The room they had given him was adequate.

  That was the word Velthan chose, because choosing words carefully was something he had done for decades, and he saw no reason to stop now simply because history had rearranged itself around him in ways he had not anticipated.

  Adequate. Stone walls, a window that admitted both light and cold in equal measure, two cots separated by a wooden table, and a brazier in the corner that someone had thought to fill with coal but not to light. Snowflakes drifted through the window's iron grating and settled on the floor in small accumulations that no one had bothered to sweep. The flakes landed on the table, on the brazier's cold rim, on the blankets, on Caelum's hair where the Duke's son lay propped against the wall with his knees drawn up and his arms wrapped around his shins.

  The boy was shaking.

  But not the full-body convulsions of the first day. The physicians had administered the compound Velthan had specified, and the worst of the withdrawal had receded to something manageable.

  Velthan closed the door behind him.

  The two guards outside did not follow him in. They had been told to remain at the door, and they would remain at the door, because the Black Guard did what they were told and nothing else.

  The General trained them well.

  Caelum's head snapped up the moment he saw Velthan entered.

  The Duke's son had lost weight. His cheekbones stood out sharply beneath skin that had gone sallow.

  "Well?" the Duke's son said.

  Velthan crossed the room and lowered himself onto the stool beside the table.

  "Things went a bit differently than I expected. It seems Lord Stormcrow has done things I did not think him capable of."

  The statement was precise. Velthan had spent the walk to this room composing it. He had been gone for the better part of two hours. The information he'd gathered from the whispers had painted a picture he was still arranging in his mind.

  The truth was that he had underestimated Eirik Stormcrow thrice now, and admitting that to himself had been difficult enough without also having to admit it to a twenty-three-year-old addict whose political sophistication extended no further than the walls of his father's banquet hall.

  "Differently how?" The words came through Caelum's teeth.

  "It seems that he has gained the General's power. He transformed into a dragon." Velthan did not enjoy delivering this next part. "He flew over the Khorath encampment and destroyed approximately half of their forces in a single engagement."

  Caelum sat up.

  The motion was too fast. His body had not recovered enough for sudden movements, and the effort produced a coughing fit that bent him double on the cot.

  "What?" His voice was raw from the coughing. "What did you just say?"

  "He became a dragon," Velthan said. "A white one, apparently, rather than the General's black. And the entire city witnessed it."

  Caelum stared at him. His left eye had narrowed to a slit, the muscles beneath it contracting and releasing in a rhythm that had lost all regularity.

  "How?" He was on his feet now, swaying, one hand gripping the chair's back for balance. "You promised me. That power was mine. I was going to take it and leave this place and bring it back to my father's forces. That was the arrangement. That was why I endured this—" He gestured at his own twitching body with a violence that nearly toppled him. "All of this. Every miserable step of this expedition. How did you let him get it first?"

  Velthan raised one hand.

  "Quiet. The guards outside have ears."

  Caelum's mouth closed, but the fury did not leave his face.

  "Archmage." His voice was lower now. "This is not what you promised me. I suffered through everything. This—" He gestured at his own trembling hands. "This condition that you insisted upon. That I needed to take your compound to reach my full cultivation potential. You cannot expect me to accept that it's simply over. My father will not permit this."

  "Nor would I," Velthan said. "We will not leave here empty-handed."

  Caelum's breathing slowed by a fraction.

  "So what now? Can his power be undone? Can I replace him and take the dragon form instead?"

  "It is considerably more complicated than that."

  "How?" Caelum's hands gripped the edge of the cot. "You are the master of illusions. Do something instead of sitting there while we waste away in this room."

  Velthan studied the young man.

  The Duke's son was not stupid. Velthan had known this since first meeting Caelum five years ago, when the boy had been eighteen and already showing the cultivation aptitude that the compound was designed to enhance. Caelum's problem had never been intelligence. His problem was that he had spent his entire life in environments where his intelligence was sufficient to get him whatever he wanted, and he had therefore never developed the patience required to use that intelligence on problems that did not yield to direct application of force or status.

  "Patience, my lord," Velthan said. "This is not a children's game where the answer presents itself the moment you look for it. If you want a different outcome, you will need to listen to me."

  Caelum's jaw worked. But he sat back against the wall and drew his knees up again.

  He exhaled. "Go ahead, then."

  Velthan rose from the stool. His back ached from the sitting, and the cold in the room had settled into his hip joints with a persistence that would not be ignored. He moved to the table and opened the small leather satchel he had brought with him from the provisions store.

  The rations were simple. Hard bread, dried meat, a wedge of cheese. The Sunless City's stores were diminishing, but Velthan had also acquired, through a conversation with a quartermaster who had proved amenable to flattery, a small quantity of dried herbs and a copper pot suitable for heating water over the brazier.

  He knelt beside the brazier and lit the coals with a word. The flame caught, small and orange, and he set the pot above it.

  "What are you doing?" Caelum asked.

  "Making tea."

  "Tea."

  "The provisions here are limited, but I have always believed that a man who cannot take a small pleasure in difficult circumstances is a man who has already lost." Velthan arranged the herbs on the table. "It settles the mind."

  Caelum looked at the bread and meat that Velthan set beside the herbs.

  "Is this real? I am not in the mood for illusory food."

  "Entirely real. I have not had occasion to use my powers here. Though I suspect that will change before long."

  The water began to heat. Velthan watched it. The act of watching water approach its boiling point was, he had found over decades of practice, a useful exercise in patience. There was a lesson in that which most people never learned.

  Caelum took the bread and bit into it. He chewed without enthusiasm. The meat followed, torn into strips with his shaking fingers.

  "Lord Caelum. Where do you think we are?"

  Caelum swallowed. "One thousand years back in history. Apparently. The Sunless City during the siege, which I read about in storybooks when I was a child."

  "Yes and no," Velthan said. "And the distinction is the most important thing I will tell you today."

  Caelum stopped chewing.

  "What do you mean?"

  The water was boiling. Velthan poured it over the herbs into a second cup he had acquired and let it steep. The smell that rose from the cup was faintly bitter, but not unpleasant. He set it on the table to cool.

  "Yes, we are in a reality situated one thousand years in the past. But it is not reality in the way that you and I experienced the world before we entered the blood pool."

  He poured a second cup and pushed it toward Caelum.

  "This place had a beginning point. That point was the moment the General performed his incomplete sacrifice of Lyanna. And it has an ending point. The ending point, I believe, was this: when the city fell into the ruins we saw with our own eyes."

  Caelum's expression had not changed during any of this. He held the bread in one hand and stared at Velthan with the flat attention of a man who wanted the speaker to arrive at the point before the bread went stale.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  "More history," Caelum said. "What does it matter?"

  "It matters because of one question." Velthan sat again and took his own cup in both hands. The heat felt good against his fingers. "From the General's perspective, do you think that ending was a satisfactory one?"

  Caelum frowned.

  "From all the possible alternatives available to him," Velthan continued, "he stumbled into the most wretched one imaginable. He did not win. He did not die fighting with honor. He did not save his daughter. He did not complete the sacrifice and claim full power. He simply endured, year after year, feeding on the girl, watching his people waste away, until there was nothing left. And his name entered history was one people remember with disgust."

  "Yes. And so what?" The bread rested forgotten in Caelum hand.

  "So this reality has an anchor. And the anchor is the General himself." Velthan leaned forward. "Do you recall the spirits we encountered in Frostwatch? The ones that fed on regret and resentment, that sustained themselves on the unresolved grief of the dead?"

  Caelum nodded slowly.

  "The principle here is identical, though the scale is incomparably greater. This place—this entire constructed history—is sustained by one thing: the General's inability to find peace with what actually transpired."

  Caelum set the bread down on the cot.

  "So the General is the key to this place," he said. "I follow that much. I still do not see what it has to do with us."

  "We are almost there." Velthan drank from his cup. "Before Lord Stormcrow's performance yesterday, we were approaching one of the endings that would have given the General closure. He would have experienced the ending he desired: his daughter whole and unharmed, his power completed through a substitute offering, and victory over the Khorath achieved without further shame to his name. It was a good ending. An ending the General had already chosen before he disappeared—an event that I am quite certain was Stormcrow's doing."

  Caelum's eyes widened.

  "Wait." He held up one shaking hand. "Wait. You are saying the whole place is not reality. It is something like the dreamscapes you constructed back in the Mage Tower."

  "Yes and no. This is not artificial in the way my constructs are artificial. The complexity here, the solidity, the depth of detail in every person and object and interaction—one thousand of our world's mana crystal reserves, drained completely, would not produce a fraction of what surrounds us. This is powered by a divine force. "

  Velthan leaned forward.

  "I believe that force is the artifact itself."

  Caelum pressed his palms against his temples.

  "I am lost again. If the artifact is what powers this world, then how come Eirik already obtained its power and we are still trapped here?"

  "Patience, Lord Caelum. We are very nearly there." Velthan set his cup down.

  He leaned forward.

  "What Eirik gained here is temporary. It will not follow him out, I believe. Because he is wrong about one fundamental thing. This is not the physical world, where a man sees a weapon lying on the ground and picks it up and it belongs to him because he reached it first. This place is governed by the laws of the divine realm."

  Caelum's hand had stopped shaking. He was staring at Velthan with full and undivided attention for the first time since the Archmage had entered the room.

  "To truly gain this power—to carry it beyond this place and into the world that matters—one must satisfy the anchor. One must rewrite this history to a conclusion that brings closure to the Anchor's resentment. Not for oneself. For him."

  Caelum's brow furrowed.

  "Wait. You keep saying 'the anchor' and 'the General' as if they are the same thing. But the General is here, without any knowledge of what happens a thousand years from now. So which is it?"

  "An excellent question." Velthan leaned back slightly. "The distinction is critical, and I apologize for conflating them. They are not the same, though they are inextricably linked."

  "That sounds complicated."

  "For powers divine, things generally tend to be," Velthan said. "But the easy version is this: the General you would find locked in a room somewhere in this keep is the real General Abercrombie from history. He is a man. He breathes, he bleeds, he knows nothing of what happens after this siege because he has not lived it yet. He is living this moment for the first time, making choices as any man would."

  Caelum nodded slowly.

  "The anchor is what the General became after this reality collapsed into ruin. A spirit. A divine entity, if you will, sustained by his own resentment and regret over how events unfolded. That spirit—that anchor—stands outside this constructed history, guarding the artifact with divine power. And only if that spirit finds satisfaction in how this version of events concludes will it grant permanence to whoever seeks the artifact's power."

  "So the anchor is the General's ghost," Caelum said flatly.

  "A divine entity with the power to grant or deny the artifact's blessing, yes." Velthan permitted himself a thin smile. "Think of it this way: the General here is living his life. The anchor is judging whether this new version of his life gives him peace. If the anchor approves—if this ending resolves his regrets—then whoever facilitated that ending walks away with the power. If the anchor remains unsatisfied, the power remains locked away, and we all leave here empty-handed."

  Caelum's lips parted.

  "So we are bringing closure to the General here, in order to please the General's spirit out there."

  "Yes. Yes, you see it now." Velthan permitted himself a thin smile."This is a maze with rules and conditions, not the bandit's game that Eirik is playing. To possess the dragon's power permanently, to command the ghost armies, to walk out of this place with the artifact's full blessing—he must end this reality in a way that leaves no room for resentment or regret in the figure who powers it."

  He let that settle.

  "And if I am correct, even though he somehow stumbled into the dragon's form, he is now heading in precisely the opposite direction with regard to the anchor."

  Caelum's eyes went wide.

  "Wait. You are saying he is making the General hate this version of history even more?"

  "That is precisely the point." Velthan's voice was almost gentle. "Consider it from the General's perspective. A stranger arrives from the future. This stranger abducts him, steals his power, takes his daughter—not to set her free but to drink her blood himself—and then parades through the sky in a mockery of the General's own form while the city that Abercrombie built with his bare hands cheers for the usurper."

  He spread his hands.

  "If the original history left the General with resentment, imagine what this version does to him."

  Caelum's breathing had changed.

  "So we still have a chance," Caelum said. "Even after what Eirik did."

  "We do. And that chance hinges entirely on the General." Velthan took a final sip and set the cup aside. "We must direct the anchor's resentment toward Eirik. All of it. Every ounce of fury and humiliation and grief that this constructed reality can produce."

  Caelum swung his legs off the cot. The movement was too quick again, and his face went gray for a moment as the blood rushed from his head. He braced himself against the wall with one hand.

  "Then let us not wait any longer."

  "Easy," Velthan said. "Easy, now. Eirik holds the upper hand at this moment. The entire city sees him as a hero. We cannot simply walk into the center of the plaza and announce ourselves as the alternative. Every soldier in this garrison watched that white dragon destroy their enemy. Trying to undermine that through direct confrontation would fail before we opened our mouths."

  Caelum's hand was still on the wall. "What, then?"

  "We begin with the most essential task: locating the General. I doubt the boy had many options, given his limited knowledge of this city and his limited number of men. The General is here, somewhere, and he is guarded by a handful of the Talon soldiers at most."

  "You could have saved me that entire lecture," Caelum said, "and simply told me to find the General."

  Velthan regarded the Duke's son with an expression that might, in a more generous light, have been fondness.

  "A wise man once observed that a warrior who understands why he fights will outperform the warrior who merely knows what to fight." He rose from the bench. "Knowledge without context is a blade without a handle. You may strike with it, but you will cut yourself as readily as your enemy."

  Caelum said nothing.

  That was progress. Five years ago, the boy would have argued. The compound had many effects, not all of them chemical. The dependency it created had taught Caelum, slowly, that there were forces in the world he could not overcome through will or birth or the strength of his cultivation alone. It had taught him, in the most visceral way possible, that he needed Velthan.

  A cruel lesson. But cruelty, in Velthan's long experience, was the only teacher whose students did not forget.

  "Now," Velthan said. "Do you think you can handle a guard in your current condition?"

  Caelum looked at him. The tic fired twice. Then the corner of his mouth turned upward.

  "I can handle hundreds," Caelum said, "even if I were twice worse off than this."

  Velthan rose from his stool and moved to the door. He glanced back at Caelum and gave a single nod.

  Caelum slid from the cot and lowered himself to the floor, arranging his body in a crumpled heap between the bed and the wall.

  Velthan opened the door.

  The two guards outside stood at attention. They were young. Both of them. The Black Guard recruited early and trained hard, and the men assigned to watch prisoners were typically the least experienced of the garrison.

  "My companion just fell from his bed, " Velthan said. "I will need both of you to assist."

  The guards looked at each other.

  Velthan stepped aside, holding the door open. "The young lord is in pain, and I cannot lift him alone."

  They entered.

  The room was small enough that three steps brought them past the threshold and into the space between the cots. Caelum was slumped against the floor in a posture that suggested complete physical collapse.

  The first guard crouched beside the cot and reached for Caelum's shoulder.

  Caelum's hand came up.

  Even diminished, the Duke's son was a warrior trained by the finest swordsmen in the Northern Kingdom. The guard's wrist was seized before the man could register that the hand he had dismissed as helpless was now locked around his own arm. Caelum pulled and twisted in a single motion. The guard's body followed his wrist, and his face met Caelum's rising knee.

  The crack was audible.

  The second guard reached for his sword. He had the hilt in his hand and the blade half-drawn when Caelum released the first man and pivoted on the cot. The Duke's son's boot caught the second guard's sword-hand and pinned it against the scabbard. His other foot drove into the man's chest.

  The guard staggered backward. Caelum was already off the cot, standing now. He caught the second guard by the collar of his breastplate and drove him headfirst into the stone wall.

  The man dropped.

  The first guard was on his knees, blood streaming from his broken nose. He looked up, and Caelum's fist ended the discussion.

  Both guards lay on the floor. The entire exchange had taken less than eight seconds.

  Velthan closed the door.

  He knelt beside the first guard—the one whose nose Caelum had broken—and began unbuckling the man's armor. The dragon-masked helmet came off first, then the chest plate, then the arm guards. The pieces were well-maintained and recently oiled. They were also slightly too large for Caelum's frame, but not so much that a casual observer would notice.

  "Put these on," Velthan said.

  Caelum was already stripping off his ruined riding jacket. He pulled the guard's under-tunic over his head and began fitting the armor pieces into place.

  When Caelum finished, Velthan crouched beside the guard now lying in his smallclothes on the cold stone. He placed one hand on the man's forehead.

  Power flowed. A trickle, carefully measured, shaped by decades of precision.

  The guard's features shifted. Within moments, a passable likeness of Lord Caelum lay unconscious on the floor.

  Velthan lifted the illusory Caelum onto the cot and arranged him beneath the blanket with care—face turned toward the wall, one hand visible and trembling faintly from the residual enchantment.

  Velthan turned to the second guard. This one was closer to his own height, though broader through the shoulders. He pulled a single hair from the unconscious man's head and held it between his thumb and forefinger.

  The hair dissolved.

  Velthan's face began to change. Younger. Dark-eyed, with a jaw that had been broken once and set slightly crooked. The guard's face. It sat on Velthan's skull as naturally as his own had, and when he raised his hands, they were the guard's hands.

  Caelum watched all of this through the slits of his borrowed helmet.

  He then crouched beside the second guard and placed his palm flat on the man's chest, and the air above the guard's body shimmered. The process took perhaps ten seconds, and when it was finished, a small brown mouse sat on the stone floor where a man had been lying.

  The mouse's small body trembled.

  Caelum looked down at it.

  "Suits him better," the Duke's son said.

  "Enough." Velthan scooped the mouse up and placed it in the leather satchel that had held the provisions.

  He shouldered the satchel and moved to the door.

  The corridor outside was empty. The shift change would not come for another two hours, and the section of the keep that held their quarters was removed from the main traffic routes. These facts Velthan had noted during his three days of careful observation through the window and through conversations with the guards and through the simple act of listening.

  He opened the door and stepped through.