The Mistborn Trilogy

by Brandon Sanderson

  Outside his cage, the caverns glowed with the light of cultivated mosses, and kandra went about their duties. Many stopped, studying him. This was the purpose of the long delay between his judgment and sentencing. The Second Generationers didn’t need weeks to ponder what they were going to do to him. However, TenSoon had forced them to let him speak his mind, and the Seconds wanted to make certain he was properly punished. They put him on display, like some human in the stocks. In all the history of the kandra people, no other had ever been treated in such a way. His name would be a byword of shame for centuries.

  But we won’t last centuries, he thought angrily. That was what my speech was all about.

  But, he hadn’t given it very well. How could he explain to the people what he felt? That their traditions were coming to a focus, that their lives—which had been stable for so long—were in drastic need of change?

  What happened above? Did Vin go to the Well of Ascension? What of Ruin, and Preservation? The gods of the kandra people were at war again, and the only ones who knew of them were pretending that nothing was happening.

  Outside his cage, the other kandra lived their lives. Some trained the members of the newer generations—he could see Elevenths moving along, little more than blobs with some glistening bones. The transformation from mistwraith to kandra was a difficult one. Once given a Blessing, the mistwraith would lose most of its instincts as it gained sentience, and would have to relearn how to form muscles and bodies. It was a process that took many, many years.

  Other adult kandra went about food preparation. They would stew a mixture of algae and fungi inside stone pits, not unlike the one in which TenSoon would spend eternity. Despite his former hatred of mankind, TenSoon had always found the opportunity to enjoy outside food—particularly aged meat—a very tempting consolation for going out on a Contract.

  Now, he barely had enough to drink, let alone enough to eat. He sighed, looking through the bars at the vast cavern. The caves of the Homeland were enormous, far too large for the kandra to fill. But, that was what many of his people liked about them. After spending years in a Contract—serving a master’s whims, often for decades at a time—a place that offered the option of solitude was quite precious.

  Solitude, TenSoon thought. I’ll have plenty of that, soon enough. Contemplating an eternity in prison made him a little less annoyed with the people who came to gawk at him. They would be the last of his people he ever saw. He recognized many of them. The Fourths and Fifths came to spit at the ground before him, showing their devotion to the Seconds. The Sixths and the Sevenths—who made up the bulk of the Contract fillers—came to pity him and shake their heads for a friend fallen. The Eighths and Ninths came out of curiosity, amazed that one so aged could have fallen so far.

  And then he saw a particularly familiar face amidst the watching groups. TenSoon turned aside, ashamed, as MeLaan approached, pain showing in those overly large eyes of hers.

  “TenSoon?” a whisper soon came.

  “Go away, MeLaan,” he said quietly, his back to the bars, which only let him look out at another group of kandra, watching him from the other side.

  “TenSoon . . .” she repeated.

  “You need not see me like this, MeLaan. Please go.”

  “They shouldn’t be able to do this to you,” she said, and he could hear the anger in her voice. “You’re nearly as old as they, and far more wise.”

  “They are the Second Generation,” TenSoon said. “They are chosen by those of the First. They lead us.”

  “They don’t have to lead us.”

  “MeLaan!” he said, finally turning toward her. Most of the gawkers stayed back, as if TenSoon’s crime were a disease they could catch. MeLaan crouched alone beside his cage, her True Body of spindly wooden bones making her look unnaturally slim.

  “You could challenge them,” MeLaan said quietly.

  “What do you think we are?” TenSoon asked. “Humans, with their rebellions and upheavals? We are kandra. We are of Preservation. We follow order.”

  “You still bow before them?” MeLaan hissed, pressing her thin face up against the bars. “After what you said—with what is happening above?”

  TenSoon paused. “Above?”

  “You were right, TenSoon,” she said. “Ash cloaks the land in a mantle of black. The mists come during the day, killing both crops and people. Men march to war. Ruin has returned.”

  TenSoon closed his eyes. “They will do something,” he finally said. “The First Generation.”

  “They are old,” MeLaan said. “Old, forgetful, impotent.”

  TenSoon opened his eyes. “You have changed much.”

  She smiled. “They should never have given children of a new generation to be raised by a Third. There are many of us, the younger ones, who would fight. The Seconds can’t rule forever. What can we do, TenSoon? How can we help you?”

  Oh, child, he thought. You don’t think that they know about you?

  Those of the Second Generation were not fools. They might be lazy, but they were old and crafty—TenSoon understood this, for he knew each of them quite well. They would have kandra listening, waiting to see what was said at his cage. A kandra of the Fourth or Fifth Generation who had the Blessing of Awareness could stand a distance away, and still hear every word being spoken at his cage.

  TenSoon was kandra. He had returned to receive his punishment because that was right. It was more than honor, more than Contract. It was who he was.

  And yet, if the things MeLaan had said were true . . .

  Ruin has returned.

  “How can you just sit here?” MeLaan said. “You’re stronger than they are, TenSoon.”

  TenSoon shook his head. “I broke Contract, MeLaan.”

  “For a higher good.”

  At least I convinced her.

  “Is it true, TenSoon?” she asked very quietly.

  “What?”

  “OreSeur. He had the Blessing of Potency. You must have inherited it, when you killed him. Yet, they didn’t find it on your body when they took you. So, what did you do with it? Can I fetch it for you? Bring it, so that you can fight?”

  “I will not fight my own people, MeLaan,” TenSoon said. “I am kandra.”

  “Someone must lead us!” she hissed.

  That statement, at least, was true. But, it wasn’t TenSoon’s right. Nor, really, was it the right of the Second Generation—or even the First Generation. It was the right of the one who had created them. That one was dead. But, another had taken his place.

  MeLaan was silent for a time, still kneeling beside his cage. Perhaps she waited for him to offer encouragement, or perhaps to become the leader she sought. He didn’t speak.

  “So, you just came to die,” she finally said.

  “To explain what I’ve discovered. What I’ve felt.”

  “And then what? You come, proclaim dread news, then leave us to solve the problems on our own?”

  “That’s not fair, MeLaan,” he said. “I came to be the best kandra I know how.”

  “Then fight!”

  He shook his head.

  “It’s true then,” she said. “The others of my generation, they said that you were broken by that last master of yours. The man Zane.”

  “He did not break me,” TenSoon said.

  “Oh?” MeLaan said. “And why did you return to the Homeland in that . . . body you were using?”

  “The dog’s bones?” TenSoon said. “Those weren’t given to me by Zane, but by Vin.”

  “So she broke you.”

  TenSoon exhaled quietly. How could he explain? On one hand, it seemed ironic to him that MeLaan—who intentionally wore a True Body that was inhuman—would find his use of a dog’s body so distasteful. Yet, he could understand. It had taken him quite some time to appreciate the advantages of those bones.

  He paused.

  But, no. He had not come to bring revolution. He had come to explain, to serve the interests of his people. He would do tha
t by accepting his punishment, as a kandra should.

  And yet . . .

  There was a chance. A slim one. He wasn’t even certain he wanted to escape, but if there was an opportunity . . . “Those bones I wore,” TenSoon found himself saying. “You know where they are?”

  MeLaan frowned. “No. Why would you want them?”

  TenSoon shook his head. “I don’t,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “They were disgraceful! I was made to wear them for over a year, forced into the humiliating role of a dog. I would have discarded them, but I had no corpse to ingest and take, so I had to return here wearing that horrid body.”

  “You’re avoiding the real issue, TenSoon.”

  “There is no real issue, MeLaan,” he said, turning away from her. Whether or not his plan worked, he didn’t want the Seconds punishing her for associating with him. “I will not rebel against my people. Please, if you truly wish to help me, just let me be.”

  MeLaan hissed quietly, and he heard her stand. “You were once the greatest of us.”

  TenSoon sighed as she left. No, MeLaan. I was never great. Up until recently, I was the most orthodox of my generation, a conservative distinguished only by his hatred of humans. Now, I’ve become the greatest criminal in the history of our people, but I did it mostly by accident.

  That isn’t greatness. That’s just foolishness.

  It should be no surprise that Elend became such a powerful Allomancer. It is a well-documented fact—though that documentation wasn’t available to most—that Allomancers were much stronger during the early days of the Final Empire.

  In those days, an Allomancer didn’t need duralumin to take control of a kandra or koloss. A simple Push or Pull on the emotions was enough. In fact, this ability was one of the main reasons that the kandra devised their Contracts with the humans—for, at that time, not only Mistborn, but Soothers and Rioters could take control of them at the merest of whims.

  21

  DEMOUX SURVIVED.

  He was one of the larger group, the fifteen percent who grew sick, but did not die. Vin sat atop the cabin of her narrowboat, arm resting on a wooden ledge, idly fingering her mother’s earring—which, as always, she wore in her ear. Koloss brutes trudged along the towpath, dragging the barges and boats down the canal. Many of the barges still carried supplies—tents, foodstuffs, pure water. Several had been emptied, however, their contents carried on the backs of the surviving soldiers, making room for the wounded.

  Vin turned away from the barges, looking toward the front of the narrowboat. Elend stood at the prow, as usual, staring west. He did not brood. He looked like a king, standing straight-backed, staring determinedly toward his goal. He looked so different now from the man he had once been, with his full beard, his longer hair, his uniforms that had been scrubbed white. They were growing worn. Not ragged . . . they were still clean and sharp, as white as things could get in the current state of the world. They were just no longer new. They were the uniforms of a man who had been at war for two years straight.

  Vin knew him well enough to sense that all was not well. However, she also knew him well enough to sense that he didn’t want to talk about it for the moment.

  She stood and stepped down, burning pewter unconsciously to heighten her balance. She slid a book off a bench beside the boat’s edge, and settled down quietly. Elend would talk to her eventually—he always did. For the moment, she had something else to engage her.

  She opened the book to the marked page and reread a particular paragraph. The Deepness must be destroyed, the words said. I have seen it, and I have felt it. This name we give it is too weak a word, I think. Yes, it is deep and unfathomable, but it is also terrible. Many do not realize that it is sentient, but I have sensed its mind, such as it is, the few times I have confronted it directly.

  She eyed the page for a moment, sitting back on her bench. Beside her, the canal waters passed, covered with a froth of floating ash.

  The book was Alendi’s logbook. It had been written a thousand years before by a man who had thought himself to be the Hero of Ages. Alendi hadn’t completed his quest; he had been killed by one of his servants—Rashek—who had then taken the power at the Well of Ascension and become the Lord Ruler.

  Alendi’s story was frighteningly close to Vin’s own. She had also assumed herself to be the Hero of Ages. She had traveled to the Well, and had been betrayed. She, however, hadn’t been betrayed by one of her servants—but instead by the force imprisoned within the Well. That force was, she assumed, behind the prophecies about the Hero of Ages in the first place.

  Why do I keep coming back to this paragraph? she thought, eyeing it again. Perhaps it was because of what Human had said to her—that the mists hated her. She had felt that hatred herself, and it appeared that Alendi had felt the same thing.

  But, could she even trust the logbook’s words? The force she had released, the thing she called Ruin, had proven that it could change things in the world. Small things, yet important ones. Like the text of a book, which was why Elend’s officers were now instructed to send all messages via memorized words or letters etched into metal.

  Regardless, if there had been any clues to be gained by reading the logbook, Ruin would have removed them long ago. Vin felt as if she’d been led by the nose for the last three years, pulled by invisible strings. She had thought she was having revelations and making great discoveries, but all she’d really been doing was following Ruin’s bidding.

  Yet, Ruin is not omnipotent, Vin thought. If it were, there would have been no fight. It wouldn’t have needed to trick me into releasing it.

  It cannot know my thoughts. . . .

  Even that knowledge was frustrating. What good were her thoughts? Always before, she’d had Sazed, Elend, or TenSoon to talk with about problems like this. This wasn’t a task for Vin; she was no scholar. Yet, Sazed had turned his back on his studies, TenSoon had returned to his people, and Elend was far too busy lately to worry about anything but his army and its politics. That left Vin. And she still found reading and scholarship to be stuffy and boring.

  Yet, she was also becoming more and more comfortable with the idea of doing what was necessary, even if she found it distasteful. She was no longer just her own person. She belonged to the New Empire. She had been its knife—now it was time to try a different role.

  I have to do it, she thought, sitting in the red sunlight. There is a puzzle here—something to be solved. What was it Kelsier liked to say?

  There’s always another secret.

  She remembered Kelsier, standing boldly before a small group of thieves, proclaiming that they would overthrow the Lord Ruler and free the empire. We’re thieves, he’d said. And we’re extraordinarily good ones. We can rob the unrobbable and fool the unfoolable. We know how to take an incredibly large task and break it down to manageable pieces, then deal with each of those pieces.

  That day, when he’d written up the team’s goals and plans on a small board, Vin had been amazed by how possible he had made an impossible task seem. That day, a little bit of her had begun to believe that Kelsier could overthrow the Final Empire.

  All right, Vin thought. I’ll begin like Kelsier did, by listing the things that I know for certain.

  There had been a power at the Well of Ascension, so that much about the stories was true. There had also been something alive, imprisoned in or near the Well. It had tricked Vin into using the power to destroy its bonds. Maybe she could have used that power to destroy Ruin instead, but she’d given it up.

  She sat thoughtfully, tapping her finger against the back of the logbook. She could still remember wisps of what it had felt like to hold that power. It had awed her, yet at the same time felt natural and right. In fact, while she held it, everything had felt natural. The workings of the world, the ways of men . . . it was like the power had been more than simple capability. It had been understanding as well.

  That was a tangent. She needed to focus on what she knew before she coul
d philosophize on what she needed to do. The power was real, and Ruin was real. Ruin had retained some ability to change the world while confined—Sazed had confirmed that his texts had been altered to suit Ruin’s purpose. Now Ruin was free, and Vin assumed that it was behind the violent mist killings and the falling ash.

  Though, she reminded herself, I don’t know either of those things for certain. What did she know about Ruin? She had touched it, felt it, in that moment she had released it. It had a need to destroy, yet it was not a force of simple chaos. It didn’t act randomly. It planned and thought. And, it didn’t seem able to do anything it wanted. Almost as if it followed specific rules . . .

  She paused. “Elend?” she called.

  The emperor turned from his place beside the prow.

  “What is the first rule of Allomancy?” Vin asked. “The first thing I taught you?”

  “Consequence,” Elend said. “Every action has consequences. When you Push on something heavy, it will push you back. If you Push on something light, it will fly away.”

  It was the first lesson that Kelsier had taught Vin, as well as—she assumed—the first lesson his master had taught him.

  “It’s a good rule,” Elend said, turning back to his contemplation of the horizon. “It works for all things in life. If you throw something into the air, it will come back down. If you bring an army into a man’s kingdom, he will react . . .”

  Consequence, she thought, frowning. Like things falling back when thrown into the sky. That’s what Ruin’s actions feel like to me. Consequences. Perhaps it was a remnant of touching the power, or perhaps just some rationalization her unconscious mind was giving her. Yet, she felt a logic to Ruin. She didn’t understand that logic, but she could recognize it.

  Elend turned back toward her. “That’s why I like Allomancy, actually. Or, at least, the theory of it. The skaa whisper about it, call it mystical, but it’s really quite rational. You can tell what an Allomantic Push is going to do as certainly as you can tell what will happen when you drop a rock off the side of the boat. For every Push, there is a Pull. There are no exceptions. It makes simple, logical sense—unlike the ways of men, which are filled with flaws, irregularities, and double meanings. Allomancy is a thing of nature.”