Teeth clenched at both the wonder and the forces twisting him, he tossed caution aside and Lashed himself upward. Once, twice, three times. He let go of all else, and amid the streaming Light, he shot from the chasms out into the open air above.
He Lashed himself back to the east so that he could fall in that direction again, but now no plateau walls got in his way. He soared toward the horizon, distant, lost in the darkness. He gained speed, coat flapping, hair whipping behind him. Air buffeted his face, and he narrowed his eyes, but did not close them.
Beneath, dark chasms passed one after another. Plateau. Pit. Plateau. Pit. This sensation… flying over the land… he had felt this before, in dreams. What took bridgemen hours to cross, he passed in minutes. He felt as if something were boosting him from behind, the wind itself carrying him. Syl zipped along to his right.
And to his left? No, those were other windspren. He’d accumulated dozens of them, flying around him as ribbons of light. He could pick out Syl. He didn’t know how; she didn’t look different, but he could tell. Like you could pick a family member out of a crowd just by their walk.
Syl and her cousins twisted around him in a spiral of light, free and loose, but with a hint of coordination.
How long had it been since he felt this good, this triumphant, this alive? Not since before Tien’s death. Even after saving Bridge Four, darkness had shadowed him.
That evaporated. He saw a spire of rock ahead on the plateaus, and nudged himself toward it with a careful Lashing to the right. Other Lashings to his rear slowed his fall enough that when he hit the tip of the spire of rock, he could clutch to it and spin around it, fingers on the smooth cremstone.
A hundred windspren broke around him, like the crash of a wave, spraying outward from Kaladin in a fan of light.
He grinned. Then he looked upward, toward the sky.
* * *
Highlord Amaram continued to stare at the Shardblade in the night. He held it up before him in the light spilling from the front of the manor house.
Shallan remembered her father’s quiet terror as he looked upon that weapon, leveled toward him. Could it be a coincidence? Two weapons that looked the same? Perhaps her memory was flawed.
No. No, she would never forget the look of that Blade. It was the one Helaran had held. And no two Blades were the same.
“Brightlord,” Shallan said, drawing Amaram’s attention. He seemed startled, as if he’d forgotten she was there.
“Yes?”
“Brightness Shallan,” she said, “wants to make certain the records are all correct and that the histories of the Blades and Plate in the Alethi army have been properly traced. Your Blade is not in them. She asked if you would mind sharing the origin of your Blade, in the name of scholarship.”
“I’ve explained this to Dalinar already,” Amaram said. “I don’t know the history of my Shards. Both were in the possession of an assassin who tried to kill me. A younger man. Veden, with red hair. We don’t know his name, and his face was ruined in my counterattack. I had to stab him through his faceplate, you see.”
Young man. Red hair.
She stood before her brother’s killer.
“I…” Shallan stammered, feeling sick. “Thank you. I will pass the information along.”
She turned, trying not to stumble as she walked away. She finally knew what had happened to Helaran.
You were involved in all of this, weren’t you, Helaran? she thought. Just like Father was. But how, why?
It seemed that Amaram was trying to bring back the Voidbringers. Helaran had tried to kill him.
But would anyone really want to bring back the Voidbringers? Perhaps she was mistaken. She needed to get to her rooms, draw those maps from the Memories she’d taken, and try to figure this all out.
The guards, blessedly, did not give her any further troubles as she slipped away from Amaram’s camp and into the anonymity of the darkness. That was well, for if they’d looked closely, they’d have seen the messenger boy with tears in his eyes. Crying for a brother that now, once and for all, Shallan knew was dead.
* * *
Upward.
One Lashing, then another, then a third. Kaladin shot up into the sky. Nothing but open expanse, an infinite sea for his delight.
The air grew cold. Still upward he went, reaching for the clouds. Finally, worried about running out of Stormlight before returning to the ground—he had only one infused sphere left, carried in his pocket for an emergency—Kaladin reluctantly Lashed himself downward.
He didn’t fall downward immediately; his momentum upward merely slowed. He was still Lashed to the sky; he hadn’t dismissed the upward Lashings.
Curious, he Lashed himself downward to slow further, then dismissed all of his Lashings except one up and one down. He eventually came to a stop hanging in midair. The second moon had risen, bathing the Plains in light far below. From here, they looked like a broken plate. No… he thought, squinting. It’s a pattern. He’d seen this before. In a dream.
Wind blew against him, causing him to drift like a kite. The windspren he’d attracted scampered away now that he wasn’t riding upon the winds. Funny. He’d never realized one could attract windspren as one attracted the spren of emotions.
All you had to do was fall into the sky.
Syl remained, spinning around him in a swirl until finally coming to rest on his shoulder. She sat, then looked down.
“Not many men ever see this view,” she noted. From up here, the warcamps—circles of fire to his right—seemed insignificant. It was cold enough to be uncomfortable. Rock claimed the air was thinner up high, though Kaladin couldn’t tell any difference.
“I’ve been trying to get you to do this for a while now,” Syl said.
“It’s like when I first picked up a spear,” Kaladin whispered. “I was just a child. Were you with me back then? All that time ago?”
“No,” Syl said, “and yes.”
“It can’t be both.”
“It can. I knew I needed to find you. And the winds knew you. They led me to you.”
“So everything I’ve done,” Kaladin said. “My skill with the spear, the way I fight. That’s not me. It’s you.”
“It’s us.”
“It’s cheating. Unearned.”
“Nonsense,” Syl said. “You practice every day.”
“I have an advantage.”
“The advantage of talent,” Syl said. “When the master musician first picks up an instrument and finds music in it that nobody else can, is that cheating? Is that art unearned, just because she is naturally more skilled? Or is it genius?”
Kaladin Lashed himself westward, back toward the warcamps. He didn’t want to leave himself stranded in the middle of the Shattered Plains without Stormlight. The tempest within had calmed greatly since he started. He fell in that direction for a time—getting as close as he dared before slowing himself—then removed part of the upward Lashing and began to drift downward.
“I’ll take it,” Kaladin said. “Whatever it is that gives me that edge. I’ll use it. I’ll need it to beat him.”
Syl nodded, still sitting on his shoulder.
“You don’t think he has a spren,” Kaladin said. “But how does he do what he does?”