Chapter 7
Grey troll-cut cliffs rise hundreds of metres on both sides, carved with giant faces of ancient trolls, their stone eyes closed. A Trisdel border wall cuts across the bottom of the pass. This is the Brygdar Pass: past it lies troll country, where the Order's reach gets thin.
A lanky young man lies flat on his back with an open book over his face. He is half-troll and half-elf: long limbs, pointed ears, faint violet rune-markings across his face and hands. He has a week of stubble, a dusting of snow on his coat, and a crow asleep on his chest. Propped against the boulder is a hand-painted sign:
WAITING. DO NOT DISTURB.
TROLLMAGE · K-II MARKED (assigned) · Scalelist #120,331
The crew comes up the path. Drekk leads, tired. Vigolas strolls with his hands in his pockets. Kompis has Mingus at his heel. Rougeina walks on the rocks above everyone. Ysel trails behind, silent. They stop and stare at the sign.
It speaks without moving.
lifting the book one inch to peer out with one violet eye.
He pats a heavy leather bag beside him. Inside it, something thumps against the leather like a heartbeat.
whispering to Mingus.
TANG. TANG. TANG. From both ends of the pass at once, Trisdel examiners in long white robes slam heavy bronze seals into the rock: circular stamps engraved with the eye of the Order. Each glows, and the glows link up into a translucent dome over the whole gorge.
RANK PLATE ×8: EXAMINER · K-II MARKED · Scalelist #155,000–#190,000
CHIEF EXAMINER · K-III TESTED · Scalelist #7,742
an old woman with spectacles of polished bone and a ledger chained to her wrist.
the same effect on three heroes.
(a) Vigolas's Greed-sight: the gold fades out of the world, grey everywhere.
(b) Kompis's soul-sight: the threads between people go dark, and Ivar's ghost flickers out.
(c) Rougeina tries to Swap: nothing. Her silver-rose mark dims on her wrist like a coal in rain.
The crew fights without powers.
Marka swings her anchor. It is just iron, but iron still hurts.
Drekk fights with a frying pan from his pack.
Rougeina dances with real steel. Her blades need no sin, only skill, and she has plenty.
Vigolas just punches, laughing, bleeding, getting hit and getting up.
Kompis fires Ivar. The rifle works. Ivar's ghost is dark, but the gun is a gun.
But there are too many of them. Examiners close in with brass rods that crackle with binding script. Marka goes down to one knee, and a rod catches Drekk across the back. The circle tightens.
In the middle of the chaos, Trollmage is still lying on his boulder. The crow has woken up and is watching the fight with interest.
finally sitting up. Snow slides off his coat.
the crew buying him time.
Marka gets up.
Rougeina throws a blade that pins a rod to the wall.
Kompis takes a hit meant for Drekk.
Vigolas headbutts an examiner, staggers and holds the line.
Mingus plants himself over Trollmage's bag, hackles up, growling at anyone who comes close: just a dog, and fierce as one.
lifting, slow and unhurried. Violet runes ignite along his fingers one after another, like lamps being lit down a long street.
He writes in the air with one finger. Glowing violet script hangs there, simple and absurd:
MACRO : MOVE MOUNTAIN = 1 m
The entire mountain on the west side of the pass, a thousand tons of troll-carved stone with ancient faces, shifts. Exactly one metre. Rumbling, sliding, sideways.
That one metre is enough. The seals embedded in the west wall shatter. The dome cracks like an eggshell, and every examiner on that side is thrown off their feet as the ground leaps under them. Snow avalanches from the peaks. The carved stone trolls seem, for one instant, to open their eyes.
Dust. Broken seals. Examiners sprawled everywhere. The dome is gone, and colour floods back into the world: Greed-sight gold, Kompis's threads, Rougeina's silver-rose mark blazing.
The Chief Examiner climbs out of the rubble holding the shattered half of her seal, ledger dragging behind her. She looks at Trollmage, then at her own book, then at Trollmage again.
wiping blood from his lip and grinning at the board-number above the troll's head.
The examiners retreat down the pass in a hurry, the Chief last, clutching her broken seal.
The violet runes on his hands have gone completely dark. He tries to snap a little spark from his fingers. Nothing.
Vigolas crouches beside the boulder and opens his coat. The library-index shard pulses in the lining. Through it glows a map: a spiral mountain, a library turned inside out, and seventy-seven tiny lights, sleeping.
Trollmage's bag kicks hard enough to tip over.
sitting bolt upright. For the first time, he looks awake.
He sticks out a long violet-marked hand.
The crew walks through the broken Pass into troll country: Vigolas, Kompis and Mingus, Marka, Drekk, Rougeina on the high rocks, and Trollmage being carried on Marka's back, asleep again.
bouncing on Marka's shoulder. The heavy book inside twitches. Not toward Vigolas's coat. It strains against the leather toward the back of the group.
Ysel walks alone, hood up.
one eye cracking open, frowning.
Ysel walks past it. Her shadow on the stone follows her one full second late, as if it had to decide to come along.