But to remain inside until they starved? Even their fear of the mist, deep-seated though it was, wouldn’t have been enough to make them starve themselves to death, would it?
“Why didn’t you leave?” Sazed asked quietly.
“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 bullheaded 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.
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.
16
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?”