Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! Last week, Shallan pored over maps and practiced her Lightweaving on the way to meet with her dazzling betrothed. This week, we jump back in time to see the effects of her Middlefest interventions… and the lack thereof.
This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here. Click on through to join the discussion.
Chapter 48: No More Weakness
Point of View: Li’l Shallan
Setting: the Davar estate
Symbology: Inverse Pattern, Vedeledev, Chach
IN WHICH Shallan, Balat, and Wikim act like a normal family and get into a pun-off; a carriage arrives; shouting ensues; Jushu is given away in payment for his own gambling debts—House Davar’s debts are too great to allow anything else; Shallan buys him back with two knives and love; more shouting follows; Father has found an ominous outlet for his anger.
Quote of the Week
“You are the type of man who profits from the gambling of others. You know that it usually leads to loss. I give you items of real value. Take them. Please?”
The man considered. He held out his hands for the daggers, and his man passed them over. He unsheathed one of the daggers and inspected it. “Name for me one reason I should show this man pity. In my house, he was an arrogant glutton, acting without thought for the difficulty he would cause you, his family.”
“Our mother was murdered,” Shallan said. “That night, as I cried, Jushu held me.” It was all she had.
This makes me cry all over again—for the little Shallan who didn’t understand why her mother tried to kill her, why she had to defend herself against the one who should protect her, and for the family who has now been torn apart by the death and the deception it brought. Much as I want to kick Jushu up one side and down the other, I also feel pity for him; he found his “escape” in a way just as self-destructive as his twin’s original plan, but he never escaped from his escape.
Commentary
Once again, the whole Davar scene makes my heart hurt.
This chapter starts out so cheerfully: Shallan’s efforts at Middlefest are paying off. Balat has pretty much stopped killing cremlings for fun, as his relationship with Eylita has developed further—directly resulting, I think, from the walk Shallan set up for them. He’s trying hard to man up and be a leader, even as their father descends further into his own private gloom, ambition, and madness. Wikim, too, has changed dramatically. He is thoroughly enjoying his maths, with the approval and support of the Davar ardents—support that for once even went so far as to rebuke Lord Davar for his anger, claiming that the Almighty approved of Wikim’s interests. He has come so far, in fact, that he is no longer suicidal, and by way of proof, he gives Shallan his pouch of blackbane. (DUN!)
In fact, Balat is much better mentally, and Wikim is much healthier physically and mentally, and they’re sitting in the gardens together, laughing and teasing one another. Their conversation is a hoot, especially when Wikim starts tossing metaphors to Shallan to see what she can make of them. Just like, you know, a real family… although Shallan is still trying too hard to distract them when any negative interactions come up.
And then we find that, apparently, Shallan was unable to do anything for Jushu like she had done for Balat and Wikim. Whether she never had the chance, or was unable to come up with anything that worked, we don’t know—but Jushu has still been out playing Prodigal Son to the hilt, gambling away somewhat more than his share of the family’s (non-existent) fortune. Now (if you’ll forgive the mixed metaphors) the time has come to pay the piper, and he has nothing with which to pay. A quick look at the books makes it clear that whether he wants to or not, Lin Davar has no money to redeem his son’s debts.
This is a bad, bad, bad place to be, and all the optimism of the first pages is blown out like a candle in a highstorm. ::sigh::
We don’t really know whether Shallan had made a similar attempt to help her father, but she does think that he’d been doing better. Whatever caused that—mostly likely simple lack of provocation—it’s over now. There’s a chilling incident when she goes to him to ask that he reconsider his denial of Jushu. For the first time in probably ever, he yells at her; when she (foolishly?) points out the apparent folly of his approach to “fixing” their problems, things get scary:
He looked at her, face shadowed but eyes reflecting light, like twin embers in the dark of his skull. In that moment, Shallan felt a terrifying hatred from her father. He strode over, grabbing her by the arms. Her satchel dropped to the floor.
“I’ve done this for you,” he growled, holding her arms in a tight, painful grip. “And you will obey. I’ve gone wrong, somewhere, in letting you learn to question me.”
She whimpered at the pain.
“There will be changes in this house,” Father said. “No more weakness. I’ve found a way…”
“Please, stop.”
He looked down at her and seemed to see the tears in her eyes for the first time.
“Father…” she whispered.
He looked upward. Toward his rooms. She knew he was looking toward Mother’s soul. He dropped her then, causing her to tumble to the floor, red hair covering her face.
This is, quite possibly, the closest either one ever comes to acknowledging the truth. It also strengthens my belief that his love for her has, over time and perhaps with Odium’s influence, been turned to equal parts fear of what she could do if she felt sufficiently threatened by him. That bit with the “terrifying hatred” makes me reasonably confident that Odium is involved here.
She defies him, however obliquely, long enough to redeem Jushu from his creditors. The results of her defiance, though… The serving maid is bloodied and has a broken arm (at least), and her father makes it eminently clear that this is what will happen as the alternative to hurting Shallan. Disobey, and someone else will pay the price.
Agony.
Stormwatch
This takes place three years ago, four months after Middlefest.
Sprenspotting
Angerspren, shamespren, fearspren. The Davar home is not a happy place these days, and the spren reflect it. Also, no Pattern… unless… well, we’ll go to Ars Arcanum for that.
All Creatures Shelled and Feathered
I just have to point out a couple of small items. One, of course, is Sakisa the axehound, who totally acts like any dog. The other amused me:
Vines shook and withdrew before her, though as her pace sped up, she stepped on more and more of them, feeling them writhe beneath her feet and try to yank back. Cultivated vines had poor instincts.
Heh.
Ars Arcanum
So about that missing spren… Is it possible that Shallan was inadvertently Lightweaving with Balat and Wikim? She hasn’t consciously connected with Pattern for a long time, but she did something at Middlefest, during her conversation with Hoid. Could she also have done something with her brothers as well?
I honestly don’t think she did; I think she simply gave them a focus other than their pain, their fear, and themselves. But it’s an interesting thought.
Heraldic Symbolism
The Heralds for this chapter are Vedeledev and Chach. I’m thinking that Vedeledev is the Healer, reflecting the impact Shallan’s efforts have had on Balat and Wikim. I suppose the number four could be significant, being as Jushu is the fourth son, but it seems less likely. Chach could, perhaps represent the Dustbringers, but I think it’s more likely she’s here as Guard and/or for bravery. I’m guessing probably not obedience, unless you consider Shallan being obedient to Hoid’s encouragement to
Keep cutting at those thorns, strong one… Make a path for the light…
Well. That’s enough of that. Come commiserate with me in the comments, and next week we can cheer up when Shallan and Adolin have a real date. We’ll need the fun of that chapter, after the grief of this one!
Alice Arneson is a long-time Tor.com commenter and Sanderson beta-reader. With Sasquan 2015 a mere three weeks away, it’s not too late to become a member. Look for Wetlander at Registration—she’d really like to meet you. Also, don’t forget that Hugo voting ends this Friday at midnight Pacific Daylight Time. Finish it up—there’s some good reading to be done!
Yea Lil’ Shallan. Kid ought to be given a medal, she’s arguably more sensible than her older self–at least in book one wear she immediately wants to steal Jasnah’s Soul Caster instead of simply asking the woman to fix their own. I feel like this younger, more hopeful Shallan would have perhaps chosen the better path.
As far as the dept collectors, I believe I said in an earlier post that accepting the knives as payment doesn’t surprise me. Even loan sharks would prefer a negotiated payment–even a less than profitable one–to simply beating someone for defaulting.
They’re in the business for money, not breaking bones or leaving corpses. That usually only causes them more headaches from the law than it solves by intimidating future “clients”.
Ow. This chapter hurts. Is it weird to say that I’m proud of a fictional character? Because seriously, li’l Shallan defying her father to rescue Jushu is all kinds of awesome, and I feel proud of her. It’s also cool to see the start of the chapter, with Balat and Wikim starting to act like human beings again. Then there’s the shroud of darkness that falls over the family. I can’t help but feel sorry for everyone involved, even Lin to some extent. Definitely looking forward to a more uplifting chapter next week.
I like the puns that Shallan told her brothers in this chapter.
Alice, if you are correct and Lin has been or will be corrupted by Odium, do you (or anybody else, for that matter) have any theories as to how Odium corrupted Lin? Did Lin somehow have to worship or pledge himself to Odium (like Darkfriends in WoT) or did Lin find some object that would allow Odium to influence Lin (like Sauramon in LotR). If Lin did not take any affirmative action, then does that mean that Odium can influence anybody on Roshar? What about other Cosmere planets? As I understand it, Odium is not actually on Roshar.
I would be interested to hear theories on this topic.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
@3 Andrew
Mistborn spoilers whited out: Ruin was able to influence the Lord Ruler, Zane, all the Kolos, the steel inquisitors, and even Vin and Spook because they had hemalurgic spikes (in Vin’s case her ear ring), None of them were naturally loyal to him, and some even tried to defy him while he wasn’t actively exerting his influence over them. End spoilers.
Given’s Ruin’s M.O. It’s safe to say that there is possibly items or even just mental states that make people more vulnerable to Odium’s influence. The man acted selflessly to defend his young daughter, no matter how heinously he’s acted, I can’t help but think of him as another victim in this whole tragedy whose actions are not entirely his own.
I agree that Shallan is not using her Radiant powers in her interactions with her family- at least, not in an active “lightweaving”. Some time earlier in the book (I don’t remember which chapter) there was a chapter preface with a quote about Lightweavers and how they provided “spiritual sustenance”. That seems perfectly in line with what Shallan is doing for the Davar family here.
@3 & 4 – Hmmm. I hadn’t thought all that much about the mechanism. I would suspect certain mental states could open one to Odium; in this case, Lin’s original actions – covering up the details to protect Shallan – were motivated by love for his daughter. The effects, though, have twisted him into rage and bitterness, and the love is mingled with fear. I suspect that it has all turned him toward madness, which opened him up to Odium’s influence, magnifying the rage, bitterness, and fear while keeping the love alive as a means to further twist him.
That said, if Odium has actual agents on Roshar, an object could certainly have been introduced through which to affect him. Could a Soulcaster fabrial have that effect in someone inadequately protected by the rites of the ardentia or something? That’s the only item I can think of that anyone ever notes as being unexpected, and I don’t think Brandon would fail to mention an object with that level of significance.
Completely OT – just in case anyone wants to see more pictures like the one I shared a few weeks ago, Leon just put up a youtube video of the past year’s worth of #MontanaMoments. The Swan Valley, where many of the pictures are taken, begins about a 10-minute drive from the house I grew up in; Leon’s house is another 20-30 minutes up the valley. So… this is home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slkbS4gp5n4
Here, Lin Davar alludes to having begun Soulcasting with the fabrial, and the sudden wave of hate seems not to be coincidental. Elsewhere, the Shardbearers seem more susceptible to the Thrill; the dead Shardblades scream when touched by the proto-Radiants; the Soulcaster ardents gradually lose their human appearance and possibly personalities; Syl says Szeth’s use of the Honorblade is deeply wrong. The common thread here is that use of Surge-related powers without the mediation of the live spren seems to have a corrupting influence. I wonder what this means for artifabrians like Navani; will their creation/use of fabrials expose them to Odium’s influence?
Alan @8 – Good question. I’ve wondered about that last from several angles. Knowing that fabrials are powered by capturing spren, it gives me a slight case of the heebie-jeebies to see Navani being so good at using them. Humans obviously think of the “minor” spren – like the flamespren, rainspren, etc. – as merely natural objects to be captured and used; I don’t know if that’s valid or not. Maybe it is. But what is she going to do when she meets an intelligent, bonded spren? FWIW, Syl doesn’t seem to have an issue with fabrials, just the dead-spren-blades. Maybe the minor spren think it’s rather fun, and are actually cooperating voluntarily rather than being captives and slaves… But I don’t know.
Rambling with it… the fabrials Navani is creating use live – and perhaps cooperative – spren. This is definitely different than the dead-spren Blades, and definitely different than the Honorblades’ direct access to Surges without spren. The big unknown is the Soulcasting fabrials. What if they, like the Blades, are dead spren brought to life in a similar way? What if… the Soulcaster fabrials are a different form some of the spren happened to be in when they were betrayed? Oh, that’s a frightening thought. It would definitely make sense of the Soulcaster as an opening for Odium (or one of the Unmade, who I assume are related to Odium) to influence Lin, in much the same way as the dead Shards seem to be an opening for the Thrill to influence the Shardbearers.
This now goes on my list of burning questions to ask Brandon.
First time commenter.
Wetlandernw @9 – It seems to me that fabrials are based mostly off of nature spren, whereas the shards are based off of emotion type spren. At one point in the book, Syl says something to the effect of “Spren of him” referring to Odium, I assume. Is it reasonable to think that in the world of spren categorization there are different uses in the physical realm of the 3 types of spren overall (Cultivation, Honor, Odium). Hope that makes sense.
Would lend credence to your thought process that the spren used in Soulcasting are somehow different.
However, if Soulcasting were a power attached to Odium, then I don’t believe it would be something that Jasnah or Shallan could accomplish through the use of their spren-bonding abilities.
litsyemir@10: I think Soulcasting via the spren bond (a la Jasnah and Shallan) would not be susceptible to Odium, but perhaps via fabrial it is.
Wetlandernw @9 There is a Words of Sanderson I remember stating that the Unmade were shards of Odium.
I think that Shallan notices something important when she makes the comment that Lin looks up at where her mother’s soul is. I believe either: that circumstance opened him to Odium’s influence, an object linked to that circumstance (that might have been Shallan’s mother’s (which could also have affected her actions toward Shallan)), or an object that he placed there.
I could also be completely wrong and he is thinking about Pattern and what could happen, or some other unknown influence.
I don’t have a source, but I’m pretty sure I read that mental instability opens one up to being influenced, which is [Mistborn spoiler]both how Ruin got Vin’s mother to invest the earring and how Ruin got Zane to spike himself.[/spoiler]
Hey, welcome to the first-timers! Stay here, and keep commenting! :D
The Diagram @12 – Shallan repeatedly thinks of the thing in the wall safe as “Mother’s soul”, but IMO there are several things that make it clear she’s thinking of the Shardblade that killed Mother, and thinking of it as still being there in the safe. It’s possible, of course, that there was something else influencing Mother, and that Lin (perhaps inadvertently) kept it and now it’s influencing him. But I’m about 99.9 % sure that some part of the reason Lin never hurts Shallan is the knowledge of that Shardblade. The idea that the Soulcaster might be affecting him is, of course, sheer speculation.
Nazrax @13 – I think I’m recalling that one, too…
Hah. Found it. It’s actually in one of the Epigraphs from Hero of Ages:
This is a heartbreaking chapter: Shallan almost loses Jushu and has to scramble to save him because she couldn’t reach him like she did her other two brothers. It’s also, for lack of a word, a very “real” moment: Shallan was relatively lucky (within the context of the bad luck of being in this situation to begin with) to have something she could do for two of her brothers, but Jushu had nothing really to save him from his vicious cycle, not then. The pain of knowing a family member is destroying him/herself, and then seeing someone come for them and having to fight to keep them safe…Sanderson really nails that in this chapter.
And then the awful moment when Lin explains how he’ll hurt other people instead of Shallan to hurt her. The backdrop of a broken family with an increasingly abusive father…it makes a fairly standard villain statement into something so much more frightening and real than you usually see in fiction.
@16 FenrirMoridin
Your right it is more frightening. And sadder too since I cant help but think that some part of that statement is the last remaining vestiges of the “real” Lin still fighting to protect his daughter while he’s increasingly falling under the thrall of Odium.
Lil’ Shallan’s mother and whoever that man with her was have a lot to answer for in my book. What kind of sick, depraved human being can attack their own child? Lin causes a lot of damage to his family, Odium’s influence or not, he’s not completely innocent.
But her family should have meant something to Shallan’s mother, and the ultimate blame I think belongs at her feet. At least assuming she wasn’t under the complete control of Odium
@17 remember her mother thought she was innately evil and would end up destroying the world by bringing the desolation back. She thought she was saving the world. I mean if your child is evil incarnate should you not destroy it? If someone had killed Hitler as a child for example …
For my part, I loved how Shallan came to rescue her most wayward brother. It is just another example as to how she took all the risks for those she loves. It seems a running theme with the Radiants: actively trying to protect their loved ones, both in their own ways. Kaladin simply tried to keep them out of harms way, Shallan tries to create lies to make them forget their live sucks, Dalinar enforces a strict code to prevent them from having any fallback. This chapter makes me yearn for her family to get their butt in Urithiru. I cannot wait to read what befalls afterwards.
As for Lin and Odium, my thoughts were weaknesses are what attracts Odium. Lin succumbed to his own. Grief. Sadness. They overcome him. His strength did not counter-acted, so Odium poured in. I have come to believe characters with strong weaknesses and no strength to balance them are the next preys to Odium (Elhokar, I have you in my loop).
FYI, Alice, I cannot WAIT to read your commentaries on the next chapter. I have been waiting for it since this re-read started. I have so many notes myself on that one, I am very keen to read your analysis. You always have the knack to spot the passages seeming irrelevant at first, but full of interesting details. Next week will be a awesome.
Objects of Odium in the Davar household? Black Sphere?
@18 That’s a terrible justification that could be turned right back around on itself. Let’s not invoke Godwin’s law but any form of blanket statement about people groups being “innately” evil/inferior/whatever starts people down a short road towards atrocities.
Personal beliefs or not, the fact that she skips “reason with my daughter and try to make her stop” and goes straight to “execution” makes me completely unwilling to cut her any slack absent any evidence of mental tampering.
If Shallan is using magic to help her brothers it’s Transformation, not Lightweaving.
The Unmade are splinters of Odium, not shards–no biggie. So they are definitely related to Odium. And we just don’t know enough about them yet. From Mr. T’s Diagram (WoR Chapt. 81 epigraph):
Let’s assume, for the moment, that Mr. T was an uber-reliable narrator when he recorded the diagram. OK?
Yelig-nar (Blightwind) is the only confirmed member of the group (Dalinar’s vision of Nohadon). However, we several other suspects. It’s pretty clear that Yelig-nar is one of the thinking Unmade, fwiw.
Sooo many questions…
Is an Unmade trapped in the black sphere Gavilar gave to Szeth?
Where is that black sphere now?
Are there more than one black spheres (or similar)?
Does something like that reside in the Davar household, and is it negatively influencing emotions there? (Xaladin @20 and others)
And the list goes on.
The Voidbinding graphic (WoK endplate) really intrigues me, but I can’t make much of it. Maybe the faces represent the Unmade. The “surge” (void?) glyphs are certainly tweaked versions of the surgebinder surge glyphs, but other than that…???
Wetlandernw@9 – You wildly speculate that soulcasting fabrials might be another type of dead spren form. There would have to be at least one difference from shardblades. After Shallan steals Jasnah’s fake soulcaster, Jasnah wears around the broken, real one for two weeks, seemingly without notice. So either a radiant wouldn’t hear a scream from a soulcaster as they would a shardblade, or it being broken changed something. For that matter have we ever heard of a broken shardblade? Would it make since for a soulcaster to be able to break if it was the form of a dead spren? Those are my thoughts in response to that.
This is definitely a hard chapter. I wouldn’t want to be a maid in that household. It sounds like it might be safe to be a man working there though.
Okay, I did some skimming through the flashback chapters. Before Lin looses it at the end and goes all out on Balat is there any evidence of him hitting any man? This Odium corrupted version of Lin really just likes to go after the weak and helpless doesn’t he? He treats Shallan different since he thinks she isn’t helpless but that seems to just be about who he yells at
Bellaberry – I did think of Shallan’s broken Soulcaster; both she and Jasnah handled both the real (broken) one and Jasnah’s fake, and neither reacted to them. So either it’s not a dead spren, or the spren was somehow released when the fabrial broke.
I was going to make an argument for how the Soulcaster fabrials behave more like the Shardblades than like Navani’s new fabrials, but I find that I don’t have the mental capacity to do it tonight. *sigh* Maybe tomorrow.
Soulcaster’s mimic the Transformation ability held by Elsecallers and Lightweavers but they apparently have some rather severe physical side affects after long-term use.
Shardblades on the other hand are the–corpses–for lack of a better word of spren from ever order of Radiant. They also lack any form of physical side affect for their user that we have ever seen or heard mention of.
I’m thinking rather than a dead or enslaved spren using powers from a former bond, it simply allows the user to artificially interact with the Cognative Realm at the cost of slowly altering their own physiology as excess or waste by-product of the Stormlight energy used to fuel the transformations gets shunted into their own bodies over time.
Jasnah, as a proto-radiant with a spren can use the natural variant of Transformation without the side effects and has done so for years implying that the Soulcasters employ an imperfect copy of the surge at best.
If spren are responsible for their use, then they are alive and either non-sentient or completely willing to do what they do and have no ties whatsoever to the Knights Radiant or the Recreance.
Shardblades are created by a Radiant breaking his bond. Fabrials like Soulcasters are produced by imprisoning a living spren. People who are not Radiants like Navani are able to create, repair and use fabrials. Shardblades are bonded to their users, who seem to temporarily revive them when they use them. Soulcasters can probably be used without any bond (maybe even without a specific user, like the heating fabrials).
Splinters or shards, both imply that Odium is … splintered,
which I don’t think is true, right? Did I miss something?
Hi, travyl!
Warning–possible spoilers below for those who haven’t read Warbreaker and Elantris.
Absolutely correct…Odium is not splintered. And neither is Endowment, yet the Divine Breath of the Returned on Nalthis is a splinter of Endowment. So, live shard(holders) must be able to create splinters intentionally. We just don’t know how.
I guess we tend to think that splinters result only from the death of a shard(holder) like Tanavast, Aona or Skai (all killed by Odium), but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Re: Soulcasting fabrials
It strikes me as odd that artifabricians haven’t extensively studied those particular fabrials since they are vitally important to sustaining life on the Shattered Plains (both for food and shelter). Maybe they have been studied and we don’t know about the effort. Or it’s entirely possible that I missed something, so please feel free to give me a heads-up.
Anyway, there isn’t an endless supply of Soulcasting fabrials (afaik) and they can become non-functional, so why wouldn’t the Alethi want to be able to replace or repair broken Soulcasters. Could it be that the Ardentia doesn’t want the devices studied for some reason? Like the ardents will lose some perceived advantage if Soulcasters can be knocked out like cheap toys. That explanation doesn’t seem likely though, because ardents are essentially slaves to the nobility. So why isn’t Dalinar (or some other Highprince) jumping up and down about having Navani study those fabrials?
I have a niggling feeling there was a mention somewhere in WoK or WoR about having Navani repair the broken “House Davar” Soulcaster, but it’s probably still at the bottom of the ocean (or did Nazh recover it?). She could probably make Jasnah’s fake into a real one, given the proper skills, which she seems to have. So what’s up here?
Okay, I’ll probably end up having to go do several hours of research as a result of opening this can of worms, but here’s what I’m remembering.
Navani does indeed suggest that she would probably be able to repair Shallan’s broken Soulcaster… but that’s not the same as making a new one. There’s mention somewhere of the fact that modern artifabrians simply cannot figure out how to make them; they’re too complex.
However… that’s what they thought about the Shardblades, too; they had assumed the Blades were complex fabrials, but then they just recently discovered that the Blades had “originally” existed without the gemstones. Those were a later addition which allowed the Blades to be bonded and thus dismissed & summoned, but they were not an integral part of the Blades to start with.
There’s a combination of a lot of different things that makes me wonder if the Soulcaster fabrials have some kind of spren connection that doesn’t involve anything so simple as a spren trapped in a gemstone. It certainly wouldn’t have to be a dead-spren connection, but there is something about the fabrial itself – not its gemstones – that allows the user to access one of the Surges. Other than Honorblades, we don’t know of any other object that grants Surges – only living spren. So what is it with Soulcasters?
^^ Yes, exactly.
(You have to admit we both like doing the research. When time permits.)
Edit–Right, artifabrians, not artifabricians.
As I was pondering some of this fabrial stuff, I had an odd thought about Shardblades. Syl says that the 10 heartbeats are “primarily something of the dead. They need to be revived each time.” But, what about unbonded Blades, or Blades that haven’t had gemstones stuck into them? They’re always around. Does that mean that unbonded/ungemstone’d Blades are still a little alive, and the gemstoning + bonding kills them even more than they were before?
@35 Nazrax
No I don’t think so. I think a dead blade is a dead blade. According to Syl, the heartbeats sync bonded dead blades to their wielders and draw them out in a temporary artificial life of sorts.
I think it’s “primarily” something of the dead because Radiants can summon the blades of their living spren instantly under normal circumstances (generally the spren is going to be with the Radiant). But I think even they might face a time delay if for instance their spren was separated from them on some other task–say if Shallan sent Pattern to go spy on someone.
If the physical distance between them was great enough, there might be a time delay in re-summoning them. Or it might even be impossible if it’s too far, but that’s speculation. I’m sure we’ll find out one way or another at some point.
I had wondered about the dead-Blades with a gemstone and the dead-Blades without a gemstone. When they are without a gemstone, the wielder is unable to dismiss them at will. The are forced to carry them and they behave essentially like a 6 foot long cumbersome sword. When they are with a gemstone, the wielder is able to form a bond strong enough with the Blade to allow simple commands such dismiss and stay to work. The bond takes about a week to install itself, a week where the wielder has to be in constant contact with his Blade, but it does not seem as if it stops there. Dalinar comments on how a Blade being owned for a very long time would alter slightly its appearances to accommodate its wielder… It makes me think the bond between a wielder and a dead-Blade is not completely static.
As for the dead-Blades, we know the 10 heartbeats is required to bring them back to life, which implies they are “more” alive while being in the physical realm than while being in the cognitive realm, providing this is where they go when dismissed. So does it mean a Blade without a gem, since it is forced to remain in the physical realm forever is more alive than one with a gem? Or is it the tiny bond installed via the gemstone that provides them life? They needs a Nahel bond to be alive, to be aware of the physical realm, so is it this small bond is able to bring them back, some from death, but remove it and they are completely oblivious to their former pain?
All that being said, would a Radiant taking hold of an unbounded Blade without a gemstone hear the screams? So far, we have only seen Radiants holding bounded Blades….
So many questions…
@37 Gepeto
That’s an interesting question, and here’s another slightly more chilling one–why are the Shardblades screaming at all?
If you’ll recall the prologue of WoK the Heralds betrayed the Oathpack and “didn’t return” to wherever it is they were supposed to go between desolation because it was apparently essentially Hell capital H including the fire and brimstone and torture with hooks and whatnot.
I can’t imagine that Honor or Cultivation would do that to someone, but Odium controlling their experiences in the Spirit Realm? Absolutely.
Which begs the question is Odium or whatever force that tortured the Heralds now torturing the souls of all the ‘dead’ spren trapped as Shardblades?
If so, then the Recreance was an even more heinous betrayal by the former Knights Radiant than I would have imagined.
Okay, that’s a grim thought. As far as I know, the only words we’ve had associated with the screaming are Relis’s reaction at the not-really-a-duel:
But it’s always described with words like horrible, terrible, shriek, screech, scream. Suitable for Damnation, indeed.
Wetlandernw @33:
We do, in fact know of other fabrials that mimic the Surges. I.e. the healing fabrials, which, BTW, existed before the Recreance and could be used by Knights Radiant (as seen by Dalinar in a vision), so definitively weren’t dead spren. And the Oathgates use Transportation and ditto. So, I am less than convinced that Soulcasters are somehow more sinister. That they work imperfectly and slowly physically change their longtime and frequent users actually makes me even more sure that they are not dead intelligent spren and/or conduits of Odium. They also can be repaired, which means that unlike the dead blades, they can actually be broken and have discrete components. Soulcaster ardents are remote, but not violent or consumed by hatred, and their remoteness could also be explained by isolation of their position and their disfigurements.
So, yea, I don’t really agree with Davar’s soulcaster being the agent of his corruption. IMHO, he just couldn’t deal with the situation and in his despair and rage opened himself to Odium. It is also possible that one of the Unmade had been hanging around the vicinity and managed to magnify the Davar tragedy/drama.
Though, I always come back to the issue of Helaran and to lesser degree Balat not noticing the tensions between Lady Davar and Shallan, or their sister’s Lightweaving, for that matter, in which she seemed to engage quite openly before the tragedy. And to the fact that Lin didn’t even try to confide in Helaran. Surely, he couldn’t have believed him to be a danger to Shallan? There is something vital missing in the picture we have been given so far, IMHO.
@39
Um yeah, sorry Alice. Not a comforting thought I know, but I really can’t think of another explanation given the evidence.
Here’s hoping that if their little spren souls/minds are being tortured, they can be freed. The sooner the better.
It certainly makes the Heralds abandoning the Oathpact seem a bit more reasonable. I can’t honestly say I would willing step forward into Damnation itself over and over and over again (possibly for centuries at a time) as my “reward’ for years of battle and hardship trying to save the world.
Just a recent thought. Maybe the ancient version of the fabrials have to do with Cultivation