she saw Kaladin. He found himself narrowing his eyes. That had sounded like . . .
Don’t be silly. She’s no warrior. The Knights Radiant had been soldiers, hadn’t they? He didn’t really know much about them.
Still, Syl had seen several strange spren about.
Shallan gave a glance to the wall of the chasm and the scrapes. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Delightful. Here, give me that paper.”
He handed it back and she slipped a pencil out of her sleeve. He gave her the satchel, which she set on the floor, using the stiff side as a place to sketch. She filled in the two plateaus closest to them, the ones she’d walked around to get a full view.
“So is your drawing off or not?” Kaladin asked.
“It’s accurate,” Shallan said as she drew, “it’s just strange. From my memory of the maps, this set of plateaus nearest to us should be farther to the north. There is another group of them up there that are exactly the same shape, only mirrored.”
“You can remember the maps that well?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t press further. From what he’d seen, maybe she could do just that.
She shook her head. “What are the chances that a series of plateaus would take the exact same shape as those on another part of the Plains? Not just one, but an entire sequence . . .”
“The Plains are symmetrical,” Kaladin said.
She froze. “How do you know that?”
“I . . . it was a dream. I saw the plateaus arrayed in a wide symmetrical formation.”
She looked back at her map, then gasped. She began scribbling notes on the side. “Cymatics.”
“What?”
“I know where the Parshendi are.” Her eyes widened. “And the Oathgate. The center of the Shattered Plains. I can see it all—I can map almost the entire thing.”
He shivered. “You . . . what?”
She looked up sharply, meeting his eyes. “We have to get back.”
“Yes, I know. The highstorm.”
“More than that,” she said, standing. “I know too much now to die out here. The Shattered Plains are a pattern. This isn’t a natural rock formation.” Her eyes widened further. “At the center of these Plains was a city. Something broke it apart. A weapon . . . Vibrations? Like sand on a plate? An earthquake that could break rock . . . Stone became sand, and at the blowing of the highstorms, the cracks full of sand were hollowed out.”
Her eyes seemed eerily distant, and Kaladin didn’t understand half of what she’d said.
“We need to reach the center,” Shallan said. “I can find it, the heart of these Plains, by following the pattern. And there will be . . . things there . . .”
“The secret you’re searching for,” Kaladin said. What had she said just earlier? “Oathgate?”
She blushed deeply. “Let’s keep moving. Didn’t you mention how little time we had? Honestly, if one of us weren’t chatting away all the time and distracting everyone, I’m half certain we’d be back already.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her, and she grinned, then pointed the direction for them to go. “I’m leading now, by the way.”
“Probably for the best.”
“Though,” she said, “as I consider, it might be better to let you lead. That way, we might find our way to the center by accident. Assuming we don’t end up in Azir.”
He gave her a chuckle at that because it seemed the right thing to do. Inside, however, it ripped him apart. He’d failed.
The next few hours were excruciating. After walking the length of two plateaus, Shallan had to stop and update her map. It was correct to do so—they couldn’t risk getting off track again.
It just took so much time. Even moving as quickly as they could between drawing sessions, practically running the entire way, their progress was too slow.
Kaladin shuffled from foot to foot, watching the sky as Shallan filled in her map again. She cursed and grumbled, and he noticed her brushing away a drop of sweat that had fallen from her brow onto the increasingly crumpled paper.
Maybe four hours left until the storm, Kaladin thought. We aren’t going to make it.
“I’ll try for scouts again,” he said.
Shallan nodded. They had entered the territory where Dalinar’s pole-wielding scouts watched for new chrysalises. Shouting to them was a slim hope—even if they were lucky enough to find one of those groups, he doubted they had enough rope handy to reach to the bottom of the chasm.
But it was a chance. So he moved away—so as to not disturb her drawing—cupped his