“Some did,” the man said, nodding as if to himself. “Jell. You know what happened to him.”
Sazed frowned. “Dead?”
“Taken by the mist. Oh, how he shook. Was a bull-headed one, you know. Old Jell. Oh, how he shook. How he writhed when it took him.”
Sazed closed his eyes. The corpses I found outside the doors.
“Some got away,” the man said.
Sazed snapped his eyes open. “What?”
The crazed villager nodded again. “Some got away, you know. They called to us, after leaving the village. Said it was all right. It didn’t take them. Don’t know why. It killed others, though. Some, it shook to the ground, but they got up later. Some it killed.”
“The mist let some survive, but it killed others?”
The man didn’t answer. He’d sat down, and now he lay back, staring unfocused at the ceiling.
“Please,” Sazed said. “You must answer me. Who did it kill and who did it let pass? What is the connection?”
The man turned toward him. “Time for food,” he said, then rose. He wandered over to a corpse, then pulled on an arm, ripping the rotted meat free. It was easy to see why he hadn’t starved to death like the others.
Sazed pushed aside nausea, striding across the room and grabbing the man’s arm as he raised the near fleshless bone to his lips. The man froze, then looked up at Sazed. “It’s not mine!” he yelped, dropping the bone and running to the back of the room.
Sazed stood for a moment. I must hurry. I must get to Luthadel. There is more wrong with this world than bandits and armies.
The wild man watched with a feral sort of terror as Sazed picked up his pack, then paused and set it down again. He pulled out his largest pewtermind. He fastened the wide metal bracer to his forearm, then turned and walked toward the villager.
“No!” the man screamed, trying to dash to the side. Sazed tapped the pewtermind, pulling out a burst of strength. He felt his muscles enlarge, his robes growing tight. He snatched the villager as the man ran passed, then held him out, far enough away that the man couldn’t do either of them much harm.
Then he carried the man outside of the building.
The man stopped struggling as soon as they emerged into the sunlight. He looked up, as if seeing the sun for the first time. Sazed set him down, then released his pewtermind.
The man knelt, looking up at the sun, then turned to Sazed. “The Lord Ruler…why did he abandon us? Why did he go?”
“The Lord Ruler was a tyrant.”
The man shook his head. “He loved us. He ruled us. Now that he’s gone, the mists can kill us. They hate us.”
Then, surprisingly adroit, the man leaped to his feet and scrambled down the pathway out of the village. Sazed took a step forward, but paused. What would he do? Pull the man all the way to Luthadel? There was water in the well and there were animals to eat. Sazed could only hope that the poor wretch would be able to manage.
Sighing, Sazed returned to the hovel and retrieved his pack. On his way out, he paused, then pulled out one of his steelminds. Steel held one of the very most difficult attributes to store up: physical speed. He had spent months filling this particular steelmind in preparation for the possibility that someday he might need to run somewhere very, very quickly.
He put it on now.
16
Yes, he was the one who fueled the rumors after that. I could never have done what he himself did, convincing and persuading the world that he was indeed the Hero. I don’t know if he himself believed it, but he made others think that he must be the one.
Vin rarely used her quarters. Elend had assigned her spacious rooms—which was, perhaps, part of the problem. She’d spent her childhood sleeping in nooks, lairs, or alleys. Having three separate chambers was a bit daunting.
It didn’t really matter, however. During her time awake she was with either Elend or the mists. Her rooms existed for her to sleep in. Or, in this case, for her to make a mess in.
She sat on the floor in the center of her main chamber. Elend’s steward, concerned that Vin didn’t have any furniture, had insisted on decorating her rooms. This morning, Vin had pushed some of this aside, bunching up rugs and chairs on one side so that she could sit on the cool stones with her book.
It was the first real book she had ever owned, though it was just a collection of pages bound loosely at one side. That suited her just fine; the simple binding had made the book that much easier to pull apart.
She sat amid stacks of paper. It was amazing how many pages there were in the book, once she had separated them. Vin sat next to one pile, looking over its contents. She shook her head, then crawled over to another pile. She leafed through the pages, eventually selecting one.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m going mad, the words read.
Perhaps it is due to the pressure of knowing that I must somehow bear the burden of an entire world. Perhaps it is caused by the death I have seen, the friends I have lost. The friends I have been forced to kill.
Either way, I sometimes see shadows following me. Dark creatures that I don’t understand, nor do I wish to understand. They are, perhaps, some figment of my overtaxed mind?
Vin sat for a moment, rereading the paragraphs. Then she moved the sheet over to another pile. OreSeur lay on the side of the room, head on paws, eyeing her. “Mistress,” he said as she set down the page, “I have been watching you work for the last two hours, and will admit that I am thoroughly confused. What is the point of all this?”
Vin crawled over to another stack of pages. “I thought you didn’t care how I spent my time.”
“I don’t,” OreSeur said. “But I do get bored.”
“And annoyed, apparently.”
“I like to understand what is going on around me.”
Vin shrugged, gesturing toward the stacks of paper. “This is the Lord Ruler’s logbook. Well, actually, it’s not the logbook of the Lord Ruler we knew, but the logbook of the man who should have been the Lord Ruler.”
“Should have been?” OreSeur asked. “You mean he should have conquered the world, but didn’t?”
“No,” Vin said. “I mean he should have been the one who took the power at the Well of Ascension. This man, the man who wrote this book—we don’t actually know his name—was some kind of prophesied hero. Or…everyone thought he was. Anyway, the man who became the Lord Ruler—Rashek—was this hero’s packman. Don’t you remember us talking about this, back when you were imitating Renoux?”
OreSeur nodded. “I recall you briefly mentioning it.”
“Well, this is the book Kelsier and I found when we infiltrated the Lord Ruler’s palace. We thought it was written by the Lord Ruler, but it turns out it was written by the man the Lord Ruler killed, the man whose place he took.”
“Yes, Mistress,” OreSeur said. “Now, why exactly are you tearing it to pieces?”
“I’m not,” Vin said. “I just took off the binding so I could move the pages around. It helps me think.”
“I…see,” OreSeur said. “And, what exactly are you looking for? The Lord Ruler is dead, Mistress. Last I checked, you killed him.”
What am I looking for? Vin thought, picking up another page. Ghosts in the mist.
She read the words on this page slowly.
It isn’t a shadow.
This dark thing that follows me, the thing that only I can see—it isn’t really a shadow. It is blackish and translucent, but it doesn’t have a shadowlike solid outline. It’s insubstantial—wispy and formless. Like it’s made out of black fog.
Or mist, perhaps.
Vin lowered the page. It watched him, too, she thought. She remembered reading the words over a year before, thinking that the Hero must have started to go mad. With all the pressures on him, who would have been surprised?
Now, however, she thought she understood the nameless logbook author better. She knew he was not the Lord Ruler, and could see him for what he might have been. Uncertain of his place in the wor
ld, but forced into important events. Determined to do the best he could. Idealistic, in a way.
And the mist spirit had chased him. What did it mean? What did seeing it imply for her?
She crawled over to another pile of pages. She’d spent the morning scanning through the logbook for clues about the mist creature. However, she was having trouble digging out much beyond these two, familiar passages.
She made piles of pages that mentioned anything strange or supernatural. She made a small pile with pages that referenced the mist spirit. She also had a special pile for references to the Deepness. This last one, ironically, was both the largest and least informative of the group. The logbook author had a habit of mentioning the Deepness, but not saying much about it.
The Deepness was dangerous, that much was clear. It had ravaged the land, slaying thousands. The monster had sown chaos wherever it stepped, bringing destruction and fear, but the armies of mankind had been unable to defeat it. Only the Terris prophecies and the Hero of Ages had offered any hope.
If only he had been more specific! Vin thought with frustration, riffling papers. However, the tone of the logbook really was more melancholy than it was informative. It was something that the Hero had written for himself, to stay sane, to let him put his fears and hopes down on paper. Elend said he wrote for similar reasons, sometimes. To Vin, it seemed a silly method of dealing with problems.
With a sigh, she turned to the last stack of papers—the one with pages she had yet to study. She lay down on the stone floor and began to read, searching for useful information.
It took time. Not only was she a slow reader, but her mind kept wandering. She’d read the logbook before—and, oddly, hints and phrases from it reminded her of where she’d been at the time. Two years and a world away in Fellise, still recovering from her near death at the hands of a Steel Inquisitor, she’d been forced to spend her days pretending to be Valette Renoux, a young, inexperienced country noblewoman.
Back then, she still hadn’t believed in Kelsier’s plan to overthrow the Final Empire. She’d stayed with the crew because she valued the strange things they offered her—friendship, trust, and lessons in Allomancy—not because she accepted their goals. She would never have guessed where that would lead her. To balls and parties, to actually growing—just a bit—to become the noblewoman she had pretended to be.
But that had been a farce, a few months of make-believe. She forced her thoughts away from the frilly clothing and the dances. She needed to focus on practical matters.
And…is this practical? she thought idly, setting a page in one of the stacks. Studying things I barely comprehend, fearing a threat nobody else even cares to notice?
She sighed, folding her arms under her chin as she lay on her stomach. What was she really worried about? That the Deepness would return? All she had were a few phantom visions in the mist—things that could, as Elend implied, have easily been fabricated by her overworked mind. More important was another question. Assuming that the Deepness was real, what did she expect to do about it? She was no hero, general, or leader.
Oh, Kelsier, she thought, picking up another page. We could use you now. Kelsier had been a man beyond convention…a man who had somehow been able to defy reality. He’d thought that by giving his life to overthrow the Lord Ruler, he would secure freedom for the skaa. But, what if his sacrifice had opened the way for a greater danger, something so destructive that the Lord Ruler’s oppression was a preferable alternative?
She finally finished the page, then placed it in the stack of those that contained no useful information. Then she paused. She couldn’t even remember what she’d just read. She sighed, picking the page back up, looking at it again. How did Elend do it? He could study the same books over and over again. But, for Vin, it was hard to—
She paused. I must assume that I am not mad, the words said. I cannot, with any rational sense of confidence, continue my quest if I do not believe this. The thing following me must, therefore, be real.
She sat up. She only vaguely remembered this section of the logbook. The book was organized like a diary, with sequential—but dateless—entries. It had a tendency to ramble, and the Hero had been fond of droning on about his insecurities. This section had been particularly dry.
But there, in the middle of his complaining, was a tidbit of information.
I believe that it would kill me, if it could, the text continued.
There is an evil feel to the thing of shadow and fog, and my skin recoils at its touch. Yet, it seems limited in what it can do, especially to me.
It can affect this world, however. The knife it placed in Fedik’s chest proves that much. I’m still not certain which was more traumatic for him—the wound itself, or seeing the thing that did it to him.
Rashek whispers that I stabbed Fedik myself, for only Fedik and I can give witness to that night’s events. However, I must make a decision. I must determine that I am not mad. The alternative is to admit that it was I who held that knife.
Somehow, knowing Rashek’s opinion on the matter makes it much easier for me to believe the opposite.
The next page continued on about Rashek, and the next several entries contained no mention of the mist spirit. However, Vin found even these few paragraphs exciting.
He made a decision, she thought. I have to make the same one. She’d never worried that she was mad, but she had sensed some logic in Elend’s words. Now she rejected them. The mist spirit was not some delusion brought on by a mixture of stress and memories of the logbook. It was real.
That didn’t mean the Deepness was returning, nor did it mean that Luthadel was in any sort of supernatural danger. Both, however, were possibilities.
She set this page with the two others that contained concrete information about the mist spirit, then turned back to her studies, determined to pay closer attention to her reading.
The armies were digging in.
Elend watched from atop the wall as his plan, vague though it was, began to take form. Straff was making a defensive perimeter to the north, holding the canal route back a relatively short distance to Urteau, his home city and capital. Cett was digging in to the west of the city, holding the Luth-Davn Canal, which ran back to his cannery in Haverfrex.
A cannery. That was something Elend wished he had in the city. The technology was newer—perhaps fifty years old—but he’d read of it. The scholars had considered its main use that of providing easily carried supplies for soldiers fighting at the fringes of the empire. They hadn’t considered stockpiles for sieges—particularly in Luthadel. But, then, who would have?
Even as Elend watched, patrols began to move out from the separate armies. Some moved to watch the boundaries between the two forces, but others moved to secure other canal routes, bridges across the River Channerel, and roads leading away from Luthadel. In a remarkably short time, the city felt completely surrounded. Cut off from the world, and the rest of Elend’s small kingdom. No more moving in or out. The armies were counting on disease, starvation, and other weakening factors to bring Elend to his knees.
The siege of Luthadel had begun.
That’s a good thing, he told himself. For this plan to work, they have to think me desperate. They have to be so sure that I’m willing to side with them, that they don’t consider that I might be working with their enemies, too.
As Elend watched, he noticed someone climbing up the steps to the wall. Clubs. The general hobbled over to Elend, who had been standing alone. “Congratulations,” Clubs said. “Looks like you now have a full-blown siege on your hands.”
“Good.”
“It’ll give us a little breathing room, I guess,” Clubs said. Then he eyed Elend with one of his gnarled looks. “You’d better be up to this, kid.”
“I know,” Elend whispered.
“You’ve made yourself the focal point,” Clubs said. “The Assembly can’t break this siege until you meet officially with Straff, and the kings aren’t likely to meet with anyone on
the crew other than yourself. This is all about you. Useful place for a king to be, I suppose. If he’s a good one.”
Clubs fell silent. Elend stood, looking out over the separate armies. The words spoken to him by Tindwyl the Terriswoman still bothered him. You are a fool, Elend Venture….
So far, neither of the kings had responded to Elend’s requests for a meeting—though the crew was sure that they soon would. His enemies would wait, to make Elend sweat a bit. The Assembly had just called another meeting, probably to try and bully him into releasing them from their earlier proposal. Elend had found a convenient reason to skip the meeting.
He looked at Clubs. “And am I a good king, Clubs? In your opinion.”
The general glanced at him, and Elend saw a harsh wisdom in his eyes. “I’ve known worse leaders,” he said. “But I’ve also known a hell of a lot better.”
Elend nodded slowly. “I want to be good at this, Clubs. Nobody else is going to look after the skaa like they deserve. Cett, Straff. They’d just make slaves of the people again. I…I want to be more than my ideas, though. I want to—need to—be a man that others can look to.”
Clubs shrugged. “My experience has been that the man is usually made by the situation. Kelsier was a selfish dandy until the Pits nearly broke him.” He glanced at Elend. “Will this siege be your Pits of Hathsin, Elend Venture?”
“I don’t know,” he said honestly.
“Then we’ll have to wait and see, I guess. For now, someone wants to speak with you.” He turned, nodding down toward the street some forty feet below, where a tall, feminine figure stood in colorful Terris robes.
“She told me to send you down,” Clubs said. He paused, then glanced at Elend. “It isn’t often you meet someone who feels like they can order me around. And a Terriswoman at that. I thought those Terris were all docile and kindly.”
Elend smiled. “I guess Sazed spoiled us.”
Clubs snorted. “So much for a thousand years of breeding, eh?”
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