by John Bierce
Godrick chuckled at that.
“But jus’ because they’re not subtle emotions doesn’t mean they’re easy ta get a grip on,” Artur said, dumping the vegetables into the frying pan. “Ah’ve known a lot a’ folks who just lock ‘em away and hope they vanish.”
He looked straight at Godrick at that.
Godrick rolled his eyes, wadded up a nearby sheet of paper, and lobbed it at Artur.
“Ah’m fine. The breakup with Irrick wasn’t bad,” he protested.
Artur chuckled. “Alright, alright, yeh can’t blame me fer worryin’.”
“Yeh’re more worried about that than the giant battle ah barely survived?” Godrick joked.
Artur rolled his eyes and threw the wad of paper back at Godrick. “There’ll be plenty of yellin’ and lecturin’ yeh all about that this summer. Fer now, though, yeh all deserve a little break.”
Godrick groaned theatrically as Artur adjusted the enchantment that heated the oventop.
“So there was never an arranged marriage?” Sabae asked.
“Feh,” her grandmother said. “No point! Your mother already ruined the bloodline, marrying that healer. You can marry whoever, doesn’t matter. You have more than enough cousins for me to marry off, even after losing half of them in the Blue Plague. Get over yourself, girl.”
Sabae folded her arms and glared at her grandmother.
Well, at the human-sized stormcloud her grandmother was projecting onto the peak of Skyhold.
The peak was a mess. All the lava had drained down through the holes ripped in the peak of Skyhold, dried, or been cleaned up, but almost all of the thrones had been shattered, and the wards guarding the peak had mostly failed, save for Kanderon’s spatial defenses.
Finally, Ilinia sighed and rolled her eyes. “You’re no fun, girl. I thought about finding you a marriage, but I just didn’t have the heart for it. I lost my daughter for years over trying to force her into a marriage she didn’t want, and I missed out on so much of your childhood. I just don’t have it in me to arrange a marriage for you too.”
“But you’re fine with it for my cousins?” Sabae asked.
Ilinia waved her hand in the air, tiny lightning bolts trailing her cloud-fingers. “Feh.”
Sabae eyed her dubiously, but she let that one pass.
“You still owe me great-grandbabies, though,” Ilinia said, jabbing Sabae in the side with a cloudy finger. A tiny lightning bolt leapt out and jolted her. “Lots of great-grandbabies.”
Sabae threw her hands up in the air and stormed off. “I’m going to sell all your secrets to your enemies, Grandmother,” she yelled. “All of them! Even the name of that little shop you buy all of your awful romance novels at, and the guy who brews that awful rotgut you drink.”
“I can still drop a lightning bolt on you, ungrateful little girl,” Ilinia said, laughing.
Ilinia watched her granddaughter descend into Skyhold. Once the girl was out of range, her smile faded, and she turned away from the stairs down.
“You can both come out now,” Ilinia said. She pulled out her flask and sipped from it, and hundreds of leagues away, her storm body atop Skyhold copied the motion.
The air just above the ground rippled, and the immense body of Kanderon Crux emerged from nowhere, settling gently to the ground.
Ilinia wondered idly how many people had noticed that the depression Kanderon had worn in her spot for council meetings had remained almost entirely untouched, save for a little dried lava that had been scraped out easily.
Skyhold was as much a part of Kanderon as Kanderon was a part of Skyhold.
A breeze began blowing sand up to the top of the mountain, and it slowly consolidated into a small sandstorm the shape of a dragon.
Well, not that small— still a good fifty feet long— but it would be rude for Indris Stormbreaker— ridiculous epithet, that— to craft a storm body larger than Kanderon for herself.
The three of them each stood equidistant to one another. You could draw a perfect triangle between them, if you were one of those ridiculous idiots that were always pestering Ilinia about the need for some new breakwater or drain system for Ras Andis, with their exhausting little papers full of math.
She kept a perfectly good prince around just to deal with that sort of nonsense. She couldn’t be bothered with the absurdities of ruling a city herself, not at her age.
“Indris, how did things go on your end?” Kanderon rumbled.
The sandstorm rustled its wings as Indris took her time responding. “Chelys Mot still refuses to join us, but he did at least agree to keep the peace in the Endless Erg if the situation requires,” the dragon said. “The lesser powers of the Erg have all agreed to behave themselves over the next few years.”
Ilinia snorted. She’d believe that bunch of fickle idiots would behave when she saw it. Still, if anyone other than the three of them could keep that bunch in line, it was Chelys Mot. The big turtle might be utterly disinterested in politics or ruling, and he might not be as powerful as the three of them, but he was reliable. And he was more than enough to deal with the assorted archmages, dragons, sphinxes, and whatever elses always stirring up trouble in the Erg.
Well, except maybe for that damn giant sunmaw, but for all its power, it was just an idiot beast, and the spells keeping it asleep should last for decades yet— enough time that Ilinia’s successor should have already claimed the Storm Seat.
“Indris made sure things will stay nice and peaceful,” Ilinia said, “and I’ve dealt with your nasty little demon problem. It’s time to fulfill your side of the deal.”
“Very well,” Kanderon said, not seeming overly pleased about it.
A rush of light flowed through Kanderon’s massive crystal wings. Ilinia turned towards the Skyreach range, and watched with pleasure as answering blue lights flashed on several nearby peaks as, for the first time in the history of the Kaen Das family, Skyhold’s great weather wards came down.
Ilinia reached out on the wind, her perception rushing over hidden valley after mountain after waterfall. As the great barrier fell, it felt like an itch she hadn’t been able to scratch had vanished, like a box that had been around one limb her whole life had been removed.
She could feel Indris’ power reaching out alongside hers as they both stretched towards the lands east of the Skyreach Range, to extend their unending rivalry over the winds to whole new territories.
Ilinia grinned in anticipation of the contests to come.
Before she got too caught up in expanding her power, however, she turned to Kanderon.
“Do you think your little pet paper mage suspects our plan?” Ilinia asked.
Kanderon snorted. “I’ve burdened him with enough harsh truths that he won’t reach for this one. That one will chase a lie to the ends of the continent, and an unanswered question even farther, but leave a truth in plain sight, and he won’t even glance twice at it.”
“Cryptic twaddle,” Ilinia said. “I don’t know why so many people get all pretentious when they get old.”
Indris chuckled at that. “As opposed to turning into a trashy old harridan?” she said.
Ilinia made a rude gesture at the dragon, who just chuckled harder. Ilinia shook her head and turned towards Kanderon.
“Alustin is fashioning my granddaughter and her friends into weapons,” Ilinia said, her voice suddenly serious. “I’ll tolerate it for now, because I had thought her broken, and he’s given her a new path, but I won’t see her thrown away.”
“You’re not the first one to notice what he’s doing,” Kanderon said, her expression as serious as always. “For now, his aims serve our own.”
Kanderon rustled her wings, setting off a cascade of gentle chimes.
“And what if our fears for Imperial Ithos are realized?” Indris asked.
Ilinia shuddered a little at that. As powerful as she was, as powerful as the three of them were together…
Power didn’t mean much in the face of the Cold Minds.
“Then none of our plans matter,” Kanderon said. “But the Cold Minds don’t think like we do, and it’s entirely likely they didn’t even notice the bubble containing Imperial Ithos. Five centuries is a blink of the eye to them while they sleep in their dead universes.”
Ilinia hoped Kanderon was right. The sphinx was far more knowledgeable about the multiverse than either of the others.
If Kanderon was wrong, though, Ilinia had no intention of sticking around, or leaving her family to the ministrations of the cold minds. She’d already plotted out routes through several labyrinths to likely new worlds.
If their world was going to die, Ilinia Kaen Das, Stormguard of the South, Protector of Ras Andis, Kraken’s Bane, and Hammer of the Sky was going to make damn sure the Kaen Das line didn’t die with it.
Appendix: Galvachren’s Guide to Anastis
Annotated by [Redacted]
The world of Anastis should, by any account, be a hub for multiversal travelers. ([Redacted]’s note: Isn’t it, though?) There are more mana wells than nearly any other known inhabited world, with a preponderance of them being junction wells.
For some reason, however, the labyrinths on Anastis have run amok. They’re far deeper and more tangled than any others I’ve encountered, going far beyond the original design of the Weavers. Whether this is a result of the unusual characteristics of this universe’s Aether, or a result of how close to going aether critical this world is, is unknown. It’s also possible that the labyrinths are evolving over time. I’m curious what the Weavers would think of that, but, alas, we’ll never know. ([Redacted]’s note: Galvachren is, so far as we can tell, the only scholar to refer to the Labyrinth Builders as Weavers. We have no idea why. We remain fairly confident that he’s not old enough to have encountered the Labyrinth Builders— Galvachren might be ancient, but he’s no Cold Mind.)
Physical Overview: Anastis is disproportionately geologically active, even for a young world. Much of this can be attributed to Anastis’ preposterously large moon. Moon is a poor name, really, since Anastis and its moon actually orbit one another— it’s not significantly smaller than Anastis itself. This also results in the massive tides of Anastis, which have resulted in the unusual population distribution on the continents— sapients on Anastis only inhabit the coast atop seacliffs or other raised landforms. Atmospheric pressure is also marginally higher than most inhabited worlds— in combination with Anastis’ moon, this results in some truly impressive storm systems.
([Redacted]’s note: “impressive storm systems” is understating it.)
Anastis has recently exited an ice age, but it doesn’t seem to be thanks to interference by [redacted]. ([Redacted]’s note: The ice age is only geologically recent. To anyone else other than Galvachren, recent is a terrible adjective. And of course there’s no [redacted] presence— Anastis is one of our strongholds, not theirs.)
Ecological Overview: Anastis’ ecosystems are, to say the least, a mess. Remnants of the original ecosystem can still be found in some parts of the world— Ithos’ Endless Erg, Gelid’s great mudflats— but for the most part, it has been supplanted by invasive species that have poured out of Anastis’ countless labyrinths over the eons. I’ve personally identified species from dozens of known worlds, and countless more I don’t recognize.
There are at least a half dozen tool-using sapient species, and half again as many non-tool using sapients present. None are native to Anastis. This doesn’t count the numerous members of the “Great Powers” of Anastis that are the only representative of their species on Anastis. It also doesn’t count Aether mutations and [redacted] that can’t properly be counted as members of their species any longer. ([Redacted]’s note: Our assessments of the count differ from Galvachren’s, but this is, as usual, thanks to differing definitions of what counts as a species. Our official nomenclature also differs with who counts as [redacted]— while many of the Great Powers of Anastis can go toe to toe with [redacted], there’s more to becoming [redacted] than mere power. Galvachren, after all, is no [redacted], and, well... Anyhow, by our definition, there are no [redacted] on Anastis. Which is one of the reasons we established this as one of our stronghold worlds.)
The strangeness of what native life is still present leads me to hypothesize that Anastis originated in a relatively distant habitable reach of the multiverse, and that its connections have shifted over time.
There is a truly splendid diversity of spiders on Anastis. I could fill entire volumes on them. None are native, however.
Aetheric Overview: The Aether of Anastis is singularly unusual. While in many respects its Aether resembles a fairly typical liquid Aether world, there appears to be some process interfering with the free flow of Aether. Aether density is radically variable across Anastis, something usually only found in gaseous Aether environments. Even then, however, it’s seldom even close to the Aether density variance of Anastis. There are a few rival hypotheses as to why this occurs.
The most popular hypothesis points to the unusual number, depth, and complexity of Anastis’ labyrinths as the cause. While plausible sounding, an actual mechanism for this is seldom put forwards.
Another hypothesis claims that the Anastan Aether is thixotropic— that it responds to shocks by changing its viscosity. Shocks in this sense, of course, being heavy draws upon the Aether. The downside of this analysis, of course, is that no-one has ever felt said viscosity change.
There are a few other minor hypotheses to consider, ranging from the eccentric to the insane, but the last I find worthy of inclusion is that there is some sort of substrate through which the Anastan Aether flows. This is controversial, to say the least— there has never been direct evidence of any such substrate, and solid Aether is, to say the least, quite easy to perceive. Still, there is a marked similarity between the Anastan Aether flows and the movement of liquids in aquifers. ([Redacted]’s note: So far as we can tell, Galvachren was the originator of this hypothesis, but he shows his usual reticence in claiming credit for anything.)
Regardless, as a consequence of this, Anastans tend to do well as multiversal travelers. They tend to recover from Aether sickness far more quickly when traveling between worlds than natives of worlds with more stable Aether. It seems likely that the variable Anastan Aether density has acclimated their systems to an extent.
As an added benefit, Anastis is far less prone to Aether exhaustion than many other worlds. One city-state overusing its Aether will seldom even affect many of its neighbors.
The magic of Anastis is also unusually versatile in function— not on an individual level, where mages tend to have quite specific portfolios of power, but overall, it’s astonishingly diverse.
Political Overview: Thanks to the variable Anastan Aether density, political organization tends to lean towards smaller nation states and city states. While a few empires exist, they’re far less common on Anastis than other worlds. The lack of Aether exhaustion as a major threat to civilization also changes political interactions, though in a perhaps less easily definable manner. ([Redacted]’s note: What a polite way to say that Anastan politics are an unstable, constantly shifting mess of coups, civil wars, and assassinations.)
There is relatively little organized multiversal presence on Anastis. [Redacted] have planted none of their [redacted], [redacted] incursions are unknown, [redacted] has built no [redacted] ([Redacted]’s note: We most certainly have, and Galvachren’s visited them. What’s he up to? Perhaps he thinks he’s doing us a favor by not letting others know we’re here? We might be one of the weaker multiversal powers, but we’re not that weak], [Redacted] infections are a non-factor, and there are few [redacted] on Anastis. ([Redacted]’s note: there are no true [redacted] on Anastis. Again, it’s why we made it one of our stronghold worlds. Anastis’ Aether is inherently hostile to those belligerent, imbecilic godlings.) The [redacted] are, as with most human worlds, present, though as is often the case, they have no idea how far their own [redacted] extends. There are a lar
ger than normal number of demons on Anastis, but that’s simply a consequence of the numerous labyrinths. ([Redacted]’s note: It is, as always, exasperating trying to figure out who Galvachren considers to be a multiversal power. His list is considerably shorter than expected, and excludes quite a number of powers that we’d include. Most notably of course, Galvachren himself.)
Afterword
Thank you so much for reading A Traitor in Skyhold, Book 3 of Mage Errant!
This was a tough one to write— not so much the actual writing, but life around it. Illness, personal drama, and over a month of traveling this year. Plus, the transition into writing full time was a tough one. Before, I’d just come home from my day job and immediately start writing. Having to manage my own schedule again was tricky.
I’ll be taking a little break between books 3 and 4 to write a standalone epidemiological fantasy novel that follows the course of a plague across a continent. It will be very different than Mage Errant in both tone and content, and is set in an entirely different world, but if you keep your eyes open, you’ll almost certainly notice a few details that will be of interest to Mage Errant fans. (Though, again, it will be a very different beast from Mage Errant- it’s going to be pretty depressing, and not have much in the way of action scenes.)
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me at [email protected], or on reddit (u/johnbierce). For news about the Mage Errant series, other upcoming works, and random thoughts about fantasy, worldbuilding, and whatever else pops in my mind, check out www.johnbierce.com. The best way to keep updated on new releases is to sign up for my mailing list, which you can find on my website.
I’ve also started a Patreon, which can be found at patreon.com/johnbierce. There, I’ll be posting monthly short stories set in the worlds of my books.