The Way of Kings - By Brandon Sanderson Page 0,395

used to work, though I can’t remember how or when. I just know that it was.”

“I—”

“Hush,” she said. “I’m talking.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m willing to stop it, if you want,” she said. “But I would go back to being as I was before. That scares me. Floating on the wind, never remembering anything for longer than a few minutes. It’s because of this tie between us that I can think again, that I can remember what and who I am. If we end it, I lose that.”

She looked up at Kaladin, sorrowful.

He looked into those eyes, then took a deep breath. “Come,” he said, turning, walking back down the peninsula.

She flew over, becoming a ribbon of light, floating idly in the air beside his head. Soon they reached the place beneath the ridge leading to the warcamps. Kaladin turned north, toward Sadeas’s camp. The cremlings had retreated to their cracks and burrows, but many of the plants still continued to let their fronds float in the cool wind. When he passed, the grass pulled back in, looking like the fur of some black beast in the night, lit by Salas.

What responsibility are you avoiding….

He wasn’t avoiding responsibility. He took too much responsibility! Lirin had said it constantly, chastising Kaladin for feeling guilt over deaths he couldn’t have prevented.

Though there was one thing he clung to. An excuse, perhaps, like the dead emperor. It was the soul of the wretch. Apathy. The belief that nothing was his fault, the belief that he couldn’t change anything. If a man was cursed, or if he believed he didn’t have to care, then he didn’t need to hurt when he failed. Those failures couldn’t have been prevented. Someone or something else had ordained them.

“If I’m not cursed,” Kaladin said softly, “then why do I live when others die?”

“Because of us,” Syl said. “This bond. It makes you stronger, Kaladin.”

“Then why can’t it make me strong enough to help the others?”

“I don’t know,” Syl said. “Maybe it can.”

If I get rid of it, I’ll go back to being normal. For what purpose… so I can die with the others?

He continued to walk in the darkness, passing lights above that made vague, faint shadows on the stones in front of him. The tendrils of fingermoss, clumped in bunches. Their shadows seemed arms.

He thought often about saving the bridgemen. And yet, as he considered, he realized that he often framed saving them in terms of saving himself. He told himself he wouldn’t let them die, because he knew what it would do to him if they did. When he lost men, the wretch threatened to take over because of how much Kaladin hated failing.

Was that it? Was that why he searched for reasons why he might be cursed? To explain his failure away? Kaladin began to walk more quickly.

He was doing something good in helping the bridgemen—but he also was doing something selfish. The powers had unsettled him because of the responsibility they represented.

He broke into a jog. Before long, he was sprinting.

But if it wasn’t about him—if he wasn’t helping the bridgemen because he loathed failure, or because he feared the pain of watching them die— then it would be about them. About Rock’s affable gibes, about Moash’s intensity, about Teft’s earnest gruff ness or Peet’s quiet dependability. What would he do to protect them? Give up his illusions? His excuses?

Seize whatever opportunity he could, no matter how it changed him? No matter how it unnerved him, or what burdens it represented?

He dashed up the incline to the lumberyard.

Bridge Four was making their evening stew, chatting and laughing. The nearly twenty wounded men from other crews sat eating gratefully. It was gratifying, how quickly they had lost their hollow-eyed expressions and begun laughing with the other men.

The smell of spicy Horneater stew was thick in the air. Kaladin slowed his jog, coming to a stop beside the bridgemen. Several looked concerned as they saw him, panting and sweating. Syl landed on his shoulder.

Kaladin sought out Teft. The aging bridgeman sat alone below the barrack’s eaves, staring down at the rock in front of him. He hadn’t noticed Kaladin yet. Kaladin gestured for the others to continue, then walked over to Teft. He squatted down before the man.

Teft looked up in surprise. “Kaladin?”

“What do you know?” Kaladin said quietly, intense. “And how do you know it?”

“I—” Teft said. “When I was a youth, my family belonged to a secret sect that awaited the return of the Radiants. I quit when