“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 world, 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.