Words of Radiance: Chapter 42

Progression of the Chapter:
Shallan and Pattern discuss the intricacies of figurative speech, lies, truth, and illusion; Pattern spots a pattern and prevents a probable crash-and-burn for Shallan; spanreeds allow her to communicate with the Ghostbloods in Sebarial’s warcamp via an intermediary on the other side of the continent; Shallan practices deliberate Illusion drawing, and learns from Pattern that her Illusion will last as long as she holds Stormlight; a meeting is set for tonight; Shallan rifles Tyn's belongings for clothing to outfit her illusory person, and climbs out her suite's window.
Quote of the Chapter:
Commentary:
For a chapter where the most action involves walking from the couch to the washroom, there’s a lot going on in it. First, when Pattern starts talking like a Cryptic, with all the lies and truths, evidently the words mean something ever so slightly different to him than to readers.
Once again, readers are reminded that Pattern is very, very literal; figurative speech delights him even though he finds it hard to understand.
Fortunately for Shallan, he’s also very, very observant and the name she has given him is apt. Also fortunately for Shallan, her "instantaneous communication across half the world" is inconveniently delayed: while they’re waiting for the someone at the other end of Tyn’s spanreed to return, Pattern decodes the authentication cypher she needs to get access to Tyn’s connections. However ... it leaves a question hanging. Just before Pattern finds the pattern, there’s this:
Is the "oddity" merely that Tyn was not entirely consistent in the way she presented herself to Shallan versus her correspondent and/or the Ghostbloods? Or is this a hint about future developments?
Shallan proceeds to do her very best imitation of Tyn’s attitude and manner toward the person at the other end of the spanreed, and ends up with a meeting scheduled in less than half an hour, if she can "get to Sebarial’s warcamp quickly." If. Her disguise consists of a whole lot of strange-to-her clothing; it’s good she and Tyn were roughly of a size. One of Tyn’s white coats with a wide black belt, a buttoned shirt, boots (Kaladin's?), and Bluth's white hat to shade her face and disguise her fuzzy nose; loose trousers, that feel a bit odd but at least she was used to seeing them ... even her Illusion blushes.
Summoning Jasnah's lessons to support her, she finally collects all her needful things and climbs out the window.
Stormwatch:
Same day as Chapters 31-38, 40, 41, and Interludes 5 and 8.
Ars Arcanum:
Lightweaving everywhere! This is nicely set up to parallel Kaladin’s efforts in the previous chapter, with two notable differences. Pattern seems to have a more thorough grasp of Lightweaving than Syl has of Windrunning. Best two guesses: 1) Pattern was not isolated from his kind by his bonding as Syl was; she rebelled and is the only bonded honorspren, while Pattern was clearly in communication with other Cryptics when we first saw them back in The Way of Kings. 2) Pattern’s earlier learning time with Shallan, while interrupted for six years, has returned to him over the last few months, while Syl hasn’t had any previous experience and is still figuring things out for the first time. That second option might not be as applicable to spren as it would be to humans, but it’s at least partly relevant. In any event, it’s only fair that Shallan’s spren knows more than Kaladin’s, because he’s got friends to help him learn, and she’s flying solo.
Like Kaladin, Shallan has done some Surgebinding before (that she remembers), but this is a new step. Always before, she was building on an existing framework, making little modifications here and there, enhancing this and disguising that. This time, she draws something different: dark eyes, dark hair, worn features, a scar. She keeps her body mostly the same, in terms of height and build, but no one could possibly see this Illusion as merely an older or more polished Shallan. Everything is different. And Pattern matter-of-factly says, "Sure, no worries. Your imagination is the limit. More coffee?" ... or words to that effect.
Not that it was perfect - she forgot to finish the nose on her drawing, so now she has a fuzzy gap. (Why she can’t just go back to the drawing, add in the necessary line, and make it look un-fuzzy is unclear.) It's fitting that she had to go dig through Tyn’s working wardrobe to find stuff suitable to the persona she was weaving. Which is not to say that she couldn’t do a full-body-and-clothes Illusion some other time, of course, but it would be a bit much for a first effort. And that long-ago reference to Tyn’s annoying lessons in forgery now comes full circle, aiding Shallan in a way Tyn certainly didn’t intend!
Is this really the first time Shallan has made the connection between her Illusions and the Stormlight she holds? When she asks Pattern how long the Illusion will last, he tells her that it feeds on Light; she looks and realizes that she had apparently drained all the spheres in her safepouch during the meeting with the Highprinces. While it does explain the changes noted by Sebarial during their carriage ride, because the Illusion faded as the spheres ran out, was she drawing Stormlight from those spheres involuntarily, or instinctively? And was she really completely unaware that she was doing so?
Heraldic Symbolism:
Shalash presides in solitary glory over this chapter, full as it is of Lightweaving. No further explanation seems necessary. The chapter title clearly comes from Jasnah’s remembered words at the end of the chapter:
Words of Radiants:
The epigraph skips from the ending of the Knights Radiant in the previous chapter to their beginnings. This brings back a question discussed many chapters ago: whether the initial efforts at Surgebinding were strictly limited to exactly the combinations given to the Heralds or whether that limit was one of the "precepts and laws" imposed on them by Ishar.
Since the spren were imitating what was given the Heralds, all they did was imitate exactly that. Is that certain, though? It seems far more probable that the spren experimented with granting humans access to whatever Surges they could influence - single Surges, various melds, one person with control over three, or four, or five Surges ... . That would also be a strong reason for Ishar to step in and say, "No. These ten combinations, and no others, always accompanied by Ideals that constrain the worst impulses of human nature." The text says he "caused organization to be thrust upon them" - which could be as light as requiring each of the ten extant "families" of spren to abide by certain Ideals, or it could be as heavy as defining and imposing the system of ten Orders (with Ideals) and forbidding all others.
- Paraphrased from Alice Arneson