Words of Radiance: Prologue

Progression of the Chapter:
A princess prefers the company of assassins, despite her father’s recommendations; shadows prove troublesome; a palace disintegrates in favor of another world entirely; hostile diplomacy is opened with spren; an appointment is kept; a killer is hired, but not for killing; strangers pass by unrecognized, discussing lordly blades; screams replace drumbeats; magic is witnessed; His Majesty Gavilar Kholin, King of Alethkar, First of his Name, is killed; and an expected peace gives way to war.
Quote of the Chapter:
Development of the Chapter:
Jasnah is working as a spymaster for House Kholin. She’s the cannier of her father’s children, if not quite the more suspicious, and her drive to ferret out the truth dovetails with the skillset necessary for the role. However, since this is Alethkar, everything there is too dysfunctional for her to be asked to do that job. Instead she’s spying on her sister-in-law, with an option on future killings. Still, she doesn't have any official support. Jasnah is juggling a few too many unknowns; if she could've devoted her full attention to Szeth, or to the strangers in the hallway, or to Gavilar and Amaram, she might've solved one of these mysteries. As it happens, they all slip through her fingers.
The inky-black, sword-wielding inkspren has some serious style. It has been confirmed that the swordsman who bows to Jasnah is indeed Ivory. That challenge giving way to respect is likely what became the formation of her Nahel bond with him.
It seems like the preferred method of testing the worthiness of a potential Elsecaller is to just drop her in the ocean and see if she drowns. Unlike when Shallan Davar first visited Shadesmar, none of the spren that Jasnah encounters there communicate to her just what she has to do to survive while there. Presumably, a Surgebinder with the capacity to become a primary liaison between the Physical Realm and Cognitive Realm will figure it out.
Jasnah’s intuitive understanding of Shadesmar is much better than that of Shallan. She understands immediately that each sphere within the 'sea' is a plan for an object in the real world, and that she can use one to form a structure out of others. She doesn’t yet understand the Stormlight exchange, but the light goes dark and she feels the energy leaving her as she shapes Shadesmar to her will.
She also sees Szeth do his best Windrunner impression, running down the walls after murdering her father. Her defensive obsession with his Surgebinding drives years of research. However, what she’s seeing is different from what she did. The mysterious strangers mention Szeth using “[their lord’s] own Blade."
Battar, the Herald of Wisdom, is the patron of the Elsecallers, Jasnah’s Order of Knights Radiant, which is why she gets special attention here. The man with the scar is Nale, and it's likely his companion is Kalak. He isn’t Jezrien, who they discuss, or Talenel'Elin, who is still in Damnation. The only other male Herald this could be is Ishar, who is depicted as an old man with a long beard, which makes this unlikely.
The two of them are discussing Shalash, who they call 'Ash', the Herald of Beauty. They're concerned about the sanity of their minds and not the statues being destroyed though this likely sparked the conversation. Kalak states, "We weren't supposed to get worse. Am I getting worse? I think I feel worse." This likely is a reference to how broken the Heralds are after so many Desolations. When he goes on to say, "I don't like this. What we've done was wrong. That creature carries my lord's own Blade. We shouldn't have let him keep it. He ... ," they (Kalak and Nale) likely gave the Honorblade to Szeth because of reasoning later revealed.
- Paraphrased from Carl Engle-Laird
Category:Words of Radiance chapters summaries