Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive #4) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,509

tone? For answers, she looked to nature. A magnet could be made to change its polarity with some captive lightning, and another magnet could realign the pole. But Raboniel had mentioned they could magnetize an ordinary piece of metal that way too.

So were they really changing the polarity of the magnet? Or were they blanking the existing polarity—then rewriting it with something new? The idea intrigued her, and she made a few key requests of her jailers—some objects that would have to be fetched from one of the labs near the top of the tower.

Soon after, Raboniel came to check on her. Navani braced herself. She’d been planning for this.

“Navani?” the Fused asked. “This latest request is quite odd. I don’t know what to make of it.”

“It’s just some esoteric lab equipment,” Navani said from the desk. “Nothing of any real note, though it would be fun to use in some experiments. No bother if you can’t find it.”

“I authorized the request,” Raboniel said. “If it is there, you shall have it.”

That was a rhythm to express curiosity. She made a note in her book; she was trying to list them all.

“What are you working on?” Raboniel asked. “The guard tells me of a terrible sound you have been making, something discordant.”

Damnation. The new tone didn’t sound the same to a Regal. Could she explain it away? “I’m testing how atonal sounds influence Voidlight, if at all.”

Raboniel lingered, looking over Navani’s shoulder. Then she glanced at the floor, where a bucket of icy water, with snow from outside, held a submerged gemstone. It was an attempt to see if temperature could blank the tone of Voidlight.

“What are you not telling me?” Raboniel said to a musing rhythm. “I find your behavior … intriguing.” She glanced to the side as her daughter trailed into the room.

The younger Fused was drooling today. Raboniel had a servant periodically put a cloth against the side of her daughter’s mouth. It wasn’t that her face was paralyzed; more that she didn’t seem to notice or care that she was drooling.

“You write about something called ‘axi’ in our notebook,” Navani said, trying to distract Raboniel. “What are these?”

“An axon is the smallest division of matter,” Raboniel said. “Odium can see them. Theoretically, with a microscope powerful enough, we could see little balls of matter making up everything.”

Navani had read many theories about such a smallest division of matter. It spoke to her state of mind that she barely considered it a curiosity to have such theories confirmed by a divine source.

“Do these axi have a polarity?” Navani asked, as she monitored the temperature of her experiment.

“They must,” Raboniel said. “We theorize that axial interconnection is what holds things together. Certain Surges influence this. The forces between axi are fundamental to the way the cosmere works.”

Navani grunted, writing another notation from the thermometer.

“What are you doing?” Raboniel asked.

“Seeing if a colder temperature changes the vibrations in a gemstone,” Navani admitted. “Would you hold this one and tell me if the rhythm changes—or grows louder—as it warms up?”

“I can do that,” Raboniel said, settling down on the floor beside the desk. Behind, her daughter mimicked her. The attendant—a singer in workform—knelt to dab at the daughter’s lips.

Navani took the gemstone out with a pair of tongs and gave it to Raboniel. Though Navani could faintly hear the tones of gemstones if she pressed a lot of them to her skin, her skill wasn’t fine-tuned enough to detect small changes in volume. She needed a singer to finish this experiment. But how to keep Raboniel from figuring out what she’d discovered?

Raboniel took the sphere and waited, her eyes closed. Finally she shook her head. “I can sense no change in the tone. Why does it matter?”

“I’m trying to determine if anything alters the tone,” Navani said. “Creating Warlight requires a slight alteration of Odium’s and Honor’s tones, in order to put them into harmony. If I can find other things that alter Voidlight’s tone, I might be able to create other hybrids.”

It was a plausible enough explanation. It should explain her requests for plates and other devices, even the ice.

“A novel line of reasoning,” Raboniel said to her curiosity rhythm.

“I had not thought you would take notice,” Navani said. “I assumed you were busy with your … work.” Unmaking the Sibling.

“I still need to bring down the final node,” Raboniel said. “Last time I touched the Sibling, I thought I could sense it. Somewhere nearby … but it is