Warbreaker Part 74

"Who are you, then?"

"I don't know," she said, nodding toward the horizon. "But I think I'll find it out there."

They walked for another short time.

"Your family will worry about you," Vasher finally said.

"They'll get over it," she replied.

Finally, he just shrugged. "All right. I don't really care. You might as well come."

She smiled. It's true, she thought. I don't want to go back. Princess Vivenna was dead. She'd died on the streets of T'Telir. Vivenna the Awakener had no desire to bring her back.

"So," she asked as they walked along the jungle road, "I can't figure it out. Which one are you? Klad, who started the war, or Peacegiver, who ended it?"

He didn't answer immediately. "It's odd," he finally said, "what history does to a man. I guess people couldn't understand why I suddenly changed. Why I stopped fighting, and why I brought my armies back to seize control of my own kingdom. So they decided I was two people. A man can get confused about his ident.i.ty when things like that happen."

She grunted in a.s.sent. "You're still Returned, though."

"Of course I am," he said.

"Where did you get the Breath?" she asked. "The one a week you need to survive."

"I carried it with me," Vasher said. "Returned aren't quite what people think they are. They don't have hundreds or thousands of Breath."

"But-"

"They're of the Fifth Heightening," Vasher said, interrupting her. "But they don't get there by number of Breaths, but by quality. Returned have a single, powerful Breath. One that takes them all the way to the Fifth Heightening. It's a... divine Breath, you might say. But their body feeds on Breath, like..."

"The sword."

Vasher nodded. "Nightblood only needs it when he's drawn. Returned feed off their Breath once a week. So, if you don't give them one, they essentially eat themselves-devouring their one, single Breath. Killing them. However, if you give them extra Breath, on top of their single divine one, they'll feed off those each week."

"So the Hallandren G.o.ds could be fed more than one," Vivenna said. "They could have a stock of Breaths, a buffer to keep them alive if one couldn't be provided."

Vasher nodded. "Wouldn't make them as dependant on their religion to care for them, though."

"That's a cynical way of looking at it."

He shrugged.

"So you're going to burn up a Breath every week," she said. "Reducing our stock?"

He nodded. "I used to have thousands of Breath."

"Thousands? But it would take you years and years to..." she trailed off. He'd been alive for over three hundred years. At fifty Breaths a year, that was thousands of Breath. "You're an expensive guy to keep around," she noted. "How do you keep yourself from looking like a Returned?"

"That's my secret," he said, not looking at her. "Though you should have figured out that Returned can change their forms."

She raised an eyebrow.

"You've got Returned blood in you," he said. "The royal line. Where do you think that ability to change your hair color comes from?"

"Does that mean I can change more than just my hair?"

"Maybe," he said. "Takes time to learn. Go stroll around the Hallandren Court of the G.o.ds sometime, though. You'll find that the G.o.ds look exactly as they think they should. The old ones look old, the heroic ones become strong, the ones who think a G.o.ddess should be beautiful become unnaturally voluptuous. It's all about how they perceive themselves."

She nodded, her life sense letting her feel the jungle around them. They'd recovered Vasher's cloak, shirt, and trousers-the ones that Denth had originally taken from him. There had been enough Breath in those to split among the two of them and get them each to the Second Heightening. It wasn't as much as she was used to, but it was a fair bit better than nothing.

"So where are we going, anyway?"

"Ever heard of Kuth and Huth?" he asked.

"Sure," she said. "They were your main rivals in the Manywar."

"Somebody's trying to restore them," he said. "A tyrant of some kind. He's apparently recruited an old friend of mine."

"Another one?" she asked.

He shrugged. "There were five of us. Me, Denth, Shashara, Arsteel, and Yesteel. It looks like Yesteel has resurfaced, finally."

"He's related to Arsteel?" Vivenna guessed.

"Brothers."

"Great."

"I know. He's the one who originally figured out how to make Ichor-Alcohol. I hear rumors that he's got a new form of it. More potent."

"Even better."

They walked in silence for a time longer.

I'm bored, Nightblood said. Pay attention to me. Why doesn't anyone ever talk to me?

"Because you're annoying," Vasher snapped.

The sword huffed.

"What's your real name?" Vivenna finally asked.

"My real name?" Vasher asked.

"Yes," she said. "Everyone calls you things. Peacegiver. Klad. Vasher. Talaxin. Is that last one your real name, the name of the scholar?"

He shook his head. "No."

"Well, what is it, then?"

"I don't know," he said. "I can't remember the time before I Returned."

"Oh," she said.

"When I came back, however, I did get a name," he finally said. "The Cult of Returned-those who eventually founded the Hallandren Iridescent Tones-found me and kept me alive with Breaths. They gave me a name. I didn't like it much. Didn't seem to fit me, considering my temper."

"Well?" she asked. "What was it?"

"Warbreaker the Peaceful," he finally admitted.

She raised an eyebrow.

"What I can't figure out," he said, "is whether that was truly prophetic, or if I'm just trying to live up to it."

"Does it matter?" she asked.

He walked for a time in silence. "No," he finally said. "No, I guess it doesn't. I just wish I knew if there really were something spiritual about the Returns, or if it were all just happenstance."

"Probably not for us to know."

"Probably," he agreed.

Silence.

"Should have called you Wartlover the ugly," she finally said.

"Very mature," he replied. "You really think those sorts of comments are proper for a princess?"

She smiled broadly. "I don't care," she said. "And I never have to again."

Ars Arcanum Table of the Heightenings Heightening Number Approximate Breath Needed to Reach this Heightening Effects of the Heightening First 50 Aura Recognition Second 200 Perfect Pitch Third 600 Perfect Color Recognition Fourth 1,000 Perfect Life Recognition Fifth 2,000 Agelessness Sixth 3,500 Instinctive Awakening Seventh 5,000 Invested Breath Recognition Eighth 10,000 Command Breaking Ninth 20,000 Greater Awakening, Audible Command Tenth 50,000 Color Distortion, Perfect Invocation, ????

Note One: Most Reaching above the sixth Heightening is incredibly rare, and so few people understand the powers of the Seventh Heightening and above. Very little research has been done. The only known people to ever reach the Eighth Heightening and above are the Hallandren G.o.d Kings.

Note Two: Returned appear to achieve the Fifth Heightening by virtue of their Breath. It is theorized that they do not actually receive two thousand Breaths when they Return, but instead receive a single, powerful Breath which brings with it the powers of all five first Heightenings.

Note Three: The numbers used in the table above are only estimates, as very little is known about the upper Heightenings. Indeed, even for the lower levels, fewer or more Breaths may be required to achieve a given Heightening, depending on circ.u.mstances and the strength of the Breath.

Note Four: Each gained Breath grants some things, no matter which Heightening an Awakener has achieved. The more breath one has, the more resistant to disease and aging a person is, the easier it is for them to distinguish colors, and the stronger their life sense.

Heightening Powers: Aura Recognition: The First Heightening grants a person the ability to see the Breath Auras of others instinctively. This allows them to judge roughly how many Breaths the person contains and the general health of that Breath. Persons without this Heightening have a much more difficult time judging auras, and must rely on how deeply the colors around a person change when they enter the aura. Without at least the First Heightening, it is generally impossible for the naked eye to notice an Awakener with fewer than about thirty Breaths.

Perfect Pitch: The Second Heightening grants perfect pitch to those who achieve it.

Perfect Color Recognition: While each gained Breath leads a person to greater appreciation of colors, it isn't until one reaches the Third Heightening that they can instantly and instinctively determine exact shades of colors and their hue harmonics.

Perfect Life Sense: At the Fourth Heightening, an Awakener's life sense achieves its maximum strength.

Agelessness: At the Fifth Heightening, an Awakener's resistance to aging and disease reaches its maximum strength. These persons are immune to most toxins, including the effects of alcohol, and most physical ailments. (Such as headaches, colds, and the like.) The person no longer ages, and becomes functionally immortal.

Instinctive Awakening: All persons of the Sixth Heightening and above immediately understand and can use basic Awakening Commands without training or practice. More difficult Commands are easier for them to master and to discover.

Breath Recognition: Those few persons who have reached the Seventh Heightening gain the ability to recognize the auras of objects, and can tell when something has been Invested with Breath via Awakening.

Command Breaking: Any persons of the Eighth Heightening or more gain the ability to over-ride Commands in other Invested objects, including Lifeless. This requires concentration and leaves the Awakener exhausted.

Greater Awakening: Persons of the Ninth Heightening are reportedly able to Awaken stone and steel, though doing so requires large Invest.i.tures of Breath and specialize Commands. This ability has not been studied or confirmed.

Audible Command: Persons of the Ninth Heightening also gain the ability to Awaken objects which they are not physically touching, but which are within the sound of their voice.

Color Distortion: One of the many abilities gained by the Tenth Heightening is the natural and intrinsic ability of the Awakener to bend light around white objects, creating colors from them as if from a prism.

Perfect Invocation: Awakeners of the Tenth Heightening can draw more color from objects they use to fuel their art. This leaves objects drained to white, rather than grey.

Other: There are rumors of other powers granted by the Tenth Heightening which are not understood or have not been made known by those who have achieved it.

Revisions done in Version 4.0.

This draft was still largely working on medium-level and large-level problems. Because of this, I haven't yet 'spot fixed' chapters. Larger changes for this version include: A rewrite of the character Peprin, whose name has been changed to Parlin. The old name fit the old character; the new character was different enough that I wanted a new feel for his name. Peprin wasn't working, in my opinion, as he was too over-the-top. He was a little TOO dense, and we already had plenty of humor in the Vivenna sections-humor done much better and more intelligently by Denth and Tonks. I felt that Peprin's goofiness was detracting from the story and wasn't gaining anything, so I backed off and made the character far less 'present' in the narrative. In doing so, I hope to actually make him more sympathetic. This may take another draft to get right.

Vivenna is now more aware of why her father sent Siri instead of her. Readers were feeling that Vivenna was too dense in these early chapters. It was obvious to them why the king would make the change; it should have been obvious to Vivenna. I agreed as I re-read the narrative, and did a reworking here. This effected her motivations for going to T'Telir in the first place, and I think strengthens her as a character.

My agent wanted more of a sense of danger in the early chapters-a better understanding of the oncoming war, the inevitability, and the threat it posed. I worked on this noticeably at the beginning in an attempt to establish better 'rooting interest' for Idris. This also played in with Vivenna's reworked motivations at the beginning.

I split the "Vivenna living on the streets" chapter in two and added a little bit more material there to draw out her time. I felt that having her get tossed onto the streets in one chapter, then get captured again in the very next seriously weakened this phase of the book. The reader and she both needed more time to suffer. It's still not terribly long, but I think that the slight fiddling with pacing here will have a large impact on the tempo of the story here.

Slightly better transition of Vivenna being scared of Vasher and agreeing to help him.

A lot of people were having trouble understanding 1) Why Susebron could awaken objects at the end without dying and 2) Why the statues could be Awakened in the first place. I decided that for the first, I would simply be more explicit in my explanations. For the second, I decided that I needed to revise the narrative to fix a plot hole. Hence the change to give the statues human bones, which I had considered in the first draft and discarded. I think it works better here. Both of these things are going to require a little more polishing in draft 5, but I think the climax finally has all of the explanations it needs.

I filled out what the different Heightenings are and explained them in more detail, including an Ars Arcanum.

I made a bunch of smaller changes on the paragraph or scene level to smooth the story. I probably also introduced a lot of typos in doing so. ;) * * *

Sample Chapters of ELANTRIS.

This book, originally released in 2005, is now out in paperback. Hardback copies are still on Amazon as of January 2008. It won the Romantic Times award for best epic fantasy of the year and was chosen by Barnes and n.o.ble.com as the best sf/fantasy book of the year.

It is a stand-alone epic fantasy novel, and was the first book I published.

Prologue Elantris was beautiful, once. It was called the city of the G.o.ds: a place of power, radiance, and magic. Visitors say that the very stones glowed with an inner light, and that the city contained wondrous arcane marvels. At night, Elantris shone like a great silvery fire, visible even from a great distance.

Yet, as magnificent as Elantris had been, its inhabitants had been more so. Their hair a brilliant white, their skin an almost metallic silver, the Elantrians seemed to shine like the city itself. Legends claimed that they were immortal, or at least nearly so. Their bodies healed quickly, and they were blessed with great strength, insight, and speed. They could perform magics with a bare wave of the hand; men visited Elantris from all across Opelon to receive Elantrian healings, food, or wisdom. They were divinities.

And anyone could become one.

The Shaod, it was called. The Transformation. It struck randomly-usually at night, during the mysterious hours when life slowed to rest. The Shaod could take beggar, craftsman, n.o.bleman, or warrior. When it came, the fortunate person's life ended and began anew; he would discard his old, mundane existence, and move to Elantris. Elantris, where he could live in bliss, rule in wisdom, and be worshipped for eternity.

Eternity ended ten years ago.