The Mistborn Trilogy

by Brandon Sanderson

  She saw that, too. Outside the palace, in the city, across the land. People in the mists, shaking, falling. Many stayed indoors, thankfully. The traditions of the skaa were still strong within them.

  Some were out, however. Those who trusted in Kelsier’s words that the mists could not hurt them. But now the mists could. They had changed, bringing death.

  This was the Deepness. Mists that killed. Mists that were slowly covering the entire land. The deaths were sporadic; Vin saw many falling dead, but saw others simply falling sick, and still others going about in the mists as if nothing were wrong.

  It will get worse, the Voice said quietly. It will kill and destroy. And, if you try to stop it yourself, you will ruin the world, as Rashek did before you.

  “Elend…” she whispered. She turned toward him, bleeding on the floor.

  At that moment, she remembered something. Something Sazed had said. You must love him enough to trust his wishes, he had told her. It isn’t love unless you learn to respect him—not what you assume is best, but what he actually wants….

  She saw Elend weeping. She saw him focusing on her, and she knew what he wanted. He wanted his people to live. He wanted the world to know peace, and the skaa to be free.

  He wanted the Deepness to be defeated. The safety of his people meant more to him than his own life. Far more.

  You’ll know what to do, he’d told her just moments before. I trust you….

  Vin closed her eyes, and tears rolled down her cheeks. Apparently, gods could cry.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  She let the power go. She held the capacity to become a deity in her hands, and she gave it away, releasing it to the waiting void. She gave up Elend.

  Because she knew that was what he wanted.

  The cavern immediately began to shake. Vin cried out as the flaring power within her was ripped away, soaked up greedily by the void. She screamed, her glow fading, then fell into the now empty pool, head knocking against the rocks.

  The cavern continued to shake, dust and chips falling from the ceiling. And then, in a moment of surreal clarity, Vin heard a single, distinct sentence ringing in her mind.

  I am FREE!

  59

  …for he must not be allowed to release the thing that is imprisoned there.

  Vin lay, quietly, weeping.

  The cavern was still, the tempest over. The thing was gone, and the thumping in her mind was finally quiet. She sniffled, arms around Elend, holding him as he gasped his final few breaths. She’d screamed for help, calling for Ham and Spook, but had gotten no response. They were too far away.

  She felt cold. Empty. After holding that much power, then having it ripped from her, she felt like she was nothing. And, once Elend died, she would be.

  What would be the point? she thought. Life doesn’t mean anything. I’ve betrayed Elend. I’ve betrayed the world.

  She wasn’t certain what had happened, but somehow she’d made a horrible, horrible mistake. The worst part was, she had tried so hard to do what was right, even if it hurt.

  Something loomed above her. She looked up at the mist spirit, but couldn’t even really feel rage. She was having trouble feeling anything at the moment.

  The spirit raised an arm, pointing.

  “It’s over,” she whispered.

  It pointed more demandingly.

  “I won’t get to them in time,” she said. “Besides, I saw how bad the cut was. Saw it with the power. There’s nothing any of them could do, not even Sazed. So, you should be pleased. You got what you wanted…” She trailed off. Why had the spirit stabbed Elend?

  To make me heal him, she thought. To keep me…from releasing the power.

  She blinked her eyes. The spirit waved its arm.

  Slowly, numbly, she got to her feet. She watched the spirit in a trance as it floated a few steps over and pointed at something on the ground. The room was dark, now that the pool was empty, and was illuminated only by Elend’s lantern. She had to flare tin to see what the spirit was pointing at.

  A piece of pottery. The disk Elend had taken from the shelf in the back of the room, and had been holding in his hand. It had broken when he’d collapsed.

  The mist spirit pointed urgently. Vin approached and bent over, fingers finding the small nugget of metal that had been at the disk’s center.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  The mist spirit turned and drifted back to Elend. Vin walked up quietly.

  He was still alive. He seemed to be getting weaker, and was trembling less. Eerily, as he grew closer to death, he actually seemed a bit more in control. He looked at her as she knelt, and she could see his lips moving.

  “Vin…” he whispered.

  She knelt beside him, looked at the bead of metal, then looked up at the spirit. It stood motionless. She rolled the bead between her fingers, then moved to eat it.

  The spirit moved urgently, shaking its hands. Vin paused, and the spirit pointed at Elend.

  What? she thought. However, she wasn’t really in a state to think. She held the nugget up to Elend. “Elend,” she whispered, leaning close. “You must swallow this.”

  She wasn’t certain if he understood her or not, though he did appear to nod. She placed the bit of metal in his mouth. His lips moved, but he started to choke.

  I have to get him something to wash it down, she thought. The only thing she had was one of her metal vials. She reached into the empty well, retrieving her earring and her sash. She pulled free a vial, then poured the liquid into his mouth.

  Elend continued to cough weakly, but the liquid did its work well, washing down the bead of metal. Vin knelt, feeling so powerless, a depressing contrast to how she had been just moments before. Elend closed his eyes.

  Then, oddly, the color seemed to return to his cheeks. Vin knelt, confused, watching him. The look on his face, the way he lay, the color of his skin…

  She burned bronze, and with shock, felt pulses coming from Elend.

  He was burning pewter.

  Epilogue

  Two weeks later, asolitary figure arrived at the Conventical of Seran.

  Sazed had left Luthadel quietly, troubled by his thoughts and by the loss of Tindwyl. He’d left a note. He couldn’t stay in Luthadel. Not at the moment.

  The mists still killed. They struck random people who went out at night, with no discernible pattern. Many of the people did not die, but only became sick. Others, the mists murdered. Sazed didn’t know what to make of the deaths. He wasn’t even certain if he cared. Vin spoke of something terrible she had released at the Well of Ascension. She had expected Sazed to want to study and record her experience.

  Instead, he had left.

  He made his way through the solemn, steel-plated rooms. He half expected to be confronted by one Inquisitor or another. Perhaps Marsh would try to kill him again. By the time he and Ham had returned from the storage cavern beneath Luthadel, Marsh had vanished again. His work had, apparently, been done. He’d stalled Sazed long enough to keep him from stopping Vin.

  Sazed made his way down the steps, through the torture chamber, and finally into the small rock room he’d visited on his first trip to the Conventical, so many weeks before. He dropped his pack to the ground, working it open with tired fingers, then looked up at the large steel plate.

  Kwaan’s final words stared back at him. Sazed knelt, pulling a carefully tied portfolio from his pack. He undid the string, and then removed his original rubbing, made in this very room months before. He recognized his fingerprints on the thin paper, knew the strokes of the charcoal to be his own. He recognized the smudges he had made.

  With growing nervousness, he held the rubbing up and slapped it against the steel plate on the wall.

  And the two did not match.

  Sazed stepped back, uncertain what to think now that his suspicions had been confirmed. The rubbing slipped limply from his fingers, and his eyes found the sentence at the end of the plate. The last sentence, the
one that the mist spirit had ripped free time and time again. The original one on the steel plate was different from the one Sazed had written and studied.

  Alendi must not reach the Well of Ascension, Kwaan’s ancient words read, for he must not be allowed to release the thing that is imprisoned there.

  Sazed sat down quietly. It was all a lie, he thought numbly. The religion of the Terris people…the thing the Keepers spent millennia searching for, trying to understand, was a lie. The so-called prophecies, the Hero of Ages…a fabrication.

  A trick.

  What better way for such a creature to gain freedom? Men would die in the name of prophecies. They wanted to believe, to hope. If someone—something—could harness that energy, twist it, what amazing things could be accomplished….

  Sazed looked up, reading the words on the wall, reading the second half once again. It contained paragraphs that were different from his rubbing.

  Or, rather, his rubbing had been changed somehow. Changed to reflect what the thing had wished Sazed to read. I write these words in steel, Kwaan’s first words said, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted.

  Sazed shook his head. They should have paid attention to that sentence. Everything he had studied after that had, apparently, been a lie. He looked up at the plate, scanning its contents, coming to the final section.

  And so, they read, I come to the focus of my argument. I apologize. Even forcing my words into steel, sitting and scratching in this frozen cave, I am prone to ramble.

  This is the problem. Though I believed in Alendi at first, I later became suspicious. It seemed that he fit the signs, true. But, well, how can I explain this?

  Could it be that he fit them too well?

  I know your argument. We speak of the Anticipation, of things foretold, of promises made by our greatest prophets of old. Of course the Hero of Ages will fit the prophecies. He will fit them perfectly. That’s the idea.

  And yet…something about all this seems so convenient. It feels almost as if we constructed a hero to fit our prophecies, rather than allowing one to arise naturally. This was the worry I had, the thing that should have given me pause when my brethren came to me, finally willing to believe.

  After that, I began to see other problems. Some of you may know of my fabled memory. It is true; I need not a Feruchemist’s metalmind to memorize a sheet of words in an instant. And I tell you, call me daft, but the words of the prophecies are changing.

  The alterations are slight. Clever, even. A word here, a slight twist there. But the words on the pages are different from the ones in my memory. The other Worldbringers scoff at me, for they have their metalminds to prove to them that the books and prophecies have not changed.

  And so, this is the great declaration I must make. There is something—some force—that wants us to believe that the Hero of Ages has come, and that he must travel to the Well of Ascension. Something is making the prophecies change so that they refer to Alendi more perfectly.

  And whatever this power is, it can change words within a Feruchemist’s metalmind.

  The others call me mad. As I have said, that may be true. But must not even a madman rely on his own mind, his own experience, rather than that of others? I know what I have memorized. I know what is now repeated by the other Worldbringers. The two are not the same.

  I sense a craftiness behind these changes, a manipulation subtle and brilliant. I have spent the last two years in exile, trying to decipher what the alterations could mean. I have come to only one conclusion. Something has taken control of our religion, something nefarious, something that cannot be trusted. It misleads, and it shadows. It uses Alendi to destroy, leading him along a path of death and sorrow. It is pulling him toward the Well of Ascension, where the millennial power has gathered. I can only guess that it sent the Deepness as a method of making mankind more desperate, of pushing us to do as it wills.

  The prophecies have changed. They now tell Alendi that he must give up the power once he takes it. This is not what was once implied by the texts—they were more vague. And yet, the new version seems to make it a moral imperative. The texts now outline a terrible consequence if the Hero of Ages takes the power for himself.

  Alendi believes as they do. He is a good man—despite it all, he is a good man. A sacrificing man. In truth, all of his actions—all of the deaths, destructions, and pains that he has caused—have hurt him deeply. All of these things were, in truth, a kind of sacrifice for him. He is accustomed to giving up his own will for the common good, as he sees it.

  I have no doubt that if Alendi reaches the Well of Ascension, he will take the power and then—in the name of the presumed greater good—will give it up. Give it away to this same force that has changed the texts. Give it up to this force of destruction that has brought him to war, that has tempted him to kill, that has craftily led him to the north.

  This thing wants the power held in the Well, and it has raped our religion’s holiest tenets in order to get it.

  And so, I have made one final gamble. My pleas, my teachings, my objections, and even my treasons were all ineffectual. Alendi has other counselors now, ones who tell him what he wants to hear.

  I have a young nephew, one Rashek. He hates all of Khlennium with the passion of envious youth. He hates Alendi even more acutely—though the two have never met—for Rashek feels betrayed that one of our oppressors should have been chosen as the Hero of Ages.

  Alendi will need guides through the Terris Mountains. I have charged Rashek with making certain that he and his trusted friends are chosen as those guides. Rashek is to try and lead Alendi in the wrong direction, to dissuade him, discourage him, or otherwise foil his quest. Alendi doesn’t know that he has been deceived, that we’ve all been deceived, and he will not listen to me now.

  If Rashek fails to lead the trek astray, then I have instructed the lad to kill Alendi. It is a distant hope. Alendi has survived assassins, wars, and catastrophes. And yet, I hope that in the frozen mountains of Terris, he may finally be exposed. I hope for a miracle.

  Alendi must not reach the Well of Ascension, for he must not be allowed to release the thing that is imprisoned there.

  Sazed sat back. It was the final blow, the last strike that killed whatever was left of his faith.

  He knew at that moment that he would never believe again.

  Vin found Elend standing on the city wall, looking over the city of Luthadel. He wore a white uniform, one of the ones that Tindwyl had made for him. He looked…harder than he had just a few weeks before.

  “You’re awake,” she said, moving up beside him.

  He nodded. He didn’t look at her, but continued to watch the city, with its bustling people. He’d spent quite a bit of time delirious and in bed, despite the healing power of his newfound Allomancy. Even with pewter, the surgeons had been uncertain if he’d survive.

  He had. And, like a true Allomancer, he was up and about the first day he was lucid.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  She shook her head, leaning against the stones of the battlement. She could still hear that terrible, booming voice. I am FREE….

  “I’m an Allomancer,” Elend said.

  She nodded.

  “Mistborn, apparently,” he continued.

  “I think…we know where they came from, now,” Vin said. “The first Allomancers.”

  “What happened to the power? Ham didn’t have a straight answer for me, and all anyone else knows are rumors.”

  “I set something free,” she whispered. “Something that shouldn’t have been released; something that led me to the Well. I should never have gone looking for it, Elend.”

  Elend stood in silence, still regarding the city.

  She turned, burying her head in his chest. “It was terrible,” she said. “I could feel that. And I set it free.”

  Finally, Elend wrapped his arms around her. “You did the best you could, Vin,” he said. “In fact, you did the right thing. How could you have
known that everything you’d been told, trained, and prepared to do was wrong?”

  Vin shook her head. “I am worse than the Lord Ruler. In the end, maybe he realized he was being tricked, and knew he had to take the power rather than release it.”

  “If he’d been a good man, Vin,” Elend said, “he wouldn’t have done the things he did to this land.”

  “I may have done far worse,” Vin said. “This thing I released…the mists killing people, and coming during the day…Elend, what are we going to do?”

  He looked at her for a moment, then turned back toward the city and its people. “We’re going to do what Kelsier taught us, Vin. We’re going to survive.”

  THE END OF BOOK TWO

  ARS ARCANUM

  1. Metals Quick-Reference Chart

  2. Names and Terms

  3. Summary of Book One

  You can also find extensive annotations of every chapter in the book, along with deleted scenes, a very active blog, and expanded world information at www.brandonsanderson.com.

  NAMES AND TERMS

  ALENDI: A man who conquered the world a thousand years ago, before the Lord Ruler’s Ascension. Vin found his journal in the Lord Ruler’s palace, and thought—at first—that he had become the Lord Ruler. It was later discovered that his servant, Rashek, killed him and took his place. Alendi was a friend and protégé of Kwaan, a Terris scholar who thought that Alendi might be the Hero of Ages.

  ALLOMANCY: A mystical hereditary power involving the burning of metals inside the body to gain special abilities.