4.14 Bad Faith

Hi all, sorry for the late post. I've finally got my family, cats, and stuff all moved to my new place in Berlin, which was way more complicated than moving should have any right to be. I also rewrote this chapter once, and I'm sure you can guess which part is trouble. Turns out that writing a conspiracy theorist is harder and less fun than I originally pictured in my head.

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Bernt sat with his eyes closed, enjoying the feel of the morning sunlight on his face and idly modulating mana flows through his sorcerous channels. It almost felt as natural as using the ones in his arm, now, and that was good. He needed to start experimenting to work out exactly what he could do with them. There was far more to them than the perpetual flame investiture in his arm, and as the core of his sorcerous spirit – his “spiritual sea”, as Song called it – it would define his future development as a sorcerer. Or, at least, his limits.

While it was similar in a lot of ways, it had become obvious over the past weeks that sorcerous channels weren’t really like investitures. In some ways, they had the opposite effect. While a mages’ investitures limited the caster more and more as it increased their power, sorcerers grew more complex and versatile as their spirits grew. He should really come up with another name for it.

“Excuse me.” 

Bernt looked up to find a young woman standing in front of him. She was bundled up against the cold of early spring and wore a fur coat over a brightly colored dress of some kind.  She spoke Madzhuri and her face looked oddly familiar. “Hi again! Do you mind if I sit?”

“Ehm… no, of course not,” Bernt replied and gestured for her to sit, thinking furiously. Where did he know her from?

She sat down uncomfortably close, even though the stone bench was wide enough for four or five people. Bernt could smell her perfume. He turned toward her slightly, shifting away from her a little bit as he did so to make some space. “I’m sorry, have we met?”

“Of course!” she laughed. “Though we weren’t introduced. My name is Cladya. You told me about the battle of Halfbridge over breakfast the other morning.” She pointed toward the mess area, which was just barely visible behind them, and Bernt. 

Right. The noblewoman who had been more shocked that Underkeepers had been called up to fight than at the fact that a greater demon had shown up to eat their city.

“Everyone else is playing politics over there,” she complained tiredly. “They all think they’re going to profit somehow, supplying weapons, supplies, horses or mercenaries for the Invigilation’s forces. But they don’t even know if anything is going to happen yet. What is there to scheme about already?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. I guess they’re just deciding who their friends are.” 

“Well said!” she replied enthusiastically, though Bernt hadn’t said anything especially insightful. as she just trying to find her own allies? Considering where they were, he couldn’t imagine that this was a social visit. 

“All that matters to me is that they take the Duergar threat seriously,” he explained. “We can’t just allow someone to set greater demons loose in our cities.”

“Right!” she exclaimed enthusiastically, “at least somebody has their priorities in order. Why does it take an Underkeeper to see it?” She cocked her head to the side and smirked. “I guess it makes sense. You can’t do your jobs when you have demons pouring in. I still can’t believe you had to fight!”

Bernt eyed her, trying to decide whether that was supposed to be an insult. He’d already explained this when he’d told her and several others about the Battle of Halfbridge the other morning.

“We were put in charge of the defense of the Undercity, and the Duergar got around the army repeatedly – of course we had to fight. I wish they hadn’t managed to get so many demons in, and that whole assault force at the end, but it was still our job to try to handle it. And we did.”

“Of course you did!” she said in a tone that managed to be both enthusiastic and insincere at the same time. She leaned in conspiratorially. “But I’m sure you weren’t actually supposed to be in danger. The rock munchers helped them. They told them how to get through and where to strike.”

Bernt blinked. “What? The Duergar summoned the demons. Of course they told them where to – ”

“Not those. I mean the regular ones in the city. They can’t help themselves when gold is involved. I heard what happened. You lost most of your Crafters’ District and now you have to rely on them. They took out all of their competitors at once!”

Leaning away a bit from the strange noblewoman, Bernt turned to get a better look at her face to see if she was pulling his leg. “I… don’t think that the dwarves in the Underworks were working with the Duergar, no.”

Cladya shook her head. “You have to step back and look at the larger pattern – the flow of the history of humanity. This sort of thing isn’t new. It’s been happening in Besermark for generations. Just look at the Goblin Assimilation, or the demographic changes in the north of the country. Rimehorn Point, the Empire’s former bulwark against the orcs of the Tib’Nar highlands is manned by the children of our ancestors’ enemies. Your country is crumbling, and it’s been happening for over a hundred years. The godless races are just getting too powerful to ignore, now. This is the tipping point, right now.”

Bernt had heard this kind of talk before, from some of his former classmates at the Mages’ Academy, but he blinked at the odd phrase, “godless races”. It wasn’t unfamiliar, just weird – the sort of thing you found in old historical texts, not something anyone actually said out loud. At least, not in Besermark. The early Madurian empire had believed itself to be the only civilization that benefitted from the guidance of gods – that humanity alone possessed a link to the divine.

Of course, everybody knew now that dwarves, gnomes, and orcs worshipped their own true deities. While they were a bit more obscure, it wasn’t a secret either that goblins, trolls and some lizardmen worshipped lesser spirits, often exclusive to individual tribes or families. While those weren’t really gods, they performed many of the same practical functions.

“I see.” Bernt said, successfully managing to sound neither sarcastic nor condescending. He tried to find the right words to get him out of this conversation. “I’ll discuss your words with my fellow legitimators. I’m sure we can learn something.”

“You may come and talk to me when you’re ready for the truth,” she replied gravely.

He rose and offered the noblewoman a small bow before retreating around the Hall of Witnesses and back toward Ruzinia’s peak. 

Maybe he could climb around to the back to practice his pyromancy a bit in peace. He’d had more than enough diplomacy for now.

***

Bernt spent an hour attempting to modulate his spells by manipulating his new sorcerous channels. He’d spoken with Jori about the process, but found that her advice was less than helpful. The way she developed new spells was closer to making a wish than it was actively controlling mana flows to produce a desired result. She relied almost entirely on intuition and instinct. Predictably, that approach didn’t do much for Bernt.

Instead, he tried to get an idea of what different portions of the new mass of channels at his core could do. Untangling the absurdly complex mess was practically impossible, though that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try. Just… not yet. Instead, he resorted to simple trial and error, casting small fire darts at a large rock over and over and pinching off different channels to see what happened. He very carefully did not cast out unshaped mana again. The last time he’d tried that, he’d inadvertently created something that looked suspiciously like a fire elemental made of a perpetual flame. That was incredible, of course, but the strange spell had weakened him significantly until he’d managed to reabsorb the bits of his spirit that it had taken with it on its way out.

About half of the fire darts fizzled in various ways, while most of the remainder flew true, splashing down on the stone and slowly heating it until its surface became glassy. It was boring work, but that was life. Besides, it produced results. By the time the first session was set to break for lunch down at the Hall, Bernt had managed to make his fire dart curve to strike his target – even when he cast it in the wrong direction. The spell tugged lightly on his spirit as he cast it, but the discomfort ended the moment it struck the rock. 

It had borrowed a small portion of his spirit, probably using the exact same mechanism as the strange elemental.

Bernt returned to the Hall of Witnesses with a spring in his step. It might not be as flashy as fire that could burn an enemy mage from the inside out, but it was probably even more useful in a fight. Target-seeking spells were considered highly advanced, and usually they were exclusive to people with a talent for scrying. His mood soured a little as the approached the entrance to the Hall, though. The legitimators were still there, doing what they did and he could see Cladya talking animatedly to a group of four other foreign-looking people.

Torvald emerged from the Hall looking troubled and wordlessly beckoned Bernt to follow him. He was only too happy to leave, but he waited until they were walking alone back up toward the Temple of Ruzinia before he said anything.

“So, what happened? Was it that bad?”

Most of the other representatives were still milling around down below, eating and gossiping about the Conclave. He didn’t mind not being there for that after his experience this morning, but they did have a job to do here.

“It was fine.” Torvald grumbled unconvincingly.

Bernt snorted, but climbed on in silence for a few more minutes, until they reaced the temple doors, to press the issue. “Alright, spill it. What’s going on?”

The paladin sighed. “They just asked me what happened in Halfbridge, so I told them. I explained about Nuros, the assault on Halfbridge, and what we learned about Loamfurth. It looked fine, I’m sure, but they were way too polite. Not at all like when they had me alone in their temple.” He took a few steps into the room and sat down on an old wooden bench, where he immediately began to tap his foot nervously. “I don’t get it. They talked about the danger that demons could represent in the hands of the Duergar, and the need for us to come up with a unified response. It all went too smoothly.”

Bernt frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t know… it could make sense. This first day was about introducing the case for fighting a war against the Duergar, right? That’s what Hannis wanted in the first place. So it would make sense that they wouldn’t do anything to undermine your testimony – not so long as what you’re saying serves their interests. I mean, think about it. Who would lead the Invigilation in a war against a greater demon and the entire Duergar empire? There’s only one real option, and they’d probably wield enormous influence over Besermark and Madzhur too, at the very least.”

Torvald grimaced. “Yeah, maybe. But the questions were wrong, too. Everybody was calm and polite and sympathetic, but every time anyone asked me something, it felt like I was walking into a trap. It was weird.”

“Weird how? What kinds of questions were they asking?”

“Well… they wanted to know how many Duergar there were, how many demons I saw and how powerful they were. But when I mentioned Nuros’ giant soulstone, they wanted to know exactly how big it was, and whether I really broke it.” He shook his head, remembering. “That was all expected, but then they asked about our defenders – the army, the adventurers, the guards and the Underkeepers. They were way too curious about that, so I didn’t give them any numbers there. But they wanted to know how many dwarves we had living in Halfbridge, as if that was somehow relevant. And then they asked about the goblins in the Undercity, and about the refugees from Loamfurth.”

That all sounded… oddly familiar to Bernt. 

“What did they want to know about them?”

“How many orcs there were,” Torvald replied bitterly. “I don’t know what that was all about, but it’s pretty obvious it wasn’t about assessing the Duergar threat.”