body. People had been doing this from the arrival of the first winds.

The listeners had learned that capturing spren was possible from the humans, then had figured out the process on their own. A captive spren made the transformation much more reliable. Before, there had always been an element of chance. You could go into the storm wanting to become a soldier, and come out a mate instead.

This is progress, Eshonai thought, staring at the little smoky spren inside the stone. Progress is learning to control your world. Put up walls to stop the storms, choose when to become a mate. Progress was taking nature and putting a box around it.

Eshonai pocketed the gemstone, and checked the time. Her meeting with the rest of the Five wasn’t scheduled until the third movement of the Rhythm of Peace, and she had a good half a movement until then.

It was time to speak with her mother.

Eshonai stepped out into Narak and walked along the path, nodding to those who saluted. She passed mostly soldiers. So much of their population wore warform these days. Their small population. Once, there had been hundreds of thousands of listeners scattered across these plains. Now a fraction remained.

Even then, the listeners had been a united people. Oh, there had been divisions, conflicts, even wars among their factions. But they had been a single people—those who had rejected their gods and sought freedom in obscurity.

Bila no longer cared about their origins. There would be others like her, people who ignored the danger of the gods and focused only on the fight with the humans.