have so many names?”
“One is honorific,” Shallan said. “His original name wasn’t considered symmetrical enough. Well, I guess it wasn’t really symmetrical at all, so the ardents gave him a new one centuries ago.”
“But . . . the new one isn’t symmetrical either.”
“The h sound can be for any letter,” Shallan said absently. “We write it as the symmetrical letter, to make the word balance, but add a diacritical mark to indicate it sounds like an h so the word is easier to say.”
“That— One can’t just pretend that a word is symmetrical when it isn’t!”
Shallan ignored his sputtering, instead staring at the alien script of what was supposedly the Dawnchant. If we do find Jasnah’s city, Shallan thought, and if it does have records, they might be in this language. “We need to see how much of the Dawnchant you can translate.”
“I did not read it,” Pattern said, annoyed. “I postulated a few words. The name I could translate because of the sounds of the cities above.”
“But those aren’t written in the Dawnchant!”
“The scripts are derived from one another,” Pattern said. “Obviously.”
“So obvious that no human scholar has ever figured it out.”
“You are not as good with patterns,” he said, sounding smug. “You are abstract. You think in lies and tell them to yourselves. That is fascinating, but it is not good for patterns.”
You are abstract . . . Shallan rounded the bed and slipped a book from the pile there, one written by the scholar Ali-daughter-Hasweth of Shinovar. The Shin scholars were among the most interesting to read, as their perspectives on the rest of Roshar could be so frank, so different.
She found the passage she wanted. Jasnah had highlighted it in her notes, so Shallan had sent out for the full book. Sebarial’s stipend to her—which he was paying—came in very handy. Vathah and Gaz, by her request, had spent the last few days visiting book merchants asking after Words of Radiance, the book Jasnah had given her just before dying. So far no luck, though one merchant had claimed he might be able to order it in from Kholinar.
“Urithiru was the connection to all nations,” she read from the Shin writer’s work. “And, at times, our only path to the outside world, with its stones unhallowed.” She looked up at Pattern. “What does that mean to you?”
“It means what it says,” Pattern replied, still hovering beside the maps. “That Urithiru was well connected. Roads, perhaps?”
“I’ve always read the phrase metaphorically. Connected in purpose, in thought, and scholarship.”
“Ah. Lies.”
“What if it’s not a metaphor? What if it’s like what you say?” She rose and crossed the room toward the maps, resting her fingers on Urithiru at the center. “Connected . . . but not by roads. Some of these maps don’t have any roads leading to Urithiru at all. They all place it in the mountains, or at least the hills. . . .”
“Mmm.”
“How do you reach a city if not by roads?” Shallan asked. “Nohadon could walk there, or so he claimed. But others do not speak of riding, or walking, to Urithiru.” True, there were few accounts of people visiting the city. It was a legend. Most modern scholars considered it a myth.
She needed more information. She scrambled over to Jasnah’s trunk, digging out one of her notebooks. “She said that Urithiru wasn’t on the Shattered Plains,” Shallan said, “but what if the pathway to it is here? Not an ordinary pathway, though. Urithiru was the city of Surgebinders. Of ancient wonders, like Shardblades.”
“Mm . . .” Pattern said softly. “Shardblades are no wonder . . .”
Shallan found the reference she was searching for. It wasn’t the quote she found curious, but Jasnah’s annotation of it. Another folktale, this one recorded in Among the Darkeyed, by Calinam. Page 102. Stories of instantaneous travel and the Oathgates pervade these tales.
Instantaneous travel. Oathgates.
“That’s what she was coming here for,” Shallan whispered. “She thought she could find a passageway here, on the Plains. But they’re barren stormlands, just stone, crem, and greatshells.” She looked up at Pattern. “We really need to get out there, onto the Shattered Plains.”
Her announcement was accompanied by an ominous chime from the clock. Ominous in that it meant the hour was far later than she’d assumed. Storms! She needed to meet Adolin by noon. She had to leave in a half hour if she was going to meet him on time.
Shallan yelped and ran for the washroom. She turned the spigot for water