Well of Ascension

by Brandon Sanderson

  OreSeur immediately let out a howl so bestial and unexpected that Vin jumped to her feet in shock, flaring pewter.

  OreSeur fell to the bed, shaking.

  "OreSeur!" she said, dropping to her knees, grabbing his head. "I'm sorry!"

  "Said too much ..." he muttered, still shaking. "I knew I'd said too much."

  "I didn't mean to hurt you," Vin said.

  The shaking subsided, and OreSeur fell still for a moment, breathing quiedy. Finally, he pulled his head out of her arms. "What you meant is immaterial. Mistress," he said flatly. "The mistake was mine. Please, never do that again."

  "I promise," she said. "I'm sorry."

  He shook his head, crawling off the bed. "You shouldn't even have been able to do it. There are strange things about you. Mistress-you are like the Allomancers of old, before the passage of generations dulled their powers."

  "I'm sorry," Vin said again, feeling helpless. He saved my life, nearly broke his Contract, and I do this to him. . . .

  OreSeur shrugged. "It is done. I need to rest. I suggest that you do the same."

  After that. I began to see other problems.

  41

  '"I WRITE THIS RECORD NOW,'" Sazed read out loud, "'pounding it into a metal slab, because I am afraid. Afraid for myself, yes-I admit to being human. If Alendi does return from the Well of Ascension, I am certain that my death will be one of his first objectives. He is not an evil man, but he is a ruthless one.-That is, I think, a product of what he has been through.'"

  "That fits what we know of Alendi from the logbook," Tindwyl said. "Assuming that Alendi is that book's author."

  Sazed glanced at his pile of notes, running over the basics in his mind. Kwaan had been an ancient Terris scholar. He had discovered Alendi, a man he began to think- through his studies-might be the Hero of Ages, a figure from Terris prophecy. Alendi had listened to him, and had become a political leader. He had conquered much of the world, then traveled north to the Well of Ascension. By then, however, Kwaan had apparently changed his mind about Alendi-and had tried to stop him from getting to the Well.

  It fit together. Even though the logbook author never mentioned his own name, it was obvious that he was Alendi. "It is a very safe assumption, I think," Sazed said. "The logbook even speaks of Kwaan, and the falling-out they had."

  They sat beside each other in Sazed's rooms. He had requested, and received, a larger desk to hold their multitudinous notes and scribbled theories. Beside the door sat the remnants of their afternoon meal, a soup they had hurriedly gulped down. Sazed itched to take the dishes down to the kitchens, but he hadn't been able to pull himself away yet.

  "Continue," Tindwyl requested, sitting back in her chair, looking more relaxed than Sazed had ever seen her. The rings running down the sides of her ears alternated in color-a gold or copper followed by a tin or iron. It was such a simple thing, but there was a beauty to it.

  "Sazed?"

  Sazed started. "I apologize." he said, then turned back to his reading, "i am also afraid, however, that all I have known-that my story-will be forgotten. I am afraid for the world that may come. Afraid because my plans failed. Afraid of a doom brought by the Deepness.'"

  "Wait," Tindwyl said. "Why did he fear that?"

  "Why would he not?" Sazed asked. "The Deepness- which we assume is the mist-was killing his people. Without sunlight, their crops would not grow, and their animals could not graze."

  "But, if Kwaan feared the Deepness, then he should not have opposed Alendi," Tindwyl said. "He was climbing to the Well of Ascension to defeat the Deepness."

  "Yes," Sazed said. "But by then, Kwaan was convinced that Alendi wasn't the Hero of Ages."

  "But why would that matter?" Tindwyl said. "It didn't take a specific person to stop the mists-Rashek's success proves that. Here, skip to the end. Read that passage about Rashek."

  " T have a young nephew, one .Rashek,'" Sazed read. " 'He hates all of Khlennium with the passion of envious youth. He hates Alendi even more acutely-though the two have never met-for Rashek feels betrayed that one of our oppressors should have been chosen as the Hero of Ages.

  " 'Alendi will need guides through the Terris mountains. I have charged Rashek with making certain that he and his trusted friends are chosen as those guides. Rashek is to try and lead Alendi in the wrong direction, to discourage him or otherwise foil his quest. Alendi won't know that he has been deceived.

  " 'If Rashek fails to lead Alendi astray, then I have instructed the lad to kill my former friend. It is a distant hope. Alendi has survived assassins, wars, and catastrophes. And yet, I hope that in the frozen mountains of Terris, he may finally be exposed. I hope for a miracle.

  " 'Alendi must not reach the Well of Ascension. He must not take the power for himself.'"

  Tindwyl sat back, frowning.

  "What?"

  "Something is wrong there, I think," she said. "But I cannot tell you precisely what."

  Sazed scanned the text again. "Let us break it down to simple statements, then. Rashek-the man who became the Lord Ruler-was Kwaan's nephew."

  "Yes," Tindwyl said.

  "Kwaan sent Rashek to mislead, or even kill, his once-friend Alendi the Conqueror-a man climbing the mountains of Terris to seek the Well of Ascension."

  Tindwyl nodded.

  "Kwaan did this because he feared what would happen if Alendi took the Well's power for himself." Tindwyl raised a finger. "Why did he fear that?"

  "It seems a rational fear, I think," Sazed said.

  'Too rational," Tindwyl replied. "Or, rather, perfectly rational. But, tell me, Sazed. When you read Alendi's logbook, did you get the impression that he was the type who would take that power for himself?"

  Sazed shook his head. "Actually, the opposite. That is part of what made the logbook so confusing-we couldn't figure out why the man represented within would have done as we assumed he must have. I think that is part of what eventually led Vin to guess that the Lord Ruler wasn't Alendi at all, but Rashek, his packman."

  "And Kwaan says that he knew Alendi well," Tindwyl said. "In fact, in this very rubbing, he compliments the man on several occasions. Calls him a good person, I believe."

  "Yes," Sazed said, finding the passage. " 'He is a good man-despite it all, he is a good man. A sacrificing man. In truth, all of his actions-all of the deaths, destructions, and pains that he has caused-have hurt him deeply.'"

  "So, Kwaan knew Alendi well," Tindwyl said. "And thought highly of him. He also, presumably, knew his nephew Rashek well. Do you see my problem?"

  Sazed nodded slowly. "Why send a man of wild temperament, one whose motivations are based on envy and hatred, to kill a man you thought to be good and of worthy temperament? It does seem an odd choice."

  "Exactly," Tindwyl said, resting her arms on the table.

  "But," Sazed said, "Kwaan says right here that he 'doubts that if Alendi reaches the Well of Ascension, he will take the power and then-in the name of the greater good-give it up.'"

  Tindwyl shook her head. "It doesn't make sense, Sazed. Kwaan wrote several times about how he feared the Deepness, but then he tried to foil the hope of stopping it by sending a hateful youth to kill a respected, and presumably wise, leader. Kwaan practically set up Rashek to take the power-if letting Alendi take the power was such a concern, wouldn't he have feared that Rashek might do the same?"

  "Perhaps we simply see things with the clarity of those regarding events that have already occurred," Sazed said.

  Tindwyl shook her head. "We're missing something, Sazed. Kwaan is a very rational, even deliberate, man- one can tell that from his narrative. He was the one who discovered Alendi, and was the first to tout him as the Hero of Ages. Why would he turn against him as he did?"

  Sazed nodded, flipping through his translation of the rubbing. Kwaan had gained much notoriety by discovering the Hero. He found the place he was looking for.

  There was a place for me in the lore of the Anticipation, the text read. I thought mysel
f the Announcer, the prophet foretold to discover the Hero of Ages. Renouncing Alendi then would have been to renounce my new position, my acceptance, by the others.

  "Something dramatic must have happened," Tindwyl said. "Something that would make him turn against his friend, the source of his own fame. Something that pricked his conscience so sharply that he was willing to risk opposing the most powerful monarch in the land. Something so frightening that he took a ridiculous chance by sending this Rashek on an assassination mission."

  Sazed leafed through his notes. "He fears both the Deepness and what would happen if Alendi took the power. Yet, he cannot seem to decide which one is the greater threat, and neither seems more present in the narrative than the other. Yes, I can see the problem here. Do you think, perhaps, Kwaan was trying to imply something by the inconsistency in his own arguments?"

  "Perhaps," Tindwyl said. 'The information is just so slim. I cannot judge a man without knowing the context of his life!"

  Sazed looked up, eyeing her. "Perhaps we have been studying too hard," he said. "Shall we take a break?"

  Tindwyl shook her head. "We don't have the time, Sazed."

  He met her'eyes. She was right on that point. "You sense it too, don't you?" she asked. He nodded. "This city will soon fall. The forces pressing upon it... the armies, the koloss. the civil confusion ..."

  "I fear it will be more violent than your friends hope, Sazed," Tindwyl said quietly. 'They seem to believe that they can just continue to juggle their problems."

  'They are an optimistic group," he said with a smile. "Unaccustomed to being defeated."

  "This will be worse than the revolution," Tindwyl said.

  ""I have studied these things, Sazed. I know what happens when a conqueror takes a city. People will die. Many people."

  Sazed felt a chill at her words. There was a tension to Luthadel; war was coming to the city. Perhaps one army or another would enter by the blessing of the Assembly, but the other would still strike. The walls of Luthadel would run red when the siege finally ended.

  And he feared that end was coming very, very soon.

  "You are right," he said, turning back to the notes on his desktop. "We must continue to study. We should collect more of what we can find about the land before the Ascension, so that you may have the context you seek."

  She nodded, showing a fatalistic resolve. This was not a task they could complete in the time they had. Deciphering the meaning of the rubbing, comparing it to the logbook, and relating it to the context of the period was a scholarly undertaking that would require the determined work of years.

  Keepers had much knowledge-but in this case, it was almost too much. They had been gathering and transmitting records, stories, myths, and legends for so long that it took years for one Keeper to recite the collected works to a new initiate.

  Fortunately, included with the mass of information were indexes and summaries created by the Keepers. On top of this came the notes and personal indexes each individual Keeper made. And yet, these only helped the Keeper understand just how much information he had. Sazed himself had spent his life reading, memorizing, and indexing religions. Each night, before he slept, he read some portion of a note or story. He was probably the world's foremost scholar on pre-Ascension religions, and yet he felt as if he knew so little.

  Compounding all of that was the inherent unreliability of their information. A great deal of it came from the mouths of simple people, doing their best to remember what their lives had once been like-or, more often, what the lives of their grandparents had once been like. The Keepers hadn't been founded until late in the second century of the Lord Ruler's reign. By then, many religions had already been wiped out in their pure forms.

  Sazed closed his eyes, dumped another index from a coppermind into his head, then began to search it. There wasn't much time, true, but Tindwyl and he were Keepers. They were accustomed to beginning tasks that others would have to finish.

  Elend Venture, once king of the Central Dominance, stood on the balcony of his keep, overlooking the vast city of Luthadel. Though the first snows had yet to fall, the weather had grown cold. He wore an overcloak, tied at the front, but it didn't protect his face. A chill tingled his cheeks as a wind blew across him, whipping at his cloak. Smoke rose from chimneys, gathering like an ominous shadow above the city before rising up to meld with the ashen red sky.

  For every house that produced smoke, there were two that did not. Many of those were probably deserted; the city held nowhere near the population it once had. However, he knew that many of those smokeless houses were still inhabited. Inhabited, and freezing.

  I should have been able to do more for them, Elend thought, eyes open to the piercing cold wind. I should have found a way to get more coal; I should have managed to provide for them all.

  It was humbling, even depressing, to admit that the Lord Ruler had done better than Elend himself. Despite being a heartless tyrant, the Lord Ruler had at least kept a significant portion o£,the population from starving or freezing. He had kept armies in check, and had kept crime at a manageable level.

  To the northeast, the koloss army waited. It had sent no emissaries to the city, but it was more frightening than either Cett's or Straff's armies. The cold wouldn't scare away its occupants; despite their bare skin, they apparently took little notice of weather changes. This final army was the most disturbing of the three-more dangerous, more unpredictable, and impossible to deal with. Koloss did not bargain.

  We haven't been paying enough attention to that threat, he thought as he stood on the balcony. There's just been so much to do, so much to worry about, that we couldn't focus on an army that might be as dangerous to our enemies as it is to us.

  It was looking less and less likely that the koloss would attack Cett or Straff. Apparently, Jastes was enough in control to keep them waiting to take a shot at Luthadel itself.

  "My lord," said a voice from behind. "Please, come back in. That's a fell wind. No use killing yourself from a chill."

  Elend turned back. Captain Demoux stood dutifully in the room, along with another bodyguard. In the aftermath of the assassination attempt. Ham had insisted that Elend go about guarded. Elend hadn't complained, though he knew there was little reason for caution anymore. Straff wouldn't want to kill him now that he wasn't king.

  So earnest, Elend thought, studying Demoux's face. Why do I find him youthful? We're nearly the same age.

  "Very well," Elend said, turning and striding into the room. As Demoux closed the balcony doors, Elend removed his cloak. The suit below felt wrong on him. Sloppy, even though he had ordered it cleaned and pressed. The vest was too tight-his practice with the sword was slowly modifying his body-while the coat hung loosely.

  "Demoux," Elend said. "When is your next Survivor rally?"

  'Tonight, my lord."

  Elend nodded. He'd feared that; it would be a cold night. "My lord," Demoux said, "do you still intend to come?" "Of course," Elend said. "I gave my word that I would join with your cause."

  "That was before you lost the vote, my lord."

  "That is immaterial," Elend said. "I am joining your movement because it is important to the skaa, Demoux, and I want to understand the will of my ... of the people. I promised you dedication-and you shall have it."

  Demoux seemed a bit confused, but spoke no further. Elend eyed his desk, considering some studying, but found it hard to motivate himself in the chill room. Instead, he pushed open the door and strode out into the hallway. His guards followed.

  He stopped himself from turning toward Vin's rooms. She needed her rest, and it didn't do her much good to have him peeking in every half hour to check on her. So instead he turned to wander down a different passageway.

  The back hallways of Keep Venture were tight, dark, stone constructions of labyrinthine complexity. Perhaps it was because he'd grown up in these passages, but he felt at home in their dark, secluded confines. They had been the perfect place for a young man who di
dn't really care to be found. Now he used them for another reason; the corridors provided a perfect place for extended walking. He didn't point himself in any particular direction, he just moved, working out his frustration to the beating of his own footsteps.

  I can't fix the city's problems, he told himself. I have to let Penrod handle that-he's the one the people want.

  That should have made things easier for Elend. It let him focus on his own survival, not to mention let him spend time revitalizing his relationship with Vin. She, however, seemed different lately. Elend tried to tell himself it was just her injury, but he sensed something deeper. Something in the way she looked at him, something in the way she reacted to his affection. And, despite himself, he could think of only one thing that had changed.

  He was no longer king.

  Vin was not shallow. She had shown him nothing but devotion and love during their two years together. And yet, how could she not react-even if unconsciously-to his colossal failure? During the assassination attempt, he had watched her fight. Really watched her fight, for the first time. Until that day, he hadn't realized just how amazing she was. She wasn't just a warrior, and she wasn't just an Allomancer. She was a force, like thunder or wind. The way she had killed that last man, smashing his head with her own ...

  How could she love a man like me? he thought. I couldn’t even hold my throne. I wrote the very laws that deposed me.

  He sighed, continuing to walk. He felt like he should be scrambling, trying to figure out a way to convince Vin that he was worthy of her. But that would just make him seem more incompetent. There was no correcting past mistakes, especially since he could see no real "mistakes" he had made. He had done the best he could, and that had proven insufficient.

  He paused at an intersection. Once, a relaxing dip into a book would have been enough to calm him. Now he felt nervous. Tense. A little ... like he assumed Vin usually felt.