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It ground against stone as it littered beneath

Sazed froze, his strength--and body--deflating as he released his pewterain The room was silent Sazed stared at the half-covered pit, and at the enorets hidden in the floor

"The Trust, we call it," Haddek said with a soft voice "Given for our safekeeping by the Father"

Atiuasped "The Lord Ruler's atiu"

"Most of that atium never left the Pits of Hathsin," Haddek said "There were obligators on staff at all times--but never Inquisitors, for the Father knew that they could be corrupted The obligators broke the geodes in secret, inside of a metal room constructed for the purpose, then took out the atiueodes to Luthadel, never knowing that they didn't have any atiuet, and distribute, to the nobility was brought in by the obligators They disguised the atium as Ministry funds and hid the beads in piles of coins so that Ruin wouldn't see them as they were transported in convoys full of new acolytes to Luthadel"

Sazed stood, du Just a short distance from the very caves where Kelsier raised his army A short journey from Luthadel, completely unprotected all these years

Yet hidden so well

"You worked for atiu up "The kandra Contracts, they were paid in atiuather all of it we could What didn't end up in our hands, the Mistborn burned away Some of the houses kept small stockpiles, but the Father's taxes and fees keptback to him as payments And, eventually, almost all of it ended up here"

Sazed looked down Such a fortune, he thought Suchpower Atium never had fit in with the other metals Every one of them, even aluh natural processes Atiule place, its appearance e Its power had allowed one to do so else in Allomancy or Feruche of ods

It was more than just a metal It was condensed concentrated power Power that Ruin would want Very badly

TenSoon pushed toward the crest of the hill, lad he had switched to the horse's body, for a wolfhound could never have ly where he was, li his visibility I will never er Even pushing hard,too slowly to get far from the Homeland

He finally crested the hill, his breath co snorts out the horse's snout

At the top of the hill he froze, shocked The landscape before hi

Tyrian, closest of the ashmounts to Luthadel, stood in the near distance, half of its top blown free from soues of flaed with flowing lava It was a deep, powerful red Even froainst hi upon a landscape that had once contained villages, forests, and roads All was now gone, burnt away The earth had cracked in the distance, andout of it

By the First Contract, he thought with despair He could detour to the south, continue on to Fadrex as if he'd coht line froet up the motivation

It was too late

Yes, there are sixteen hly unlikely that the Lord Ruler did not know of them all Indeed, the fact that he spoke of several on the plates in the storage caches meant that he knew at least of those

I must assume that he did not tell mankind of theive hiet of Preservation's body that made men into Mistborn

Or, perhaps he sih power in the ten s we shall never know Part ofthe thousand-year reign of the Lord Ruler, howthat they were Mistings, simply be1cause their ive us a slight advantage, at the end Ruin had a lot of trouble giving duralumin to his Inquisitors, since they'd need an Allomancer who could burn it to kill before they could use it And, since none of the duralus in the world knew about their power, they didn't burn it and reveal themselves to Ruin That left most Inquisitors without the power of duralumin, save in a few iot it from a Mistborn This was usually considered a waste, for if one killed a Mistborn with Hey, one could draw out only one of their sixteen powers and lost the rest Ruin considered it ain access to all of their power

72

IT BEGAN RAINING just before Vin reached Luthadel A quiet, cold drizzle that wetted the night, but did not banish the mists

She flared her bronze In the distance, she could sense Allo her There were at least a dozen of the in on her position

She landed on the city wall, bare feet slipping just slightly on the stones Beyond her stretched Luthadel, even now proud in its sprawl Founded a thousand years before by the Lord Ruler, it was built atop the Well of Ascension itself During the ten centuries of his reign, Luthadel had burgeoned, beco the most important--and most crowded--place in all of the e

Vin stood up straight, looking out over the vast city Pockets of flaht fire The fla the various sluht In their light, she could see that the city was a wreck Entire swathes of the town had been torn apart, the buildings broken or burned The streets were eerily vacant--nobody fought the fires, nobody huddled in the gutters

The capital, once hoh Vin's rain-wetted hair and she felt a shiver The mists, as usual, stayed away from her--pushed aside by her Alloest city in the world