Mistborn Trilogy - Brandon Sanderson [849]
I have no advice to give. It is more powerful than I am. It is more powerful than this world. It claims to have created this world, in fact. It will destroy us all eventually.
Perhaps these stores will let mankind survive a little longer. Perhaps not. I am dead. I doubt that I should care.
Still, I do. For you are my people. I am the Hero of Ages. That is what it must mean: Hero of Ages, a hero that lives through the ages, as I do.
Know that the thing’s power is not complete. Fortunately, I have hidden his body well.
And that was the end. Vin tapped the plate with frustration. Everything about the words on it seemed contrived to frustrate her. The Lord Ruler had led them on this grand chase, then at the end, he offered no hope? Elend was betting so much on what this plaque would contain, and yet, it was virtually worthless. At least the other ones had contained some relevant information about a new metal or the like.
I have failed you. It was infuriating—almost crushingly so—to come all this way, then find that the Lord Ruler had been as stumped as they were. And, if he’d known more—as his words implied that he did—why hadn’t he shared it on the plate? And yet, she could sense his instability even through these words—his washing back and forth from contrition to arrogance. Perhaps that was Ruin’s influence on him. Or, perhaps it was simply the way he had always been. Either way, Vin suspected that the Lord Ruler couldn’t have told her much more that would have been of use. He’d done what he could, holding Ruin at bay for a thousand years. It had corrupted him, perhaps even driven him mad.
That didn’t stop her from feeling a sharp sense of disappointment at what the plate contained. The Lord Ruler had been given a thousand years to worry about what would happen to the land if he were killed before the power returned to the Well, and even he hadn’t been able to come up with a way out of the problem.
She looked up toward the plate, though in the darkness, she could not see it.
There has to be a way! she thought, refusing to accept the Lord Ruler’s implication that they were doomed. What was it you wrote at the bottom? “I have hidden his body well.”
That part seemed important. However, she hadn’t been—
A sound rung through the darkness.
Vin turned immediately, growing tense, feeling for her last metal vial. Proximity to Ruin had made her jumpy, and she found her heart beating with anxiety as she listened to the echoing sounds—sounds of stone grinding against stone.
The door to the cavern was opening.
One might ask why Ruin couldn’t have used Inquisitors to release him from his prison. The answer to this is simple enough, if one understands the workings of power.
Before the Lord Ruler’s death, he maintained too tight a grip on them to let Ruin control them directly. Even after the Lord Ruler’s death, however, such a servant of Ruin could never have rescued him. The power in the Well was of Preservation, and an Inquisitor could only have taken it by first removing his Hemalurgic spikes. That, of course, would have killed him.
Thus, Ruin needed a much more indirect way to achieve his purpose. He needed someone he hadn’t tainted too much, but someone he could lead by the nose, carefully manipulating.
49
SAZED MADE A SMALL NOTATION ON HIS DIAGRAM, comparing measurements of the waterway. From what he could tell, the Lord Ruler hadn’t really needed to do much to create the underground lake. Water had already been flowing into the cavern. The Lord Ruler’s engineers had simply widened the passageways, bringing in a steadier, surer flow that outpaced the natural drainage.
The result was an aquifer of good size. Some machinery in a side cave proved to be a mechanism for plugging the outlets at the bottom—presumably so that one could keep the water reserve from escaping, should something happen to the incoming supply. Unfortunately, there was no existing