Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive #4) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,209

room using her own feces.

Temporarily excused from seeing ordinary patients, Kaladin located six men in the sanitarium with similar symptoms. He released them and got them working to support each other. He developed a plan, and showed them how to share in ways that would help.

Today they sat in seats on the balcony outside his clinic. Warmed by mugs of tea, they talked. About their lives. The people they’d lost. The darkness.

It was helping. You didn’t need a surgeon or ardent to lead the discussion; they could do it themselves. Two of the six were mostly quiet, but even they grunted along when others talked about their problems.

“Remarkable,” Kaladin’s mother said, taking notes as she stood with Kaladin to the side. “How did you know? Previous documentation indicated that they would feed each other’s melancholy, driving one another to destructive behavior. But these are having the opposite experience.”

“The squad is stronger than the individual,” Kaladin said. “You simply need to get them pointed in the right direction. Get them to lift the bridge together…”

His mother frowned, glancing up at him.

“The ardents’ stories about inmates feeding each other’s despair,” Kaladin said. “They probably came from inmates who were situated next to one another in the sanitariums. In dark places, where their gloom could run rampant … Yes, there I could see them driving each other closer toward death. It happens sometimes to … to slaves. In a hopeless situation, it’s easy to convince one another to give up.”

His mother rested her hand on his arm, and her face looked so sad he had to turn away. He didn’t like to talk to her about his past, the years between then and now. During those years she’d lost her loving boy, Kal. That child was dead, long ago buried in crem. At least by the time he’d found her again, Kaladin had become the man he was now. Broken, but mostly reforged as a Radiant.

She didn’t need to know about those darkest months. They would bring her nothing but pain.

“Anyway,” Kaladin said, nodding toward the group of men, “I suspected after talking to Noril that this would help. It changes something to be able to speak to others about your pain. It helps to have others who actually understand.”

“I understand,” his mother said. “Your father understands.”

He was glad she thought that, wrong though she was. They were sympathetic, but they didn’t understand. Better that they didn’t.

For the men chatting together softly, the change was in being shown sunlight again. In being reminded that the darkness did pass. But perhaps most important, the change was in not merely knowing that you weren’t alone—but in feeling it. Realizing that no matter how isolated you thought you were, no matter how often your brain told you terrible things, there were others who understood.

It wouldn’t fix everything. But it was a start.

To combine powers would change and distort who Odium is. So instead of absorbing others, he destroys them. Since we are all essentially infinite, he needs no more power. Destroying and Splintering the other Shards would leave Odium as the sole god, unchanged and uncorrupted by other influences.

“I like none of these proposals,” the Stump said, with her spren interpreting for her.

She leaned forward to warm her gnarled hands—out of habit most likely, as this manifested fire gave very little heat. It could be packed up and carried in your pocket. All you had to do was grab the bead. It was more like a painting of a fire that flickered and crackled like the real thing.

Veil sat with Shallan’s sketchbook open, her back to a large chunk of obsidian, pretending to draw as Adolin held counsel with the Radiants. So far, despite doing the worst job sketching, she hadn’t been able to coax Shallan out.

“None of them?” Adolin asked. He stood tall, wearing a black uniform embroidered with silver around the cuffs. The polished buttons perfectly matched the silver of the sheathed side sword he wore on his hip.

He was striking—brilliant, even, as he stood before the fire in a sharply tailored uniform. The fire was cold somehow, though it should have been warm. And he was warm somehow, when a stiff black uniform should have made him seem cold.

Arshqqam, though coming from a very different background, was not timid about speaking her mind to him. Veil liked the old Truthwatcher. Too many people refused to look past a person’s age. To them this woman—as exemplified by her nickname—would be defined by how old