فصل 28

28

Wax stilled.

Wayne let the hand fall limp. He wanted to just sit here. Stare at nothing like those fellows in rows nearby, the ones that weren’t crushed. Sit and become nothing.

All his life, only one man had believed in him. Only one man had forgiven him, had encouraged him. The rest of this damned race could burn away and become ash, for all Wayne cared. He hated them all.

But … what would Wax say?

He left me, the bastard, Wayne thought, wiping his eyes. In that moment, he hated Wax too. But then, Wayne loved him more than the hatred. He growled, and stumbled to his feet. He had no weapons; he’d dropped his dueling canes above.

He stared at Wax’s body, then knelt and felt along the man’s leg. He got ahold of something and yanked it free. The shotgun.

Wayne’s hands immediately started shaking.

“You stop that,” he hissed at them. “We’re done with that.” He cocked the shotgun, then went looking for a way out of this tomb.

The whole temple is a decoy, Marasi thought, trembling in the cold. So where are the actual Bands?

The place was built for the Lord Ruler, who would supposedly return to claim his weapon. Where would you put that weapon?

He’d know what it looked like, Marasi thought. He built it. We think it was in the shape of bracers, but it didn’t have to be. Could be anything.

That would be smart, if you were making a weapon. These metalminds, you had to know what they did before they worked. You could protect yourself, so only someone who knew what to look for could use your weapon.

And in that case, the people who built the temple could have left the weapon where the returning Lord Ruler would see it, but everyone else would pass right by, digging farther into the temple to encounter traps, pits, and decoys—all designed to either kill them or convince them that they’d successfully robbed the place.

Where did you put the weapon? On the doorstep, under the sign of the Sovereign himself, in his very own hand. Marasi turned, frantic, searching out the oversized spearhead.

It lay right beside her, where the guard had dropped it. Waxillium had called it aluminum because he couldn’t sense it, but he hadn’t looked closely enough.

If he had, he’d have seen it was made of different interwoven metals, wavy, like the folds forged into the blade of a sword. He couldn’t Push on it, not because it was aluminum.

But because it was a metalmind, stored with more power than any they’d ever seen.

Around Wax, everything became misty and indistinct. The cavern, the rocks, the ground itself—all just mist. He could stand on it somehow.

Harmony stepped up beside Wax in the misty darkness. They fell in beside one another, walking as was natural for men to do. God looked much as Wax had always imagined Him. Tall, peaceful, hands laced before Himself. Face like a long oval, serene and human, though He towed behind Him a cloak of timelessness. Wax could see it, trailing after. Storms and winds, clouds and rain, deserts and forests, all reflected somehow in this creature’s wake. His robe was the Terris V pattern, where each V was not a color, but an age. A strata of time, like those of a deep rock uncovered.

“They say,” Wax said softly, “that You come to all people when they die.” “It is a duty I consider to be among my most sacred,” Harmony said. “Even with other pressing matters, I find time to take this walk.” He had a quiet voice, familiar to Wax. Like that of a forgotten friend.

“I’m dead then.”

“Yes,” Harmony said. “Your body, mind, and soul have separated. Soon one will return to the earth, another to the cosmere, and the third … Even I do not know.” Wax continued walking. The shadowy cavern vanished, and Wax had a feeling of blurring. Mists became darkness, and all he could see was a distant light, like the sun below the horizon.

“If You can take time to walk with us,” Wax said, bitter, “why not come a little earlier? Why not stop the walk before it must begin?” “Should I prevent all hardship, Waxillium?”

“I know where this is going,” Wax said. “I know what You’re going to say. You value choice. Everyone theorizes about it. But You can help. You’ve done it before, in placing me where I needed to go. You intervene. So why not intervene more? Prevent children from being killed. Make certain that constables arrive in time to stop deaths. You don’t have to take away choice, but You could do more. I know You could.” He left the last part unsaid.

You could have saved her. Or at least told me what I was doing.

Harmony nodded. It felt bizarre to be demanding things, but rusts … if this was the end, Wax wanted a few answers.

“What is it to be God, Waxillium?” Harmony asked.

“I don’t think that’s a question I can answer.”

“It is not one I ever thought I’d have to answer either,” Harmony said. “But obviously, it has been forced upon me. You would have me intervene and stop the murders of innocents. I could do this. I have considered it. If I were to stop every one, what then? Do I stop maimings as well?” “Of course,” Wax said.

“And where do I hold back, Waxillium? Do I prevent all wounds, or do I prevent only those caused by evil people? Do I stop a man from falling asleep so that he will not tip a candle and burn down his house? Do I stop all harm that could ever befall a person?” “Maybe.”

“And once nobody is ever hurt,” Harmony said, “will people be satisfied? Will they not pray to me and ask for more? Will some people still curse and spit at the sound of my name because they are poor, while another is rich? Should I mitigate this, make everyone the same, Waxillium?” “I won’t be caught in this trap,” Wax said. “You’re the God, not me. You can find a line where You prevent the worst. You can find a line where You’re stopping the worst that is reasonable, while still letting us live our lives.” The light ahead suddenly rolled outward, and Wax found that they’d been rounding a planet. They stood high above it, and had stepped from darkness into sunlight, which let Wax see the world below, bathed in a calm, cool light.

Beyond that hung a haze of red. All around, pressing in upon the world. He could feel it choking him, a miasma of dread and destruction.

“Perhaps,” Harmony said softly, “I have already done just as you suggest. You do not see it, because the worst never reaches you.” “What is it?” Wax asked, trying to take in that vast redness. It beat inward, but he could see something, a thin strip of light—like a bubble around the world—stopping it.

“A representation,” Harmony said. “A crude one, perhaps.” He looked to Wax and smiled, like a father at a wide-eyed child.

“We’re not done with our conversation,” Wax said. “You let her die. You let me kill her.” “And how long,” Harmony asked softly, “must you hate yourself for that?” Wax clenched his jaw, but couldn’t force down the trembling that took him. He lived it again, holding her as she died. Knowing he’d killed her.

That hatred seethed inside of him. Hatred for Harmony. Hatred for the world.

And yes. Hatred for himself.

“Why?” Wax asked.

“Because you demanded it of me.”

“No I didn’t!”

“Yes. A part of you did. An eventuality I can see, one of many possible Waxilliums, all you—yet not set. Know yourself, Waxillium. Would you have had another kill her? Someone she didn’t know?” “No,” he whispered.

“Would you have had her live on, a slave in her mind? Corrupted by that cursed spike that would forever leave her scarred, even if replaced?” “No.” He was crying.

“And if you had known,” Harmony said, holding his eyes, “that you’d never have been able to pull that trigger unless your eyes were veiled? If you’d realized what knowledge of the truth would do to you—stilling your hand and trapping her in an endless prison of madness—what would you have asked of me?” “Don’t tell me,” Wax whispered, squeezing his eyes shut.

The silence seemed to stretch until eternity.

“I am sorry,” Harmony said with a gentle voice, “for your pain. I am sorry for what you did, what we had to do. But I am not sorry for making you do what had to be done.” Wax opened his eyes.

“And when I hold back, staying my hand from protecting those below,” Harmony said, “I must do it out of trust in what people can do on their own.” He glanced toward the red haze. “And because I have other problems to occupy me.” “You didn’t tell me what it was,” Wax said.

“That is because I do not know.”

“That … frightens me.”

Harmony looked to him. “It should.”

Down below, a tiny spark flickered on one of the landmasses. Wax blinked. He’d seen it, despite the incredible distance.

“What was that?” he asked.

Harmony smiled. “Trust.”

Marasi clutched the spearhead in two hands.

And tapped everything.

Power flooded into her, lighting her up like an inferno. Snow hung motionless in the air. She stood up and reached to the belt of one of her captors, removing one of his vials of metal. She took them all, several from each guard, and drank them. She was tapping a metalmind, letting her move at a speed so fast that when she lifted her hand, she could briefly see the pocket of vacuum left behind. She smiled.

Then she burned her metals. All of them.

In that one transcendent moment, she felt herself change, expand. She felt the Lord Ruler’s own power, stored in the Bands of Mourning—the spearhead clutched in her fingers—surge through her, and she felt she would burst. It was as if an ocean of light had suddenly been pumped into her arteries and veins.

Blue lines exploded from her, first pointing at metals, then multiplying, changing, transforming. She saw through it all, everything in blue. There were no people or objects, just energy coalesced. The metals shone brilliantly, as if they were holes into someplace different. Concentrated essence, providing a pathway to power.

She was using the reserves with startling quickness. She slowed her speed, and for some reason the people beside her jumped, holding their ears. She cocked her head, then PUSHED.

The Push flung the guards a good fifty feet. That left her facing Suit and Telsin, who regarded her with horrified expressions. They were glowing energy to her, but she recognized them. They had spikes inside of them.

Convenient. Those spikes resisted Pushes, but not enough to bother Marasi now. She lifted a hand and flung both of them away by the very metals they’d used to pierce themselves.

All around, guards grabbed guns and turned on her. She swept them backward, then lifted herself off the ground, Pushing on the trace minerals in the stone beneath her.

She hung there, and was surprised to see something spinning around her. Mist? Where was it coming from?

Me, she realized.

She hovered in the sky, flush with power. In that moment, she was the Ascendant Warrior. She held the fullness of what Waxillium had barely tasted his whole life. She could be him, eclipse him. She could bring justice to entire peoples. Holding it all within her, having it and measuring it, she finally admitted the truth to herself.

This isn’t what I want.

She would not let her childhood dreams hold sway over her any longer. She smiled, then threw herself through the air in a Push toward the temple.

Steris watched her sister fly away.

“Unexpected,” she said. And here she assumed she’d been prepared for anything. Marasi starting to glow, throwing people around with Allomancy as if they were dolls, then streaking away and leaving a trail of mist … well, that hadn’t been on the list. It hadn’t even made the appendix.

She looked down at poor Allik, so cold he’d stopped shivering. “I shall have to enlarge my projections of what is plausible during activities such as this, don’t you think?” He mumbled something in his language. “Foralate men!” He waved his hand in a gesture. “Forsalvin!” “Telling me to flee without you?” Steris said, walking over and retrieving her notebook. “Yes, running while they are all confused would be wise, but I don’t plan to leave yet.” She opened the notebook, which she’d hollowed out with Wax’s knife in the rear of the skimmer, while Marasi was talking with Allik up front and the others slept. “Did you know that when I evaluated everyone’s usefulness on this expedition, I gave myself a seven out of a hundred? Not very high, yes, but I couldn’t reasonably give myself the lowest mark possible. I do have my uses.” She turned the large notebook, showing an extra medallion from the skimmer’s emergency store settled protectively into the gouged-out section she’d made.

She smiled at Allik, pulled it free, and pressed it into his hand. He let out a long, relieved sigh, and the blown snow that had stuck to his face melted away.

Nearby, soldiers were regaining their feet and shouting to one another.

“And now,” Steris said, “I think your earlier suggestion has merit.” * * *

“Now what?” Wax asked Harmony. “I fade off into nothing?” “I don’t believe it’s nothing,” God said. “There is something beyond. Though perhaps my belief is merely my own desire wishing it to be so.” “You are not encouraging me. Aren’t You omnipotent?” “Hardly,” Harmony said, smiling. “But I believe that parts of me could be.” “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It won’t until I make it do so,” Harmony said, extending His hands to either side. “In answer to your question, however, you don’t fade just yet. Though soon. Right now, you make a choice.” Wax looked from one of the deity’s hands to the other. “Does everyone get this choice?” “Their choices are different.” He proffered His hands to Wax, as if offering them for him to take.

“I don’t see the choice.”

“My right hand,” Harmony said, “is freedom. You can feel it, I think.” And he could. Soaring, released from all bonds, riding upon lines of blue light. Adventure into the unknown, seeking only the fulfillment of his own curiosity. It was glorious. It was what he’d always wanted, and its lure thrummed through him.

Freedom.

Wax gasped. “What … what is the other one?”

Harmony held up His left hand, and Wax heard something. A voice?

“Wax?” it said.

Yes, a frantic voice. Feminine.

“Wax, you have to know what it does. It will heal you, Wax. Waxillium! Please…” “That hand,” Wax said, looking at it. “That hand is duty, isn’t it?” “No, Waxillium,” Harmony said gently. “Although that is how you’ve seen it. Duty or freedom. Burden or adventure. You were always the one who made the right choice, when others played. And so you resent it.” “No I don’t,” Wax said.

Harmony smiled. The understanding in His face was infuriating.

“This hand,” Harmony said, “is not duty. It is but a different adventure.” “Wax…” the voice said from below, choked with emotion. It belonged to Marasi. “You have to tap the metalmind.” Wax reached toward the left hand, and Harmony—shockingly—pulled it away. “Are you certain?” “I have to.”

“Do you?”

“I have to. It’s who I am.”

“Then perhaps,” Harmony said, “you should stop hating that, my son.” He extended the hand.

Wax hesitated. “Tell me one thing first.”

“If it is within my means.”

“Did she come here? When she passed?”

Harmony smiled. “She asked me to look after you.” Wax seized the left hand with his own. He was immediately pulled toward something, like air being sucked through a hole. Warmth bathed him; then it became a fire. Pulling breath into his lungs, he screamed, heaving, throwing the boulder off. It clattered to the side, and he found himself in the low-roofed chamber beneath the temple.

Such strength! He hadn’t thrown that rock with muscles, but with steel. His body reknit even as he launched himself to his feet by Pushing on tiny traces of metal in the ground beneath him. He landed and looked down at his left hand. The one that had been dangling, broken, before his face as he died.

Clutched in it was an oversized spearhead crafted from sixteen different metals melded together. He looked up from it and toward Marasi, who regarded him with tearstained eyes, but a broad smile.

“You found it,” Wax said.

She nodded eagerly. “Just took a little old-fashioned detective work.” “You saved me,” Wax said.

Rust and Ruin … such power. He felt as if he could level cities or build them up anew.

“Suit and your sister are outside,” Marasi said. “I left the others there. I don’t— Well, I wasn’t thinking straight. Or maybe I was thinking too much. Here.” She handed him a vial of metals.

Wax took it, then held up the Bands. “You could have done this yourself.” “No,” Marasi said. “I couldn’t have.”

“But—”

“I couldn’t have,” Marasi said. “It just … isn’t me.” She shrugged. “Does that make sense?” “Surprisingly, yes.” He flexed his hand around the Bands.

“Go,” Marasi said. “Do what you do best, Waxillium Ladrian.” “Which is what? Break things?”

“Break things,” Marasi said, “with style.”

He grinned, then downed the vial of metals.