POV: szeth
Summary
*Nine years ago.* On the night that follows the cliff-top battle and the Stoneward betrayal, Szeth sits with his arms across his knees beside a fire, cheeks stained with tears, his army camped a short way off. The other Honorbearers stand a little distance away with his father among them — wearing the Bondsmith colours, the Bondsmith Honorblade at his hip. His gentle, administrating father, a man Szeth cannot picture as a killer, has become one who subtracts.
He listens. *The Voice wanted this to continue,* Sivi says. *Surely that makes you wary, Pozen.* Moss notes how close Shinovar has come to civil war; Neturo keeps insisting his son is a good lad and that he himself was given no warning of these plans. He sounds as though he has been part of something for a great long time. Then the Voice speaks in Szeth's own head — sharp, contemptuous. *I genuinely thought you'd strike Neturo down and start a revolution. Regardless, I'm going to have to do something to harden you. This land needs armies, and armies need generals acquainted with war. If you do not trust me, trust your father. I'll see you in a decade.* It vanishes; he wonders whether he has dreamed it all.
*Truthless,* Pozen says. The word catches in Szeth's mind. Neturo flinches — *that's harsh, Pozen. Too harsh* — but the others harden. Vambra insists civil war must be punished. Gearil the Dustbringer proposes that the Honorbearers declare here and now that the Voidbringers are never returning, and push Truth to mean something new. Dulo the Edgedancer agrees: an example must be made. *You've known Truth since the day I let you touch the Bondsmith Blade,* Sivi tells Neturo. *You saw the stones transform; you've seen the future; you spoke to God.* *War,* Neturo whispers. *With other worlds.* Then, stronger: *Give up the sword, Szeth.*
Still seated, Szeth summons it. The Honorbearers tell him there are no Voidbringers. There are no Knights Radiant. The spirits of the stones themselves have shown this. The Blade in his hand becomes the ultimate manifestation of his sin — he tosses it into the grass. Soldiers bind his wrists from behind; his father's hand on his shoulder calms him as he struggles. He looks up into a sky of stars, feels the wind there as always, and tells him he is Truthless. The choice as he frames it is simple: either he was right and must kill all of them — even his father — or he was wrong, and the Honorbearers must name him. *Decide. For I will not.*
*So be it,* Neturo whispers. Pozen brings the Oathstone from his pocket — a small round rock with quartz and a vein of rust — and asks the vow: *do whatever this stone's holder demands, except the demand to kill yourself.* *I make the Oathstone promise,* Szeth says, and feels an immediate liberation. No more choices. The bonds are cut. He holds out his hand for the stone.
*Take his Blade,* Pozen begins — then breaks off, looking up. The others shiver. Sivi whispers that the Voice says he is to keep it. His father curses softly. The vow is amended: he may not give the Blade away, and *a stonewalker should never hold it.* Szeth promises it. *Then may the stones guide you, Szeth-son-Neturo,* Pozen says — and at Szeth's correction, with Neturo supplying his grandfather's name through tears, sentences him as *Szeth-son-son-Vallano.* *And may the Heralds protect those you are turned against.*
His father grabs him in one last embrace, weeping that he cannot go with him this time, that he is so, so sorry. *Your little boy is dead, Neturo,* Szeth whispers. *You lost him years ago, the night he killed.* Soldiers pull them apart. Neturo is left in trodden grass. Szeth is hauled away, and eventually sold to a stonewalker with curious eyebrows and far too colourful clothing — and from there resolves not to look back, and never to question.