POV: dalinar
Summary
Dalinar stands behind his back in the command tent the morning after the red-eyed Parshendi was pulled from the rain, listening to water hit the canvas and pool on the floor. Shallan's claim — that every parshman is a Voidbringer in embryo — sits ill against what he must do with the one Bridge Four calls Shen and who has named himself Rlain. Dalinar has even let the man stay armed. Adolin ducks in, escorting Navani from the rain, both ready for the interrogation. Dalinar has pushed the three armies through another day's march on no further attack from the Parshendi; Shallan's projections say they are nearing the middle of the Plains.
Teleb brings Rlain in with a full guard, Skar and Rock in as the Bridge Four witnesses Dalinar has permitted. The man set on the stool is nothing like the silent parshman who carried bridges: full Parshendi warrior, orange-red skullplate, carapace at chest and thigh, as tall as an Alethi, more muscular. He carries no weapon. He salutes Dalinar in the Bridge Four way — hand to chest — and bears the company tattoo on his forehead, blending up into his skullplate. He will not answer the others. To Dalinar he answers because Dalinar is his commanding officer.
He admits the spying — three years in dullform across Alethi warcamps under Eshonai's orders — and explains the listeners' forms: shapes chosen for the work needed; dullform that looks enough like a parshman to live unseen among them, and is never truly noticed because no Alethi looks past *parshman*. Something is wrong, he says, his rhythm breaking. Eshonai's voice on the plateau the day she met with Adolin was already not hers. He believes the people he loved have been destroyed, replaced by monsters; the listeners may be no more. *Yes you do*, Skar tells him from outside the ring. *You're Bridge Four.* *Is little problem*, Rock adds. *Can be fixed.*
Dalinar asks the meaning of the red eyes. *Our gods have returned*, Rlain whispers. He names them in a slow, reverent rhythm: the souls of those ancient who gave themselves to destroy. They hate Dalinar and his kind. The new form they have given his people will bring something terrible. Then the question that turns the chapter: *can you lead us to your city?* Rlain hesitates — *the elderly, the young, who watches our children?* — and Dalinar stoops down, lays a hand on his shoulder, and promises on his honour that he will see the noncombatants spared if Rlain will lead him in.
The promise lands. Rlain agrees, in a new rhythm. Dalinar orders him taken to Shallan to draw the route out, releases him into Bridge Four's keeping, and sits down beside Navani in the gust of cold wet air the departing guards let in. She asks if he trusts the man. He does not know, but something has shaken him. *He is Parshendi*, she warns. *You may be misreading his body.* And then, quietly, the timing line that hangs the rest of the book on the chapter: *the countdown?* Navani tells him it is three days away — three days from Lightday. *We hasten our pace*, Dalinar says. Inward. Toward the centre. And, beyond it, the destiny he has not yet seen.