Brandon SANDERSON - The Bands of Mourning

The power was gone. She’d handed it over to Waxillium, but instead of feeling deflated, she felt … peaceful. Hers was the serenity of a woman who’d lain stretched out on a perfect summer day, feeling the sun as it slowly sank. Yes, the light was gone now, but oh what a joy it had been.

Poor MeLaan was still here, and her form had started to incorporate the bones, slowly assembling them in a strange configuration. With no spikes, she’d become a mistwraith. Marasi knelt beside her, but wasn’t certain what comfort she could offer. At the very least, MeLaan seemed to still be alive.

Marasi rose, then hurried down the hallway with the traps, reaching the entryway with the murals. Outside, a war was going on, hundreds of gunshots echoing in the cold, snow-filled night. She was surprised to see that the people in masks seemed to be winning. The soldiers had been pushed back to the edge of the stone field, their backs to a series of gulfs and cliffs. They had nowhere to retreat, and many of their number lay dead or wounded.

She thought she saw Waxillium’s influence in the way some of those bodies lay, as if tossed through the air to land crumpled. Marasi nodded in satisfaction. Let him do the job he came to do.

She still had one of her own to finish. She strode out of the temple, down the steps past the statue of the Lord Ruler holding what now, with the spearhead removed, appeared to be only a staff.

Now where would she find–

A loud gunshot from quite nearby. She swiveled her head, searching for the source. A second one sounded.

A moment later, Wayne emerged through the snowstorm, head down, expression shadowed. He carried a shotgun on his shoulder, and clutched not one, but three small metal spikes in his other hand.

Wax stood quietly on the bridge of the ship, waiting for his uncle to move.

This didn’t work the way it did in the stories. You didn’t outdraw a man; couldn’t happen, not without Feruchemical speed. If you waited for him to start moving, you would be too slow. He’d tried it with blanks on the fastest men he knew.

The man who drew first got the first shot. That was that.

Suit drew.

Wax Pushed on the metal window frame behind him. He crossed the distance between them in a blur, even as Suit fired. The bullet hit Wax in the shoulder, but Wax collided with the surprised Suit, knocking them both to the floor of the bridge.

Suit grabbed his arm. Wax’s metal reserves vanished.

“Aha!” Suit said. “I made myself a Leecher! I can drain the metals from anyone who touches me, Waxillium. You’re dead. No Bands. No Allomancy. I win.”

Wax grunted, clinging tight to Suit as they rolled. “You forget,” he said. “I’m not surprised. You’ve always hated it. I’m a Terrisman, Uncle.”

He increased his weight manyfold.

He tapped everything he had in his arm bracer, hundreds of hours spent being lighter than he should have been. He brought it all out in one moment of desperation.

The airship lurched. And then the floor shattered.

Wax clung to Suit as they fell, holding him tight, though one hand was weakening from the gunshot. They crashed through two levels of the ship – Suit’s body, which tapped healing, bearing the brunt of the damage – before smashing out the bottom, battered, bleeding, and thrashed by splintered wood.

Suit looked horrified. “You fool! You–”

Wax spun them in the air, pointing Suit downward as they plummeted. Snow-filled air was a roaring wind around them, flakes streaking past.

Suit screamed.

And then he Pushed.

Suit dropped the coin from his mouth and used his Allomancy to Push it downward in a straight shot. It hit the approaching ground and slowed the two of them with a lurch.

Wax decreased his weight just enough that Suit’s Push was sufficient to keep them alive. They crashed into the snow, some distance from the plateau with the temple.

Wax recovered first. He lurched to his feet and pulled Suit up by one hand, the two of them standing alone in a field of white. Suit looked up at him, dazed by the fall and the impact.

“The definition of a lawman, Uncle, is easy,” Wax said, feeling blood from a dozen cuts trickle down his face. He lifted Suit by the front of his clothing, bringing him close. “He’s the man who takes the bullet so nobody else has to.”

With that, Wax decked him across the face and dropped him to the snow, unconscious.

MeLaan swam in a sea of terror. Terror within her own mind; a piece of her knowing this was not right. This being ruled by instinct, this craven set of impulses.

But this was what she did. Food. She needed food.

No. First a place to hide. From the trembling sounds. Hide away, find a crack. She continued building a body that would let her walk. Flee.

So cold. She didn’t understand coldness. It wasn’t a thing that should be. And she couldn’t taste dirt, just stone. Stone everywhere.

Frozen stone.

She felt like screaming. Something was missing. Not food. Not a place to hide, but … something. Something was horribly, horribly, horribly wrong.

An object dropped on her. It was cold, but not stone. This wasn’t food. She enfolded it and intended to spit it away, but then something happened.

Something wonderful. She gobbled up the second one as it was dropped, and began to undulate, frantic. It came back . Memory. Knowledge. Rationality.

Self.

She exulted in it, ignoring the little holes that were now poked in her memory. She remembered most of the trip here, but something had happened in the room with the Bands.… No, the Bands hadn’t been there, and …

She formed eyes first, and she knew what she would see when she opened them. She’d already tasted him on the air, and knew his flavor.

“Welcome back,” Wayne said, grinning. “I think we won.”

Marasi accepted the canteen from Allik. It steamed from the top although it was only lukewarm to the touch. She sat on the steps up to the temple, swathed in about forty blankets. She’d surrendered her medallion to one of the Malwish people until more could be secured from the airship.

And its recovery was an interesting sight to say the least. Waxillium stood on the rocky section before the plateau, heaving with two hands and Pulling on nothing visible. Up ahead, the rogue airship slowly sank through the snow-filled sky, drawn toward Waxillium on an invisible tether.

“Will it break apart?” Allik asked.

She looked at him with surprise, then down at his language medallion.

“Warm choc and a blanket will do me for a minute,” he said, settling down and pulling his blanket around him. “Others are in greater need, yah? The ship. Will it break?”

Marasi looked up toward it. She could imagine Suit’s people aboard, trying desperately to make the engines work harder, the fans blow more powerfully. It sank anyway. Waxillium Ladrian – bearing the Bands of Mourning and supremely annoyed – was like a force of nature.

She smiled and sipped her drink.

“Rusts!” she said, looking at it. “What is this?” It was sweet, thick, warm, chocolaty, and wonderful .

“Choc,” he said. “Sometimes it is a man’s only succor in this frozen, lonely world, yah?”

“You drink chocolate ?”

“Sure. Don’t you?”

She never had. Plus, this was far sweeter than the chocolate she was used to. Not bitter at all. She took a long, soothing draught. “Allik, this is the most wonderful thing I’ve ever experienced. And I just held the powers of creation themselves.”