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I do not wish to become human, the Stormfather said. But perhaps I can learn. Perhaps I can change.
“That’s all it takes,” Dalinar said. “A willingness.”
You are wrong though. I do understand mercy. I have expressed it, on occasion.
“Really?” Dalinar said, curious. “When?”
FOURTEEN MONTHS AGO
Eshonai hit the ground of the chasm in a furious splash. Above, the battle for Narak continued, and the rest of the listeners summoned the Everstorm.
She should be leading them! She was foremost among them! She leaped to her feet and shouted to a dozen horrible rhythms in a row, her voice echoing in the chasm. It did no good. She had been defeated by the human Shardbearer, sent tumbling into the chasms.
She needed to get out of here and find the fight again. She started trudging forward. Though the water came up to her waist, the flow was not swift. It was merely a constant, steady stream from the Weeping—and in Shardplate she was able to walk against the current. Her greaves flooded with chill water.
Which way was which? The lack of light confused her, but after a moment of thinking, she realized she was being silly. She didn’t need to go either direction. She needed to go up. The fall must have dazed her more than she’d realized.
She picked a rough-feeling section of wall and began clawing her way up. She managed to get halfway to the top—using the awesome gripping strength of Shardplate, the Rhythm of Conceit pounding in her ears. But then the way the chasm wall bulged presented a problem. In the darkness, she couldn’t find a proper handhold, and the flashes of lightning above were too brief to help.
Lightning. Was that lightning too frequent, too bright, to be coming from other stormforms? Her own powers had been ruined by the water, naturally. She could barely feel any energy in her; it flooded out the moment it started to build.
What was happening? That was the Everstorm coming, wasn’t it? Yes, she could feel its power, its energy, its beauty. But there was something else.
Listening to the howling wind, she realized what it was. A second storm. A highstorm was coming as well.
She attuned the Rhythm of Panic.
The two storms clashed, making the very ground tremble.
Clinging to the wall within the chasm, Eshonai felt the wind howling above. The lightning made her feel like she was blinking her eyes quickly, light and darkness alternating.
Then she heard a roar. The terrible sound of water surging through the chasm, becoming an incredible wave. She braced herself, but when the water hit, it ripped her off the wall.
It was here, within these highstorm rainwaters, that Eshonai’s first battle began: the fight for survival.
She slammed into a rock, her helmet cracking. Escaping Stormlight lit the dark waters as they filled her helmet, suffocating her. She thrashed in the current and managed to grab something hard—an enormous boulder lodged into the center of the chasm.
With a heave, she pulled herself out of the water. A few precious moments later her helmet emptied, letting her gasp for air.
I’m going to die, she thought, the Rhythm of Destruction pounding in her ears. Water thundered around her, splashing her armor, and lightning spasmed in the sky above. I’m going to die … as a slave.
No.
An ember within Eshonai came alive. The part of herself she’d reserved, the part that would not be contained. The part that made her let Thude and the others escape. It was the core of who she was: a person who had insisted on leaving the camps to explore, a person who had always longed to see what was over the next hill.
A person who would not be held captive.
That was when her second battle began.
Eshonai screamed, trying to banish the Rhythm of Destruction. If she was to die here, she would die as herself! It was a highstorm. In highstorms, transformations came upon all people, listeners and humans alike. Within a highstorm, death walked hand in hand with salvation, singing a harmony.
Eshonai began summoning her Blade—but in a rumbling flash, her boulder shifted and she lost her grip. The Rhythm of Panic ruled her briefly as she was again submerged. Lightning flashing above made the water seem to glow as she was smashed into one chasm wall, then another.
Not Panic. Not your rhythms.
I reject you.
My life. My death.
I WILL BE FREE.
Sunken deep in the water, Eshonai summoned her Blade and rammed it into the chasm wall. For some reason, she thought she could hear its voice, far away. Screaming?
She clung to it anyway—holding steady before the current. She banished all rhythms, but she could not breathe. Darkness began to close in upon her. Her lungs stopped burning. As if … as if everything was going to be all right …
There. A tone. The strange, haunting one she’d heard when taking warform. It seemed … one of the pure tones of Roshar. It began a stately rhythm. Then a second tone, chaotic and angry, appeared beside it. The two drew closer, closer, then snapped together.
They melded into harmony, making a song of Honor and Odium both. A song for a singer who could fight, but also for a soldier who wanted to lay down her sword. She found this tone as, in the blackness, a small spren—shaped like a shooting star—appeared ahead of her.
Eshonai strained, reaching, clawing.
Her head came above water, and then her helm blessedly emptied. The rush of the river was slowing. She gasped sweet air, but then her hand slipped from her sword, and she slipped back under the water and was towed away—though with less force than before.
She attuned the rhythm. The Rhythm of War, the rhythm of victories and losses. The rhythm of a life at its end. To its beats, she resummoned her Blade and rammed it into the ground, holding it tightly as the waters slowed further.
She would not die. She would live. She was strong enough. Her journey was not at an end. Not. Yet.
She held on, belligerent, until the water slowed. Until the weight of her Plate was enough to resist the current without her effort, and she slumped against the bottom of the chasm, her back to the wall, water streaming over her.
She felt at her side, where the Plate had broken—as had her body. She bled from a deep gash here, her carapace ripped away. Each breath came as a ragged, sodden mess, and she tasted blood.
But in her mind, she cycled through the rhythms of her childhood. Awe. Confidence. Mourning. Determination. Then Peace.
She had lost the first battle.
But she had won the second.
And so, to the Rhythm of Victory, she closed her eyes. And found herself drifting in a place full of light.
What is this? Eshonai thought.
YOU WERE HIGHLY INVESTED WHEN YOU DIED, a voice said. It rumbled with the sound of a thousand storms, echoing through her. SO YOU PERSIST. FOR A SHORT TIME.
Invested? Eshonai thought.
YOU WERE RADIANT WHEN YOU DIED. YOU COULDN’T SAY THE WORDS, UNDER THE WATER, BUT I ACCEPTED THEM ANYWAY. HOW DO YOU THINK YOU SURVIVED THAT LONG WITHOUT BREATHING?
She floated. So … this is my soul?
SOME WOULD CALL IT THAT, said the Rider of Storms. SOME WOULD SAY IT IS A SPREN FORMED BY THE POWER YOU LEFT, IMPRINTED WITH YOUR MEMORIES. EITHER WAY, THIS IS THE END. YOU WILL PASS INTO ETERNITY SOON, AND EVEN I CANNOT SEE WHAT IS BEYOND.
How long? Eshonai asked.
MINUTES. NOT HOURS.
She had no eyes to close, but she relaxed in the light. Floating. She could hear the rhythms. All of them at once, with accompanying songs.
