Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive #4) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,50

they needed to be set apart, own a home full of delicate wood instead of sturdy stone. The hungry flames seemed excited as they played with the dying manor. There was a glee to the sounds of the fire: its roars and hisses. Flamespren ran up the wall alongside him, leaving tracks of black on the wood.

Ahead, the kitchen was fully engulfed. He didn’t mind the heat so far—his Stormlight healed burns before they had a chance to more than itch. As long as he stayed away from the heart of the fire, he should be all right.

Unfortunately, that might prove impossible.

“Where’s the cellar?” Syl asked from his shoulder.

Kaladin pointed through the kitchen inferno toward a doorway—barely visible as a shadow.

“Great,” Syl said. “You going to run for it?”

Kaladin nodded, not daring to lose his Stormlight by speaking. He braced himself, then dashed into the room, flames and smoke curling around him. A forlorn groaning sound from above indicated that the ceiling was close to giving in.

A quick Lashing upward let Kaladin leap the burning kitchen counter. He landed on the other side and slammed his shoulder into the charred door to the cellar, breaking through with a loud crash, bits of flame and soot spraying before him.

He entered a dark tunnel sloping downward, cut directly into the rock of the hillside. As he moved away from the inferno behind, Syl giggled.

“What?” he asked.

“Your backside’s on fire,” she said.

Damnation. He batted at the back of his coat. Well, after getting stabbed by Leshwi, this uniform was ruined anyway. He was going to have to listen to Leyten complain about how often Kaladin went through them. The Windrunner quartermaster seemed convinced that Kaladin let himself get hit solely to make it difficult to keep uniforms in supply.

He started through the dark stone tunnel, counting on his Stormlight to provide illumination. Soon after entering, he crossed a metal grate covering a deep pit: the watercatch, to divert rainwater that flooded the tunnel. A stormcellar like this was where lighteyed families retreated during highstorms.

He’d have dismissed potential flooding as another problem with living in a wooden home, but even stone houses occasionally got damaged during storms. He didn’t blame anyone for wanting to put several feet of rock between them and the raging winds. He had played down here with Laral as a child, and it seemed smaller to him now. He remembered a deep, endless tunnel. But soon after he passed the watercatch, he saw the lit cellar room ahead.

As Kaladin stepped into the underground room, he found two prisoners manacled to the far wall, slumped in place, their heads bowed. He didn’t recognize one of them—perhaps he was a refugee—but the other was Jeber, father to a couple of the boys Kaladin had known as a youth.

“Jeber,” Kaladin said, hurrying forward. “Have you seen Roshone? He…”

Kaladin trailed off as he noticed that neither person was moving. He knelt, feeling a growing dread as he got a better glimpse of Jeber’s lean face. It was perfectly normal, save for the pale cast—and the two burned-out pits, like charcoal, in place of the eyes. He’d been killed with a Shardblade.

“Kaladin!” Syl said. “Behind you!”

He spun, thrusting out his hand and summoning his Blade. The rough-hewn room sloped back to the left of the doorway, making a small alcove that Kaladin hadn’t been able to see when first entering. There, standing quietly, was a tall man with a hawkish face, brown hair flecked with black. Moash wore a sharp black uniform cut after the Alethi style, and held Brightlord Roshone in front of him with a knife to the man’s neck. The former citylord was crying silently, Moash’s other hand covering his mouth, fearspren undulating on the ground.

Moash jerked the knife in a quick, efficient slice, opening Roshone’s throat and spilling his lifeblood across the front of his ragged clothing.

Roshone fell to the stone. Kaladin shouted, scrambling to help, but the surgeon within him shook his head. A slit throat? That wasn’t the kind of wound a surgeon could heal.

Move on to someone you can help, his father seemed to say. This one is dead.

Storms! Was it too late to fetch Lift or Godeke? They could … They could …

Roshone thrashed weakly on the ground before a helpless Kaladin. Then the man who had terrorized Kaladin’s family—the man who had consigned Tien to death—simply … faded away in a pool of his own blood.

Kaladin glared up at Moash, who silently returned his knife to