Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive #4) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,208

Shallan? I thought everything was going better during the boat ride, but these last few weeks … I don’t know, she feels different. Off.”

He noticed! Shallan thought in a panic.

He noticed, Veil thought with relief.

“She has been retreating more and more these days,” Radiant said. “She claims to be tired. But … there is something going on with us. I can try to make her emerge.”

“Please.”

She tried. She sincerely did. In the end though, she grimaced. “I’m sorry. Shallan is tired. Maybe scared. Veil can explain, perhaps.”

“So … can I talk to her?”

“You already are,” Veil said, sighing. “Adolin, look. This is really complicated. It’s wrapped up in Shallan’s past, and the pain she felt as a child. Pain that I was created specifically to help her overcome.”

“I can help. I can understand.”

“I barely understand, Adolin,” Veil said. “And I’m living in her head.” She took a deep breath, forcing herself to see him as Shallan did. She loved Adolin. She’d chosen Adolin. The least Veil could do was try to explain.

“All right,” she said. “Pretend you’re her, and you experienced some things that were so traumatic that you don’t want to believe they happened to you. So you pretend they happened to someone else. Someone different.”

“That’s you?” Adolin said.

“Not exactly,” Veil said. “This is hard to put into words. Radiant and I are coping mechanisms that, for the most part, work. But something deeper has started to manifest.

“Shallan is worried that the person you see in her is a lie. That the person you love is a lie. And it’s not only you. Pattern, Dalinar, Jasnah, Navani—she worries that they all don’t know the real her.

“Because of things that happened to her—and more, some of the things she was forced to do—she’s beginning to think that ‘Shallan’ is the fake one, the false identity. That there is a monster deep inside that is her real self. She fears it’s inevitable that the truth will come out, and everyone will leave her when it does.”

Adolin nodded, his brow knit. “She couldn’t have told me that, could she?”

“No.” Indeed, in saying those things, she’d made Shallan retreat into a little knot of fear. Right next to Formless.

“You can say things she can’t,” Adolin said. “And that’s why we need you, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I think I do understand, a little bit.” He met her eyes. “Thank you, Veil. Sincerely. I’ll find a way to help. I promise.”

Huh. She believed him. How interesting. “I was wrong about you,” she said. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad I was outvoted.”

“If she’s listening,” he said, “make sure she knows that I don’t care what she did. And tell her I know she’s strong enough to deal with this on her own, but she should know she doesn’t have to anymore. Deal with it on her own, that is.”

I wasn’t ever alone, part of her whispered. I had Pattern. Even in the dark days of our childhood, we had him. Although we don’t remember.

So Adolin was wrong, but he was also right. They didn’t have to do this alone. If only they could persuade Shallan of that fact.

We must assume that Odium has realized this, and is seeking a singular, terrible goal: the destruction—and somehow Splintering or otherwise making impotent—of all Shards other than him.

There was more than one way to protect.

Kaladin had always known this, but he hadn’t felt it. Feeling and knowing seemed to be the same to his father, but not to Kaladin. Listening to descriptions from books was never good enough for him. He had to try something to understand it.

He threw himself into this new challenge: finding a way to help Noril and the others in the sanitarium. At his father’s recommendation—then insistence—Kaladin took it slowly, confining his initial efforts to men who shared similar symptoms. Battle fatigue, nightmares, persistent melancholy, suicidal tendencies.

Lirin was correct, of course. Kaladin had complained that the ardents were treating all mental disorders the same; he couldn’t swoop in and treat each and every person in the entire sanitarium at once. First he needed to prove that he could make a difference for these few.

He still didn’t know how his father balanced work and emotion. Lirin genuinely seemed to care for his patients, but he could also turn it off. Stop thinking about the ones he couldn’t help. Such as the dozens of people trapped in the darkness of the sanitarium, locked away from the sun, moaning to themselves or—in one severe case—writing gibberish all over her