POV: dalinar
Summary
After the day's final battle in Emul, Dalinar walks the field. To him the smell of smoke is welded to the smell of blood, and he has done this hike enough times that it has become a habit — a kind of autopsy of the fighting, reading the day from the way the dead have fallen. He can see where a line collapsed and chaos ruled (singer bodies in a swath), where a company was forced onto bad footing along the sluggish river (humans bunched at the bank), where the first beats of the battle landed (arrows in chests) and where the rout came (arrows in backs). Among the shafts he counts many with white "goosefeather" fletching that the Horneaters have been delivering in crates to support the war.
Blood threads across the stone seeking out old rainwater channels. The human red and the singer orange together make an unwholesome shade — the off-red of a rotting methi fruit. Smoke from the pyres hangs heavy; officers are Soulcast into statues and sent home, but everyone else burns where they fell. Charnel groups move through with knives, cutting the inked name-patches from the back of each uniform so families have a chance at closure — though sometimes the patch is lost, or the ink ruined, and a family will spend the rest of its life merely hoping.
Walking among the dead, Dalinar cannot stop hearing Taravangian's cold, terribly logical argument: there is a way to end the war, and all Dalinar has to do is stop fighting. He is not ready yet. Every general knows there is a time to turn the point of the sword down. He could trust that the Fused are not aiming at extinction — Odium, however, he could never trust. Ever since he sent the Thrill to the bottom of the ocean, he has been quietly turning into what men have accused him of being for years: a soldier who has lost the will to kill. He acts the figurehead with the victorious companies feasting in the shadow of the slaughter, and he can tell that only the Mink sees what he is hiding — which is one of the reasons Dalinar has worked so hard to make the Herdazian his replacement.
The Mink falls in beside him to give the strategic assessment. The war in Emul is essentially done. The enemy fought, but cut their losses rather than risk destabilising Jah Keved — they want to occupy and rule, not just to destroy, which is the only reason this front did not end them. He reminds Dalinar of the promise: Alethkar next, then Herdaz; no operations against the Iriali and no grab at Jah Keved until his people are free. Dalinar adds his own footnote — Urithiru first, before any of it — and the Mink heads off to celebrate with his unit of Herdazian freedom fighters.
In the small command tent Dalinar ends up with a goblet of rubies — could the spheres not have been a different colour? He drifts. They won today, but Navani is still captive; if he cannot retake Urithiru everything collapses, including his real goal of frightening Odium enough to deal.
Sigzil the Windrunner arrives with Lyn and Leyten and the Lightweaver Stargyle — a handsome man in a too-grand name who refuses to wear a uniform and bows rather than salutes. He paints in the air with his fingers, Lightweaving from breath rather than from drawings, the way Shallan needs hers. (He says he was a pigmenter's son and has always seen the world by its colours.) The illusion rises: a shoreline camp, undisciplined groups around campfires, no real uniforms, mixed weapons — yet well-equipped, well-numbered, battle-hardened. Ishar's troops. At the centre, a pavilion in ringed patterns like Tukari bracelets. Dalinar knows the Tukari for their mercenaries, their perfumes, their jewellery; he knows almost nothing else about the region.
The image rolls forward as the Windrunners sweep closer, and the figure in front of the pavilion sharpens — an older, white-bearded, pale-skinned man, simple deep-blue robes. Wit had said Ishar would appear Shin, and so he does. He spreads his hands; frost crystallises out of the stone around him in lines that resolve into a glyph — the symbol for *mystery*, for a *question*. It is aimed at Dalinar specifically. He does not need Wit's sketches; this is the right man.
A hiss from beside Dalinar. Szeth has left his post at the tent flap and is staring into the illusion. *"Blood of my fathers,"* Szeth says, "that man is Shin?" — almost remembering that he wears the face of an Alethi today. Dalinar explains, gently: the Heralds existed before any of the modern nations did, and most artists have always painted them as Alethi anyway. Szeth seems transfixed.
The Windrunners climb Stargyle up out of bowshot and his illusion comes apart. Stargyle offers to show it again; Dalinar says he has what he needs. They have found Ishar, and he is waiting for them. Dalinar tells Sigzil to run another sweep and report back — he wants to consult with Jasnah first, but they are going to go meet that man, and find out what he knows.