Mistborn Trilogy - Brandon Sanderson [546]
“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.”
“I gather information, Sazed,” she said. “Because of what it says of people, and because of what the past can teach us. However, there is a reason I took to studying history as opposed to theology. I don’t approve of perpetuating lies.”
“Is that what you think I do when I teach of religions?” he asked in amusement.
Tindwyl looked toward him. “A bit,” she admitted. “How can you teach the people to look toward the gods of the dead, Sazed? Those religions did their people little good, and their prophecies are now dust.”
“Religions are an expression of hope,” Sazed said. “That hope gives people strength.”
“Then you don’t believe?” Tindwyl asked. “You just give the people something to trust, something to delude themselves?”
“I would not call it so.”
“Then you think the gods you teach of do exist?”
“I…think