The Way of Kings - By Brandon Sanderson Page 0,227

meal is finished, Shallan?”

Shallan blushed, feeling a fool for her enthusiasm. “Of course.”

“No, no,” the king said. “I’m quite finished. A wider sketch would be perfect, child. How would you like me to sit?” He slid his chair back, posing and smiling in a grandfatherly way.

She blinked, fixing the image in her mind. “That is perfect, Your Majesty. You can return to your meal.”

“Don’t you need me to sit still? I’ve posed for portraits before.”

“It’s all right,” Shallan assured him, sitting down.

“Very well,” he said, pulling back to the table. “I do apologize for making you use me, of all people, as a subject for your art. This face of mine isn’t the most impressive one you’ve depicted, I’m sure.”

“Nonsense,” Shallan said. “A face like yours is just what an artist needs.”

“It is?”

“Yes, the—” She cut herself off. She’d been about to quip, Yes, the skin is enough like parchment to make an ideal canvas. “…that handsome nose of yours, and wise furrowed skin. It will be quite striking in the black charcoal.”

“Oh, well then. Proceed. Though I still can’t see how you’ll work without me holding a pose.”

“Brightness Shallan has some unique talents,” Jasnah said. Shallan began her sketch.

“I suppose that she must!” the king said. “I’ve seen the drawing she did for Varas.”

“Varas?” Jasnah asked.

“The Palanaeum’s assistant chief of collections,” the king said. “A distant cousin of mine. He says the staff is quite taken with your young ward. How did you find her?”

“Unexpectedly,” Jasnah said, “and in need of an education.”

The king cocked his head.

“The artistic skill, I cannot claim,” Jasnah said. “It was a preexisting condition.”

“Ah, a blessing of the Almighty.”

“You might say that.”

“But you would not, I assume?” Taravangian chuckled awkwardly.

Shallan drew quickly, establishing the shape of his head. He shuffled uncomfortably. “Is it hard for you, Jasnah? Painful, I mean?”

“Atheism is not a disease, Your Majesty,” Jasnah said dryly. “It’s not as if I’ve caught a foot rash.”

“Of course not, of course not. But…er, isn’t it difficult, having nothing in which to believe?”

Shallan leaned forward, still sketching, but keeping her attention on the conversation. Shallan had assumed that training under a heretic would be a little more exciting. She and Kabsal—the witty ardent whom she’d met on her first day in Kharbranth—had chatted several times now about Jasnah’s faith. However, around Jasnah herself, the topic almost never came up. When it did, Jasnah usually changed it.

Today, however, she did not. Perhaps she sensed the sincerity in the king’s question. “I wouldn’t say that I have nothing to believe in, Your Majesty. Actually, I have much to believe in. My brother and my uncle, my own abilities. The things I was taught by my parents.”

“But, what is right and wrong, you’ve…Well, you’ve discarded that.”

“Just because I do not accept the teachings of the devotaries does not mean I’ve discarded a belief in right and wrong.”

“But the Almighty determines what is right!”

“Must someone, some unseen thing, declare what is right for it to be right? I believe that my own morality—which answers only to my heart—is more sure and true than the morality of those who do right only because they fear retribution.”

“But that is the soul of law,” the king said, sounding confused. “If there is no punishment, there can be only chaos.”

“If there were no law, some men would do as they wish, yes,” Jasnah said. “But isn’t it remarkable that, given the chance for personal gain at the cost of others, so many people choose what is right?”

“Because they fear the Almighty.”

“No,” Jasnah said. “I think something innate in us understands that seeking the good of society is usually best for the individual as well. Humankind is noble, when we give it the chance to be. That nobility is something that exists independent of any god’s decree.”

“I just don’t see how anything could be outside God’s decrees.” The king shook his head, bemused. “Brightness Jasnah, I don’t mean to argue, but isn’t the very definition of the Almighty that all things exist because of him?”

“If you add one and one, that makes two, does it not?”

“Well, yes.”

“No god needs declare it so for it to be true,” Jasnah said. “So, could we not say that mathematics exists outside the Almighty, independent of him?”

“Perhaps.”

“Well,” Jasnah said, “I simply claim that morality and human will are independent of him too.”

“If you say that,” the king said, chuckling, “then you’ve removed all purpose for the Almighty’s existence!”

“Indeed.”

The balcony fell silent. Jasnah’s sphere lamps cast a cool,