The air seemed warmer inside—and, thankfully, they passed out of the smoke as they entered. A low light came from something on the far side of the chamber, though Elend couldn’t distinguish the source. It didn’t look like torchlight. It was the wrong color, and it shimmered rather than flickered.
Vin wrapped an arm around him, staring toward the back of the chamber, suddenly seeming apprehensive.
“Where is that light coming from?” Elend asked, frowning.
“A pool,” Vin said quietly, her eyes far keener than his. “A glowing white pool.”
Elend frowned. But, the two of them didn’t move. Vin seemed hesitant. “What?” he asked.
She pulled against him. “That’s the Well of Ascension. I can feel it inside of my head. Beating.”
Elend forced a smile, feeling a surreal sense of displacement. “That’s what we came for, then.”
“What if I don’t know what to do?” Vin asked quietly. “What if I take the power, but I don’t know how to use it? What if I … become like the Lord Ruler?”
Elend looked down at her, arms wrapped around him, and his fear lessened a bit. He loved her. The situation they faced, it couldn’t easily fit into his logical world. But Vin had never really needed logic. And he didn’t need it either, if he trusted her.
He took her head in his hands, rotating it up to look at him. “Your eyes are beautiful.”
She frowned. “What—”
“And,” Elend continued, “part of the beauty in them comes from your sincerity. You won’t become the Lord Ruler, Vin. You’ll know what to do with that power. I trust you.”
She smiled hesitantly, then nodded. However, she didn’t move forward into the cavern. Instead, she pointed at something over Elend’s shoulder. “What’s that?”
Elend turned, noticing a ledge on the back wall of the small room. It grew straight out of the rock just beside the doorway they had entered. Vin approached the ledge, and Elend followed behind her, noticing the shards that lay upon it.
“It looks like broken pottery,” Elend said. There were several patches of it, and more of it was scattered on the floor beneath the ledge.
Vin picked up a piece, but there didn’t seem to be anything distinctive about it. She looked at Elend, who was fishing through the pottery pieces. “Look at this,” he said, holding up one that hadn’t been broken like the others. It was a disklike piece of fired clay with a single bead of some metal at the center.
“Atium?” she asked.
“It looks like the wrong color,” he said, frowning.
“What is it, then?”
“Maybe we’ll find the answers over there,” Elend said, turning and looking down the rows of pillars toward the light. Vin nodded, and they walked forward.
Marsh immediately tried to Push Sazed away by the metal bracers on his arms. Sazed was ready, however, and he tapped his ring ironmind—drawing forth the weight he had stored within it. His body grew denser, and he felt its weight pulling him down, his fists feeling like balls of iron on the ends of lead arms.
Marsh immediately lurched away, thrown violently backward by his own Push. He slammed into the back wall, a cry of surprise escaping his lips. It echoed in the small, domed room.
Shadows danced in the room as the candle grew weaker. Sazed tapped sight, enhancing his vision, and released iron as he dashed toward the addled Inquisitor. Marsh, however, recovered quickly. He reached out, Pulling an unlit lamp off the wall. It zipped through the air, flying toward Marsh.
Sazed tapped zinc. He felt something like a twisted hybrid of an Allomancer and a Feruchemist, his sources of metal embedded within him. The gold had healed his insides, made him whole, but the rings still remained within his flesh. This was what the Lord Ruler had done, keeping his metalminds inside of him, piercing his flesh so that they would be harder to steal.
That had always seemed morbid to Sazed. Now, he saw how useful it could be. His thoughts sped up, and he quickly saw the trajectory of the lamp. Marsh would be able to use it as a weapon against him. So Sazed tapped steel. Allomancy and Feruchemy had one fundamental difference: Allomancy drew its powers from the metals themselves, and so the amount of power was limited; in Feruchemy, one could compound an attribute many times, drawing out months’ worth of power in a few minutes.
Steel stored physical speed. Sazed zipped across the room, air rushing in his ears as he shot past the open doorway. He snatched the lamp out of the air, then tapped iron hard—increasing his weight manyfold—and tapped pewter to give himself massive strength.
Marsh didn’t have time to react. He was now Pulling on a lamp held in Sazed’s inhumanly strong, inhumanly heavy, hand. Again, Marsh was yanked by his own Allomancy. The Pull threw him across the room, directly toward Sazed.
Sazed turned, slamming the lamp into Marsh’s face. The metal bent in his hand, and the force threw Marsh backward. The Inquisitor hit the marble wall, a spray of blood misting in the air. As Marsh slumped to the ground, Sazed could see that he’d driven one of the eye-spikes back into the front of the skull, crushing the bone around the socket.
Sazed returned his weight to normal, then jumped forward, raising his impromptu weapon again. Marsh, however, threw an arm up and Pushed. Sazed skidded back a few feet before he was able to tap the ironmind again, increasing his weight.
Marsh grunted, his Push forcing him back against the wall. It also, however, kept Sazed at bay. Sazed struggled to step forward, but the pressure of Marsh’s Push—along with his own bulky, weighed-down body—made walking difficult. The two strained for a moment, Pushing against each other in the darkening light. The room’s inlays sparkled, quiet murals watching them, open doorway leading down to the Well just to the side.
“Why, Marsh?” Sazed whispered.
“I don’t know,” Marsh said, his voice coming out in a growl.
With a flash of power, Sazed released his ironmind and instead tapped steel, increasing his speed again. He dropped the lamp, ducking to the side, moving more quickly than Marsh could track. The lamp was forced backward, but then fell to the ground as Marsh let go of his Push, jumping forward, obviously trying to keep from being trapped against the wall.
But Sazed was faster. He spun, raising a hand to try to pull out Marsh’s linchpin spike—the one in between his shoulder blades, pounded down lengthwise into the back. Pulling this one spike would kill an Inquisitor; it was the weakness the Lord Ruler had built into them.
Sazed skidded around Marsh to attack from behind. The spike in Marsh’s right eye protruded several extra inches out the back of his skull, and it dribbled blood.
Sazed’s steelmind ran out.
The rings had never been intended to last long, and his two extreme bursts had drained this one in seconds. He slowed with a dreadful lurch, but his arm was still raised, and he still had the strength of ten men. He could see the bulge of the linchpin spike underneath Marsh’s robe. If he could just—
Marsh spun, then dexterously knocked aside Sazed’s hand. He rammed an elbow into Sazed’s stomach, then brought a backhand up and crashed it into his face.
Sazed fell backward, and his pewtermind ran out, his strength disappearing. He hit the hard steel ground with a grunt of pain, and rolled.
Marsh loomed in the dark room. The candle flickered.