Iyatil and the Voidbringers

[Rushu42]

I'm currently in the process of rereading Stormlight in preparation for RoW, and a moment from WoR caught my eye. Shallan and Iyatil are sneaking into Dalinar's camp to catch a glimpse of the "madman" imprisoned there. To get inside, Shallan claims that Iyatil is possessed by a Voidbringer. Iyatil then does this:

Quote

Iyatil turned to Shallan, and with an almost inaudible sigh, started rocking back and forth in place. "Should we kill them?" she muttered. "No. No, we shouldn't. But someone will see! No, do not say these things. No. I will not listen to you." She started humming.

Now, maybe this is just a standard pretending to be possessed performance. Maybe it's just based off of vaguely accurate legends of what the Voidbringers could do. But the combination of hearing voices that told you to be aggressive, and the humming made me wonder whether Iyatil knew a little bit more than she was letting on. It just seemed a little bit too similar to what happened to Eshonai for me to just move past it. Thoughts?

[ftl]

To me, that just seemed like Iyatil pretending to be crazy for the watching Ardent. The "turning to Shallan with an inaudible sigh" seems to mean "Really, Shallan? You're going to make me do this? Fine, I'll play along."

[Rushu42]

Just now, ftl said:

To me, that just seemed like Iyatil pretending to be crazy for the watching Ardent. The "turning to Shallan with an inaudible sigh" seems to mean "Really, Shallan? You're going to make me do this? Fine, I'll play along."

I mean, I'm sure that she was pretending. I wasn't proposing that she was actually possessed by the Voidbringers - just that she had a suspiciously good idea of what being possessed by a Voidbringer might be like.

[Weltall]

You don't really need to know anything about how the Fused work to fake being crazy, especially if it's already a common belief that the mentally ill are possessed. Shallan is the one who suggests that idea and if she's heard that belief discussed by the ill-informed, it's a pretty good bet that Iyatil has heard it as well.

That said, the Ghostbloods are a worldhopping group and Iyatil is from Silverlight originally so it's entirely possible that she has better information on Roshar's history and the nature of the Fused than most, or at least that she has access to people who she could have learned things from. Though hitting on humming as an addition to her feigning of illness being a coincidence can't be ruled out. Shallan certainly thinks that the comments about killing the ardents if they try to take her mask off were completely sincere so the additional muttering about the voices in her head telling her to kill might have been added to reinforce that part of it, more than an indication that Iyatil has some kind of inside knowledge.

Edited November 11, 2020 by Weltall