The Bands of Mourning (Mistborn #6) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,133

right about her clothing—it was ragged, pierced in several dozen places, her left trouser leg ripped completely at the thigh.

She’d compacted her body, somehow. Most of her fatty curves had become taut muscles instead, and she’d taken off her hair, storing it in the pack Allik carried, leaving her bald.

Wax knelt beside her, glancing down the hallway with its spikes, pits, poison darts, and other strange mechanisms. The entire temple seemed to be one long passage, intended to be as hard to move through as possible.

Something about this is wrong, Wax thought. But what?

MeLaan stirred on the ground.

“Rest a moment,” Wax said, hand on her shoulder.

“I don’t know if we have a moment, Ladrian,” she said, sitting up and accepting a canteen of water from the nervous Allik. Telsin stood nearby with arms folded, obviously annoyed at how long this was taking. She kept glancing over her shoulder, as if at any moment she expected to find Suit there to take her again.

“How are your bones?” Wax asked MeLaan.

She held up her left arm—or tried to. It had snapped at the middle of the humerus, and the rest of her arm dangled.

Wax breathed out. “You’re sure that doesn’t hurt?”

“Turned off the nerves that cause pain,” she said. “A trick we’ve learned over the last centuries. And since my bones are crystal, they can’t feel.” She grimaced as the arm straightened, the break seeming to heal. But it hadn’t, Wax knew—she couldn’t make bone, or heal it. “Another patch?”

She nodded. She had stretched ligament along the sides of the break to hold it tight. She’d done that with many of her bones already.

MeLaan moved to rise.

“We can find another way,” Wax said, standing. “Break in through one of the walls up ahead, or the roof maybe.”

“And how long will that take?”

“Depends on how much we care about what’s inside.”

“And wouldn’t it be silly to come all this way, then ruin the Bands of Mourning because of our impatience?”

Wax looked down the hallway. They were most of the way through it, so he put off pushing her further. He could see a door ahead.

“You might not have to do much more anyway,” Wax said. “I think I have the pattern figured out.”

“What pattern?” MeLaan asked.

“Pressure plate under the second stone to your right,” Wax said. “Shoots darts.”

She glanced at him, then stepped forward and tapped it with her toe. Darts spat from the wall, passed before her, and bounced against the opposite wall.

“Next one is two stones ahead,” Wax said. “There’s a hint of a metal line leading underneath it. So far, those have been wall traps.”

Another toe press. A portion of the wall opened, dropping a very large spiked log.

“Nice,” MeLaan said.

“Last one should be a pit trap,” Wax said, joining her in walking around the fallen log. “Check your rope. The stones those are under are raised slightly.”

She tugged on it, using her right hand because the fingers of her left had been crushed. The crystal had broken beyond repair, and she now walked with the hand permanently shut, splinters of bones fused together by tendons.

“I hate the pit ones,” she said. “They just keep going down. Makes me afraid of what might be at the bottom.”

She stepped on the section of floor he indicated, and Wax held tightly to his side of the rope, which was tied about his waist. But instead of a pit trap, the ceiling opened, dropping a block of something. MeLaan jumped back, and the block of strangely colored ice banged to the stones beneath. It was wet, its surface oddly oily-looking.

“What in Harmony’s Rings—” MeLaan said, squatting to inspect the ice.

“Acid, maybe?” Wax said. “It looks like whatever they stored up there was a liquid, but it separated over time, and half froze.”

MeLaan stared at it a long time.

“What?” Wax asked.

“Nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “So that’s it?”

“Best as I can tell.” Together, they stepped up before the end of the hallway, at a door made of stone. But there was no handle. The rest of the wall was thick stone as well.

There were some markings carved into the door, if indeed that was what it was. Circles, with symbols in them, inlaid in silver. Wax looked to Allik.

“I don’t recognize any of those,” the pilot said after swapping his metalminds. “If they’re writing, it’s not a language I understand.”

“What do you want to do?” MeLaan asked.

“Let’s get the others,” Wax said, thoughtful. “More brains to solve this will be helpful, and Marasi