A Traitor in Skyhold: Mage Errant Book 3

by John Bierce

  Hugh didn’t trust that it would stay easy, though.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Eccentric Faculty

  Hugh was more than a little nervous on the first day of his spellform crafting course. It was his first class without one of his friends alongside him in quite some time, and it would be alongside journeyman mages, for the most part— students who, rather than hiring out as battlemages or whatever other specialization after completing their first three years, instead chose to continue their education. Other than a few specialized disciplines like enchanting and healing beyond basic field medicine that required those extra years, journeyman mages tended to be those who delighted in magic for its own sake, or wanted to push boundaries.

  Alustin was surprisingly ambivalent about becoming a journeyman mage. While he had done it— you couldn’t take apprentices at Skyhold unless you’d completed your journeyman years, among other things— he didn’t actually consider it to be that advantageous for many mages. Most battlemages, for instance, didn’t need to know precisely how their spells worked, they just needed to be able to perform them reliably and quickly— especially if they were serving in an army.

  When Hugh arrived at the classroom, he found himself numbering among only a dozen or so students, only three of which appeared to be apprentices like him.

  The instructor was already waiting for them in the room. Every inch of exposed skin on the grey-haired, stocky older mage was covered in complex metallic spellform tattoos. He took his time staring at each and every student in turn. The look on his face said he found all of them wanting.

  “My name is Emmenson Drees, and I’ll be teaching you spellform construction. I accept no students without a personal recommendation from a Skyhold instructor, and only then if you already have a requisite minimum skill at spellform construction.”

  Emmenson glanced around the room again, the sour look on his face growing more pronounced. “I’m sure all of you consider yourself brilliant and above your peers. That’s hardly an accomplishment, since most of your peers think hurling a fireball straight ahead requires magical skill, and could likely be replaced by a goat without many people noticing a difference in their spellcasting.”

  Someone in the front of the classroom snickered, and Emmenson fixed the unlucky soul with a glare. “I have a lot more patience for them than I will for any of you. I will have more respect for most of them than for you. The reason most mages merely use spellforms out of a book or memorize them is that they work. They’re time-tested, reliable spells that don’t explode two castings out of seven, only work in warm weather, or get shorted out by loud noises.”

  Emmenson rapped his knuckles on the desk of the student that had laughed. “You all, however, think that you are cleverer, more talented, and just better than everyone else. Enough so that you think you’re capable of creating worthwhile spells. I doubt most of you will ever pass the level of being able to meddle with cantrips, however. One or two of you might be good enough to eventually develop spellforms for specialized, one time jobs.”

  He paused and looked around the room. “None of you, however, will ever be good enough to craft one of those mundane, day-to-day spells that students like you disdain so much. Those pedestrian fireball spellforms? They’re tried and true works of art that you’ll never even approach. In all my years of teaching, I have had exactly three students who reached that level. None of you will ever get there.”

  The students around Hugh held varying mixes of shock and anger on their faces. One journeyman to Hugh’s right, a woman with hair nearly down to the floor, spoke up in irritation. “Who do you think…”

  “Quiet,” Emmenson said, sounding more bored than anything.

  “I-” the woman started, only to be interrupted by Emmenson snapping his fingers. The tattoos on his hand flared slightly, and the journeyman abruptly went silent. Her mouth was still moving, but Hugh couldn’t hear anything.

  In fact, Hugh couldn’t hear almost anything at all, except for Emmenson’s voice. Even his breathing and heartbeat sounded curiously muted.

  “I have absolutely no interest in hearing what any of you have to say. If you have any questions, you may write them down for me and leave them on my desk, and I’ll answer any I find worthwhile during the next class. If you have any comments, you may keep them to yourselves. I teach this class for two reasons only— because the Council demands it of me, and for the vanishingly rare chance that I might actually find a worthy student amongst you all.”

  Hugh noticed that the journeyman’s hair was twitching, apparently on its own.

  Emmenson strode up to the front of the classroom. “While in my class, you may not test a new spellform without my prior approval. If you test one without it, you will be expelled from the class. If I hear of you testing a new spell on your own time, it had best be with your master’s approval, because otherwise, you will be expelled from the class.”

  Hugh started to raise his hand at that, but then he quickly lowered it and began rummaging in his pockets for paper and something to write with.

  “If you miss a class without an extremely good reason, you will be expelled from the class. If you make a habit of being late, you will be expelled from the class.”

  His spellbook, apparently deciding to be helpful, flipped itself up onto his desk from the floor, where he’d left it. Thankfully, it seemed to be covered by whatever sound suppressing spell Emmenson was using. The spellbook opened up, and sandwiched in between its crystal pages was a blank sheet of paper. A slightly chewed looking sheet of paper. Hugh was fairly sure it was identical to the paper that the book had been filled with before it became crystalline.

  Hugh looked up to see Emmenson looking his way. The mage cocked an eyebrow at him, but didn’t say anything.

  Hugh set his quill pen and sealed inkpot on the desk, but he didn’t do anything with them just yet.

  “Even if you don’t get expelled, I fail most students. I do not do so out of cruelty or for my amusement, but simply because you will not meet the expectations I have for this class. My standards will be clearly laid out, and I will be utterly fair about them, but I will not compromise on them.”

  Quite a few of the students around Hugh looked a little queasy.

  “If you wish to drop this class now, you may do so without any difficulty. The academy is more than aware of how much I demand, and they’re happy to assist you in finding a subject better suited for you. And rest assured, it will be better suited to you than this. And don’t think that I’m merely being rough on you now to weed out the unsuited— I’m being kind, given that it’s the first day.”

  Emmenson glanced at the door, which swung open at his look. He then turned his gaze expectantly on the students.

  Almost immediately, a couple of students began to leave. Emmenson just waited patiently. Another student eventually got up and left, followed in swift succession by two more.

  Hugh, seeing that Emmenson wasn’t moving on just yet, began to write.

  Eventually, after no one else chose to leave, Emmenson resumed. Hugh noticed that he didn’t even glance at the door when he released the spell holding it open— which wasn’t at all necessary to do, but most people had trouble not looking at the results of their spells.

  Hugh was the only apprentice left in the room— only journeymen had stayed otherwise. He also noticed that the journeyman with the long hair that seemed to move on its own was still there, though she looked incredibly frustrated.

  Emmenson raised his eyebrows as he looked over the remainder of the class. “You lot are harder to scare off than usual, I see. Well, let’s begin.”

  Almost everyone in the class left questions on Emmenson’s desk after the class let out. Once out of the classroom, sound resumed like normal, and Hugh could hear the other students complaining to one another about Emmenson.

  Hugh was just happy he had a class where there was no chance of him being called on to answer questions in front of everyone.

  A co
uple of days before the first meeting of Hugh’s wardcrafting class, an origami golem in the shape of a bat delivered itself to the door of Hugh’s hidden room in the library. When he unfolded it, the sheet of paper only contained directions to a classroom inside Skyhold.

  Which, in turn, had led him today into a hallway that, so far as he could tell, didn’t contain any doorways, nor anyone else.

  Hugh spent a few moments double-checking his directions, but he was definitely in the correct hallway. Maybe the directions were incorrect?

  For a moment, the idea flashed through his mind that perhaps the note was encrypted somehow, and he was supposed to solve the code to find the correct classroom. He quickly dismissed it, however, as a product of having just left cryptography class.

  Hugh frowned, and started to walk back down the hallway. Something about this wasn’t right. The classroom should be halfway down the hall on the north side, but the wall was just blank there.

  As he turned his head, he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye for a moment. He jerked his head back, but there was still nothing there.

  Maybe…

  Hugh tried simply reaching out towards the wall where the door should be, but met only the granite of Skyhold with his hand. So it wasn’t an illusion, then.

  He frowned, then walked back to the end of the hallway. He rested his hand on the north wall, then closed his eyes and started walking forward. About halfway down, the wall vanished beneath his fingers. Hugh smiled and stepped through without opening his eyes.

  Only to find himself in an empty classroom, save for Hugh and the desks.

  No, there was a letter lying on one of the desks. He walked over to it, seeing that it had his name on the envelope.

  Hugh reached out to grab it, but then stopped himself, turning to face the door again, curious.

  There, right above the door, was a ward. Hugh immediately recognized it as a ward intended to divert attention from the door. It was much more complex than the attention wards Hugh was familiar with, though— those only worked when people didn’t know something was there. They wouldn’t deter an active searcher.

  Hugh lifted up his spellbook, intending to copy down the ward. When he opened it, however, there was no convenient sheet of paper for him to write on.

  “If you’re no good to write in anymore, you could at least supply me with paper when I need it,” Hugh told the spellbook.

  The spellbook somehow managed to give him a stubborn look.

  “Maybe I should write in you, then, see how you like it,” Hugh said. He strode over to the lecturer’s podium, dropping the spellbook on it and getting out his quill and ink.

  Its pages somehow looked even more obstinate now. Hugh frowned. “Alright, you asked for it.” He lowered the quill pen to the page to start writing.

  The ink just ran straight off the book.

  Hugh sighed. “Are you actually good for anything at all, or did I just manage to ruin you?”

  The book seemed offended. Hugh rolled his eyes and moved to shut it, but the book refused to close.

  “Fine, be like that,” Hugh said. He turned to pick the letter off the desk, only to have something poke him in the back.

  He turned, only to see his spellbook floating off towards the door.

  “Now what?” Hugh demanded. The book stopped a few feet away from the door, hovering open at chest height and somehow staring at him expectantly.

  “This is ridiculous,” Hugh said, but he walked over to the book. The book stared at him for a moment, then it switched its attention to the ward above the door, and then looked back at him.

  Not only did Hugh have no idea what the book wanted him to do, he still had no idea how he could tell what the book was feeling or looking at. It hadn’t moved at all since it had reached the spot it was now hovering in.

  “Look, if the ink doesn’t stick to you, how am I supposed to write in you?” Hugh asked.

  The book, seeming exasperated with him, abruptly began turning pages. They didn’t bend like paper, but they weren’t rigid, either. They were somewhere between sheets and panes.

  They were also absurdly strong. Even Godrick hadn’t been able to tear one out this summer, and the book had bit Hugh hard when he kept trying after that. The edges were considerably less sharp than those of paper pages, however.

  The book finally came to rest on a pair of pages near its front cover. There was writing suspended within the pages— easily visible flaws within the crystal. The writing was from when he was planning out his explosive wardstones for his sling— which reminded him that he needed to rework the ward designs so that they would be less likely to randomly blow up while he was carrying them around. He was lucky he hadn’t been injured by one blowing up in his belt pouch in the labyrinth.

  The book shot him an impatient look, and he focused back onto it.

  “What are you trying to tell me?” Hugh asked.

  The book seemed to sigh, and then the words and diagrams inside… moved. Hugh blinked in surprise as they reformed into a crude drawing of him drawing in the book with… his finger?

  The drawing collapsed back into its constituent words and diagrams, and the spellbook flipped its pages until it reached a blank one, then it stared at him expectantly.

  Hugh shrugged, then reached his finger out and pressed it against the page, drawing the first line of the ward above the door.

  Nothing happened.

  Hugh sighed and started to pull his hand back. The instant he did so, the book snapped shut on it. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough to keep his hand from moving.

  “Alright, fine,” he told the book irritably. The book slowly opened, releasing his hand. He frowned, then poked the book with his finger again. Nothing happened— he might as well be trying to use a quill without ink.

  A quill without ink… Hugh smiled, then tapped into his mana reservoirs. He didn’t channel the mana into any spellforms, but instead just reached out with his finger again, dragging it across the page.

  It left a perfect line in its wake.

  Hugh smiled and started to draw.

  It took a few minutes to get the hang of it, and he made quite a few errors during the process. Partway through, he realized that he could actually erase the lines like chalk just by running his fingers over them and willing them away, which helped the process go much faster.

  After he finished drawing the ward, he closed the spellbook and slung the strap over his shoulder, after which the book stopped hovering and fell against his hip. Possibly a little harder than strictly necessary. He glared at it, then strode over to the desk his letter was on.

  And just kept staring.

  Eventually, he felt a twinge of impatience from his spellbook.

  “It’s warded,” Hugh told the book. “Look at the wax seal— that’s a ward stamped into it, around the border of the sigil.”

  Presumably, the sigil belonged to Loarna of the Vault, the wardcrafting professor.

  “I recognize part of the ward— it’s meant to destroy the letter if the wrong person breaks the seal. It’s one of the basic wards. I don’t recognize a lot of the rest of the spellform components, though.”

  The spellbook somehow managed to emulate a bored yawn. Hugh rolled his eyes and turned back to the letter.

  Part of the ward seemed to be designed to interact with other wards. If Hugh was reading the spellforms correctly, moving the letter past the other ward would destroy part of the text of the letter, but he wasn’t sure what ward it was describing. Maybe the one under the door?

  Hugh grinned and looked underneath the desk. Sure enough, there was a corresponding ward below it. He barely recognized half the markings in the ward, but he didn’t need to— he could at least tell that the ward was mainly just built to interact with the other ward. He stood back up, grabbed the letter, and cracked the seal right there on the desk without moving it from inside the desk ward.

  Hugh unfolded it and removed it from the desk, and smiled when
nothing happened to the text inside the letter.

  Then he frowned again.

  All the paper contained was a date and time— the date and time of the next wardcrafting class, in fact— and another location in Skyhold. Below it was a homework assignment. He was supposed to write about all the wards he’d encountered during this class, as well as their purposes.

  From what he was guessing, the homework assignment would have been the part that would have been burned off by the ward.

  Hugh was preparing to leave the classroom when a thought occurred to him. He crouched down and began looking under the other desks.

  There were wards almost identical to those under his desk under each of them. Curious, he tried to feel the tops of some of the other desks to see if there were letters hidden there, but his fingers somehow slipped away from the desk in the air above them.

  Strange.

  If Hugh had to guess, there was a letter atop each desk, each only visible to their intended recipient. Which actually lead to another question— shouldn’t he have seen some of his other classmates by now? He was fairly sure he wasn’t the only one in this class.

  Curious, Hugh strode out of the room and looked down the hallway, seeing nobody in sight. He started to walk down the hallway, then stopped, feeling like something was off. Why had he started down the hall at such an odd angle? And, come to think of it, he had definitely meandered quite a bit on his way through the hallway the first time.

  Hugh pulled out a piece of chalk, then began dragging it across the floor as he walked down the hallway. When he reached the nearest intersection, he stopped and looked back at the line.

  It was the least straight line he’d ever seen. It wavered, twisted, made U-turns, and even looped at one point. He must have gone twice as far as he actually needed to go to get down the hallway, and he had hardly noticed it.

  Hugh grinned, then stepped back into the hallway. He touched one wall with his outstretched hand, then stretched his other hand out as far as it could go.