The Hero of Ages

"Different?" Elend asked, doing up the buttons on his jacket sleeves. "What is different about Tindwyl's death? She fell during the assault on Luthadel. So did Clubs and Dockson. You killed my own father in that battle, and I beheaded my best friend shortly before it. We've all lost people."



"He said something like that himself," Vin said. "But, it's more than just one death to him. I think he sees a kind of betrayal in Tindwyl's death—he always was the only one of us who had faith. He lost that w1hen she died, somehow."



"The only one of us who had faith?" Elend asked, plucking a wooden, silver-painted pin off his desk and affixing it to his jacket. "What about this?"



"You belong to the Church of the Survivor, Elend," Vin said. "But you don't have faith. Not like Sazed did. It was like . . . he knew everything would turn out all right. He trusted that something was watching over the world."



"He'll deal with it."



"It's not just him, Elend," Vin said. "Breeze tries too hard."



"What does that mean?" Elend asked with amusement.



"He Pushes on everyone's emotions," Vin said. "He Pushes too hard, trying to make others happy, and he laughs too hard. He's afraid, worried. He shows it by overcompensating."



Elend smiled. "You're getting as bad as he is, reading everybody's emotions and telling them how they're feeling."



"They're my friends, Elend," Vin said. "I know them. And, I'm telling you—they're giving up. One by one, they're beginning to think we can't win this one."



Elend fastened the final button, then looked at himself in the mirror. Sometimes, he still wondered if he fit the ornate suit, with its crisp whiteness and implied regality. He looked into his own eyes, looking past the short beard, warrior's body, and scarred skin. He looked into those eyes, searching for the king behind them. As always, he wasn't completely impressed with what he saw.



He carried on anyway, for he was the best they had. Tindwyl had taught him that. "Very well," he said. "I trust that you're right about the others—I'll do something to fix it."



That, after all, was his job. The title of emperor carried with it only a single duty.



To make everything better.



"All right," Elend said, pointing to a map of the empire hanging on the wall of the conference tent. "We timed the arrival and disappearance of the mists each day, then Noorden and his scribes analyzed them. They've given us these perimeters as a guide."



The group leaned in, studying the map. Vin sat at the back of the tent, as was still her preference. Closer to the shadows. Closer to the exit. She'd grown more confident, true—but that didn't make her careless. She liked to be able to keep an eye on everyone in the room, even if she did trust them.



And she did. Except maybe Cett. The obstinate man sat at the front of the group, his quiet teenage son at his side, as always. Cett—or, King Cett, one of the monarchs who had sworn allegiance to Elend—had an unfashionable beard, an even more unfashionable mouth, and two legs that didn't work. That hadn't kept him from nearly conquering Luthadel over a year before.



"Hell," Cett said. "You expect us to be able to read that thing?"



Elend tapped the map with his finger. It was a rough sketch of the empire, similar to the one they'd found in the cavern, only more up to date. It had several large concentric circles inscribed on it.



"The outermost circle is the place where the mists have completely taken the land, and no longer leave at all during the daylight." Elend moved his finger inward to another circle. "This circle passes through the village we just visited, where we found the cache. This marks four hours of daylight. Everything inside the circle gets more than four hours. Everythin1g outside of it gets less."



"And the final circle?" Breeze asked. He sat with Allrianne as far away from Cett as the tent would allow. Cett still had a habit of throwing things at Breeze: insults, for the most part, and occasionally knives.



Elend eyed the map. "Assuming the mists keep creeping toward Luthadel at the same rate, that circle represents the area that the scribes feel will get enough sunlight this summer to support crops."



The room fell silent.



Hope is for the foolish, Reen's voice seemed to whisper in the back of Vin's mind. She shook her head. Her brother, Reen, had trained her in the ways of the street and the underground, teaching her to be mistrustful and paranoid. In doing so, he'd also taught her to survive. It had taken Kelsier to show her that it was possible to both trust and survive—and it had been a hard lesson. Even so, she still often heard Reen's phantom voice in the back of her mind—more a memory than anything else—whispering her insecurities, bringing back the brutal things he had taught her.



"That's a fairly small circle, El," Ham said, still studying the map. The large-muscled man sat with General Demoux between Cett and Breeze. Sazed sat quietly to the side. Vin glanced at him, trying to judge if their previous conversation had lifted his depression any, but she couldn't tell.



They were a small group: only nine, if one counted Cett's son, Gneorndin. But, it included pretty much all that was left of Kelsier's crew. Only Spook, doing reconnaissance in the North, was missing. Everyone was focused on the map. The final circle was, indeed, very small—not even as big as the Central Dominance, which held the imperial capital of Luthadel. What the map said, and Elend implied, was that over ninety percent of the empire wouldn't be able to support crops this summer.



"Even this small bubble will be gone by next winter," Elend said.



Vin watched the others contemplate, and realize—if they hadn't already—the horror of what was upon them. It's like Alendi's logbook said, she thought. They couldn't fight the Deepness with armies. It destroyed cities, bringing a slow, terrible death. They were helpless.



The Deepness. That was what they'd called the mists—or, at least, that was what the surviving records called them. Perhaps the thing they fought, the primal force Vin had released, was behind the obfuscation. There was really no way of knowing for sure what had once been, for the entity had the power to change records.



"All right, people," Elend said, folding his arms. "We need options. Kelsier recruited you because you could do the impossible. Well, our predicament is pretty impossible."



"He didn't recruit me," Cett pointed out. "I got pulled by my balls into this little fiasco."



"I wish I cared enough to apologize," Elend said, staring at them. "Come on. I know you have thoughts."



"Well, my dear man," Breeze said, "the most obvious option appears to be the Well of Ascension. It seems the power there was built to fight the mists."



"Or to free the thing hiding in them," Cett said.



"That doesn't matter," Vin said, causing heads to turn. "There's no power at the Well. It's gone. Used up. If it ever returns, it will be in another thousand years, I suspect."



"That's a little bit long to stretch the supplies in those storage caches," Elend 1said.



"What if we grew plants that need very little light?" Ham asked. As always, he wore simple trousers and a vest. He was a Thug, and could burn pewter—which made him resistant to heat and cold. He'd cheerfully walk around sleeveless on a day that would send most men running for shelter.



Well, maybe not cheerfully. Ham hadn't changed overnight, as Sazed had. Ham, however, had lost some of his joviality. He tended to sit around a lot, looks of consternation on his face, as if he were considering things very, very carefully—and not much liking the answers he came up with.



"There are plants that don't need light?" Allrianne asked, cocking her head.



"Mushrooms and the like," Ham said.



"I doubt we could feed an entire empire on mushrooms," Elend said. "Though it's a good thought."



"There have to be other plants, too," Ham said. "Even if the mists come all day, there will be some light that gets through. Some plants have to be able to live on that."



"Plants we can't eat, my dear man," Breeze pointed out.



"Yes, but maybe animals can," Ham said.



Elend nodded thoughtfully.



"Blasted little time left for horticulture," Cett noted. "We should have been working on this sort of thing years ago."



"We didn't know most of this until a few months ago," Ham said.



"True," Elend said. "But the Lord Ruler had a thousand years to prepare. That's why he made the storage caverns—and we still don't know what the last one contains."



"I don't like relying on the Lord Ruler, Elend," Breeze said with a shake of his head. "He must have prepared those caches knowing that he'd be dead if anyone ever had to use them."



Cett nodded. "The idiot Soother has a point. If I were the Lord Ruler, I'd have stuffed those caches with poisoned food and pissed-in water. If I were dead, then everyone else ought to be as well."



"Fortunately, Cett," Elend said with a raised eyebrow, "the Lord Ruler has proven more altruistic than we might have expected."



"Not something I ever thought I'd hear," Ham noted.



"He was emperor," Elend said. "We may not have liked his rule, but I can understand him somewhat. He wasn't spiteful—he wasn't even evil, exactly. He just . . . got carried away. Besides, he resisted this thing that we're fighting."



"This thing?" Cett asked. "The mists?"



"No," Elend said. "The thing that was trapped in the Well of Ascension."



It is called Ruin, Vin thought suddenly. It will destroy everything.



"This is why I've decided we need to secure that last cache," Elend said. "The Lord Ruler lived through this once—he knew how to prepare. Perhaps we'll find plants that can grow without sunlight. Each of the caches so far has had repeats—food stores, water—but each one has held something new as well. In Vetitan, we found large stores of the first eight Allomantic metals. The thing in that last cache might be just what we need in order to survive."



"That's it, then!" Cett said, smiling broadly through his beard. "We are marching on Fadrex, aren't we?"



Elend nod1ded curtly. "Yes. The main force of the army will march for the Western Dominance once we break camp here."



"Ha!" Cett said. "Penrod and Janarle can suck on that for a few days."



Vin smiled faintly. Penrod and Janarle were the two other most important kings under Elend's imperial rule. Penrod governed Luthadel, which was why he wasn't with them currently, and Janarle ruled the Northern Dominance—the kingdom that included House Venture's hereditary lands.



The largest city in the north, however, had been seized in a revolt while Janarle—with Elend's father, Straff Venture—had been away laying siege to Luthadel. So far, Elend hadn't been able to spare the troops necessary to take Urteau back from its dissidents, so Janarle ruled in exile, his smaller force of troops used to maintain order in the cities he did control.



Both Janarle and Penrod had made a point of finding reasons to keep the main army from marching on Cett's homeland.