and ridges he felt rather than saw. He found himself watching little fish dart this way and that, shadows in the water, and next to them a face.
A face.
Dalinar shouted, jumping back, pointing his spear downward. “That was a face! In the water!”
“Riverspren?” the knight asked, stepping up beside him.
“It looked like a shadow,” Dalinar said. “Red eyes.”
“It’s here, then,” the knight said. “Sja-anat’s spy. Caeb, run to the checkpoint. The rest of you, keep watching. It won’t be able to go far without a carrier.” She yanked something off her belt, a small pouch.
“There!” Dalinar said, spotting a small red dot in the water. It flowed away from him, swimming like a fish. He charged after, running as he’d learned earlier. What good would it do to chase a spren, though? You couldn’t catch them. Not with any method he knew.
The others charged behind. Fish scattered away, frightened by Dalinar’s splashing. “I’m chasing a spren,” Dalinar said under his breath. “It’s what we’ve been hunting. It looks a little like a face—a shadowy one, with red eyes. It swims through the water like a fish. Wait! There’s another one. Joining it. Larger, like a full figure, easily six feet. A swimming person, but like a shadow. It—”
“Storms!” the knight shouted suddenly. “It brought an escort!”
The larger spren twisted, then dove downward in the water, vanishing into the rocky ground. Dalinar stopped, uncertain if he should keep chasing the smaller one or remain here.
The others turned and started to run the other way.
Uh-oh . . .
Dalinar scrambled back as the rocky lake bottom began to shake. He stumbled, splashing down into the water. It was so clear he could see the floor cracking under him, as if something large were pounding against it from beneath.
“Come on!” one of the soldiers cried, grabbing him by the arm. Dalinar was pulled to his feet as the cracks below widened. The once-still surface of the lake churned and thrashed.
The ground jolted, almost tumbling Dalinar off his feet again. Ahead of him, several of the soldiers did fall.
The knight stood firm, an enormous Shardblade forming in her hands.
Dalinar glanced over his shoulder in time to see rock emerging from the water. A long arm! Slender, perhaps fifteen feet long, it burst from the water, then slammed back down as if to get a firm purchase on the lakebed. Another arm rose nearby, elbow toward the sky, then they both heaved as if attached to a body doing a push-up.
A giant body ripped itself out of the rocky floor. It was like someone had been buried in sand and was now emerging. Water streamed from the creature’s ridged and pocked back, which was overgrown with bits of shalebark and submarine fungus. The spren had somehow animated the stone itself.
As it stood and twisted about, Dalinar could make out glowing red eyes—like molten rock—set deep in an evil stone face. The body was skeletal, with thin bony limbs and spiky fingers that ended in rocky claws. The chest was a rib cage of stone.
“Thunderclast!” soldiers yelled. “Hammers! Ready hammers!”
The knight stood before the rising creature, which stood thirty feet tall, dripping water. A calm, white light began to rise from her. It reminded Dalinar of the light of spheres. Stormlight. She raised her Shardblade and charged, stepping through the water with uncanny ease, as if it had no purchase on her. Perhaps it was the strength of Shardplate.
“They were created to watch,” a voice said from beside him.
Dalinar looked to the soldier who had helped him rise earlier, a long-faced Selay man with a balding scalp and a wide nose. Dalinar reached down to help the man to his feet.
This wasn’t how the man had spoken before, but Dalinar recognized the voice. It was the same one that came at the end of most of the visions. The Almighty.
“The Knights Radiant,” the Almighty said, standing up beside Dalinar, watching the knight attack the nightmare beast. “They were a solution, a way to offset the destruction of the Desolations. Ten orders of knights, founded with the purpose of helping men fight, then rebuild.”
Dalinar repeated it, word for word, focused on catching every one and not on thinking about what they meant.
The Almighty turned to him. “I was surprised when these orders arrived. I did not teach my Heralds this. It was the spren—wishing to imitate what I had given men—who made it possible. You will need to refound them. This is your task. Unite them. Create a