Highprince of War
POV: dalinar
Summary
While the highstorm hammers the soldiers' barrack, Dalinar falls into his twelfth vision — wearing the body of a farmer named Heb in the ancient Eastern kingdom of Natanatan (in the year Eighth Epoch 337, the kingdom that would one day fall and become the Shattered Plains). He stands in a dark barn with Heb's terrified daughter Seeli clutching at him. A Midnight Essence — a tar-black, eyeless, six-legged creature that hunts by smell — bursts through the wall, and he carries Seeli through the broken planks to her mother Taffa's farm house.
Inside, the Essence shatters the window and slashes his cheek; with the lamp lit and an iron fire-poker in hand he falls into Smokestance — sword forms he should not know — and holds the thing off until two Knights Radiant in glowing blue Plate arrive and kill it. Their breastplates carry the stylized double-eye symbol. The female knight closes Dalinar's cheek with Regrowth and tells him the year, the kingdom (Natanatan), and that the Radiants live across Alethela (the kingdom that would one day be called Alethkar) and fight "for no king and for all of them." The male knight invites Heb to Urithiru if his sword skill matches his hearth-tending. The female recites Radiant doctrine: every pasture needs flocks, herdsmen, and watchers — "we of Alethela are the watchers." Harkaylain, she says, predicts a Desolation is close — though the Essence itself is only a sign of it, one of the Ten Deaths.
Screams from the village; the female knight runs off. Taffa goes still, eyes wrong, and the deep familiar voice of the visions speaks through her: he misses these times when the orders were one; Dalinar must unite the highprinces. Pressed for specifics, the voice tells him concretely to trust Sadeas — and to act with honor, and honor will aid him. The vision dissolves. Dalinar returns to the barrack flailing and yelling under the hands of his own soldiers, Renarin watching with concern. The men release him, Renarin tries to pass the fit off as battle-eagerness, and Dalinar withdraws to the back of the barrack to breathe. He trusts the visions. He cannot explain Sadeas to Adolin. There is nothing to do but keep going and find a way to make the highprinces work together.