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Read an Excerpt From Isles of the Emberdark by Brandon Sanderson
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Read an Excerpt From Isles of the Emberdark by Brandon Sanderson
A legendary standalone novel that navigates the seas and the stars of a far-future Cosmere.
By Brandon Sanderson
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Published on February 3, 2026
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We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Isles of the Emberdark, a standalone cosmere novel by Brandon Sanderson featuring illustrations by Esther Hi‘ilani Candari, available now from Tor Books.
All his life, Sixth of the Dusk has been a traditional trapper of Aviar—the supernatural birds his people bond with—on the deadly island of Patji. Then one fateful night he propels his people into a race to modernize before they can be conquered by the Ones Above, invaders from the stars who want to exploit the Aviar.But it’s a race they’re losing, and Dusk fears his people will lose themselves in the effort. When a chance comes to sail into the expanse of the emberdark beyond a mystical portal, Dusk sets off to find his people’s salvation with only a canoe, his birds, and all the grit and canniness of a Patji trapper.Elsewhere in the emberdark is a young dragon chained in human form: Starling of the starship Dynamic. She and her ragtag crew of exiles are deep in debt and on the brink of losing their freedom. So when she finds an ancient map to a hidden portal between the emberdark and the physical realm, she seizes the chance at a lucrative discovery.These unlikely allies might just be the solution to each other’s crises. In their search for independence, Dusk and Starling face perilous bargains, poisonous politics, and the destructive echo of a dead god.
PROLOGUE
FIFTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO
Starling hopped from one foot to the other, holding open the drapes to her balcony, staring at the dark horizon. She didn’t dare blink. She didn’t dare miss it.
First light. When would first light appear?
She’d barely slept, though she’d tried for at least a half hour. She was simply too excited, and had spent the night trying—failing—to distract herself with a book.
In the distance, across the rolling forests of Yolen, the darkness seemed to fade. Did that count? It wasn’t light. It was just… less dark.
She went running anyway. Still wearing her nightgown, she pushed into the hallway outside her rooms in her uncle’s mansion. She scrambled past smiling attendants. Starling genuinely liked most of them—and pretended to like the rest. That was what her uncle taught her: Always look for the best in both people and situations.
Today, that wasn’t so difficult. Today was the day.
First light.
The day she transformed.
She burst into the grand entryway in a tizzy of white hair and fluttering nightgown, startling her uncle’s priests in their formal robes and wide hats. They were up early, of course, because her uncle got up early to take the prayers of those who worshipped him.
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Isles of the Emberdark
Brandon Sanderson
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Isles of the Emberdark
Brandon Sanderson
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Starling fluttered around the corner, heading for the next hallway over, which led to his reflectory. Priests, belatedly, bowed to her from the sides as she ran. She might look like an eight-year-old girl, but dragons grew slowly, and she was older than some of the priests.
She didn’t feel it. She still felt like a child, which her uncle explained was the way of things. Her mental age was like that of a human child her size, but she got to experience that age far longer than they did—which would have been wonderful, except for one thing. It had forced her to wait three long decades for her transformation.
She burst into the reflectory, where her uncle sat upon his fain-wood throne. He wore his human form, which had pale skin and a sharp silver beard just on his chin, bound in cords, extending a good eight inches. He took the appearance of an older man, maybe in his sixties, though that could be deceptive for their kind.
Starling scurried up to him, but didn’t touch him. With his eyes closed— wearing his brilliant white and silver robes and conical headdress—he was taking a prayer from some distant follower. She couldn’t interrupt that. Not even for first light. So she waited, balancing on one foot, then the other, trying to keep from bursting from excitement.
Finally he opened his eyes. “Oh? Starling. It’s early for a young dragonet like you. Why are you up?”
“It’s today, Uncle! It’s today!”
“Is today special?”
“Uncle!”
“Oh, your birthday,” he said. “Thirty years old, unless… Could I have mistaken the day? A lot was happening during your birth, child. Maybe we need to wait until tomorrow.”
“UNCLE! ” she shouted.
Frost smiled, then held out his hands for her to run up and embrace him. “I just spoke with Vambrakastram—and she will take my prayers for the day. I am free, all day, for you.”
“Just for me?” she whispered.
“Just for you. Are you ready?”
“I’ve been so, so ready,” she said. “For so, so long.” She pulled back. “Will my scales really be white when I am a dragon?”
“You are always a dragon,” he said, raising his finger, “whether or not you have the shape of one. As for the coloring of your scales, there’s no way to know until the transformation.” He tapped her arm—which was powder white, like her hair. “Dragons come in all colors, and each is beautiful and unique. But I will say, every dragon I’ve known who was leucistic in human form—granted, there have only ever been two others—had white scales to match. A metallic, shimmering white with a sheen of mother-of-pearl. It’s breathtaking.”
“Only ever two,” she whispered.
“Only ever two,” he said, then cupped her cheek. “Plus one, Starling.” “Letsgoletsgoletsgo!” she shouted, running back out into the hallway. He followed, and—with her urging him on—they continued down the corridor, passing more smiling priests. All human, of mixed genders. Starling had been to other dragon palaces, and the priests there were stiff and stuffy. Not so here. Frost saw the best in people, and people became their best because of it. That’s what he’d always said.
“Now,” he said from behind, walking far too slowly for her tastes, “I’m supposed to speak to you of the ritual importance of the first transformation.”
“I know the importance!” she exclaimed, spinning to walk backward. “I will be able to fly.”
“We live dual lives,” he said. “And there is a reason we spend thirty years in human form before reaching the age of transformation. This is Adonalsium’s wisdom.”
“Yes, yes,”she said, spinning again as they reached the end of the hallway— and the grand balcony doors. “We live half our lives as humans so we know what it is like to be small. We live the lives of mortals before we gain the life of a dragon. That way, we’ll understand.”
“Do you?” he said, resting his hand on her shoulder as she stood before the closed doors, which were made of yellow stained glass. She thought… she could see light on the other side, from the horizon.
She was so eager, but he’d taught her to be honest, always.
“No,” she admitted. “I try, but I… don’t understand mortals. They live such hurried lives, and they are so fragile, but they don’t seem to care. I try, but I don’t understand.”
“Yes. With our powers, even as dragonets, empathy is difficult.”
“Will that ruin me?” she asked softly. She’d worried about this. “Because I don’t understand? Will it stop me from flying?”
“You can never be ruined, child,” he said, a smile in his voice. “Never, ever. You can learn better, and you will as you grow. Knowing that fact is how it happens! Ignorance will not hold back the transformation.” He leaned back. “Sometimes, contrast is important to help us learn.”
He shoved the doors open, revealing a horizon that had begun to blaze with predawn. The grand balcony was large enough to hold them in their draconic forms. It was one of the launchpads to the upper palace, which was built on a different scale—for people who were the size of buildings.
She stepped out onto the balcony, suddenly worried. What if it didn’t happen to her? What if she was broken? Everyone put so much stock in her being leucistic—which was a cousin, but not exactly the same, as being albino like a human. She was more like a white tiger, she’d been told. A symbol of two worlds. But some said with every great sign came misfortune, as proven by what had happened to her parents…
“You are,” Frost said, “so wonderful, Illistandrista. I am honored to be here, with you, on this most important of days.”
He left unsaid that he wished her parents were the ones here. That was not to be. She took a deep breath, and held out her hands to her sides.
First dawn struck her, and she absorbed the light. It became part of her, and the self that had been hidden within Starling these thirty years emerged, glorious and radiant. With wings, and dragonsteel of pure silver, and scales a glittering white—faintly iridescent.
With the transformation, Starling—finally—felt that she belonged.
CHAPTER ONE
Sixth of the Dusk crept up on a deathant.
“This thing’s venom,” Dusk whispered, slipping forward on silent feet, “is enough to kill a horse. It would have no trouble with you or me. They call it a three-step kill. Because after its bite, you’ll last only three more steps.”
He kept his eyes on the tiny insect, which held to the bottom of a leaf— barely visible, imitating a natural spot on the foliage. Dusk turned a smoking brand between his fingers and slid forward. “They often cling to the bottoms of leaves,” he said softly. “People rub against them, unaware, and the ants slip onto their clothing. In the jungles of Patji, you can never fully trust that you’re not carrying one. Death could come with a tiny sting hours after you’ve passed their hive.”
One more step. He raised his brand.
“Smoke,” he whispered, “is your best defense. It puts them to sleep.” He inched the brand up underneath the leaf, letting its smoke puff up and ooze around the insect. “Either that, or you move with extreme caution. Hoping—praying to the Father Island—that you were careful enough.”
The deathant did not drop to sleep as it should have—because if you looked closely, you would see it was actually a drawing. Dots of black, painted on the leaf in the shape of the deadly insect.
He turned around to an audience of children and parents. Most were barely paying attention. He lowered his smoking brand, then rapped his other hand on the glass terrarium, which held living specimens. It was set up next to the fake display, both being used for presentations.
“You have no idea how lucky you are,” he said, “to be able to look at these safely. Real, live deathants. Few people ever got that chance before the modern era.”
The children stared at him blankly. One was drooling. Their juvenile Aviar—birds which clung to shoulders or heads—chattered softly at one another.
“I’m done,” Dusk added.
A smattering of applause, which he always found… odd. He did not like being applauded. After that, the people moved on to one of the other displays, several children complaining they were bored, one crying for no reason whatsoever.
Dusk groaned and glanced back at the terrarium containing one of the deadliest creatures in all of creation. And he felt… sorry. These insects had once terrified even the most skilled trapper. Now they were just bugs in a jar.
It made him angry, with no good reason, for he was part of the reason they were imprisoned like this. Indeed, this entire park—with its captive displays of the dangers of the outer islands, and showy explanations for how life had once been—existed because of him. He might not have captured these animals, but he’d signed their bill of incarceration.
With a sigh, he turned from the enclosure and went to gather Sak from the Aviar roost nearby. The sleek black bird stood out among the others. Everyone here had an Aviar, all a variety of colors, but none were like Sak, with her black coloring and more pointed beak. As he put her on his shoulder, she leaned to the side, looking at his other shoulder. Empty. She never stopped looking.
“I know,” Dusk said. “I miss him too.”
After that, he went walking. Something that once, when he’d worked on Patji—most perilous of islands—had been rife with danger. Each step a risk of death, a new challenge around every tree and within every hollow. Five years later, and his instincts still said that walking lazily like this was dangerous. Was it strange, that he should long for those days?
He wore his old gear—cargo pants and a tight, buttoned shirt—which made him stand out in this city full of bright dresses and colorful wraps. On the street outside, he could hear new kinds of vehicles passing: the kind with motors that roared like some type of beast. Gifts of technology from the Ones Above.
He peered to the sky, and spotted the ship hanging there. More talks, more meetings, more gifts and promises. The aliens were growing impatient with this primitive planet full of stubborn people and valuable birds. How long would the Ones Above wait? He had thoughts on what could be done. He kept them to himself, as nobody asked. Couldn’t Vathi send for him again? He’d only punched one senator. And surely the man had deserved it.
Dusk continued walking through the park. People did, occasionally, stop and point. He was a celebrity, he supposed. The last trapper of Patji, a man who had been ushered back to receive medals and awards for the secrets he’d helped discover. He’d asked them to build this park, to preserve the trapper heritage, and so they had. It was the last time they’d listened to him.
He didn’t work for the park formally, but he liked to visit. To remember. Maybe that was a bad idea. Maybe that was asking for pain, seeing all these creatures in cages. Knowing that secretly, he was one of them. A relic of days that had been bulldozed. Leaving him a man with no purpose. Other than to try, and fail, to scare children.
He found Tuka, the park director, supervising one of the new exhibits. They hoped to house nightmaws here. Insanity, he’d have once said. But they’d housed Dusk, so who knew?
Tuka was a boisterous, stout woman. She had long black hair and wore orange. Always. Orange was practically a religion to Tuka.
It made her look like a fruit.
“Dusk!” she said, turning from the new construction. “I didn’t know you were coming in today!”
He didn’t reply. Because that had not been a question.
“What do you think?” she asked, gesturing to the enclosure—a deep pit with stone sides.
“They will get out at that point there,” he said, pointing at some trees inside. “They will knock the trees down, climb up, feast upon your patrons.” He paused. “It might be bad for publicity.”
“Oh, you,” she said, swatting him.
She thought he made jokes. He let her think that—as his gut said it would make her underestimate him.
Why would you need that kind of thinking any longer? a part of him accused. Haven’t you listened to a single thing Vathi has tried to teach you?
“We’re very lucky to have you,” Tuka noted. “A real, live trapper. One who trapped Patji, no less.”
The words… they were echoes of the ones from his presentation. The exact things he’d said about the deathants.
Father. Was this really his life? Dusk looked around at the colorful people and glass cages.
“Was it really as terrible as people say?” Tuka asked. “On the island, I mean.”
“Yes,” Dusk said. “And wonderful.”
“Terrible… and wonderful?” Tuka frowned.
“Wonderful because it was terrible.”
“I don’t understand.”
He wasn’t surprised. All this effort to create the park, to preserve the ways of the trappers, and Dusk only now realized something. Tamed displays—no matter how vibrant and accurate—could never fully capture the truth of living on Patji.
And so, the only true displays were his memories.
CHAPTER TWO
FIVE YEARS AGO
Death hunted beneath the waves.
Dusk saw it approach: a vast dark shadow within the deep blue. Dusk’s hands tensed on his paddle, rocking in his boat, his heartbeat racing as he immediately sought out Kokerlii.
Fortunately, the colorful bird sat in his customary place on the prow, idly biting at one clawed foot raised to his hooked beak. Kokerlii lowered his foot and puffed out his feathers, as if completely unmindful of the danger beneath.
Dusk held his breath. He always did, when unfortunate enough to run across one of these things in the open ocean. He did not know what they looked like beneath those waves. He hoped to never find out.
The shadow drew closer, almost to the boat. A school of slimfish passing nearby jumped into the air in a silvery wave, spooked by the shadow’s approach. The terrified fish showered back to the water with a sound like rain, but the shadow did not deviate. The slimfish were too small a meal to interest it.
A boat’s occupants, however…
It passed directly underneath. Sak chirped quietly from Dusk’s shoulder; the second bird seemed to have some sense of the danger. Creatures like the shadow did not hunt by smell or sight, but by sensing the minds of prey. Dusk glanced at Kokerlii again, whose powers were their only protection. Dusk had never clipped Kokerlii’s wings, but at times like this he understood why many sailors preferred protection Aviar that could not fly away.
The boat rocked softly; the jumping slimfish stilled. Waves lapped against the sides of the vessel. Had the shadow stopped? Hesitated? Did it sense them? Kokerlii’s protective aura had always been enough before, but…
The shadow slowly vanished. It had turned to swim downward, Dusk realized. In moments, he could make out nothing through the waters. He hesitated, then forced himself to get out his new mask. It was a modern device he had acquired two supply trips back: a glass faceplate with leather at the sides. He placed it on the water’s surface and leaned down, looking through it into the depths. They became as clear to him as an undisturbed lagoon.
Nothing. Just that endless deep, sunlight making streams of light like roadways into the abyss. Fool man, he thought, tucking away the mask and getting out his paddle. Didn’t you just think to yourself that you never wanted to see one of those?
Still, as he started paddling again, he knew that he’d spend the rest of this trip feeling as if the shadow were down there, following him. He continued regardless, paddling his outrigger canoe until he drew a distance away—all around him was that same trembling ocean, not a speck of land in sight. He carried with him compass, map, and sextant… but today, he didn’t reach for any of those.
Instead he dipped his hand into the water and closed his eyes, reading the lapping of the waves to judge his position. Once, those waves would have been good enough for any of the Eelakin, his people. These days, only the trappers learned the old arts, the arts of the grand navigators from long ago. It was a mark of pride to him that he almost never needed the compass, and he had yet to encounter a situation where he had to rely on the new sea charts—given as gifts by the Ones Above during their visit earlier in the year. They were said to be more accurate than even the best Eelakin surveys.
He hated that such things existed. However, you could not stop times from changing. His mother’s words. You couldn’t stop times from changing any more than you could stop the surf from rolling. But he could remember. He pulled his hand from the ocean and got out his navigator’s book, where each day he recorded observations. The rising and setting of the sun, the locations of constellations, fish he’d seen and the direction they were swimming.
Wayfinding was a puzzle. In the old days, the great navigators would not sleep for as long as a week as they traveled—for they needed to record everything in incredible detail. Distance traveled, speed of motion, the angle of each day’s sailing as accounted by sun and stars.
Dusk fortunately didn’t need to be quite so detailed. So long as he passed shallows now and then, a modern anchor could keep him from drifting while he slept. And he knew that if he did drift too far, the compass, map, and sextant could get him back on track.
He still loved to do it the old way. He marked the school of slimfish, and knew—without needing to look—it meant he was getting close. The birds he’d seen in the distance yesterday had been enough. At night, birds headed toward land—and that had let him turn his course slightly. The snarl of seaweed—with a hook from some previous trapper caught in it—had been an obvious sign as well. Even the clouds could help, for green reflections on the bottoms of distant clouds meant land.
He finished his notations, then used his spyglass to scan for other signs. More birds. They’d be flying away from land this time of day… Yes, he was close.
Again, he dipped his hand into the water. Of all the ancient techniques, this was his favorite. For while you let your fingers trail in the water, with eyes closed, you could feel the waves… and large islands created different wave patterns. It worked best once you were close, of course, but with his fingers in the water… he almost felt like the islands were talking to him. Telling him, by how they interrupted the patterns, where they were.
He smiled and took out his old string map—made with wooden sticks on a board, used to show wave patterns and indicate how to find them around certain islands. He turned his boat with confidence—his birds chirping— and paddled straight on their new path.
It was not long, after the accounting of tides, before he was rewarded with first sight of an island. He’d done it, without picking up his compass a single time this trip. That was Sori: a small island in the Pantheon, and the most commonly visited. Her name meant “child”; Dusk vividly remembered training on her shores with his uncle.
It had been long since he’d burned an offering to Sori, despite how well she had treated him during his youth. Perhaps a small offering would not be out of line. Patji would not grow jealous. One could not be jealous of Sori, as she was the least of the islands. Just as every trapper was welcome on Sori, every other island in the Pantheon was said to be affectionate of her.
Be that as it may, Sori did not contain much valuable game. Dusk continued paddling, moving down one leg of the archipelago known as the Pantheon.
From a distance, this archipelago was not so different from the homeisles of the Eelakin, now a three-week trip behind him. Up close, they were very, very different. Over the next five hours, Dusk paddled past Sori, then her three cousins. He had never set foot on any of those three. In fact, he had not landed on many of the forty-some islands in the Pantheon. At the end of his apprenticeship, a trapper chose one island and worked there all his life.
Dusk had chosen Patji—an event some fifteen years past now. Seemed like far less.
Dusk saw no other shadows beneath the waves, but he kept watch. Not that he could do much to protect himself. Kokerlii did all of that work as he roosted happily at the prow of the ship, eyes half closed. Dusk had fed him seed; Kokerlii did like it so much more than dried fruit.
Nobody knew why beasts like the shadows lived only here, in the waters near the Pantheon. Why not travel across the seas to the homeisles, where food would be plentiful and Aviar like Kokerlii were far rarer?
Once, these questions had not been asked. The seas were what they were. Now, however, men poked and prodded into everything. They asked, “Why?” They said, “We should explain it.”
Dusk shook his head, dipping his paddle into the water.That sound—wood on water—had been his companion for most of his days. He understood it, and the whisperings of the waves, far better than he did the speech of men.
Even if sometimes their questions got inside of him and refused to go free.
After the cousins, most trappers would have turned north or south, moving along branches of the archipelago until reaching their chosen island. Dusk continued forward, into the heart of the islands. He stopped briefly with harpoon and rope to spear some fish—often, in these waters, the best way to get protein.
He gutted and packed them away for later tonight at his safecamp, then continued paddling until a shape loomed before him. Patji, largest island of the Pantheon. He towered like a wedge rising from the sea, and all of the waves here bent around him. A place of inhospitable peaks, sharp cliffs, and deep jungle.
Patji. King of the Pantheon. God of the Eelakin.
Hello, old destroyer, Dusk thought. Hello, Father.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Starling crawled down the ladder in a metal tube, far from her homeworld— and even farther, at least emotionally, from that glorious day when she’d first transformed.
Over fifty years had passed. She was basically an adult, but she had replaced grand palaces with dimly lit corridors on a half-functional starship. She reached the last rung and turned toward engineering, wearing her human shape.
A shape she’d been magically locked into—exclusively—for twelve years now.
She forced a spring into her step and told herself to keep positive. There was at least one blessing about being exiled: there were a whole lot of places that weren’t home—and many of them were vibrant, amazing. She’d never have visited them if she hadn’t been forced out into the cosmere against her will.
For that, she had decided to be grateful for what had been done to her. Her master said she worked too hard to find sunlight in dark places, but what else was she to do? Darkness was commonplace, and she preferred a challenge. Besides, the cosmere really was a wondrous place.
Not that her current location was anything spectacular. A metallic corridor, with flickering fluorescent lights. Pipes for decor and barely enough space to walk upright. It took a lot of energy to keep a ship like the Dynamic flying, and designers learned to be economical.
She paused by one of the portholes, looking out at the bleak darkness of Shadesmar—an endless, empty black plane. Really, wasn’t it the darkness that reminded one how wonderful the light was? Traveling through Shadesmar was dreary, but at least she could do it in a ship, rather than walking in a caravan like people had done in the olden days.
She tried to imagine them out there, walking the lonely obsidian expanse. Or worse, straying into regions where the ground went incorporeal and turned into the misty nothing they called the unsea. Or… the emberdark, people sometimes called that vast emptiness—the Rosharan term for the unexplored parts of Shadesmar.
Her ship stayed along the more frequented pathways, where the ground was solid—and had been for millennia. You often encountered other travelers on these patrolled lanes between planets. For Shadesmar, such places were conventional, understood, and safe. But her ship had strayed close to the edge of one such corridor. And out there… well, anything could be out there in the emberdark. Starling found that both exciting and terrifying all at once.
A figure stepped out of the wall behind her.Transparent, with a faint glow to him, Nazh had pale skin with cool undertones, and wore a dark grey formal suit: the kind with a fancy cravat that normal people wore to only the most exclusive of gatherings. He didn’t have much choice, though, seeing as that was what he’d died in.
“Star?” he asked her. “Is everything all right?”
“It’s strikingly beautiful,” she said, running her fingers along the metal. “This corridor.”
The sleeve of her jacket slipped back, exposing one of her manacles. Silver against her powder-white skin, the thick pieces of metal—more like bracers visually—were the symbols of her exile, binding her in human form, locking away her abilities. Until she “learned.”
She still didn’t know, years later, how much of the exile was to teach her and how much to punish her. Her people’s leaders could be… obscure.
“Strikingly beautiful?” Nazh asked. “The… corridor? Star, are you having one of your moments?”
“No. Maybe. Look, I was just thinking that this ship is almost starting to feel like home.”
“The dragon,” he said with a smile, “who flies a starship.”
“I don’t do much flying. That’s Leonore’s job. I just get flown around.”
Twelve years now, trapped in her human form by these manacles. Twelve years since she’d stretched her wings and taken to the sky under her own power.
Shards. She would not let that break her.
She would not let them win.
She continued on her way, Nazh joining her. He didn’t walk, and he didn’t really float. He glided, feet on the ground, as if standing still—but moving when she walked, his hands clasped behind his back.
“I shouldn’t complain,” she said. “I mean, there are advantages to letting someone else do the flying. Easier on the muscles this way. Plus I can sleep while we travel! Try doing that when flying with your own wings.”
“Star, dear,” he said, “if I still had a stomach, I believe I’d find your optimism nauseating.”
“Oh, come on,” she said. “You have to admit. Things could be worse. I could be dead…”
“One gets over such trivialities.”
“… wearing a formal suit for eternity…”
“I’ll never be underdressed.”
“… and have a face that is… well, you know.”
Nazh stopped in place. “I know what?”
“Never mind,” she said, reaching the ladder to the bottom deck, where she’d find engineering. She descended while he floated alongside her.
“Never mind what?” he said.
“It wouldn’t be polite to say.”
“You were trained by one of the most obtuse, crass men in all of the cosmere, Star. You don’t know the meaning of the word ‘polite.’”
“Sure I do,” she said, hopping off the ladder. “It’s just that I’m a kindly young—”
“You’re eighty-seven.”
“I’m a kindly young—for the relative age of her species—person. Being kindly means you don’t tell your friend about the unfortunate nature of his coiffure. You merely imply it is ridiculous so you can maintain plausible deniability.”
He floated along, eyes forward as she reached the door to engineering. “Hairstyles of this… volume were quite fashionable when I died.”
“Among whom? Musk oxen?”
He almost broke composure—that stern expression of near disapproval cracked, and a smile itched the corners of his mouth. It always felt like a gift when she managed to make Nazh smile. Also, his hair wasn’t that bad—it had a windswept, classic look. It was just that he was a tad overly fond of it, despite it making him seem like he couldn’t decide if he was a pompous prince or a rockstar.
“Hey,” a commanding female voice said in Star’s earpiece. “Are you wasting time again?”
“No, Captain.”
“Then why isn’t my engine working yet?”
“Had to stop at my rooms to fetch something, Captain,” Starling said. “I’m almost to engineering.”
“Did Nazrilof find you?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“I explicitly told him not to.”
“Tell her,” Nazh said, “she can order me a hundred lashings. I’m fond of them. They tickle.”
“Sorry, Captain,” Starling said instead. “I’m entering engineering now.”
“Warn that engineer,” the captain said, “that if there is another problem, I will come down and deal with her personally. I am not known for my patience with crew who slack off.” She cut the line.
“Do you suppose,” Nazh said, “we could pitch her overboard and claim she jumped? I’d swear under oath she was driven mad.”
“By what?”
“My ravishingly attractive hairdo, of course.” He hesitated. “I mean, there has to be some musk ox in the captain’s heritage. Have you seen the woman?”
Starling grinned, then pushed through the door. The engine room of the Dynamic was even more cramped than the hallway—though it had a higher ceiling, the round chamber was clogged with machinery. More than that, large bundles of tubes ran up and down the walls, tied off every few feet or so to keep them together. Like cords, only a little thicker, and sometimes pulsing with water or aether. They were a staple of the ship, and of its class. Tubes in bundles running across the ceilings, or along walls, glowing, pulsing, or thrumming. Most ships that Starling had been on, particularly the less expensive ones, had similar features.
Regardless, Starling had to squeeze between engine protrusions and the wall at several points—and step over several bundles of tubes—to make her way to the back, where a hammock hung from a rivet on the wall and a stack of large barrels, marked with symbols of various aethers.
A young woman sat up from within the hammock and hurriedly hid some items in the pocket of her blue jumpsuit. Aditil had brown skin, with light tan—almost golden—undertones. She wore her black hair in a braid, and as she moved, Starling saw the distinctive pale blue, glasslike portion of her right hand. The center of the palm was replaced—bones and all—with a transparent aether the color of the sky.
The glass was cracked, an indication that the symbiote she’d bonded was dead. Starling had never asked for the story behind that.
“L.T.!” the young woman exclaimed. “Oh hells. Captain sent you? Did I let the pressure lapse again?” She scrambled, grabbing her earpiece from the pouch in her hammock, fumbling to put it in. “Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry!”
Aditil slid out of the hammock, almost falling over. She hopped over a large pipe and began to monitor the engines—where she’d plugged in her lodestar to give her readouts in her native language. This was what she was supposed to have been doing. The old machinery needed constant attention; the Dynamic—as fond as Starling was of it—wasn’t the most cutting-edge of ships. Indeed, it was something of a mongrel. Rosharan antigrav technology, aether spores from the Dhatrian planetary network for thrust and engine power, a Scadrian composite metal hull. Never mind that all three technological strains produced their own viable starships without the others. The Dynamic, like her crew, had picked up a little here and a little there. All it was missing was an Awakened metalmind, but those were expensive—and Starling had never trusted them anyway.
Aditil fiddled with machinery, often controlling the systems via her lodestar. The rectangular device—around ten inches wide and six inches tall—was a kind of controller, or input device. There were so many different kinds of mechanical architectures in the cosmere, from so many different planets, that it could be difficult to learn them all. Plus, a patchwork ship like this might have parts from a half dozen different manufacturers, each with their own languages, customs, and—most importantly—input schemes.
Having a lodestar built to your preferences helped with that. Most of them, like Aditil’s—or the one that Starling wore in a holster at her belt— could be pulled apart into two pieces, each of which you plugged into a device. A little like… like handles for luggage that you could remove, then attach to a new piece of luggage. If those handles each had buttons, triggers, and thumbsticks made to your culture’s preferences. Most had things like small foldout screens or even keypads in your local language.
Starling had spent decades customizing hers. It had a kind of stonework feel to it, though of course that was a facade for the electronics. She liked to feel that it was ancient, like her people. Aditil’s was more modern, with smoother grips and… well, it felt more like a controller to one of the game systems she was fond of playing. It was brightly colored, almost gaudy, and the tiny readout displayed the flowing script of her people.
With the lodestar she gave inputs—but she still checked specific gauges and local readouts of things like aether levels. Someone who grew familiar with a system rarely used their lodestar for everything. In this case, Aditil actually whispered to the aethers themselves—but it worked, as she got the engine back up to full power. Starling leaned against the wall, noting that Nazh had chosen to remain outside. Aditil was new, and he had learned— from painful experience—to ration his time with new crewmembers. Not everyone was comfortable around shades. Indeed, there were some who’d say that bringing one on board your ship was tantamount to suicide.
“So,” Starling said, “this is… the third time this week that Captain hasn’t been able to get ahold of you?”
“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” Aditil kept her head low as she worked.
“Want to talk about it?”
“I’ll do better! I need this job, L.T. Please. I… need to save up enough…”
Starling folded her arms, the edges of her manacles peeking out from beneath her jacket.
Aditil worked for a moment longer, but then slumped to the floor, leaning forward, forehead against the engine. A low humming sound came from within the machinery as zephyr aether generated gas, which created pressure—the basis for powering the ship. The fact that they could use the zephyr as propellant and for breathable air meant that the Dynamic was spaceworthy. They rarely needed that, as Xisis—the ship’s owner—usually had them do merchant runs through Shadesmar instead.
“They’re pictures of your family, aren’t they?” Starling said. “The things you hide whenever I walk past?”
Aditil glanced at her, surprised.
“Can I see them?” Starling asked.
Sheepishly, the young woman fished them out of her pocket and handed them over. Only four photos, depicting a crowded family with… seven children? Aditil seemed the oldest. Her parents were smiling in every one, wearing the bright, colorful clothing common to her people.
“They… didn’t want me to go,” Aditil muttered. “Said I was too young, even if I’d done the apprenticing. But after…” She looked at her hand, pressed flat on the ground, and the cracked aether bud in the right palm. “I couldn’t stay. I took the deal to work for passage offworld, but do you have any idea how much it costs to get back to Dhatri? I didn’t. Stupidly, I left my family. And with them, the one place where anyone has ever wanted me…”
“Hey,” Starling said, kneeling beside her. “You’re wanted here.”
“I shouldn’t be,” Aditil said. “I’ve screwed up every duty I’ve ever been given. You deserve a real engineer, with real experience, and a functional aether.”
“Aditil, you think we can afford a full aetherbound? On this old piece of junk?”
“She’s not a piece of junk.” Aditil put a hand on the engine. “She’s a good ship, L.T.”
Now that was encouraging. You always wanted an engineer who cared about the ship.
“Either way,” Starling said, “you’re a blessing to us here. A fully trained aetherbound?”
“Without a functioning aether.”
“Regardless, we get your knowledge, your skill. You always get the engine working again, when you try.”
“I talk to it,” she said softly. “You can only afford older spores, which tend to be drowsy. I wake them up, that’s all…” She turned to Starling. “I’m broken, L.T. Ruined.”
“You can never be ruined,” Starling said, taking her hand. “Hey, look at me. Never ever, Aditil. It’s impossible.” Then she shrugged. “But here, we’re all a little off, eh? Maybe that’s what makes us a family.” Starling had let her jacket sleeves retreat, and Aditil glanced at the manacles, thought a moment, then nodded.
“Thanks for the pep talk, L.T.,” Aditil said, pulling back to work at her post. “I’ll stay on it.”
“Well, good,” Starling said. “That’s what Captain wants.” She handed back the pictures, then slipped something out of her own inner jacket pocket—an envelope, fetched from her room earlier.
Aditil took it with a frown, looked to Starling, then opened it. After a moment, she registered what was inside. Her eyes went wide, and her hand went to her lips, covering a quiet gasp.
One ticket to Dhatri, Aditil’s homeworld.
“But how?” Aditil asked. “Why would you…”
“Nobody,” Starling said intently, “on my ship is trapped. Everybody on my ship has the right to go home. You’re a great engineer, Aditil, and I love having you on this crew. But if there’s another place you feel you need to be, well…” She nodded toward the ticket.
“What does Captain think?”
“Captain doesn’t need to know,” Starling said. “You’re not our slave, Aditil. You’re our friend and colleague.”
Aditil stared at the ticket, tearing up.“How… how long have you known I was homesick?”
“I made a good guess. Though… I did buy a refundable ticket, in case I was wrong.” She walked past and squeezed Aditil’s shoulder. “When we get back to Silverlight, I’ll sign your release papers. You can return home, until you’re ready to leave again—if ever.”
“I…” Aditil closed her eyes, tears leaking down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Starling smiled. “For now, though, please just keep the ship moving. Captain keeps threatening to come down here herself, and I think she might actually do it next time.”
“Thank you, L.T.,” she whispered again. “Starling… Thank you.”
Starling left her working with renewed vigor, then stepped out of engineering. Nazh was waiting, one eyebrow cocked.
“What?” she asked him.
“How did you afford that?”
It was expensive to travel to Dhatri. The law of commerce was simple: if you could get to a location through Shadesmar, it was cheap. If not, then you had to pay. A lot.
Most cities were in the Physical Realm, not in Shadesmar, but you could transfer between the two dimensions with ease—if you had a special kind of portal. They were called perpendicularities, and most major planets had them. To travel, you popped into Shadesmar on one planet, traveled easily to your destination, then popped back out.
Unfortunately, Dhatri didn’t have a perpendicularity anymore. Which meant you couldn’t hop out of Shadesmar there to visit it. No, to get to Dhatri, you needed a faster-than-light-capable ship that traveled through space in the Physical Realm. Those were expensive. And mostly controlled by one military or another. Hence why Aditil could catch a ride on one leaving: a ship had needed a post filled, and recruited her. But to get back, the only reliable way was to buy an overpriced ticket.
“Well?” Nazh asked as they started walking. And gliding. “How did you afford it?”
“I had some savings,” she said.
“You realize,” he said, “this is only going to convince them further you have a hoard of gold somewhere.”
Shards. She hadn’t thought of that. Their crew was small—only eight people—but the myth about Starling’s kind and their caverns of gold had persisted among them no matter how she tried to stamp it out. At least they’d believed her when she’d insisted that dragons didn’t eat people.
She started up the ladder to the middle deck. Truth was, she felt good, having guessed accurately what Aditil needed. She was finally starting to feel like she understood this crew and how to be a leader, just like Master Hoid had been trying to teach her. Before he’d vanished, of course. It was… his way.
He’d be back. Until then, she had to do her best to guide the crew, and protect them from the interim captain. She reached the middle deck and walked through the hallway toward the stern, where she could climb up to the bridge. As she did, though, she spotted someone standing outside of the medical bay, peering in.
ZeetZi was a lawnark, a being that was basically human—except instead of hair, he had feathers. A mostly bald head, with dark brown skin that had a cool earthy tone, along with a crest of yellow and white feathers on the very top. He also had tiny feathers along his arms, almost invisible against his skin. Arcanists said lawnarks hadn’t evolved from birds or anything like that—more, they were humans who had been isolated, and whose hair had evolved into something more akin to feathers. He wore a pair of trousers with suspenders over a shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His lodestar, in its case on his belt, had a shiny metallic outer shell with almost no markings on its various buttons and triggers.
ZeetZi was supposed to be checking on the life support systems. While Aditil handled the aethers and the engine, ZeetZi was their technician for the rest of the ship. He was a genius at mechanical devices… when he wasn’t getting distracted by the ship’s doctor.
He spotted Starling and Nazh, and his crest perked up in alarm. Then he immediately stepped forward to meet them.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, before you prod me in your relentlessly surreptitious way, L.T., I was checking on the doctor again. I know you encouraged me to abandon my anxiety, but I can’t help it. We shouldn’t have invited one of those on our ship, not if we value our lives or sanity.”
“Zee,” she said, taking his arm, “have you listened to yourself when you talk like that?”
“I know, I know,” he said, crest smoothing back down. “It’s unseemly, yes, but… you know what they did to my people. To my world.”
She nodded. She’d never been to his homeworld—amazing though it sounded—but she knew what the hordes had done to other planets. It was a familiar story.
“Master Hoid,” Starling said, “trusts Chrysalis. He invited her on board.”
ZeetZi shivered at the name Chrysalis—and Nazh looked away. It said something that, even with a dragon and a shade on board, the crew was most frightened of the ship’s doctor.
“I found one of its spies,” ZeetZi hissed, “murine, sniffing around in my room again, L.T.”
Well, that was a problem. Chrysalis did tend to ignore privacy.
“I’ll speak to her,” Starling said. She’d made a breakthrough, finally, with Aditil. Could she manage another?
“Star,” Nazh said softly, “you need to stop worrying about that one. The horde will be gone from this ship as soon as Xisis finds a proper ship’s doctor.”
“Master Hoid told me to watch over the crew,” she whispered.
“That’s not a member of our crew,” ZeetZi said. “L.T., show me trust in this. The creature isn’t here for us, and will not lend aid if we need it. It doesn’t care about us, except how it can use us to further its own arcane goals.”
“We’ll see,” Starling said. “You two head up to the bridge. I’ll meet you in a bit.”
Both reluctantly withdrew. Starling approached the medical bay, looking in at a figure who wore a tight, formal uniform from a military Starling hadn’t ever been able to identify. The individual worked at a cabinet, cataloging medicines, as the captain had asked.
As the figure heard Starling, it turned—revealing a face with the skin pulled back, and a network of insects beneath.
Excerpted from Isles of the Emberdark, copyright © 2026 by Brandon Sanderson.
The post Read an Excerpt From <i>Isles of the Emberdark</i> by Brandon Sanderson appeared first on Reactor.
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