Difference between revisions of "Summary:Oathbringer"

Dalinar enters the vision fighting with a spear among poorly equipped men. He charges forward toward a company of savage men, but his untrained allies fail to support him; his arm is cut off. Dalinar merely wraps it and continues fighting, thinking that it's "cheating" to heal with Stormlight. A Voidbringer joins the enemy. A Radiant (Stoneward) appears and creates handholds down the cliff so they can escape. The Stormfather says Dalinar may also learn this ability. Dalinar realizes that humans were fighting with the Voidbringers. The Stormfather then brings in Jasnah and Navani into the vision at Dalinar's request. They see a Radiant using a device to stimulate Regrowth and Navani rushes off to watch. Jasnah marvels that the civilization is more primitive than that of a previous vision. She worries about how Dalinar will react to being accused as a heretic. She tells him not to let others define who he is. They decide to split up and see as much of the vision as possible. Navani returns, dictating her observations to Teshav who is in the same room outside the vision. She hasn't figured out how the healing fabrial works. They run up a hill to see thousands of bodies and other terrible signs of the Desolation. Dalinar is startled to find that the boulder at the top of the hill was actually a slain creature made of stone. They continue on past the corpses to a place with nine Honorblades rammed into stone. They recognize the one that killed Gavilar, the Honorblade that Szeth carried. The Stormfather explains that the Voidbringers were given power by Odium, and when they were killed, they were simply reborn into the bodies of parshmen. Humans could never defeat them if they kept reincarnating, so Honor created the Oathpact with five men and five women. After each Desolation they would return to Damnation to hold back the spirits of the dead until a Herald, under torture, broke their oath. The Desolations came more often because it would take a shorter time for one to break. In this "last" Desolation, when nine of them survived, they hoped that the only Herald to never break, Talenelat, would be enough. He lasted 4,500 years of torture until finally breaking. Dalinar realizes that the "madman" in Kholinar is really Talenelat, though the blade had when he arrived at the Shattered Plains was not his Honorblade. He asks the Stormfather if the breaking of the Oathpact caused the Recreance, but he refuses to reveal that deeper secret, assuming that it would cause Dalinar to break his oath as well.