Words of Radiance: Chapter 84

Progression of the Chapter:
Shallan's team is stunned by ancient beauty; Renarin behaves strangely; Pattern warns of clashing storms; they gain a clue to activating the Oathgate; messengers are sent to bring the armies to the Gate.
Adolin dances a duel with Eshonai; a storm approaches from the west; he sacrifices parts of his armor to maneuver her to the edge, then knocks her into the chasm, and is barely saved from following; he seeks his father and information; he finds the Assassin in White.
Kaladin is drained, but tries to defend Elhokar; Moash punches Kaladin, breaking bones and organs; Kaladin collapses, but hears a distant, familiar voice; he finally realizes why he must protect Elhokar; he stands again, though he cannot fight; he hears voices, arguing; he speaks Words; at Syl's command, he stretches out his hand and she becomes a living Shardblade; all his powers return and he heals in an instant; Moash and Graves flee, but Graves drops an ominous hint from the Diagram on the way out.
Quote of the Chapter:
Development of the Chapter:
Shallan, artist that she is, has to forcibly remind herself that she's not here to admire the ancient art. Perfectly preserved inside a building sealed for millennia with layers of crem, everything is still as beautiful as the day it was abandoned. Except the lamps, because the gemstones in them are dun. So, for Shallan, a little study of the artwork is needed to figure out where to start.
Combining her various skills and her instincts, she identifies what looks like a large keyhole; with a little judicious testing by Renarin, she concludes that it's made of the same stuff as a Shardblade. Unfortunately, nothing happens when Renarin inserts his Blade, beyond the keyhole reshaping itself to match the sword.
In any case, she's clearly found the Oathgate, so she sends soldiers off to fetch Dalinar and the armies, while she and the scholars try to figure out how to make the thing function.
Adolin, meanwhile, has found a fight much more to his liking than slaughtering semi-oblivious, singing Parshendi. He still feels no Thrill, but can sense it in Eshonai; whether that sensing is solely due to her observable eagerness for the kill, or if there's another way he can recognize it, readers don’t know. In any case, lack of Thrill doesn't diminish his skill: using Windstance, he finesses Eshonai, shifting toward where he had originally crossed to this plateau. He thinks of her being "difficult to maneuver," and yet he does so, isolating her from her army, his own soldiers keeping hers back from them and too busy to interfere.
Granted that she's caught in the Thrill and perhaps not as clear-headed as she could be, Adolin's dueling expertise shines here. He transitions from Windstance to Flamestance, for the head game as much as for the physical fight ... and it works. Sacrificing some critical parts of his Plate, he backs her right to the edge of the chasm and knocks her in with a tackle.
She's probably not dead, though.
Fortunately for Adolin, he has fantastically dedicated guards - if they hadn't been right there to grab him, he'd have followed her down ... and he assuredly would not have survived the fall. But he does, and they were, and he didn't.
By now, the battle is total chaos, there's a nasty-looking storm coming in from the west, and another from the east, so Adolin goes searching for Dalinar. Instead, he finds Szeth ... .
Back at the Pinnacle, Kaladin - bleeding, exhausted, barely able to stand on his wounded leg - attempts to use his spear as a weapon instead of a crutch; it's not much against a Shardbearer. Moash, aside from being far too pigheaded for his own good, makes some foolish decisions here: it really is stupid of him to talk for a while, punch Kaladin, and talk some more.
So Moash and Graves waste their advantage, while Kaladin hears a familiar voice, very distant, yelling at someone. Syl? His thoughts return again to Fleet, and to the First Ideal:
He looks at the king, unconscious but alive, and he finally understands where he went wrong. He had thought that he could decide who to protect and who not to, based on whether or not he considered them worth protecting. His personal preferences had become his ultimate standards.
That’s not the way of Windrunners; they don't use their gifts to serve their own ends. So, powerless and shattered, he stands anyway, to defend what is right with his last breath.
And here, at the destination, his journey finally turns back onto the path he'd abandoned. Before him, Moash and Graves argue about who's doing what, and how to make it look like Szeth was responsible. But in his head, Kaladin hears another conversation, shouting, arguing, two familiar voices, a determined honorspren defying the Stormfather himself. Moash takes another moment to apologize for not killing Kaladin quickly in the first place - like he would have if he were a competent antagonist, but he's not - and summons his Shardblade.
From Moash's perspective ... my former leader/ally has now turned against me; he has no magic left, he's badly injured - and I've just done him further injury, with that punch that was harder than intended; I'm reluctant to kill him, but know it needs to be done to protect my new allies; I'm torn between that knowledge and respect for a man who should be dying but won't stop getting in the way. I hesitate again, because Kaladin is trying to speak ... and all of a sudden, mist becomes a whole new kind of Shardblade that makes my shiny Blade look like a dull mockery, everything goes dark, and then Kaladin is too bright to look at, too strong to stand against ... and clearly no longer injured.
Re: the frost-formed glyph behind Kaladin; dead Blades are always dripping with condensation when they are first summoned, but a live Blade brings frost. It's like ... a live Blade takes everything readers know about Shardblades and makes it more so.
Graves screams and falls over his own feet trying to get away. He then starts cackling over how he's outmaneuvered Kaladin despite everything - and in the process, gives Kaladin vital information which will enable him to defeat another of Graves's own purposes.
It reveals that readers know something they got wrong in interpreting the Diagram ... and Graves doesn't know that Kaladin can fly. In the immortal words: "It ain't over 'til it's over."
Stormwatch:
Day Zero, continued.
Sprenspotting:
Sylphrena. Has. Returned.
Also, Pattern is aware of both the Everstorm and the highstorm, and that they will meet in a grand chaotic smash-up right here on this spot. And it will be very, very bad.
Ars Arcanum:
This may be the evidence, if not the proof, that Renarin is a Truthwatcher.
First, he hears the screaming of the dead spren, which has only happened to emerging Knights Radiant. Granted, the only person readers know who is bonded to a Voidspren is Eshonai, and readers don't know whether the Parshendi would have the same reactions, but she doesn't seem to have any trouble with her Blade.
Second, he really does see the future, which - despite Vorin tradition - is a known attribute of Cultivation. If the Honor-Cultivation-spectrum theory of sapient spren is correct, Truthwatchers would be most fully the spren of Cultivation, as the Stormfather is most fully the spren of Honor. In that light, it makes sense to accept that Renarin is a Truthwatcher.
Ars Mechanica:
Readers already knew this, to some extent, but this is the only time pieces of the broken Plate are referred to as seeds. So, just exactly how does Shardplate work? It's certainly not a normal fabrial; there are no spren trapped in gemstones making it work. That doesn't mean that there aren't spren involved, though ...
Heraldic Symbolism:
Jezrien: King; Protecting/Leading; Windrunners. All present here, although Elhokar is a pretty poor representation of a king. Kaladin makes up for it, protecting even the one he hates - and leveling up as a Windrunner in the process. It is mildly amusing that the "Body Focus" associated with Jezrien is "Inhalation".
It's hardly unique to Windrunners, but it's still funny.
Words of Diagram:
Translation: "Hold the secret that broke the Knights Radiant. You may need it to destroy the new orders when they return."
"Hold the secret ... " implies that Taravangian knows that secret. Presumably, with the Palanaeum being the analog of the Library of Alexandria, Taravangian's researches have given him the information he needed to work that out. While genius-Taravangian understood the secret, there's no guarantee that normal-Taravangian does, although he certainly might. Also, does this secret seems likely to be "that wicked thing of eminence" which was discovered way back when?
" ... broke the Knights Radiant" implies that the discovery which caused so much consternation was a single element of sufficient import to make all but one Order of Radiants abandon their oaths back then.
" ... to destroy the new orders when they return" has a couple of aspects to consider. One, it seems that the secret which caused such mass abandonment "back then" could be expected to have the same effect now - or at least genius-Taravangian thought it would. Two, he apparently thought it might be necessary to destroy the returning Radiants in order to save humanity. Why?
Is it possible that the "wicked thing of eminence" was the Splintering of Honor?
*Note: A lot of readers went nuts over this epigraph, trying to break the code. Sadly, it didn't take the hive mind quite as long as Brandon had hoped. The key was the previous epigraph (Book of the 2nd Ceiling Rotation: pattern 1); each letter in pattern 15 is identified by the numerical position in which it first occurred in pattern 1. Why genius-Taravangian thought it was necessary to encrypt this bit remains unknown.
- Paraphrased from Alice Arneson