Sazed gasped, stumbling back, nearly tripping over his chair. It wasn’t actually a person. It was a shadow—formed, it seemed, from streams of mist. They were very faint, still trailing through the window that Vin had opened, but they made a person. Its head seemed turned toward the table, toward the book. Or … perhaps the scrap of paper.
Sazed felt like running, like scrambling away in fear, but his scholar’s mind dredged something up to fight his terror. Alendi, he thought. The one everyone thought was the Hero of Ages. He said he saw a thing made of mist following him.
Vin claimed to have seen it as well.
“What … do you want?” he asked, trying to remain calm.
The spirit didn’t move.
Could it be … her? he wondered with shock. Many religions claimed that the dead continued to walk the world, just beyond the view of mortals. But this thing was too short to be Tindwyl. Sazed was sure that he would have recognized her, even in such an amorphous form.
Sazed tried to gauge where it was looking. He reached out a hesitant hand, picking up the scrap of paper.
The spirit raised an arm, pointing toward the center of the city. Sazed frowned.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
The spirit pointed more insistently.
“Write down for me what you want me to do.”
It just pointed.
Sazed stood for a long moment in the room with only one candle, then glanced at the open book. The wind flipped its pages, showing his handwriting, then Tindwyl’s, then his again.
Alendi must not be allowed to reach the Well of Ascension. He must not be allowed to take the power for himself.
Perhaps … perhaps Kwaan knew something that nobody else had. Could the power corrupt even the best of people? Could that be why he turned against Alendi, trying to stop him?
The mist spirit pointed again.
If the spirit tore free that sentence, perhaps it was trying to tell me something. But … Vin wouldn’t take the power for herself. She wouldn’t destroy, as the Lord Ruler did, would she?
And if she didn’t have a choice?
Outside, someone screamed. The yell was of pure terror, and it was soon joined by others. A horrible, echoing set of sounds in a dark night.
There wasn’t time to think. Sazed grabbed the candle, spilling wax on the table in his haste, and left the room.
The winding set of stone stairs led downward for quite some time. Vin walked down them, Elend at her side, the thumping sounding loudly in her ears. At the bottom, the stairwell opened into …
A vast chamber. Elend held his lantern high, looking down into a huge stone cavern. Spook was already halfway down the stone steps leading to the floor. Ham was following.
“Lord Ruler …” Elend whispered, standing at Vin’s side. “We’d have never found this without tearing down the entire building!”
“That was probably the idea,” Vin said. “Kredik Shaw isn’t simply a palace, but a capstone. Built to hide something. This. Above, those inlays on the walls hid the cracks of the doorway, and the metal in them obscured the opening mechanism from Allomantic eyes. If I hadn’t had a hint …”
“Hint?” Elend asked, turning to her.
Vin shook her head, nodding to the steps. The two began down them. Below, she heard Spook’s voice ring.
“There’s food down here!” he yelled. “Cans and cans of it!”
Indeed, they found rank upon rank of shelves sitting on the cavern floor, meticulously packed as if set aside in preparation for something important. Vin and Elend reached the cavern floor as Ham chased after Spook, calling for him to slow down. Elend made as if to follow, but Vin grabbed his arm. She was burning iron.
“Strong source of metal that way,” she said, growing eager.
Elend nodded, and they rushed through the cavern, passing shelf after shelf. The Lord Ruler must have prepared these, she thought. But for what purpose?
She didn’t care at the moment. She didn’t really care about the atium either, but Elend’s eagerness to find it was too much to ignore. They rushed up to the end of the cavern, where they found the source of the metal line.
A large metal plaque hung on the wall, like the one Sazed had described finding in the Conventical of Seran. Elend was clearly disappointed when they saw it. Vin, however, stepped forward, looking through tin-enhanced eyes to see what it contained.
“A map?” Elend asked. “That’s the Final Empire.”
Indeed, a map of the empire was carved into the metal. Luthadel was marked at the center. A small circle marked another city nearby.
“Why is Statlin City circled?” Elend asked, frowning.
Vin shook her head. “This isn’t what we came for,” she said. “There.” A tunnel split off from the main cavern. “Come on.”
Sazed ran through the streets, not even certain what he was doing. He followed the mist spirit, which was difficult to trace in the night, as his candle had long since puffed out.
People screamed. Their panicked sounds gave him chills, and he itched to go and see what the problem was. Yet the mist spirit was demanding; it paused to catch his attention if it lost him. It could simply be leading him to his death. And yet … he felt a trust for it that he could not explain.
Allomancy? he thought. Pulling on my emotions?
Before he could consider that further, he stumbled across the first body. It was a skaa man in simple clothing, skin stained with ash. His face was twisted in a grimace of pain, and the ash on the ground was smeared from his thrashings.
Sazed gasped as he pulled to a halt. He knelt, studying the body by the dim light of an open window nearby. This man had not died easily.
It’s … like the killings I was studying, he thought. Months ago, in the village to the south. The man there said that the mists had killed his friend. Caused him to fall to the ground and thrash about.
The spirit appeared in front of Sazed, its posture insistent. Sazed looked up, frowning. “You did this?” he whispered.
The thing shook its head violently, pointing. Kredik Shaw was just ahead. It was the direction Vin and Elend had gone earlier.
Sazed stood. Vin said she thought the Well was still in the city, he thought. The Deepness has come upon us, as its tendrils have been doing in the far reaches of the empire for some time. Killing.
Something greater than we comprehend is going on.
He still couldn’t believe that Vin going to the Well would be dangerous. She had read; she knew Rashek’s story. She wouldn’t take the power for herself. He was confident. But not completely certain. In fact, he was no longer certain what they should do with the Well.
I have to get to her. Stop her, talk to her, prepare her. We can’t rush into something like this. If, indeed, they were going to take the power at the Well, they needed to think about it first and decide what the best course was.
The mist spirit continued to point. Sazed stood and ran forward, ignoring the horror of the screams in the night. He approached the doors of the massive palace structure with its spires and spikes, then dashed inside.
The mist spirit remained behind, in the mists that had birthed it. Sazed lit his candle again with a flint, and waited. The mist spirit did not move forward. Still feeling an urgency, Sazed left it behind, continuing into the depths of the Lord Ruler’s former home. The stone walls were cold and dark, his candle a wan light.