Unity
POV: dalinar
Summary
Part Two opens with King Elhokar leading a Shattered Plains hunting procession — a thousand Cobalt Guard in Kholin blue, palanquin-borne scribes, and the highprinces Sadeas, Vamah, and Dalinar himself — out to claim a fully grown chasmfiend living on plateaus Dalinar maintains. Riding behind in inherited blue Shardplate, Adolin watches Sadeas needle his father over his fading gemheart count and chafes at the Codes of War that forbid him to duel his father's tormentor while on duty. Beside him his quieter brother Renarin rides with spectacles down and back straight. The phrase Unite them keeps whispering through Dalinar's mind — an echo of the highstorm visions that have lately put him on the floor shaking every storm.
Elhokar, charged with a young man's restlessness, challenges his uncle to a bareheaded race up a forty-foot rock spire and gallops off without notice. Dalinar gives Adolin command and chases. Plate-assisted, the two race up the stone. Dalinar pulls ahead, hears Unite them again, hesitates, and lets his nephew win. Gloryspren bloom around the king atop the spire. Elhokar laughs, pulls Dalinar up, and confides his usual paradox: he can face an enemy with a Blade in hand; what he cannot face is the assassin no one sees coming. From the spire they spot the hunt pavilion three plateaus on. Below, the King's Wit catches up on a black gelding, jokes Renarin into a blush, and as he rides past Dalinar whispers that those who deserve mockery are those who can benefit from it — and that Renarin is less fragile than his father thinks.
The procession crosses to the viewing plateau, where the gaunt huntmaster Bashin has the lure-chull ready and the grandbows (one of Navani's fabrial research lines) racked. Bashin briefs them: this chasmfiend is one of the largest, going for the legs is essential, do not forget the beast is far more dangerous when it is not pupating. He breaks off, frowning. The chull is wandering away from the chasm with a frayed, baitless rope behind it. Dalinar's voice goes alarmed. Something dark and mind-numbingly enormous heaves itself up onto chitinous legs — and climbs onto the viewing plateau where the king's scribes, attendants, and unprepared honor guard are gathered. "Aw, Damnation," Bashin says.