POV: dalinar
Summary
Dalinar stands on the Urithiru Oathgate platform and looks down the endless cliffs around the tower's perch, Navani on his arm and Taravangian and Adrotagia coming up the ramp behind. Navani reads his distraction wrongly and asks if the latest vision is still on him; he does not correct her. He cannot shake the memory of Odium in the Feverstone Keep vision, or of the Stormfather reduced to a whimper. He and Navani and Jasnah have agreed to suspend use of the Stormfather visions for now — no more pulling other minds in until they understand what Odium can and cannot reach.
Taravangian reaches the top with Adrotagia and his short-haired Surgebinder Malata in tow; Dalinar's guards, including the leathery Sergeant Rial, bring up the rear. Rial salutes him too many times in protest of a previous chastisement, submits his canteen for the alcohol sniff-test, and cheerfully reports that the actual flask is buttoned away in his right leg pocket where he has *completely forgotten* about it. Navani grumbles that the man is unfit company; Dalinar admits he reminds him of his old friends.
The control building at the centre of the platform is patterned in Dawnchant glyphs that hint, frustratingly, at direct platform-to-platform travel they have not yet worked out. Navani consults her notes at the keyhole — paired with the Shattered Plains mechanism, as far as they can tell — then writes by spanreed to Thaylen City and ushers everyone out. A ring of Stormlight runs round the building like an afterimage of a firebrand, and Kaladin and Shallan step out: room-only transfer works, a far cheaper trick than swapping the entire platform.
Dalinar takes Kaladin aside on the ramp. The flight in front of the highstorm to Thaylen City went smoothly; on the next storm he is to make for Kholinar with Adolin and Elhokar and keep the king from doing anything foolhardy. Something strange is going on in the city. And, in passing, Dalinar tells him that as a Shardbearer he is at least fourth dahn — that makes him a landed brightlord, and Elhokar has chosen him a small estate on the south fork of the Deathbend River, six or seven villages and one town, on a good caravan route. Kaladin looks stunned. He doesn't want the burden. *If you'd wanted a life without burdens,* Dalinar tells him, *you shouldn't have said the oaths.* Get the Oathgate open, the man adds; once Alethkar is holding, take all the time you need to go fetch your family from northern Alethkar — spanreed reports say Relis Ruthar has been pushed back to Herdaz by the Fused, but the Voidbringers are not killing noncombatants, and the Lirin family should still be safe.
Watching Kaladin jog off down the ramp, Dalinar dwells on his own burdens. Once Elhokar and Adolin are back from Kholinar he will have to announce Elhokar's highking arrangement, formally name Adolin Kholin highprince, and step down. He still has not told the highprinces. He keeps delaying because the day he does it is the day he is no longer of his homeland. He goes in and joins the others in the control building; Malata inserts her Blade into the slot in the metal plate, rotates it, and the inner wall turns. The floor mosaics begin to glow like stained glass; a flash of light, and they step out onto a platform high above Thaylen City.
The Royal Ward platform has been turned into a sculpture garden, but most of the sculptures are toppled and broken. Queen Fen waits with her court on the ramp below. The view stops Dalinar cold: he has only ever studied Thaylen City on maps, a mountainside metropolis like Kharbranth climbing in stepped Loft Wards up from the wall-protected Low Ward to the Royal Ward at the top, with the distinctive shape of the Ancient Ward at the city's heart. Today, hundreds of buildings have caved in; whole sections are rubble where higher structures, smashed by the Everstorm, slid down on top of them. The famous Thaylen docks, all wood, are simply gone. No other report he has read describes destruction this complete — the city's western seafront has no land to break a storm, and the wooden Loft Wards never had to weather any storm worse than the mild straits winds. The Everstorm has come five times now; the later passings have been tamer than the first, and the reports of them disagree on whether there were winds, rain, or burning embers.
Dalinar descends to where Fen stands with her aging consort Kmakl — mustaches and eyebrows drooping into matching white frames — flanked by lighteyes, scribes, and ardents. *Fen,* he says softly, *I'm sorry.* She answers in a thick Thaylen accent he had not heard in the visions, joking that they lived too long in luxury, that as a child she had worried other countries would discover how pleasant the broken-storm coast was and come swarming in. They will, she says, rebuild from stone. And in the meantime there is a tour to give: she will walk him through the temples of the Royal Ward, by tradition.