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  the

  WAY of

  KINGS

  P R I M E

  T H E 2 0 0 2 A L T E R N A T E V E R S I O N

  FICTION BY BRANDON SANDERSON®

  THE STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE®

  The Way of Kings

  Words of Radiance

  Oathbringer

  THE MISTBORN® SAGA

  THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY

  Mistborn: The Final Empire

  The Well of Ascension

  The Hero of Ages

  THE WAX & WAYNE SERIES

  The Alloy of Law

  Shadows of Self

  The Bands of Mourning

  THE RECKONERS®

  Steelheart

  Firefight

  Calamity

  SKY WARD

  Skyward

  Starsight

  ALCATRAZ VS. THE EVIL LIBRARIANS

  Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians

  The Scrivener’s Bones

  The Knights of Crystallia

  The Shattered Lens

  The Dark Talent

  NOVELS

  Elantris

  Warbreaker

  The Rithmatist

  NOVELET TES

  Firstborn

  Defending Elysium

  Mitosis: A Reckoners Story

  NOVELLAS

  Perfect State

  Snapshot

  Children of the Nameless

  INFINIT Y BLADE

  Infinity Blade: Awakening

  Infinity Blade: Redemption

  COLLECTIONS

  Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere® Col ection

  Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds

  GRAPHIC NOVELS

  White Sand, Volumes 1–3

  Dark One

  THE WHEEL OF TIME, with Robert Jordan

  The Gathering Storm

  Towers of Midnight

  A Memory of Light

  SANDERSON CURIOSITIES

  The Way of Kings Prime

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  the way of Kings Prime

  Copyright © 2020 by Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  A Dragonsteel Entertainment Book

  Published by Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC

  American Fork, UT

  brandonsanderson.com

  Brandon Sanderson®, The Stormlight Archive®, Mistborn®, Cosmere®, Reckoners®, Dragonsteel Entertainment®, and the logo are registered trademarks of

  Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC

  ISBN 978-1-938570-24-7

  First Dragonsteel Edition: December 2020

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  S a n d e r s o n C ur io s it i e s

  the

  WAY of

  KINGS

  P R I M E

  T H E 2 0 0 2 A L T E R N A T E V E R S I O N

  BRANDON SANDERSON

  ®

  A D r a g o n s t e e l E n t e r t a i n m e n t® B o o k

  INTRODUCTION

  This book is both one of my greatest accomplishments and one of

  my greatest failures.

  I started it during a difficult time in my life. I’d graduated with my

  undergraduate degree in English in 2000, but had been summarily rejected

  from every graduate program to which I’d applied. (The book Elantris was my writing sample for those submissions.) The publishing industry didn’t

  want my books either; I’d been racking up a nice stack of rejections saying my books were too long.

  On top of it all, I’d just finished writing what I consider two of the weakest books of my career. (Though later on the ideas from these unpublished

  books evolved into Mistborn.)

  And this was when I decided to begin the most ambitious story I’d ever

  attempted.

  I’ve talked a lot about that time in my life; you might have heard the

  story before. I started The Way of Kings because I needed something for me.

  Something to prove to myself that I still loved writing. After spending

  several years chasing the market by trying to write like popular writers

  who were selling at the time, I asked myself, “What would I most want to

  read? What would I be writing if I didn’t care what the publishing industry thought?”

  The book you are now reading is the result. I was told my books were too

  viii PREFACE

  long; this is even longer than any book I’d heretofore created. Publishers told me to focus less on magic and more on creating gritty Earth-like settings, like what was selling at the time. I went off in a completely different direction, into a land of knights in magical power armor, ancient magics,

  and an ecology that was far, far removed from anything you’d find on Earth.

  To an extent this was me giving up, but in the most glorious way possible.

  I had realized, during those dark moments, that I loved writing so much

  that I wasn’t going to give up, even if I was never published. The Way of Kings was for me. It was my exploration of my own goals for the fantasy genre—my feelings of where it could go, what it could do—and what I’d

  like to see fantasy become.

  I’ve talked about something my friends jokingly called “worldbuilder’s

  disease.” That’s the affliction a writer can get where they spend all their time worldbuilding, and never actually tell their story. For The Way of Kings, I decided to GIVE myself worldbuilder’s disease. I let myself just think

  and plan about the world for months and months before writing—far more

  than I normally did.

  At the time, I was working the graveyard shift at a hotel and would

  write during downtime. I bought a three-ring binder, and I started printing off pages of Roshar’s worldbuilding each day after I finished. I filled that thing up with some three or four hundred thousand words of ideas for the

  setting—more words than the book itself eventually had. In part, this was

  to give myself time to deal with all the rejections I’d been getting.

  Things eventually got better. I finally got accepted to a graduate school.

  (BYU let me in; I hadn’t wanted to apply there initially because that’s where I’d done my undergraduate studies. However, out of twelve applications the first year and another eight the next year, it’s the only school that accepted me.) I started to see some small successes in publishing. And right around the time I finished The Way of Kings Prime, I finally sold a book.

  The Way of Kings saw me through it all. It shepherded me through my transition from an amateur to a professional writer—and the text, as you’ll soon find out, shows that. This book is a failure, but a spectacular one.

  I’d never attempted something on this scope before, and so I tried to

  write too many different viewpoints, with too many different plotlines for me to juggle. The end result, as you’ll read, is a book that lacks focus—it’s trying to do too much. What it envisions is awesome, but because of my

  limited skill at the time, I ended up with a large number of fragments of

  different stories told together in one book—rather than something that

  tells a single narrative.

  THE WAY OF KINGS PRIME

  ix

  Everything is going to feel just a little off to you in t
his novel. Indeed, themes like mental health, which I later learned better ways of addressing, are . . . handled less delicately in this book. Also, in reading history, I found that many arranged marriages happened between people of extremely

  disparate ages, and I wanted to explore that kind of strange relationship. (I did it in a way that didn’t involve anything uncomfortable happening—but

  it still came off poorly in the book. Fair warning.)

  Almost all the characters are here, though most of them have different

  names. (Jasnah and Dalinar are the only names I remember keeping. And

  I don’t believe Navani exists yet.) Kaladin, called Merin in this, has a

  completely different arc—as I hadn’t put Bridge Four into the book yet,

  and hadn’t yet figured out how to make spren part of the world as I wanted.

  Taln, the Herald, is a main character—I envisioned him as the main

  character of the series back then, though his arc was supposed to be un-

  certain, as I didn’t want you to know if he’s actually what he claims, or if he’s delusional.

  The events of this book are far, far different from the published version.

  So please don’t assume anything in here is still canon, or an indication of the future for the real Stormlight Archive—even the name of the series

  was different; I was calling it the Dawnshards. All that said, I’m very proud of this novel. It’s the book I wrote right before Mistborn, and is of a similar quality—just less controlled.

  It taught me a great deal, however, and I still think it’s worth reading—so long as you understand that the book is an embryonic version of the story I truly dreamed of telling. I would eventually gain the skill and confidence, after years of thinking about what went wrong, to write the book a better

  way. If for some reason you haven’t read the published version, please read that one first.

  Despite all its flaws, it’s exactly what I needed when I wrote it. And it

  is the seed that eventually grew into something great. I hope you find

  something in it to love.

  Brandon Sanderson

  April 2020

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Even though The Way of Kings Prime was never published in the traditional way, it still had a large group of people —friends, family, members of writing groups—who read it and gave feedback. Even by the time Elantris was published, the binders with the printed pages of the book you now

  hold in your hands were still being shared around. (In fact, one of those

  binders full of comment-filled pages was literally used as a doorstop when helping a friend move apartments.) So, thank you to everyone who read,

  commented upon, and enjoyed this book throughout the years.

  For this Sanderson Curiosities edition, big thanks go to Peter Ahlstrom

  and Is∞c Stewart for shepherding it from manuscript to print. Kristina

  Kugler provided exceptional proofreading and copyediting, for which we

  are very grateful. We especial y want to thank Kristy S. Gilbert at Looseleaf Editorial & Production for the book’s layout and design. Her talents and hard work can be seen on every page. Additionally, Isaac Stewart would

  like to thank Brandon Sanderson for creating the map and symbols that

  appear on the next few pages.

  THE DOUBLE EYE

  This is a representation of the Double Eye as it appears in Rosharan

  art. Sometimes it appears stylized or without glyphs, as seen on the next

  page. Other times the Ten Forces are left out in favor of portraying the Ten Essences more prominently.

  Part 1

  chapter 1

  DALENAR 1

  Dalenar could see a highstorm approaching. Its clouds crested the

  horizon like a rising wave, dark, silent. It was stil distant, but it would come. Furious and exact, highstorms were as inevitable as the rising sun.

  The wood lurched beneath his feet, and Dalenar reached reflexively for

  the tower’s rail. The battlefield stretched below him, a world of screaming men, metallic rings, and hissing bowstrings.

  “When we return,” Elhokar muttered from a short distance away,

  “remind me to find a towermaster who doesn’t see fit to run over every

  boulder on the battlefield.”

  Dalenar snorted quietly, scanning the battlefield. Spearmen in Alethkar

  blue held in a tight formation around the advancing tower, protecting the

  wooden structure and using its momentum to help push them forward

  as they pressed against the enemy line. Two massive chulls pulled the

  tower, a fifty-foot high construction of wood and steel. The chul s lumbered forward on trunk-like feet, encased in stone—the great northern beasts

  used massive, hollowed-out boulders like shells to hide their tender bodies.

  They didn’t even seem to notice their harnesses at their necks or the men

  scurrying at their feet.

  The tower did its job well. Its two tiers of archers launched volley after volley of missiles at the enemy. Dalenar looked down at the soldiers, wondering what it would be like to be a simple footman facing the enormous

  4

  BRAND ON SANDERS ON

  structure. The unfortunate men were forced to choose between holding

  their shields up high to block the death from above, or holding them low

  to block the spears in front of them. The discarded bodies, left in heaps

  behind the advancing line, proved that both choices were equally fatal.

  “Where is he?” Elhokar said, frowning. The king shone in his golden

  armor, one of the finest suits of Shardplate in Alethkar. Gold-trimmed

  with sunbursts on the shoulders and breastplate, the armor was topped by

  a helm mounted with four intricate spikes. Yet, majestic though it was, the armor looked wrong on the young king. Dalenar still expected a different

  face to look out from that helm—a face aged with wisdom, not young and

  untested.

  “He’ll come, your majesty,” Meridas promised with a smooth voice.

  Dalenar frowned, but said nothing. The king had a right to choose his

  counselors, and while Meridas was lowly of rank, he was still a lord—and

  a wealthy one. Without Meridas’ s merchant fleets, the king could never

  have moved across the Sea of Chomar in such a short time.

  Elhokar didn’t respond. His eyes watched the battlefield, yet Dalenar

  knew he wasn’t planning strategy. Elhokar only desired one thing from

  this battle.

  And that, unfortunately, left Dalenar to shoulder the bulk of the com-

  mand. Dalenar turned, waving toward the back of the tower and its small

  crowd of aides, messengers, and lesser lords—Dalenar’s two living sons

  among them. A messenger approached, and Dalenar ordered a squad of

  heavy infantry to the eastern flank, to break a particularly resilient group of Prallan spearmen. The messenger nodded, moving to climb down and

  deliver the message.

  “Where is he?” the king repeated quietly.

  Dalenar moved up to stand beside the young king, his armored feet

  thumping against the wood. Dalenar’s own Shardplate wasn’t as intricate

  as that of his nephew—he hadn’t sewn it with silks, and it bore few

  adornments. It suited him, and he had worn it with pride since the day his brother had given it to him, so many years ago.

  “The Traitor will commit himself soon,” Dalenar said with a slow nod,

  speaking over the sounds of fighting a short distance below. “Your sister’s strategy is a good one. The Prallan forces are buckling in the east, and their men fight with the frantic motions of a group demoralized. If the Traitor

  doesn’t
join the battle soon, he will lose the day for certain.”

  Elhokar waved a golden hand. “This day was won hours ago.”

  “Don’t express the fall, your majesty,” Dalenar warned. “Our force is

  THE WAY OF KINGS PRIME 5

  larger, but the Prallans fight on the land of their fathers. Arrogance will serve us nothing but misery.”

  Again, Elhokar did not respond. He had a regal face, with a perfect

  Aleth countenance—dark black hair, oval face, and a distinct chin. In fact, he had more of a traditional noble look than his father had—Nolhonarin’s

  face had been flatter, his nose wide and blunt. Yet Nolhonarin had been a

  commander like Alethkar had rarely known.

  Dalenar sighed to himself, turning back to the battlefield. What had

  happened to him? What had happened to the days when he could mourn

  a man’s falling one day, then drink to his victories the next? Why did he

  keep looking for the features of the father in the face of the son, and since when did he wonder what it felt like to be a footman in the enemy’s army?

  His body felt old, lethargic despite the mystical strength and speed of his Shardplate. There had been a day when he’d sworn by the Tenth Name of

  the Almighty that he would die with Shardblade in hand, but that had been

  a day before he’d lost both brother and son on the bleak Prallan highrock.

  “There!” Elhokar snapped suddenly, standing upright.

  Dalenar fol owed the king’s gesture. In the distance he could barely make

  out a large tower rolling onto the battlefield. Lady Jasnah, Elhokar’s sister, had been right—the Aleth offensive had forced the Prallans to commit their towers despite the approaching highstorm.

  “He’ll be on that tower,” Elhokar said. With that, the young king hopped

  up—Shardplate granting him spryness despite its bulk—and threw himself

  over the side of the tower.

  “By the—” Dalenar cursed, leaning over the rail and watching the king

  drop to the first archer tier below, then leap over its ledge as well.