Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive #4) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,384

said. “We can do this. But we need to take it slowly, carefully. I rushed to find new forms, and that proved a disaster. This time we’ll do things the right way.”

EIGHT YEARS AGO

Eshonai accompanied her mother into the storm.

Together they struck out into the electric darkness, Eshonai carrying a large wooden shield to buffer the wind for her mother, who cradled the bright orange glowing gemstone. Powerful gusts tried to rip the shield out of Eshonai’s hand, and windspren soared past, giggling.

Eshonai and her mother passed others, notable for the similar gemstones they carried. Little bursts of light in the tempest. Like the souls of the dead said to wander the storms, searching for gemhearts to inhabit.

Eshonai attuned the Rhythm of the Terrors: sharp, each beat puncturing her mind. She wasn’t afraid for herself, but her mother had been so frail lately.

Though many of the others stood out in the open, Eshonai led her mother to the hollow she’d picked out earlier. Even here, the pelting rain felt like it was trying to burrow through her skin. Rainspren along the top of the ridge seemed to dance as they waved along with the furious tempest.

Eshonai huddled down beside her mother, unable to hear the rhythm the femalen was humming. The light of the gemstone, however, revealed a grin on Jaxlim’s face.

A grin?

“Reminds me of when your father and I came out together!” Jaxlim shouted at Eshonai over the stormwinds. “We’d decided not to leave it to fate, where one of us might be taken and the other not! I still remember the strange feelings of passion when I first changed. You’re too afraid of that, Eshonai! I do want grandchildren, you realize.”

“Do we have to talk about this now?” Eshonai asked. “Hold that stone. Adopt the new form! Think about it, not mateform.”

Wouldn’t that be an embarrassment.

“The lifespren aren’t interested in someone my age,” her mother said. “It simply feels nice to be out here again! I’d been beginning to think I would waste away!”

Together they huddled against the rock, Eshonai using her shield as an improvised roof to block the rain. She wasn’t certain how long it would take the transformation to begin. Eshonai herself had only adopted a new form once, as a child—when her father had helped her adopt workform, since the time of changes had come to her.

Children needed no form, and were vibrant without one—but if they didn’t adopt a form upon puberty in their seventh or eighth year, they would be trapped in dullform instead. That form was, essentially, an inferior version of mateform.

Today, the storm stretched long, and Eshonai’s arm began to ache from holding the shield in place. “Anything?” she asked of her mother.

“Not yet! I don’t know the proper mindset.”

“Attune a bold rhythm!” Eshonai said. That was what Venli had told them. “Confidence or Excitement!”

“I’m trying! I—”

Whatever else her mother said was lost in the sound of thunder washing across them, vibrating the very stones, making Eshonai’s teeth chatter. Or perhaps that was the cold. Normally chill weather didn’t bother her—workform was well suited to it—but the icy rainwater had leaked through her oiled coat, sneaking down along her spine.

She attuned Resolve, keeping the shield in place. She would protect her mother. Jaxlim often complained that Eshonai was unreliable, prone to fancy, but that wasn’t true. Her exploration was difficult work. It was valuable work. She wasn’t unreliable or lazy.

Let her mother see this. Eshonai holding her shield in defiance of the rain—in defiance of the Rider of Storms himself. Holding her mother close, warming her. Not weak. Solid. Dependable. Determined.

The gemstone in her mother’s hands began to glow brighter. Finally, Eshonai thought, shifting to give her mother more space to enact the transformation, the recasting of her soul, the ultimate connection between listener and Roshar itself.

Eshonai shouldn’t have been surprised when the light burst from the gemstone and was absorbed—like water rushing to fill an empty vessel—into her own gemheart. Yet she was. Eshonai gasped, the rhythms disrupting and vanishing—all but one, an overwhelming sound she’d never heard before. A stately, steady tone. Not a rhythm. A pure note.

Proud, louder than the thunder. The sound became everything to her as her previous spren—a tiny gravitationspren—was ejected from her gemheart.

The pure tone of Honor pounding in her ears, she dropped the shield—which flew away into the dark sky. She wasn’t supposed to have been taken, but in the moment she didn’t care. This transformation was wonderful. In it, a vital