Page 286 of The Well of Ascension
The person stepped forward.
Elend jumped, taking a slight step backward, his foot crunching on a bit of ice-crusted snow.Don’t be silly,he told himself.Your mind is playing tricks on you. There’s nothing—
The shape in the mists took another step forward. It was indistinct, almost formless, and yet it seemed real. Random movements in the mists outlined its face, its body, its legs.
“Lord Ruler!” Elend yelped, jumping back. The thing continued to regard him.
I’m going mad,he thought, hands beginning to shake. The mist figure stopped a few feet in front of him and then raised its right arm and pointed.
North. Away from Luthadel.
Elend frowned, glancing in the direction the figure pointed. There was nothing but more empty mists. He turned back toward it, but it stood quietly, arm upraised.
Vin spoke of this thing,he remembered, forcing down his fear.She tried to tell me about it. And I thought she was making things up!She was right—just as she’d been right about the mists staying longer in the day, and the possibility of the mists being the Deepness. He was beginning to wonder which of them was the scholar.
The mist figure continued to point.
“What?” Elend asked, his own voice sounding haunting in the silent air.
It stepped forward, arm still raised. Elend put a useless hand to his sword, but held his ground.
“Tell me what you wish of me!” he said forcefully.
The thing pointed again. Elend cocked his head. It certainly didn’t seem threatening. In fact, he felt an unnatural feeling of peace coming from it.
Allomancy?he thought.It’s Pulling on my emotions!
“Elend?” Spook’s voice drifted out of the mists.
The figure suddenly dissolved, its form melting into the mists. Spook approached, his face dark and shadowed in the night. “Elend? What were you saying?”
Elend took his hand off his sword, standing upright. He eyed the mists, still not completely convinced that he wasn’t seeing things. “Nothing,” he said.
Spook glanced back the way he had come. “You should come look at this.”
“The army?” Elend asked, frowning.
Spook shook his head. “No. The refugees.”
“The Keepers are dead, my lord,” the old man said, sitting across from Elend. He didn’t have a tent, only a blanket stretched between several poles. “Either dead, or captured.”
Another man brought Elend a cup of warm tea, his demeanor servile. Both wore the robes of stewards, and while their eyes bespoke exhaustion, their robes and hands were clean.
Old habits,Elend thought, nodding thankfully and taking a sip of the tea.Terris’s people might have declared themselves independent, but a thousand years of servitude cannot be so easily thrown off.
The camp was an odd place. Spook said he counted nearly a thousand people in it—a nightmare of a number to care for, feed, and organize in the cold winter. Many were elderly, and the men were mostly stewards: eunuchs bred for genteel service, with no experience in hunting.
“Tell me what happened,” Elend said.
The elderly steward nodded, his head shaking. He didn’t seem particularly frail—actually, he had that same air of controlled dignity that most stewards exhibited—but his body had a slow, chronic tremble.
“The Synod came out into the open, my lord, once the empire fell.” He accepted a cup of his own, but Elend noticed that it was only half full—a precaution that proved wise as the elderly steward’s shaking nearly spilled its contents. “They became our rulers. Perhaps it was not wise to reveal themselves so soon.”
Not all Terrismen were Feruchemists; in fact, very few were. The Keepers—people like Sazed and Tindwyl—had been forced into hiding long ago by the Lord Ruler. His paranoia that Feruchemical and Allomantic lines might mix—thereby potentially producing a person with his same powers—had led him to try and destroy all Feruchemists.
“I’ve known Keepers, friend,” Elend said softly. “I find it hard to believe that they could have been easily defeated. Who did this?”
“Steel Inquisitors, my lord,” the old man said.
