Why doesn't Shallan heal with Stormlight in WoR?

[Soulcaster05]

I hope this is where we're supposed to post questions!!

Onto the question:-

In Words of Radiance, Shallan has stormlight in spheres packed in Jasnah's trunk seemingly all through her journey to the Shattered Plains. She uses it too, but her injured feet don't heal. Why is that?

Spoiler

His two guards watched her as they loaded equipment onto the lead wagon. She did not miss the cudgels they carried prominently at their waists. She’d had a sphere in her hand as she walked last night, hadn’t she?

Memories of that made her feet flare up again. She had to grit her teeth against the agony as painspren, like orange hands made of sinew, clawed out of the ground nearby.

 

[The Sibling she/her]

I think that she just didn't really know what she was doing, so she didn't use it.

[alder24]

42 minutes ago, Soulcaster05 said:

I hope this is where we're supposed to post questions!!

Onto the question:-

In Words of Radiance, Shallan has stormlight in spheres packed in Jasnah's trunk seemingly all through her journey to the Shattered Plains. She uses it too, but her injured feet don't heal. Why is that?

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His two guards watched her as they loaded equipment onto the lead wagon. She did not miss the cudgels they carried prominently at their waists. She’d had a sphere in her hand as she walked last night, hadn’t she?

Memories of that made her feet flare up again. She had to grit her teeth against the agony as painspren, like orange hands made of sinew, clawed out of the ground nearby.

 

This particular section you quoted was when she found Tvlakv, slept at his firecamp and just woke up - the trunk was still on the beach where she was left by santhid. But later she indeed constantly feels pain from her injured feet.

Inexperience. At that point she still knew next to nothing about her Radiant powers and she could simply not know that Stormlight heals. Also healing takes time, so when she was using light for illusions, she would heal only a bit before running out of Stormlight. At first spheres were charged when Shallan opened the trunk but they were going dim a few days later (ch 17).

But on occasion, she did accidentally breathe in Stormlight, create a faint illusion on herself, and with that also heal her feet a tiny bit - WoR ch 15:

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She leaned closer to Tvlakv into the firelight. “Do not toy with me, slaver.”
“I wouldn’t dare—”
“You have no idea the storm you have wandered into,” Shallan hissed, holding his eyes. “You have no idea what stakes have been wagered upon my arrival. Take your petty schemes and stuff them in a crevice. Do as I say, and I will see your debts canceled. You will be a free man again.”
“What? How . . . how did you—”
Shallan stood up, cutting him off. She felt somehow stronger than she had before. More determined. Her insecurities fluttered in the pit of her stomach, but she paid them no heed.
Tvlakv didn’t know she was timid. He didn’t know she had been raised in rural isolation. To him, she was a woman of the court, accomplished at argument and accustomed to being obeyed.
Standing before him, feeling radiant in the glow of the flames—towering above him and his grubby machinations—she saw. Expectation wasn’t just about what people expected of you.
It was about what you expected of yourself.
Tvlakv leaned away from her like a man before a raging bonfire. He shrank back, eyes wide, raising an arm. Shallan realized that she was glowing faintly with the light of spheres. Her dress no longer bore the tears and smudges it had before. It was majestic.
Instinctively, she let the glow from her skin fade, hoping Tvlakv would think it a trick of the firelight. She spun and left him shaking beside the fire as she walked back to the wagon. Darkness was fully upon them, the first moon having yet to rise. As she walked, her feet didn’t hurt nearly as much as they had. Was the knobweed sap doing that much good?

A day later she realized that she heals faster than she should have, and asked Pattern about it, ch 17:

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Settling back, she unwrapped her feet to apply the new knobweed. They were scabbed over and much improved from their condition just a day before.“Pattern?”
He vibrated from somewhere nearby. She’d asked him to remain in the back so as to not alarm Tvlakv and the guards.
“My feet are healing,” she said. “Did you do this?”
“Mmmm . . . I know almost nothing of why people break. I know less of why they . . . unbreak.”
[...]
“So would many of us,” Shallan said, bent over. She grimaced as the wagon hit a particularly large rock. “I made myself glow last night, by the fire with Tvlakv.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know why?”
“Lies.”
“My dress changed,” Shallan said. “I swear the scuffs and rips were gone last night. They’ve returned now, though.”
“Mmm. Yes.”
[...]
She finished with her hair and moved to rewrap her feet. Pattern had moved to the other side of the rattling wagon chamber, settling onto the wall, only faintly visible in the dim light. She had a handful of infused spheres left. Not much Stormlight, considering how quickly that other had left her. Should she use what she had to further heal her feet? Could she even do that intentionally, or would the ability elude her, as Lightweaving had?
She tucked the spheres into her safepouch. She would save them, just in case. For now, these spheres and their Light might be the only weapon available to her.
Bandages redone, she stood up in the rattling wagon and found that her foot pain was nearly gone. She could walk almost normally, though she still wouldn’t want to go far without shoes. Pleased, she knocked on the wood nearest to Bluth. “Stop the wagon!”

But she still had no shoes, and she was constantly walking and straining her feet, wounding them again and again. Any bits of healing done by an accident would be undone after a day of walking on rocks. She healed again when she was convincing Vathah's group to help her, but that, and Lightweaving of her, used up all of her remaining light, ch 20:

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Shallan stood alone in the night, exhaling softly. No Light came out; she’d used it all. Her feet were no longer so much as sore, but she felt exhausted, drained like a punctured wineskin.

ch 21:

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Shallan didn’t feel majestic. She felt tired, sore, and grungy. Her bare feet —hidden by the bottom of her skirts—had started to ache again, and her ability to Lightweave was expended. Her dress looked almost as bad as a pauper’s, and her hair—though braided—was an absolute mess.

After that she got a pair of slippers from Macob. There was also a storm in the meantime (Kaladin's chapter 22, if they are in chronological order) and a few chapters later, 28, she got boots from Kaladin - between that there was no mention of her feet. Ch 28:

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The group of four men waited on the top of the hill. As Shallan drew closer, she could see that they were wearing crisp blue uniforms that looked quite genuine. At the bottom of the ravine between hills, Shallan stubbed her toe on a rockbud. She grimaced—Macob had given her lighteyed shoes to match her dress. They were luxurious, and probably worth a fortune, but they were little more than slippers.

 

So the answer is she didn't know at first, then she realized something is going on after she Lightweave accidentally in front of Tvlakv, and healed her feet a bit, but her spheres were already going dim, and she decided to use remaining light to Lightweave and persuade Vathah's bandits instead of healing herself. Then she might have charged spheres during Highstorm, used light to heal her feet fully (as there was no mention of pain and her injured feet after rescuing Macob's caravan, in ch 24 and 28) and she also got a pair of slippers, and Kaladin's boots, which prevented her from wounding her feet again.

[Soulcaster05]

Okay thanks both of you! Explains it!!