The Mysterious Pen
also known as The Mysterious Pen, The mysterious spanreed correspondent
The fervent, cramped hand on the other end of a half-ruby someone has wax-stuck under Navani's travel-pod table. Calls her *the monster Navani Kholin*, accuses her of imprisoning hundreds of spren in her fabrials, says *the honorspren cannot be trusted, not anymore*, and warns that there will be consequences if she does not stop. Then goes silent. SA:RoW:Ch 9
A powerful spren on the order of the Stormfather or the Nightwatcher — capable, Navani believes, of making a Bondsmith — who once occupied Urithiru and was, by surviving spren accounts, lost to the Recreance in some shade of death they call *slumbering*. SA:RoW:Ch 3 superseded at SA:RoW:Ch 9
Known facts
- essentially-deadeyeRaboniel tells the Nine that the Sibling is essentially a deadeye — and that the suppression technology she discovered in the tower thousands of years ago can be inverted to turn Urithiru's own defences against the Radiants inside.SA:RoW:Ch 14
- gatekeeper-spren-orphanedThe thirty-to-forty-foot marble-and-onyx sentinels above the Urithiru Oathgate platforms were the Sibling's children — the Sibling commanded them, before dying or sleeping, to stop letting people into Shadesmar. Some have since chosen to obey the Stormfather and Dalinar instead, as the only Bondsmiths left, in contradiction of the old order.SA:RoW:Ch 22
- not-dead-merely-slumberingA Masked One in the Raboniel team contradicts a scout who suggests the Sibling might be permanently dead — *the Sibling lives* — confirming the Fused know their target is sleeping, not destroyed, when they enter Urithiru to corrupt it.SA:RoW:Ch 37
- speaks-through-garnet-veinsDabbid presses Navani's hand to a fine vein of garnet running through the wall and the tower's spren speaks to her there directly — small voice, pitched between male and female — confirming that the Sibling reaches its bonded humans through those veins of garnet in Urithiru's stone.SA:RoW:Ch 39
- old-bondsmith-built-them-a-defenceBefore the Sibling cut humans from the tower, their last Bondsmith built them something — a method of protecting them from the dangers they saw in humans, meant to help them trust again. It did not work then. It might, they tell Navani, stop the Lady of Pains now. It will need a great deal of Stormlight.SA:RoW:Ch 40
- only-the-suppression-portion-is-corruptedSo far the Lady of Pains has only corrupted the portion of the Sibling that suppresses Surgebinding — and reversed it to suppress Radiants instead of Fused — but she means to take more. The high-oath Radiants, the highly Invested generally (Unmade have managed before), and the Surge of Binding and Oaths should still work in the meantime.SA:RoW:Ch 40
- shield-was-built-by-melishiThe defence Navani activates here is something the Sibling's last Bondsmith, Melishi, built into the tower before they banished men from these halls — a barrier that, once primed with a great deal of Stormlight, walls off the crystal pillar from anyone trying to reach the Sibling, at the cost of also sealing off Teofil's route to break the garnet construction.SA:RoW:Ch 42
- leads-kaladin-through-hidden-doors-to-an-eleventh-floor-sanctuaryWith the Pursuer on his trail and a singer cordon tightening around the eighth-floor dead end, the Sibling uses pulses of garnet light in the wall veins to lead Kaladin from one embedded door-gem to another, through a hidden stairwell up to the eleventh floor and into a chamber the enemy is not searching.SA:RoW:Ch 44
- third-bondsmith-sprenSyl tells Kaladin what little she has been able to recover from older spren: long ago there were three Bondsmiths rather than one — the Stormfather, the Nightwatcher, and a third spren simply called the Sibling, who stayed in Urithiru and never showed themselves to humans. The other Radiant spren had assumed the Sibling long dead.SA:RoW:Ch 46
- hid-from-midnight-mother-for-centuriesThe Sibling tells Navani they survived the Midnight Mother's occupation of the tower by hiding for centuries without ever fighting back, so that the Unmade eventually concluded they had died. Time means nothing to the Sibling — they do not age, and unlike Radiant spren they do not pretend to be male or female, do not need to look human, and do not need to beg for human attention.SA:RoW:Ch 49
- wounded-by-ancient-binding-of-unmadeThe Sibling confesses to Navani that they did not raise the tower's defences against Raboniel's attack because they have been wounded since the ancient act that *changed the singers* — the binding of an Unmade that stripped the singers of their forms; that same act touched the souls of every spren of Roshar too. The Sibling lost the rhythm of their Light that day, the tower stopped working, and their father Honor — who should have helped — was losing his mind and soon died.SA:RoW:Ch 49
- contacted-navani-via-asylum-woman-and-dabbidThe earlier mysterious spanreed contact that warned Navani to stop her fabrial research was the Sibling — speaking through *an insane woman locked in a monastery* whose permeable soul accepted the contact, after the Sibling had Dabbid bring her a spanreed. The Sibling regards Vorin fabrial-making as a *high crime* — enslavement of spren — and reluctantly accepts only Oathgates as having been entered into willingly.SA:RoW:Ch 49
- cannot-attune-doors-to-individuals-anymoreThe tower spren tells Kaladin that the Urithiru gemstone doors were once attunable to specific individuals — these days the Sibling can only leave a door fully open or fully locked.SA:RoW:Ch 55
- tower-field-also-disrupts-invisible-spren-and-secretsprenThe dampening field through Urithiru interferes with Voidspren as well as Radiants: normally-invisible Voidspren leave visible sparks in the air, and the secretspren the Fused would use to track stray uses of Light spin in confused circles. A consequence noted in passing by the Deepest Ones: a Radiant in the tower could draw Stormlight unseen.SA:RoW:Ch 56
- contacts-kaladin-via-garnet-light-to-defend-a-nodeThrough a flashing garnet light embedded in the wall, the tower spren speaks for the first time to Kaladin directly — middling-pitched, frightened, pleading — and tells him the occupiers have found one of the nodes that protect it. The Lady of Pains has been sent for; the Sibling begs him to defend the node before she can take its mind.SA:RoW:Ch 58
- siblings-light-is-towerlightThe Light the Sibling used to make the tower work is a mixture of Stormlight and Lifelight — Towerlight — fitting their nature as a child of both Honor and Cultivation. Raboniel tells Navani she has been able to draw only a faint trickle of it from the corrupted tower.SA:RoW:Ch 61
- only-two-true-tonesThe Sibling insists to Navani that there are only two true tones of Roshar — one from each of their parents, Honor and Cultivation — and that the note of Odium is an interloper. They suspect their loss of Towerlight is connected to losing the ability to hear those two notes, and concede they do not know whether Odium becoming a true third pure tone of Roshar is to blame.SA:RoW:Ch 69
- towerlight-not-mixed-but-bornWhen Navani presses for an emulsifier that might let her bind Stormlight and Lifelight into more Towerlight, the Sibling corrects her: Towerlight is not a mixture. It is the Sibling's own Light, born from Honor and Cultivation as a child is born from a mother and father, and it has only ever been produced by the Sibling or by their Bondsmith through them.SA:RoW:Ch 69
- only-four-of-the-planned-nodes-builtAll four of the Sibling's nodes sit on the lower floors of the tower — none higher. Their last Bondsmith had planned more, farther up, but the falling-out with the humans drained the project of resources before it could be finished; only the four on the first few floors were ever built.SA:RoW:Ch 69
- transformation-almost-complete-after-third-nodeAfter the third node was destroyed in the Breakaway market well, Kaladin was seen fleeing the tower half an hour later with his wound still not healed. Raboniel reads this as confirmation that the Sibling's transformation toward corruption is almost complete, and that any Radiant powers drawn through the Sibling are now quite unreliable.SA:RoW:Ch 72
- fears-death-by-unmakingSpeaking faintly through the crystal vein, the Sibling tells Navani that being unmade is a kind of death — *if I am made into someone else, that is death* — that the singer it would have liked to bond is now beyond its reach, and that it is cold, and afraid, and does not want to die.SA:RoW:Ch 89
- warns-kaladin-of-final-node-and-radiant-deathsReaching Kaladin through a barely-glowing garnet on the wall, the Sibling reports that the enemy has located the final node at the room with the large stone model of the tower, and — worse — is about to kill all the captive Radiants; the spren also asks Kaladin to *send me Rlain*.SA:RoW:Ch 100
- spoke-rhythm-of-war-to-navani-at-the-pillarWhen the bleeding Navani fell against the crystal pillar in the basement, the Sibling answered her for the first time with a tone that was both harmonious and discordant at once — the Rhythm of War — rather than the whimpering she had heard for days.SA:RoW:Ch 107
- refused-navanis-bond-as-unworthyWhen Navani — bleeding out at the crystal pillar — asked the Sibling to bond her, the Sibling refused her with one word — *unworthy*. Navani traps spren in fabrials.SA:RoW:Ch 109
- own-tone-is-the-song-of-scienceThe Sibling identified the harmony Navani modulated into — the boundless growing energy of Cultivation vibrating together with the calm structured solidity of Honor — as their own tone, the Rhythm of the Tower: structure and nature, knowledge and wonder, the song of science itself, *the common ground between humans and spren* and the reason they had been created.SA:RoW:Ch 110
- aware-of-tower-conversationsThe Sibling can attend to anything spoken anywhere inside Urithiru — anyone inside the tower is, in its framing, inside it and therefore without expectation of privacy. It does not hear it all simultaneously; it listens to what it chooses to listen to.SA:WaT:Ch 14
- six-thousand-years-old-stone-of-honor-and-cultivationThe Sibling tells Jasnah that they were created some six thousand years ago, when the Stones wanted a legacy in the form of a child of Honor and Cultivation — born of Stone, sibling to the Wind (the early Stormfather) and the Night (an earlier Nightwatcher-figure). Of those siblings the Night left, the Stormfather has been replaced by something new, and the present Nightwatcher no longer answers to the Sibling as the elder sister once did — a chronology that flatly contradicts the Stormfather's account of having been present at humanity's arrival seven thousand years ago.SA:WaT:Ch 21
- accepts-spren-cultivation-compromisePressed by Navani over the moral weight of fabrial-imprisoned spren, the Sibling watches Bippy respond to a name and a compliment and concedes that — if spren can take willing shifts in fabrials under Rushu's cultivation method, with rewards — they can see a compromise where they once saw torment. They thank Navani for changing, and open a separate conversation with Rushu about being neither male nor female.SA:WaT:Ch 23
- melishi-discovered-spren-imprisonmentSpeaking to Navani through the vision-thread, the Sibling names what Melishi withdrew from them to pursue: the means of imprisoning spren — the technique that becomes the modern art of fabrial making. Mixed with a Bondsmith's premonition of *so much pain,* it sent Melishi toward what would become the Recreance.SA:WaT:Ch 82
- not-fully-functional-without-navaniTells Lift that without Navani physically present they are not fully functional — manageable for weeks more while she is partially in the Spiritual Realm, but already losing fidelity in distant corridors of Urithiru.SA:WaT:I-13
Events
- SA:RoW:Ch 40 Answers Navani's hand at the garnet vein with a small voice pitched between male and female; admits to spying through the tower's walls; admits to fearing the Lady of Pains; tells her, finally, what to try.
- SA:RoW:Ch 42 Reports Teofil dead, then quietly thanks and blesses Melishi as the shield holds and they are safe for now; tells Navani the protected sapphire must be destroyed in case the enemy reaches it.
- SA:RoW:Ch 44 Pulses violet light along garnet veins to lead Kaladin from door-gem to door-gem and up a hidden stairwell into the eleventh-floor sanctuary.
- SA:RoW:Ch 49 Speaks in Navani's mind through the garnet vein in the library wall, sketching what they have observed and grudgingly answering questions; later they relay Navani's words to Kaladin and back.
- SA:RoW:Ch 55 Speaks through the garnet line in the wall — confirms it guided Dabbid to Kaladin, and explains it can no longer attune doors to specific people.
- SA:RoW:Ch 58 Reaches Kaladin for the first time through a blinking garnet wall fixture, in a middling-pitched, frightened voice, to plead that he defend one of the tower's nodes from the Lady of Pains.
- SA:RoW:Ch 59 Guides Kaladin all the way to the eastern node with a moving garnet light along the strata, opens a single-exit hidden room with a fast-closing door for him on request, and at one point cries through his hand on the wall — *Sheiskillingme. Stopitstopit.*
- SA:RoW:Ch 61 Relays Kaladin's voice to Navani through the crystal vein, and later — in the private library — refuses to tell her where the remaining nodes are, insisting she invent plots to defend them first.
- SA:RoW:Ch 63 Relays Navani's voice to Kaladin through a crystal vein in the wall and again, via a garnet vein, while she walks him through installing the lift bracer's paired rubies in the weight shaft on the twentieth floor.
- SA:RoW:Ch 69 Speaks with Navani through the vein in the library wall: warns her off further dangerous fabrial work, insists Towerlight is not a mixture but their own Light born from Honor and Cultivation, names only two true tones of Roshar and calls Odium's an interloper, agrees to consider a singer-Bondsmith candidate, and at last names the Breakaway market well as one of the two remaining nodes — then flashes the alarm that the enemy has already found it.
- SA:RoW:Ch 76 Navani addresses the garnet vein at the start of the chapter and apologises; the Sibling gives only the faintest stirring in response.
- SA:RoW:Ch 89 Speaks faintly to Navani through the crystal vein, calling itself cold and afraid, and admits that being unmade would be a kind of death.
- SA:RoW:Ch 100 Reaches Kaladin through a barely-glowing garnet on the wall — a thin, frail voice that warns of the final node and the imminent killing of the captive Radiants, then asks for Rlain before fading out.
- SA:RoW:Ch 105 Whimpers in answer when Navani tries to talk to them; the field around the crystal pillar drops once the final node is destroyed, leaving them exposed in a chamber darker than it had been.
- SA:RoW:Ch 107 Answers Navani at the crystal pillar for the first time in days, not with whimpering but with a tone both harmonious and discordant at once — the Rhythm of War.
- SA:RoW:Ch 109 Shows Navani a vision of the atrium where humans and singers stand together to defend the helpless Radiants, then refuses her request for a Bondsmith bond — *you aren't worthy, Navani*.
- SA:RoW:Ch 110 Tells Navani she is unworthy and they are too different, then identifies the harmony Navani modulates into as their own tone — the Rhythm of the Tower, the song of science itself, the reason they were created — and accepts her Words.
- SA:RoW:Ch 111 Joined with Navani inhabiting the tower's veins; flashes lights to draw Kaladin's eye and speaks to him through the crystal vein.
- SA:RoW:Ch 113 Speaks to Navani after disconnection; tells her she has performed a kindness and that consequences came for spren after the Recreance.
- SA:WaT:Ch 14 Speaks in Navani's mind throughout, answering her questions about the tower's fabrials and finally interrupting her exploration to tell her to listen to the Windrunner at Dalinar's door.
- SA:WaT:Ch 29 The tower-spren manifests at Lift's side as a dancing column of light invisible to other humans, and trades a long, characteristically dry conversation with her about chickens, Wyndle, and the millions of tiny life-forms living on her skin.
- SA:WaT:Ch 80 Reached through the vision's thread of teal light; speaks weakly to Navani that they remember nothing of those days.
- SA:WaT:Ch 82 Speaks again through the teal vision-thread, identifies Melishi's withdrawal toward spren-imprisonment, and points Navani at Garith with the warning *he lies.*
- SA:WaT:Ch 105 Reaches Navani through the right tones of Roshar, names the discordant futures she can hear, explains that perpendicularities only go inward — and at the Kholinar Oathgate's flash latches Connection onto her and pulls her home.
- SA:WaT:I-13 Speaks to Lift through shimmers on the desk and walls of Urithiru, helps her locate Mraize's aluminum-lined cell, and cancels her Navani-illusion on request.
- SA:WaT:Ch 114 Speaks amused inside Navani's mind — *told you* — when she finds Lift in her seat, and confirms it is not one of the Fused.
- SA:WaT:Ch 145 Calls Navani's name in her mind to break the news of Dalinar's death, names what the enemy has become, and rises to her order to wall the enemy out of Urithiru — *it will be your will and mine against his.*
- SA:RoW:Ch 9 Writes into Navani's notebook through a half-ruby waxed under her travel-pod table — fervent, cramped, scolding — then refuses any further answer once the warning is delivered.
Backreferences
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 3
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 9
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 13
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 14
- factthe Sibling
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 22
- factthe Sibling
- factthe Sibling
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 38
- factthe Sibling
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 40
- factthe Sibling
- factthe Sibling
- factthe Lady of Pains
- factHonor's Truest Surge
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 42
- factthe Sibling
- factMelishi
- factthe Sibling's Shield
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 44
- factthe Sibling
- factthe Sibling's Hidden Tunnels
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 46
- factthe Sibling
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 49
- factLift
- factthe Sibling
- factthe Sibling
- factthe Sibling
- factthe Sibling's Shield
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 55
- factthe Sibling
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 58
- factthe Sibling
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 59
- factthe Sibling
- factTowerlight
- factthe Sibling
- factthe Sibling
- factthe Sibling
- factPure Tones of Roshar
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 71
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 72
- factthe Sibling
- factRaboniel
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 76
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 84
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 89
- factthe Sibling
- factRaboniel
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 91
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 92
- factVenli
- factRaboniel
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 96
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 99
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 100
- factthe Sibling
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 104
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 105
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 107
- factthe Sibling
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 109
- factthe Sibling
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 110
- factthe Sibling
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 1
- factUrithiru
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 7
- factShadesmar compass
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 11
- factthe Grand Knell
- factthe Current
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 14
- factthe Sibling
- factNavani Kholin
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 15
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 18
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 20
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 21
- factthe Sibling
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 23
- factthe Sibling
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 25
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 26
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 29
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 30
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 31
- factMayalaran
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 50
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 80
- factNavani Kholin
- factGarith
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 82
- factthe Sibling
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 105
- factNavani Kholin
- summarySA:WaT:I-13
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 114
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 119
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 126
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 129
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 131
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 132
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 145
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 146