Vin shrugged. “Fine. Hopefully, none of the secrets Kelsier wants us to discover in this text are related to the Terrisman powers—if they are, I’ll miss them completely.”
Sazed paused.
“Ah, well,” Vin said nonchalantly, flipping through the pages she hadn’t read. “Looks like he spends a lot of time talking about the Terrismen. Guess I won’t be able to give much input when Kelsier gets back.”
“You make a good point,” Sazed said slowly. “Even if you make it a bit melodramatically.”
Vin smiled pertly.
“Very well,” Sazed said with a sigh. “We should not have let you spend so much time with Master Breeze, I think.”
“The men in the logbook,” Vin said. “They’re Keepers?”
Sazed nodded. “What we now call Keepers were far more common back then—perhaps even more common than Mistings are among modern nobility. Our art is called ‘Feruchemy,’ and it grants the ability to store certain physical attributes inside bits of metal.”
Vin frowned. “You burn metals too?”
“No, Mistress,” Sazed said with a shake of his head. “Feruchemists aren’t like Allomancers—we don’t ‘burn’ away our metals. We use them as storage. Each piece of metal, dependent upon size and alloy, can store a certain physical quality. The Feruchemist saves up an attribute, then draws upon that reserve at a later time.”
“Attribute?” Vin asked. “Like strength?”
Sazed nodded. “In the text, the Terris packmen make themselves weaker during the evening, storing up strength in their bracelets for use on the next day.”
Vin studied Sazed’s face. “That’s why you wear so many earrings!”
“Yes, Mistress,” he said, reaching over to pull up his sleeves. Underneath his robe, he wore thick iron bracers around his upper arms. “I keep some of my reserves hidden—but wearing many rings, earrings, and other items of jewelry has always been a part of Terris culture. The Lord Ruler once tried to enforce a ban upon Terrismen touching or owning any metal—in fact, he tried to make wearing metal a noble privilege, rather than a skaa one.”
Vin frowned. “That’s odd,” she said. “One would think that the nobility wouldn’t want to wear metal, because that would make them vulnerable to Allomancy.”
“Indeed,” Sazed said. “However, it has long been imperial fashion to accent one’s wardrobe with metal. It began, I suspect, with the Lord Ruler’s desire to deny the Terrismen the right to touch metal. He himself began wearing metal rings and bracelets, and the nobility always follows him in fashion. Nowadays, the most wealthy often wear metal as a symbol of power and pride.”
“Sounds foolish,” Vin said.
“Fashion often is, Mistress,” Sazed said. “Regardless, the ploy failed—many of the nobility only wear wood painted to look like metal, and the Terris managed to weather the Lord Ruler’s discontent in this area. It was simply too impractical to never let stewards handle metal. That hasn’t stopped the Lord Ruler from trying to exterminate the Keepers, however.”
“He fears you.”
“And hates us. Not just Feruchemists, but all Terrismen.” Sazed laid a hand on the still untranslated portion of the text. “I hope to find that secret in here as well. No one remembers why the Lord Ruler persecutes the Terris people, but I suspect that it has something to do with those packmen—their leader, Rashek, appears to be a very contrary man. The Lord Ruler often speaks of him in the narrative.”
“He mentioned religion,” Vin said. “The Terris religion. Something about prophecies?”
Sazed shook his head. “I cannot answer that question, Mistress, for I don’t know any more of the Terris religion than you do.”
“But, you collect religions,” Vin said. “You don’t know about your own?”
“I do not,” Sazed said solemnly. “You see, Mistress, this was why the Keepers were formed. Centuries ago, my people hid away the last few Terris Feruchemists. The Lord Ruler’s purges of the Terris people were growing quite violent—this was before he began the breeding program. Back then, we weren’t stewards or servants—we weren’t even skaa. We were something to be destroyed.
“Yet, something kept the Lord Ruler from wiping us out completely. I don’t know why—perhaps he thought genocide too kind a punishment. Anyway, he successfully destroyed our religion during the first two centuries of his rule. The organization of Keepers was formed during the next century, its members intent upon discovering that which had been lost, then remembering for the future.”
“With Feruchemy?”
Sazed nodded, rubbing his fingers across the bracer on his right arm. “This one is made of copper; it allows for the storage of memories and thoughts. Each Keeper carries several bracers like this, filled with knowledge—songs, stories, prayers, histories, and languages. Many Keepers have a particular area of interest—mine is religion—but we all remember the entire collection. If just one of us survives until the death of the Lord Ruler, then the world’s people will be able to recover all that they have lost.”
He paused, then pulled down his sleeve. “Well, not all that was lost. There are still things we are missing.”
“Your own religion,” Vin said quietly. “You never found it, did you?”
Sazed shook his head. “The Lord Ruler implies in this logbook that it was our prophets that led him to the Well of Ascension, but even this is new information for us. What did we believe? What, or whom, did we worship? Where did these Terris prophets come from, and how did they predict the future?”
“I’m… sorry.”
“We continue to look, Mistress. We will find our answers eventually, I think. Even if we do not, we will still have provided an invaluable service for mankind. Other people call us docile and servile, but we have fought him, in our own way.”
Vin nodded. “So, what other things can you store? Strength and memories. Anything else?”