The words, problematically truthful, slapped him hard. He did not react, not outwardly.

“What of the matter I assigned you?” Dalinar asked him.

“Bordin?” Amaram said. “So far as I can tell, his story checks out. I really think that the madman is only raving about having had a Shardblade. It’s patently ridiculous that he might have actually had one. I—”

“Brightlord!” A breathless young woman in a messenger uniform—narrow skirt slit up the sides, with silk leggings beneath—scrambled up to him. “The plateau!”

“Yes,” Dalinar said, sighing. “Sadeas is sending out troops?”

“No, sir,” the woman said, flush in the cheeks from her run. “Not . . . I mean . . . He came out of the chasms.”

Dalinar frowned, looking sharply toward her. “Who?”

“Stormblessed.”

* * *

Dalinar ran the entire way.

When he drew close to the triage pavilion at the edge of camp—normally reserved for tending to the wounded who came back from plateau runs—he had trouble seeing because of the crowd of men in cobalt blue uniforms blocking the path. A surgeon was yelling for them to back up and give him room.

Some of the men saw Dalinar and saluted, hastily pulling out of the way. The blue parted like waters blown in a storm.

And there he was. Ragged, hair matted in snarls, face scratched and leg wrapped in an improvised bandage. He sat on a triage table and had removed his uniform coat, which sat on the table beside him, tied into a round bundle with what looked like a vine wrapping it.

Kaladin looked up as Dalinar approached, and then moved to pull himself to his feet.

“Soldier, don’t—” Dalinar began, but Kaladin didn’t listen. He hauled himself up tall, using a spear to support his bad leg. Then he raised hand to breast, a slow motion, as if the arm were tied with weights. It was, Dalinar figured, the most tired salute he’d ever seen.

“Sir,” Kaladin said. Exhaustionspren puffed around Kaladin like little jets of dust.

“How . . .” Dalinar said. “You fell into a chasm!”

“I fell face-first, sir,” Kaladin said, “and fortunately, I’m particularly hard-headed.”

“But . . .”

Kaladin sighed, leaning on his spear. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t really know how I survived. Some spren were involved, we think. Anyway, I hiked back through the chasms. I had a duty to see to.” He nodded to the side.

Farther into the triage tent, Dalinar saw something he hadn’t originally noticed. Shallan Davar—a tangle of red hair and ripped clothing—sat amid a pack of surgeons.

“One future daughter-in-law,” Kaladin said, “delivered safe and sound. Sorry about the damage done to the packaging.”

“But there was a highstorm!” Dalinar said.

“We really wanted to get back before that,” Kaladin said. “Ran into some troubles along the way, I’m afraid.” With lethargic movements, he took out his side knife and cut the vines off the package beside him. “You know how everyone kept saying there was a chasmfiend prowling about in the nearby chasms?”

“Yes . . .”

Kaladin lifted the remnants of his coat away from the table, revealing a massive green gemstone. Though bulbous and uncut, the gemheart shone with a powerful inner light.

“Yeah,” Kaladin said, taking the gemheart in one hand and tossing it to the ground before Dalinar. “We took care of that for you, sir.” In the blink of an eye, gloryspren replaced his exhaustionspren.

Dalinar stared mutely at the gemheart as it rolled and tapped against the front of his boot, its light almost blinding.

“Oh, don’t be so melodramatic, bridgeman,” Shallan called. “Brightlord Dalinar, we found the beast already dead and rotting in the chasm. We survived the highstorm by climbing up its back to a crack in the side of the plateau, where we waited out the rains. We could only get the gemheart out because the thing was half-rotted already.”

Kaladin looked to her, frowning. He turned back to Dalinar almost immediately. “Yes,” Kaladin said. “That’s what happened.”

He was a far worse liar than Shallan was.

Amaram and Navani finally arrived, the former having remained behind to escort the latter. Navani gasped when she saw Shallan, then ran to her, snapping angrily at the surgeons. She fussed and bustled around Shallan, who seemed far less the worse for wear than Kaladin, despite the terrible state of her dress and hair. In moments, Navani had Shallan wrapped in a blanket to cover her exposed skin, then she sent a runner back to prepare a warm bath and meal at Dalinar’s complex, to be had in whichever order Shallan wished.

Dalinar found himself smiling. Navani pointedly ignored Shallan’s protests that none of this was necessary. The mother axehound had finally emerged. Shallan was apparently no longer an outsider, but one of Navani’s clutch—and Chana help the man or woman who stood between Navani and one of her own.

“Sir,” Kaladin said, finally letting the surgeons settle him back on the table. “The soldiers are gathering supplies. The battalions forming up. Your expedition?”

“You needn’t worry, soldier,” Dalinar said. “I could hardly expect you to guard me in your state.”

“Sir,” Kaladin said, more softly, “Brightness Shallan found something out there. Something you need to know. Talk to her before you set out.”

“I’ll do so,” Dalinar said. He waited for a moment, then waved the surgeons aside. Kaladin seemed to be in no immediate danger. Dalinar stepped closer, leaning in. “Your men waited for you, Stormblessed. They skipped meals, pulled triple shifts. I half think they’d have sat out here, at the head of the chasms, through the highstorm itself if I hadn’t intervened.”

“They are good men,” Kaladin said.

“It’s more than that. They knew you would return. What is it they understand about you that I don’t?”

Kaladin met his eyes.

“I’ve been searching for you, haven’t I?” Dalinar said. “All this time, without seeing it.”

Kaladin looked away. “No, sir. Maybe once, but . . . I’m just what you see, and not what you think. I’m sorry.”

Dalinar grunted, inspecting Kaladin’s face. He had almost thought . . . But perhaps not.

“Give him anything he wants or needs,” Dalinar said to the surgeons, letting them approach. “This man is a hero. Again.”

He withdrew, letting the bridgemen crowd around—which, of course, started the surgeons cursing at them again. Where had Amaram gone? The man had been here just a few minutes ago. As the palanquin arrived for Shallan, Dalinar decided to follow and find out just what it was that Kaladin said the girl knew.

* * *

One hour later, Shallan snuggled into a nest of warm blankets, wet hair on her neck, smelling of flowered perfume. She wore one of Navani’s dresses—which was too big for her. She felt like a child in her mother’s clothing. That was, perhaps, exactly what she was. Navani’s sudden affection was unexpected, but Shallan would certainly accept it.

The bath had been glorious. Shallan wanted to curl up on this couch and sleep for ten days. For the moment, however, she let herself revel in the distinctive feeling of being clean, warm, and safe for the first time in what seemed like an eternity.

“You can’t take her, Dalinar.” Navani’s voice came from Pattern on the table beside Shallan’s couch. She didn’t feel a moment’s guilt for sending him to spy on the two of them while she bathed. After all, they had been talking about her.

“This map . . .” Dalinar’s voice said.

“She can draw you a better map and you can take it.”

“She can’t draw what she hasn’t seen, Navani. She’ll need to be there, with us, to draw out the center of the pattern on the Plains once we penetrate in that direction.”

“Someone else—”

“Nobody else has been able to do this,” Dalinar said, sounding awed. “Four years, and none of our scouts or cartographers saw the pattern. If we’re going to find the Parshendi, I’m going to need her. I’m sorry.”

Shallan winced. She was not doing a very good job of keeping her drawing ability hidden.

“She just got back from that terrible place,” Navani’s voice said.

“I won’t let a similar accident occur. She will be safe.”

“Unless you all die,” Navani snapped. “Unless this entire expedition is a disaster. Then everything will be taken from me. Again.” Pattern stopped, then spoke further in his own voice. “He held her at this point, and whispered some things I did not hear. From there, they got very close and made some interesting noises. I can reproduce—”

“No,” Shallan said, blushing. “Too private.”

“Very well.”

“I need to go with them,” Shallan said. “I need to complete that map of the Shattered Plains and find some way to correlate it with the ancient ones of Stormseat.”

It was the only way to find the Oathgate. Assuming it wasn’t destroyed in whatever shattered the Plains, Shallan thought. And, if I do find it, will I even be able to open it? Only one of the Knights Radiant was said to be able to open the pathway.

“Pattern,” she said softly, clutching a mug of warmed wine, “I’m not a Radiant, right?”

“I do not think so,” he said. “Not yet. There is more to do, I believe, though I cannot be certain.”

“How can you not know?”

“I was not me when the Knights Radiant existed. It is complex to explain. I have always existed. We are not ‘born’ as men are, and we cannot truly die as men do. Patterns are eternal, as is fire, as is the wind. As are all spren. Yet, I was not in this state. I was not . . . aware.”

“You were a mindless spren?” Shallan said. “Like the ones that gather around me when I draw?”

“Less than that,” Pattern said. “I was . . . everything. In everything. I cannot explain it. Language is insufficient. I would need numbers.”

“Surely there are others among you, though,” Shallan said. “Older Cryptics? Who were alive back then?”

“No,” Pattern said softly. “None who experienced the bond.”

“Not a single one?”

“All dead,” Pattern said. “To us, this means they are mindless—as a force cannot truly be destroyed. These old ones are patterns in nature now, like Cryptics unborn. We have tried to restore them. It does not work. Mmmm. Perhaps if their knights still lived, something could be done . . .”

Stormfather. Shallan pulled the blanket around her closer. “An entire people, all killed?”

“Not just one people,” Pattern said, solemn. “Many. Spren with minds were less plentiful then, and the majorities of several spren peoples were all bonded. There were very few survivors. The one you call Stormfather lived. Some others. The rest, thousands of us, were killed when the event happened. You call it the Recreance.”