a small figure, all white, standing before him with hands forward, as if to part the tempest for him. Tiny and frail, yet as strong as the winds themselves.
Syl . . . what have I done to you?
“I need to hear the story,” Shallan said.
“I’ll tell it to you sometime.”
Water washed up over them again. For a moment, they became lighter, floating in the sudden burst of water. The current pulled with unexpected strength, as if eager to tow them out into the river. Shallan screamed and Kaladin gripped the rock on either side, holding on in a panic. The river retreated, though he could still hear it rushing. They settled back into the alcove.
Light came from above, too steady to be lightning. Something was glowing on the plateau. Something that moved. It was hard to see, since water streamed off the side of the plateau above, falling in a sheet before their refuge. He swore he saw an enormous figure walking up there, a glowing inhuman form, followed by another, alien and sleek. Striding the storm. Leg after leg, until the glow passed.
“Please,” Shallan said. “I need to hear something other than that. Tell me.”
He shivered, but nodded. Voices. Voices would help. “It started when Amaram betrayed me,” he said, tone hushed, just loud enough for her—pressed close—to hear. “He made me a slave for knowing the truth, that he’d killed my men in his lust to get a Shardblade. That it mattered more to him than his own soldiers, more to him than honor . . .”
He continued on, talking of his days as a slave, of his attempts to escape. Of the men he’d gotten killed for trusting him. It gushed from him, a story he’d never told. Who would he have told it to? Bridge Four had lived most of it with him.
He told her of the wagon and of Tvlakv—that name earned a gasp. She apparently knew him. He spoke of the numbness, the . . . nothing. The thinking he should kill himself, but the trouble believing that it was worth the effort.
And then, Bridge Four. He didn’t talk about Syl. Too much pain there right now. Instead, he talked of bridge runs, of terror, of death, and of decision.
Rain washed over them, blown in swirls, and he swore he could hear chanting out there somewhere. Some kind of strange spren zipped past their enclosure, red and violet and reminiscent of lightning. Was that what Syl had seen?
Shallan listened. He would have expected questions from her, but she didn’t ask a single one. No pestering for details, no chattering. She apparently did know how to be quiet.
He got through it all, amazingly. The last bridge run. Rescuing Dalinar. He wanted to spill it all out. He talked about facing the Parshendi Shardbearer, about how he’d offended Adolin, about holding the bridgehead on his own . . .
When he finished, they both let the silence settle on them, and shared warmth. Together, they stared out at the rushing water just out of reach and lit by flashing.
“I killed my father,” Shallan whispered.
Kaladin looked toward her. In a flash of light, he saw her eyes as she looked up from where her head had been resting against his chest, beads of water on her eyelashes. With his hands around her waist, hers around him, it was as close as he’d held a woman since Tarah.
“My father was a violent, angry man,” Shallan said. “A murderer. I loved him. And I strangled him as he lay on the floor, watching me, unable to move. I killed my own father . . .”
He didn’t prod her, though he wanted to know. Needed to know.
She went on, fortunately, speaking of her youth and the terrors she had known. Kaladin had thought his life terrible, but there was one thing he’d had, and perhaps not cherished enough: parents who loved him. Roshone had brought Damnation itself to Hearthstone, but at least Kaladin’s mother and father had always been there to rely upon.
What would he have done, if his father had been like the abusive, hateful man Shallan described? If his mother had died before his own eyes? What would he have done if, instead of living off Tien’s light, he had been required to bring light to the family?
He listened with wonder. Storms. Why wasn’t this woman broken, truly broken? She described herself that way, but she was no more broken than a spear with a chipped blade—and a spear