The Hero of Ages

precisely the combination Ruin needed.

There were other reasons, of course. But even Ruin didn't know them.

74

Day broke with no mists.

Elend stood atop the rocky heights in front of Fadrex City, looking out. He felt far better with a night's rest behind him, though his body ached from fighting, his arm throbbed where he'd been wounded, and his chest hurt where he'd carelessly allowed a koloss to punch him. The massive bruise would have crippled another man.

Koloss corpses littered the ground before the city, piled particularly high in the corridor leading into Fadrex itself. The whole area smelled of death and dried blood. Far more often than Elend would have liked, the field of blue corpses was broken by the lighter skin of a human. Still, Fadrex had survived-if only because of the last-minute addition of several thousand Allomancers and the eventual retreat of the koloss.

Why did they leave? Elend wondered, thankful yet frustrated. And, perhaps more importantly, where are they going?

Elend turned at the sound of footsteps on rock and saw Yomen climbing the rough-hewn steps to join him, puffing slightly, still pristine in his obligator's robes. Nobody had expected him to fight. He was, after all, a scholar, and not a warrior.

Like me, Elend thought, smiling wryly.

'The mists are gone,' Yomen said.

Elend nodded. 'Both day and night.'

'The skaa fled inside when the mists vanished. Some still refuse to leave their homes. For centuries, they feared being out at night because of the mists. Now the mists disappear, and they find it so unnatural that they hide again.'

Elend turned away, looking back out. The mists were gone, but the ash still fell. And it fell hard. The corpses that had fallen during the night hours were nearly buried.

'Has the sun always been this hot?' Yomen asked, wiping his brow.

Elend frowned, noticing for the first time that it did seem hot. It was still early morning, yet it already felt like noon.

Something is still wrong, he thought. Very wrong. Worse, even. The ash choked the air, blowing in the breeze, coating everything. And the heat. . shouldn't it have been getting colder as more ash flew into the air, blocking the sunlight? 'Form crews, Yomen,' Elend said. 'Have them pick through the bodies and search for wounded among that mess down there. Then, gather the people and begin moving them into the storage cavern. Tell the soldiers to be ready for. . for something. I don't know what.'

Yomen frowned. 'You sound as if you're not going to be here to help me.'

Elend turned eastward. 'I won't be.'

Vin was still out there somewhere. He didn't understand why she had said what she had about the atium, but he trusted her. Perhaps she had intended to distract Ruin with lies. Elend suspected that somehow, the people of Fadrex owed her their lives. She'd drawn the koloss away-she'd figured something out, something that he couldn't even guess at.

She always complains that she's not a scholar, he thought, smiling to himself. But that's just because she lacks education. She's twice as quick-witted as half the 'geniuses' I knew during my days at court.

He couldn't leave her alone. He needed to find her. Then. . well, he didn't know what they'd do next. Find Sazed, perhaps? Either way, Elend could do no more in Fadrex. He moved to walk down the steps, intending to find Ham and Cett. However, Yomen caught his shoulder.

Elend turned.

'I was wrong about you, Venture,' Yomen said. 'The things I said were undeserved.'

'You let me into your city when my men were surrounded by their own koloss,' Elend said. 'I don't care what you said about me. You're a good man in my estimation.'

'You're wrong about the Lord Ruler, though,' Yomen said. 'He's guiding this all.'

Elend just smiled.

'It doesn't bother me that you don't believe,' Yomen said, reaching up to his forehead. 'I've learned something. The Lord Ruler uses unbelievers as well as believers. We're all part of his plan. Here.'

Yomen pulled the bead of atium free from its place at his brow. 'My last bead. In case you need it.'

Elend accepted the bit of metal, rolling it over in his fingers. He'd never burned atium. For years, his family had overseen its mining-but, by the time Elend himself had become Mistborn, he'd already either spent what he'd been able to obtain, or had given it to Vin to be burned.

'How did you do it, Yomen?' he asked. 'How did you make it seem you were an Allomancer?'

'I am an Allomancer, Venture.'

'Not a Mistborn,' Elend said.

'No,' Yomen said. 'A Seer-an atium Misting.'

Elend nodded. He'd assumed that was impossible, but it was hard to rely on assumptions about anything anymore. 'The Lord Ruler knew about your power?'

Yomen smiled. 'Some secrets, he worked very hard to guard.'

Atium Mistings, Elend thought. That means there are others too. . gold Mistings, electrum Mistings. . Though, as he thought about it, some-like aluminum Mistings or duralumin Mistings-would be impossible to find because they couldn't use their metals without being able to burn other metals.

'Atium was too valuable to use in testing people for Allomantic powers anyway,' Yomen said, turning away. 'I never really found the power all that useful. How often does one have both atium and the desire to use it up in a few heartbeats? Take that bit and go find your wife.'

Elend stood for a moment, then tucked the bead of atium away and went down to give Ham some instructions. A few minutes later, he was streaking across the landscape, doing his best to fly with the horseshoes as Vin had taught him.

Each Hemalurgic spike driven through a person's body gave Ruin some small ability to influence them. This was mitigated, however, by the mental fortitude of the one being controlled.

In most cases-depending on the size of the spike and the length of time it had been worn-a single spike gave Ruin only minimal powers over a person. He could appear to them, and could warp their thoughts slightly, making them overlook certain oddities-for instance, their compulsion for keeping and wearing a simple earring.

75

Sazed gathered his notes, carefully stacking the thin sheets of metal. Though the metal served an important function in keeping Ruin from modifying-or perhaps even reading-their contents, Sazed found them a bit frustrating. The plates were easily scratched, and they couldn't be folded or bound.

The kandra elders had given him a place to stay, and it was surprisingly lush for a cave. Kandra apparently enjoyed human comforts-blankets, cushions, mattresses. Some even preferred to wear clothing, though those who didn't declined to create genitals for their True Bodies. That left him wondering about scholarly sorts of questions. They reproduced by transforming mistwraiths into kandra, so genitals would be redundant. Yet, the kandra identified themselves by gender-each was definitely a 'he' or a 'she.' So, how did they know? Did they choose arbitrarily, or did they actually know what they would have been, had they been born human rather than as a