“Come on…” Syl said, zipping around to his other side. “You need to be with people to be happy, Kaladin. I know you do.”
“I have my bridge crew,” he muttered, voice lost to the winds—but Syl would be able to hear, as he could hear her.
“Not the same. And you know it.”
“She brought her handmaid on a scouting mission. She couldn’t go a week without someone to do her hair. You think I’d be interested in that?”
“Think?” Syl said. She took the shape of a tiny young woman in a girlish dress, flying through the sky before him. “I know. Don’t think I don’t spot you stealing looks.” She smirked.
“Time to stop so we don’t overshoot Kholinar,” Kaladin said. “Go tell Skar and Drehy.”
Kaladin took his charges one at a time, canceling their Lashing forward, replacing it with a half Lashing upward. There was a strange effect to the Lashings that frustrated Sigzil’s scientific attempts at terminology. All of his numbers had assumed that once Lashed, a person would be under the influence of both the ground and the Lashing.
That wasn’t the case. Once you used a Basic Lashing on someone, their body completely forgot about the pull of the ground, and they fell in the direction you indicated. Partial Lashings worked by making part of the person’s weight forget the ground, though the rest continued to be pulled downward. So a half Lashing upward made a person weightless.
Kaladin situated the groups so he could speak to the king, Adolin, and Shallan. His bridgemen and Shallan’s attendants hovered a short distance off. Even Sigzil’s new explanations had trouble accounting for everything that Kaladin did. He’d somehow made a kind of … channel around the group, like in a river. A current, sweeping them along, keeping them closer together.
“It really is beautiful,” Shallan said, surveying the storm, which blanketed everything but the tips of some very distant peaks to their left. Probably the Sunmaker Mountains. “Like mixing paint—if dark paint could somehow spawn new colors and light within its swirls.”
“So long as I can continue to watch it from a safe distance,” Adolin said. He held Kaladin’s arm to keep from drifting away.
“We’re close to Kholinar,” Kaladin said. “Which is good, as we’re getting near the back edge of the storm, and I’ll soon lose access to its Stormlight.”
“What I feel like I’m about to lose,” Shallan said, looking down, “is my shoes.”
“Shoes?” Adolin said. “I lost my lunch back there.”
“I can’t help imagining something sliding off and dropping into it,” Shallan whispered. “Vanishing. Gone forever.” She glanced at Kaladin. “No wisecracks about missing boots?”
“I couldn’t think of anything funny.” He hesitated. “Though that hasn’t ever stopped you.”
Shallan grinned. “Have you ever considered, bridgeman, that bad art does more for the world than good art? Artists spend more of their lives making bad practice pieces than they do masterworks, particularly at the start. And even when an artist becomes a master, some pieces don’t work out. Still others are somehow just wrong until the last stroke.
“You learn more from bad art than you do from good art, as your mistakes are more important than your successes. Plus, good art usually evokes the same emotions in people—most good art is the same kind of good. But bad pieces can each be bad in their own unique way. So I’m glad we have bad art, and I’m sure the Almighty agrees.”
“All this,” Adolin said, amused, “to justify your sense of humor, Shallan?”
“My sense of humor? No, I’m merely trying to justify the creation of Captain Kaladin.”
Ignoring her, Kaladin squinted eastward. The clouds behind them were lightening from deep, brooding black and grey to a more general blandness, the color of Rock’s morning mush. The storm was near to ending; what arrived with a fanfare ended with an extended sigh, gales giving way to peaceful rain.
“Drehy, Skar,” Kaladin called. “Keep everyone in the air. I’m going to go scout below.”
The two gave him salutes, and Kaladin dropped through the clouds, which—from within—looked like dirty fog. Kaladin came out crusted in frost, and rain began pelting him, but it was growing weak. Thunder rumbled softly above.
Enough light seeped through the clouds for him to survey the landscape. Indeed, the city was close, and it was majestic, but he forced himself to look for enemies before marveling. He noted a broad plain before the city—a killing field kept free of trees or large boulders, so that neither could offer cover to an invading army. That was empty, which wasn’t unexpected.
The question was who held the city—Voidbringers or humans? He cautiously descended. The place glowed with a sprinkling of Stormlight from cages left out in the storm to recharge the gems. And … yes, from guard posts flew Alethi flags, raised now that the worst of the storm had passed.
Kaladin let out a relieved sigh. Kholinar had not fallen, though if their reports were right, all surrounding towns were occupied. In fact, looking closely, he could see that the enemy had begun building stormshelters on the killing field: bunkers from which they could prevent resupply to Kholinar. They were mere foundations of brick and mortar for now. During the times between storms, they were likely guarded—and built up—by large enemy forces.
He finally let himself stare at Kholinar. He knew it was coming, inevitable as a budding yawn; he couldn’t keep it down forever. First assess the area for danger, get the lay of the land.
Then gawk.
Storms, that city was beautiful.
He’d flown high above it once in a half dream where he’d seen the Stormfather. That hadn’t affected him the way it did to float here, looking over the vast metropolis. He’d seen proper cities now—the warcamps together were probably larger than Kholinar—so it wasn’t the size that amazed him, really, but the variety. He was accustomed to functional bunkers, not stone buildings of many shapes and roofing styles.
Kholinar’s defining feature, of course, was the windblades: curious rock formations that rose from the stone like the fins of some giant creature mostly hidden beneath the surface. The large curves of stone glittered with red, white, and orange strata, their hues deepened by the rain. He hadn’t realized that the city walls were partially constructed on the tops of the outer windblades. There, the lower sections of the walls literally sprouted from the ground, while men had built fortifications atop them, evening out the heights and filling spaces between the curves.
Towering over the northern side of the city was the palace complex, which rose high and confident, as if in defiance of the storms. The palace was like a little city unto itself, with bright columns, rotundas, and turrets.
And something was very, very wrong with it.
A cloud hung over the palace, a darkness that—at first glance—seemed like nothing more than a trick of the light. Yet the feeling of wrongness persisted, and seemed strongest around a portion at the east of the palace complex. This flat, raised plaza was filled with small buildings. The palace monastery.
The Oathgate platform.
Kaladin narrowed his eyes, then Lashed himself back upward, passing into the clouds. He’d probably let himself gape for too long—he didn’t want to start talk of a glowing person in the sky.