The Hero of Ages m-3

by Brandon Sanderson

  "In the form of a pool of liquid?" Sazed said.

  The members of the First Generation nodded.

  "And the dark black smoke outside?" Sazed asked.

  "Ruin," Haddek said. "Waiting, watching, during his imprisonment."

  Sazed frowned. "The cavern of smoke was very much larger than the Well of Ascension. Why the disparity? Was Ruin that much more powerful?"

  Haddek snorted quietly. "They were equally powerful, young one. They were forces, not men. Two aspects of a single power. Is one side of a coin more 'powerful' than the other? They pushed equally upon the world around them."

  "Though," one of the others added, "there is a story that Preservation gave too much of himself to make mankind, to create something that had more of Preservation in them than they had of Ruin. Yet, it would be only a small amount in each individual. Tiny. . easy to miss, except over a long, long time. ."

  "So, why the difference in size?" Sazed asked.

  "You aren't seeing, young one," Haddek said. "The power in that pool, that wasn't Preservation."

  "But, you just said-"

  "It was part of Preservation, to be sure," Haddek continued. "But, he was a force-his influence is everywhere. Some of it, perhaps, concentrated into that pool. The rest is. . elsewhere and everywhere."

  "But Ruin, his mind was focused there," another kandra said. "And so, his power tended to coalesce there. Much more of it, at least, than that of Preservation."

  "But not all of it," another one said, laughing.

  Sazed cocked his head. "Not all of it? It, too, was spread out across the world, I assume?"

  "In a way," Haddek said.

  "We now speak of things in the First Contract," one of the other kandra warned.

  Haddek paused, then turned, studying Sazed's eyes. "If what this man says is true, then Ruin has escaped. That means he will be coming for his body. His. . power."

  Sazed felt a chill. "It's here?" he asked quietly.

  Haddek nodded. "We were to gather it. The First Contract, the Lord Ruler named it-our charge in this world."

  "The other Children had a purpose," another kandra added. "The koloss, they were created to fight. The Inquisitors, they were created to be priests. Our task was different."

  "Gather the power," Haddek said. "And protect it. Hide it. Keep it. For the Father knew Ruin would escape one day. And on that day, he would begin searching for his body."

  The group of aged kandra looked past Sazed. He frowned, turning to follow their eyes. They were looking toward the metal dais.

  Slowly, Sazed stood, walking across the stone floor. The dais was large-perhaps twenty feet across-but not very high. He stepped onto it, causing one of the kandra behind him to gasp. Yet, none of them called out to stop him.

  There was a seam down the middle of the circular platform, and a hole-perhaps the size of a large coin-at the center. Sazed peered through the hole, but it was too dark to see anything.

  He stepped back.

  I should have a little left, he thought, glancing toward his table, with its metal-minds. I refilled that ring for a few months before I gave up on my metalminds.

  He walked over quickly, selecting a small pewter ring off of the table. He slipped it on, then looked up at the members of the First Generation. They turned from his querying look.

  "Do what you must, child," Haddek said, his aged voice echoing in the room. "We could not stop you if we wished."

  Sazed walked back to the dais, then tapped his pewtermind for the strength he had stored in it over a year ago. His body immediately grew several times stronger than normal, and his robes suddenly felt tight. With hands now thick with muscles, he reached down and-bracing himself against the rough floor-shoved against one side of the disk on the floor.

  It ground against stone as it moved, uncovering a large pit. Something glittered beneath.

  Sazed froze, his strength-and body-deflating as he released his pewtermind. His robes became loose again. The room was silent. Sazed stared at the half-covered pit, and at the enormous pile of nuggets hidden in the floor.

  "The Trust, we call it," Haddek said with a soft voice. "Given for our safekeeping by the Father."

  Atium. Thousands upon thousands of beads of it. Sazed gasped. "The Lord Ruler's atium stockpile. . It was here all along."

  "Most of that atium never left the Pits of Hathsin," Haddek said. "There were obligators on staff at all times-but never Inquisitors, for the Father knew that they could be corrupted. The obligators broke the geodes in secret, inside of a metal room constructed for the purpose, then took out the atium. The noble family then transported the empty geodes to Luthadel, never knowing that they didn't have any atium in their possession at all. What atium the Lord Ruler did get, and distribute, to the nobility was brought in by the obligators. They disguised the atium as Ministry funds and hid the beads in piles of coins so that Ruin wouldn't see them as they were transported in convoys full of new acolytes to Luthadel."

  Sazed stood, dumbstruck. Here. . all along. Just a short distance from the very caves where Kelsier raised his army. A short journey from Luthadel, completely unprotected all these years.

  Yet hidden so well.

  "You worked for atium," Sazed said, looking up. "The kandra Contracts, they were paid in atium."

  Haddek nodded. "We were to gather all of it we could. What didn't end up in our hands, the Mistborn burned away. Some of the houses kept small stockpiles, but the Father's taxes and fees kept most of the atium flowing back to him as payments. And, eventually, almost all of it ended up here."

  Sazed looked down. Such a fortune, he thought. Such. . power. Atium never had fit in with the other metals. Every one of them, even aluminum and duralumin, could be mined or created through natural processes. Atium, however-it had only ever come from a single place, its appearance mysterious and strange. Its power had allowed one to do something unlike anything else in Allomancy or Feruchemy.

  It let one see the future. Not a thing of men at all, more. . a thing of gods.

  It was more than just a metal. It was condensed concentrated power. Power that Ruin would want. Very badly.

  TenSoon pushed toward the crest of the hill, moving through ash that was so high that he was glad he had switched to the horse's body, for a wolfhound could never have moved through piles so deep.

  The ash fell strongly where he was, limiting his visibility. I will never make it to Fadrex at this rate, he thought with anger. Even pushing hard, moving in the massive horse's body, he was moving too slowly to get far from the Homeland.

  He finally crested the hill, his breath coming in puffing snorts out the horse's snout.

  At the top of the hill he froze, shocked. The landscape before him was burning.

  Tyrian, closest of the ashmounts to Luthadel, stood in the near distance, half of its top blown free from some violent eruption. The air itself seemed to burn with tongues of flame, and the broad plain in front of TenSoon was clogged with flowing lava. It was a deep, powerful red. Even from a distance, he could feel the heat pushing against him.

  He stood for a long moment, deep in ash, gazing upon a landscape that had once contained villages, forests, and roads. All was now gone, burnt away. The earth had cracked in the distance, and more lava seemed to be spilling out of it.

  By the First Contract, he thought with despair. He could detour to the south, continue on to Fadrex as if he'd come in a straight line from Luthadel, but for some reason, he found it hard to get up the motivation.

  It was too late.

  Yes, there are sixteen metals. I find it highly unlikely that the Lord Ruler did not know of them all. Indeed, the fact that he spoke of several on the plates in the storage caches meant that he knew at least of those.

  I must assume that he did not tell mankind of them earlier for a reason. Perhaps he held them back to give him a secret edge, much as he kept back the single nugget of Preservation's body that made men into Mistborn.

  Or, perhaps he simply deci
ded that mankind had enough power in the ten metals they already understood. Some things we shall never know. Part of me still finds what he did regrettable. During the thousand-year reign of the Lord Ruler, how many people were born, Snapped, lived, and died never knowing that they were Mistings, simply because their metals were unknown?

  Of course, this did give us a slight advantage, at the end. Ruin had a lot of trouble giving duralumin to his Inquisitors, since they'd need an Allomancer who could burn it to kill before they could use it. And, since none of the duralumin Mistings in the world knew about their power, they didn't burn it and reveal themselves to Ruin. That left most Inquisitors without the power of duralumin, save in a few important cases-such as Marsh-where they got it from a Mistborn. This was usually considered a waste, for if one killed a Mistborn with Hemalurgy, one could draw out only one of their sixteen powers and lost the rest. Ruin considered it much better to try to subvert them and gain access to all of their power.

  72

  It began raining just before Vin reached Luthadel. A quiet, cold drizzle that wetted the night, but did not banish the mists.

  She flared her bronze. In the distance, she could sense Allomancers. Mistborn. Chasing her. There were at least a dozen of them, homing in on her position.

  She landed on the city wall, bare feet slipping just slightly on the stones. Beyond her stretched Luthadel, even now proud in its sprawl. Founded a thousand years before by the Lord Ruler, it was built atop the Well of Ascension itself. During the ten centuries of his reign, Luthadel had burgeoned, becoming the most important-and most crowded-place in all of the empire.

  And it was dying.

  Vin stood up straight, looking out over the vast city. Pockets of flame flared where buildings had caught fire. The flames defied the rain, illuminating the various slums and other neighborhoods like watch fires in the night. In their light, she could see that the city was a wreck. Entire swathes of the town had been torn apart, the buildings broken or burned. The streets were eerily vacant-nobody fought the fires, nobody huddled in the gutters.

  The capital, once home to hundreds of thousands, seemed empty. Wind blew through Vin's rain-wetted hair and she felt a shiver. The mists, as usual, stayed away from her-pushed aside by her Allomancy. She was alone in the largest city in the world.

  No. Not alone. She could feel them approaching-Ruin's minions. She had led them here, made them assume that she was bringing them to the atium. There would be far more of them than she could fight. She was doomed.

  That was the idea.

  She launched off the wall, shooting through the mist, ash, and rain. She wore her mistcloak, more out of nostalgia than utility. It was the same one she'd always had-the one that Kelsier had given her on her very first night of training.

  She landed with a splash atop a building, then leaped again, bounding over the city. She wasn't certain if it was poetic or ominous that it was raining this night. There had been another night when she had visited Kredik Shaw in the rain. A part of her still thought she should have died that night.

  She landed on the street, then stood upright, her tasseled mistcloak falling around her, hiding her arms and chest. She stood quietly, looking up at Kredik Shaw, the Hill of a Thousand Spires. The Lord Ruler's palace, location of the Well of Ascension.

  The building was an assemblage of several low wings topped by dozens of rising towers, spires, and spines. The awful near-symmetry of the amalgamation was only made more unsettling by the presence of the mists and ash. The building had been abandoned since the Lord Ruler's death. The doors were broken, and she could see shattered windows in the walls. Kredik Shaw was as dead as the city it once had dominated.

  A figure stepped up beside her. "Here?" Ruin said. "This is where you lead me? We have searched this place."

  Vin remained quiet, looking up at the spires. Black fingers of metal reaching up into a blacker sky.

  "My Inquisitors are coming," Ruin whispered.

  "You shouldn't have revealed yourself," Vin said, not looking toward him. "You should have waited until I retrieved the atium. I'll never do it now."

  "Ah, but I no longer believe that you have it," Ruin said in his fatherly voice. "Child. . child. I believed you at first-indeed, I gathered my powers, ready to face you. When you came here, however, I knew that you had misled me."

  "You don't know that for certain," Vin said softly, voice complemented by the quiet rain.

  Silence. "No," Ruin finally said.

  "Then you'll have to try to make me talk," she whispered.

  "Try? You realize the forces I can bring to bear against you, child? You realize the power I have, the destruction I represent? I am mountains that crush. I am waves that crash. I am storms that shatter. I am the end."

  Vin continued to stare up into the falling rain. She didn't question her plan-it wasn't really her way. She'd decided what to do. It was time to spring Ruin's trap.

  She was tired of being manipulated.

  "You will never have it," Vin said. "Not while I live."

  Ruin screamed, a sound of primal anger, of something that had to destroy. Then, he vanished. Lightning flared, its light a wave of power moving through the mist. It illuminated robed figures in the blackened rain, walking toward her. Surrounding her.

  Vin turned toward a ruined building a short distance away, watching as a figure climbed up over the rubble. Now lit only faintly by starlight, the figure had a bare chest, a stark rib cage, and taut muscles. Rain ran down his skin, dripping from the spikes that sprouted from his chest. One between each set of ribs. His face bore spikes in the eyes-one of which had been pounded back into his skull, crushing the socket.

  Normal Inquisitors had nine spikes. The one she'd killed with Elend had ten. Marsh appeared to have upward of twenty. He growled softly.

  And the fight began.

  Vin flung back her cloak, spraying water from the tassels, and Pushed herself forward. Thirteen Inquisitors hurtled through the night sky toward her. Vin ducked a flight of axe swings, then slammed a Push toward a pair of Inquisitors, burning duralumin. The creatures were thrown backward by their spikes, and Vin accelerated in a sudden lurch to the side.

  She hit another Inquisitor, feet against his chest. Water sprayed, flecked with ash, as Vin reached down and grabbed one of the spikes in the Inquisitor's eyes. Then she Pulled herself backward and flared pewter.

  She lurched, and the spike came free. The Inquisitor screamed, but did not fall dead. It looked at her, one side of the head a gaping hole, and hissed. Removing one eye-spike, apparently, wasn't enough to kill.

  Ruin laughed in her head.

  The spikeless Inquisitor reached for her, and Vin Pulled herself into the sky, yanking on one of the metal spires of Kredik Shaw. She downed the contents of a metal vial as she flew, restoring her steel.

  A dozen figures in black robes sprang up through the falling rain to follow. Marsh remained below, watching.

  Vin gritted her teeth, then whipped out a pair of daggers and Pushed herself back down-directly toward the Inquisitors. She passed among them, surprising several, who had probably expected her to jump away. She slammed directly into the creature she'd pulled the spike from, spinning him in the air, ramming her daggers into his chest. He gritted his teeth, laughing, then slapped her arms apart and kicked her back toward the ground.

  She fell with the rain.

  Vin hit hard, but managed to land on her feet. The Inquisitor hit the cobblestones back-first, her daggers still in his chest. But he stood up easily, tossing the daggers aside, shattering them on the cobblestones.

  Then he moved suddenly. Too quickly. Vin didn't have time to think as he splashed through the misty rain, grabbing her by the throat.

  I've seen that speed before, she thought as she struggled. Not just from Inquisitors. From Sazed. That's a Feruchemical power. Just like the strength Marsh used earlier.

  That was the reason for the new spikes. These other Inquisitors didn't have as many as Marsh, but they ob
viously had some new powers. Strength. Speed. Each of these creatures was, essentially, another Lord Ruler.

  You see? Ruin asked.

  Vin cried out, duralumin-Pushing against the Inquisitor, tearing herself out of his grasp. The move left her throat bleeding from his fingernails, and she had to down another vial of metals-her last-to restore her steel as she hydroplaned across the wet ground.

  Feruchemical storages run out, she told herself. Even Allomancers make mistakes. I can win.

  Yet, she wavered, breathing heavily as she came to a rest, one hand to the ground, up to the wrist in cold rainwater. Kelsier had struggled fighting one Inquisitor. What was she doing fighting thirteen?

  Sodden-robed figures landed around her. Vin kicked, slamming a foot into an Inquisitor chest, then Pulled herself off to spin away from another one. She rolled across the slick cobblestones, an obsidian axe nearly taking off her head as she came up and kicked two pewter-enhanced feet at the knees of an opponent.

  Bones crunched. The Inquisitor screamed and fell. Vin pushed herself to her feet with one hand, then Pulled on the spires up above, throwing herself up about ten feet to dodge the multitude of swings that came after her.

  She landed back on the ground, grabbing the handle of the fallen Inquisitor's axe. She swung it up, spraying water, her skin stained with wet ash as she blocked a blow.

  You cannot fight, Vin, Ruin said. Each blow only helps me. I am Ruin.

  She screamed, throwing herself forward in a reckless attack, shouldering aside one Inquisitor, then slamming her axe into the side of another. They growled and swung, but she stayed a step ahead, barely dodging their attacks. The one she had knocked down stood back up, his knees healed. He was smiling.

  A blow she didn't see took her in the shoulder, throwing her forward. She felt warm blood running down her back, but pewter deadened the pain. She threw herself to the side, regaining her feet, clutching her axe.

  The Inquisitors stalked forward. Marsh watched quietly, rain dripping down his face, spikes protruding from his body like the spires of Kredik Shaw. He did not join the fight.