Page 136 of The Well of Ascension

His window shutters rattled. Sazed looked up. He was in his quarters at the palace—a tasteful collection of well-decorated rooms that were far too lavish for one who had spent his life as a servant. He rose, walked over to the window, undid the latch, and pulled open the shutters. He smiled as he found Vin crouching on the ledge outside.

“Um…hi,” Vin said. She wore her mistcloak over gray shirt and black trousers. Despite the onset of morning, she obviously hadn’t yet gone to bed after her nightly prowling. “You should leave your window unlatched. I can’t get in if it’s locked. Elend got mad at me for breaking too many latches.”

“I shall try to remember that, Lady Vin,” Sazed said, and gesturing for her to enter.

Vin hopped spryly through the window, mistcloak rustling. “Tryto remember?” she asked. “You never forget anything. Not even the things you don’t have stuck in a metalmind.”

She’s grown so much more bold,he thought as she walked over to his writing desk, peering over his work.Even in the months I’ve been away.

“What’s this?” Vin asked, still looking at the desk.

“I found it at the Conventical of Seran, Lady Vin,” Sazed said, walking forward. It felt so good to be wearing clean robes again, to have a quiet and comfortable place in which to study. Was he a bad man for preferring this to travel?

One month,he thought.I will give myself one month of study. Then I will turn the project over to someone else.

“What is it?” Vin asked, holding up the rubbing.

“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 thathaven’tbeen 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.

---