by John Bierce
Contents
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE Docks
CHAPTER TWO Unwelcome Revelations
CHAPTER THREE Class
CHAPTER FOUR Eccentric Faculty
CHAPTER FIVE Intermediate Library Filing Skills
CHAPTER SIX Gifts
CHAPTER SEVEN Silence and Sand
CHAPTER EIGHT Fatigue
CHAPTER NINE An Unpleasant Surprise
CHAPTER TEN The Hidden Valley
CHAPTER ELEVEN Motives
CHAPTER TWELVE The Owl Returns
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Sand, Stone, and Crystal
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Shield
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Dragon Bones
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Obsidian
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Arrivals
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Midwinter
CHAPTER NINETEEN Narrowing the Field
CHAPTER TWENTY Long Overdue Explanations
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Starfire
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Thrones
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Ilinia Kaen Das
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Setting the Stage
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Departures
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Return to the Labyrinth
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Twists and Turns
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Imps
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Race to the Top
CHAPTER THIRTY Out of the Labyrinth
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Wreck the Halls
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Confrontations
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE The Council Broken
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Bakori Ascends
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE Don't Forget to Chew Your Food
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX Breathing Room
This one goes out to r/fantasy. If it weren’t for that wonderful bunch of nerds, I wouldn’t be getting to write about wizards for a living.
CHAPTER ONE
Docks
Hugh of Emblin was, unfortunately, very easy to embarrass. It took remarkably little to turn him bright red.
His girlfriend, to Hugh’s regret, delighted in doing exactly that.
Avah took her time in kissing Hugh goodbye, ignoring the catcalls and whistles from the crew of the Moonless Owl, as well as a few dockworkers. Not to mention his friends, the traitors.
Avah finally ended the kiss. “I’ll see you in a couple months, when the Owl stops by Skyhold again,” she said.
Hugh just nodded, still blushing. Avah hugged him again, then turned to climb back aboard the sandship.
Sabae, Talia, and Godrick joined Hugh at the edge of the dock as the Owl’s mages called up winds to carry them out into the desert. Alustin hadn’t been able to make it out to see the ship off with them— he’d needed to meet with the Skyhold Council about something, and the meeting had been running for hours already. The apprentices watched the sandship sail away until it crested a dune and dipped out of sight.
The Moonless Owl had arrived back at Skyhold several days ago. Classes weren’t supposed to resume for another few days (not that Alustin had ever stopped training them over the summer), so they’d taken the opportunity to show Avah, and Godrick’s more-than-friends-but-not-quite-boyfriend Irrick around Skyhold, while the rest of the crew loaded and unloaded cargo.
They’d spent the rest of the summer following the incident in Theras Tel traveling across the Endless Erg. The Moonless Owl had visited port cities along its edges, hidden oases deep inside mazes of rock, and ancient ruins jutting out of the massive dunes.
The highlight had probably been their encounter with Chelys Mot, a turtle that dwarfed even the sphinx Kanderon Crux. The only larger creatures Hugh had ever seen were the dragon Indris Stormbreaker and her mate Ataerg— or at least Ataerg’s corpse. The immense turtle had been surprisingly friendly, and quite willing to tell them a great many stories over the couple of days they’d spent visiting with him.
Watching the great turtle swim away through the dunes like they were water had been fairly astonishing.
To Hugh’s great relief, the summer had been, after Theras Tel, largely dragon-free. There had been a couple sightings of dragons flying in the distance, but none had approached the sandship.
Even Talia had finally started to get a handle on her seasickness, and she had actually started to enjoy herself.
Spending time with Avah had been the highlight of Hugh’s summer, though. Even if she did delight in embarrassing him. And even if her family— especially her grandmother— enjoyed it even more.
Talia kicked Hugh’s boot after a minute or two of watching the dune the Owl had passed over.
“Are we just going to stand here all day?” the short redhead demanded. Unlike the other three, she hadn’t managed to tan at all in the desert sun, just burning whenever she forgot a hat. Ironically, the blue spellform tattoos all over her body didn’t do anything to protect her from sunburn, despite being intended to enhance fire magic and protect her from the same.
“Give him a second,” Sabae said, rolling her eyes. The tall girl’s branching scars stood out more than usual with her tan— she’d been dark-skinned to start with, but she was almost as dark as Godrick now, and her lightning scars were now visible from a considerable distance away. Her hair had gotten even lighter in the desert sun, and you could hardly tell that it wasn’t white except when up close. “I think he’s still recovering from that kiss.”
Godrick chuckled at that. The massive youth’s goodbye with Irrick had been considerably more circumspect than Hugh and Avah’s. Somehow, he’d put on even more muscle over the summer, and Hugh was fairly sure he’d grown in height a little bit as well.
Hugh, of course, was as short as ever. At least he was still taller than Talia.
“It’s fine,” Hugh said, rolling his eyes. “I’m feeling hungry, anyhow.”
The four of them wandered back through the crowded dockyard. There were a couple dozen other sandships in the docks, many of which were offloading other students returning to Skyhold for the new school year.
Hugh eyed a couple of students that looked rather confused and uncertain as they debarked from a large three-runnered sandship nearby. He was tempted to offer to help them find their way, remembering how lost he’d been when he first arrived at Skyhold. It’d taken him nearly an hour to work up the courage to ask for directions. Before Hugh could start towards the new students, however, an older mage debarked the ship and lead them away.
“Me da’s supposed ta be back before classes start back up,” Godrick said.
“I’m already feeling the bruises,” Hugh muttered. Godrick’s father, Artur Wallbreaker, was even bigger than Godrick, and he had a habit of cheerfully slapping people’s backs hard enough to wind them. And cheerfully hugging them until they thought their ribs would crack. And nearly crushing their hands when he cheerfully shook them.
Talia snorted. “Your dad would fit right in with Clan Castis,” she said. “Apart from being three sizes too large, at least.”
Along with their reputations as deadly fire mages and belligerent warmongers, Talia’s clan were also notoriously short.
Hugh knew better than to suggest a link between their height and belligerence, though. At least around Talia.
“He’s a perfectly reasonable height, yer all just way too short,” Godrick said.
Sabae coughed pointedly.
“Well, Sabae’s only a little too short,” Godrick said.
Talia kicked Godrick’s shin.
The foursome bickered cheerfully as they wound their way through the crowded docks. Sabae suggested they cut across the sand to get past the crowds of sailors, mages, and dockworkers, but Talia refused on the grounds of having spent entirely too much time in sand
over the summer. That, at least, saved Hugh the trouble of objecting, since he’d rather not walk where a sandship might run them down.
Hugh was idly glancing back out into the desert where the Moonless Owl had vanished when Talia elbowed him.
“Look who it is,” she whispered.
Hugh glanced over to see Rhodes Charax debarking from a particularly grand sandship. Hugh came to an abrupt halt. Rhodes had made Hugh’s first few months at Skyhold a living hell— he’d seemed to enjoy nothing more than tormenting Hugh at every opportunity.
Rhodes glanced their way, then seemed to notice Hugh and the others. He stopped in his tracks and stared at them.
The moment seemed to stretch on and on, until it was finally cut off by Sabae grabbing Hugh by the wrist and pulling him forward. “Come on, Hugh. Don’t waste your time on him.”
Talia was making a quiet growling noise, and Sabae grabbed her by the wrist as well.
“Let’s get some food, ah’m starving,” Godrick said. He’d positioned himself between Rhodes and the others.
After Sabae had dragged them out of sight of Rhodes, she let them both go.
“I wasn’t intending to fight Rhodes or anything,” Hugh said, rubbing his wrist.
“I was,” Talia muttered.
Sabae shot Talia a dirty look, then shook her head. “Food sounds like a great idea, Godrick.”
The four made it about fifty feet before Hugh tripped over a book.
It was, apparently, made entirely of green crystal, save for a striped orange-red stone in the front cover. Faint intersecting spellform lines radiated out from the stone, and a leather strap connected to each end of the spine.
Hugh couldn’t have explained it if he tried, but he was fairly sure the book was giving him an irritated look.
“How does that thing keep following yeh everywhere?” Godrick asked.
Hugh shrugged as he picked himself, and the book, off the ground. The book seemed to move slightly out of sync with gravity as it hung from its strap. When he slung the strap over his shoulder, the book weighed far, far less than he’d expect a book made of crystal to weigh.
“It only ever seems to move when no one’s looking at it,” Hugh said. “And it really doesn’t like being left behind when I go places.”
The crystal book had started its life as three separate items in his possession— a blank spellbook Sabae had gifted him for his birthday, the labyrinth stone that had somehow gotten bound up in his warlock contract with Kanderon Crux, and the aether crystal she’d given him to bond with.
He still wasn’t sure how the labyrinth stone had managed to bind itself to the book and the aether crystal, but he wasn’t really sure about much when it came to the labyrinth stone. Kanderon and Alustin had both been particularly cagey about answering Hugh’s questions about it— not particularly unusual for either of them, but certainly irritating.
Supposedly, a bound aether crystal would be incredibly useful to its wielder. Kanderon’s wings were her aether crystal— though she still hadn’t told Hugh how she’d lost her wings in the first place.
The only effect he’d noticed thus far from bonding with the crystal had been his eyes turning from brown to the same shade of green as the crystal spellbook.
The four of them were arguing about whether to eat at one of the cafeterias— which were free for students— or one of the restaurants near the docks— which were most certainly not free, but served considerably better food— when a tall, lanky figure waved them down.
Alustin usually had a slightly distracted, cheerful look on his face, but Hugh, Sabae, and Talia’s teacher was distressed at the moment.
“Is everything alright? Did the meeting go well?” Sabae asked him when they drew closer through the crowd.
“No, it definitely is not,” Alustin said, “and no, it most certainly did not.”
Alustin’s office hidden in the library was crowded with bookshelves, piles of books, loose books, papers, half-completed letters, and scrolls. The walls that weren’t covered in shelves held huge chalkboards, and even the floor was a single, massive chalkboard, covered in spellform diagrams and notes. A single origami golem in the shape of a sparrow was aimlessly bouncing off the ceiling, clearly near the end of its lifespan.
Hugh could tell that his spellbook was watching the golem intently, for whatever strange reason.
The four apprentices sat in immense, over-stuffed armchairs surrounding Alustin’s massively oversized desk. The chairs were large enough that Godrick had plenty of room in his, and Talia and Hugh looked like children in theirs. The armchairs had countless rips, tears, and patches, and stuffing leaked out of a number of holes— but they still remained in better condition than the desk, which looked like it had personally fought in a number of wars over the course of centuries.
Alustin, meanwhile, paced back and forth, muttering to himself. When Talia demanded to know what they were waiting for, he just muttered something inaudible and waved his hands.
Finally, after a solid ten minutes of waiting, Artur Wallbreaker ducked his way into the office, shutting the door behind him. Artur looked almost exactly like an older, more muscular version of Godrick, with the same dark skin and curly hair, albeit with a beard and ample grey in his hair. He looked tired and travel-stained at the moment.
“Da!” Godrick exclaimed, bursting out of his seat. “Ah didn’t know yeh were back already!” He darted over to his father, and the two embraced roughly.
“Ah’ve missed yeh, Godrick,” Artur said. “Ah hope yeh behaved yerself fer Alustin this summer. Speaking of which, what’s with tha urgent summons?”
Alustin strode over and shook hands with Artur. “It’s good to see you, Artur. I only wish my own apprentices were as well behaved as Godrick,” he said. “I’m sorry to call you in so soon after your arrival, but I’ll try and make this as quick as it can be, so you two can catch up.”
Hugh couldn’t help but notice Alustin flex his hand gingerly after the handshake ended, and he winced in sympathy. He’d had the experience of shaking hands with Artur before, and it was certainly a memorable one.
Alustin strode back to the desk and rolled up his sleeve. A banded spellform tattoo began darkening into visibility on his arm, and he seemed to shove his hand into empty space. A moment later, he pulled out another oversized armchair, which dropped several inches to the ground with a thunk.
Artur settled the chair to the side of the desk next to Godrick, waving a greeting at the others. Hugh waved back, relieved at not having been crushed in a massive hug.
Alustin collapsed into his chair and stared at the ceiling, saying nothing for a moment.
“So…” Artur said.
The lanky paper mage said nothing for a moment, then he sighed and looked down at them. “We have a traitor on the Skyhold Council.”
CHAPTER TWO
Unwelcome Revelations
Everyone started asking Alustin questions at once, to the point where Hugh couldn’t make out a single word anyone was saying. Alustin was taken aback for a moment, then he gestured for silence.
“Give me a chance to explain, please,” Alustin said.
“It’d best be one good explanation,” Artur said, leaning forwards in his chair.
Alustin sighed. “Before I do, I need to ask your son a question.”
Godrick gave Alustin a confused look.
“Godrick, have you told your father anything at all about the specifics of Hugh’s relationship with Kanderon?” Alustin asked.
Hugh stiffened. He’d never actually thought about whether Godrick would have shared anything about…
“No, ah haven’t,” Godrick said, an angry look on his face. “Ah wouldn’t betray Hugh’s trust like that.”
“What are yeh goin’ on about?” Artur asked. “And what does it have tah do with me boy?”
“Hugh, may I have your permission to share the details of your situation with Artur?” Alustin asked.
“Would you actually respect his
decision if he said no?” Talia demanded, glaring at Alustin. “You’ve already let Artur know that there is a situation without asking Hugh, so…”
Alustin opened his mouth, then shut it. “You’re right,” he said finally. “Hugh, I should have talked to you privately first, and you have my apology for not doing so.”
Hugh blinked, then shook his head. “It’s fine, I actually don’t mind. But what about Kanderon?”
“Kanderon was, in fact, the one to suggest bringing you four and Artur in on things, so you don’t need to worry there,” Alustin said.
Hugh rather doubted he would ever entirely not worry about the massive sphinx or her temper, but that did alleviate his concerns quite a bit.
“Ah have no idea what yer all goin’ on about,” Artur said.
“Hugh,” Alustin said, “is a warlock, and he has pacted with Kanderon.”
Artur’s jaw dropped open. “He what with who now?” The massive battlemage gave Hugh an incredulous look. “Tha High Librarian doesn’t hold reins with that sort a’ thing. She’s never pacted in all her centuries at Skyhold.”
“Not, at least,” Alustin said, “until it was the only way to save the lives of four promising students— including your son.”
Alustin told Artur everything then— how he’d figured out that Hugh was a warlock, how he’d come to suspect the demon Bakori’s manipulations, how they’d been hunting for a suitable entity for him to contract with, how Hugh had contacted Kanderon when the four apprentices had gotten stranded down in the labyrinth, and how the contract between them had been formed.
The big stone mage had been one of the mages who had gone down into the labyrinth to rescue the apprentices, so Alustin skipped over much of that part of the story.
“As interestin’ as this all is,” Artur asked after Alustin had finished, “what, exactly, does this have ta do with there bein’ a traitor on tha Skyhold Council?”
“Outside of this room, there should be only five people that know the truth of Hugh and Kanderon’s contract,” Alustin said. “Kanderon and the rest of the Councilors on the Academic sub-council. And this goes double for the specific details of the contract. When we were in Theras Tel this summer, however, Indris showed that she very clearly knew about both Hugh’s contract and at least one specific detail from it.”
