Page 219 of The Well of Ascension

“And you didn’t burn it last night?” Elend asked. “When you were fighting all those soldiers?”

“No,” Vin said. “I swallowed it, but I didn’t end up needing it, so I forced it back up.”

Lord Ruler!Elend thought.I didn’t even consider that she didn’t have atium. What could she have done if she’d burned that bit?He looked up at her. “Some reports say that there’s another Mistborn in the city.”

“There is. Zane.”

Elend dropped the bead back into her hand. “Then keep this. You might need it to fight him.”

“I doubt that,” Vin said quietly.

“Keep it anyway,” Elend said. “This is worth a small fortune—but we’d need a verylargefortune to make any difference now. Besides, who would buy it? If I used it to bribe Straff or Cett, they’d only become more certain I’m holding atium against them.”

Vin nodded, then glanced at OreSeur. “Keep this,” she said, handing the bead toward him. “It’s big enough that another Allomancer could pull it off me if he wanted.”

“I will guard it with my life, Mistress,” OreSeur said, his shoulder splitting open to make room for the bit of metal.

Vin turned to join Elend as they walked down the steps, moving to meet with the guards below.

45

I know what I have memorized. I know what is now repeated by the other Worldbringers.

“The hero of ages won’t be Terris,” Tindwyl said, scribbling a note at the bottom of their list.

“We knew that already,” Sazed said. “From the logbook.”

“Yes,” Tindwyl said, “but Alendi’s account was only a reference—a thirdhand mention of the effects of a prophecy. I found someone quoting the prophecy itself.”

“Truly?” Sazed asked, excited. “Where?”

“The biography of Helenntion,” Tindwyl said. “One of the last survivors of the Council of Khlennium.”

“Write it for me,” Sazed said, scooting his chair a bit closer to hers. He had to blink a few times as she wrote, his head clouding for a moment from fatigue.

Stay alert!he told himself.There isn’t much time left. Not much at all….

Tindwyl was doing a little better than he, but her wakefulness was obviously beginning to run out, for she was starting to droop. He’d taken a quick nap during the night, rolled up on her floor, but she had carried on. As far as he could tell, she’d been awake for over a week straight.

There was much talk of the Rabzeen, during those days,Tindwyl wrote.Some said he would come to fight the Conqueror. Others said he was the Conqueror. Helenntion didn’t make his thoughts on the matter known to me. The Rabzeen is said to be “He who is not of his people, yet fulfills all of their wishes.” If this is the case, then perhaps the Conqueror is the one. He is said to have been of Khlennium.

She stopped there. Sazed frowned, reading the words again. Kwaan’s last testimony—the rubbing Sazed had taken at the Conventical of Seran—had proven useful in more than one way. It had provided a key.

It wasn’t until years later that I became convinced that he was the Hero of Ages,Kwaan had written.Hero of Ages: the one called Rabzeen in Khlennium, the Anamnesor….

The rubbing was a means of translation—not between languages, but between synonyms. It made sense that there would be other names for the Hero of Ages; a figure so important, so surrounded by lore, would have many titles. Yet, so much had been lost from those days. The Rabzeen and the Anamnesor were both mythological figures vaguely familiar to Sazed—but they were only two among hosts. Until the discovery of the rubbing, there had been no way to connect their names to the Hero of Ages.

Now Tindwyl and he could search their metalminds with open eyes. Perhaps, in the past, Sazed had read this very passage from Helenntion’s biography; he had at least skimmed many of the older records, searching for religious references. Yet, he would never have been able to realize that the passage was referring to the Hero of Ages, a figure from Terris lore that the Khlenni people had renamed into their own tongue.

“Yes…” he said slowly. “This is good, Tindwyl. Very good.” He reached over, laying his hand on hers.

“Perhaps,” she said, “though it tells us nothing new.”

“Ah, but the wording might be important, I think,” Sazed said. “Religions are often very careful with their writings.”

“Especially prophecies,” Tindwyl said, frowning just a bit. She was not fond of anything that smacked of superstition or soothsaying.

“I would have thought,” Sazed noted, “that you would no longer have this prejudice, considering our current enterprise.”

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