The Way of Kings

I don’t care about a-”

“I need to go,” Shallan cut in, feeling suffocated. “I’m sorry.”

She brushed past the dumbfounded ardent, hurrying from the alcove, giving a wide berth to the place where the figure stood in her sketch. What was wrong with her?

She rushed to the lift, calling for the parshmen to lower her. She glanced over her shoulder. Kabsal stood in the hallway, looking after her. Shallan reached the lift, drawing pad clutched in her hand, her heart racing. Calm yourself, she thought, leaning back against the lift platform’s wooden railing as the parshmen began to take her down. She looked up at the empty landing above her.

And found herself blinking, memorizing that scene. She began sketching again.

She drew with concise motions, sketchpad held against her safearm. For illumination, she had just two very small spheres at either side, where the taut ropes quivered. She moved without thought, just drawing, staring upward.

She looked down at what she had drawn. Two figures stood on the landing above, wearing the too-straight robes, like cloth made from metal. They leaned down, watching her go.

She looked up again. The landing was empty. What’s happening to me? she thought with increasing horror. When the lift hit the ground, she scrambled away, her skirt fluttering. She all but ran to the exit of the Veil, hesitating beside the doorway, ignoring the master-servants and ardents who gave her confused looks.

Where to go? Sweat trickled down the sides of her face. Where to run when you were going mad?

She cut into the main cavern’s crowd. It was late afternoon, and the dinner rush had begun-servants pushing dining carts, lighteyes strolling to their rooms, scholars walking with hands behind their backs. Shallan dashed through their midst, her hair coming free of its bun, the hairspike dropping to the rock behind her with a high- pitched clink. Her loose red hair streamed behind. She reached the hallway leading to their rooms, panting, hair askew, and glanced over her shoulder. Amid the flow of traffic she’d left a trail of people looking after her in confusion.

Almost against her will, she blinked and took a Memory. She raised her pad again, gripping her charcoal pencil in slick fingers, quickly sketching the crowded cavern scene. Just faint impressions. Men of lines, women of curves, walls of sloping rock, carpeted floor, bursts of light in sphere lanterns on the walls.

And five symbol-headed figures in black, too-stiff robes and cloaks. Each had a different symbol, twisted and unfamiliar to her, hanging above a neckless torso. The creatures wove through the crowd unseen. Like predators. Focused on Shallan.

I’m just imagining it, she tried to tell herself. I’m overtaxed, too many things weighing on me. Did they represent her guilt? The stress of betraying Jasnah and lying to Kabsal? The things she had done before leaving Jah Keved?

She tried to stand there, waiting, but her fingers refused to remain still. She blinked, then started drawing again on a new sheet. She finished with a shaking hand. The figures were almost to her, angular not-heads hanging horrifically where faces should have been.

Logic warned that she was overreacting, but no matter what she told herself, she couldn’t believe it. These were real. And they were coming for her.

She dashed away, surprising several servants who had been approaching her to offer assistance. She ran, slippered feet sliding on the hallway carpets, eventually reaching the door to Jasnah’s rooms. Sketchpad under her arm, she unlocked it with quivering fingers, then pushed through and slammed it behind her. She locked it again and ran for her chamber. She slammed that door closed too, then turned, backing away. The only light in the room came from the three diamond marks in the large crystal goblet on her nightstand.

She got on the bed, then scrambled back as far from the door as she could, until she was against the wall, breathing through her nose with frantic breaths. She still had her sketchpad under her arm, though she’d lost the charcoal. There was more in her nightstand.

Don’t do it, she thought. Just sit and calm yourself.

She felt a growing chill, a rising terror. She had to know. She scrambled to pull out the charcoal, then blinked and began to sketch her room.

Ceiling first. Four straight lines. Down the walls. Lines at the corners. Her fingers kept moving, drawing, depicting the pad itself, held before her, safehand shrouded and bracing the pad from behind. And then on. To the beings standing around her-twisted symbols unconnected to their uneven shoulders. Those not-heads had unreal angles, surfaces that melded in weird, impossible ways.

The creature at the front was reaching too-smooth fingers toward Shallan. Just inches from the right side of the sketchpad.

Oh, Stormfather… Shallan thought, charcoal pencil falling still. The room was empty, yet depicted right in front of her was an image of it crowded full of sleek figures. They were close enough that she should be able to feel them breathing, if they breathed.

Was there a chill in the room? Hesitantly-terrified but unable to stop herself-Shallan dropped her pencil and raised her freehand to the right.

And felt something.

She screamed then, jumping to her feet on her bed, dropping the pad, backing against the wall. Before she could consciously think of what she was doing, she was struggling with her sleeve, trying to get the Soulcaster out. It was the only thing she had resembling a weapon. No, that was stupid. She didn’t know how to use it. She was helpless.

Except…

Storms! she thought, frantic. I can’t use that. I promised myself.

She began the process anyway. Ten heartbeats, to bring forth the fruit of her sin, the proceeds of her most horrific act. She was interrupted midway through by a voice, uncanny yet distinct:

What are you?

She clutched her hand to her chest, losing her balance on the soft bed, falling to her knees on the rumpled blanket. She put one hand to the side, steadying herself on the nightstand, fingers brushing the large glass goblet that sat there.

“What am I?” she whispered. “I’m terrified.”

This is true.

The bedroom transformed around her.

The bed, the nightstand, her sketchpad, the walls, the ceiling-everything seemed to pop, forming into tiny, dark glass spheres. She found herself in a place with a black sky and a strange, small white sun that hung on the horizon, too far away.

Shallan screamed as she found herself in midair, falling backward in a shower of beads. Flames hovered nearby, dozens of them, perhaps hundreds. Like the tips of candles floating in the air and moving in the wind.

She hit something. An endless dark sea, except it wasn’t wet. It was made of the small beads, an entire ocean of tiny glass spheres. They surged around her, moving in an undulating swell. She gasped, flailing, trying to stay afloat.

You want me to change? a warm voice said in her mind, distinct and different from the cold whisper she had heard earlier. It was deep and hollow and conveyed a sense of great age. It seemed to come from her hand, and she realized she was grasping something there. One of the beads.

The movement of the ocean of glass threatened to tow her down; she kicked frantically, somehow managing to stay afloat.

I’ve been as I am for a great long time, the warm voice said. I sleep so much. I will change. Give me what you have.

“I don’t know what you mean! Please, help me!”

I will change.

She felt suddenly cold, as if the warmth were being drawn from her. She screamed as the bead in her fingers flared to sudden warmth. She dropped it just as a shift in the ocean swell towed her under, beads rolling over one another with a soft clatter.

She fell back and hit her bed, back in her room. Beside her, the goblet on her nightstand