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Difference between revisions of "Summary:The Way of Kings"
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===Chapter Two: Honor is Dead===
Eight Months Later
Kaladin is now a slave in a caravan, waiting to be sold. He is solitary, and most of the other slaves avoid him since he nearly broke a man's arm (while the man was attempting to steal his food). He thinks to himself that no matter what is done to him, he has one thing that he won't allow the slavers to take from him – his ability to not think like a slave.
Kaladin is approached by one of the other slaves, who offers Kaladin half of his food in exchange for Kaladin's agreement to take him with him the next time he escapes. Kaladin tells the man that he's not going to attempt another escape. When the man protests, Kaladin reveals that he's attempted escape ten times in the past eight months. He has succeeded on several occasions, but was always found and returned due to the brands on his forehead, the most recent of which is the ''shash'' glyph, meaning “dangerous,” that was given to him by his last master.
A second slave approaches Kaladin and asks how he came to be a slave. Kaladin doesn't respond, so the other men begin to tell their stories. After a few such stories, Kaladin reveals that he killed a lighteyes. When the other slaves express surprise that he wasn't hanged for such an offense, Kaladin says, “Killing the lighteyes isn't why I was made a slave. It's the one I ''didn't'' kill that's the problem.” He refuses to say more on the subject.
Several hours later, Kaladin notices one of the other slaves coughing. Lessons from his father on how to treat the man's sickness whisper quietly in the back of his mind. Kaladin expresses his own discomfort at the ''shash'' brand on his forehead, and thinks of how to treat it as well. He regards the knowledge as an annoyance, as he doesn't have the necessary tools for any sort of healing.
Kaladin gets out a leaf of blackbane, a deadly plant that he suspects no one else in the caravan recognizes. He wonders what inspired him to grab it when he saw the plant, and decides that it was probably motivated by his instinct to obtain a weapon, no matter how unconventional.
A [[windspren]] in the form of a slender young woman, but only a handspan tall, speaks to Kaladin and wants to know what the blackbane is. When he ignores her, she asks, “Kaladin, why must you ignore me?” Kaladin is startled, because [[spren]] are typically not intelligent, but rather only mimic what they hear. He thinks that she might have heard his name from one of the other slaves, but then realizes that none of them know his name. He asks the spren how she knows his name, and she replies that she doesn't know how. She just knows.
The spren asks Kaladin why he doesn't fight anymore, and he responds that he's failed. Kaladin notices [[Tvlakv]], the slaver, moving over to inspect the sick slave Kaladin had noticed earlier. The slavers begin to remove the man from the cage, and Kaladin, after a long internal struggle about whether or not he should bother to help the man, tells Tvlakv that the man has the grinding coughs, and if he is given extra water for a few days, he will survive.
Tvlakv removes the man from the rest of the slaves, and Kaladin thinks he is going to give him water. Instead, Tvlakv brutally murders the man, to keep him from spreading the disease. When Kaladin tells him it wasn't contagious, he responds that he won't risk all of the slaves for one life. Kaladin thinks about his failure to do the man any good.
Kaladin thinks about using the blackbane to poison Tvlakv, but realizes that in his anger, he crushed it against the bars of his cage, and dropped too much of it for the remainder to be potent. He thinks to himself that even in this, he has failed, and sinks to the floor.
===Chapter Thee: City of Bells===
===Chapter Four: The Shattered Plains===
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