Welcome to the final Interlude of Rhythm of War! This week, Taravangian is having a stupid/sentimental day—as are most of his days by this point. He’s still trying to figure out how to run the world, though; he’s just going to do it more slowly. As one does. As you will see if you didn’t already know, neither of your rereaders are what you might call “big fans” of the king. It’s pretty bad when things get better for the presence of an Unmade! Come on in and join the discussion, won’t you?
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.
There are some passing mentions of Shardic functionality and another world this week, but not much by way of Cosmere spoilers.
Heralds: Vedeledev (Vedel). Edgedancers (Abrasion, Progression). Loving/Healing. Role: Healer.
A: Vedel. Hmm. My best guess is that this was chosen for an opposite: Taravangian is regressing, rather than progressing. Another possibility is that the Edgedancers, with their cultivation-spren, are closest to Cultivation, who is much referenced in the chapter. It’s also just faintly possible that Sja-anat is (or was, before being Unmade) connected to the cultivationspren or to Cultivation herself.
Icon: Vine King—Taravangian on a “stupid/sentimental” day.
A: I just have to say that, while I love the dual Taravangian icon—flipped one way, it’s “Sword King” for a smart day, the other way it’s “Vine King” for a dull day—I’m still a little baffled by it. It’s easy to see the sword as the aggressively “smart” guy who’s planning how to take over the world, but the vine always evokes Cultivation for me. The problem is that since she’s the one who set up the whole thing, it makes no sense for only one half of him to be connected to her, so… there must be another meaning to the vine. Thoughts, anyone?
Chapter Recap
WHO: Taravangian
WHEN: 1175.4.10.4—The timeline places this on the same day as the battle of Urithiru (and I have no reason to disagree), seven days after the last time we saw him, when he was attempting to manipulate Szeth.
WHERE: Laqqi, Emul—the coalition warcamp, Taravangian’s prison/house
(Note: For the “when” notations, we are using this wonderful timeline provided by the folks at The 17th Shard.)
RECAP: Taravangian struggles, with his impaired mental faculties, to put together clues to how Odium can be taken down. He feels reasonably certain it has to do with Szeth and Nightblood, though he doesn’t know how. He glances at a mirror to see Sja-anat looking back at him; she seems to actually want Odium to fall, and gives him a few hints to work with. She also promises to send him two of her children to use as bait for Odium when his plan is in place.
Chapter Chat—Plots, Plan, and Permutations
It seemed that the longer he lived, the less his intelligence varied each day. And when it did vary, it seemed to move steadily downward. Toward stupidity. Toward sentimentality. His “smart” days lately would have been average just months ago.
A: Just to set the stage a little, it’s worth noting that once everything was solidly in motion—the plan to get the higher-level Radiants out of the tower, and to keep their attention on Taravangian by betraying Dalinar’s troops—Taravangian has been rapidly declining. As he says, there’s a noticeable deterioration mentally; it seems he’s also more physically frail, and unable to even stay awake much. In real life, we’d be looking into the possibilities for hospice care, just to be prepared, you know?
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The Lost Metal
But here’s my big question: Is this Cultivation’s direct doing, or just a process she set in motion hoping it would play out this way? I guess more specifically, is Cultivation directly affecting how smart he is on any given day, or did she set it up so that he would have that “peak intelligence” day early on, with a steady downward trend from there on, falling off more drastically toward the end? I’m reasonably confident that she intended for him to be in this super-emotional state to make him attractive to the Shard; once Nightblood arrived, providing a means to actually kill Rayse, it’s certainly to her advantage to have Taravangian in a permanently emotional condition. I’m just wondering how much of it she’s directly manipulating. (And I don’t know that it matters, but I’m always curious about these things.)
P: Reading your musings, I tend to think that Cultivation definitely intended for Taravangian to be in an emotional state for a hopeful confrontation with Odium. She doesn’t yet know that she made a mistake.
A: To be fair, her plan worked for some definition of the term. She prepared Taravangian to be a perfect trap for Odium. Whether she has any concept of how he might use that power, though… we’ll have to see whether—or how badly—she miscalculated.
The right words. Dalinar would only respond to the right words. Plus, whatever Taravangian wrote seemed too much a risk to Kharbranth. He couldn’t sacrifice his home. He couldn’t.
A: Ugh. On one hand, this infuriates me, because he agreed to sacrifice the rest of humanity for his own city. Earlier, he’d told Dalinar that he had to choose between surely saving a few or possibly losing all, and he believed that the probability for the latter was too high a risk to take. (Yeah, Dalinar didn’t buy it either.) On the other hand, since that decision was made and cemented by multiple betrayals, I almost can’t fault him for doubling down on it. If you’ve already betrayed your world for the sake of your one city, you’ll want to hang on tightly to that one justification.
P: Yeah, I don’t buy it either. But I can’t fathom why Taravangian is concerning himself with trying to bring Odium down. He made his deal, Kharbranth is safe and he’s, as you say, on his way out anyway. I don’t get why, at this point, he’s working on this problem when he’s already accomplished the safety of Kharbranth.
A: Good point. Why bother? All I can guess is that some part of him feels guilty for having shafted the rest of the planet when it might not have been necessary. The “smart” side of him couldn’t care less about the rest of the world, but perhaps the sentimental side still has some sense of humanity?
Go to Dalinar, a part of him urged. Don’t write him. Talk to him. Was Taravangian actually waiting on the right words, or was there another reason he delayed? A willing disregard for the truth. The slightly smarter version of him didn’t want to give this up to the Blackthorn.
A: And that’s why I hate all his attempts at self-justification: It’s really just pride. It doesn’t matter how incapacitated he is, he doesn’t want Dalinar to get any credit for saving the world. He’s claimed in the past that he couldn’t trust the Blackthorn, because he was a crazy blood-thirsty killer. That rationale is long since debunked, so I can’t see this reluctance to talk to Dalinar as anything but pride. Arrogance. I suppose I should make allowance for Cultivation’s meddling with his attitude, but… I just don’t feel very charitable toward Taravangian.
And all of this is in context of whether or not—or how—to talk to Dalinar. Obviously it’s necessary for the plot to do it this way, but in-world… Dalinar is the freaking Bondsmith, bound to the greatest splinter of Honor’s power that exists. It seems insane to not take advantage of that. Right now it’s a three-sided conflict: Both Dalinar and Taravangian are trying to oppose Odium, but they’re also opposing each other. Wouldn’t it be more effective to work together? (Assuming he could ever regain Dalinar’s cooperation, of course. Which… maybe not. Once bitten, twice shy, as they say.)
P: There’s really not much opportunity for back-and-forth on a Taravangian chapter when I can pretty much just say, “What Alice said.” to everything. I loathe this character. I’ve always loathed his arrogance. I hate that he betrayed Dalinar when Dalinar placed so much trust in him. And as I said above, why is he even bothering? Why not just let things play out? Acclaim? He wouldn’t be thanked by those he betrayed, I don’t think. But then, I’m not a huge fan of redemption arcs so, we’ll see.
A: Heh. Yeah, the excitement for a Taravangian chapter around here wouldn’t fill a thimble. And most of that is for Sja-anat.
Here’s a thought, which might make more sense than my previous suggestion. He’s realized that Odium might not be invincible, and he’s worried that Dalinar might be able to do what he himself gave up trying to do. So now he has to keep trying.
P: I can accept that. Though he’s still crem in my eyes, despite his feeble and belated efforts.
The answer was here. He felt it. … Part of being smart, in his experience, was about speed more than capacity. … He had none of that ability now, but he needed none of it. The answer was here, in the notebook.
P: I think this is a new insight for Taravangian. He’s never valued his stupid days because he felt that it was a weakness to be so emotional. At least he felt that way about them when he was smart. Now that he has fewer smart days and a vastly increased number of stupid days, maybe he’s coming to appreciate that state of mind more.
A: That’s a good point. Smart-T was contemptuous of Stupid-T, but now it’s the latter who has to take little hints and pieces and put them together. Is it possible that there are critical connections that can only be made by emotion and gut feeling rather than quick thinking?
P: Knowing how Cultivation worked with Dalinar, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she designed Taravangian’s boon/curse as you say.
He knew exactly how it felt to be both smart and stupid. He could use that.
He had to. He needed to use every advantage he had. He had to create a plan as daring as the Diagram—and do so without the gifts Cultivation had given him.
The plan of a man, not a god.
A: Hmmm. Is it? The plan of a man, not a god? He sits and thinks about Nightblood, and how the Diagram hadn’t anticipated it, which I’m sure is true. But did Cultivation anticipate it? We don’t know exactly how long Zahel & Nightblood have been on Roshar, but I’m reasonably convinced that they got here before Taravangian visited Cultivation. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if maybe she purposely kept Nightblood out of his initial calculations, holding it in abeyance until the right time: now, when there’s a chance to entrap Odium and actually kill him with an unfamiliar Investiture-sucking sword. (I mean… can you imagine what Taravangian would have done had he known about and been able to acquire Nightblood at the time of the Diagram?)
P: If Cultivation was aware of the possibility that Nightblood could bring down Rayse, why would the Nightwatcher have offered it to Dalinar when he visited her? Did they perhaps think that Dalinar could wield Nightblood to kill Rayse? Because the Dalinar who visited the Nightwatcher was just as unfit to wield such a sword as he was unfit to bond the Stormfather.
A: I have no idea. The man Dalinar grew into, due to Cultivation’s pruning efforts, might be fit to wield Nightblood, but the Blackthorn? That would have been precarious indeed.
Odium has greatly expanded intelligence. He can be in many places at once and can command the elements. But he feels the same way a man does. He can be tricked. And he seems to have a central… self, a core person.
A: I’m including this, even though we already know far more about Shards than Taravangian does, because he’s discovering some important things. He’s also making a false but common assumption, which will be corrected later in the chapter: that the Shards can be omnipresent, or nearly so. Renarin and Dalinar figured out already that there is much Odium can’t see, and Taravangian is on the edge of recognizing the same thing when he says “he can be tricked.”
Aside from this aspect, though, he’s on the edge of discovering that there’s a distinction between the Shard and the Vessel; I don’t think he fully realizes that for a while yet, though. Maybe not until that moment when Rayse is killed and the power seeks a new home. (I could be wrong on that, though…)
P: To my recollection, Taravangian has never given any kind of indication in his thoughts, or during conversations with members of the Diagram, that Odium is essentially a dual entity. He just thinks of ‘Odium’ and not the very separate person who possesses the Shard.
Szeth had refused to listen to Taravangian. However, the man had come when Taravangian seeded the proper incentive out into the world. So maybe he didn’t need to make Szeth do anything other than arrive in the same place as Odium. … Surely Szeth would strike out against Odium if he saw the god manifesting.
A: Welp. The seeds of a plan, which will grow into something very different. It’s actually a good realization—he might not need Szeth’s actual cooperation in the plan, if he can be induced to bring Nightblood to the same place Odium will be. We won’t go into details of what did/didn’t work yet, but I do wonder: If Szeth had seen Odium manifesting in the physical world, instead of Odium pulling Taravangian into the cognitive world, would he have tried to strike? Or would he have bowed in the presence of a god, much as he did in the presence of Heralds and Radiants? I’m betting on the latter, unless he had a specific reason to be mad at Odium at the time.
P: I want very much to argue that Szeth wouldn’t bow to Odium, but I have a sneaking suspicion that you’re correct.
A: Poor Szeth. I’m still not sure how much I like him, but oh, I pity him. He’s been so badly used and abused, and he so desperately wants someone to trust. Barring trustworthiness, it seems (based on his attitude toward Nalan) that he’ll take “minor deity” as a substitute. Major deity would be pretty hard for him to resist, because he wants so much for there to be meaning to everything he’s been through. (Speaking of whether someone is “fit” to wield Nightblood…!)
He looked across at the small hand mirror he’d set up on the counter. … But his face did not reflect.
Instead he saw a shadowy figure, female, with long flowing black hair. … Taravangian blinked very slowly, then began to tremble with fear. Storms.
Storms.
A: Heh. Storms, indeed! While I can’t even pretend I’d react any differently, I always have to snicker a little. He basically sits still and looks calm because he’s physically unable to do anything else.
P: Yeah, a bit freaky to have an Unmade pop in while you’re in the loo, even if you’re not actually using the facilities at the moment.
A: LOL. It’d wig me out!
“It is… the Nightwatcher’s fault.”
No, the other one. The god.
A: So why does Taravangian say it was the Nightwatcher, when he knows it was Cultivation? He just talked about trying to make a plan without Cultivation’s gifts; is he just worried about having an Unmade know he had contact with a god?
P: That’s really the only thing I can think of. I just don’t see any other reason why he would lie about it. Except that he’s Taravangian and, well, you know…
A: True. Taravangian never admits any truth he doesn’t have to, unless he sees a way to make it serve his purposes.
Why did you go to her? What did you ask?
“For the capacity to stop what was coming,” he said. He was too frightened to lie. Even the smart him hadn’t wanted to face one of these things.
A: Heh. Smart him. Also, now we know for sure exactly what he asked, and apparently his previous comment on the subject was truthful. “The capacity to stop what was coming” sure left Cultivation a lot of room to maneuver, though! She could have gone so many ways with that.
P: Too frightened to lie, huh? Perhaps my above statement needs to be revised, but I think I’ll leave it.
A: He might be too frightened to lie on purpose, but he’s pretty good at lying out of habit. Also, she just caught him once, so he wouldn’t risk another.
She sows many seeds, Sja-anat said. Can you do it? Can you stop what is coming?
“I don’t know,” Taravangian whispered. “Can it be stopped? Can … he be stopped?”
I am uncertain. The power behind him is strong, but his mind is exposed. The mind and the power seek different goals. This leaves him … not weak, but vulnerable.
A: Oh, the possibilities inherent in that statement. I begin to wonder how much of Odium’s past actions have been more Rayse’s peculiar form of nastiness than the actual Intent of the Shard. Frost called the Shard “God’s own divine hatred, separated from the virtues that gave it context.” Put that into the hands of someone whom Hoid describes as “loathsome, crafty, and dangerous” and you’re guaranteed something awful. This assessment from Sja-anat, in that context, makes me wonder if someone else as Vessel would be less likely to go around destroying other Shards. On the other hand, someone as arrogant as Taravangian isn’t necessarily much better, if perhaps slightly less bloody.
P: I don’t know, Taravangian has proven himself to be capable of pretty bloody work. Ungodly work.
A: He usually has someone else to do the dirty work for him… but as a god that wouldn’t be hard either. I was just thinking that Taravangian might be slightly less inclined to splinter the other Shards if he thinks he can rule over them instead.
“I assume he looks over my shoulder at everything I write.”
No. He is not everywhere. His power is, but he is not. There are limits, and his Voidspren eyes fear coming too close to a Bondsmith.
A: The limits are obviously important. How important is Taravangian’s understanding of the limit? He’s been writing down all his ideas in his little notebook, even though he assumed Odium was watching, which I find absolutely bizarre. I guess he figured that it was better to write it down and risk Odium seeing what he was thinking than risk losing the thoughts? So now that he knows it’s not really likely Odium can see what he writes, will that change anything else he does?
P: I can get on board with that, that he would rather be watched than lose the thoughts. At this point in his regression, anyway.
Sja-anat… she spoke like she wanted Odium to fall. Wasn’t there something in the Diagram about this?
A: Yes, yes there is. “One is almost certainly a traitor to the others.” (Of course, since we don’t have the full text, there might be more, but that’s all we need to know.) But how did smart-Taravangian know that? I’ve vacillated between thinking that the Diagram was information fed to him by Cultivation, and thinking it was him being hyper-brilliant in making connections and extrapolating from what he already knew; this makes me think it’s the former. Do we actually know?
P: I honestly think we (or the average reader) know precious little about Cultivation… at least compared with what we know about Odium.
A: SO SO LITTLE.
“I need a way to lure Odium to me,” Taravangian said. “At the right time.”
I will arrange for you to be given gemstones with two of my children inside, she said. Odium searches for them. He watches me, certain I will make a mistake and reveal my true intentions. We are Connected, so my children appearing will draw his attention.
A: It’s… fascinating? bizarre? creepy? that he decides to confide in an Unmade here. Even though he fears she might be tricking him—which could mean betraying him to Odium—he decides he has to try. But earlier he deliberately wouldn’t confide in Dalinar because he didn’t want the Blackthorn to take over. Better to lose everything than let someone else get the credit???
Anyway, she proves quite helpful; the funny part is that he has no idea what to do with the gemstones, and ends up with Szeth doing the necessary thing in an effort to thwart him.
P: I can never figure out what direction Brandon is going with this character, only that he’s surely made me hate Taravangian beyond what’s reasonable.
A: He writes some eminently hateable characters, doesn’t he?
Good luck, human, when he does come. You are not protected from him as many on this world are. You have made deals that exempt you from such safety.
A: And if that doesn’t give you the shivers, I don’t know what would! I have to say, though, that he certainly doesn’t deserve any kind of protection from Odium, or anyone else. He’s done too many awful things in the name of expediency, and betrayed too many people.
P: What Alice said.
Cosmere Connections
They hadn’t anticipated the sword. Still, he had been given a report by agents he’d sent to research it by interviewing one of its former bearers.
A: Umm… And who might that be? Does this have something to do with what Zahel was doing when he wasn’t available when the tower was invaded? Or did he somehow find… Nale? Or did one of the other Skybreakers carry it? Could he actually have sent someone to Nalthis?
P: I can’t fathom anyone (that’s been on screen) it could have been besides Zahel. Though I don’t see him exactly participating in an interview about Nightblood. But even so, it wouldn’t have been when the tower was taken because this information was seemingly already possessed by Taravangian, and there was no communication with the tower during that time frame. And even if Zahel was out of the tower during the invasion, I don’t see Taravangian having access to agents who might have interviewed him.
So basically what I’m trying to say is that I have no idea.
A: Yeah, me neither.
History
She touched three that I know. The child. The general. And you.
A: We have to make note of the verification of what we already knew: Lift, Dalinar, and Taravangian all (and apparently only) met Cultivation, when most people just meet the Nightwatcher. What time frame are we talking about, though? Recently? Or ever? I’d find it hard to believe that she’s never before touched anyone specific, but… well, maybe she didn’t, because she was waiting for the exact right time. Or maybe the Unmade just wasn’t watching before, or is only concerned with the present.
P: I can see Sja’Anat only being concerned with the current struggle and surrounding events.
The Old Magic… the Nightwatcher… I begin to wonder if it was all a cover, these many centuries. A way for her to secretly bring in people she wanted to touch. She has been playing a far more subtle game than Odium realized.
A: Ooof. That’s a fascinating thought. Now I wonder… There’s so much history and lore that we still don’t know. When were the Unmade Unmade? (And what were they before?) When did the whole “Old Magic” lore get started, with people going to the Nightwatcher for boons? I don’t recall thinking about this before, but it makes so much sense. (To be fair, I may never have read it if it was added after the beta. Taravangian interludes are… not my favorites, shall we say? I don’t go back and read them for fun.)
P: Well, now that comment from Sja’Anat seems to indicate that she does care about events other than those that are current.
Bruised and Broken
A: Some might say, especially in reading this chapter, that Taravangian is sufficiently bruised and broken for a spren bond. We know that’s not going to happen, of course, because he has a different destiny coming right up. If it weren’t for that, though, would we like Taravangian to become a Radiant? I personally would not, and I’m honestly not sure that I consider him “broken” despite his despair in this chapter. He made his own choices, and even now is still arrogant enough to insist on pulling off the “salvation of Roshar” on his own, or at least by his own machinations. He is still his own god, and that disqualifies him from becoming Radiant. IMO.
P: I could see maybe some spren being interested in him, but I would certainly have no desire for him to become a Radiant. And I agree that he’s not really broken—he’s just a product of his own horrible plans and doings.
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 Part Five! We’ll launch with Chapter 98, in which Dalinar tours the battlefield in the aftermath of the final decisive battle of the Emuli campaign. He also views a scouting-report Illusion of Ishar and his Tukari army.
Alice lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two kids. Fall has fallen and the rains have begun. Go, Phillies.
Paige resides in New Mexico, of course. She is bereft at the defeat of the Yankees in the ALCS, so no snarky comments! Go, Phillies! Links to her other writing are available in her profile.
