“Navani…” he prodded.
“No,” she said stubbornly. “I need to present my ideas to the scholars, see if what I’m thinking even makes sense, and then prepare a report. That’s the short of it, Dalinar Kholin. So be patient.”
“I probably won’t understand half of what you say anyway,” he grumbled.
He didn’t immediately start them up in the direction he’d gone before. Last time he’d been prompted by someone in the vision. He’d acted differently this time. Would the same prompting still come?
He had to wait only a short time until an officer came running up to them.
“You there,” the man said. “Malad-son-Zent, isn’t that your name? You’re promoted to sergeant. Head to base camp three.” He pointed up the incline. “Up over that knob there, down the other side. Hop to it!” He spared a frown for Navani—to his eyes, the two of them didn’t belong standing in such a familial pose—but then charged off without another word.
Dalinar smiled.
“What?” Navani said.
“These are set experiences that Honor wanted me to have. Though there’s freedom in them, I suspect that the same information will be conveyed no matter what I do.”
“So, do you want to disobey?”
Dalinar shook his head. “There are some things I need to see again—now that I understand this vision is accurate, I know better questions to ask.”
They started up the incline of smooth rock, walking arm in arm. Dalinar felt unexpected emotions start to churn within him, partially due to Jasnah’s words. But this was something deeper: a welling of gratitude, relief, even love.
“Dalinar?” Navani asked. “Are you well?”
“I’m just … thinking,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. “Blood of my fathers … it’s been nearly half a year, hasn’t it? Since all this started? All that time, I came to these alone. It’s just good to share the burden, Navani. To be able to show this to you, and to know for once—absolutely and certainly—that what I’m seeing isn’t merely in my own mind.”
She pulled him close again, walking with her head on his shoulder. Far more affectionate in public than Alethi propriety would sanction, but hadn’t they thrown that out the window long ago? Besides, there was nobody to see—nobody real, anyway.
They crested the slope, then passed several blackened patches. What could burn rock like that? Other sections looked like they’d been broken by an impossible weight, while yet others had strangely shaped holes ripped in them. Navani stopped them beside a particular formation, only knee high, where the rock rippled in a strange little symmetrical pattern. It looked like liquid, frozen midflow.
Cries of pain echoed through these canyons and across the open plain of rock. Looking out over the ridge, Dalinar found the main battlefield. Stretching into the distance were corpses. Thousands of them, some in piles. Others slaughtered in heaps while pressed against walls of stone.
“Stormfather?” Dalinar said, addressing the spren. “This is what I told Jasnah it was, isn’t it? Aharietiam. The Last Desolation.”
That is what it was called.
“Include Navani in your responses,” Dalinar requested.
AGAIN, YOU MAKE DEMANDS OF ME. YOU SHOULD NOT DO THIS. The voice rumbled in the open air, and Navani jumped.
“Aharietiam,” Dalinar said. “This isn’t how songs and paintings depict the final defeat of the Voidbringers. In them, it’s always some grand conflict, with tremendous monsters clashing against brave lines of soldiers.”
MEN LIE IN THEIR POETRY. SURELY YOU KNOW THIS.
“It just … seems so like any other battlefield.”
AND THAT ROCK BEHIND YOU?
Dalinar turned toward it, then gasped, realizing something he’d mistaken for a boulder was actually a giant skeletal face. A mound of rubble they’d passed was actually one of those things he’d seen in a different vision. A stone monster that ripped its way out of the ground.
Navani stepped up to it. “Where are the parshmen?”
“Earlier, I fought against humans,” Dalinar said.
THEY WERE RECRUITED TO THE OTHER SIDE, the Stormfather said. I THINK.
“You think?” Dalinar demanded.
DURING THESE DAYS, HONOR STILL LIVED. I WAS NOT YET FULLY MYSELF. MORE OF A STORM. LESS INTERESTED IN MEN. HIS DEATH CHANGED ME. MY MEMORY OF THAT TIME IS DIFFICULT TO EXPLAIN. BUT IF YOU WOULD SEE PARSHMEN, YOU NEED BUT LOOK ACROSS THAT FIELD.
Navani joined Dalinar at the ridge, looking out over the plain of corpses below. “Which ones?” Navani asked.
YOU CAN’T TELL?
“Not from this distance.”
MAYBE HALF OF THOSE ARE WHAT YOU’D CALL PARSHMEN.
Dalinar squinted, but still couldn’t make out which were human and which were not. He led Navani down the ridge, then across a plain. Here, the corpses intermingled. Men in their primitive clothing. Parshmen corpses that bled orange blood. This was a warning he should have recognized, but hadn’t been able to put together his first time in the vision. He’d thought he was seeing a nightmare of their fight on the Shattered Plains.
He knew the path to take, one that led him and Navani across the field of corpses, then into a shadowed recess beneath a tall rocky spire. The light had caught on the rocks here, intriguing him. Before, he thought he’d wandered into this place by accident, but in truth the entire vision had pointed him at this moment.
Here, they found nine Shardblades rammed into the stone. Abandoned. Navani put her gloved safehand to her mouth at the sight—nine beautiful Blades, each a treasure, simply left here? Why and how?
Dalinar stepped through the shadows, rounding the nine Blades. This was another image he’d misunderstood when living this vision the first time. These weren’t just Shardblades.
“Ash’s eyes,” Navani said, pointing. “I recognize that one, Dalinar. It’s the one…”
“The one that killed Gavilar,” Dalinar said, stopping beside the plainest Blade, long and thin. “The weapon of the Assassin in White. It’s an Honorblade. They all are.”
“This is the day that the Heralds made their final ascension to the Tranquiline Halls!” Navani said. “To lead the battle there instead.”
Dalinar turned to the side, to where he glimpsed the air shimmering. The Stormfather.
“Only…” Navani said. “This wasn’t actually the end. Because the enemy came back.” She walked around the ring of swords, then paused by an open spot in the circle. “Where is the tenth Blade?”
“The stories are wrong, aren’t they?” Dalinar said to the Stormfather. “We didn’t defeat the enemy for good, as the Heralds claimed. They lied.”
Navani’s head snapped up, her eyes focused on Dalinar.
I LONG BLAMED THEM, the Stormfather said, FOR THEIR LACK OF HONOR. IT IS … DIFFICULT FOR ME TO LOOK PAST OATHS BROKEN. I HATED THEM. NOW, THE MORE I COME TO KNOW MEN, THE MORE I SEE HONOR IN THOSE POOR CREATURES YOU NAME HERALDS.
“Tell me what happened,” Dalinar said. “What really happened?”
ARE YOU READY FOR THIS STORY? THERE ARE PARTS YOU WILL NOT LIKE.
“If I have accepted that God is dead, I can accept the fall of his Heralds.”