He walked into a room well illuminated by a double row of lamps on the left. Crammed bookcases covered the right wall from floor to ceiling. A man sat cross-legged on a small rug directly ahead of Szeth. The man looked out an enormous window cut through the rock, staring at the ocean beyond.
Szeth strode forward. “I have been instructed to tell you that the others are dead. I’ve come to finish the job.” He raised his hands, Shardblade forming.
The king did not turn.
Szeth hesitated. He had to make certain the man acknowledged what had been said. “Did you hear me?” Szeth demanded, striding forward.
“Did you kill my guards, Szeth-son-son-Vallano?” the king asked quietly.
Szeth froze. He cursed and stepped backward, raising his Blade in a defensive stance. Another trap?
“You have done your work well,” the king said, still not facing him. “Leaders dead, lives lost. Panic and chaos. Was this your destiny? Do you wonder? Given that monstrosity of a Shardblade by your people, cast out and absolved of any sin your masters might require of you?”
“I am not absolved,” Szeth said, still wary. “It is a common mistake stone-walkers make. Each life I take weighs me down, eating away at my soul.”
The voices… the screams… spirits below, I can hear them howling….
“Yet you kill.”
“It is my punishment,” Szeth said. “To kill, to have no choice, but to bear the sins nonetheless. I am Truthless.”
“Truthless,” the king mused. “I would say that you know much truth. More than your countrymen, now.” He finally turned to face Szeth, and Szeth saw that he had been wrong about this man. King Taravangian was no simpleton. He had keen eyes and a wise, knowing face, rimmed with a full white beard, the mustaches drooping like arrow points. “You have seen what death and murder do to a man. You could say, Szeth-son-son-Vallano, that you bear great sins for your people. You understand what they cannot. And so you have truth.”
Szeth frowned. And then it began to make sense. He knew what would happen next, even as the king reached into his voluminous sleeve and withdrew a small rock that glittered in the light of two dozen lamps. “You were always him,” Szeth said. “My unseen master.”
The king set the rock on the ground between them. Szeth’s Oathstone.
“You put your own name on the list,” Szeth said.
“In case you were captured,” Taravangian said. “The best defense against suspicion is to be grouped with the victims.”
“And if I’d killed you?”
“The instructions were explicit,” Taravangian said. “And, as we have determined, you are quite good at following them. I probably needn’t say it, but I order you not to harm me. Now, did you kill my guards?”
“I do not know,” Szeth said, forcing himself to drop to one knee and dismissing his Blade. He spoke loudly, trying to drown out the screams that he thought—for certain—must be coming from the upper eaves of the room. “I knocked them both unconscious. I believe I cracked one man’s skull.”
Taravangian breathed out, sighing. He rose, stepping to the doorway. Szeth glanced over his shoulder to note the aged king inspecting the guards and seeing to their wounds. Taravangian called for help, and other guards arrived to see to the men.
Szeth was left with a terrible storm of emotions. This kindly, contemplative man had sent him to kill and murder? He had caused the screams?
Taravangian returned.
“Why?” Szeth asked, voice hoarse. “Vengeance?”
“No.” Taravangian sounded very tired. “Some of those men you killed were my dear friends, Szeth-son-son-Vallano.”
“More insurance?” Szeth spat. “To keep yourself from suspicion?”
“In part. And in part because their deaths were necessary.”
“Why?” Szeth asked. “What could it possibly have served?”
“Stability. Those you killed were among the most powerful and influential men in Roshar.”
“How does that help stability?”
“Sometimes,” Taravangian said, “you must tear down a structure to build a new one with stronger walls.” He turned around, looking out over the ocean. “And we are going to need strong walls in the coming years. Very, very strong walls.”
“Your words are like the hundred doves.”
“Easy to release, difficult to keep,” Taravangian said, speaking the words in Shin.
Szeth looked up sharply. This man spoke the Shin language and knew his people’s proverbs? Odd to find in a stonewalker. Odder to find in a murderer.
“Yes, I speak your language. Sometimes I wonder if the Lifebrother himself sent you to me.”
“To bloody myself so that you wouldn’t have to,” Szeth said. “Yes, that sounds like something one of your Vorin gods would do.”
Taravangian fell quiet. “Get up,” he finally said.
Szeth obeyed. He would always obey his master. Taravangian led him to a door set into the side of the study. The aged man pulled a sphere lamp off the wall, lighting a winding stairwell of deep, narrow steps. They followed it and eventually came to a landing. Taravangian pushed open another door and entered a large room that wasn’t on any of the palace maps that Szeth had purchased or bribed a look at. It was long, with wide railings on the sides, giving it a terraced look. Everything was painted white.
It was filled with beds. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Many were occupied.
Szeth followed the king, frowning. An enormous hidden room, cut into the stone of the Conclave? People bustled about wearing coats of white. “A hospital?” Szeth said. “You expect me to find your humanitarian eff orts a redemption for what you have commanded of me?”
“This is not humanitarian work,” Taravangian said, walking forward slowly, white-and-orange robes rustling. Those they passed bowed to him with reverence. Taravangian led Szeth to an alcove of beds, each with a sickly person in it. There were healers working on them. Doing something to their arms.
Draining their blood.
A woman with a writing clipboard stood near the beds, pen held, waiting for something. What?
“I don’t understand,” Szeth said, watching in horror as the four patients grew pale. “You’re killing them, aren’t you?”
“Yes. We don’t need the blood; it is merely a way to kill slowly and easily.”
“Every one of them? The people in this room?”
“We try to select only the worst cases to move here, for once they are brought to this place, we cannot let them leave if they begin to recover.” He turned to Szeth, eyes sorrowful. “Sometimes we need more bodies than the terminally sick can provide. And so we must bring the forgotten and the lowly. Those who will not be missed.”
Szeth couldn’t speak. He couldn’t voice his horror and revulsion. In front of him, one of the victims—a man in his younger years—expired. Two of those remaining were children. Szeth stepped forward. He had to stop this. He had to—
“You will still yourself,” Taravangian said. “And you will return to my side.”
Szeth did as his master commanded. What were a few more deaths? Just another set of screams to haunt him. He could hear them now, coming from beneath beds, behind furniture.
Or I could kill him, Szeth thought. I could stop this.
He nearly did it. But honor prevailed, for the moment.
“You see, Szeth-son-son-Vallano,” Taravangian said. “I did not send you to do my bloody work for me. I do it here, myself. I have personally held the knife and released the blood from the veins of many. Much like you, I know I cannot escape my sins. We are two men of one heart. This is one reason why I sought you out.”
“But why?” Szeth said.
On the beds, a dying youth started speaking. One of the women with the clipboards stepped forward quickly, recording the words.
“The day was ours, but they took it,” the boy cried. “Stormfather! You cannot have it. The day is ours. They come, rasping, and the lights fail. Oh, Stormfather!” The boy arched his back, then fell still suddenly, eyes dead.
The king turned to Szeth. “It is better for one man to sin than for a people to be destroyed, wouldn’t you say, Szeth-son-son-Vallano?”
“I…”
“We do not know why some speak when others do not,” Taravangian said. “But the dying see something. It began seven years ago, about the time when King Gavilar was investigating the Shattered Plains for the first time.” His eyes grew distant. “It is coming, and these people see it. On that bridge between life and the endless ocean of death, they view something. Their words might save us.”
“You are a monster.”
“Yes,” Taravangian said. “But I am the monster who will save this world.” He looked at Szeth. “I have a name to add to your list. I had hoped to avoid doing this, but recent events have made it inevitable. I cannot let him seize control. It will undermine everything.”
“Who?” Szeth asked, wondering if anything at all could horrify him further.
“Dalinar Kholin,” Taravangian said. “I’m afraid it must be done quickly, before he can unite the Alethi highprinces. You will go to the Shattered Plains and end him.” He hesitated. “It must be done brutally, I’m afraid.”
“I have rarely had the luxury of working otherwise,” Szeth said, closing his eyes.
The screams greeted him.
“Before I read,” Shallan said, “I need to understand something. You Soulcast my blood, didn’t you?”
“To remove the poison,” Jasnah said. “Yes. It acted extremely quickly; as I said, it must have been a very concentrated form of the powder. I had to Soulcast your blood several times as we got you to vomit. Your body continued to absorb the poison.”
“But you said you aren’t good with organics,” Shallan said. “You turned the strawberry jam into something inedible.”
“Blood isn’t the same,” Jasnah said, waving her hand. “It’s one of the Essences. You’ll learn this, should I actually decide to teach you Soulcasting. For now, know that the pure form of an Essence is quite easy to make; the eight kinds of blood are easier to create than water, for instance. Creating something as complex as strawberry jam, however—a mush made from a fruit I’d never before tasted or smelled—was well beyond my abilities.”
“And the ardents,” Shallan said. “Those who Soulcast? Do they actually use fabrials, or is it all a hoax?”
“No, Soulcasting fabrials are real. Quite real. So far as I know, everyone else who does what I—what we—can do uses a fabrial to accomplish it.”
“What of the creatures with the symbol heads?” Shallan asked. She flipped through her sketches, then held up an image of them. “Do you see them too? How are they related?”
Jasnah frowned, taking the image. “You see beings like this? In Shadesmar?”
“They appear in my drawings,” Shallan said. “They’re around me, Jasnah. You don’t see them? Am I—”