114. The Cost

This chapter is a flashback to five and a half years before the main events, depicting Dalinar's desperate journey to the Valley of the Nightwatcher to seek relief from his grief and alcoholism following his brother Gavilar's death. Dalinar encounters both the Nightwatcher and her mysterious Mother, a being of far greater power, and receives a boon at a terrible cost.

Dalinar awakens in a stormwagon in Hexi after a disturbing vision, having decided to visit the Nightwatcher despite the warnings of his men. He pays a caravan to take him most of the way, then travels with his loyal soldier Felt toward the Valley. The landscape of Hexi is barren and twisted by storms, but as they approach the mountains, they discover a lush, overgrown valley teeming with plant life. That evening, Dalinar enters the valley alone and becomes lost in the darkness, hearing the screams of those he has failed—particularly his wife and son. Desperate and panicked, he summons Oathbringer and slashes through the underbrush. In a clearing, he encounters the Nightwatcher, a vaporous feminine entity who offers him various boons. When Dalinar asks only for forgiveness, a mysterious brown-skinned woman emerges from the forest—the Nightwatcher's Mother—and takes control of the situation. She reveals she has intervened personally because Dalinar is receiving attention from greater powers. The Mother offers Dalinar a boon: she will prune away parts of his mind to allow him to grow, though the cost will be high. When Dalinar learns the cost is all his memories of his wife, he accepts. Vines and branches engulf him, and when he emerges the next morning, he has no memory of his wife's face, name, or their life together, though he retains memories of the years since her death. Freed from the acute grief that drove him to drink, Dalinar resolves to break his habit through discipline and returns his focus to military matters and studying The Way of Kings.