antechamber. Shallan scrambled out, feeling a sense of dread. She found Ialai Sadeas lying on the floor, foam coming from the mouth of her fake face. The soldiers watched with horror.
The highprincess stared up with lifeless eyes. Dead.
* * *
Kaladin flew through the smoke billowing up over the manor. He soared down toward where the townspeople were being threatened by the strange Fused and his soldiers. That was Waber, the manor’s gardener, being held against the ground with a boot to his face.
This is obviously a trap, Syl said in Kaladin’s mind. That Fused knows exactly what to do in order to draw the attention of a Windrunner: attack innocents.
She was right. Kaladin forced himself to drop carefully a short distance away. The Fused had torn a hole in the wall around a side entrance of the manor. Though flames licked the upper floors of the structure, the room beyond the hole was dark, not yet afire. At least not completely.
As soon as Kaladin landed, the singers released Waber and the others, then retreated through the broken hole in the stone wall. Five soldiers, Kaladin noted. Three with swords, two with spears.
The Fused carried one captive as he strode into the building; thin, with a gaunt face, the captive was bleeding from a slash along his stomach. Godeke the Edgedancer. His Stormlight had apparently run out. Storms send he was still alive. The Fused wanted to use him as bait, so the chances seemed good.
Kaladin strode toward the broken wall. “You want to fight me, Fused? Come on. Let’s have at it.”
The creature, shadowed inside the building, growled something in his own rhythmic language. One of the soldiers translated. “I will fight you inside where you cannot fly away, little Windrunner. Come, face me.”
I don’t like this, Syl said.
“Agreed,” Kaladin whispered. “Be ready to go get help.”
He Lashed himself upward slightly, enough to make him lighter on his feet, then inched into the burning building. This large room had once been the dining chamber, where Kaladin’s father had eaten with Roshone and talked of thieves and compromises. The ceiling was burned in patches, the fire consuming it from above. Flamespren danced along the wood with a frantic delight.
The hulking Fused stood directly ahead, two soldiers at each side. They moved forward to flank Kaladin. Where was the fifth soldier? There, near an overturned table, fiddling with something that glowed a deep violet-black. Voidlight? Wait … was that a fabrial? The light dimmed suddenly.
Kaladin’s powers vanished.
He felt it as a strange smothering sensation, as if something heavy had been placed on top of his mind. His full weight came upon him again, his Lashing canceled.
Syl gasped and her spear puffed away as she became a spren—and when Kaladin tried to resummon his Blade, nothing happened.
Immediately, Kaladin stepped backward to try to escape the range of the strange fabrial. But the soldiers quickly rushed to surround him, cutting off his retreat. Kaladin’s assumption that he could beat them easily had relied on his Shardspear and his powers.
Storms! Kaladin strained to create a Lashing. Stormlight still raged inside him, and kept him from needing to breathe the acrid smoke, but something was suppressing his other abilities.
The Fused laughed and spoke in Alethi. “Radiants! You rely too much on your powers. Without them, what are you? A peasant child with no real training in the art of warfare or—”
Kaladin slammed himself against the soldier to his right.
The sudden motion caused the singer to cry out and fall backward. Kaladin yanked the spear from the man’s hand, then—in a fluid motion—whipped it into a two-handed lunge, impaling a second soldier.
The two soldiers on his left recovered and leaped for him. Kaladin felt the wind encircle him as he spun between the two of them, catching one sword—aimed low—with the butt of his spear as he caught the second one—aimed high—right behind the spear’s head. Metal met wood with a familiar thunk, and Kaladin finished his spin, throwing off both weapons.
He gutted one man, then tripped him—sending him stumbling to the ground in front of his ally. These soldiers were trained well, but hadn’t seen much actual combat yet—as evidenced by how the remaining singer froze when he saw his friends dying.
Kaladin kept moving, almost without thought, spearing the fourth soldier in the neck. There, Kaladin thought as the expected ribbon of red light came darting toward him. He will go for my back again.
Kaladin dropped his spear, pulled a throwing knife off his belt, and