“Elend Venture is not his father,” Sazed said. “He is a man worthy of being followed.”
“And the Terris people?” one of the skaa asked. “Do they follow him?”
“In a way,” Sazed said. “Once, my people tried to rule themselves, as your people now do. However, they realized the advantages of an alliance. My people have moved to the Central Dominance, and they accept the protection of Elend Venture.” Of course, Sazed thought, they’d rather follow me. If I would be their king.
The table fell silent.
“I don’t know,” one of the men said. “What business do we have even talking about this? I mean, Quellion is in charge, and these strangers don’t have an army to take his throne away from him. What’s the point?”
“The Lord Ruler fell to us when we had no army,” Breeze pointed out, “and Quellion himself seized the government from noble rule. Change can occur.”
“We’re not trying to form an army or rebellion,” Sazed quickly added. “We just want you to start … thinking. Talking with your friends. You are obviously influential men. Perhaps if Quellion hears of discontent among his people, he will begin to change his ways.”
“Maybe,” one of the men said.
“We don’t need these outsiders,” the other man repeated. “The Survivor of the Flames has come to deal with Quellion.”
Sazed blinked. Survivor of the Flames? He caught a sly smile on Breeze’s lips—the Soother had apparently heard the term before, and now he appeared to be watching Sazed for a reaction.
“The Survivor doesn’t enter into this,” one of the men said. “I can’t believe we’re even thinking of rebellion. Most of the world is in chaos, if you hear the reports! Shouldn’t we just be happy with what we’ve got?”
The Survivor? Sazed thought. Kelsier? But, they seem to have given him a new title. Survivor of the Flames?
“You’re starting to twitch, Sazed,” Breeze whispered. “You might as well just ask. No harm in asking, right?”
No harm in asking.
“The … Survivor of the Flames?” Sazed asked. “Why do you call Kelsier that?”
“Not Kelsier,” one of the men said. “The other Survivor. The new one.”
“The Survivor of Hathsin came to overthrow the Lord Ruler,” one of the men said. “So, can’t we assume the Survivor of the Flames has come to overthrow Quellion? Maybe we should listen to these men.”
“If the Survivor is here to overthrow Quellion,” another man said, “then he won’t need the help of these types. They just want the city for themselves.”
“Excuse me,” Sazed said. “But … might we meet this new Survivor?”
The group of men shared looks.
“Please,” Sazed said. “I was a friend to the Survivor of Hathsin. I should very much like to meet a man whom you have deemed worthy of Kelsier’s stature.”
“Tomorrow,” one of the men said. “Quellion tries to keep the dates quiet, but they get out. There will be executions near Marketpit. Be there.”
Even now, I can barely grasp the scope of all this. The events surrounding the end of the world seem even larger than the Final Empire and the people within it. I sense shards of something from long ago, a fractured presence, something spanning the void.
I have delved and searched, and have only been able to come up with a single name: Adonasium. Who, or what, it was, I do not yet know.
39
TENSOON SAT ON HIS HAUNCHES. Horrified.
Ash rained down like shards of a broken sky, floating, making the very air look pocked and sickly. Even where he sat, atop a windswept hill, there was a layer of ash smothering the plant life. Some trees had branches broken by the weight of repeated ash pileups.
How could they not see? he thought. How can they hide in their hole of a Homeland, content to let the land above die?
Yet, TenSoon had lived for hundreds of years, and a part of him understood the tired complacency of the First and Second Generations. At times he’d felt the same thing himself. A desire to simply wait. To spend years idly, content in the Homeland. He’d seen the outside world—seen more of it than any human or koloss would ever know. What need had he of experiencing more?
The Seconds had seen him as more orthodox and obedient than his brethren, all because he had continually wanted to leave the Homeland and serve Contracts. The Second Generation had always misunderstood him. TenSoon hadn’t served out of a desire to be obedient. He’d done it out of fear: fear that he’d become content and apathetic like the Seconds and begin to think that the outside world didn’t matter to the kandra people.
He shook his head, then rose to all fours and loped off down the side of the hill, scattering ash into the air with each bound. As frightening as things had gotten, he was happy for one thing. The wolfhound’s body felt good on him. There was such a power in it—a capacity for movement—that no human form could match. It was almost as if this were the form he always should have worn. What better body for a kandra with an incurable wanderlust? A kandra who had left his Homeland behind more often than any other, serving under the hated hands of human masters, all because of his fear of complacency?
He made his way through the thin forest cover, over hills, hoping that the blanket of ash wouldn’t make it too difficult for him to navigate. The falling ash did affect the kandra people—it affected them greatly. They had legends about this exact event. What good was the First Contract, what good was the waiting, the protection of the Trust? To most of the kandra, apparently, these things had become a point unto themselves.
Yet, these things meant something. They had an origin. TenSoon hadn’t been alive back then. However, he had known the First Generation and been raised by the Second. He grew up during days when the First Contract—the Trust, the Resolution—had been more than just words. The First Contract was a set of instructions. Actions to take when the world began to fail. Not just ceremony, and not just metaphor. He knew that its contents frightened some of the kandra. For them, it was better that the First Contract be a philosophical, abstract thing—for if it were still concrete, still relevant, it would require great sacrifices of them.
TenSoon stopped running; he was up to his wolfhound knees in deep black ash. The location looked vaguely familiar. He turned south, moving through a small rocky hollow—the stones now just dark lumps—looking for a place he had been over a year before. A place he’d visited after he had turned against Zane, his master, and left Luthadel to return to the Homeland.
He scrambled up a few rocks, then rounded the side of a stone outcrop, knocking lumps of ash off with his passing. They broke apart as they fell, throwing more flakes into the air.
And there it was. The hollow in rock, the place where he had stopped a year before. He remembered it, despite how the ash had transformed the landscape. The Blessing of Presence, serving him again. How would he get along without it?
I would not be sentient without it, he thought, smiling grimly. It was the bestowing of a Blessing on a mistwraith that brought the creature to wakefulness and true life. Each kandra got one of the four: Presence, Potency, Stability, or Awareness. It didn’t matter which one a kandra gained; any of the four would give him or her sentience, changing the mistwraith into a fully conscious kandra.