The Mistborn Trilogy

by Brandon Sanderson

  “If you please, Lady Vin,” Sazed said apprehensively. “That is quite fragile. The rubbing could be smudged….”

  Vin nodded, putting it down and scanning his transcription. There had been a time when she would have avoided anything that smelled of stuffy writing, but now she looked intrigued. “This mentions the Deepness!” she said with excitement.

  “Among other things,” Sazed said, joining her at the desk. He sat down, and Vin walked over to one of the room’s low-backed, plush chairs. However, she didn’t sit on it as an ordinary person would; instead, she hopped up and sat down on the top of the chair’s back, her feet resting on the seat cushion.

  “What?” she asked, apparently noticing Sazed’s smile.

  “Just amused at a proclivity of Mistborn, Lady Vin,” he said. “Your kind has trouble simply sitting—it seems you always want to perch instead. That is what comes from having such an incredible sense of balance, I think.”

  Vin frowned, but passed over the comment. “Sazed,” she said, “what was the Deepness?”

  He laced his fingers before himself, regarding the young woman as he mused. “The Deepness, Lady Vin? That is a subject of much debate, I think. It was supposedly something great and powerful, though some scholars have dismissed the entire legend as a fabrication concocted by the Lord Ruler. There is some reason to believe this theory, I think, for the only real records of those times are the ones sanctioned by the Steel Ministry.”

  “But, the logbook mentions the Deepness,” Vin said. “And so does that thing you’re translating now.”

  “Indeed, Lady Vin,” Sazed said. “But, even among those who assume the Deepness was real, there is a great deal of debate. Some hold to the Lord Ruler’s official story, that the Deepness was a horrible, supernatural beast—a dark god, if you will. Others disagree with this extreme interpretation. They think the Deepness was more mundane—an army of some sort, perhaps invaders from another land. The Farmost Dominance, during pre-Ascension times, was apparently populated with several breeds of men who were quite primitive and warlike.”

  Vin was smiling. He looked at her questioningly, and she just shrugged. “I asked Elend this same question,” she explained, “and I got barely a sentence-long response.”

  “His Majesty has different areas of scholarship; pre-Ascension history may be too stuffy a topic even for him. Besides, anyone who asks a Keeper about the past should be prepared for an extended conversation, I think.”

  “I’m not complaining,” Vin said. “Continue.”

  “There isn’t much more to say—or, rather, there is a great deal more to say, but I doubt much of it has relevance. Was the Deepness an army? Was it, perhaps, the first attack from koloss, as some theorize? That would explain much—most stories agree that the Lord Ruler gained some power to defeat the Deepness at the Well of Ascension. Perhaps he gained the support of the koloss, and then used them as his armies.”

  “Sazed,” Vin said. “I don’t think the Deepness was the koloss.”

  “Oh?”

  “I think it was the mist.”

  “That theory has been proposed,” Sazed said with a nod.

  “It has?” Vin asked, sounding a bit disappointed.

  “Of course, Lady Vin. During the thousand-year reign of the Final Empire, there are few possibilities that haven’t been discussed, I think. The mist theory has been advanced before, but there are several large problems with it.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well,” Sazed said, “for one thing, the Lord Ruler is said to have defeated the Deepness. However, the mist is obviously still here. Also, if the Deepness was simply mist, why call it by such an obscure name? Of course, others point out that much of what we know or have heard of the Deepness comes from oral lore, and something very common can take on mystical properties when transferred verbally through generations. The ‘Deepness’ therefore could mean not just the mist, but the event of its coming or alteration.

  “The larger problem with the mist theory, however, is one of malignance. If we trust the accounts—and we have little else to go on—the Deepness was terrible and destructive. The mist seems to display none of this danger.”

  “But it kills people now.”

  Sazed paused. “Yes, Lady Vin. It apparently does.”

  “And what if it did so before, but the Lord Ruler stopped it somehow? You yourself said that you think we did something—something that changed the mist—when we killed the Lord Ruler.”

  Sazed nodded. “The problems I have been investigating are quite terrible, to be certain. However, I do not see that they could be a threat on the same level as the Deepness. Certain people have been killed by the mists, but many are elderly or otherwise lacking in constitution. It leaves many people alone.”

  He paused, tapping his thumbs together. “But, I would be remiss if I didn’t admit some merit to the suggestion, Lady Vin. Perhaps even a few deaths would be enough to cause a panic. The danger could have been exaggerated by retelling—and, perhaps the killings were more widespread before. I haven’t been able to collect enough information to be certain of anything yet.”

  Vin didn’t respond. Oh, dear, Sazed thought, sighing to himself. I’ve bored her. I really do need to be more careful, watching my vocabulary and my language. One would think that after all my travels among the skaa, I would have learned—

  “Sazed?” Vin said, sounding thoughtful. “What if we’re looking at it wrong? What if these random deaths in the mists aren’t the problem at all?”

  “What do you mean, Lady Vin?”

  She sat quietly for a moment, one foot tapping back idly against the chair’s back cushion. She finally looked up, meeting his eyes. “What would happen if the mists came during the day permanently?”

  Sazed mused on that for a moment.

  “There would be no light,” Vin continued. “Plants would die, people would starve. There would be death…chaos.”

  “I suppose,” Sazed said. “Perhaps that theory has merit.”

  “It’s not a theory,” Vin said, hopping down from her chair. “It’s what happened.”

  “You’re so certain, already?” Sazed asked with amusement.

  Vin nodded curtly, joining him at the desk. “I’m right,” she said with her characteristic bluntness. “I know it.” She pulled something out of a trouser pocket, then drew over a stool to sit beside him. She unfolded the wrinkled sheet and flattened it on the desk.

  “These are quotes from the logbook,” Vin said. She pointed at a paragraph. “Here the Lord Ruler talks about how armies were useless against the Deepness. At first, I thought this meant that the armies hadn’t been able to defeat it—but look at the wording. He says ‘The swords of my armies are useless.’ What’s more useless than trying to swing a sword at mist?”

  She pointed at another paragraph. “It left destruction in its wake, right? Countless thousands died because of it. But, he never says that the Deepness actually attacked them. He says that they ‘died because of it.’ Maybe we’ve just been looking at this the wrong way all along. Those people weren’t crushed or eaten. They starved to death because their land was slowly being swallowed by the mists.”

  Sazed studied her paper. She seemed so certain. Did she know nothing of proper research techniques? Of questioning, of studying, of postulating and devising answers?

  Of course she doesn’t, Sazed chastised himself. She grew up on the streets—she doesn’t use research techniques.

  She just uses instinct. And she’s usually right.

  He smoothed the paper again, reading its passages. “Lady Vin? Did you write this yourself?”

  She flushed. “Why is everybody so surprised about that?”

  “It just doesn’t seem in your nature, Lady Vin.”

  “You people have corrupted me,” she said. “Look, there isn’t a single comment on this sheet that contradicts the idea that the Deepness was mist.”

  “Not contradicting a point and proving it are different things, L
ady Vin.”

  She waved indifferently. “I’m right, Sazed. I know I am.”

  “What about this point, then?” Sazed asked, pointing to a line. “The Hero implies that he can sense a sentience to the Deepness. The mist isn’t alive.”

  “Well, it does swirl around someone using Allomancy.”

  “That isn’t the same thing, I think,” Sazed said. “He says that the Deepness was mad…destructively insane. Evil.”

  Vin paused. “There is something, Sazed,” she admitted.

  He frowned.

  She pointed at another section of notes. “Do you recognize these paragraphs?” It isn’t a shadow, the words read.

  This dark thing that follows me, the thing that only I can see—it isn’t really a shadow. It is blackish and translucent, but it doesn’t have a shadowlike solid outline. It’s insubstantial—wispy and formless. Like it’s made out of a dark fog.

  Or mist, perhaps.

  “Yes, Lady Vin,” Sazed said. “The Hero saw a creature following him. It attacked one of his companions, I think.”

  Vin looked in his eyes. “I’ve seen it, Sazed.”

  He felt a chill.

  “It’s out there,” she said. “Every night, in the mists. Watching me. I can feel it, with Allomancy. And, if I get close enough, I can see it. As if formed from the mist itself. Insubstantial, yet somehow still there.”

  Sazed sat quietly for a moment, not certain what to think.

  “You think me mad,” Vin accused.

  “No, Lady Vin,” he said quietly. “I don’t think any of us are in a position to call such things madness, not considering what is happening. Just…are you certain?”

  She nodded firmly.

  “But,” Sazed said. “Even if this is true, it does not answer my question. The logbook author saw that same creature, and he didn’t refer to it as the Deepness. It was not the Deepness, then. The Deepness was something else—something dangerous, something he could feel as evil.”

  “That’s the secret, then,” Vin said. “We have to figure out why he spoke of the mists that way. Then we’ll know…”

  “Know what, Lady Vin?” Sazed asked.

  Vin paused, then looked away. She didn’t answer, instead turning to a different topic. “Sazed, the Hero never did what he was supposed to. Rashek killed him. And, when Rashek took the power at the Well, he didn’t give it up like he was supposed to—he kept it for himself.”

  “True,” Sazed said.

  Vin paused again. “And the mists have started killing people. They’ve started coming during the day. It’s…like things are repeating again. So…maybe that means that the Hero of Ages will have to come again.”

  She glanced back at him, looking a bit…embarrassed? Ah… Sazed thought, sensing her implication. She saw things in the mists. The previous Hero had seen the same things. “I am not certain that is a valid statement, Lady Vin.”

  She snorted. “Why can’t you just come out and say ‘you’re wrong,’ like regular people?”

  “I apologize, Lady Vin. I have had much training as a servant, and we are taught to be nonconfrontational. Nevertheless, I do not think that you are wrong. However, I also think that, perhaps, you haven’t fully considered your position.”

  Vin shrugged.

  “What makes you think that the Hero of Ages will return?”

  “I don’t know. Things that happen; things I feel. The mists are coming again, and someone needs to stop them.”

  Sazed ran his fingers across his translated section of the rubbing, looking over its words.

  “You don’t believe me,” Vin said.

  “It isn’t that, Lady Vin,” Sazed said. “It’s just that I am not prone to rushing to decisions.”

  “But, you’ve thought about the Hero of Ages, haven’t you?” Vin said. “He was part of your religion—the lost religion of Terris, the thing you Keepers were founded to try and discover.”

  “That is true,” Sazed admitted. “However, we do not know much about the prophecies that our ancestors used to find their Hero. Besides, the reading I’ve been doing lately suggests that there was something wrong with their interpretations. If the greatest theologians of pre-Ascension Terris were unable to properly identify their Hero, how are we supposed to do so?”

  Vin sat quietly. “I shouldn’t have brought it up,” she finally said.

  “No, Lady Vin, please don’t think that. I apologize—your theories have great merit. I simply have a scholar’s mind, and must question and consider information when I am given it. I am far too fond of arguing, I think.”

  Vin looked up, smiling slightly. “Another reason you never made a good Terris steward?”

  “Undoubtedly,” he said with a sigh. “My attitude also tends to cause conflicts with the others of my order.”

  “Like Tindwyl?” Vin asked. “She didn’t sound happy when she heard that you’d told us about Feruchemy.”

  Sazed nodded. “For a group dedicated to knowledge, the Keepers can be rather stingy with information about their powers. When the Lord Ruler still lived—when Keepers were hunted—the caution was warranted, I think. But, now that we are free from that, my brethren and sisters seem to have found the habit of secrecy a difficult one to break.”

  Vin nodded. “Tindwyl doesn’t seem to like you very much. She says that she came because of your suggestion, but every time someone mentions you, she seems to get…cold.”

  Sazed sighed. Did Tindwyl dislike him? He thought, perhaps, that her inability to do so was a large part of the problem. “She is simply disappointed in me, Lady Vin. I’m not sure how much you know of my history, but I had been working against the Lord Ruler for some ten years before Kelsier recruited me. The other Keepers thought that I endangered my copperminds, and the very order itself. They believed that the Keepers should remain quiet—waiting for the day when the Lord Ruler fell, but not seeking to make it happen.”

  “Seems a bit cowardly to me,” Vin said.

  “Ah, but it was a very prudent course. You see, Lady Vin, had I been captured, there are many things I could have revealed. The names of other Keepers, the location of our safe houses, the means by which we managed to hide ourselves in Terris culture. My brethren worked for many decades to make the Lord Ruler think that Feruchemy had finally been exterminated. By revealing myself, I could have undone all of that.”

  “That would only have been bad had we failed,” Vin said. “We didn’t.”

  “We could have.”

  “We didn’t.”

  Sazed paused, then smiled. Sometimes, in a world of debate, questions, and self-doubt, Vin’s simple bluntness was refreshing. “Regardless,” he continued, “Tindwyl is a member of the Synod—a group of Keeper elders who guide our sect. I have been in rebellion against the Synod a number of times during my past. And, by returning to Luthadel, I am defying them once again. She has good reason to be displeased with me.”

  “Well, I think you’re doing the right thing,” Vin said. “We need you.”

  “Thank you, Lady Vin.”

  “I don’t think you have to listen to Tindwyl,” she said. “She’s the type who acts like she knows more than she does.”

  “She is very wise.”

  “She’s hard on Elend.”

  “Then she probably does so because it is best for him,” Sazed said. “Do not judge her too harshly, child. If she seems off-putting, it is only because she has lived a very hard life.”

  “Hard life?” Vin asked, tucking her notes back into her pocket.

  “Yes, Lady Vin,” Sazed said. “You see, Tindwyl spent most of her life as a Terris mother.”

  Vin hesitated, hand in pocket, looking surprised. “You mean…she was a Breeder?”

  Sazed nodded. The Lord Ruler’s breeding program included selecting a few, special individuals to use for birthing new children—with the goal being to breed Feruchemy out of the population.

  “Tindwyl had, at last count, birthed over twenty children,” he said. “Each
with a different father. Tindwyl had her first child when she was fourteen, and spent her entire life being taken repeatedly by strange men until she became pregnant. And, because of the fertility drugs the Breeding masters forced upon her, she often bore twins or triplets.”

  “I…see,” Vin said softly.

  “You are not the only one who knew a terrible childhood, Lady Vin. Tindwyl is perhaps the strongest woman I know.”

  “How did she bear it?” Vin asked quietly. “I think…I think I would probably have just killed myself.”

  “She is a Keeper,” Sazed said. “She suffered the indignity because she knew that she did a great service for her people. You see, Feruchemy is hereditary. Tindwyl’s position as a mother ensured future generations of Feruchemists among our people. Ironically, she is exactly the sort of person that the Breeding masters were supposed to avoid letting reproduce.”

  “But, how did such a thing happen?”

  “The breeders assumed they’d already cut Feruchemy out of the population,” Sazed said. “They started looking to create other traits in the Terris—docility, temperance. They bred us like fine horses, and it was a great stroke when the Synod managed to get Tindwyl chosen for their program.

  “Of course, Tindwyl has very little training in Feruchemy. She did, fortunately, receive some of the copperminds that we Keepers carry. So, during her many years locked away, she was able to study and read biographies. It was only during the last decade—her childbearing years through—that she was able to join and gain fellowship with the other Keepers.”

  Sazed paused, then shook his head. “By comparison, the rest of us have known a life of freedom, I think.”

  “Great,” Vin mumbled, standing and yawning. “Another reason for you to feel guilty.”

  “You should sleep, Lady Vin,” Sazed noted.

  “For a few hours,” Vin said, walking toward the door, leaving him alone again with his studies.

  31

  In the end, my pride may have doomed us all.

  Philen Frandeu was not skaa. He had never been skaa. Skaa made things or grew things. Philen sold things. There was an enormous difference between the two.