POV: eshonai
Summary
NINE YEARS AGO. Eshonai reflects that there is more than one way to explore — even from the centre of your own tent, if a group of living relics walks out of the forest to visit you. The humans thrill her. They were not destroyed after all. They speak without rhythm, hear no songs of Roshar, make carapace out of metal and lash it on. They have only one form they cannot leave, the *passions of mateform* never set down. Stranger still, with them is a tribe of dullform creatures who do not even sing.
The Five are cautious; they let only a few listeners cross the river to meet the visitors, fearing the strangers will be scared off. Eshonai thinks that foolish — these are people who know ancient things — and she sits up with the human scholars night after night, prying their tongue out of them by the light of their startlingly bright gemstones. Old human phrases preserved in the songs help. She outpaces Klade and the others, perhaps from stubbornness, perhaps from a life with the songs.
Once the language barrier begins to fall, the humans ask to be taken onto the Plains. Eshonai guides them, keeping them well clear of the ten ancient cities and the other families. Following one of her maps they approach from the north, walking the chasms until they reach an old listener bridge of wood and rope. The rift smells of wet rotting plants — *where plants rot, others often grow,* she thinks, *and the scent of death is the same as the scent of life.* The guards in buffed metal breastplates cross first.
On the plateau, the surgeon's assistant — a woman in concealing dress who wears rings on her right hand and keeps her left covered — climbs up beside Eshonai and asks what she sees when she looks at windspren. Long white lines, pinpricks in the sky, very long tails — the woman names that *closer to the reality.* She asks if Eshonai has ever seen windspren that take shape, that play tricks, that speak. The first, yes. The last, no — fanciful, Eshonai answers, hearing the new word back into her mouth.
The king is harder to read. He is unlike the rest of his party — sometimes loud, sometimes dismissive, the only male in beard — and he takes little interest in her or in any of the listeners at first. His scholars and scouts, however, are fascinated, so she spends her time with them. His brother — a brutish, harder-faced man whom she would call warform if humans had forms — walks differently than the others. They unpack their improbably opulent lunch (durable cloth tents, varieties of foods) and Eshonai helps with the poles.
The woman with the rings notices Eshonai's hunting knife and waves the king over. Beautiful patterned metal, carved hilt — salvaged generations ago from ruins at the centre of the Plains. *Lasting back to the False Desolation perhaps,* the woman says; could they really be weapons two thousand years old? Eshonai does not mention the listener Shardblades; her family has none.
The king is asking *where did you get this* when trumping sounds nearby. Eshonai spins, attunes Tension — *Monster of Chasms* — and shouts for soldiers, though she had not expected one to come this close. A chasmfiend climbs onto a plateau a distance off, sleek and powerful, basking toward the sun, ignoring the humans entirely; it sinks back into the chasm trailed by chasmspren like arrows in flight. Eshonai tells them outright: *it noticed us, it simply doesn't care.* The party finishes lunch quietly and is eager to leave; only the king seems untouched, still turning the knife over in his hands and not handing it back.
*You truly kept these for thousands of years?* No, she admits — they were found. In ruins. The king looks up sharply, asks what ruins, and she curses Klade quietly for having mentioned the ten cities. *My people built cities. Old parents of my people. We have songs* — many, important — *they talk of the forms we bore, the wars we fought, how we left the ones of old who ruled us, when the Neshua Kadal were fighting, with spren as companions...* *Radiants?* the king says, his voice growing softer. *Your people have stories about the Knights Radiant?* Yes, maybe — she does not have the words yet.
From that moment on, the king is *very, very interested.* All the way back to the forest his scholars interrogate the listeners about songs, lore, and other ruins. When the humans finally leave several days later, Gavilar gifts the family several crates of fine modern steel — not a replacement for the ancient salvaged blades, but enough that more of her warriors can be armed. All he asks in return is a promise: that on his return he find the family settled in one of the cities at the edge of the Plains, so that he can hear from the keepers of songs in person.