Mistborn #03 The Hero of Ages

life."
    "But you don't wear them, either."
    Sazed continued polishing. "No. I do not."
    "But why?" Breeze asked. "You think that she would have wanted this? She was a Keeper too—do you honestly think she'd want you to give up your metalminds?"
    "This particular habit of mine is not about Tindwyl."
    "Oh?" Breeze asked, sighing as he seated himself at the table. "What do you mean? Because honestly, Sazed, you're confusing me. I understand people. It bothers me that I can't understand you."
    "After the Lord Ruler's death," Sazed said, putting down the ring, "do you know what I spent my time doing?"
    "Teaching," Breeze said. "You left to go and restore the lost knowledge to the people of the Final Empire."
    "And did I ever tell you how that teaching went?"
    Breeze shook his head.
    "Poorly," Sazed said, picking up another ring. "The people didn't really care. They weren't interested in the religions of the past. And why should they have been? Why worship something that people used to believe in?"
    "People are always interested in the past, Sazed."
    "Interested, perhaps," Sazed said, "but interest is not faith. These metalminds, they are a thing of museums and old libraries. They are of little use to modern people. During the years of the Lord Ruler's reign, we Keepers pretended that we were doing vital work. We believed that we were doing vital work. And yet, in the end, nothing we did had any real value. Vin didn't need this knowledge to kill the Lord Ruler.
    "I am probably the last of the Keepers. The thoughts in these metalminds will die with me. And, at times, I can't make myself regret that fact. This is not an era for scholars and philosophers. Scholars and philosophers do not help feed starving children."
    "And so you don't wear them anymore?" Breeze said. "Because you think they're useless?"
    "More than that," Sazed said. "To wear these metalminds would be to pretend. I would be pretending that I find the things in them to be of use, and I have not yet decided if I do or not. To wear them now would seem like a betrayal. I set them aside, for I can do them no justice. I'm just not ready to believe, as we did before, that gathering knowledge and religions is more important than taking action. Perhaps if the Keepers had fought, rather than just memorized, the Lord Ruler would have fallen centuries ago."
    "But you resisted, Sazed," Breeze said. "You fought."
    "I don't represent myself any longer, Lord Breeze," Sazed said softly. "I represent all Keepers, since I am apparently the last. And I, as the last, do not believe in the things I once taught. I cannot with good conscience imply that I am the Keeper I once was."
    Breeze sighed, shaking his head. "You don't make sense."
    "It makes sense to me."
    "No, I think you're just confused. This may not seem to you like a world for scholars, my dear friend, but I think you'll be proven wrong. It seems to me that now—suffering in the darkness that might just be the end of everything—is when we need knowledge the most."
    "Why?" Sazed said. "So I can teach a dying man a religion that I don't believe? To speak of a god, when I know there is no such being?"
    Breeze leaned forward. "Do you really believe that? That nothing is watching over us?"
    Sazed sat quietly, slowing in his polishing. "I have yet to decide for certain," he finally said. "At times, I have hoped to find some truth. However, today, that hope seems very distant to me. There is a darkness upon this land, Breeze, and I am not sure that we can fight it. I am not sure that I want to fight it."
    Breeze looked troubled at that. He opened his mouth, but before he could respond, a rumble rolled through the cavern. The rings and bracers on the table quivered and clinked together as the entire room shook, and there was a clatter as some foodstuffs fell—though not too many, for Captain Goradel's men had done good work in moving most of the stockpile off of shelves and to the ground, in order to deal with the quakes.
    Eventually, the shaking subsided. Breeze sat with a white face, looking up at the ceiling of the cavern. "I tell you, Sazed," he said. "Every time one of those quakes comes, I wonder at the wisdom of hiding in a cave. Not the safest place during an earthquake, I should think."
    "We really have no other option at the moment," Sazed said.
    "True, I suppose. Do . . . does it seem to you like those quakes are coming more frequently?"
    "Yes," Sazed said, picking up a few fallen bracelets from the floor.