“Gancho,” Lopen said, his voice awed. “You’re glowing.”
Kaladin frowned. What is he–
And then he noticed it. It was very faint, but it was there, wisps of luminescent smoke curling up from his skin. Like steam coming off a bowl of hot water on a cold winter night.
Shaking, Kaladin put the medical pack on the broad rim of the water barrel. He felt a moment of coldness on his skin. What was that? Shocked, he raised his other hand, looking at the wisps streaming off of it.
“What did you do to me?” he demanded, looking up at Teft.
The older bridgeman was still smiling.
“Answer me!” Kaladin said, stepping forward, grabbing the front of Teft’s shirt. Stormfather, but I feel strong!
“I didn’t do anything, lad,” Teft said. “You’ve been doing this for a while now. I caught you feeding off Stormlight when you were sick.”
Stormlight. Kaladin hastily released Teft, fishing at the pouch of spheres in his pocket. He yanked it free and pulled it open.
It was dark inside. All five gemstones had been drained. The white light streaming from Kaladin’s skin faintly illuminated the inside of the bag.
“Now that’s something,” Lopen said from the side. Kaladin spun to find the Herdazian man bending down and looking at the medical pack. Why was that so important?
Then Kaladin saw it. He thought he’d set the pack on the rim of the barrel, but in his haste he’d just pressed it against the side of the barrel. The pack now clung to the wood. Stuck there, hanging as if from an invisible hook. Faintly streaming light, just like Kaladin. As Kaladin watched, the light faded, and the pack slumped free and fell to the ground.
Kaladin raised a hand to his forehead, looking from the surprised Lopen to the curious Teft. Then he glanced around the lumberyard, frantic. Nobody else was looking at them; in the sunlight, the vapors were too faint to see from a distance.
Stormfather… what… how…
He caught sight of a familiar shape above. Syl moved like a blown leaf, tossed this way and that, leisurely, faint.
She did it! Kaladin thought. What has she done to me?
He stumbled away from Lopen and Teft, running toward Syl. His footsteps propelling him forward with too much speed. “Syl!” he bellowed, stopping beneath her.
She zipped down to hover before him, changing from a leaf to a young woman standing in the air. “Yes?”
Kaladin glanced around. “Come with me,” he said, hurrying to one of the alleys between barracks. He pressed himself up against a wall, standing in the shade, breathing in and out. Nobody could see him here.
Syl alighted in the air before him, hands behind her back, looking closely at him. “You’re glowing.”
“What have you done to me?”
She cocked her head, then shrugged.
“Syl…” he said threateningly, though he wasn’t certain what harm he could do a spren.
“I don’t know, Kaladin,” she said frankly, sitting down, her legs hanging over the side of the invisible platform. “I can… I can only faintly remember things I used to know so well. This world, interacting with men.”
“But you did do something.”
“We have done something. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t you. But together…” She shrugged again.
“That isn’t very helpful.”
She grimaced. “I know. I’m sorry.”
Kaladin raised a hand. In the shade, the light streaming off of him was more obvious. If someone walked by… “How do I get rid of it?”
“Why do you want to get rid of it?”
“Well, because… I… Because.”
Syl didn’t respond.
Something occurred to Kaladin. Something, perhaps, he should have asked long ago. “You’re not a windspren, are you?”
She hesitated, then shook her head. “No.”
“What are you, then?”
“I don’t know. I bind things.”
Bind things. When she played pranks, she made items stick together. Shoes stuck to the ground and made men trip. People reached for their jackets hanging on hooks and couldn’t pull them free. Kaladin reached down, picking a stone up off the ground. It was as big as his palm, weathered smooth by highstorm winds and rain. He pressed it against the wall of the barrack and willed his Light into the stone.
He felt a chill. The rock began to stream with luminescent vapors. When Kaladin pulled his hand away, the stone remained where it was, clinging to the side of the building.
Kaladin leaned close, squinting. He thought he could faintly make out tiny spren, dark blue and shaped like little splashes of ink, clustering around the place where the rock met the wall.
“Bindspren,” Syl said, walking up beside his head; she was still standing in the air.
“They’re holding the rock in place.”
“Maybe. Or maybe they’re attracted to what you’ve done in affixing the stone there.”
“That’s not how it works. Is it?”
“Do rotspren cause sickness,” Syl said idly, “or are they attracted to it?”
“Everyone knows they cause it.”
“And do windspren cause the wind? Rainspren cause the rain? Flamespren cause fires?”
He hesitated. No, they didn’t. Did they? “This is pointless. I need to find out how to get rid of this light, not study it.”
“And why,” Syl repeated, “must you get rid of it? Kaladin, you’ve heard the stories. Men who walked on walls, men who bound the storms to them. Windrunners. Why would you want to be rid of something like this?”
Kaladin struggled to define it. The healing, the way he never got hit, running at the front of the bridge… Yes, he’d known something odd was happening. Why did it frighten him so? Was it because he feared being set apart, like his father always was as the surgeon in Hearthstone? Or was it something greater?
“I’m doing what the Radiants did,” he said.
“That’s what I just said.”
“I’ve been wondering if I’m bad luck, or if I’ve run afoul of something like the Old Magic. Maybe this explains it! The Almighty cursed the Lost Radiants for betraying mankind. What if I’m cursed too, because of what I’m doing?”
“Kaladin,” she said, “you are not cursed.”
“You just said you don’t know what’s happening.” He paced in the alleyway. To the side, the rock finally plopped free and clattered to the ground. “Can you say, with all certainty, that what I’m doing might not have drawn bad luck down upon me? Do you know enough to deny it completely, Syl?”
She stood in the air, her arms folded, saying nothing.
“This… thing,” Kaladin said, gesturing toward the stone. “It isn’t natural. The Radiants betrayed mankind. Their powers left them, and they were cursed. Everyone knows the legends.” He looked down at his hands, still glowing, though more faintly than before. “Whatever we’ve done, whatever has happened to me, I’ve somehow brought upon myself their same curse. That’s why everyone around me dies when I try to help them.”
“And you think I’m a curse?” she asked him.
“I… Well, you said you’re part of it, and…”
She strode forward, pointing at him, a tiny, irate woman hanging in the air. “So you think I’ve caused all of this? Your failures? The deaths?”
Kaladin didn’t respond. He realized almost immediately that silence might be the worst response. Syl – surprisingly human in her emotions – spun in the air with a wounded look and zipped away, forming a ribbon of light.
I’m overreacting, he told himself. He was just so unsettled. He leaned back against the wall, hand to head. Before he had time to collect his thoughts, shadows darkened the entry to the alleyway. Teft and Lopen.
“Rock talkers!” Lopen said. “You really shine in shade, gancho!”
Teft gripped Lopen’s shoulder. “He’s not going to tell anyone, lad. I’ll make certain of it.”