The Way of Kings - By Brandon Sanderson Page 0,169

echoing. He fell on his side, so amused that Kaladin was afraid he’d roll right into the chasm. “Horneater,” Teft finally said, “I owe you a drink.”

Rock smiled. Kaladin shook his head to himself, amazed. It suddenly made sense.

“What?” Rock said, apparently noticing his expression.

“This is what we need,” Kaladin said. “This! It’s the thing I’ve been missing.”

Rock hesitated. “Chull dung? This is the thing you need?”

Teft burst into another round of laugher.

“No,” Kaladin said. “It’s…well, I’ll show you. But first we need this knobweed sap.” They’d barely made their way through one of the bundles, and already his fingers were aching from the milking.

“What of you, Kaladin?” Rock asked. “I have been telling you my story. You will tell me yours? How did you come to those marks on your forehead?”

“Yeah,” Teft said, wiping his eyes. “Whose food did you trat in?”

“I thought you said it was taboo to ask about a bridgeman’s past,” Kaladin said.

“You made Rock share, son,” Teft said. “It’s only fair.”

“So if I tell my story, that means you’ll tell yours?”

Teft scowled immediately. “Now look, I ain’t going to—”

“I killed a man,” Kaladin said.

That quieted Teft. Rock perked up. Syl, Kaladin noticed, was still watching with interest. That was odd for her; normally, her attention wavered quickly.

“You killed a man?” Rock said. “And after this thing, they made you a slave? Is not the punishment for murder usually death?”

“It wasn’t murder,” Kaladin said softly, thinking of the scraggly bearded man in the slave wagon who had asked him these same questions. “In fact, I was thanked for it by someone very important.”

He fell silent.

“And?” Teft finally asked.

“And…” Kaladin said, looking down at a reed. Nomon was setting in the west, and the small green disk of Mishim—the final moon—was rising in the east. “And it turns out that lighteyes don’t react very well when you turn down their gifts.”

The others waited for more, but Kaladin fell silent, working on his reeds. It shocked him, how painful it still was to remember those events back in Amaram’s army.

Either the others sensed his mood, or they felt what he’d said was enough, for they each turned back to their work and prodded no further.

Neither point makes the things I have written to you here untrue.

The king’s Gallery of Maps balanced beauty and function. The expansive domed structure of Soulcast stone had smooth sides that melded seamlessly with the rocky ground. It was shaped like a long loaf of Thaylen bread, and had large skylights in the ceiling, allowing the sun to shine down on handsome formations of shalebark.

Dalinar passed one of these, pinks and vibrant greens and blues growing in a gnarled pattern as high as his shoulders. The crusty, hard plants had no true stalks or leaves, just waving tendrils like colorful hair. Except for those, shalebark seemed more rock than vegetation. And yet, scholars said it must be a plant for the way it grew and reached toward the light.

Men did that too, he thought. Once.

Highprince Roion stood in front of one of the maps, hands clasped behind his back, his numerous attendants clogging the other side of the gallery. Roion was a tall, light-skinned man with a dark, well-trimmed beard. He was thinning on top. Like most of the others, he wore a short, open-fronted jacket, exposing the shirt underneath. Its red fabric poked out above the jacket’s collar.

So sloppy, Dalinar thought, though it was very fashionable. Dalinar just wished that current fashion weren’t so, well, sloppy.

“Brightlord Dalinar,” Roion said. “I have difficulty seeing the point of this meeting.”

“Walk with me, Brightlord Roion,” Dalinar said, nodding to the side.

The other man sighed, but joined Dalinar and walked the pathway between the clusters of plants and the wall of maps. Roion’s attendants followed; they included both a cupbearer and a shieldbearer.

Each map was illuminated by diamonds, their enclosures made of mirror-polished steel. The maps were inked, in detail, onto unnaturally large, seamless sheets of parchment. Such parchment was obviously Soulcast. Near the center of the chamber they came to the Prime Map, an enormous, detailed map fixed in a frame on the wall. It showed the entirety of the Shattered Plains that had been explored. Permanent bridges were drawn in red, and plateaus close to the Alethi side had blue glyphpairs on them, indicating which highprince controlled them. The eastern section of the map grew less detailed until the lines vanished.

In the middle was the contested area, the section of plateaus where the chasmfiends most