(title hidden — not yet read)

(summary hidden — not yet read)

Dalinar stands alone at his villa window above Thaylen City and looks westward toward Shinovar — the only piece of Roshar the Eila Stele now says was ever rightly his ancestors'. The other monarchs argue without him in the temple below; everything he says only widens the rifts. He should have released the visions and told the others about Elhokar's oath to him long ago. Each of Taravangian's leaked blows landed on its target with terrible precision: Fen now has proof he was hiding political ambition, Noura and the Azish proof that the visions are dangerous, and Taravangian himself — the philosopher — proof that the war has no moral floor.

The Stormfather asks whether he really thought he belonged here, whether he was native to Roshar. Shinovar was the land humans were given, a place where their plants and animals could grow; men were never able to confine themselves to what they had been given. When, Dalinar whispers, remembering Gavilar, has any tyrant in history ever stopped and admitted he had enough? The Almighty kept this truth from his Radiants; when at last they uncovered it, they walked away from their oaths. The Stormfather tells him it was more than the truth alone — the ancient Radiants abandoned their oaths from a sharper fear: that they would do to this world what men like them had already done to a previous one. And as he will. He insists his own Radiants will not follow that path. The Stormfather does not believe him.

Below, Bridge Four files out of the temple with their spears slumped and their heads down. Dalinar hurries down to intercept them. They are heading back to Urithiru to brief the men they left there. Leyten grumbles that he had thought they were finally on the side of the good for once; Sigzil sounds half-sympathetic to the invaders; Teft says they want to hear what Kal makes of it when he returns, because Kal tends to see how things really stand when nobody else can. They salute him cross-armed and march off without leave. He keeps to himself the thought lurking under all the rest: it has been four weeks now. What if none of the party ever come back?

Previously, the Stormfather tells him, Honor was always able to keep this kind of revelation from breaking the Radiants: he could convince them they were righteous regardless of where their grandfathers had come from. By the run-up to the Recreance, however, Honor himself was dying. He did not steady the knights of that generation. He raved instead about the Dawnshards — old weapons by which the Tranquiline Halls were destroyed — and warned that Surgebinders would inflict the same fate on this world. Dalinar points out that the enemy tells him much the same thing. The Stormfather does not argue. The ancient knights, he now sees, abandoned their oaths not out of pettiness but in an attempt to keep the world alive; he holds their weakness against them and, having been cursed with Dalinar's capacity for sympathy, also understands them.

The meeting empties past him onto the steps. Vizier Noura stops only to tell him — in Azish — that they are being manipulated by the truth and that the Oathgate and his powers alike are dangerous. The Azish will rejoin their soldiers in the fleet and ride out the storm at sea; afterwards they will see. Taravangian has offered them his ships home if it comes to that. Veden highprinces avoid him with excuses; Thaylen guild lighteyes do the same. His own Alethi highprinces hold with him, but Alethkar alone cannot do this. Queen Fen is one of the last out. He asks whether she will leave him too; she laughs — to go where? An army is coming, she needs his infantry, she cannot afford to throw him out. He apologises for betraying her trust. She tells him he has, near as she can tell, become a good man only just in time to go down bravely with this ship — which would be commendable if she did not remember that the old Blackthorn would long since have murdered anyone trying to sink him. She and Kmakl go off in a palanquin.

Taravangian is still sitting on the steps when the courtyard finally empties. He apologises in a small voice for having assumed everyone shared the same intelligence and wanted it aired in one go; he had not foreseen this outcome. He climbs stiffly to his feet, descends slowly toward Dalinar, and tells him he can no longer stand in the field beside him. Dalinar reminds him that he, of all people, has been the one to preach that a ruler must accept whatever political necessities arrive. That, Taravangian says, is exactly what he must do now. He wishes he could explain. He cannot. He is carried away in a palanquin and does not look back.

Dalinar sinks down on the steps. The Stormfather tells him he had tried his best to hide this; Dalinar asks bitterly whether that was so they could keep on living the lie. The Stormfather answers that lying, in his experience, is what men do best of all. Insulted, Dalinar objects — and the Stormfather turns the knife: has this not been Dalinar's own occupation for six years now — pretending he was no monster, pretending he had not killed her? He winces, makes a fist over nothing to fight, lets it drop, and trudges back up the steps to his villa. So ends the fourth part of his story.