Mistborn: The Hero of Ages (61 page)

What good was killing another monster if it was just replaced by two more? What good was food to feed his people if the ash j ust smothered everything anyway ? What good was he, an emperor who couldn't even def end the people of a single village?

Elend had never lusted for pow er. He'd been a theorist and a scholar ruling an empire had mostly been an academic exercise for him. Yet, as he fought on that dark night in the burning mists and falling ash, he began to understand. As people died around him despite his most frenzied efforts, he could see what would drive men for more and more power.

Power to protect. At that moment, he would have accepted the powers of god-hood, if it would mean having the strength to save the people around him. He dropped another koloss, then spun as he heard a scream. A young woman was being pulled from a nearby house, despite an older man holding onto her arm, both yelling for help. Elend reached to his sash, pulling free his bag of coins. He tossed it into the air, then simultaneously Pushed on some of the coins inside and Pulled on others . The sack exploded with twinkling bits of metal, and Elend shot some forward into the body of the koloss yanking on the woman.

It grunted, but did not stop. Coins rarely worked against koloss you had to hit them just right to kill them. Vin could do it.

Elend wasn't in a mood for such subtlety, even had he possessed it. He yelled in defiance, snapping more coins at the beast. He flipped them up off the ground toward . 125 201

himself, then f lung them forward, shooting missile after glittering missile into the creature's blue body. Its back became a glistening mass of too-red blood, and finally it slumped over. Elend spun, turning from the relieved father and daughter to face down another koloss. It raised its weapon to strike, but Elend just scre amed at it in anger.
I should be able to protect them!
he thought. He needed to take control of the entire group, not waste time fighting them one at a time. But, they resisted his Allomancy, even as he Pushed on their emotions again. Where was the Inquisitor guardian?

As the koloss swung its weapon, Elend flared pewter and flung himself to the side, then sheared the creature's hand free at the wrist. As the beast screamed in pain, Elend threw himself back into the fight. The villagers began to rally around him. They obviously had no training for war they were likely under Yomen's protection and didn't need to worry about bandits or roving armies. Yet, despite their lack of skill, they obviously knew to stay close to the Mistborn. Their desperate, pleading eyes prodded Elend on, drove him to cut down koloss after koloss.

For the moment, he didn't have to worry about the right or wrong of the situation. He could simply
f
ight
. The desire for battle burned within him like metal the desire, even, to kill. And so he fought on fought for the surprise in the eyes of the townspeople, for the hope each of his blows seemed to inspire. They had given their lives up for lost, and then a man had dropped from the sky to defend them.

Two years before, during the siege of Luthadel, Vin had attacked Cett's fortification and slaughtered three hundred of his soldiers. Elend had trusted that she had good reasons for the attack, but he'd never understood how she could do such a thing. At least, not until this night, f ighting in an unnamed village, too much ash in the dark sky, the mists on fire, koloss dying in ranks before him. The Inquisitor didn't appear. Frustrated, Elend spun away from a group of koloss, leaving one dying in his wake, then extinguished his metals . The creatures surrounded him, and he burned duralumin, then burned zinc, and Pu lled .

The village fell silent.

Elend paused, stumbling slightly as he f inished his spin. He looked through the falling ash, turning toward the remaining koloss thousands and thousands of them who now suddenly stood motionless and patient around him, under his control at last.

There's no wa y I took them all at once , he thought warily. What had happened to the Inquisitor?

There was usually one with a mob of koloss this big. Had it fled? That would explain why suddenly Elend had been able to control the koloss .

Worried, yet uncertain what else to do, he turned to scan the village. Some people had gathered to stare at him. They seemed to be in shock instead of doing something about the burning buildings, they simply stood in the mists, watching him.

He should have felt triumphant. And yet, his victory was spoiled by the Inquisitor's absence. In addition, the village was in flames by this point, very few structures remained that weren't burning. Elend hadn't saved the village. He'd found his koloss army, as he'd planned, but he f elt as if he'd failed in some greater way. He sighed, dropping his sword from tired, b loody fingers, then walked toward the villagers. As he moved, he was disturbed by the number of koloss bodies he passed. Had he really slain so many?

Another part of him quiescent now, but still aflame was sorry that the time for killing had ended. He stopped before a silent group of villagers. "You're him, aren't you?" an elderly man asked.

"Who ? " Elend asked.

"The Lord Ruler," the man whispered.

Elend looked down at his black uniform, encased in a mistcloak, both of which were slick with blood.

"Close enough," he said, turning to the east toward where his human army camped many miles away, waiting for him to return with a new koloss force to aid them. There was only one reason for him to do that. Finally, he acknowledged what he'd decided, unconsciously, the moment he'd set out to find more of the creatures. The time for killing hasn't ended at all, he thought. It has just begun .

. 126 201

Near the end, the ash began to pile up in frightening amounts. I've spoken of the s pecial microbes
that the Lord Ruler devised to hel p the world deal with the ashfalls. They did not " feed" on ash, reall
y. Rather, they broke it down as an as pect of their metabolic functions. Volcanic ash itself is,
actually, good f or soil, depending on what one wishes to grow
.

Too much of anything, however, is deadly. Water is necessary f or survival, yet too much will drown.
During the history of the Final Em pire, the land balanced on the ver y kni f e-edge of disaster via the
ash. The microbes broke it down about as rapidl y as it fell, but when there was so much of it that it
oversaturated the soil, it became more di f f icult f or plants to survive
.
In the end, the entire system fell apart. Ash fell so steadil y that it smothered and killed , and the
world's plant li fe died of f . The microbes had no chance of keeping up, for the y needed time and
nutrients to reproduce
.

52

DURING THE DAYS OF THE LORD RULER,
Luthadel had been the most crowded city in the world. Filled with three-and four-story tenements, it had been packed with the skaa who'd worked its numerous furnaces and forges, with the noble merchants who'd sold its goods, and with the high nobility who'd simply wanted to be near the imperial court. TenSoon had assumed that now, with the Lord Ruler dead and the imperial government shattered, Luthadel would become far less densely populated.

He had, apparently, been wrong.

Still wearing the wolfhound's body, he trotted along in amazement as he explored the streets. It seemed that every nook every alleyway, every street corner, each and every tenement had become home to a skaa family. The city smelled terrible, and ref use clogged the streets, buried in ash. What is going on? he wondered. The skaa lived in filth, many of them looking sick, coughing piteously in their ash-filled gutters. TenSoon made his way toward Keep Venture. If there were answers to be found, he hoped to locate them there . Occasionally, he had to growl menacingly at skaa who looked at him hungrily, and twice he had to run from gangs that ignored his growls.
Surely V in and Elend would not have let this city fall so far ,
he thought as he hid in an alley. It was a foreboding sign. He'd left Luthadel without knowing whether or not his friends would even survive the city's siege. Elend's banner the spear and the scroll flew at the front of the city, but could someone else have taken Elend's sign as their own? And what of the koloss army that had threatened to destroy Luthadel a year ago?

I should never have left her ,
TenSoon thought, f eeling a stab of anxiety.
My f oolish kandra sense of
duty. I should have stayed here, and told her what I know, little though it is
.
The world could end because of my f oolish honor
.

He poked his head out of the alleyway, looking at Keep Venture. TenSoon's heart sank to see that its beautiful stained-glass windows had been shattered. Crude boards blocked the broken holes . There were guards at the front gates, however, which seemed a better sign.

TenSoon crept forward, trying to look like a mangy stray. He kept to the shadows, edging his way up to the gate. Then, he lay down in some refuse to watch the soldiers. He expanded his eardrums, craning to hear what the men were saying.

It turned out to be nothing. The two guards stood quietly, looking bored and not a little disconsolate as they leaned against their obsidian-tipped spears. TenSoon waited, wishing that Vin were there to Pull on the emotions of the guards, making them more talkative.

Of course, if V in were here, I wouldn't have to be poking about f or information , TenSoon thought with frustration. And so, he waited. Waited as the ash fell, waited even until the sky darkened and the mists came out. Their appearance finally sparked some life into the guards. "I hate night duty," one of them muttered. "Nothing wrong with night," the other one said. "Not for us. Mists didn't kill us. We're safe from them."

What?
TenSoon thought, frowning to himself.

"Are we safe from the king? " the first guard said quietly.

His companion shot him a glance. "Don't say such things."

The first guard shrugged. "I j ust hope the emperor gets back soon."

"King Penrod has all of the emperor's authority," the second guard said sternly.
Ah
, TenSoon thought.
So Penrod managed to keep the throne. But
. . .
what's this about an emperor?

TenSoon feared that the emperor was Straff Venture. That terrible man had been the one poised to take Luthadel when TenSoon had left.

But what of Vin? Somehow, TenSoon just couldn't bring himself to believe that she had been def eated. He had watched her kill Zane Venture, a man who had been burning atium when Vin had none

. She'd done the impossible three times, to TenSoon's count. She'd slain the Lord Ruler. She'd defeated Zane. And she'd befriended a kandra who had been determined to hate her. The guards fell silent again.
This is f oolish
, TenSoon thought.
I don't have time to hide in corners
and eavesdrop. The world is ending!
He rose, shaking the ash from his body an action that caused the guards to start, raising their spears anxiously as they searched the darkening night for the source of the sound. TenSoon hesitated, their nervousness giving him an idea. He turned and loped off into the night. He'd grown to know the city quite well during his year serving with Vin she had liked to patrol the city, particularly the areas around Keep Venture. Even with his knowledge, however, it took TenSoon some time to find his way to where he was going. He had never visited the location, but he had heard it described.

Described by a person whom TenSoon had been killing at the time.

The memory still brought him chills. Kandra served Contracts and in Contracts, they usually were required to imitate specif ic individuals. A master would provide the proper body kandra were forbidden to kill humans themselves and the kandra would emulate it. However, before any of that happened, the kandra would usually study its quarry, learning as much about them as possible. TenSoon had killed OreSeur, his generation brother. OreSeur, who had helped overthrow the Father. At Kelsier's command, OreSeur had pretended to be a nobleman named Lord Renoux so that Kelsier would have an apparent nobleman as a front to use in his plan to overthrow the empire. But, there had been a more important part for OreSeur to play in Kelsier's pl ot. A secret part that not even the other members of the crew had known until after Kelsier's death.

TenSoon arrived at the old warehouse. It stood where OreSeur had said it would. TenSoon shuddered, remembering OreSeur's screams. The kandra had died beneath TenSoon's torture, torture which had been necessary, for TenS oon had needed to learn all that he could. Every secret. All that he would need in order to convincingly imitate his brother.

That day, TenSoon's hatred of humans and at himself for serving them had burned more deeply than ever before. How Vin had overcome that, he still didn't know.

The warehouse before TenSoon was now a holy place, ornamented and maintained by the Church of the Survivor. A plaque hung out f ront, displaying the sign of the spear the weapon by which both Kelsier and the Lord Ruler had died and giving a written explanation of why the warehouse was important. TenSoon knew the story already. This was the place where the crew had found a stockpile of weapons, left by the Survivor to arm the skaa people for their revolution. It had been discovered the same day that Kelsier had died, and rumors whispered that the spirit of the Survivor had appeared in this place, giving guidance to his followers. Those rumors were true, after a fashion. TenSoon rounded the building, following instructions OreSeur had given as he died. The B lessing of Presence let TenSoon recall the precise words, and despite the ash, he found the spot a place where the cobbles were disturbed. Then, he began to dig.

Kelsier, the Survivor of Hathsin, had indeed appeared to his followers that night years ago. Or, at least, his bones had. OreSeur had been commanded to take the Survivor's own body and digest it, then appear to the faithful skaa and give them encouragement. The legends of the Survivor, the whole religion that had sprung up around him, had been started by a kandra.

And TenSoon had eventually killed that kandra. But not before learning his secrets. Secrets such as where OreSeur had buried the bones of the Survivor, and how the man had looked. TenSoon smiled as he unearthe d the first bone . They were years old now, and he hated using old bones. Plus, there would be no hair, so the one he created would be bald. Still, the opportunity was too valuable to pass up. He'd only seen the Survivor once, but with his expertise in imitation . . . Well, it was worth a try.