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Dalinar reaches into the dark stone shaft where he hid the Honorblade he took from the assassin in white and pulls it free into the spherelight of the next chamber. He had expected to feel *something* at touching a Herald's weapon — a tingling, a pressure — and feels only his own old anger. He had been shortsighted, he tells himself, to see this thing only as the assassin's sword. It is the weapon of a king: Jezerezeh'Elin.

*Some men name you a Herald,* he says to the Stormfather rumbling in the back of his head. *Jezerezeh. Herald of Kings. Father of Storms.* No, the Stormfather answers; he is neither Jezrien nor Kelek; men say many foolish things. Jezrien was a Windrunner *before* there were Windrunners — *a man whose powers bore no name* — until Ishar founded the orders. *Ishi'Elin,* Dalinar says. *Herald of Luck.* Or of mysteries, or of priests, or a dozen other things men dub him, the Stormfather replies. He is now as mad as the rest. More, perhaps. Pressed, the Stormfather admits he has *seen* Ishar in the storms — cursing the Stormfather at night while naming himself a god, seeking death, his own, perhaps that of every man. Dalinar guesses aloud: *Tezim, the god-priest of Tukar?* *Yes.* He swallows the urge to demand why the Stormfather had not volunteered this — *when else would I speak of it?* — and asks instead whether he can heal stone again. *Once you did it, I always knew,* the Stormfather rumbles. *Once you discover it, I will know.* Powers cannot be hurried or forced; they come when their bearer is ready. And, the Stormfather adds — pressing him backward with the force of it — *do not look toward the powers of others. Yours is the power Ishar once held. Before he was Herald of Luck, they called him Binder of Gods. He founded the Oathpact. No Radiant is capable of more than you. Yours is the power of Connection — of joining men and worlds, minds and souls.* Reknitting the Thaylen temple was a mere trifle. A party trick.

Dalinar is left out of breath, leaning on a stone slab with a headache. *Are there others like me?* Not right now, the Stormfather answers, and there can ever be only three — *one for each of us.* Dalinar hazards: three spren who make Bondsmiths — the Stormfather, Cultivation…? The Stormfather actually laughs. *You would have a difficult time making her your spren. I should like to see you try it.* Then who? *My siblings need not concern you.* He drops it.

Dalinar holds out a dun sphere and asks whether the Stormfather can renew it directly. The Stormfather strains against the bond, intrigued, and reports back that he cannot: during a highstorm Honor's power concentrates in one place that pierces all three Realms — Physical, Cognitive, Spiritual — and brings them momentarily together, and the gemstones, exposed to the infinite Spiritual power there, are lit. Standing here beside Dalinar the Stormfather is close, *but the power is not. It still rides the storm.* Dalinar tries to memorise it for Navani verbatim.

He takes the Honorblade out into the hall to Bridge Four. *This is the Honorblade your captain recovered. Anyone who holds it will immediately gain the powers of a Windrunner — one at a time. Use it to keep training while he is gone.* He proffers it to Teft first; Teft points at Leyten — *you're our storming armourer; you take the thing.* Leyten protests that the Blade isn't armour. Rock cuts through with *airsick lowlanders, your soup is cold,* takes the weapon himself — *I am not going to swing this thing; I will keep him safe, this is all* — and his eyes bleed glassy blue. *Don't let anyone know you have this,* Dalinar warns, *and see if you can learn to dismiss and summon it like an ordinary Shardblade.* Teft tasks Sigzil with a rotation; Dalinar only belatedly registers the obvious — anyone holding the Blade should be able to heal themselves with Stormlight too.

Navani's clock fabrial dings on his forearm — *she's learned to make it ding* — and he excuses himself for his appointment with an emperor a thousand miles away. On the balcony she and Fen argue for his benefit. *No amount of Stormlight will help if they simply imprison him,* Navani says. *We could be sending him to be a hostage.* He kisses her and accepts Fen's envelope: three essays inside, all marked with appropriate glyphs, with a spanreed for signals. Navani hands him a small box: *lunch.* She has wrapped it in a glyphward — *can't hurt, right?* — and tells him plainly that one hour without spanreed signal and they are coming for him.

Crossing Urithiru's western plateau he passes drilling formations and runners; the Shardbearers Rust and Serugiadis practise massive Shardbows at a target Kaladin set on a nearby mountainside. Common soldiers sit in clusters staring intently at held spheres; he overhears one group discussing *swallowing* them. *They go about this backward,* the Stormfather rumbles. *They can't draw in Light and become Radiant; they first must be approaching Radiance, and look for Light to fulfil the promise.* Dalinar barks them back to drill. Two practice formations interlock badly — green-and-white against black-and-maroon, Aladar against Sadeas — and the Sadeas block keeps ramming the wavering Aladar line as angerspren boil at their feet. Dalinar shouts; the rear ranks pull back; the centre devolves into a brawl. He shimmers Stormlight along the stones in front of him — anyone untouched jumps back; everyone in the Light is glued in place. The brawl breaks. He pulls the last few apart and sticks them by the seat to the stone next to their angerspren. Aladar's officers withdraw their men in good order; the Sadeas men spit at the ground and stalk off sullen. *They're getting worse,* he thinks. Under Torol they had been sadistic but still soldiers; under Meridas — whose remade glyphpair flies above them, tower elongated, hammer changed to axe — they no longer behave like an army. The investigation into Torol's murder is still leadless. He resolves to find them work that tires them out; something, perhaps, like a ruined city in need of rebuilding.

Up the ramp to the proper Oathgate platform he crosses the empty field to the control building. Jasnah waits inside reading a book and making notes. *What took you?* *Nearly had a riot on the parade ground.* *Sadeas?* They agree to start cycling Sadeas troops in small batches into Fen's rebuild — strictly supervised, just enough work to grind them out. No word, Jasnah reports, from the Kholinar infiltration team; the Stormfather cannot reach them through visions and they cannot risk it, so they wait on a spanreed. Dalinar shoves down his worry for Elhokar and his son. *Ready?* Jasnah asks. *I am.* She summons her Shardblade and rotates the wall; light flashes, and stuffy summer heat surges in through the doorways. *Good luck.* Dalinar steps out into Azir alone, leaving her to flash back home.