Words of Radiance: Chapter 86

Progression of the Chapter:
Kaladin finally admits he's a Radiant; Kaladin and Szeth begin their battle.
... Shallan seeks the pattern of the Oathgate; she finally sees that it's a fabrial.
... Dalinar turns his attention to the retreat; Adolin is pleased; Sebarial and Palona are unexpected; the evacuation continues.
... Kaladin chases Szeth, delighting in Syl's presence; they meet above the storms; Kaladin hasn't practiced sword-fighting; Syl becomes a Shardspear; Szeth holds desperately to his pseudo-facts.
... Shallan finally admits she's a Radiant; she infuses the Oathgate lamps until she runs out of Stormlight; Shallan finds Adolin, and inhales Stormlight; he recognizes her action and is pleased.
... Kaladin fights for his life; Syl anticipates Kaladin's needs, but he still can't quite win; Szeth turns to pursue his original target: Dalinar.
... Shallan finishes charging the lamps; Adolin's Blade cannot unlock the Oathgate; she finally admits that Pattern is her Blade; she activates the Oathgate.
... Kaladin chases Szeth; Syl cautions him about the clashing storms; both men replenish their Investiture from the highstorm as they go; in a flash of lightning, they see armies and disaster on the target plateau; the next flash reveals Szeth baffled and the army gone.
... Shallan has saved a few, but fears what they will find in the silence outside; through a new doorway in the outer wall they find sunshine, four armies, and Urithiru.
... Kaladin hears screams above the storm; Szeth hurls himself westward toward the Oathgate's destination; Kaladin follows, with difficulty; the fight continues, falling westward before the stormwall; Syl changes forms as needed; Szeth begins to panic; windspren seem to enwrap Kaladin; Szeth faces Kaladin and submits to truth; Kaladin severs Szeth's sword hand; assassin and Blade fall, no longer bonded; as Kaladin soars above the storm with the recovered Blade, his collection of windspren zip away; Syl approves his actions and teases him; he smiles.
Quote of the Chapter:
For now, at least, Adolin doesn’t have the slightest problem with Kaladin and Shallan being Radiants. He's quite pleased, in fact.
So, just how did Shallan know about Kaladin? In Chapter 77 through Chapter 78, Shallan told Navani about Jasnah; Navani told Dalinar, who then spoke with Shallan about it. While Shallan made him promise not to tell anyone about her own status, nothing prevented Dalinar from telling Adolin about Jasnah. So while "You, too?" from Adolin's perspective meant Kaladin - hence the "Can you fly?" - Shallan knows nothing of Kaladin and assumes he meant Jasnah - hence the "Fly?" puzzlement.
Development of the Chapter:
There's so much in this chapter!
The bridgemen - as always - are doing their job, being exactly where they're needed. They've become quite a team. Having promptly regrouped, they need only one quick command from Teft to provide Kaladin with a replenishment of Stormlight. Then, as their commander flies away, they move on to the next thing - two follow Dalinar, the rest go with Adolin (some carrying Adolin's battered Shardplate) to help where they're needed next.
Sebarial and Palona are hilarious! Fruit, wine, and a novel in the middle of a hurricane. Naturally, for all he's having fun looking nonchalant, Sebarial has organized not only his own army, but also Roion's, and has them nearly across to the Oathgate plateau. He also knows the status of Adolin's and Aladar's armies, and has heard the news of Roion. Sebarial is a genius organizer!
He is also, somehow, still dry.
Aladar has done his job well; he won his plateau, in an unquestionable victory.
For the first time in years, Aladar has stepped up and done something significant, something to truly be proud of ... and it almost doesn't matter. The Vengeance Pact is fulfilled, but the world has moved on, the Desolation is upon them, and vengeance, even for an assassinated King Gavilar, is all but meaningless at this point.
The rest of this chapter switches back and forth to keep a real-time connection between Shallan's work in the Oathgate room and Kaladin's battle with Szeth. So ... Shallan's subconscious mind finally puts together the clues she's been seeing, and she realizes that the whole thing (i.e., the Oathgate) is an enormous fabrial.
Just a few chapters ago, Shallan made Dalinar promise not to tell anyone, but her secret is now out. Readers could almost feel sorry for Inadara, who is quietly wigging out about Shallan sucking in Stormlight and moving it from one gem to another. However, even funnier is the scholars sketching prayers, and Shallan wondering whether they were praying for protection from the storm or from her.
Then the storms collide. Readers are never told just how many people are lost in these final moments, as the stormwalls hit from opposite sides while Shallan desperately tries and finally succeeds in activating the Oathgate. From Kaladin's observation, apparently there were losses during this time.
Even so, Kaladin is seeing a cataclysm, which looks like the army will be totally wiped out in minutes, and then suddenly, in the next flash of lightning, the whole army is just ... gone.
The sound of the storm vanishes, and Shallan knows the Oathgate worked, but there are so few people in the building. What about the army? Adolin once again slays a rock - ncutting a doorway in the new position - to find that the army has come with them to Urithiru.
At long last, readers see Kaladin's joy in Syl's return, and she gets in a series of great jabs at him - which he loves, of course. She also warns him that the Stormfather hates him, and them, and wants to wash it all away. This is not encouraging.
Szeth is, naturally, disconcerted by Kaladin. He repeatedly tries to make Taravangian's explanations cover the situation, but he's seeing things that are impossible, and he knows it. His progress through this chapter is agonizing; as the evidence builds up that Kaladin is a true Windrunner, he is forced to acknowledge that everything he's acted on for the past seven years and more has been false. He was right in the first place, when he claimed that the Voidbringers were returning, and his leaders were wrong when they named him Truthless and laid on him the burden of unquestioning obedience to the holder of his Oathstone.
This, of course, is where readers find the major change to the ending of Word of Radiance, which Brandon felt was important enough to implement even after publication. In the original ending - in the hardcover edition - as Szeth confronts the truth, he draws Kaladin to attack and deliberately doesn't parry: it really is intentional suicide-by-duel. Kaladin follows through on the attack he started, and kills Szeth as Szeth had killed so many others. The Blade goes through Szeth's spine, his soul is severed, his eyes burn out, and his bond to the Honorblade is severed.
In the new paperback edition ending, it all goes the same until Szeth doesn't parry; now Kaladin diverts the stroke and sends his Blade through Szeth's wrist, severing only the hand and forcing him to drop his Blade. Because he's not dead, Syl has to tell Kaladin that Szeth has released the bond, and now the Blade is far more important than the assassin.
It's a relief in that Kaladin didn't kill a person who had made himself defenseless, and he can make the happy discovery that he really didn't want to kill someone merely for revenge. It may also be a relief in that Nalan will have less healing to do to make Szeth functional again. Mostly, it's important for Kaladin to not enjoy killing.
However, might Szeth have preferred the original ending, if only to avoid the following?
Stormwatch:
Day zero ...
Sprenspotting:
Kaladin was sure he heard terrible screams over the winds, as red spren he'd never seen before - like small meteors, trailing light behind them - zipped around him.
Are these the same red spren - stormspren - that Adolin observed in Chapter 81, wiggling out of the Parshendi when they were killed? There they were described as "small red spren, like tiny lightning, that zipped into the air and vanished." Tiny lightning and small meteors trailing light don't sound quite the same, so there are two likely solutions. One is that they looked like lightning when they left the Parshendi bonding, but here they're free in the storm, so they look a little different. The other is that they are yet another kind of Voidspren.
However, there are also Kaladin's windspren:
So, do they actually help Kaladin find Szeth in the storm? It's implied.
This makes it almost impossible not to assume that the windspren will eventually form Shardplate for Windrunners. Somehow. But this theory has been around for a couple of years now, so it no longer has the stun factor it once did.
All Creatures Shelled and Feathered:
One Ryshadium awaits his rider. Sureblood, sadly, is gone. Even so, Dalinar still has Gallant.
Ars Arcanum:
Kaladin and Szeth spend the bulk of the chapter Windrunning.
How have the wind and sky been his since childhood? And after all the work he had to do earlier just to get off the ground, should it now be this instinctive? For the latter, the case can be made that he learned all the basics earlier, and now his intensified bond makes it possible to do all the things without thinking.
Then, there's Syl the shifting Shardweapon!
So suitable that despite his failure to really work at learning sword-fighting, the years he spent perfecting spear-fighting are just as useful. It just keeps getting better, too, as she shifts from spear to shield to halberd to hammer to knife, back and forth , forming the weapon he needs just as he needs it.
This also needs mentioning:
This explains why Syl can shift forms so quickly, and why she can dissipate to mist and then be instantly back in useful form when he needs her. It also helps make sense out of this quotation ...
It's not blatant, but this is the first moment when Shallan acknowledges even to herself that Pattern is her Shardblade. Readers saw it evidenced in the chasms, when she couldn't make her illusions move because Kaladin had her Shardblade, but even then, her mind skirted around the reason for it. This is a deep truth that she's been hiding from for the last six years. On the rare occasions when she used her Blade, she consciously took the ten heartbeats to summon him, because that's the way it's supposed to work. Now, when she accepts the deeper truth, he can form instantly, and now readers know why.
Ars Mechanica:
Shallan recognizes the Oathgate as a fabrial, but is she correct? Or, to ask the question another way, does the Oathgate fit the definition of "fabrial" as learned from Navani? Modern Rosharans can reliably design and manufacture fabrials, to the point that it's basically magic-powered technology; they do it by trapping specific spren in specific gemstones, combining them and directing the resulting Surges by means of a machine. Is the Oathgate just a bigger and more sophisticated version of the same thing? Or is it something ... more, somehow?
Of the Oathgate's intended function, it uses the Surge of Transportation to move the user between the point of origin and any of the other ten Oathgates. It requires a living, sapient spren to operate it, though the spren doesn't appear to be taking any deliberate action; the Knight Radiant merely uses the spren in Blade-form as both key and lever to select the destination. It is powered by Stormlight-infused gems held in metal latticework; one of the gems is a ruby. (It's possible that the ten lamps hold the ten key gemstones, but this remains as yet unknown. However, a ruby doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Transportation.) The "keyhole" is some mysterious substance which appears to be similar to a Shardblade. Does that mean the keyhole itself is a spren?
Is there more to the working of this place? Is there an underground component of machinery? Is there anything underground? Is there any way the Listeners who rejected stormform could have been hiding within the range of the Oathgate? And, when there exist one functioning Oathgate, can one force access to another that is not functioning? Can they use the Oathgate to get to Kholinar?
Heraldic Symbolism:
With regard to Nalan, Szeth is agonizing about whether he was rightly keeping the law of his people, or whether he was wrongly judged and condemned, and all his resulting actions have also been wrong. That's as good a reason for Nalan’s presence as any, being all concerned with law-keeping.
As for Jezrien, Kaladin is rightly pursuing the one who wants to kill those he is sworn to protect, to keep him from doing so. However, when Szeth simply gives up, Kaladin no longer wishes to take his life. I’m a bit conflicted about just how honorable it is to incapacitate someone and let him fall a few hundred feet to his death?
Just Sayin':
"Kelek's breath" is a frequently used exclamation, and might perhaps be related to a certain someone from Nalthis, where Breath is magic. Here, it's "Kelek's tongue," but that might actually be just as relevant, since a Command is also required to Awaken.
Words of Diagram:
One might assume the 2nd Desk Drawer is all about the Unmade, given the epigraphs of Chapter 81 and Chapter 82. If so, how and why would one Unmade betray the others? Or perhaps the inscription concerns the Heralds; in that case, perhaps Nalan might be the traitor. But, where's the context? The two other quotations from the 2nd Desk Drawer are labeled as paragraphs 14 and 15; but 15 ended with an effort to change the subject completely. Without knowing what's in paragraphs 16-26, there really isn't context.
- Paraphrased from Alice Arneson