A History of Betrayal
Chris's eyes glittered.
"So Pardine of the Sitta Ruins was one of the original ten. A Generation Zero mage who came down from the Middle Realm and taught magic. They told us once that all of them had died. Another lie, of course."
The exclamations kept spilling out of him.
"A living fossil. Perfectly preserved."
"No. As Pardine said back then, every one of them is dead."
"If they're all dead, why talk about them as if they're still alive? You're scrambling my head."
"Did I?"
"You spoke as if you'd heard it from them yourself."
Chris sighed and went on.
"People that clever, that capable, that stubborn, that ruthless, that cold — how did they die? Ah. Time carried them off. Cryostasis isn't all-powerful either, so they couldn't last ten thousand years. Even those venomous old men, taken by the years."
Grain cleared his throat.
"So my guess was wrong."
"You weren't entirely off. In the end, time was the problem."
"How did it become a problem?"
"I told you they took turns being active, to spare their lifespans."
"Yes. You did."
"That activity was the problem."
"Because lifespan gets burned during the active years, and it piled up and piled up until the end drew near. They didn't just bow their heads to time, did they?"
"They didn't. Originally, on a hundred-year cycle, three stayed active and seven remained frozen. They cut the number of active mages down to one."
"So instead of a hundred years active out of every three hundred, it became a hundred years out of every thousand."
"Right."
"A hundred years in a thousand — surely that was enough to endure ten thousand years?"
"A problem came up."
"Again?"
Chris scratched his forehead.
"What kind of problem?"
"The one who stayed active got other ideas."
Chris cursed mages all over again. Give them an opening and they betray you. Mages really are bastards. You can't trust a single one of them.
Grain laughed.
"Easy to betray the rest when they're all frozen."
"Why did he betray them?"
"Cryostasis isn't over once you've frozen someone. You have to keep supplying mana stones and tend the process with extreme care. Running the ruins alone and managing the freezing alone — he was too busy, and it wore him down. And the more he thought it over, the clearer it became that at that rate they wouldn't open the gate before their lifespans ran out. So he made his decision. Better to devour the resources alone than to split them ten ways. Disposing of frozen mages was nothing at all. He turned his nine colleagues into living mana stones and took everything for himself."
"And by hoarding the resources alone, he raised his realm?"
"He did. Then he took disciples."
"The last time he took disciples they turned on him and everything went wrong — and after living through that, he took disciples again?"
"Manage the ruins alone, freeze alone, thaw alone, open the Sky Gate alone... No one can do every last task by himself. It's impossible. He needed someone to help. Taking disciples was a step already set from the moment he decided to betray the others."
"That's foolish."
"No. He was an extraordinarily clever man."
"You saw him?"
"No. I heard about him."
"Master, you always talk as if you'd lived it yourself. And every bit of it is something you heard."
Grain tipped the herbs and medicinal liquid he had prepared beforehand into the cauldron.
"A story's more entertaining if I tell it as though I lived it. It's a useful way of speaking. You should learn it too."
"You said all of Generation Zero died. So that traitor was betrayed in the end by the new disciples he took, and that's how he died. What exactly is clever about that?"
"He prepared, in his own way."
"How?"
"He picked a hundred capable mages, took them as disciples, and while he taught them magic he used an appallingly vicious poison. Skip the antidote, and you suffered unbearable agony until you died. A truly nasty toxin."
"Poisoning his own disciples. He really was a rotten bastard."
"A life paved end to end with betrayal. I understand him."
"What happened after that?"
"He gave his orders, then froze himself for a hundred years. The disciples needed the antidote, so they had no choice but to wake him after those hundred years, just as he'd instructed. He would wake, check whether the work he'd ordered a century earlier had been carried out properly, and dole out the antidote. It wasn't a complete antidote. One dose let you endure another hundred years — an incomplete one. After that he would train on the resources he'd seized, look after the ruins for a year or two, issue fresh orders, and freeze himself again. And that cycle repeated, on and on."
"If it all went according to plan, how did he end up dead?"
"Trusting the poison too much was his mistake. Among the hundred he taught, there was a genius. For five hundred years that genius secretly researched the antidote, and once he decided the gamble was worth taking, he took his dose, ambushed his colleagues as they scattered, killed five of them, and stole five antidotes. Experimenting with those, he succeeded at last in making a complete antidote."
Grain shut the lid and set about brewing Motaro. The work demanded meticulous control of his mana, so the story broke off there.
An hour later he opened the sealed mouth of the cauldron, and filth poured out. Chris had repeated the task dozens of times and was long used to it. He cleared away every bit of the filth, took out a towel, and wiped the sweat streaming off Grain. After another two and a half hours of grueling labor, a new Motaro came into being.
Grain set the Motaro in a wooden case and picked the story back up.
"A hundred years passed, and the time came to receive the antidote. Minus the five the genius had killed, the remaining ninety-five disciples gathered in one place. There the genius revealed the complete antidote and made his proposal. Kill the master. The disciples, whose resentment toward the man who had poisoned them and worked them like dogs had piled up past all bearing, agreed to a one. But one of the ninety-five betrayed his colleagues."
Chris didn't even have the strength left to curse.
"Of course he did."
A cold sneer crossed his face.
"If he hadn't betrayed them, he wouldn't be a mage. Let's at least hear why. Why did that bastard turn on his colleagues?"
"That man — the last survivor of the original ten — didn't rely on poison alone. Just in case, he planted not only poison in one of the hundred, but a curse in his Klpandi as well."
"What kind of curse?"
"A curse that kills you if you betray him."
So he had betrayed his colleagues for a reason one could at least stomach.
"He didn't have a choice, then."
"He didn't."
"So it turned into a bloodbath. Ninety-four against two?"
"It did. The ninety-four meant to finish him while he was still frozen, but the traitor got there first and thawed him."
"And he lost."
"If he'd been in proper condition, he would have won. But he'd only just been thawed, and his body wasn't right."
Chris thought of the ogres and trolls he had met in the ruins. Looking back now, they had been asleep by means of something very like cryostasis.
If everything Grain said was true — and Chris didn't wholly believe him, having trusted a master's words once already and been struck hard across the back of the head for it — then those two had driven him back one-sidedly even though their bodies were nowhere near normal. Which means those bastards were even stronger to begin with. I can't begin to gauge that kind of power. Surely not the Absorption Realm?
Grain asked, "What are you brooding on so hard?"
Chris waved him off.
"It's nothing."
The ogres and trolls had had no colleagues or subordinates to wake them. That much was plain from the state of things around them when Chris roused them with mana stones, and from the way they reacted. Both had been grateful to him.
If time had simply gone on, they would have died still frozen. As Grain had stressed again and again, cryostasis was not all-powerful. I was their savior, wasn't I? If I'd known that then, I could have wrung an even steeper price out of them...
A thick regret settled over him. When he came back out of his thoughts, Grain was watching him with a peculiar look.
"I was just remembering the hard times... So how did it end?"
"When the fight was over, only ten of his disciples were left. And their influence over the magic towers had fallen to almost nothing."
"Why?"
"They were badly wounded, and their skill fell short of a Generation Zero mage. That was when the order we have now took its final shape. They had no choice but to lure mages with treasures like Motaro."
Grain rapped the cauldron.
"Wash it clean."
"Wait. Is that the end?"
"That's the end."
Letting it end there felt like a waste.
"The Generation Zero mage who lasted to the very end — what was his name?"
"Horace."
"They named the ruins after him. Are the others the same?"
"Yes. The Sitta Ruins, the Burnoa Ruins — all of them bear those men's names."
"The current master of the Sitta Ruins is Pardine... and the other ruins?"
"The Burnoa Ruins belong to Kaman. The Horace Ruins belong to Akansa."
Chris fiddled with the short beard growing along his jaw and ventured a guess.
"By any chance, are the masters of the ruins three of Horace's ten disciples?"
"That's right."
"How old are they?"
"I don't know the exact number either, but they're past five thousand."
"They succeeded, then."
"They survived to the end with glory sitting right in front of them. So yes. They succeeded."
"The last survivors used cryostasis too, I assume?"
"Of course."
"Look at the direct line running down from the Generation Zero mages and it's a history of betrayal, plain and simple. Masters betray, colleagues betray, disciples betray. No wonder the mages in the towers today are absolute scum. All of it comes from that."
"You could see it that way."
"Those shit-disciples must have been betrayed later too, so how did they survive? Did they simply not take disciples?"
"Ten people can't manage it all. The ten survivors made underlings of their own, naturally."
"The shit-disciples couldn't have dodged time's assault either, so of course they leaned on cryostasis... which would have left them defenseless. How is it that only the shit-disciples survived without being betrayed?"
Grain's brow furrowed.
"Shit-disciples? That's unpleasant to hear. Call them the Ten Survivors. Or the Great Ten, if you must."
"The shit-survivors."
"Not shit — ten!"
"Yes, of course. So the answer is...?"
"The Great Ten were betrayed too, naturally. That's how they were cut down to five."
"The Last Five, literally."
"Yes. Those remarkable mages dwindled and dwindled until only five were left."
Chris narrowed his eyes and looked Grain over. Grain's eyes narrowed in turn.
"Why are you looking at me with that sour face?"
"It isn't sour... I'm worried."
"About what?"
"Looking at that history, the Last Five can't help being full of suspicion. Of course they wouldn't trust their subordinates, and like Horace they would have set up every kind of safeguard. Master Grain — you aren't poisoned, are you?"
"No. We trust each other."
Chris snorted outright.
"That's absurd."
"We don't trust each other's character. We trust each other's interests."
"Each other's interests... what does that mean?"
"This is getting long... Go back, first, to the moment Horace, the last Generation Zero mage, died, and the age of the ten disciples began. Just as it was with the original ten and their disciples, the ten disciples and their own disciples and subordinates were bound to have fundamentally misaligned interests. Why? Because an underling can't endure the long stretch of time until the gate opens. His lifespan ends partway through. He can see his own end. He knows full well he's going to die later. And he's supposed to live a grinding, slave's life for his master? Do you think mages would accept that?"
"The odds aren't high."
"When they first learn magic, raise their realm, and watch their lifespan grow, there's no conflict. But once they reach Ring Binding, advancement stops, and the day of their death draws near, discord is inevitable. They rise up demanding cryostasis for themselves, and the ten disciples would never grant it. So, just as Horace did to them, they poison their subordinates and plant curses."
"They ruled through every kind of coercion, threat, and fear."
"Yes."
"So of course the backlash exploded?"
"The ten disciples were old hands at betrayal. Most of the underlings were subdued and killed... but the years were too long. Betrayal happened again and again, people began to fall to it, and in the end only five remained. In your manner of speaking: the Last Five."
"Which means you're in that same position, doesn't it?"
"No."
Chris didn't understand.
"The disciples of the generation above were all controlled with poison and curses. Why were you left out of it?"
"Not only me. Every mage who became a subordinate around the same time I did is free of the poison. We're different."
"Different how?"
"Because the time for the Sky Gate to open is close."
Understanding hit him a beat late, and the breath left him in a rush.
"Ah!"
"Yes. We're the last underlings. The sky opens before our lifespans end. We only have to take each other's hands and go up, so our interests align. There's no reason to fight with our lives on the line."
"You're a lucky man."
Grain stroked Chris's shoulder with something like affection.
"It isn't only good for me. Your luck isn't bad either."
"Mine?"
Chris tilted his head.
"I've suffered like a dog my whole life."
"They say joy comes at the end of hardship. Thanks to meeting me, your luck has finally turned."
When Chris's face stayed sullen, Grain clamped a hand hard on his shoulder.
"Brat. You're at Ring Binding, and you're my disciple. Of course you go up with me."
"Ah. Together."
"Of course."
"Thank you."
Chris bowed his head low, the very picture of gratitude.
"Are there many underlings like you, Master?"
"Quite a few."
Grain rubbed his hands with cheerful vigor.
"Before the next Motaro, the cauldron needs washing."
"Yes."
Chris hauled the cauldron out of the cave, conjured water with magic, and scrubbed it clean. All the while he turned over the conversation they had just had, chewing on it again and again, until the words were worn to rags.