The Hero of Ages m-3

by Brandon Sanderson

  "Sixteen," Noorden said. He looked up. "Another exact percentage."

  Elend frowned, stepping over to the ledger.

  "This third one here isn't exact," Noorden said, "but that's only because the base number isn't a multiple of twenty-five. A fraction of a person can't really become sick, after all. Yet, the sickness in this population here is within a single person of being exactly sixteen percent."

  Elend knelt down, heedless of the ash that had dusted the deck since it had last been swept. Vin looked over his shoulder, scanning the numbers.

  "It doesn't matter how old the average member of the population is," Noorden said, scribbling. "Nor does it matter where they live. Each one shows the exact same percentage of people falling sick."

  "How could we have not noticed this before?" Elend asked.

  "Well, we did, after a fashion," Noorden said. "We knew that about four in twenty-five caught the sickness. However, I hadn't realized how exact the numbers were. This is indeed odd, Your Excellency. I know of no other disease that works this way. Look, here's an entry where a hundred scouts were sent into the mists, and precisely sixteen of them fell sick!"

  Elend looked troubled.

  "What?" Vin asked.

  "This is wrong, Vin," Elend said. "Very wrong."

  "It's like the chaos of normal random statistics has broken down," Noorden said. "A population should never react this precisely-there should be a curve of probability, with smaller populations reflecting the expected percentages least accurately."

  "At the very least," Elend said, "the sickness should affect the elderly in different ratios from the healthy."

  "In a way, it does," Noorden said as one of his assistants handed him a paper with further calculations. "The deaths respond that way, as we would expect. But, the total number who fall sick is always sixteen percent! We've been paying so much attention to how many died, we didn't notice how unnatural the percentages of those stricken were."

  Elend stood. "Check on this, Noorden," he said, gesturing toward the ledger. "Do interviews, make certain the data hasn't been changed by Ruin, and find out if this trend holds. We can't jump to conclusions with only four or five examples. It could all just be a large coincidence."

  "Yes, Your Excellency," Noorden said, looking a bit shaken. "But. . what if it's not a coincidence? What does it mean?"

  "I don't know," Elend said.

  It means consequence, Vin thought. It means that there are laws, even if we don't understand them.

  Sixteen. Why sixteen percent?

  The beads of metal found at the Well-beads that made men into Mistborn-were the reason why Allomancers used to be more powerful. Those first Mistborn were as Elend Venture became-possessing a primal power, which was then passed down through the lines of the nobility, weakening a bit with each generation.

  The Lord Ruler was one of these ancient Allomancers, his power pure and unadulterated by time and breeding. That is part of why he was so mighty compared to other Mistborn-though, admittedly, his ability to mix Feruchemy and Allomancy was what produced many of his most spectacular abilities. Still, it is interesting to me that one of his "divine" powers-his essential Allomantic strength-was something every one of the original nine Allomancers possessed.

  22

  Sazed sat in one of the nicer buildings at the Pits of Hathsin-a former guardhouse-holding a mug of hot tea. The Terris elders sat in chairs before him, a small stove providing warmth. On the next day, Sazed would have to leave to catch up with Goradel and Breeze, who would be well on their way to Urteau by now.

  The sunlight was dimming. The mists had already come, and they hung just outside the glass window. Sazed could just barely make out depressions in the dark ground outside-cracks, in the earth. There were dozens of the cracks; the Terris people had built fences to mark them. Only a few years ago, before Kelsier had destroyed the atium crystals, men had been forced to crawl down into those cracks, seeking small geodes which had beads of atium at their centers.

  Each slave who hadn't been able to find at least one geode a week had been executed. There were likely still hundreds, perhaps thousands, of corpses pinned beneath the ground, lost in deep caverns, dead without anyone knowing or caring.

  What a terrible place this was, Sazed thought, turning away from the window as a young Terriswoman closed the shutters. Before him on the table were several ledgers which showed the resources, expenditures, and needs of the Terris people.

  "I believe I suggested keeping these figures in metal," Sazed said.

  "Yes, Master Keeper," said one of the elderly stewards. "We copy the important figures into a sheet of metal each evening, then check them weekly against the ledgers to make certain nothing has changed."

  "That is well," Sazed said, picking through one of the ledgers, sitting in his lap. "And sanitation? Have you addressed those issues since my last visit?"

  "Yes, Master Keeper," said another man. "We have prepared many more latrines, as you commanded-though we do not need them."

  "There may be refugees," Sazed said. "I wish for you to be able to care for a larger population, should it become necessary. But, please. These are only suggestions, not commands. I claim no authority over you."

  The group of stewards shared glances. Sazed had been busy during his time with them, which had kept him from dwelling on his melancholy thoughts. He'd made sure they had enough supplies, that they kept a good communication with Penrod in Luthadel, and that they had a system in place for settling disputes among themselves.

  "Master Keeper," one of the elders finally said. "How long will you be staying?"

  "I must leave in the morning, I fear," Sazed said. "I came simply to check on your needs. This is a difficult time to live, and you could be easily forgotten by those in Luthadel, I think."

  "We are well, Master Keeper," said one of the others. He was the youngest of the elders, and he was only a few years younger than Sazed. Most of the men here were far older-and far wiser-than he. That they should look to him seemed wrong.

  "Will you not reconsider your place with us, Master Keeper?" asked another. "We want not for food or for land. Yet, what we do lack is a leader."

  "The Terris people were oppressed long enough, I think," Sazed said. "You have no need for another tyrant king."

  "Not a tyrant," one said. "One of our own."

  "The Lord Ruler was one of our own," Sazed said quietly,

  The group of men looked down. That the Lord Ruler had proven to be Terris was a shame to all of their people.

  "We need someone to guide us," one of the men said. "Even during the days of the Lord Ruler, he was not our leader. We looked to the Keeper Synod."

  The Keeper Synod-the clandestine leaders of Sazed's sect. They had led the Terris people for centuries, secretly working to make certain that Feruchemy continued, despite the Lord Ruler's attempts to breed the power out of the people.

  "Master Keeper," said Master Vedlew, senior of the elders.

  "Yes, Master Vedlew?"

  "You do not wear your copperminds."

  Sazed looked down. He hadn't realized it was noticeable that, beneath his robes, he wasn't wearing the metal bracers. "They are in my pack."

  "It seems odd, to me," Vedlew said, "that you should work so hard during the Lord Ruler's time, always wearing your metalminds in secret, despite the danger. Yet, now that you are free to do as you wish, you carry them in your pack."

  Sazed shook his head. "I cannot be the man you wish me to be. Not right now."

  "You are a Keeper."

  "I was the lowest of them," Sazed said. "A rebel and a reject. They cast me from their presence. The last time I left Tathingdwen, I did so in disgrace. The common people cursed me in the quiet of their homes."

  "Now they bless you, Master Sazed," said one of the men.

  "I do not deserve those blessings."

  "Deserve them or not, you are all we have left."

  "Then we are a sorrier people than we may appear."

&n
bsp; The room fell silent.

  "There was another reason why I came here, Master Vedlew," Sazed said, looking up. "Tell me, have any of your people died recently in. . odd circumstances?"

  "Of what do you speak?" the aged Terrisman asked.

  "Mist deaths," Sazed said. "Men who are killed by simply going out into the mists during the day."

  "That is a tale of the skaa," one of the other men scoffed. "The mists are not dangerous."

  "Indeed," Sazed said carefully. "Do you send your people out to work in them during the daylight hours, when the mists have not yet retreated for the day?"

  "Of course we do," said the younger Terrisman. "Why, it would be foolish to let those hours of work pass."

  Sazed found it difficult not to let his curiosity work on that fact. Terrismen weren't killed by the daymists.

  What was the connection?

  He tried to summon the mental energy to think on the issue, but he felt traitorously apathetic. He just wanted to hide somewhere where nobody would expect anything of him. Where he wouldn't have to solve the problems of the world, or even deal with his own religious crisis.

  He almost did just that. And yet, a little part of him-a spark from before-refused to simply give up. He would at least continue his research, and would do what Elend and Vin asked of him. It wasn't all he could do, and it wouldn't satisfy the Terrismen who sat here, looking at him with needful expressions.

  But, for the moment, it was all Sazed could offer. To stay at the Pits would be to surrender, he knew. He needed to keep moving, keep working.

  "I'm sorry," he said to the men, setting aside the ledger. "But this is how it must be."

  During the early days of Kelsier's original plan, I remember how much he confused us all with his mysterious "Eleventh Metal." He claimed that there were legends of a mystical metal that would let one slay the Lord Ruler-and that Kelsier himself had located that metal through intense research.

  Nobody really knew what Kelsier did in the years between his escape from the Pits of Hathsin and his return to Luthadel. When pressed, he simply said that he had been in "the West." Somehow in his wanderings he discovered stories that no Keeper had ever heard. Most of the crew didn't know what to make of the legends he spoke of. This might have been the first seed that made even his oldest friends begin to question his leadership.

  23

  In the eastern lands, near the wastelands of grit and sand, a young boy fell to the ground inside a skaa shack. It was many years before the Collapse, and the Lord Ruler still lived. Not that the boy knew of such things. He was a dirty, ragged thing-like most other skaa children in the Final Empire. Too young to be put to work in the mines, he spent his days ducking away from his mother's care and running about with the packs of children who foraged in the dry, dusty streets.

  Spook hadn't been that boy for some ten years. In a way, he was aware that he was delusional-that the fever of his wounds was causing him to come in and out of consciousness, dreams of the past filling his mind. He let them run. Staying focused required too much energy.

  And so, he remembered what it felt like as he hit the ground. A large man-all men were large compared with Spook-stood over him, skin dirtied with the dust and grime of a miner. The man spat on the dirty floor beside Spook, then turned to the other skaa in the room. There were many. One was crying, the tears leaving lines of cleanliness on her cheeks, washing away the dust.

  "All right," the large man said. "We have him. Now what?"

  The people glanced at each other. One quietly closed the shack's door, shutting out the red sunlight.

  "There's only one thing to be done," another man said. "We turn him in."

  Spook looked up. He met the eyes of the crying woman. She looked away. "Wasing the where of what?" Spook demanded.

  The large man spat again, setting a boot against Spook's neck, pushing him back down against the rough wood. "You shouldn't have let him run around with those street gangs, Margel. Damn boy is barely coherent now."

  "What happens if we give him up?" asked one of the other men. "I mean, what if they decide that we're like him? They could have us executed! I've seen it before. You turn someone in, and those. . things come searching for everyone that knew him."

  "Problems like his run in the family, they do," another man said.

  The room grew quiet. They all knew about Spook's family.

  "They'll kill us," said the frightened man. "You know they will! I've seen them, seen them with those spikes in their eyes. Spirits of death, they are."

  "We can't just let him run about," another man said. "They'll discover what he is."

  "There's only one thing to be done," the large man said, pressing down on Spook's neck even harder.

  The room's occupants-the ones Spook could see-nodded solemnly. They couldn't turn him in. They couldn't let him go. But, nobody would miss a skaa urchin. No Inquisitor or obligator would ask twice about a dead child found in the streets. Skaa died all the time.

  That was the way of the Final Empire.

  "Father," Spook whispered.

  The heel came down harder. "You're not my son! My son went into the mists and never came out. You must be a mistwraith."

  Spook tried to object, but his chest was pressed down too tight. He couldn't breathe, let alone speak. The room started to grow black. And yet, his ears-supernaturally sensitive, enhanced by powers he barely understood-heard something.

  Coins.

  The pressure on his neck grew weaker. He was able to gasp for breath, his vision returning. And there, spilled on the ground before him, was a scattering of beautiful copper coins. Skaa weren't paid for their work-the miners were given goods instead, barely enough to survive on. Yet, Spook had seen coins occasionally passing between noble hands. He'd once known a boy who had found a coin, lost in the dusty grime of the street.

  A larger boy had killed him for it. Then, a nobleman had killed that boy when he'd tried to spend it. It seemed to Spook that no skaa would want coins-they were far too valuable, and far too dangerous. And yet, every eye in the room stared at that spilled bag of wealth.

  "The bag in exchange for the boy," a voice said. Bodies parted to where a man sat at a table at the back of the room. He wasn't looking at Spook. He just sat, quietly spooning gruel into his mouth. His face was gnarled and twisted, like leather that had been sitting in the sun for far too long. "Well?" the gnarled man said between bites.

  "Where did you get money like this?" Spook's father demanded.

  "None of your business."

  "We can't let the boy go," one of the skaa said. "He'll betray us! Once they catch him, he'll tell them that we knew!"

  "They won't catch him," the gnarled man said, taking another bite of food. "He'll be with me, in Luthadel. Besides, if you don't let him go, I'll just go ahead and tell the obligators about you all." He paused, lowering his spoon, glancing at the crowd with a crusty look. "Unless you're going to kill me too."

  Spook's father finally took his heel off Spook's neck as he stepped toward the gnarled stranger. However, Spook's mother grabbed her husband's arm. "Don't, Jedal," she said softly-but not too softly for Spook's enhanced ears. "He'll kill you."

  "He's a traitor," Spook's father spat. "Servant in the Lord Ruler's army."

  "He brought us coins. Surely taking his money is better than simply killing the boy."

  Spook's father looked down at the woman. "You did this! You sent for your brother. You knew he'd want to take the boy!"

  Spook's mother turned away.

  The gnarled man finally set down his spoon, then stood. People backed away from his chair in apprehension. He walked with a pronounced limp as he crossed the room.

  "Come on, boy," he said, not looking at Spook as he opened the door.

  Spook rose slowly, tentatively. He glanced at his mother and father as he backed away. Jedal stooped down, finally gathering up the coins. Margel met Spook's eyes, then turned away. This is all I can give you, her posture seemed to say.
<
br />   Spook turned, rubbing his neck, and rushed into the hot red sunlight after the stranger. The older man hobbled along, walking with a cane. He glanced at Spook as he walked.

  "You have a name, boy?"

  Spook opened his mouth, then stopped. His old name didn't seem like it would do any more. "Lestibournes," he finally said.

  The old man didn't bat an eye. Later, Kelsier would decide that Lestibournes was too difficult to say, and name him "Spook" instead. Spook never did figure out whether or not Clubs knew how to speak Eastern street slang. Even if he did, Spook doubted that he'd understand the reference.

  Lestibournes. Lefting I'm born.

  Street slang for "I've been abandoned."

  I now believe that Kelsier's stories, legends, and prophecies about the "Eleventh Metal" were fabricated by Ruin. Kelsier was looking for a way to kill the Lord Ruler, and Ruin-ever subtle-provided a way.

  That secret was indeed crucial. Kelsier's Eleventh Metal provided the very clue we needed to defeat the Lord Ruler. However, even in this, we were manipulated. The Lord Ruler knew Ruin's goals, and would never have released him from the Well of Ascension. So, Ruin needed other pawns-and for that to happen, the Lord Ruler needed to die. Even our greatest victory was shaped by Ruin's subtle fingers.

  24

  Days later, Melaan's words still pricked TenSoon's conscience.

  You come, proclaim dread news, then leave us to solve the problems on our own? During his year of imprisonment, it had seemed simple. He would make his accusations, deliver his information, then accept the punishment he deserved.

  But now, strangely, an eternity of imprisonment seemed like the easy way out. If he let himself be taken in such a manner, how was he better than the First Generation? He would be avoiding the issues, content to be locked away, knowing that the outside world was no longer his problem.

  Fool, he thought. You'll be imprisoned for eternity-or, at least, until the kandra themselves are destroyed, and you die of starvation. That's not the easy way out! By accepting your punishment, you're doing the honorable, orderly thing.