POV: venli
Summary
Eight years before the present day, in the listener city above the Shattered Plains, Venli walks her halls hearing rhythms no one else around her can hear. The Rhythms of Praise, of Exultation, of Craving — proof, she tells herself, that she is special. Ulim, the Voidspren hidden in her gemheart, urges her to keep the secret a little longer. He hints at nimbleform; he whispers her own majesty back to her until she agrees.
Venli has gathered a small staff of scholars to give her cover for the forms she means to "discover" on Roshar's behalf — first nimbleform, then more. She tells Ulim she wants nimbleform soon; her sister gets to march through the cities in warform like a hero while she is overlooked. He cautions her against finding another form too quickly — too suspicious. He also keeps deflecting her: the new storm is not yet ready, the last Herald is still standing, the other Voidspren are still trapped on Braize and can only be pulled across on gemstones from a place out in the ocean.
Their conversation curdles. Asked whether the listeners' warriors can fight, Ulim laughs and paints her a picture of armoured men, archers, cavalry — interlocking shields and waves of arrows — and her confidence cracks. Maybe we don't have to fight them, she ventures. *Kid,* he answers, *you don't get to choose to be free. Just which master to follow.* And then, when she persists: in the old days forms of power were reserved for the most special, the most valuable. She asks how they ever lost. He admits the truth — they had relied too heavily on Ba-Ado-Mishram, an oversized Unmade who Connected herself to the whole singer species and granted forms of power as if they were Fused titles, until humans figured out that spren can be caught in gemstones. Ba-Ado-Mishram got a very cramped prison; every singer in the world had their mind broken. To restore them, Odium will need a critical mass of stormforms to pull the new storm across from Shadesmar.
Venli notes that Ulim's plan depends on the very ancestors he sneers at; without them, the listeners would not exist to be used. *They got lucky,* he says. *Doesn't mean they weren't traitors.* She suggests they may have attuned Wisdom, not Betrayal — there were nine Unmade in the songs, and her people had sworn not to follow any of them again.
Without intending it, Venli has walked all the way home. She finds her mother Jaxlim picking apart a rug she has woven — *I got it wrong again. Wrong every time…* — and the Rhythm of Indifference Venli tries to attune will not come. She sits cross-legged on the floor as she used to as a child and asks Jaxlim to tell her the first song. *Days we sing. Days we once knew?* Her mother continues on the Rhythm of Memories: the chant of the listeners' departure from their gods. Ulim mutters that this is painful to hear, that her people had no idea what they were doing.
Venli sets him aside and lets herself feel her mother's rhythm, lets herself remember that this had all been to help Jaxlim — and admits to herself, finally, that she has always wanted more than that. The forms changed thought, she knows; with Ulim crowded into her gemheart alongside her ordinary workform spren, she cannot fully tell what she still believes. *You single-handedly delivered warform to your people,* he whispers. *Once you give them additional forms, they will revere you. Worship you.*
She listens instead to the four hundred ancestors who walked out into dullform rather than be ruled by gods, and decides for herself what is left. The ancient songs became irrelevant the moment Eshonai led humans onto the Plains; the listeners can no longer hide; war is coming whether they wear forms of power or not. The choice is no longer between gods and freedom — it is between gods and slaving brands.
*How do we proceed?* Ulim asks. Venli watches Jaxlim trail off in the middle of the chant and weep. She tells him: use his agents among the humans to nudge the Alethi king toward inviting the listeners to visit. Bring her people into a great human city. Overwhelm them with their own insignificance. Make them sing to the Terrors long into the night. Only then will they listen to her promises.
*It shall be done,* Ulim answers. Venli rises to comfort her mother.