He took a deep breath, the pain of his ribs forgotten, as the stormwall crossed the lumberyard in a flash and slammed into him.
“Though many wished Urithiru to be built in Alethela, it was obvious that it could not be. And so it was that we asked for it to be placed westward, in the place nearest to Honor.”
—Perhaps the oldest surviving original source mentioning the city, requoted in The Vavibrar, line 1804. What I wouldn’t give for a way to translate the Dawnchant.
The force of the stormwall nearly knocked him unconscious, but the sudden chill of it shocked him lucid.
For a moment, Kaladin couldn’t feel anything but that coldness. He was pressed against the side of the barrack by the extended blast of water. Rocks and bits of branch crashed against the stone around him; he was already too numb to tell how many slashed or beat against his skin.
He bore it, dazed, eyes pressed shut and breath held. Then the stormwall passed, crashing onward. The next blast of wind came in from the side—the air was swirling and gusting from all directions now. The wind flung him sideways—his back scraping against stone—and up into the air. The wind stabilized, blowing out of the east again. Kaladin hung in darkness, and his feet yanked against the rope. In a panic, he realized that he was now flapping in the wind like a kite, tied to the ring in the barrack’s slanted roof.
Only that rope kept him from being blown along with the other debris to be tumbled and tossed before the storm across the entirety of Roshar. For those few heartbeats, he could not think. He could only feel the panic and the cold—one boiling out of his chest, the other trying to freeze him from the skin inward. He screamed, clutching his single sphere as if it were a lifeline. The scream was a mistake, as it let that coldness course into his mouth. Like a spirit forcing its arm down his throat.
The wind was like a maelstrom, chaotic, moving in different directions. One buff et ripped at him, then passed, and he fell to the roof of the barrack with a thud. Almost immediately, the terrible winds tried to lift him again, pounding his skin with waves of icy water. Thunder crashed, the heartbeat of the beast that had swallowed him. Lighting split the darkness like white teeth in the night. The wind was so loud it nearly drowned out the thunder; howling and moaning.
“Grab the roof, Kaladin!”
Syl’s voice. So soft, so small. How could he hear it at all?
Numbly, he realized he was lying facedown on the sloped roof. It wasn’t so steeply peaked that he was immediately pitched off, and the wind was generally blowing him backward. He did as Syl said, grabbing the lip of the roof with cold, slick fingers. Then he lay facedown, head tucked between his arms. He still had the sphere in his hand, pressed against the stone rooftop. His fingers started to slip. The wind was blowing so hard, trying to push him to the west. If he let go, he’d end up dangling in the air again. His rope tether was not long enough for him to get to the other side of the shallow-peaked rooftop, where he’d be sheltered.
A boulder hit the roof beside him—he couldn’t hear its impact or see it in the tempest’s darkness, but he could feel the building vibrate. The boulder rolled forward and crashed down to the ground. The entire storm didn’t have such force, but occasional gusts could pick up and toss large objects, hurling them hundreds of feet.
His fingers slipped further.
“The ring,” Syl whispered.
The ring. The rope tied his legs to a steel ring on the side of the roof behind him. Kaladin let go, then snatched the ring as he was blown backward. He clutched to it. The rope continued down to his ankles, about the length of his body. He thought for a moment of untying the ropes, but he didn’t dare let go of the ring. He clung there, like a pennant flapping in the wind, holding the ring in both hands, sphere cupped inside one of them and pressed against the steel.
Each moment was a struggle. The wind yanked him left, then hurled him right. He couldn’t know how long it lasted; time had no meaning in this place of fury and tumult. His numbed, battered mind started to think he was in a nightmare. A terrible dream inside his head, full of black, living winds. Screams in the air, bright and white, the flash of lightning revealing a terrible, twisted world of chaos and terror. The very buildings seemed blown sideways, the entire world askew, warped by the storm’s terrible power.
In those brief moments of light when he dared to look, he thought he saw Syl standing in front of him, her face to the wind, tiny hands forward. As if she were trying to hold back the storm and split the winds as a stone divided the waters of a swift stream.
The cold of the rainwater numbed the scrapes and bruises. But it also numbed his fingers. He didn’t feel them slipping. The next he knew, he was whipping in the air again, tossed to the side, being slammed down against the roof of the barrack.
He hit hard. His vision flashed with sparkling lights that melded together and were followed by blackness.
Not unconsciousness, blackness.
Kaladin blinked. All was still. The storm was quiet, and everything was purely dark. I’m dead, he thought immediately. But why could he feel the wet stone roof beneath him? He shook his head, dripping rainwater down his face. There was no lightning, no wind, no rain. The silence was unnatural.
He stumbled to his feet, managing to stand on the gently sloped roof. The stone was slick beneath his toes. He couldn’t feel his wounds. The pain just wasn’t there.
He opened his mouth to call out into the darkness, but hesitated. That silence was not to be broken. The air itself seemed to weigh less, as did he. He almost felt as if he could float away.
In that darkness, an enormous face appeared just in front of his. A face of blackness, yet faintly traced in the dark. It was wide, the breadth of a massive thunderhead, and extended far to either side, yet it was somehow still visible to Kaladin. Inhuman. Smiling.
Kaladin felt a deep chill—a rolling prickle of ice—scurry down his spine and through his entire body. The sphere suddenly burst to life in his hand, flaring with a sapphire glow. It illuminated the stone roof beneath him, making his fist blaze with blue fire. His shirt was in tatters, his skin lacerated. He looked down at himself, shocked, then looked up at the face.
It was gone. There was only the darkness.
Lightning flashed, and Kaladin’s pains returned. He gasped, falling to his knees before the rain and the wind. He slipped down, face hitting the rooftop.
What had that been? A vision? A delusion? His strength was fleeing him, his thoughts growing muddled again. The winds weren’t as strong now, but the rain was still so cold. Lethargic, confused, nearly overwhelmed by his pain, he brought his hand up to the side and looked at the sphere. It was glowing. Smeared with his blood and glowing.
He hurt so much, and his strength had faded. Closing his eyes, he felt himself enveloped by a second blackness. The blackness of unconsciousness.
Rock was the first to the door when the highstorm subsided. Teft followed more slowly, groaning to himself. His knees hurt. His knees always hurt near a storm. His grandfather had complained about that in his later years, and Teft had called him daft. Now he felt it too.
Storming Damnation, he thought, wearily stepping outside. It was still raining, of course. These were the after-flurries of drizzle that trailed a highstorm, the riddens. A few rainspren sat in puddles, like blue candles, and a few windspren danced in the stormwinds. The rain was cold, and he splashed through puddles that soaked his sandaled feet, chilling them straight through the skin and muscle. He hated being wet. But, then, he hated a lot of things.
For a while, life had been looking up. Not now.
How did everything go so wrong so quickly? he thought, holding his arms close, walking slowly and watching his feet. Some soldiers had left their barracks and stood nearby, wearing raincloaks, watching. Probably to make certain nobody had snuck out to cut Kaladin down early. They didn’t try to stop Rock, though. The storm had passed.
Rock charged around the side of the building. Other bridgemen left the barrack behind as Teft followed Rock. Storming Horneater. Like a big lumbering chull. He actually believed. He thought they’d find that foolish young bridgeleader alive. Probably figured they’d discover him having a nice cup of tea, relaxing in the shade with the Stormfather himself.
And you don’t believe? Teft asked himself, still looking down. If you don’t, why are you following? But if you did believe, you’d look. You wouldn’t stare at your feet. You’d look up and see.
Could a man both believe, and not believe, at the same time? Teft stopped beside Rock and—steeling himself—looked up at the wall of the barrack.
There he saw what he’d expected and what he’d feared. The corpse looked like a hunk of slaughter house meat, skinned and bled. Was that a person? Kaladin’s skin was sliced in a hundred places, dribbles of blood mixing with rainwater running down the side of the building. The lad’s body still hung by the ankles. His shirt had been ripped off; his bridgeman trousers were ragged. Ironically, his face was cleaner now than when they’d left him, washed by the storm.
Teft had seen enough dead men on the battlefield to know what he was looking at. Poor lad, he thought, shaking his head as the rest of Bridge Four gathered around him and Rock, quiet, horrified. You almost made me believe in you.
Kaladin’s eyes snapped open.
The gathered bridgemen gasped, several cursing and falling to the ground, splashing in the pools of rainwater. Kaladin drew in a ragged breath, wheezing, eyes staring forward, intense and unseeing. He exhaled, blowing flecks of bloody spittle out over his lips. His hand, hanging below him, slipped open.
Something dropped to the stones. The sphere Teft had given him. It splashed into a puddle and stopped there. It was dun, no Stormlight in it.
What in the name of Kelek? Teft thought, kneeling. You left a sphere out in the storm, and it gathered Stormlight. Held in Kaladin’s hand, this one should have been fully infused. What had gone wrong?
“Umalakai’ki!” Rock bellowed, pointing. “Kama mohoray namavau—” He stopped, realizing he was speaking the wrong language. “Somebody be helping me get him down! Is still alive! We need ladder and knife! Hurry!”
The bridgemen scrambled. The soldiers approached, muttering, but they didn’t stop the bridgemen. Sadeas himself had declared that the Stormfather would choose Kaladin’s fate. Everyone knew that meant death.
Except…Teft stood up straight, holding the dun sphere. An empty sphere after a storm, he thought. And a man who’s still alive when he should be dead. Two impossibilities.
Together they bespoke something that should be even more impossible.
“Where’s that ladder!” Teft found himself yelling. “Curse you all, hurry, hurry! We need to get him bandaged. Somebody go fetch that salve he always puts on wounds!”
He glanced back at Kaladin, then spoke much more softly. “And you’d better survive, son. Because I want some answers.”
“Taking the Dawnshard, known to bind any creature voidish or mortal, he crawled up the steps crafted for Heralds, ten strides tall apiece, toward the grand temple above.”
—From The Poem of Ista. I have found no modern explanation of what these “Dawnshards” are. They seem ignored by scholars, though talk of them was obviously prevalent among those recording the early mythologies.