by John Bierce
“So just because Anders is nice, he’s the traitor?” Hugh asked.
“Yes! Well, no, but also yes,” Talia said.
Godrick gave her an exasperated look. “That was real clear,” he said. “Yeh really couldn’t have explained that better.”
The four of them were hypothetically supposed to be studying, but it was taking the form of them sitting around Hugh’s room wasting time instead.
Well, three of them, anyhow. Sabae was ignoring them and poring through a massive stack of attendance reports and meetings for the Council on Hugh’s desk, muttering to herself and taking notes.
Hugh’s spellbook was napping in the windowsill after hours spent harassing sand drakes above the harbor.
“Look, when there’s a traitor in a novel, if the writer is any good, they make sure to trick the reader into thinking that the actual traitor is the last possible suspect it could possibly be,” Talia said. “They make the traitor boring and forgettable by making them a scribe or clerk to a more likely traitor; or they make them seem weak and ridiculous by making them nervous and giving them a stutter; or they make them so egregiously obvious as a traitor by having them sleep with the protagonist’s wife or something, so the reader would never believe it was actually them, or they just make them way too nice.”
Godrick sighed. “This isn’t one a’ yer novels, though, and yeh’ve been convinced Anders was the culprit from day one.”
“I know it’s not a novel,” Talia said. “But the writer of one of those novels is trying to conceal the identity of the traitor, and there’s only so many realistic ways to do that. There’s no spell that just conceals or reveals traitors, just like there’s no such thing as a truth spell.”
Hugh raised his hand. “I ran into a truth spell once, in the book of forbidden magic I found in the Library last year.”
Godrick shook his head. “I attended a lecture on truth spells a while back. Every single one of them anyone’s ever encountered is either a fraud, a scrying spell that doesn’t actually detect truth, or does something like detects when someone says something the caster doesn’t believe. That last one is probably the biggest reason most cities ban them. Which is probably why it was in a book of forbidden magic.”
“This one also burned lies onto their speaker’s skin,” Hugh said with vaguely nauseous look. “That probably had something to do with it too.”
“Gross,” Godrick said.
“Anyhow,” Talia interjected, “as I was saying. A traitor’s first line of defense, in real life or in fiction, is simply going to be keeping people’s attention off them. There’s only so many ways to do that, so there’s going to be a certain amount of overlap.”
“Sure, but when yeh got a traitor hidin’ themselves in fiction, it’s goin’ ta be in a more narratively satisfyin’ way, more often than not. It’s predisposin’ yeh towards that sort a’ answer,” Godrick said. “Yeh really don’t have any good reason ta think it’s more likely ta be Anders other than the fact it’s narratively satisfyin’.”
“You were wrong about Eudaxus being responsible for the conspiracy in Theras Tel just because he was Indris’ High Priest, and it’s always the High Priest behind everything in books,” Hugh said.
Talia stuck her tongue out at Hugh.
“Look, it’s just as likely ta be Abyla, or Rutliss, or Headmaster Tarik,” Godrick said.
“It’s not Tarik,” Sabae said.
Godrick started to continue, then he realized what Sabae had just said.
“What do yeh mean, it’s not Tarik?” he asked.
“I mean, Tarik wasn’t the traitor,” Sabae said.
“We get that,” Talia said. “How do you know it’s not her?”
Sabae gestured at the pile of paperwork. “I’ve spent literally weeks poring over years of council attendance records and minutes and comparing them to the information that…”
“Stop!” Hugh yelled.
Everyone froze and stared at him.
“Someone’s trying to get past my wards to scry on us,” Hugh hissed. “Act natural, quick.”
Hugh promptly sat down and grabbed the nearest book, pretending to be reading. Godrick scooted back over to his homework and pretended to be studying. Talia went and started staring out the window.
Godrick would be shocked if someone watching them couldn’t tell how tense they all were. Godrick could feel the sweat rolling down his forehead.
A couple minutes of tense waiting later, Talia stepped away from Hugh’s window nervously.
“Uh, Hugh? Your spellbook’s doing something weird,” she said.
The spellbook was standing up, looking intently around the room. Godrick had no idea how he could tell the spellbook was looking around, it was just sitting there motionlessly, but he could.
Seeming dissatisfied, the orange labyrinth stone set into the spellbook’s front cover began to glow. The labyrinth pattern on the stone began spreading outwards through the green crystal.
Then, just as abruptly as it had started, the glow vanished, and Hugh sighed.
“I don’t know how it did it, but it halted the scrying attempt,” he said.
“What a good little book,” Talia said. She reached out and scratched the book’s spine, and Godrick could have sworn it looked pleased at the attention.
“Who do yeh think was spyin’ on us?” Godrick asked.
“Probably Alustin testing Hugh’s wards,” Sabae said. “Now as I was saying…”
“What if it was Bakori?” Hugh said, visibly worried. “We know he’s capable of scrying. What if he’s onto our search for the traitor?”
“Then there’s nothing we can do about it,” Sabae said, “and we should just keep worrying about the investigation. Besides, it looks like your spellbook can protect us from that now. So as I was saying…”
Someone knocked on the door.
“Don’t open it!” Hugh whispered. “What if it’s the traitor?”
Sabae rolled her eyes, stood up, and went to open the door.
Godrick tensed up, but it was only Alustin on the other side of the door.
“How did you block my scrying attempt?” the paper mage asked excitedly.
Sabae rolled her eyes again.
After they explained what had happened on their end to Alustin, he spent several minutes examining the spellbook.
“It felt just like trying to scry into a labyrinth,” Alustin said. “It’s got to be a property of the labyrinth stone, not the aether crystal. Not that there’s much difference now, but…”
Sabae coughed pointedly.
“Right, you were saying why you thought Headmaster Tarik was innocent,” Alustin said. He sat down next to Godrick on Hugh’s bed. Godrick scooted over to give him a little more room.
Sabae rolled her eyes again. Godrick was fairly sure she was going to sprain them at this rate.
“I’ve spent the last few weeks painstakingly going over attendance lists and minutes for every leaked secret you all know about that you were willing to share with us,” Sabae said. “This all, by the way, would have been much, much easier if you’d been willing to share a little more.”
Alustin opened his mouth to say something, but Sabae held up her hand to forestall him. “I know, I know, we’re not cleared for that sort of thing as apprentices.”
“Anyhow,” she continued. “I just created a chart of how frequently councilors attended meetings where these secrets were discussed, and what I found was that Headmaster Tarik’s attendance was far, far less frequent than any of the others at these meetings. I wasn’t able to conclusively show that she missed any of the secrets entirely, but many of the meetings in questions had only the most rudimentary mentions of the leaked information. So I suppose I don’t have absolute confirmation it wasn’t her, but it’s pretty telling.”
Alustin got off the bed and walked over to her. “May I see your results?”
He spent several minutes reading through her notes and examining her charts, and then nodde
d. “You did a good job on this. You even spotted a handful of significant meetings we missed. Good work.”
Sabae stared at him for a moment, then narrowed her eyes. “You knew,” she said. “You’ve known all along that it wasn’t Tarik and you didn’t tell us. So much for our contributions mattering, then.”
“We only figured it out a couple months ago,” Alustin protested. “And while I’ve hardly kept it a secret that I consider this a training exercise for you, I also consider you part of a legitimate operation here. You’re not the only investigators on the case we haven’t told— we actually have quite a few people still looking into Tarik.”
“That seems like a waste,” Talia said.
“Better safe than sorry,” Alustin countered. “We can’t risk being wrong about a suspect when the stakes are this high. It would take remarkably little to pull her back into being a suspect again.”
“Isn’t it risky having this many people in on the investigation?” Sabae asked. “Even if there’s only one traitor on the Council…”
Alustin nodded. “There almost certainly are other traitors in Skyhold as well. Bakori’s magic can’t penetrate into the Grand Library, though, and Kanderon has personally inspected most of the librarians for his influence. We think our security is good enough to look for more conventional traitors.”
“Wait, if Kanderon can detect his influence like that, why is this investigation even necessary?” Hugh asked.
Alustin looked a little awkward at that. “Because the examination is long, unpleasant, and undignified. Even if Kanderon wanted to risk tipping her hand…”
“Paw, you mean?” Talia interrupted.
“The phrase refers to a hand of cards, not an actual hand,” Alustin said. “And even if she wanted to risk tipping her hand, she’d have to convince the full Council to authorize it against another Council member, and she’d need to explain the whole story to them— which would include revealing the fact that you’d pacted to Kanderon, rather than just being the first crystal mage to come through Skyhold in decades, as well as being the student of her student.”
Alustin answered a few more questions about the investigation before he got up to leave. As he put his hand on the door, however, Sabae spoke up again.
“I think we need to talk about what happens if we do end up having to enter Skyhold’s labyrinth at Midsummer.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Long Overdue Explanations
Alustin pulled his hand off the door. “I remain confident that we’ll be able to finish the investigation in enough time to prevent that,” he said.
Sabae folded her arms. “It’s already getting close to the spring equinox, and we’ve only eliminated a single suspect. Whether you’re confident or not, it seems reasonable to assume the risk is there, and we should be prepared for it. We need to know what, exactly, we need to worry about from Bakori if we enter the labyrinth with him still inside.”
Hugh watched the two of them anxiously. He knew Sabae was right, that they needed to be prepared just in case, but his stomach felt like it wanted to claw its way out of him thinking about the possibility.
Alustin sighed, then took his hand off the door. “Alright, but it’s a long conversation, so get yourselves situated.”
The paper mage actually pulled out a battered, overstuffed armchair from his storage tattoo, settling it under Hugh’s window.
“Do you remember the lecture I gave you all on the nature of the aether, and how it’s born from the slow decay of the universe?” Alustin asked.
Everyone except Godrick nodded. Hugh felt vaguely surprised at recalling that Godrick had only joined their group a good ways into the spring— actually, almost a year ago now.
“You’ve had that lecture, though, right?” Alustin asked Godrick, who nodded. “Good. So eventually, our universe will run down completely. The stars will go out and the planet will grow cold and… some nastier things will sometimes happen. Our universe is hardly the only one out there, though, and that’s not the only way a universe can die. The other way is much, much faster.”
Alustin pulled two sheets of paper off Sabae’s research pile and made them hover in mid-air.
“Say these two sheets of paper are different universes. They’re just doing their own thing, not worrying about anything outside themselves, right? It’s not an overly accurate depiction— universes frequently intersect entirely without interacting— there are probably thousands of universes intersecting us right now, if not more, and we’d never know it.”
Alustin brought the two sheets of paper together in midair.
“Sometimes, though, those intersecting universes start interacting more strongly. They start rubbing up against one another, and a hole starts to form. One of the first, and most important, consequences of this hole forming is a rapid increase in the density of the aether around it.”
“Because it’s leaking through from the other universe?” Talia asked.
Alustin shook his head. “No. Every universe has its own aether, but it doesn’t leak through the holes. Rather, the universes rubbing together produces what might be called friction, which generates more aether on both sides. It’s likely for the best, since from what we know, the nature of aether tends to vary wildly from universe to universe.”
The two sheets of paper floating in the air began to rub together even more vigorously, and Hugh spotted a little smoke coming from the point of contact.
“These points of friction are known as mana wells. There are a couple different types of these. A mana well that only connects a couple of universes is known as a lateral well, while one that connects more than that is known as a junction well.”
Several more sheets of paper joined in.
“Despite me describing them as holes, it takes a while before they’re actually permeable. The membranes separating universes tend to be both thick and strong, so it can take quite some time for the friction to wear a hole anything can pass through. Many lateral wells never last long enough to form an actual hole. Junction wells, on the other hand, can form holes much more quickly, as well as producing far more aether density around them.”
“This is interesting,” Talia said, “but it relates to Bakori how?”
“I’m getting there,” Alustin said. “When enough mana wells form in a universe, it starts to increase its aether density to a far greater level than would be naturally possible. When this happens, it starts to… change things. More and more creatures start to tap into the aether as part of their natural life cycle, and life starts to run riot. Eventually, aether densities will get so high that natural law itself will start to distort, and reality itself will start to break down. It wouldn’t even be possible for us to even breathe the air there, I would imagine. We call this going aether critical.”
A visible hole with charred edges had appeared where the group of papers were rubbing together.
“These are the universes where demons are spawned. They’re lifeforms adapted for extreme aether densities, and they’re constantly living on the edge of destruction. Most can only live in their own universe for a certain amount of time before aether densities grow great enough that they either die or are forced to abandon it to later generations better adapted, and so on and so forth. When they can escape, they put disproportionate demands on the aether of the worlds they invade— and if the aether can’t sustain them, they die.”
The hole in the paper was significantly larger now, and actual embers were visible.
“Eventually, aether densities in these universes grow so high that reality breaks down entirely, and they collapse. Thankfully, by that point most of the inhabitants can’t survive other universes at all.”
“So… Bakori is trying to get out of the labyrinth so he can colonize our world?” Hugh asked. “And how’d he get into the labyrinth in the first place?”
Alustin smiled excitedly. “I’m getting there! Labyrinths are the next piece of the puzzle. They only form on mana wells, and generally only j
unction wells. So far as we can tell, whoever designed labyrinths designed them to slow down this process, to prevent universes from going aether critical. They act as brakes on the amount of aether being generated by mana wells. We’re fairly sure the wells can’t be plugged, but the labyrinths seem to do an effective job at slowing down the process of universes dying this way— once they’ve arrived in a universe, they tend to reproduce and plant themselves in mana wells quickly. There’s little we actually understand about how they grow or how they work, and even less about their creators, but trying to understand that is one of Skyhold’s main reasons to exist.”
Alustin raised a finger. “They also tend to overlay onto quite a few other worlds temporarily— many of the creatures in the labyrinth are drawn in during these brief periods, then they get stuck there when the overlay ends.
The papers were burning merrily now, but Hugh was fairly sure that Alustin had forgotten about his little demonstration.
“Skyhold’s labyrinth bars the entrance to the largest junction mana well on the continent of Ithos, and one of the largest on all of Anastis. Bakori wandered into our labyrinth from his own universe, which was going aether critical. His own universe is too aether dense for him to survive in any longer, so he can’t flee back there.”
“So that’s why he wants into ours,” Hugh said.
Alustin shook his head. “If he wanted out, he likely could have escaped decades, even centuries ago. So far as we can tell, he’d been down there at least half a century before his battle with Kanderon two hundred years ago. No, we suspect that our universe is too aether poor for him to settle in long-term. We think, rather, that his goal is to shatter the labyrinth.”
Alustin gestured for them to wait before they could burst into questions.
“Shattering the labyrinth would massively increase the aether density around Skyhold, giving him a broad territory he could inhabit for quite a long time. Thankfully, we’re fairly sure he currently lacks the means, and that the shattering must be done from outside the labyrinth. So long as this is Kanderon’s territory, he won’t dare act. He’s powerful, but by no means her match in a direct confrontation— as he learned before.”
