#I didn’t even mention the oathstone

[arlingtonpark]

The Stormlight Archive Read Through: Thoughts on the First Interludes in “The Way of Kings”

And so we return to the world of Roshar.

Here we’ll be covering the interludes, a series of vignettes that expand the world of the story even as they serve to divide the story up into parts.

Our first stop on this whirlwind tour of Roshar is the idyllic vacation destination of the Purelake, a titanic sized body of water that’s like a shallow tropical lagoon. As far as this area’s culture and society is concerned, it’s your typical unspoiled, scenic, rural locale. It’s a place untouched by modern industry; slow, laid-back, tranquil.

So you know this place will be destroyed at some point.

What struck me about this place was how beautiful it sounded as it was described to us by the text. The Wheel of Time is getting an adaptation and so is The Lord of the Rings (again), can this series be next? Preferably with a director with an eye for creative and avant-garde visuals? The Purelake would be a children’s sandbox to them. It’s a shallow lagoon that covers hundreds of square miles, awe inspiring by virtue of its size alone. It’s a beautiful place.

It’s a beautiful place, but the people are an eyesore. If Ishikk, our POV character, is representative of the typical Purelaker, then the people of the Purelake are close-minded and possibly even xenophobic.

Ishikk can’t imagine why anyone, after getting a taste of what it’s like to live on the Purelake, would choose to not live there. He also can’t seem to comprehend the notion of punctuality for its own sake, a notion his culture apparently doesn’t value. He scoffs at other cultures that do. And he rejects the need to learn other languages, not because it’s just not something of interest to him, but because it wouldn’t help him catch more fish.

It’s a nice play on the usual trope of rural areas being enviable places. Here, the rural area is beautiful, but it’s populated by the close-minded.

Also noteworthy is how the narration is used to convey information about the culture of the Purelake.

The narration here is written in the voice of a Purelaker, and by making this stylistic choice, Sanderson is able to give us a window into the culture of the Purelake. You can learn a lot about someone by how they talk. Language is, after all, the vehicle by which people express their way of thinking. Through this we’re given a fascinating glimpse into how the Purelake has influenced the culture of the Purelakers. For example, we can see that they swear “by the sun and tide,” and given the many references to their god, Nu Ralik, we can tell their culture has a strong religious component to it. 

The big question here is what does this have to do with the story? As we’ll see, the other two interludes are relevant to Shallan and Szeth, who’re two of the three main characters alongside Kaladin. Going off of that, we can assume that this vignette has something to do with him, except how isn’t obvious.

Three mysterious individuals are looking for someone, could it be Kaladin? If so, what is their connection to him? I have to know!!

Our next vignette has to do with Shallan.

She seems like a pretty cool person (desperation-induced theft aside) and today we’re finally introduced to her family, starting with her big bro, Nan Ballat. What’s he like?

“Nan Ballat liked killing things.”

Wow, awesome broheim, you do that often?

Seriously, that’s the first thing we learn about him. He likes killing things. And he’s introduced torturing animals and finding pleasure in it.

So, yeah, he’s nice.

Earlier, I speculated that Shallan had an abusive home-life. This essentially confirms it: her father was an abusive man.

The narrator tells us that Shallan was untouched by her father’s abuse, but I’ll believe it when I don’t see it. The narration is from Nan Ballat’s POV and it claims he was also untouched, which is obviously wrong. (Seriously, dude likes torturing animals to death. That’s, like, a sign of something, or something.)

Depression, alcoholism, sadism. Shallan’s family has been truly scared by their father. Even in death, what their father did haunts them, even if they don’t realize it. It’s great to see stuff like this in this series. Abuse has an aftermath, but it’s not really shown often, at least in my experience.

And again with the suspense! What is the problem that was mentioned? Are the Davar family’s creditors closing in on them sooner than expected? I have to know!!!

You know, it occurs to me that maybe the narrator wasn’t lying after all. Maybe Shallan wasn’t abused by her father after all…because it was actually her mother! DUN DUN DUNNN.

That’s a twist this series is just smart enough to do…

And Szeth! Long time no see, good buddy! How’s life treating you?

“’All right.’ Took pulled out his boot knife and tossed it to Szeth. ‘Kurp, cut your arm up.’…Took didn’t rescind the order, so Szeth complied, taking the knife and cutting at the flesh of his arm.”

Mmmhmmm. Interesting.

The most important thing about this vignette is that it tells us what Szeth’s been up to since his late night incident at the party. In short, nothing much. He’s been all over the map, bouncing from one master to another. Anyone who possesses his oathstone can command him to do anything except kill himself and he must comply. As you can tell, his life is shit right now.

You’d think he’s miserable, but au contraire: he’s happy!

…In a relative sense anyway.

Szeth never took joy in his prior life as an assassin. He considers it a victory that he’s doing menial chores instead of killing. In his mind, it’s better to suffer than to cause suffering, and that’s logic I imagine pretty much everyone can agree with.

What’s funny about this is that Szeth’s current situation in-story mirrors his character’s situation on a meta level. Szeth has a connection to the lore of this series that no other character can claim, yet he so far has had no role in the story except for being the catalyst of the series’ main external conflict, the war between the Parshendi and Alethkar. This perfectly mirrors how, in-story, he’s a gifted assassin, but is forced to clean toilets instead.

That’s all I can think to say here.

Including these interludes was a great idea on Sanderson’s part. They give us a break from the main action of the story, even as they expand the scope of the story by showing us that relevant events are happening outside of the Shattered Plains and Kharbranth. And all the while adding depth to the world of Roshar.

On to part two of the story.

[wanderingchanneler]

I’m having thoughts about how Szeth followed the Oathstone for so long, then finally came to the realization that it really was just a rock, and how that could connect back to what little we know of his past so far. I still haven’t worked it out in my head quite right, so I’m sorry if this is inconherent

First, we know that Szeth followed the Oathstone for over seven years. For most of that time, he didn’t allow himself to entertain conscious questions about what he was doing. If he did, it would lead to a collapse of everything he’d held to so unwaveringly, which would lead to the end of his own personal world. Of course, that came to a head both times he fought Kaladin in Words of Radiance. Him realizing that he was never wrong was part of what ended their second fight.

In Oathbringer, Szeth has to consciously remind himself that he was never Truthless a few times. When he’s conflicted over what he should choose as his Third Skybreaker Ideal, Nightblood is actually the one that directs him to make the choice he does. The sword reminds Szeth of his years following the Oathstone, and Szeth starts to justify it by saying that he had no choice. Then he realizes that, ‘it had always been nothing more than a rock.’ So Szeth makes a decision other than the one Nale expected him to make, and swears himself to Dalinar instead.

In Rhythm of War, Szeth confronts Taravangian after Taravangian bates him by asking for an Oathstone. Szeth ignores most of what Taravangian tells and asks him, demanding to know why Taravangian wanted an Oathstone. At one point, Szeth says something like, “My stone…was only ever a stone.” He goes on to hint at something his father said in the past, but Taravangian interrupts by saying that Szeth’s father is dead.

I find two things interesting about that moment. First, this is the first time since that realization at the Battle of Thaylen Field that Szeth has verbally stated, on page, that his Oathstone was just a rock. True, he does tell Navani that he was never Truthless earlier on in RoW, but that verbal declaration still feels important, especially since Szeth says it to Taravangian, who played a large roll in making Szeth’s mental state even worse than it was before.

The second thing that interests me is that Szeth mentions his father, and (presumably) something he might have said about the Oathstone. In the reading of a Szeth flashback Brando did at NYCC, it seems that Szeth’s family doesn’t share Szeth’s level of commitment/devotion/adherence to the teachings of Stone Shamanism. They’re more willing to leave things up to interpretation/bend the prohibitions than Szeth is. So I wonder if at some point, Neturo tried to encourage Szeth to think of the Oathstone in a different way. We don’t know how long it took for Szeth to be named Truthless or what might have been involved in that process, so I can’t say much more about this. I’m just intrigued that Neturo might have had a different view on things. Whatever it might have been, we’ll have to wait for KOWT to be released before the pieces come together.

If I had a main point to make with this post, I don’t remember what it was. I’m just still trying to put what we know about Szeth’s past and Shin beliefs together to find answers that haven’t been revealed yet. I’m very curious to see how much of my speculation is in any way accurate when KOWT comes out

[wanderingchanneler]

I’m thinking of Szeth’s time as Truthless , and why he was so devoted to the law of the Oathstone . We don’t know the process involved in making someone Truthless , but we do know a few relevant things about the Shin religion and Szeth’s view of it.

First, stone is holy. That seems to be a core tenant of Stone Shamanism.

Second, Stone Shamanism seems to have quite a few rules and expectations for religious practice.

Third, Szeth strictly followed his religion for years, and even clung to some aspects of it after being exiled from Shinovar.

Fourth, Szeth takes honor and the oaths he’s sworn very seriously.

So back to the Oathstone . Knowing that stone is holy to the Shin, that Szeth strictly followed his religion, and that he takes oaths seriously, I came up with a theory. I think there was a literal oath involved in making Szeth Truthless , and that he swore it on the Oathstone itself. There are a couple of passages from the books to back this up.

(I don’t know how to format the next bit of this. Tumblr continues to be difficult to navigate with a screen reader.)

From WoR:

“Have I not been faithful?” Szeth shouted, finally looking up to face the sun. His voice echoed against the mountains and their spirit-souls. “Have I not obeyed, kept my oath? Have I not done as you demanded of me?”

The killing, the murder. He blinked tired eyes.

SCREAMS.

“What does it mean if the Shamanate are wrong? What does it mean if they banished me in error?”

It meant the End of All Things. The end of truth. It would mean that nothing made sense, and that his oath was meaningless.

It would mean he had killed for no reason.

My thoughts:

An oath of some kind is mentioned twice in that passage, and it seems deeply intwined with Szeth’s status as Truthless . That status is something he’s been clinging to for over seven years of his life at this point, and it’s crumbling around him. The idea of a meaningless oath or one that was wrongly sworn is incredibly distressing for him.

From OB:

The sword made some soft hums, imitating a human deep in thought. You say you killed many people before we met. But the whispers...you didn’t take pleasure in destroying those who needed to be destroyed?

“I am not convinced that they needed to be destroyed.”

You killed them.

“I was sworn to obey.”

By a magic rock.

He had explained his past to the sword several times now. For some reason, it had difficulty understanding—or remembering—certain things. “The Oathstone had no magic. I obeyed because of honor, and I sometimes obeyed evil or petty men. Now I seek a higher ideal.”

My thoughts:

Szeth doesn’t say who or what he swore to, but I do think the Oathstone was involved somehow. He also says he obeyed because of honor. Like I said earlier, that would be very important to him. While he was Truthless , Szeth always chose his honor above his own morals, wants, and needs.

The Oathstone and Szeth’s nature as Truthless are mentioned a few times in RoW, but there’s nothing directly related to oaths or Szeth’s sworn word.

There are obviously still some pieces missing, but when they’re revealed, I won’t be surprised if it turns out that “ Oathstone ” is a very literal term. Swearing an oath on a sacred rock would hold enormous amounts of meaning to past Szeth, which could be only one of the reasons he held to being Truthless as devotedly as he did.