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“That went well for me today, wouldn’t you say?” Adolin asked him.
“Hmm?” Kelek said.
“One witness could not refute my point about my father,” Adolin said. “Another made my argument for me by pointing out that siding against the Radiants is practically serving Odium. Then Notum put his honor before his own well-being. It went well for me.”
“Does it matter?” Kelek asked.
“Of course it does. That’s why I’m here.”
“I see,” Kelek said. “Did the ancient Radiants betray their spren, killing them?”
“Well, yes,” Adolin said. “But that’s not the question. The question is whether modern humans can be blamed.”
Kelek continued writing.
“Honored One?” Adolin asked.
“Do you know how old I am, young man?” Kelek looked up and met Adolin’s eyes, and there was something in them. A depth that made him, for the first time, seem distinctly inhuman. Those eyes seemed like eternal holes. Bored through time.
“I,” Kelek said softly, “have known many, many men. I’ve known some of the best who ever lived. They are now broken or dead. The best of us inevitably cracked. Storms … I ran when the Return came this time, because I knew what it meant. Even Taln … Even Taln…”
“He didn’t break,” Adolin said.
“The enemy is here, so he did,” Kelek said firmly. He waved toward the honorspren. “They deserve better than you, son. They deserve better than me. I could never judge them for refusing to bond men. How could I? I could never order them back into that war, back into that hole. To do so would be to … to abandon what little honor I have left.…”
Adolin took a deep breath. Then he nodded.
“I just told you that your cause is hopeless,” Kelek said, turning to his writing. “You do not seem concerned.”
“Well, Honored One,” Adolin said. “I agreed to this trial—even with Sekeir’s insistence I be blamed for what my ancestors did—because it was the only way to get a chance to talk to the honorspren. Maybe you will judge against me—but so long as I get a chance to have my say, then that will be enough. If I persuade even one or two to join the battle, I’ll have won.”
“Optimism,” Kelek said. “Hope. I remember those things. But I don’t think you understand the stakes of this trial, child—nor do you understand what you’ve stumbled into. The things that inkspren said—about joining Odium’s side—are on the minds of many spren. Including many in this very fortress.”
That hit Adolin like a gut punch. “Honorspren would join the enemy?” Adolin said. “That would make them no better than the highspren!”
“Indeed; I suspect their dislike of highspren is part of why they hesitate. The honorspren in favor of joining the enemy worried how such a suggestion would be received. But here you are, giving them a chance to make their arguments, acting as a magnet for all of their frustration and hatred.
“Many are listening. If honorspren start joining the enemy … well, many other varieties of spren would soon follow. I dare think they’d go in large numbers.” Kelek didn’t look up. “You came here to recruit. But I suspect you will end up tipping these finely balanced scales, and not in the direction you desire.”
* * *
About an hour after the first stage of the trial—an hour she’d spent consoling Adolin in his sudden terror that he would accidentally cause a mass defection of spren to the side of the enemy—Shallan climbed a tree.
She stretched high, clinging to a branch near the top. It was a normal tree, one of the real ones the honorspren managed to grow here. It felt good to feel bark beneath her fingers.
She reached with one arm into the open space above the tree, but couldn’t feel anything different. Had she hit the barrier yet? Maybe a little farther …
She shimmied a little higher, then reached out, and thought she felt an oddity as she got exactly high enough. An invisible tugging on the tips of her fingers.
Then her foot slipped.
In a second she was tumbling through the air. She didn’t fall all the way to the base of the structure, merely to the floor of her plane. She hit with a loud crack, then lay dazed before letting out a loud groan.
Lusintia the honorspren was at her side a moment later.
As I suspected … Veil thought. She always seems to be nearby. She’d clearly been assigned to watch Shallan.
“Human!” she said, her short hair hanging along the sides of her white-blue face. “Human, are you hurt?”
Shallan groaned, blinking.
“Mmm…” Pattern said, stepping over. “Rapid eye blinks. This is serious. She could die.”
“Die?” Lusintia said. “I had no idea they were so fragile!”
“That was a long fall,” Pattern said. “Ah, and she hit her head when she landed on the stones here. Not good, not good.”
Other honorspren were gathering, muttering to themselves. Shallan groaned again, then tried to focus on Pattern and Lusintia, but let her eyes slip shut.
“We must act quickly,” Pattern said. “Quickly!”
“What do we do!” Lusintia said.
“You have no hospital here?”
“Of course we don’t have a hospital!” Lusintia said. “There are only a couple dozen humans here.”
“Mmm … but you won’t let them come back in if they leave, so they are basically caged here. You should feel bad. Very bad. Yes.”
Storms, Veil thought. Is that the best he can do? How did we ever let him fool us?
“Tell me what to do!” Lusintia said. “Do we carry her out to that Edgedancer?”
“It will take too long. She will die. Poor human whom I love very much. It will be tragic for her to die here, in the center of honorspren power and protection. Unless, of course, she were to be given Stormlight.”
“Wait … Stormlight?”
“Yes, she is Radiant,” Pattern said. “It would heal her.”
Shallan suppressed a smile. Pattern was a tad transparent, but the honorspren here plainly had little experience with humans. They swallowed the bait without question, and soon Shallan was being carried by a team of four. She tucked away the piece of cloth-wrapped stone she’d used to smack the ground as she landed, giving the impression that she’d hit her head.
In reality, her arm did ache. She had undoubtedly bruised it when she hit, though this wasn’t the worst self-inflicted wound she’d sustained in the name of science. At least this time her scheme hadn’t involved deliberately embarrassing herself in front of several attractive men.
She made sure to groan occasionally, and Pattern kept exclaiming how worried he was. That kept Lusintia and the other honorspren motivated as they hauled Shallan to a specific building, their footfalls echoing against enclosing stone.
They had a hushed but urgent conversation with a guard. Shallan made a particularly poignant whimper of pain at exactly the right moment, and then she was in. Light surrounded her as she was brought someplace brilliant. They hadn’t let her in here last time, when they retrieved Stormlight for Adolin’s healing.
She let her eyes flutter open and found that most of the Stormlight was contained in a large construction at the center of the room. A kind of vat, or tall jar. This was technology Shallan hadn’t heard of before coming to Shadesmar, and apparently not even the honorspren knew how it worked. They could be purchased from a group of strange traveling merchants called the Eyree.
