Kaladin spotted his original captor standing near the rock where Kaladin had been sitting. Then Khen finally pushed him away from the rockbud and took up the shard he’d been holding. I just have to figure out how we’re going to cook without any pots to boil the water.” In the dark, the smoke is less likely to reveal us, and we can shield the light in the trees. We can keep that one small, then do the cooking tomorrow night.

“Rockbud shells don’t burn particularly well, so we’ll want to harvest some real wood and dry it at the fire during the day. It won’t flow much longer with the end of the rains. “Since we’re already here, we should be near enough the river that we can gather more water. If you don’t do something soon, your supplies will rot.” We need to boil that grain, then dry it into cakes. Now that the rain has stopped, I should be able to get us a fire going, assuming nobody has lost my tinder bag. “If you scrape off this inner layer,” Kaladin said, tapping at the rockbud shell, “you can get to the dry portion. The rockbud needs a barrier between itself and the water outside for some reason, though it always seems eager to drink after a storm. “The inside of this,” he said, turning it over for them, “will still be dry, despite the rainfall. Kaladin ignored them, picking through the wreckage of the rockbud. He was surrounded a few moments later by angry parshmen carrying cudgels. Kaladin carried his rock a few steps, then dropped it, crushing a rockbud. The parshmen hushed, noticing his escape. “No.” Kaladin instead picked up a large stone. “The spheres they took from you have all run out, but they’ll scatter at seeing a Blade.”

That would change his eye color, but in the darkness, he hoped the parshmen wouldn’t notice. He turned and hid what he was doing, then quickly summoned Syl as a knife to cut himself free. “Is that spren watching me right now?” Kaladin asked.

Stormlight archive 3