The Way of Kings

warcamps at the southern or northern sides.

None of the bridgemen had come after him. He wasn’t certain what Teft had told them. Perhaps he’d said Kaladin was distraught following Maps’s death.

It felt odd to be alone. Ever since he’d been betrayed by Amaram and made a slave, he had been in the company of others. Slaves with whom he’d plotted. Bridgemen with whom he’d worked. Soldiers to guard him, slavemasters to beat him, friends to depend on him. The last time he’d been alone had been that night when he’d been tied up for the highstorm to kill him.

No, he thought. I wasn’t alone that night. Syl was there. He lowered his head, passing small cracks in the ground to his left. Those lines eventually grew into chasms as they moved eastward.

What was happening to him? He wasn’t delusional. Teft and Lopen had seen it too. Teft had actually seemed to expect it.

Kaladin should have died during that highstorm. And yet, he had been up and walking shortly afterward. His ribs should still be tender, but they hadn’t ached in weeks. His spheres, and those of the other bridgemen near him, had consistently run out of Stormlight.

Had it been the highstorm that had changed him? But no, he’d discovered drained spheres before being hung out to die. And Syl…she’d as much as admitted responsibility for some of what had happened. This had been going on a long time.

He stopped beside a rock outcropping, resting against it, causing grass to shrink away. He looked eastward, over the Shattered Plains. His home. His sepulcher. This life on them was ripping him apart. The bridgemen looked up to him, thought him their leader, their savior. But he had cracks in him, like the cracks in the stone here at the edges of the Plains.

Those cracks were growing larger. He kept making promises to himself, like a man running a long distance with no energy left. Just a little farther. Run just to that next hill. Then you can give up. Tiny fractures, fissures in the stone.

It’s right that I came here, he thought. We belong together, you and I. I’m like you. What had made the Plains break in the first place? Some kind of great weight?

A melody began playing distantly, carrying over the Plains. Kaladin jumped at the sound. It was so unexpected, so out of place, that it was startling despite its softness.

The sounds were coming from the Plains. Hesitant, yet unable to resist, he walked forward. Eastward, onto the flat, windswept rock. The sounds grew louder as he walked, but they were still haunting, elusive. A flute, though one lower in pitch than most he’d heard.

As he grew closer, Kaladin smelled smoke. A light was burning out there. A tiny campfire.

Kaladin walked out to the edge of this particular peninsula, a chasm growing from the cracks until it plunged down into darkness. At the very tip of the peninsula-surrounded on three sides by chasm-Kaladin found a man sitting on a boulder, wearing a lighteyes’s black uniform. A small fire of rockbud shell burned in front of him. The man’s hair was short and black, his face angular. He wore a thin, black-sheathed sword at his waist.

The man’s eyes were a pale blue. Kaladin had never heard of a lighteyed man playing a flute. Didn’t they consider music a feminine pursuit? Lighteyed men sang, but they didn’t play instruments unless they were ardents.

This man was extremely talented. The odd melody he played was alien, almost unreal, like something from another place and time. It echoed down the chasm and came back; it almost sounded like the man was playing a duet with himself.

Kaladin stopped a short distance away, realizing that the last thing he wanted to do now was deal with a brightlord, particularly one who was eccentric enough to dress in black and wander out onto the Shattered Plains to practice his flute. Kaladin turned to go.

The music cut off. Kaladin paused.

“I always worry that I’ll forget how to play her,” a soft voice said from behind. “It’s silly, I know, considering how long I’ve practiced. But these days I rarely give her the attention she deserves.”

Kaladin turned toward the stranger. His flute was carved from a dark wood that was almost black. The instrument seemed too ordinary to belong to a lighteyes, yet the man held it reverently.

“What are you doing here?” Kaladin asked.

“Sitting. Occasionally playing.”

“I mean, why are you here?”

“Why am I here?” the man asked, lowering his flute, leaning back and relaxing. “Why are any of us here? That’s a rather deep question for a first meeting, young bridgeman. I generally prefer introductions before theology. Lunch too, if it can be found. Perhaps a nice nap. Actually, practically anything should come before theology. But especially introductions.”

“All right,” Kaladin said. “And you are…?”

“Sitting. Occasionally playing… with the minds of bridgemen.”

Kaladin reddened, turning again to go. Let the fool lighteyes say, and do, what he wished. Kaladin had difficult decisions to think about.

“Well, off with you then,” the lighteyes said from behind. “Glad you are going. Wouldn’t want you too close. I’m rather attached to my Stormlight.”

Kaladin froze. Then he spun. “What?”

“My spheres,” the strange man said, holding up what appeared to be a fully infused emerald broam. “Everyone knows that bridgemen are thieves, or at least beggars.”

Of course. He had been talking about spheres. He didn’t know about Kaladin’s… affliction. Did he? The man’s eyes twinkled as if at a grand joke.

“Don’t be insulted at being called a thief,” the man said, raising a finger. Kaladin frowned. Where had the sphere gone? He had been holding it in that hand. “I meant it as a compliment.”

“A compliment? Calling someone a thief?”

“Of course. I myself am a thief.”

“You are? What do you steal?”

“Pride,” the man said, leaning forward. “And occasionally boredom, if I may take the pride unto myself. I am the King’s Wit. Or I was until recently. I think I shall probably lose the title soon.”

“The king’s what?”

“Wit. It was my job to be witty.”

“Saying confusing things isn’t the same as being witty.”

“Ah,” the man said, eyes twinkling. “Already you prove yourself more wise than most who have been my acquaintance lately. What is it to be witty, then?”

“To say clever things.”

“And what is cleverness?”

“I…” Why was he having this conversation? “I guess it’s the ability to say and do the right things at the right time.”

The King’s Wit cocked his head, then smiled. Finally, he held out his hand to Kaladin. “And what is your name, my thoughtful bridgeman?”

Kaladin hesitantly raised his own hand. “Kaladin. And yours?”

“I’ve many.” The man shook Kaladin’s hand. “I began life as a thought, a concept, words on a page. That was another thing I stole. Myself. Another time, I was named for a rock.”

“A pretty one, I hope.”

“A beautiful one,” the man said. “And one that became completely worthless for my wearing it.”

“Well, what do men call you now?”

“Many a thing, and only some of them polite. Almost all are true, unfortunately. You, however, you may call me Hoid.”

“Your name?”

“No. The name of someone I should have loved. Once again, this is a thing I stole. It is something we thieves do.” He glanced eastward, over the rapidly darkening Plains. The little fire burning beside Hoid’s boulder shed a fugitive light, red from glimmering coals.