And so we come to the end of Rhythm of War, Part Four: A Knowledge. This chapter is the one that really triggers the Avalanche that is Part Five, as Navani makes a breakthrough discovery but is unable to hide it from Raboniel. The emotions run high, shall we say? Also, the maths and physics. Warning: If you find the science side dull, you might have a tough time with part of this week’s reread, because Alice always gets carried away with the sciencey stuff. Still, come on in and join the discussion!
Reminder: We’ll be discussing spoilers for the entirety of the series up until now. If you haven’t read ALL of the published entries of The Stormlight Archive (this includes Edgedancer and Dawnshard as well as the entirety of Rhythm of War), best to wait to join us until you’re done.
Heralds: Nalan (Nale), Herald of Justice. Skybreakers (Gravitation, Division). Just/Confident. Role: Judge.
A: I’m as baffled this week as I was last week. Why is Nale here? The best I can guess is that the Surge of Division is used by the Skybreakers, and what Navani is doing here is division at a very fine level. Or I suppose, with the lies and betrayal, maybe this is an inverse of justice?
Icon: Fabrial Gemstone for Navani’s POV.
Epigraph:
As one who has suffered for so many centuries… as one whom it broke… please find Mishram and release her. Not just for her own good. For the good of all spren.
For I believe that in confining her, we have caused a greater wound to Roshar than any ever realized.
A: It’s an interesting peek into the mind of a Herald who’s just about gone ‘round the twist. There’s definitely a note of compassion for someone trapped with only her own mind for company, from one who has spent millennia in a different sort of trap. So that’s nice.
The more interesting aspect is what’s implied in the last two sentences. This could go so many different directions. We know that broken Nahel bonds didn’t cause deadeyes until after Mishram was trapped, so the idea that her captivity somehow affects all spren is not entirely new—but how does it affect the “natural” spren (the non-sapient ones, both emotion- and nature-related)? Is the ability to split spren for fabrials a phenomenon only enabled by Mishram’s capture? It seems to be a relatively new technology.
Beyond that, we know that the Recreance happened after she was trapped. Did the spren and Radiants realize they had created a problem by trapping her, but decided that rather than releasing her, it would be better to end all Surgebinding? It wouldn’t be the first time someone made things even worse by doubling down on a decision that turned out to be less than ideal. It’s also possible that someone (Melishi?) had already done something with her gemstone that made it seemingly impossible to find it and release her. Now I have all sorts of theories floating around in my head again, some of which are recorded in TinFoil. Most of them will probably be wrong, but they’re fun to think about.
Chapter Recap
WHO: Navani
WHEN: 1175.4.10.2—The 17S timeline places this two days after the events of Chapter 89, but the first part of it clearly takes place beginning the moment Raboniel leaves the room at the end of that chapter. Much of the experimentation here takes place over the course of two days, with the first breakthrough coming very late on the second day; the interaction with Raboniel takes place the following day.
WHERE: Urithiru
(Note: For the “when” notations, we are using this wonderful timeline provided by the folks at The 17th Shard.)
RECAP: Navani dives into experimentation, using various tools to create different sounds. She finally creates a tone that drives Voidlight out of a gemstone, much to the discomfort of her singer guard. Unfortunately, Raboniel discovers this breakthrough, and, seeing through Navani’s subterfuge, insists on being present for the next stage of experimentation. With the tone reproducible, Navani develops a light from that tone—anti-Voidlight. Raboniel messes with it when Navani leaves the room, creating an explosion that, to Navani’s chagrin, doesn’t actually kill her. Together they create another anti-Voidlight gemstone, and Raboniel uses it to permanently kill her daughter, releasing her to go Beyond. They share a moment of compassion, but then Raboniel co-opts the notes and equipment to replicate the process and create anti-Stormlight. She intends to test it on the captive Radiants and their bonded spren.
Chapter Chat—Breakthroughs and Betrayals
A: Remember that the last time we saw Navani, she’d just had the breakthrough theory that she’d find the true opposite of the Lights in sound. She’d realized that, as the Investiture created both visible and audible waveforms, either could be used to create the antithesis she sought. If you already know how destructive interference works, I won’t bore you with my attempt to explain it. If you don’t… I won’t bore you with my attempt to explain it. This little visual might help? Anyway, my geeky little engineer’s heart was pretty excited to see this applied in a fantasy novel! (And now I want to see him use constructive interference… which can also be very destructive. This, for example, happened when a harmonic oscillation constructively interfered with itself.)
Okay, back to Navani. Most of this chapter could have been tucked under “Music, Mechanisms, and Manifestations of Light,” but there are enough other aspects to it that… nope. It’s all here.
The answer was here. The answer meant something. She couldn’t explain why, but she needed this secret. …
These actions horrified a part of her. She was still herself, the type of woman who put her socks in the drawer so they all faced the same direction. She loved patterns, she loved order. But in this quest for meaning, she found she could appreciate something else entirely. The raw, disorganized chaos of a brain making connections paired with the single-minded order of a quest for one all-consuming answer.
A: Aside from giggling at the sock drawer, I love the way Navani freaks herself out here. What she’s seeing (IMO) for the first time in her life is a different aspect of her obsessive-compulsive personality. One reason she likes scholarship is the order and method. It’s the same reason she’s always been distracted by running the kingdom: She sees how much it requires order and method, and she wants things done right, which means she has to do it herself. (Remember seeing that at the beginning of Oathbringer, when Adolin was trying to get the merchants to set up according to Navani’s plans?) The difference is that now she has an urgency to find a very specific solution, and so she instinctively sets aside all the orderly things that don’t support that search. The orderliness of her subconscious mind is able to make the needed connections, but without her conscious volition. Yes, she’s still herself, but a rather different version for a few days.
Buy the Book
The Lost Metal
P: The socks in the drawer facing the same direction cracked me up, too. But I love that she lets go of her orderly habits and goes all in on her experiments. She never just lets herself go and although the results have horrifying possibilities, it’s good to see her give it her all.
A: It’s pretty amazing to see what she can do in this state. I wonder if she’ll ever reach a point in her research where she’ll be able to meld the two approaches—though it’s worth noting that even in her supposed chaotic state, she’s still taking careful notes.
Her study morphed from music theory—where some philosophers said that the true opposite of sound was silence—to mathematics. Mathematics taught that there were numbers associated with tones—frequencies, wavelengths. …
The opposite of most numbers was a negative number. Could a tone be negative? Could there be a negative wavelength? … Could she make a tone that produced the opposite pattern? Peaks where there were troughs, troughs where there were peaks? …
They called it destructive interference. Strangely, the theories said that a sound and its opposite sounded exactly the same.
A: Sorry… the maths and physics are so fascinating to me. Paige, you might need to bring me back to the people… But seriously, this is important stuff in Cosmerology (or whatever you call it)—the way the forces of the Cosmere function. I know there are people who prefer the magic to just be magic, meaning incomprehensible. I’m not one of them; I find the magic more interesting when there’s a rationality to it. And we’ll come back to the thing about sounding exactly the same.
P: Eh, you’re doing fine. It’s cool to be excited about math and physics! I have the dumb when it comes to both so you go, girl.
If a tone and its destructive interference sounded the same, how could she sing one and not the other? …
She could hear the tone she wanted, she thought. Or was it madness? This desire to create an anti-sound?
It took hours. Maybe days. … When she played this particular tone—bow on steel—something happened. Voidlight was shoved out of the sphere attached to the plate. …
As when measuring spren—which reacted to your thoughts about them—this tone needed Intent to be created. You had to know what you were trying to do.
A: And there’s the key to the magic, the key to how even physics—at least as it applies to Investiture—works in the Cosmere. Intent. (Not that this is a new concept, I know. I just love seeing it play out here.) Even though she suggests it might be madness to think she can hear the anti-sound she wants, it’s that desire that enables her to invert the waveform. (It’s not clear exactly how her filing results in placing the wave exactly out of phase with the Voidlight wave, but I’m content to let that ride. We don’t need that much detail.)
But of course we’re not done here. (This is an insanely long chapter, you know?) Now she has to turn the sound into Light—or rather anti-Light. For certain applications, this wouldn’t really be necessary, but I’m not sure she’s really aware of that in the moment. She knows it can be made into Light, because she’s seen the anti-Stormlight sphere that blew up the lab where Talnah and Nem were working with it. The logical next step—at least the way her mind is working now—is to create a similar sphere containing anti-Voidlight. So… onward. Except that “onward” means requesting equipment that piques Raboniel’s curiosity.
P: How she figures out how to turn the sound into Light is delightful. To be honest, this chapter was a bit heavy for me during the beta. But each time I’ve read it since, I like it more and more.
And yes, once she catches Raboniel’s attention with her equipment requests, she has no choice but to share what she’s doing. A good liar, she is not.
“What are you working on?” Raboniel asked. “The guard tells me of a terrible sound you have been making, something discordant.”
Damnation. The new tone didn’t sound the same to a Regal.
A: Damnation indeed.
P: Y’all can imagine the swear I chose. “Storms” will have to do.
“Creating Warlight requires a slight alteration of Odium’s and Honor’s tones, in order to put them into harmony. If I can find other things that alter Voidlight’s tone, I might be able to create other hybrids.”
A: Her efforts to distract Raboniel are really pretty cool, and worthy experiments in their own right. I’m impressed with the plausibility of her explanation; I assume she’s considered this over the last weeks as a way to disguise the purpose of her main experiments by burying them in a variety of other valid ideas that would go in different directions.
P: She’s nothing if not clever, our Navani.
Raboniel lingered as Navani recorded her notes…
Navani managed to appear unconcerned right until she heard the plates being shifted. She turned to see Raboniel pulling out the new one, the one she’d hidden beneath several others. Damnation. How had she picked out that one?
A: Damnation indeed. Again. And of course she plays it and understands it immediately.
P: Raboniel is a clever one, too. Storming Fused.
Navani kept her face impassive. Well, that answered one question. She’d wondered if the person playing the note needed the proper Intent to eject the Voidlight, but it seemed that creating the plate to align to her hummed tones was enough.
A: I… don’t really have much to say about this, but it seems Significant. Once the sound source is made with the specific Intent, it will always make sound with that Intent.
P: Which would be handy for mass production of anti-Voidlight, if that were to become a thing.
A: We can hope!
“Navani,” Raboniel said, lowering the bow, “this is remarkable. And dangerous. I felt the Voidlight in my gemheart respond. It wasn’t ejected, but my very soul cringed at the sound. I’m shocked. And… and befuddled. How did you create this?”
“Math,” Navani admitted. “And inspiration.”
A: Math and inspiration can be a formidable combination. The effect on Raboniel is pretty profound and exciting. Oh, the possibilities! If simply bowing that plate affected her gemheart, what might happen if the sound could be amplified? Could it shut down all the Fused in the Tower if the Sibling could pump the sound out somehow? (Obviously that’s not where the story goes, but I still wonder.)
P: It’s an interesting question. I wonder how Odium would react to the sound, especially if it were amplified.
“I think what you wanted all along is possible, Raboniel. I have reason to believe there is an opposite Light to Voidlight.”
“Have you written this down?”
“No, I’ve merely been toying with random ideas.”
“A lie you must tell,” Raboniel said. “I do not begrudge you it, Navani. But know that I will rip this room apart to find your notes, if I must.”
A: Sigh. She already knows Navani too well to believe that she would not have written down everything that she’s done so far. She’s always recorded her experiments, both failure and success, because that’s how you make progress. She’s too good a scientist to leave it unwritten. Unfortunately, that makes her a poor liar—and she just watched Navani recording her notes on a minor experiment. Not write down how she reached a major conclusion? Never.
P: Indeed, she is. Raboniel knows Navani is too meticulous not to have written down her thoughts and observations.
“Still you do not believe me,” Raboniel said. “That we are so much stronger when working together.”
“How could I trust your word, Raboniel?” Navani said. “You’ve already broken promises to me, and each time I’ve asked to negotiate for the benefit of my people or the Sibling, you’ve refused.”
“Yes, but haven’t I led you to a weapon?” she asked. “Haven’t I given you the secrets you needed to make it this far? Within reach of something that could kill a god? All because we worked together. Let’s take this last step as one.”
A: Sigh. I mean… she’s not entirely wrong. Navani has learned much from her in terms of background knowledge. At the same time, Raboniel had all that knowledge for millennia, and still didn’t figure out what could be done with it. I’m not sure that gives her much by way of rights. Unfortunately, what she does have is leverage. Even if Navani hadn’t written it down, Raboniel could probably reverse engineer it if necessary, and it was only a side project for her anyway. The stakes are much higher for Navani: Even if it weren’t written down and if she went all self-sacrificial to keep the knowledge secret, the Sibling would still be Unmade and her people subjected to whatever the Fused wished to do to them. From her perspective, anti-Voidlight is her only hope of saving her people.
P: I saw someone hate on Navani for continuing her experiment at this point. This was shortly after the book was released and they basically called her a traitor for working with Raboniel and creating the anti-Voidlight. But as you say, she saw no other choice to try to save her people.
A: I can sort of understand the attitude, especially if you’re thinking about the side of Navani that just finds it hard to let go of a cool idea. And of course people are mad, because this discovery enables Moash to murder Phendorana and Teft. At the same time, this discovery is what enables Navani to kill Raboniel, and to purge the Tower of all the Voidlight Raboniel had pumped in, giving a major victory to Our Heroes. Would their world have been better off with an Unmade Sibling but no anti-Voidlight? And let’s not forget, someone had already created it once. At least now it’s in the hands of Navani and Dalinar.
Raboniel winced at the sound. “The Light won’t be able to hear,” she said. “It’s in a vacuum, as you said.”
“Yes, but it’s moving across, and will soon touch the empty diamond at the other side,” Navani said. “I want this to be the first thing it hears when it touches matter.”
A: This goes back to one of her earlier thoughts (which I didn’t talk about)—she’s hoping to “reverse the polarity” of the Light by first blocking all tones from it, and then rewriting it with the anti-Voidlight tone. On a personal and somewhat vindictive note, I find it quite satisfying that Raboniel then has to sit there and listen to the anti-Void tone the entire time they wait for the Light to drift across the vacuum chamber. Good.
P: You’re right that this chapter is just so long, there’s not room for everything! But I love Navani working with the Light in the vacuum. So clever, to change the tone of the Light this way.
Navani … plucked out the diamond. It glowed faintly violet-black. She stared at it, looking closer, until …
Yes. A faint warping of the air around it. She felt a thrill as she handed it to Raboniel—who screamed.
Navani caught the diamond as Raboniel dropped it. The Fused pulled her hand to her breast, humming violently.
“I take it the sound wasn’t pleasant,” Navani said.
“It was like the tone that plate makes,” Raboniel said, “but a thousand times worse. This is a wrongness. A vibration that should not exist.”
“It sounds exactly the same as the tone of Odium to me,” Navani said.
A: BAAHAHAHAHAHA! I’m sorry, I try not to quote so much at a time, but I loved this little scene. Navani gets a little revenge on Raboniel for insisting on taking the last step together, and it is sweet. Insufficient, but sweet.
P: I have to admit that I chuckled at Raboniel’s discomfort when she touched the diamond.
A: And Navani’s nonchalant “I take it the sound wasn’t pleasant.” Hah!
“I need a break, Raboniel.” …
“Go ahead,” Raboniel said, “I’ll wait.” … In fact, Raboniel was so fixated on the diamond that she didn’t notice Navani take Rhythm of War as she stepped out with the guard into the hallway.
She braced herself. Expecting…
An explosion.
…At any rate, Raboniel was still alive, and Navani’s scheme had failed. Navani had assumed that, in her absence, Raboniel would take the next step—to try mixing Voidlight with the new Light. Raboniel kept saying she expected the Lights to puff away when mixed, vanishing. She didn’t expect the explosion.
A: Well, if Raboniel knows Navani too well to believe certain things, the reverse is also true. Navani knows Raboniel well enough to know that she’ll casually try to prove her own belief about what opposing Lights will do. And if Raboniel didn’t expect the explosion, Navani certainly did. Unfortunately, it was a smaller explosion than the one that killed Talnah and Nem. Raboniel had put the diamond into the hilt of the dagger, as Navani had laid it out, but apparently the gemstone she chose to draw Voidlight from wasn’t full enough to create a truly massive explosion. Or the mechanism limited the amount that could come in contact.
P: Frankly, I’m skeptical that Raboniel didn’t suspect that Navani left the room on purpose at that moment… but then, I suppose she had no way of knowing that Navani was expecting something like this to happen.
A: Yeah, I think Navani had a major advantage in this one case. She knew something Raboniel didn’t: that anti-Light did exist, and that it would cause an explosion when mixed with its opposite. It’s one of the few times Navani knows more than Raboniel, and she did her best to make use of that knowledge.
Feeling an ominous cloud hanging over her, Navani repeated her experiment, this time filling the gemstone a little less—just in case—before removing it and holding it up.
Raboniel took it … [and flipped the raysium strip so the anti-Voidlight would flow out of the dagger.]
“You may wish to take cover.” Then she turned, walked across the room, and stabbed her daughter in the chest.
A: Gotta say, that was a shock. It makes perfect sense once you know, but that was not what I was expecting. Not anywhere on the list.
P: Huge shock. Left me gaping during the beta, let me tell you.
She went limp, and Navani thought she saw something escape her lips. Smoke? As if her entire insides had been burned away.
A: I assume this is similar to what happens when someone is killed by a Shardblade and their eyes “burn out”?
Navani walked over, listening to Raboniel’s sorrowful rhythm. …
“Elithanathile,” Navani said, whispering the tenth name of the Almighty. “You killed her forever, didn’t you?”
“No more rebirth,” Raboniel whispered. “No more Returns. Free at last, my baby. Free.”
A: Despite myself, this brings me to tears. As much as I hate Raboniel in this chapter, this one just makes my mother’s heart ache. But I also have to note that this really is a phenomenal breakthrough for the humans, if they can weaponize it. It’s a way to perma-kill the Fused, if they can find a workable delivery mechanism.
P: This elicits all the feels in me, too. To see Raboniel’s grief… storms.
“This is why,” Navani said. … Because you hoped to find this anti-Voidlight. Not because you wanted a weapon against Odium. Because you wanted to show a mercy to your daughter.”
“We could never create enough of this anti-Light to threaten Odium,” Raboniel whispered. “That was another lie, Navani, I’m sorry. But you took my dream and you fulfilled it. After I had given up on it, you persisted.”
A: Three things here… One, this is Sanderson, so I wouldn’t discount the possibility of creating enough anti-Voidlight to threaten Odium. Two, she flat out admits it was yet another lie. Three, despite her amazement and appreciation for what Navani was able to do, she’s going to immediately take it and use it against her.
P: There’s always another lie with Raboniel. And the fact that she wants to traipse off and murder the fallen Radiant’s spren is abhorrent. Storm her.
“I will have a copy made for you,” she promised Navani. “For now, I need this one to reconstruct your work. … I need to create a new plate, a new tone. For Stormlight.”
…“So much for your words about working together,” Navani said. “And you dared imply I was wrong to keep trying to hide things from you.”
A: And just like that, the needful equipment and the notebook are taken away from Navani, and like Navani I am furious. Talk about lies and betrayal!
P: Navani’s outrage is certainly understandable, but you can’t help but want to ask her what more she expected from her enemy.
A: Sigh. True. I want to see some gratitude, but… we all know better. Raboniel will use any tool to reach her goal, without compunction for who might be harmed. She didn’t care about creating a disease that killed her own people along with the humans; why would she care about Navani’s right as the inventor here?
“I will end the war,” Raboniel said. “That is the promise I will keep. … I have preserved the Radiants in the tower for a reason. Anti-Stormlight will need subjects for testing. … Today is a momentous day … Today is the day we discovered a way to destroy Radiant spren. I will let you know the results of the test.”
A: What an absolutely brutal way to end Part Four. Part Three was bad enough, when she realized that Raboniel had been eavesdropping on her conversations with the Sibling and had used that to find the third node and set a trap for Kaladin. This time, she’s basically handed the Fused a means to destroy the Radiants and the Nahel spren, paving the way to complete subjugation of the humans.
P: BRUTAL! I can only storming say “storm her” so many times but storming storm her! (I’m incredibly eloquent, I know.)
Spren and Shadesmar
“I assumed you were busy with your… work.” Unmaking the Sibling.
“I still need to bring down the final node,” Raboniel said. “Last time I touched the Sibling, I thought I could sense it. Somewhere nearby … but it is very, very small. Smaller than the others…”
A: Oh, right. There’s that. I was so caught up in Navani’s experiments, I almost forgot that along with wanting the opposites of the Lights, Raboniel’s official goal here is to Unmake the Sibling. I’m still not quite sure what the end result is supposed to be. A non-functioning tower, or a tower converted to function only on Voidlight as a home for the Fused, or… what? Raboniel’s mind is too convoluted for me to feel sure about anything with her, but “Unmaking the Sibling” is enough to remind me that I want her to fail!
P: Looking back, I’m surprised that I didn’t pick up on the “very, very small” hint about the final node. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and such.
A: Yeah, I don’t think I caught that either. We should have known that the model was more significant than we’d seen yet.
Bruised and Broken
A: I just have to say here that if Navani wasn’t already bruised and broken enough for a Nahel bond, this chapter would do it…
P: This experience may have been the boost she needed.
Humans
She put Voidlight spheres into her arm sheath and listened until she could hum that tone. She was delighted when—after hours of concerted practice—she could draw Voidlight out with a touch, like the Fused could do.
Humans could sing the correct tones. Humans could hear the music of Roshar. Her ancestors might have been aliens to this world, but she was its child.
A: This ability is, of course, critical to the narrative at this point. I wonder, though, whether this “belonging to Roshar” is going to become a different kind of plot point later in the series. It could be as simple as the Fused finally accepting that the humans have a right to be here, or as significant as Odium being unable to take them off-planet like he wants. Or… you know, other things that I haven’t even considered, that are festering in that fertile brain in Utah…
P: Navani has become adept at discerning the rhythms that Raboniel hums, and in which she speaks, so it stands to reason that humans can learn to hear the rhythms, too.
A: It occurs to me that no one has even considered this for a couple thousand years, because no humans had any opportunity to know the rhythms existed until Dalinar ran into Eshonai a few years ago. So if humans had ever tried to access the rhythms and tones, it would have been lost in history.
TinFoil TheoryCrafting
P: Have at it, Alice. I’ll just watch!
A: So I’m going to record a few of the odd theories that occurred to me regarding the epigraph. I don’t expect any of these to play out, but they’re fun.
Melishi hid the gemstone in Urithiru, but after the Bondsmith bond was broken, so the Sibling doesn’t know where it is.
Melishi took the gemstone into Shadesmar and to a place impossible to access from the physical side—deep under an island, for example, in a Shadesmar sea of beads—and then pushed it back into the physical realm so it’s buried in tons of rock.
Melishi sacrificed himself to place the gemstone somewhere it couldn’t be retrieved, breaking the Sibling’s bond by his death. Or not-quite-death.
I could go on…
And here’s another one, with respect to the creation of the anti-Voidlight sphere. I wonder what would happen if she released Stormlight into the vacuum chamber, and then tried to rewrite that with this tone when it touched the empty diamond. Would it still be Stormlight of some sort, or would it be rewritten as anti-Voidlight? Is all Light similar in essence, needing a tone to shape it? Or is Stormlight (absent tone) still different from Voidlight?
Arresting Artwork
A: I always hesitate to copy this much text from anywhere, particularly the Coppermind, but I think the text on this page needs to be copied here for purposes of discussion. So with all credit to the fans who translated this (I don’t know who they were), I’m pasting it all in. (I’m removing the line breaks within quotes because it takes up too much space, though.)
This particular entry in the “Navani’s Notebook” series is another reminder that we’re looking right at the in-world “Rhythm of War” document reflected in the novel’s title.
At the top, the title “The Thaylen vacuum tube,” is followed below by two notes of explanation on how it works:
The metal caps unscrew for versatility in experimentation
A fabrial pump removes the remaining air
To the right is a note about a way she might manipulate the equipment:
A cracked diamond affixed to the end might give the exact result I am seeking
Then comes a fascinating exchange between the two scholars:
Navani: The rhythms cause patterns in the sand. Different patterns for the different kinds of light. There must be an answer of some kind here though I wish I could consult a true scholar concerning this
Raboniel: Now that we have seen where this line of exploration has led, I am amazed that you were able to extrapolate this voice of lights
Navani: The tones are becoming easier for me to hear. I recognise the tones of the different kinds of light and struggle to hear if there is something more.
Raboniel: Your research has yielded great fruits. There was a time I thought it impossible for one of your kind to hear the rhythms. How could I have anticipated the magnitude of what you have kept hidden from me? I fear I have underestimated you and your kind.
A: So many little notes here…
Navani, always with the “I’m not a true scholar” reflex. Also, the hinted callback to the cymatics thing back in The Way of Kings, with its subtle reminder that there’s more to learn about the ancient cities and means of construction. (And the question… who really created those cities in the first place?)
Raboniel, offering respect and reminding Navani of her new title with all it implies. Even though the singers have always been able to hear and reproduce the tones, Navani has given a voice to the lights in a new and unique way.
The amazing progress Navani has made in hearing the tones of Roshar—which makes me wonder how many other humans have been able to hear them, but never recognized the significance. Or if no one ever really tried before, because they never had the combination of insight and incentive that has pushed Navani into development of her ear and her voice.
Raboniel, again showing respect for Navani’s scholarship as well as her unexpected capacity to learn to hear the rhythms. That last bit, though… I’m not sure whether to be awed or terrified. After 7,000 years, she’s realizing that she underestimated humans… and now she’s recording all this in a book which will be read by other Fused/singer scholars. Not only will they also have the secrets of creating, reproducing, capturing, and manipulating the various Lights and anti-Lights, they are hereby warned not to underestimate the humans’ ability to do so as well, if with greater difficulty. While it holds potential for the two races to work together, should they team up against other forces, it also puts both sides of the current conflict in possession of new technology—and the singer side is better equipped to make use of it.
A: Well, that’s the end of that chapter and Part Four. What have we learned about “A Knowledge” over the past months? We’ve learned that knowledge by itself doesn’t necessarily get you where you want to go; that takes hard work, thought, inspiration, and persistence. We’ve come across a lot of different kinds of knowledge, too: the knowledge that your past doesn’t have to control your present (Teft), the knowledge that you can learn to do better (Venli), the knowledge that even the past sometimes changes (the listener survivors). (Well, okay, the facts don’t change, but sometimes what you “know” about the past turns out to be incorrect.) What else? Thoughts?
We’ll be leaving further speculation and discussion to you in the comments, and hope to join you there! Next week, we’ll be back with Interlude 10, in which Hesina challenges Lirin to look at the world a little differently.
Alice lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two kids. She’s very excited about seeing her daughter today, and bringing her home for fall break. She’s also pretty pumped about the Yankees clinching their title, but not as much as Paige is.
Paige resides in New Mexico, of course. And she’s fangirling out on baseball this week. Go, Yankees! Links to her other writing are available in her profile.
