The Way of Kings - By Brandon Sanderson Page 0,114

to Kharbranth,” Kal said, perched atop his rock. “To train to become a surgeon.”

“What, really?” Laral asked, as she walked across the edge of the rock just in front of him. She had golden streaks in her otherwise black hair. She wore it long, and it streamed out behind her in a gust of wind as she balanced, hands out to the sides.

The hair was distinctive. But, of course, her eyes were more so. Bright, pale green. So different from the browns and blacks of the townspeople. There really was something different about being a lighteyes.

“Yes, really,” Kal said with a grunt. “He’s been talking about it for a couple of years now.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

Kal shrugged. He and Laral were atop a low ridge of boulders to the east of Hearthstone. Tien, his younger brother, was picking through rocks at the base. To Kal’s right, a grouping of shallow hillsides rolled to the west. They were sprinkled with lavis polyps, a planting halfway to being harvested.

He felt oddly sad as he looked over those hillsides, filled with working men. The dark brown polyps would grow like melons filled with grain. After being dried, that grain would feed the entire town and their highprince’s armies. The ardents who passed through town were careful to explain that the Calling of a farmer was a noble one, one of the highest save for the Calling of a soldier. Kal’s father whispered under his breath that he saw far more honor in feeding the kingdom than he did in fighting and dying in useless wars.

“Kal?” Laral said, voice insistent. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if Father was serious or not. So I didn’t say anything.”

That was a lie. He’d known his father was serious. Kal just hadn’t wanted to mention leaving to become a surgeon, particularly not to Laral.

She placed her hands on her hips. “I thought you were going to go become a soldier.”

Kal shrugged.

She rolled her eyes, hopping down off her ridge onto a stone beside him. “Don’t you want to become a lighteyes? Win a Shardblade?”

“Father says that doesn’t happen very often.”

She knelt down before him. “I’m sure you could do it.” Those eyes, so bright and alive, shimmering green, the color of life itself.

More and more, Kal found that he liked looking at Laral. Kal knew, logically, what was happening to him. His father had explained the process of growing with the precision of a surgeon. But there was so much feeling involved, emotions that his father’s sterile descriptions hadn’t explained. Some of those emotions were about Laral and the other girls of the town. Other emotions had to do with the strange blanket of melancholy that smothered him at times when he wasn’t expecting.

“I…” Kal said.

“Look,” Laral said, standing up again and climbing atop her rock. Her fine yellow dress ruffled in the wind. One more year, and she’d start wearing a glove on her left hand, the mark that a girl had entered adolescence. “Up, come on. Look.”

Kal hauled himself to his feet, looking eastward. There, snarlbrush grew in dense thickets around the bases of stout markel trees.

“What do you see?” Laral demanded.

“Brown snarlbrush. Looks like it’s probably dead.”

“The Origin is out there,” she said, pointing. “This is the stormlands. Father says we’re here to be a windbreak for more timid lands to the west.” She turned to him. “We’ve got a noble heritage, Kal, darkeyes and light-eyes alike. That’s why the best warriors have always been from Alethkar. Highprince Sadeas, General Amaram…King Gavilar himself.”

“I suppose.”

She sighed exaggeratedly. “I hate talking to you when you’re like this, you know.”

“Like what?”

“Like you are now. You know. Moping around, sighing.”

“You’re the one who just sighed, Laral.”

“You know what I mean.”

She stepped down from the rock, walking over to go pout. She did that sometimes. Kal stayed where he was, looking eastward. He wasn’t sure how he felt. His father really wanted him to be a surgeon, but he wavered. It wasn’t just because of the stories, the excitement and wonder of them. He felt that by being a soldier, he could change things. Really change them. A part of him dreamed of going to war, of protecting Alethkar, of fighting alongside heroic lighteyes. Of doing good someplace other than a little town that nobody important ever visited.

He sat down. Sometimes he dreamed like that. Other times, he found it hard to care about anything. His dreary feelings were like a black eel, coiled