Hola, Sanderfans! How’s about that cliffhanger last week? We saw Shallan making a huge, huge mistake in not realizing that the three guards at the Oathgate in Shadesmar were the three storming Ghostbloods she was looking for. Come on, girl… do we need Veil to reemerge? Just kidding… just kidding. (We don’t want that to happen—no how, no way.) Then we had Dalinar and Navani preparing to undergo Wit’s experiment of popping into the Spiritual Realm for a spell. Mraize kind of messed that up, in spectacular fashion… This week we’re moving on to chapter 33 and another freakin’ Sanderlanche. Let’s dish about it! (That means “talk about it,” for you young folks.)
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Note that this post will possibly (likely) contain full Cosmere spoilers, so beware if you aren’t caught up on all Cosmere content. And please remember, when posting or commenting about these preview chapters on social media, follow your platform’s spoiler rules. Your comments here, however, don’t need to be spoiler-tagged, so feel free to comment as you will down below!
Paige’s Summary and Commentary
Chapter 33 is titled “The Conflux of All Darkness and Shadow” and if that doesn’t sound foreboding, I don’t know what does. That feeling is only increased by the fact that the chapter arch is looking more and more cracked and unstable… and this is only Day 2!
The chapter begins with Lift, our fave little Edgedancer, who’s not so little anymore. She’s been hiding and spying on Dalinar, Navani, and Wit with… someone. She watches as Dalinar opens the perpendicularity and she sees a version of herself, if she’d stayed in Iri and grown up unafraid of changing and not caring who noticed. Then she admits to herself that she doesn’t think her mother is dead. And we knew that she’s been afraid of growing up in case her mother didn’t recognize her when she saw Lift again. She’s lamenting the short time during which her life had seemed perfect when she hears someone telling her they’re scared.
We knew that someone else was with her, as Shallan and company had glimpsed two souls lurking. It’s Gavinor, and she is surprised to see him there. He says that she told him that sometimes they needed to disobey and hey, he was just taking the lesson seriously, right? She tries to get hurry him back down the tunnel—taking a moment to notice purple cremlings, and wondering if other people suspect what they really are—and then she hears Navani shout.
Suddenly, Lift is being pulled backward toward the room, but manages to stop herself—until Gav slams into her and they both fall into the room. She loses Gavinor as they’re both pulled toward the light. She tries to increase her friction but that doesn’t help, and then someone grabs her. A man all in black whose shadow goes the wrong way? What?
Then the perpendicularity is gone and Lift slumps to the floor. Wit says they’re lucky he saved them, and they both owe him, but… when she looks around, Gavinor isn’t there. She asks Wit if he grabbed him and he says he hadn’t seen him. They look to the stone where the perpendicularity had been and Lift swears. Wit knows she’s been talking to Zahel because people on Roshar don’t say “shit.” Meanwhile, he peeks into Shadesmar to see if the Bondsmiths happened to drop in there. But no luck, he just sees a dead Malwish man in a demolished room. Wit tells her they’ll have to hope that Dalinar will find his way back in the next eight days; otherwise, the contract will likely be forfeit and Odium would be unbound, and free of Roshar.
Then Wit hears a knock at the door and realizes that they’ll have to lie about the whereabouts of the Bondsmiths because their absence would likely throw the tower into chaos. What a lovely thought.
POV shift!
Kaladin has to admit that he makes terrible stew. He apparently put ration bars in it, which might not have been the best choice, and adding more spices doesn’t help the taste. He is, to say the least, disappointed. Szeth is already eating his own ration bar, which defeats the purpose of Kaladin making stew, which is supposed to “draw people in.” He tries to engage Szeth anyway, asking if his home is nearby and if he’d like to visit it. Szeth says that there’s nothing there for him. Kaladin counters that by saying it might help but Szeth says he doesn’t need help. But he doesn’t mean that there’s nothing wrong with him; rather, he means that he deserves suffering and tells Kaladin flat out to leave him alone.
Kaladin pulls out his flute and tries to play, but he doesn’t do very well. He gets frustrated and throws the flute down and gets up and walks away. Syl follows and Kaladin tells her that he’s not useful unless he’s killing something. Which is so not true. He protects, he helps people, even when he’s not killing. He basically created therapy! That’s helped people, and will help even more people as Kaladin’s efforts are duplicated and the practice spreads to others on Roshar. He’s so not useless! Poor Kaladin. I just wanna hug him.
“This is your dark brain talking,” she said. “You weren’t killing when you rescued Bridge Four. You pulled thirty men out of the darkness and the chasms, then you forged them into something wonderful.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I forged them into killers.”
“A family,” Syl said. “Don’t try to distort it. I was there, Kaladin. You did it because you couldn’t stand to let them keep dying. You did it out of love.”
::sniffle::
Kaladin realizes that Syl is right and that he could drive away the bad thoughts with good. He knows that things have been good lately. Syl says that Szeth is no more stubborn than Rock was, and Kaladin looks back to the fire and sees Szeth eating his stew. He hurries back to the fire as Szeth is finishing his bowl of stew and Szeth says that he would eat it again if Kaladin made it. So Kaladin has a higher expectation of how stew should taste than Szeth does. I find this hilarious. Szeth liked Kaladin’s bad stew! I love it.
Then Szeth announces there’s something wrong, that there should be light from candles and fires at homesteads in the valley. He admits that he cares about his people and wants to help them. Kaladin says they will help them and then Szeth turns in. It wasn’t quite the chat over stew that Kaladin had been hoping for, but it seems like a small breakthrough: Szeth had opened up, if only a bit.
Kaladin tries to practice with the flute again and the Wind speaks to him. It says that Odium is made anew, which is dangerous. You think? It tells Kaladin to watch and says it will watch, too, and that together they must somehow “preserve a remnant of Honor.” Which is really interesting language to use. When Dalinar is searching for honor over in the Spiritual Realm. We assume.
Kaladin continues to practice the flute after the Wind departs, Then he looks up and finds the Herald Ishar before him. What the what?
POV shift!
Lopen is in Shadesmar with Isasik and he tells him that they found the room that way when they returned from rescuing the guards. All of the walls were broken and the wall facing the hallway was completely destroyed. All they found was the “broken” dead man and they had been kind of afraid that Shallan and the others might have been reduced to “person-mush.” A Lopen word, of course. Since there was no person-mush and they weren’t in the Physical Realm, Lopen surmises that they went through the perpendicularity. He thinks about how Navani isn’t talking and therefore, the Sibling isn’t talking.
He tells Isasik they need to go fly the Mink’s people to Herdaz, but Isasik remains concerned about Shallan. Lopen says that they can’t help the others if they’re dead. And if they escaped and don’t want to be found then it wouldn’t help to out them. Finally, if they’re in some other realm, Lopen says they couldn’t help, anyway. So they need to report back and go about their business.
He does ask his spren, Rua, where he thinks they went and Rua points at the distant sun. Lopen realized that he is indicating the place where the gods reside. He also mentions that Navani seems unconcerned, eating chouta and shrugging. So… who is playing Navani? Wit? A Lightweaver? That is a question for another day, because…
POV shift!
Ishar regards Kaladin and Syl, and says that he doesn’t know Kaladin. That he thought Kaladin was insignificant, but here he was with the Truthless and bonded to the Ancient Daughter. He wants to know Kaladin’s name and when Kaladin mentions that he’s sometimes called “Stormblessed,” Ishar says he didn’t remember blessing him…which almost made me snort laugh, Sanderfans. That right there was funny.
Kaladin says he’s there to help Ishar and asks if he ever feels overwhelmed or like he couldn’t trust his thoughts. And how do we expect Ishar to respond to that? Hmm… I’m going to guess, with disdain. Ah, yes, Ishar realizes that Dalinar had sent Kaladin and says he doesn’t need Kaladin’s help. He states that Dalinar attacked him and he lost the name Tezim but that now he can be Ishar, who Ascended to the position of the Almighty. Yeah. Disdainful and just as arrogant as he had been in Emul.
Kaladin tries appealing to the Herald, saying that they need his help. He tells Ishar that Ash and Taln are back at the tower and Ishar calls them useless. He says that he can “siphon some of their pains” onto him, all of them but Taln. That if he didn’t do so, they’d all be as “insensate” as Taln. Ishar tells Kaladin that if he wants to talk to him then they will speak only when Szeth’s pilgrimage was at an end. Then he disappears.
Syl, always leaning toward levity, says that since he didn’t vaporize them, it went well. Oh, Syl. Never change. Seriously… don’t storming change. ::stern look:: Syl reassures Kaladin that they can help Ishar, but he feels that they can’t do so in time to help Dalinar. But then he remembers Wit’s warning—that whatever he has to do in Shinovar might be more important than Dalinar’s contest.
Syl wonders what Ishar had meant by saying Szeth was his servant and Kaladin pretty much disregards that since Ishar called him a disciple and thinks he’s the Almighty. Kaladin decides to talk to Szeth about it in the morning and packs up his flute and papers. He ponders his feelings and considers his current state of mind:
The darkness was still there and wanted him to believe things would never change, but this little victory proved the opposite. Because while he might never be rid of the thoughts permanently, he was done letting them win.
Wow. I wonder how that would be, not letting the dark thoughts win. Maybe someday, I’ll figure it out, too. ::shops for a flute::
POV sh—
Oh, wait… no more POV shifts! It’s the end of Day 2! And no Dalinar or Navani POV! What happened to them? Where did they go? Are they okay? Is Gavinor okay? And what is Szeth going to do in Shinovar? How is he going to cleanse a whole country? A whole people? Why do I have so many questions? Tell us all of your thoughts and theories, Sanderfans. We truly want to hear them!
Lyndsey’s Commentary
Our chapter arch icons for this week are the Joker & Ishi (Ishar), Herald of Luck, patron of the Bondsmiths. His attributes are Pious/Guiding and his role is Priest. The Joker is likely here due to Wit’s presence in the beginning, and the same goes for Ishar. Seems pretty cut and dried.
So if you’re anything like me, you might have trouble keeping all the excerpts from the beginning of the chapters in mind when reading week by week. In order to help facilitate a deeper analysis, here is the full excerpt from the in-book The Way of Kings presented in its entirety:
As I approached the first crossroads, I met a family seeking a new life. This family did not speak my language, but we could both write glyphs, which proved facilitative in our conversation. As I shared their kindly cookfire, I learned some of their story. They had left behind family and hereditary home, something many would find unconscionable. What I learned from their glyphs scribbled in dust trembled my soul: it was because of me, and the stories they’d heard of my teachings, that they had left. They’d gone to seek a land some told them was mythical. A land where the king was a holy man, and was concerned with the plight of the farmer beyond the appropriation of taxes. I let them pass with two lies. First, I dared not tell them this dusty traveler with whom they shared a meal was in fact that very king they had heard of. The second was that I did not explain that very king had abdicated his throne and walked away from his kingdom. After we parted with affection the next day, I watched their cart roll into the distance, pulled by the father with two children riding in the rear, the mother striding with a pack on her back. Dust blew with them, for dust goes where it wishes, ignoring all borders. Would that men could always do the same—if I could enshrine one law in all further legal codes, it would be this. Let people leave if they wish. The Almighty has given us the limbs to move and the minds to decide. Let no monarch take away what was divinely granted. The Heralds also taught that all should have the sacred right of freedom of movement, to escape a bad situation. Or simply to seek a brighter dawn.
Interesting. I wonder if this is meant to indicate that the only remaining option for some of our characters will be to leave Roshar? With all of the worldhoppers showing up in these later entries, I think this might be a possibility. Does this mean that Dalinar is doomed to failure, and there’s a mass exodus is in our future…? Or perhaps it will only be one or two.
I continued on my way, contemplating dust and the nature of desertion. For I, as king, had walked away from my duties, and it was different for me. Had I not renounced a throne the Almighty had granted, and in so doing, undermined my very own words? Was I abandoning that which was divinely given me? I do not have answers, and there will always be some who denounce me for this decision I made. But let me teach a truth here that is often misunderstood: sometimes, it is not weakness, but strength, to stand up and walk away.
Strength before weakness, eh? I like this subversion of the common interpretation of strength. In most cases, it’s expected that the “strong” thing to do is to stick things out no matter what. To keep trying. Nohadon, however, is presenting another option and asserting that that which is so often attributed to strength can indeed be the opposite. The decision to stand up and walk away is sometimes the right choice. Anyone who’s ever been in a toxic or abusive relationship can relate to and understand this one, I suspect.
Those who offer blanket condemnation are fools, for each situation deserves its own consideration, and rarely can you simply apply a saying—even one of mine—to a situation without serious weighing of the context. As I fear not the child with a weapon he cannot lift, I will never fear the mind of a man who does not think. So think, my dear reader. As a soldier retreats from a battle he cannot win. As a woman rejects a home that shows her only violence. As a family finds hope in walking away from dying fields during a season of too much rain. As a king leaves a people with the gift of his absence, so that they may grow and solve their own problems, without his hand to always guide them. May you have the courage someday to walk away. And the wisdom to recognize that day when it arrives.
—From The Way of Kings, fourth parable
Sanderson never includes these things needlessly and this doesn’t have any other obvious purpose I can see (for instance, I don’t see a character- or setting-related reason for its inclusion), so it must be foreshadowing of something plot-wise. What decision will someone need to walk away from? Will it be Dalinar? Kaladin? Shallan? Szeth?
All of them?
Lift
What if she’d stayed there, in Rall Elorim, instead of . . . wherever the wind put her? Would she have become that girl—that confident young woman—with gleaming hair, wearing an Iriali short shirt, her shoulders and midriff exposed? As if she didn’t care that people saw she was growing up?
This version of her didn’t seem afraid of anything.
I don’t know about you, dear Cosmere Chicken, but I don’t often think of Lift as afraid, because that’s not how she thinks of herself. She presents herself as being so confident that it’s hard to recognize that for what it is: a clever mask she wears to conceal her true nature from the world, and even from herself. She’s the classic case of “fake it till you make it,” but she’s going to need to come to terms with her fear eventually. You can only run from something like that for so long before it eats you away from the inside. She can’t continue pretending that she’s not growing up and changing forever.
But Lift… she couldn’t change. What if Mother returned and didn’t recognize her? What if Mother looked for her and didn’t see her, so found some other little girl to love?
Well, that explains a lot about Lift, doesn’t it? That level of denial isn’t good for anyone, though. Again, she’s going to need to come to terms with not only the fact that she’s growing up and changing, but that her mother is gone.
Unless she’s not…? What if, over the course of the back five set of books (in which Sanderson has said that Lift will be a main POV character), we find out that her mother didn’t die and she finds her again?!
She startled a strange purplish cremling as they crawled. Those things were all over in the air shafts.
Which Dysian Aimian is spying…? (I’m beginning to wonder if the different colors indicate different swarms. We’ve seen this purple variety a few times, but other colors have also been noted.) Well, Hoid saved them, whichever one it was.
Szeth
“When I say I need no help, it is because this is how I should be. I have murdered many innocents. I chose to follow the broken traditions of a people who were so scared of the Truth, they exiled me rather than face it. Because of this, I deserve suffering.
Szeth really is the quintessential emo angst-lord, isn’t he? He reminds me a bit of Angel in Buffy the Vampire Slayer in this respect. Whether the self-flagellation is warranted is debatable, but one person would certainly say it’s not, and that one person is currently trying and failing to make some nice stew over the campfire…
“I do love my people, Kaladin. My exile makes it feel like I don’t care about anything, and sometimes I tell myself I don’t deserve to care. But… the exile was—for so long—my proof that I love them. I want to help my people. That is… more important to me than the quest, though that makes me a bad Skybreaker.”
What’s this?! Szeth opening up and being honest about his emotions?! There really is something special about that stew, whether it tastes like crem or no. In all seriousness, it’s nice to see this. It’s been hard to see anything beyond Szeth’s self-hatred for the entire time we’ve known him, so this admittance of something that he loves is really enlightening.
Kaladin
“The only thing I’ve ever been good at is war. Even when I was forced on leave, I found a way to fight for the tower. I am useless unless I’m killing something.”
Ah, this old chestnut again. I’m actually glad to see this, if only because it’s proof that Kal hasn’t changed overnight. That would be completely unrealistic, in my opinion. He still has these same doubts, that same darkness. The difference is that he’s now actively working to face them and move past them. If we can take no other silver linings from Teft’s death, we can at least take this. I like to think that Teft would be happy to know that, even if he’s gone, Kaladin is starting to be able to claw his way out of depression.
“This is your dark brain talking,” she said. “You weren’t killing when you rescued Bridge Four. You pulled thirty men out of the darkness and the chasms, then you forged them into something wonderful.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I forged them into killers.”
“A family,” Syl said.
Yeah! Way to go, Syl. She’s so good for him, and she’s telling the whole truth here. Yes, Kaladin did teach them to kill. But he also taught them to protect. To heal. To care. To love. And, most importantly, to live. When you’re deep in the throes of depression (and I’m speaking from experience on this one), it can be so, so hard to see the good you put into the world. While Kaladin’s starting to be able to pull himself free, sometimes you still need that helping hand from the outside. And that’s what Syl is.
He could claim many things about himself, but he couldn’t justify the argument that he was only a killer. And life was good. He had felt it earlier.
It didn’t banish the darkness, but active thoughts, as counters to it, really did help.
I find it somewhat amusing that Kaladin’s finally using on himself the same tools and methods he’s spent the entire series teaching others. Giving Bridge Four jobs, giving them purpose, was giving them active thoughts and techniques to combat their depression. Now it’s your turn, Kal ol’ boy!
“I just don’t know what I am anymore,” Kaladin said softly, more honestly, “or who. If I’m not a soldier, what is there to me?
We saw this thought reflected a lot in the last book, too. And Syl’s response is perfect; reminding him of all the varied parts of himself that he tries so hard not to see.
The darkness was still there and wanted him to believe things would never change, but this little victory proved the opposite. Because while he might never be rid of the thoughts permanently, he was done letting them win.
YEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAH Kal! I am so here for this new, actively fighting the darkness and depression Kaladin. He’s an inspiration in this regard, and I hope that he helps so many others in the real world to face and overcome their own dark thoughts. (He’s certainly helped me.)
Ishar
I founded the Oathpact, so I can siphon some of their pains onto myself. I bear their darkness. Each of them would be crushed by it, were it not for me. You’ve seen Taln? He is insensate, so in the thrall of the darkness?”
“Yes,” Syl said.
“That is because I do not bear his darkness as I carry the others […]”
Hmm. Interesting parallels here with Odium and Dalinar and the “you cannot have my pain” scene. By removing their pain and darkness, did Odium remove an essential part of their humanity, and hence drive them to madness? Did he actually achieve the opposite of his stated goal? Food for thought.
Drew’s Commentary: Invested Arts & Theories
And so we come to the end of Day Two.
The stage is set. Armies are in motion. Ishar is watching Kaladin and Szeth. Eight days remain… and the Spiritual Realm awaits.
There isn’t a whole lot of new information in this one chapter, as far as the Invested Arts go, but there is still plenty to speculate about. The first place to start, I think, is with Lift.
“Lift, you’re so highly Invested I’m surprised normal people can’t feel it. You glow so brightly to my life sense that you outshine anyone nearby.”
This is pretty telling here. Hoid himself is blown away by how Invested Lift is—this isn’t like even advanced Knights Radiant like Shallan or Kaladin or Jasnah. Hoid doesn’t go around remarking about how Invested they are, or how he thinks any Joe Schmoshar should be able to sense them.
Lift has been directly touched by Cultivation, and she’s almost certainly unique in her ability to metabolize food into Lifelight. Cultivation doesn’t do things by accident—Lift is being set up for something big. She’s only of the Third Ideal, and doesn’t seem to be particularly close to the Fourth, but she had no problem overcoming the anti-Radiant measures when Raboniel took over Urithiru. Honestly, the sense I get from Hoid is that she might be on the level of Elantrians when it comes to how Invested she is. That’s Big News.
Of course, Lift’s flashbacks will have to wait until Book Six, so it stands to reason that she’s a Chekhov’s Radiant who will mostly remain on the mantel until the second half of the series. I fully expect her unique Lifelight abilities to become a huge deal (perhaps in another instance where regular Radiants are crippled or can’t access Stormlight).
Lift frowned at that until she saw the cremling from earlier fluttering away on wings that could barely hold it in the air.
As usual, there was a Sleepless keeping tabs on interesting things in high places. The way Hoid talks to the hordeling makes me wonder if this isn’t the same Ghostblood Sleepless that was keeping tabs on him in Rhythm of War (though it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility that Hoid is familiar with several of the Sleepless, and talks to all of them with such snark).
Lift sat bolt upright. “Gav!”
But of course there was a third person spying on Hoid, Dalinar, and Navani, and he didn’t get as lucky as Lift and our friendly neighborhood Sleepless. Gavinor is off to have his own Spiritual Realm adventure, and… well, he’s no Bondsmith. There’s probably a heap of trouble ahead of him, especially since Navani and Dalinar have no clue he was even there. We’ll have to see what lies in store for that poor kid; he’s already been through the wringer once, with Aesudan and all the Voidspren and Unmade in Kholinar.
Let’s take a quick jaunt over to Shinovar before we wrap things up.
Odium changes. His goals change. I… can speak now… when it was so hard for years…
This, from the Wind, is curious. It seems Rayse was deliberately suppressing the old gods of Roshar, the old spren of Wind, Stone, and Night. But Taravangian either doesn’t have enough knowledge of what they are, exactly, or simply doesn’t have the time to spare for them. Now, on the metaphorical eve of the contest of champions, the Wind has snuck out the back window and gets to have a fun road trip with its best buddy, Kaladin.
Together we must preserve a remnant of Honor.
This line had a neon, blinking arrow pointing at it when I first read through. There are a lot of moving pieces here, with Dalinar trying to discover the truth of Honor’s death and maybe see if he can Ascend, but the Wind doesn’t sound too certain of that being a possibility. In fact, this feels like even more of a doomsday scenario than the contest would at first imply—it’s like the Wind expects Odium to somehow do more damage to Honor than has already been done. I don’t know if a Shard can actually be destroyed, but the Wind isn’t ready to risk it.
Maybe Ishar is going to have something to do with that?
Fan Theories
Karter705 on Reddit has a compelling and believable theory:
A few weeks ago, I jokingly commented that Dalinar would lose the duel by being late and I almost did a whole crempost theory citing all the times that he’s late to appointments (even when Navani started making fabrial watches with freaking alarm bells) as obvious foreshadowing. It was going to conclude with something like “and now Wit is giving him a magic watch and telling him please don’t lose track of time”
After tonight, seriously y’all Dalinar is going to lose the battle of champions because he doesn’t show up on time.
MightyFishMaster has a good observation on Reddit here:
I like that Renarin dislikes some of Shallan’s personality traits that Adolin finds endearing.
Lastly, tchales7 on Reddit has this speculation:
I am convinced we’re going to see Shallan do some amazing things as she powers up in this book. Her breakdown at the start as she talks about the “height to which creations could rise” coupled with how she creates Radiant in the Cognitive Realm is surely teasing something pretty immense.
We’ll be keeping an eye on the comment sections of posts about this article on various social media platforms and may include some of your comments/speculation (with attribution) on future weeks’ articles! Keep the conversation going, and PLEASE remember to spoiler-tag your comments on social media to help preserve the surprise for those who choose to wait for the full release. See you next Monday with our last preview discussion article before Wind and Truth arrives, as we dig into Interludes 3 and 4!
