The Way of Kings - By Brandon Sanderson Page 0,243

entire assault force into chaos. You’ve come to punish me so that when your superiors come screaming to you for what happened, you can at least show that you acted quickly to deal with the one responsible.”

Gaz paused, Lamaril and the spearmen stopping around him. The bridge sergeant looked surprised.

“If it’s worth anything,” Kaladin said grimly, “I didn’t know this would happen. I was just trying to survive.”

“Bridgemen aren’t supposed to survive,” Lamaril said curtly. He waved to a pair of his soldiers, then pointed at Kaladin.

“If you leave me alive,” Kaladin said, “I promise I will tell your superiors that you had nothing to do with this. If you kill me, it will look like you were trying to hide something.”

“Hide something?” Gaz said, glancing at the battle on the Tower. A stray arrow clattered across the rocks a short distance from him, shaft breaking. “What would we have to hide?”

“Depends. This very well could look like it was your idea from the start. Brightlord Lamaril, you didn’t stop me. You could have, but you didn’t, and soldiers saw Gaz and you speaking when you saw what I did. If I can’t vouch for your ignorance of what I was going to do, then you’ll look very, very bad.”

Lamaril’s soldiers looked to their leader. The lighteyed man scowled. “Beat him,” he said, “but don’t kill him.” He turned and marched back toward the Alethi reserve lines.

The beefy spearmen walked up to Kaladin. They were darkeyed, but they might as well have been Parshendi for all the sympathy they would show him. Kaladin closed his eyes and steeled himself. He couldn’t fight them all off. Not and remain with Bridge Four.

A spear butt to the gut knocked him to the ground, and he gasped as the soldiers began to kick. One booted foot tore open his belt pouch. His spheres—too precious to leave in the barrack—scattered across the stones. They had somehow lost their Stormlight, and were now dun, their life run out.

The soldiers kept kicking.

“They changed, even as we fought them. Like shadows they were, that can transform as the flame dances. Never underestimate them because of what you first see.”

—Purports to be a scrap collected from Talatin, a Radiant of the Order of Stonewards. The source—Guvlow’s Incarnate—is generally held as reliable, though this is from a copied fragment of “The Poem of the Seventh Morning,” which has been lost.

Sometimes, when Shallan walked into the Palanaeum proper—the grand storehouse of books, manuscripts, and scrolls beyond the study areas of the Veil—she grew so distracted by the beauty and scope of it that she forgot everything else.

The Palanaeum was shaped like an inverted pyramid carved down into the rock. It had balcony walkways suspended around its perimeter. Slanted gently downward, they ran around all four walls to form a majestic square spiral, a giant staircase pointing toward the center of Roshar. A series of lifts provided a quicker method of descending.

Standing at the top level’s railing, Shallan could see only halfway to the bottom. This place seemed too large, too grand, to have been shaped by the hands of men. How had the terraced levels been aligned so perfectly? Had Soulcasters been used to create the open spaces? How many gemstones would that have taken?

The lighting was dim; there was no general illumination, only small emerald lamps focused to illuminate the walkway floors. Ardents from the Devotary of Insight periodically moved through the levels, changing the spheres. There had to be hundreds upon hundreds of the emeralds here; apparently, they made up the Kharbranthian royal treasury. What better place for them than the extremely secure Palanaeum? Here they could both be protected and serve to illuminate the enormous library.

Shallan continued on her way. Her parshman servant carried a sphere lantern containing a trio of sapphire marks. The soft blue light reflected against the stone walls, portions of which had been Soulcast into quartz purely for ornamentation. The railings had been carved from wood, then transformed to marble. When she ran her fingers across one, she could feel the original wood’s grain. At the same time, it had the cold smoothness of stone. An oddity that seemed designed to confuse the senses.

Her parshman carried a small basket of books full of drawings by famous natural scientists. Jasnah had begun allowing Shallan to spend some of her study time on topics of her own choosing. Just a single hour a day, but it was remarkable how precious that hour had become. Recently,