Edgedancer is a 2016 Stormlight Archive novella in which Lift follows the Herald Nale to the Tashikk city of Yeddaw, finds the hidden Radiant he means to execute, and swears her Third Ideal on a rooftop in the Everstorm. Szeth and Nightblood shadow Nale, and the story explains why the Herald stops killing Surgebinders. Spoilers for Edgedancer and the first three main books follow.
What is Edgedancer and where does it fit in the Stormlight Archive?
Edgedancer is book 2.5 of the Stormlight Archive, a novella starring the young Reshi thief Lift that Brandon Sanderson first published in the Arcanum Unbounded collection on November 22, 2016. Coppermind records that most of the story takes place between Words of Radiance and Oathbringer, at the start of the year 1174, when the Everstorm first sweeps across Roshar. The novella runs 40,660 words over twenty chapters, nineteen told by Lift and one by the Yeddaw guard captain Hauka. Tor also sells Edgedancer as a 272 page standalone hardback that reprints Lift’s ninth interlude from Words of Radiance as a prologue, so readers get her first meeting with Nale and her Second Ideal before the new material starts. Coppermind notes the first draft was written in May 2016, and that Lift is one of Sanderson’s favorite characters.
Do you need to read Edgedancer before Oathbringer?
Edgedancer is not strictly required before Oathbringer, but our recommendation is to read it in order, because the main series quietly assumes you have. The novella shows the moment Nale, the Herald of Justice, realizes his years of killing Surgebinders failed to stop the Desolation, which is why he resurfaces in Oathbringer leading the Skybreakers in a new direction. It also contains Lift’s Third Ideal, which the main books treat as already sworn, and it introduces Arshqqam, the Truthwatcher nicknamed the Stump, who later joins Adolin and Shallan on the expedition to Lasting Integrity in Rhythm of War. Skipping Edgedancer costs a reader context rather than plot. At roughly a quarter the length of a main volume, it is also the fastest way back into Roshar between big books.
What happens in Edgedancer?
Lift opens Edgedancer by running away from the Bronze Palace in Azimir, where her friend Gawx now rules as the Prime Aqasix and court lessons are smothering her. With her cultivationspren Wyndle complaining at every step, Lift travels south to Yeddaw, a city in Tashikk whose streets were cut into the ground with Shardblades, and she has two goals. The first is to eat all ten varieties of pancake the city makes during the Weeping. The second is to find the Radiant that Nale, whom she calls Darkness, is hunting there. Coppermind describes Lift deliberately showing her powers to the gate guards so that Darkness will come looking. She dumps a smuggler’s grain cart into the hungry immigrant district, slides down after it, and ends up begging meals at Tashi’s Light Orphanage, run by a cranky old woman the children call the Stump.
Lift’s plan to use herself as bait works, and the middle of Edgedancer becomes a tense game of following the man who wants her dead. After Nale questions the guard captain Hauka, Lift tails him through Yeddaw and watches him execute a girl named Tiqqa for stealing fruit, justifying the killing with an exact reading of the law. Lift tries to heal the girl as she once healed Gawx, but Tiqqa is already fully dead. In Nale’s hideout Lift overhears him send two Skybreaker initiates after the Radiant who has been in the city for a while, while he deals with the new arrival himself. Lift then talks her way into the Grand Indicium, the city’s vast archive, with a spanreed message from Gawx vouching for her, and sets scribes searching for anything strange in Yeddaw before a storm emergency scatters them.
Who is Darkness, and why is Nale hunting Radiants?
Darkness is Nale, also called Nalan or Nin, the Herald of Justice and the founder of the Skybreakers, and in Edgedancer he is still convinced that new Surgebinders will bring back the Desolations. Coppermind explains that Nale tracked Lift all the way to Azimir, filled out the paperwork to have her executed, and only let her go because the newly crowned Gawx pardoned her. Before that he had killed the Truthwatcher Ym for a forty year old crime. Nale always works through the law, carrying local lawkeeper credentials and correct forms wherever he goes, which makes him frightening in a different way from Odium’s forces. He is not cruel, simply certain. Our guide to all ten Heralds covers how five thousand years of Desolations broke his mind, and the Skybreakers explainer covers the order he leads.
What role do Szeth and Nightblood play in Edgedancer?
Szeth travels with Nale through Edgedancer as his newest recruit, carrying the sentient sword Nightblood, and he quietly pushes the story toward its ending. Coppermind records that Nale revived Szeth after the Battle of Narak and gave him Nightblood before taking him west to Yeddaw. In Nale’s hideout, Szeth openly disagrees with the man he calls Nin, insisting the Voidbringers have already returned because he saw them on the Shattered Plains. When Lift spies on the initiates in the Grand Indicium, Szeth spots her and draws Nightblood a few inches, and the sword’s presence makes her nauseated, but he simply turns and leaves. Later he stays behind, admits that Nale is wrong and probably mad, and describes where the initiates are going. Our Szeth quotes roundup follows where that doubt leads him.
Who is the Stump, and why was she the hidden Radiant?
The Stump is Arshqqam, the elderly woman who runs Tashi’s Light Orphanage in Yeddaw, and she is the Radiant Nale came to kill. According to Coppermind, Arshqqam had been unconsciously using the Stormlight in her spheres to heal sick children in her care, then accusing them of having faked their illness when they recovered. The guard captain Hauka even reports her for money laundering, because she trades donated infused spheres for dun ones. Lift first suspects the strange old philosopher outside the orphanage, until she realizes the boy Mik, abandoned at the door barely able to move, was healed by the Stump herself. Arshqqam is a Truthwatcher bonded to the mistspren Dreaming-though-Awake, and Gawx later dismisses the charges against her. Our Truthwatchers guide explains why her order heals so naturally.
Who is the old man outside the orphanage?
The old man outside the orphanage is Arclomedarian, or Arclo, a Dysian Aimian, one of the Sleepless, and Edgedancer is the first time Lift sees what he really is. Coppermind describes Arclo as a body made of many cremling-like hordelings that he has bred over many years to imitate an elderly man with a grey mustache, wrapped tightly in cloth to hide the seams. Lift finds him in an alley beside the bodies of the two Skybreaker initiates, who had mistaken him for their target and died for it. Arclo tells her that ancient Radiants named him friend and ally before the Last Desolation, and he points her back toward the Stump. He is thousands of years old, and the Sleepless later complain that he meddles with the new Radiants, a thread our Dawnshard novella guide picks up.
How does Edgedancer end?
Edgedancer ends on the orphanage roof in the first Everstorm, with Lift defeating Nale without a single blow. Coppermind’s chapter summary describes Lift leading Nale on a chase through the building to drain his Stormlight until he pins her with a knife through her clothing. The Stump strikes him with a plank of wood, and Nale stabs her with an ordinary knife so that Lift will waste her Light healing her. Lift runs to the roof instead. When Nale swings his Shardblade, Wyndle becomes a rod in her hands and Lift speaks aloud the words she had already sworn in her heart. She then points at the evicted parshmen on the plain, their eyes glowing red inside the Everstorm, and makes Nale see that the Desolation has come despite every Radiant he killed. The Herald breaks down crying, Lift hugs him, and he flies away.
“I will listen to those who have been ignored.”
Lift’s Third Ideal, Edgedancer
Lift’s victory is followed by a quiet final chapter that ties every thread of Edgedancer back to listening. Lift heals the Stump, who rewards her with a heap of pancakes while pretending they were never meant for her. Mik’s mother comes back for her son even though she could not have known he was healed, and Arshqqam slowly accepts that she was the one healing the children all along, with Lift helping her identify her spren. A scribe arrives with a spanreed so Lift can report to Gawx. Lift then slips out on the excuse of visiting the bathroom, spends all her remaining Stormlight healing refugees waiting at the city entrance, and starts walking back to Azir because she feels she will be needed there. That sense of duty is the clearest sign of how much the runaway thief has changed in twenty chapters.
What are Lift’s Edgedancer Ideals in the novella?
Lift’s Edgedancer Ideals frame the whole novella, because the Second appears in its prologue and the Third is its climax. Coppermind quotes the Second Ideal of the Edgedancers as “I will remember those who have been forgotten,” which Lift swears in Azimir when she returns to heal Gawx after one of Nale’s men cuts his throat. The Third Ideal she speaks in Yeddaw is about listening to people the world ignores, and the novella shows her doing exactly that before she says it: the drooling boy left at the orphanage door, the Stump nobody likes, the hungry immigrants below the city wall, and finally Nale himself, a Herald whom everyone has stopped trying to understand. Wyndle had pushed her to say more Words throughout the story. Our Edgedancers explainer covers the full order, its Surges and the Ideals that come after.
What changes in the Stormlight Archive after Edgedancer?
Nale changes most after Edgedancer, and his new direction drives a major subplot of Oathbringer. Coppermind records that after the Everstorm he had a minor breakdown and vanished for weeks, then dropped Szeth at the Skybreaker training grounds and left to seek guidance from Ishar. He returned calm and confident, took the Skybreakers to Marat, told them the truth about Aharietiam, and at the Battle of Thaylen Field told Szeth he meant to follow the singers, as the original owners of Roshar. Szeth chose Dalinar instead. Lift returns to Azir, and the novella’s running joke that she still insists she is ten, after asking the Nightwatcher three years earlier to stop her growing older, is a clue the series keeps pulling on. Our Oathbringer ending explained picks up the story at Thaylen Field.
Frequently asked questions
Where does Edgedancer fit in the Stormlight Archive reading order?
Edgedancer is book 2.5 of the Stormlight Archive. Coppermind places most of the novella between Words of Radiance and Oathbringer, in the first days of the Everstorm, so the usual reading order is The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Edgedancer, then Oathbringer. The standalone edition also reprints Lift’s interlude from Words of Radiance as its prologue.
Do I need to read Edgedancer before Oathbringer?
Edgedancer is not required to follow Oathbringer, but it explains three things the main books take for granted: why Nale stops hunting Surgebinders, how Lift swore her Third Ideal, and who the Truthwatcher called the Stump is when she joins the expedition to Lasting Integrity in Rhythm of War. Most fans recommend reading it in order.
Who is the Stump in Edgedancer?
The Stump is Arshqqam, an elderly woman who runs Tashi’s Light Orphanage in the city of Yeddaw. According to Coppermind, she is a Truthwatcher bonded to the mistspren Dreaming-though-Awake, and she had been healing sick children with Stormlight without realizing it. Nale came to Yeddaw to kill her, and Lift saved her.
How long is the Edgedancer novella?
Coppermind lists Edgedancer at 40,660 words across twenty chapters, nineteen from Lift’s point of view and one from the guard captain Hauka. The Tor standalone hardback runs 272 pages because it also includes Lift’s Words of Radiance interlude. The novella first appeared in the Arcanum Unbounded collection on November 22, 2016.
The Way of Kings is the perfect entry point. Available in print, Kindle, and audiobook.
The Stormlight Archive audiobooks - narrated by Michael Kramer & Kate Reading - are 40–57 hours each. The best use of a commute in fantasy history.
