Visitors to Roshar should know that fire will respond unusually because of the high-oxygen environment, which I believe is part of the reason that an alternative light source was developed during the early days of humanoid life on the planet. Be aware that lengths and times mentioned in essays and stories about the world usually use local measurements. A Rosharan year is longer than cosmere standard, and a Rosharan foot is larger than cosmere standard. It is difficult not to feel very small, at times, on this domineering, majestic tempest of a planet.

Edgedancer

EDGEDANCER

This story takes place after and contains spoilers for Words of Radiance.

Chapter 1

1

LIFT prepared to be awesome.

She sprinted across an open field in northern Tashikk, a little more than a week’s travel from Azimir. The place was overgrown with brown grass a foot or two high. The occasional trees were tall and twisty, with trunks that looked like they were made of interwoven vines, and branches that pointed upward more than out.

They had some official name, but everyone she knew called them drop-deads because of their springy roots. In a storm, they’d fall over flat and just lie there. Afterward they’d pop back up, like a rude gesture made at the passing winds.

Lift’s run startled a group of axehinds who had been grazing nearby; the lean creatures leaped away on four legs with the two front claws pulled in close to the body. Good eating, those beasties. Barely any shell on them. But for once, Lift wasn’t in the mood to eat.

She was on the run.

“Mistress!” Wyndle, her pet Voidbringer, called. He took the shape of a vine, growing along the ground beside her at superfast speed, matching her pace. He didn’t have a face at the moment, but could speak anyway. Unfortunately.

“Mistress,” he pled, “can’t we please just go back?”

Nope.

Lift became awesome. She drew on the stuff inside of her, the stuff that made her glow. She Slicked the soles of her feet with it, and leaped into a skid.

Suddenly, the ground didn’t rub against her at all. She slid as if on ice, whipping through the field. Grass startled all around her, curling as it yanked down into stone burrows. That made it bow before her in a wave.

She zipped along, wind pushing back her long black hair, tugging at the loose overshirt she wore atop her tighter brown undershirt, which was tucked into her loose-cuffed trousers.

She slid, and felt free. Just her and the wind. A small windspren, like a white ribbon in the air, started to follow her.

Then she hit a rock.