Oh my storms, my Cosmere Chickens, this is a heck of a ride. This is a very long chapter and we’ve got a lot to cover here, from new Radiant Oaths being sworn, revelations about Heralds and spren and highly Invested swords, and bad guys getting their just rewards. (Hmm, that almost rhymed!) Let’s jump right in, shall we?
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.
In this week’s discussion we also discuss some things touching on Warbreaker in the Cosmere Connections section, so if you haven’t read it, best to give that section a pass.
Heralds:
Lyn: Ah, another of the rare four-Herald chapters! Let’s see here. We’ve got…
- Chana, (Chanarach), Herald of the Common Man. Dustbringers (Division, Abrasion). Brave/Obedient. Role: Guard.
- Ishi (Ishar), Herald of Luck. Bondsmiths (Tension, Adhesion). Pious/Guiding. Role: Priest.
- Palah (Pailiah, Paliah). Truthwatchers (Progression, Illumination). Learned/Giving. Role: Scholar.
- Jezrien (Jezerezeh, Yaezir, Ahu), Herald of Kings. Windrunners (Adhesion, Gravitation). Protecting/Leading. Role: King.
Lyn: So to start off, we’ve got Chana. I’d like to think that she’s here to represent people like Adin, whom Kaladin protects and saves. There’s also a fair amount of guarding going on here on a lot of different fronts. I suppose she could also be representative of Moash, who likes to think of himself as a common man. Ishar actually shows up so that accounts for him, even if we didn’t also have Dalinar and Navani showing a lot of Bondsmithery. Palah’s here since Rlain just joined the Truthwatchers (sort of, his spren’s corrupted like Renarin’s is) and Jezrien, naturally, is here for Kaladin and Bridge Four.
Paige: I had the same thought about Chana being here for Adin, and Dabbid! The rest are definitely spot on.
Icon: Eye of the Almighty, indicating lots of POVs.
Epigraph:
And so I am not at all dissatisfied with recent events.
—Musings of El, on the first of the Final Ten Days
P: Hmm? Whosie-whatie? Not dissatisfied? That’s worrisome.
Chapter Recap
WHO: Lots of people.
WHEN: 1175.4.10.4
WHERE: Urithiru and wherever Ishar’s army was camped.
(Note: For the “when” notations, we are using this wonderful timeline provided by the folks at The 17th Shard.)
RECAP: This doozy of a chapter opens with Dalinar, just after he accepted the words of Kaladin’s Fourth Ideal. He’s on his way to visit Ishar, along with Sigzil and several Windrunners. The visit doesn’t go well, with Ishar raving mad and attacking Dalinar for being Odium’s champion after Dalinar can’t convince him otherwise. Sigzil and the Windrunners try to defend him as Szeth has been rendered helpless by the fact that Ishar is in possession of his Bondsmith honorblade, which had previously been held by Szeth’s father, and Ishar declares that Szeth’s father is dead. We see Ishar shocked that Dalinar is able to open a perpendicularity before he tries to steal Dalinar’s bond with the Stormfather. Finally Szeth gets a grip and severs the connection with Nightblood before engaging Ishar. Nightblood leaves a notch in Ishar’s honorblade and afraid, the Herald opens a perpendicularity and escapes into Shadesmar. Upon his exit, Dalinar and the others discover dead spren, somehow manifested into the physical realm. They gather Ishar’s notes and depart.
Buy the Book
The Lost Metal
Rlain is trying to get the fallen Radiants and the group he’s gathered, including Venli and her people, some humans who had fought, and some singers and Heavenly ones, out of the tower. They’re accosted by numerous Fused, including Stormforms and the Deepest Ones. All seems hopeless until Rlain is faced with a vision of Kaladin and hears a spren’s voice in his mind, telling him to speak the words.
Navani discovers that she and the Sibling can create light, and she tries to infuse the tower. As she explores the tower through the pillar, she discovers an immense amount of information about the tower, surprising the Sibling again and again. The light she’s creating drives Moash away and Navani is able to reverse the fabrial that has kept the Radiant down to turn it against the Fused.
Young Adin and a band of rebel humans (including Hesina!) and singers are facing down stormform in the Atrium. Dabbid steps in front of Adin but as the fighting begins, Adin is shoved forward and a Fused thrusts his spear toward the boy. Suddenly, there’s Shardplate covering the boy’s torso. The Plate then dissolves into windspren to protect Dabbid, and then others. Then the Plate returns to Kaladin, hovering over the crowd, as the tower comes to life and the fabrial is reversed. Radiants begin to wake and Fused lose their powers. Kaladin bids the Fused surrender their weapons and leave.
Moash flees from Navani and her light, then loses his connection to Odium. He suddenly feels pain and guilt over murdering Teft, though he’s not sorry he did it, just sorry to feel the pain. He’s found by some Heavenly Ones and given stormlight, but he’s been struck blind.
Chapter Chat – Ishar
Dalinar could identify [Ishar] immediately. There was a bond between them. A Connection.
L: I mean… I’d hope so, given that he’s the Herald of the Bondsmiths!
P: I’d have been surprised if Dalinar hadn’t recognized him.
He was the man who had discovered how to travel between worlds, leading humans to Roshar in the first place.
L: That’s certainly an interesting bit of news.
P: Right? The first time I read that, I thought, “Did we know this and I just forgot?”
“He claims to be the Almighty,” Sigzil said. “God, born again, after being shattered. He says he’s waiting for Odium’s champion to come and fight him for the end of the world. I think he means you, sir.”
L: Well, that bodes well… /sarcasm
P: Of course it means Dalinar. Otherwise this visit would be much less intense, I think.
I am Tezim, first man, aspect of the Almighty. I alone prepare for the end of the worlds.
L: Full of yourself much?
P: Nah…
“Ishar,” Dalinar said softly. “I know what you are.”
“I am that man no longer,” Ishar said. “I am Herald of Heralds, sole bearer of the Oathpact.
L: Uhhhh pretty sure that’s Taln, not you, my friend.
P: Yeah, you remember Taln, right? The one you abandoned?
“I shall absorb your power, Odium, and become a god among gods, Adonalsium reborn.”
L: Hoo boy. He’s gone off the deep end all right.
P: First he thinks Dalinar is Odium’s champion, and now he’s talking to Dalinar as if he was Odium. Dude is absolutely unhinged.
“I spoke to Ash,” Dalinar said calmly. “She said to tell you that Taln has returned. He’s hurt, and she pleads for your help in restoring him.”
“Taln…” Ishar said. He adopted a far-off look. “Our sin. Bearer of our agonies…”
L: Yeah. The guy you left to torture, remember him?
P: Oh good, you do remember him. *glare*
“Jezrien is dead, Ishar,” Dalinar said. “Truly dead. You felt it. Ash felt it. He was captured, but his soul faded away after that. Her father, Ishar. She lost her father. She needs your counsel. Taln’s madness terrifies her. She needs you.”
L: Is this the first we’ve heard of Jezrien being Ash’s father? Did I miss this in my little “vacation”?
P: She’s called him her father before. At least as far back as Oathbringer, when he died, IIRC. I’m sure someone will check on that. Oh hell, I’ll check. I must know!
“They… they killed him somehow.…”
“Who?”
She looked up at the man, tears blurring her vision. This wasn’t like their other deaths. This was something horrible. She couldn’t feel him at all. They’d done something to Jezrien’s soul.
“My father,” she said, “is dead.”
(Oathbringer ch. 121, “Ideals”)
P: I remembered something correctly! w00t!
Szeth hissed loudly. “That Blade,” he said. “The Bondsmith Honorblade. My father’s sword. Where did you get it? What have you done to my father?”
L: Oh dear. The plot thickens! I have to say, I’m getting more and more excited for Szeth’s backstory book. That’s still the next one before we break between the front and back five, right?
P: I’m looking forward to it, too! He was so barely there in this book. Until this chapter and then that bit at the end, of course.
Ishar’s skill as a duelist is a lesser danger. He has recovered his Honorblade. He is a Bondsmith unchained.
L: Just as Szeth could use the Windrunner Surges when he had the Honorblade, so too can Ishar now use Bondsmith Surges. That’s definitely a scary thought. And even more so, that word “unchained.” He’s not beholden to a bond with a spren, and hence isn’t held to the same standards. If Kaladin begins to act against his Oaths, Syl’s Bond with him will break and he’ll lose access to his powers (we’ve seen this happen before, in Words of Radiance.) Having access to this kind of power with no chains to bind it is definitely a scary thought.
Especially if he’s mad.
P: Mad as a hatter. And yeah, that “unchained” bit is scary.
“I need you, Ishar. I don’t need the legend, the Herald of Mysteries. I need the man Ash says you once were. A man willing to risk his life, his work, and his very soul to save mankind.”
L: I can’t wait to learn more about the Heralds and their backstories.
P: It will be an interesting set of stories, for sure.
Ishar touched his hand to his own chest, creating a line of light between him and Dalinar. “I will take this bond to the Stormfather. I will bear it myself. I sense… something odd in you. A Connection to Odium. He sees you as… as the one who will fight against him. This cannot be right. I will take that Connection as well.”
Dalinar gasped, falling to his knees as something was torn from him—it felt as if his very soul was being ripped out. The Stormfather screamed: a terrifying, agonized sound, like lightning that warped and broke.
L: Yikes. Well, that ain’t good.
P: This was downright terrifying. Knowing that Ishar could literally steal Dalinar’s bond with the Stormfather was a total slap in the face.
I have the answer, a way to fix the problems that beset us. Come to me in Shinovar. I can reset the Oathpact, though I must be sane to do it.
L: I’m not sure if I trust this.
P: I believe that he had a moment of sanity, as Taln has had. But I don’t trust that he would remain lucid long enough for it to matter.
The powers of a Bondsmith are the powers of creation, the Stormfather said. The powers of gods, including the ability to link souls. Always before, Honor was here to guard this power, to limit it. It seems that Ishar knows how to make full use of his new freedom.
L: The powers of a god, unlimited, in the hands of a madman. Awesome. Great. Just what everyone needed.
P: As if the impending conflict with Odium wasn’t enough for us to worry about until book 5!
Ishar was ambitious even before madness took him. He cannot bear sole blame for the destruction of Ashyn, humankind’s first home, but he was the one Odium first tricked into experimenting with the Surges.
L: Interesting that it was Odium who influenced “messing” with the Surges, and that this is being portrayed as somehow… a negative thing?
P: Well, they did something to destroy Ashyn, right? Maybe Ishar had a prominent hand in that.
Music, Mechanisms, and Manifestations of Light
These are complex fabrials… made of the essence of spren. Of your essence?
Yes, the Sibling said, their voice growing stronger. But they are complicated, and took many years of—
Pressure fabrial here, Navani said, inspecting it with her mind. Ah, I see. A network of attractors to bring in air and create a bubble of pressure. Quite ingenious.
L: I love how quickly and easily Navani figures all this out. The Sibling keeps underestimating her!
P: I LOVED this scene. Navani kept figuring stuff out and the Sibling was just like, Yes!
Spren and Shadesmar
Another corpse—half revealed by a drawn-back sheet—was on the slab in front of Mela, though this one was far stranger. The elongated body had a black shell covering most of it, from neck to feet. That had been cut free to open up the chest. Dalinar couldn’t make sense of the shell. It looked like clothing, kind of, but was hard like singer carapace—and had apparently been attached to the skin.
The head was a soggy mass of black flesh, soft like intestines, with no visible eyes or features.
That is a Cryptic, he said. The Lightweaver spren. Only they don’t have bodies in this realm. They can’t.
“Sir,” Lyn said from a nearby slab. The corpse she’d uncovered was a pile of vines vaguely shaped like a person.
Cultivationspren… the Stormfather said.
L: I have no idea what’s going on here but it can’t be good.
P: Yeah, some definite bad stuff going on with some spren.
Honorspren seem to have the most humanlike essences. When transferred, the organs and muscles form most naturally. We must capture more of them.
L: So they’re trying to manifest spren physically? Trap them in “real” bodies? I wonder if there’s a connection to be made here in the experiments of the ardents, who found that when they measured spren, the spren would remain in that form…
P: Ishar must have opened a perpendicularity and somehow brought them across. Killing them. Honor knows what his intent was.
Oaths Spoken, Powers Awakened
“And Timbre says… she says you’re spoken for?”
“What?” he said. “By that honorspren who said he’d take me? I turned him down. I…”
L: Not quite, Rlain. I’m still miffed that he didn’t get to be a Bondsmith, but I’m glad that he’s got someone who wants to work with him regardless.
P: I still tear up when reading where the spren speaks to him for the first time.
Then it shone as crystals grew out from his feet like… like stained glass windows, covering the floor. They showed a figure rising in blue-glowing Shardplate, and a tower coming alight.
Keep fighting, a voice said in his head. Salvation will be, Rlain, listener. Bridger of Minds. I have been sent to you by my mother, at the request of Renarin, Son of Thorns. I have watched you and seen your worthiness.
Speak the Words, and do not despair.
L: If this spren’s been sent by his “mother” and is at the request of Renarin, we can assume that it’s another Truthspren corrupted by Sja-anat.
P: This. This is the part that got me all verklempt! To have Rlain see Kaladin like he did, like Renarin would, while his soon-to-be-bonded-spren encourages him. OH MY FEELS!!
He stabbed at Adin’s chest, but the spear stopped short again. Adin looked at his body as he lay prone on the floor. His torso was surrounded by glittering blue armor. He raised his hands, and found them covered in gauntlets.
He was in Shardplate.
L: I absolutely love this. Leave it to Kaladin to “send” his living Plate to protect others. It’s just so… him.
P: More tears here for me. Kaladin, protecting those who cannot protect themselves. LOVE!
Cosmere Connections
He was staring at Szeth’s sword as it dripped black liquid smoke. Around it, the white light of the perpendicularity warped and was consumed, like water down a drain.
L: Do we have any idea what Nightblood does with the Investiture it consumes? What are the ramifications of it being able to absorb this much, presuming that whatever it draws from Szeth is immediately replaced by the perpendicularity? It’s basically looking at an endless supply of Investiture.
Thankfully we don’t get to find out, as Szeth uses it to collapse the perpendicularity. But it’s still a fascinating thought.
P: I was afraid Nightblood would destroy the perpendicularity, despite what the Stormfather says next.
No creation of mortal hands could destroy the power of a Shard of Adonalsium.
L: Something gives me the feeling that this theory is eventually going to be put to the test.
P: Yeah, never say never with Brandon. Rather, don’t believe it when Brandon says it.
There was a chip in its unearthly steel where it had met the black sword.
Dalinar, in all his life, had never seen a Shardblade marred in such a way, let alone one of the Honorblades.
L: Yikes. Nightblood just keeps getting more and more terrifying.
P: And AWESOME!
TinFoil TheoryCrafting
He is a duelist, Dalinar thought. Storms, and a good one.
L: A good duelist. Eh? Gee, Dalinar, if only you knew someone like that who might be able to take him… (This does lend some credence to the theory that Adolin may wind up being Odium’s champion.)
P: Lalalalala! So Taln needs to heal miraculously, and he can help Adolin dispatch Ishar. Not that Taln would need help.
Singers/Fused
Odium wants me to know. I will be tortured like the Heralds once I return to Braize.”
L: Ooof. That sucks for Leshwi.
P: She just needs to not die.
Humans
“The Shin serve the Heralds. They held my sword for me. They returned it when I revealed myself.”
L: Well, at least poor Szeth doesn’t have to fear his father’s demise. But I am curious as to why he didn’t know this about his own culture. Do you not learn this until you’re a certain “level” in society, or something? I guess we’ll find out in book 5!
P: Guess we will!
“My people,” Szeth shouted, “were not going to return your weapons to you. We kept your secrets, but you lie if you say my father gave you that Blade!”
“Your father was barely a man when I found him,” Ishar said. “The Shin had accepted the Unmade. Tried to make gods of them. I saved them. And your father did give me this Blade. He thanked me for letting him die.”
L: …I spoke too soon.
P: The whole Unmade thing is quite disturbing, if Ishar can be believed, of course.
Together, Navani and the Sibling could create Light.
Light that drove the monster Moash back along the corridor, holding his arm before his eyes.
L: Ha! Yeah! Take that, ya monster!
P: Get him, Queen!
“Your people. They have all of the Honorblades?”
“All but three,” Szeth said. “The Blade of the Windrunners was mine for years. The Blade of the Skybreakers was reclaimed by Nin long ago. And of course the Blade of the Stonewards was never ours to protect. So there were seven, but if Ishar has his Blade…”
L: If Ishar has his, who’s to say that all the others aren’t gone, too? This just keeps getting better and better.
P: Right? Honor knows where any of them are.
Even women had picked up weapons, including the surgeon’s wife, who had given her son to one of the young girls at the center to hold.
L: I bet Lirin’d be reeeaaaal annoyed at that.
P: *cackles*
A hand took Adin by the shoulder and moved him backward. Not all the way back, but enough for the figure to stand in front of him. It was the quiet bridgeman, Dabbid.
L: YOU GO, DABBID!
P: Bridge Four. *sniffle*
And before that, a terrible sound. It had pushed away his Connection to Odium, forcing Moash to feel pain for the things he’d done—pain he didn’t want. Pain he’d given away.
That pain seethed and spread inside him. He’d killed Teft.
He’d. Killed. TEFT.
L: Yes. Yes you did, you storming bastard. You deserve to feel that guilt.
P: I hope it hurts more than any pain you’ve ever felt. Ever.
“Teft, I…” He couldn’t say it. The words wouldn’t form. He wasn’t sorry for what he’d done. He was only sorry for how his actions made him feel.
L: And this right here is why I don’t want him to have a redemption arc. If he actually was brainwashed and now, in this moment of clarity, felt true remorse? I’d be willing to entertain the notion. But he doesn’t. Even now, it’s all about him.
P: That line about not being sorry. Grrr. He doesn’t deserve a damn redemption. Do you hear me, Brandon?
But he couldn’t see them. No matter how much Stormlight he was given, his eyes didn’t recover.
He was blind.
L: ::savagely:: Good.
P: This doesn’t storming bother me at all. Does that make me a bad person?
L: If it does, I guess we’re in that boat together.
Brilliant Buttresses
…the Herald casually twisted and caught the Blade with one finger—touching it along the unsharpened side—and guided it past him.
L: Okay, that’s pretty badass, not gonna lie.
P: When millennia old you reach, be as good at the sword you will not.
You don’t particularly like anyone, Dalinar noted.
Not true. There was a human who made me laugh once, long ago.
P: This actually made me laugh, so I felt that the Stormfather deserved a brilliant buttress moment.
L: He’s got that sort of dry, sarcastic humor that I usually associate with British comedy and I love it.
We’ll be leaving further speculation and discussion to you in the comments, and hope to join you there! What question from this chapter are you most looking forward to having answered? Next week, we’ll be back with chapter 112.
Paige resides in New Mexico, of course. She very much misses baseball and is counting the days until she gets to see a Spring Training game in 10 days! Links to her other writing are available in her profile.
Lyndsey lives in Connecticut and makes magic wands for a living, as well as working as the costumer for two of her local Renaissance Faires. If you enjoy queer protagonists, snarky humor, and don’t mind some salty language, check out book 1 of her fantasy series. Follow her on Facebook or TikTok!
