A Traitor in Skyhold: Mage Errant Book 3

by John Bierce

  She poked the orange-red stone embedded in the spellbook’s front cover with her massive claw, a surprisingly delicate action. Hugh could feel the spellbook’s indignation.

  “If I thought I could remove it without damaging the crystal and likely you, I would, but that’s out of the question now. And the abilities it has presented so far are useful, but hardly of the level you’d expect from a fully bonded aether crystal.”

  The spellbook felt even more irritated for a moment, then spat a wad of chewed up paper at Kanderon. Hugh tensed, expecting her to get angry, but she just seemed interested instead. It probably helped that the book didn’t have saliva, so it was just a wad of dry shredded paper.

  “Where is it storing the paper?” Kanderon said, and pried the book open. It struggled for a moment, but settled down when the sphinx glared at it.

  Kanderon stared at it for a while, muttering to herself, then plunged a claw into the crystal spellbook. Hugh started, at first thinking that she was damaging it, but then realized that the claw seemed to disappear into space just inches above the book.

  “Fascinating,” Kanderon said, probing deeper. “I had thought that the traces of stellar and planar mana I smelled on the book were merely from it draining those reservoirs to power its form-taking, but it appears that it actually fashioned itself some sort of internal pseudoplane. It’s not a proper plane— it’s fractured and twisting, and it only seems to want to accept written records, of all things, but it’s definitely there.”

  Kanderon glanced up at Hugh. “It actually reminds me of a labyrinth, structurally. It seems to be a fairly safe bet that the stone crafted this space when it was attaching itself to the aether crystal. I had wanted you to avoid attuning the crystal anytime soon, because ideally you could have done so with a spell that tapped into all three of our affinities, but the stone at least prevented the planar affinity from being wasted. The stellar affinity, unfortunately, did go to waste, other than as raw power.”

  Hugh stared at her blankly.

  Kanderon sighed and pulled her claw out of the book. “You can magically store books, paper, and such in there, if you can get it to swallow them without chewing. And if you can get it to spit them back up. It’s basically a portable library. On top of that, you should be able to write an almost unlimited amount in the book’s crystal pages without running out of room. You’ve got your own personal library.”

  Hugh smiled. He rather liked the sound of that.

  “I’d be a little shocked if it didn’t manifest other abilities. The internal pattern of an attuned aether crystal is extremely complex, and continues to slowly change for quite a long time. Though, there is one aspect of it you don’t seem to have grasped yet. Do you remember how heavy your aether crystal was before you mastered the proprioceptive link?”

  Hugh nodded.

  “All that weight is still there, and the book is continuing to grow in density. The book, like my… the book is growing outwards into its little pseudoplane. It will continue to grow heavier and denser over time, though your link to it will let you carry it without noticing most of the time. It already weighs at least a third of what you do. By the time you’ve finished your apprenticeship, it will likely weigh what you do now. On top of that, it’s unusually sturdy, even for an aether crystal— attuning it to construct a ward seems to have considerably reinforced its pattern.”

  “Meaning?…” Hugh asked.

  “If you’re somehow able to train the pesky thing, it should be able to guard you in battle, and cause quite a bit of trouble. And even if something does damage it, it should be able to heal itself over time.”

  Hugh smiled widely.

  “I thought you might enjoy that,” Kanderon said. She removed her paw from the book, which immediately shot away from her and buried itself in the sand behind Hugh. She gave it another irritated look as it did so. “I can still try and figure out a way to deal with that personality problem it has, if you’d like.”

  Hugh shook his head. “It’s growing on me, I think.”

  Kanderon snorted, swishing her tail through the air. “Very well. We’ve got a lot more work to do, Hugh. I want to start you on pattern linking crystals other than quartz today.”

  She wasn’t exactly telling the truth. ‘A lot more work’ made it sound far easier than it ended up being. ‘Bruising and exhausting labor’ might have been a better choice of words.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Fatigue

  By Fourthday on the second week of classes, Talia felt ready to explode. Either that, or sleep for a week.

  Classes had hardly been easy last year, but two weeks into classes this year and she was already feeling overwhelmed, and her friends weren’t doing much better.

  If Talia’s lessons were more interesting, it might have been going better, but they were far from it. She’d been excited when Alustin told her he’d arranged for a fire mage to tutor her, but finding that said fire mage was a street entertainer dampened her enthusiasm considerably.

  She’d had a little success creating an illusion of fire using her dream affinity last year, but only a little bit. The fire tended to take on the fragmentary shapes of monsters, creatures, and buildings, and it just looked terrible in general.

  Trying to craft illusions of anything else just failed entirely. So, Alustin’s brilliant idea had been for Talia to try to use her malfunctioning dream affinity to mimic a flame affinity crafting the moving puppets and sculptures of a flame mage.

  It was going miserably. Flame-based puppetry was crude at the best of times, and relied as much on the narration and acting abilities of the mage as anything else. There really weren’t many ways to make a crudely fashioned six-inch-tall puppet made entirely of fire look much like any specific person.

  Her tutor spent as much time instructing her on how to act out scenes as on helping her figure out increasingly convoluted methods for making dream-based illusions of flame resemble flame-based puppets.

  Still, that was going better than her tutorship under her dream mentor, who was the most infuriating woman she’d ever met. The woman seemed convinced that Talia’s failures were entirely in her head, not deriving from her tattoos, and that she could overcome them by sheer force of will or something.

  The two of them having to go to the hospital wing to get burns treated after she tried to make Talia go through a standard dream training exercise had somewhat cured her of that, at least.

  Talia had to admit that the woman actually knew what she was talking about when it came to dreamfire. They’d started working together on the more traditional uses of dreamfire— that of disrupting nightmares. Talia had thought it a frivolous use of the skill, but it was apparently often used to help warriors who had seen too much battle.

  There were more than a few warriors who experienced that in Clan Castis. Some could spend years going on raid after raid and never suffer even the smallest loss of sleep, but that life could break something in others. The elders frequently stopped warriors and mages from the clan from going on too many raids in a row, and kept a close eye on them when they returned.

  Her bone affinity studies were considerably less infuriating. They largely consisted of just causing countless explosions with different combinations of animal bones, levels of mana, rates of infusion, and any other variables Talia and Alustin could think of.

  The test chamber had a built-in blast shield that hardly obscured her view at all, so she was having quite a lot of fun there.

  And, it turned out, her abilities interacted in a very interesting way with dragon bone.

  It wasn’t any of these classes, or even combat training, however, which really bothered her the most.

  Talia quite enjoyed combat training, in fact. Especially watching Hugh try to learn unarmed combat, something that he very much wasn’t a natural at.

  No, it was cryptography that was the worst.

  It was taking up more time to do her cryptography homework than the rest of her homework combined. With math
, at least, she could turn to Godrick to help her through it, but this was new material to all of them. The others seemed to be handling it well enough, but Talia was getting headaches almost daily from it.

  She wasn’t meant for subtlety; she was meant for battle.

  Talia could handle all the extra classwork if not for everything else.

  Sabae was off in her own head sulking and refusing to talk about things, which was ridiculous and counterproductive. Of course, Talia had to acknowledge— to herself, at least— that she’d refused to talk about problems before out of pride, so she couldn’t blame Sabae too much for being ridiculous.

  Hugh was being more talkative than usual, but the longer he was away from Avah, the more he talked about the Radhan girl. Talia didn’t dislike Avah, but she had better things to do than talk about her. Or talk to her. There was only so much talk of imports and exports and trade patterns you could listen to.

  Godrick, at least, was being his usual solid, dependable self.

  Alustin was, of course, the biggest source of her problems right now. When wasn’t he? She was grateful, even loyal, to him for making her into a worthwhile mage, but that hardly meant he couldn’t be a pain.

  Like now, for instance.

  “Why aren’t we just using fire for this?” Talia demanded through the handkerchief tied over her face.

  Alustin sighed through his own. “Fire would hardly help us preserve the books, would it?”

  Talia growled, then turned back to sprinkling foul-smelling powders on the books in front of her. Hunting the rogue pack of books last week had at least been interesting. This week, Alustin had taken them into the Grand Library simply to clean up an infestation of some sort of magical mold. Which, of course, smelled vile, and required even viler-smelling powders to clean.

  Hugh yawned through his own handkerchief. There was a lump tied into it near his nose— a little enchanted glass sphere that absorbed odors, which had been a gift from Godrick.

  Talia elbowed him in the side. To keep him awake, certainly not for any other reason. Certainly not because Hugh was suffering less than any of the others. Well, except for Godrick, who had a scent affinity, but that was fairer.

  Hugh glared at her. “What was that for? I swear, your elbows are so sharp you don’t need to carry daggers with you.”

  Talia snorted. “If I were a proper bone mage that might actually be true. I’ve been reading about them lately, and some bone mages grow their bones into spines and blades that protrude from their bodies. Elbow spikes are one of the most popular.”

  Hugh gave her a slightly queasy look.

  Sabae snorted. “Can you imagine Talia as a dressmaker? The dress would weigh as much as a suit of armor from all the daggers and other weapons she’d hide in it.”

  “More weapons isn’t always better,” Talia said. “You’re liable to trip yourself up. I heard of one fellow who tried to go into battle with three swords, an axe, several daggers, and a crossbow all strapped to him. He ended up…”

  “You’re missing the point of what Sabae said, ah think,” Godrick said.

  “Careful weapon choice is important!” Talia protested.

  “You’re going to get invited to a ball some day and bring a spiked flail,” Sabae said.

  “A flail would be a terrible choice of weapon for a ball,” Talia said. “Dancing would set it to swinging all over the place, and it’d probably hit another dancer, which would be rude. You should only strike someone with a weapon when you intend to.”

  “Still missing the point,” Sabae said. “Also, I think that striking anyone with a weapon at any point is rude.”

  That didn’t sound quite right to Talia.

  “Well, what would be a good choice of weapon to bring to a ball?” Hugh asked.

  “That depends on a lot of different things, ranging from your age to the occasion,” Talia said.

  Sabae sighed. “I can’t believe I’m going along with this, but what kind of weapon should a girl like you bring to a ball?”

  “I’m not a girl, I’m a woman,” Talia said.

  Sabae gave her a dirty look over her handkerchief. “You’re sixteen, unless you’re using a really pastoral definition of when you become a woman.”

  “Remember that pirate ship I blew up this summer?” Talia asked. “Is that the action of a girl?”

  “Are you using violence as the qualifier for being an adult?” Sabae asked.

  “No, anyone can commit violence,” Talia said. “I’m talking about blowing up a pirate ship here. Much more impressive.”

  Sabae raised her eyebrows. “You’re saying that blowing up a pirate ship makes you a woman.”

  “Honestly,” Alustin said, “it makes about as much sense as half the definitions of adulthood I’ve encountered.”

  Sabae glared at him. “Guess I need to go blow up a pirate ship,” she muttered. “Then maybe I’d feel more prepared for…”

  She cut off abruptly, and focused back on the mold, several tendrils of which were weakly trying to grab her hands.

  Hugh gave Sabae an awkward look, then turned back to Talia. “You didn’t answer the question, though. What weapons would you bring to a ball?”

  Talia thought about it for a moment. There were a lot of tempting choices.

  “I think…” she said. “I think it would have to depend on my dress. You wouldn’t want them to clash.”

  Godrick and Hugh chuckled at that, and even Sabae gave an exasperated groan, but Talia would wager good coin that she was smiling under the handkerchief.

  Talia didn’t care about anyone claiming she was “too serious” or “terrifyingly bloody-minded”, she could be funny when she felt like it. More importantly, the others seem to have perked up a little bit. Hugh hadn’t mentioned Avah in at least ten minutes, and Sabae’s shoulders seem to have relaxed a little bit.

  Talia did have to admit that the topic was a little bit ridiculous, of course. It would be absurd to match your weapon to your dress.

  It made so much more sense to match your dress to your weapon.

  “So,” Alustin said, holding three dense, almost book-thick folders in his hands. They were in another reading area in the Grand Library, this one on one of the floating islands in the center. Talia wasn’t especially fond of being this exposed, but she did like the line of sight it provided her. “There were five council members attending the vote on your end of year test. Three of them voted against allowing you all to take it in a different labyrinth. Kanderon was there, of course. Anders vel Seraf, the Dean of Students, was the other who voted to allow the alternate test.”

  Talia had never heard of vel Seraf before, but Alustin continued before she could ask.

  Alustin dropped the first folder on the table. “Headmaster Tarik voted against the alternate test.”

  Talia raised her eyebrows at that one. The grey-haired woman was one of the most powerful stone mages alive, and she had quite the reputation among the mountain clans. She’d singlehandedly built an entire castle in a week during one of the Havath Dominion’s numerous wars of expansion, and had crushed countless clan raiding parties under avalanches while she helped defend the northern borders of Highvale.

  If she was working with Bakori, they were all in trouble. Well, they were in trouble regardless of who was working with Bakori, but they’d be in more trouble.

  Alustin dropped the second folder on the table. “Abyla Ceutas, the Chair of Admissions, voted against the alternate test.”

  Sabae’s brow narrowed at that, but she didn’t say anything.

  Alustin dropped the final folder on the table. “Rutliss the Red, Skyhold’s Bursar, voted against the alternate test.”

  Talia hadn’t heard of Rutliss either.

  No one said anything or went for the folders for a moment. All the talk of there being a traitor on the council hadn’t seemed real until now, when they were actually being presented with suspects.

  “You’re missing a folder,” Sabae said.

 
; Alustin cocked an eyebrow at her.

  “Anders vel Seraf,” Sabae said.

  “But he voted to allow the alternate test,” Hugh said, pulling his spellbook away from Abyla’s folder before it could start chewing on it.

  Talia rather liked Hugh’s new spellbook. It kept him on his toes.

  “We don’t actually know what Bakori’s endgame is here. It seems probable that he’s after Hugh, for revenge or whatever reason, but we can’t assume that guarantees our suspect is among the three that voted against the alternative test,” Sabae said. “The only safe assumption we can make is that it’s not Kanderon working with Bakori— because if it is, we’ve already lost.”

  “She’s right,” Talia agreed. “In stories, the traitor’s never one of the main suspects— it’s always someone you overlook, because it’s obviously not them, or it’s so obviously one of this other group. In fact, maybe we should be looking at Kanderon, just because it seems so unlikely it would be her.”

  Sabae sighed, but just kept staring at Alustin. The paper mage returned her gaze for a long pause and then smiled. His arm tattoo lit up, and he pulled another folder from midair.

  “Well spotted,” he said. “I genuinely don’t think it is Anders, both out of personal and professional inclination, but it would be foolish to ignore him.”

  He dropped the folder on the table. “We don’t have a reliable way to test them directly for Bakori’s influence, so we’re going to have to try and find a paper trail. Someone’s been leaking information about the inner workings of Skyhold for some time, and until now we haven’t had a way to figure out who. There’s thirteen members of the council at large, and most of the known leaked information could have come from any number of them. Hugh’s contract with Kanderon was the first one that we could narrow down to a specific sub-council. It seems probable that the leak would be the one working with Bakori.”

  “Why?” Talia asked. “There might just be two traitors. Happens all the time in novels. Wouldn’t it make more sense for Bakori to try and hide the fact he’d subverted a council member than to leak information?”