them, ripped from somewhere distant. Kaladin was sure he heard terrible screams over the winds, as red spren he’d never seen before—like small meteors, trailing light behind them—zipped around him.
Szeth screamed again. Kaladin caught the word this time. “How!”
Kaladin’s answer was to strike with his Blade. Szeth parried violently, and they clashed, two glowing figures in the blackness.
“I know this column!” Szeth screamed. “I have seen its like before! They went to the city, didn’t they!”
The assassin launched himself into the air. Kaladin was all too eager to follow. He wanted out of this tempest.
Szeth screamed away, heading westward, away from the storm with the red lightning—following the path of the common highstorm. That alone was dangerous enough.
Kaladin gave chase, but that proved difficult in the buffeting winds. It wasn’t that they served Szeth more than Kaladin; the tempest was simply unpredictable. They’d shove him one way and Szeth another.
What happened if Szeth lost him?
He knows where Dalinar went, Kaladin thought, gritting his teeth as a flash of sudden whiteness blinded him from one side. I don’t.
He couldn’t protect Dalinar if he couldn’t find the man. Unfortunately, a chase through this darkness favored the person who was trying to escape. Slowly, Szeth pulled ahead.
Kaladin tried to follow, but a surge of wind drove him in the wrong direction. Lashings didn’t really let him fly. He couldn’t resist such unpredictable winds; they controlled him.
No! Szeth’s glowing form dwindled. Kaladin shouted into the darkness, blinking eyes against the rain. He’d almost lost sight . . .
Syl spun into the air in front of him. But he was still carrying the spear. What?
Another one, then another. Ribbons of light, occasionally taking the shapes of young women or men, laughing. Windspren. A dozen or more spun around him, leaving trails of light, their laughter somehow strong over the sounds of the storm.
There! Kaladin thought.
Szeth was ahead. Kaladin Lashed himself through the tempest toward him, jerking one way, then the other. Dodging blitzes of lightning, ducking under hurled boulders, blinking away the sheets of driven rain.
A whirlwind of chaos. And ahead . . . light?
The stormwall.
Szeth burst free of the storm’s very front. Through the mess of water and debris, Kaladin could just barely make out the assassin turning around to look backward, his posture confident.
He thinks he’s lost me.
Kaladin exploded out of the stormwall, surrounded by windspren that spiraled away in a pattern of light. He shouted, driving his spear toward Szeth, who parried hastily, his eyes wide. “Impossible!”
Kaladin spun around and slashed his spear—which became a sword—through Szeth’s foot.
The assassin lurched away along the length of the stormwall. Both Szeth and Kaladin continued to fall westward, just in front of the wall of water and debris.
Beneath them, the land passed in a blur. The two storms had finally separated, and the highstorm was moving along its normal path, east to west. The Shattered Plains were soon left behind, giving way to rolling hills.
As Kaladin chased, Szeth spun and fell backward, attacking, though Syl became a shield to block. Kaladin swung down and a hammer appeared in his hand, crashing against Szeth’s shoulder, breaking bones. As Stormlight tried to heal the assassin, Kaladin pulled in close and slammed his hand against Szeth’s stomach, a knife appearing there and digging deeply into the skin. He sought the spine.
Szeth gasped and frantically Lashed himself farther backward, pulling out of Kaladin’s grip.
Kaladin followed. Boulders churned in the stormwall—which was now the ground from Kaladin’s perspective. He had to repeatedly adjust his Lashing to stay in the right place, just ahead of the storm.
Kaladin leaped on churning boulders as they appeared, pursuing Szeth, who fell wildly, his clothing flapping. Windspren formed a halo around Kaladin, zipping in and out, spiraling, spinning around his arms and legs. The proximity of the storm kept his Stormlight stoked, never letting it grow dim.
Szeth slowed, his wounds healing. He hung in front of the crashing stormwall, holding his sword before him. He took a breath, meeting Kaladin’s eyes.
An ending, then.
Kaladin drove forward, Syl forming a spear in his fingers, the most familiar weapon.
Szeth attacked in a sequence, a relentless blur of strikes.
Kaladin blocked each one. He ended with his spear against the hilt of Szeth’s Blade, pressing the two together, mere inches from the assassin’s face.
“It is actually true,” Szeth whispered.
“Yes.”
Szeth nodded, and the edge of tension seemed to fade from him, replaced by an emptiness in his eyes. “Then I was right all along. I was never Truthless. I could have