Chapter 5: The Ivory Citadel, 270 AC

Chapter 5: The Ivory Citadel, 270 AC

The transition from the sensual, perfumed haze of Lys to the brisk, scholarly air of Oldtown was like stepping from a fever dream into a lecture hall. The ship Elias had taken navigated the calm, misty waters of the Whispering Sound, the mournful cries of gulls replacing the songs of Lysene nightingales. Then, rising from the morning mist like a titan's spear, he saw it: the Hightower. It was a structure that defied the imagination, a colossal stone sentinel crowned with a beacon that pierced the heavens, its sheer scale a testament to the ancient and enduring power of the city it guarded.

Oldtown was a city built on layers of history, its cobblestone streets worn smooth by millennia of footfalls. The air smelled of damp stone, salt, and old parchment, a scent that was the very perfume of knowledge and tradition. Unlike the chaotic vibrancy of the Free Cities, Oldtown possessed a sober, ordered beauty. Gabled and timber-framed houses huddled together along winding streets, and the serene, flowing waters of the Honeywine river partitioned the city into neat districts. Everything felt…settled. Ancient. It was the heart of the Seven Kingdoms' faith and intellect, a place of immense, quiet power.

For Elias, arriving here was a true homecoming, though not to a home he had ever known. This was Westeros. The grand stage. The names of the streets—the Street of Sisters, the Alchemist's Way—were not just locations; they were echoes from a life he had left behind, now made real and tangible. He observed it all through a multi-faceted lens. Vorro Tagaros's mind saw a thriving port, a hub of trade in wool, wine, and valuable lumber from the Reach. Silas Marr's eyes saw a city with formidable defenses, a population that felt soft and unready for true violence. Tregar Ormollen's cunning saw a thousand secrets tucked away behind the respectable facades of the city's ancient houses. And Elias, the master of them all, saw a treasure house waiting to be plundered.

He disembarked wearing the face of a travel-worn merchant's clerk, but he knew this identity was temporary, unsuitable for his purpose. He needed a local face, a seamless cover that would allow him to move within the city's rigid social strata without raising an eyebrow. Acquiring one was a matter of cold, predatory pragmatism. He spent a day in the bustling markets near the harbor, a shadow listening and watching. His target presented himself that evening: a young man named Harys, the third son of a minor wool merchant, whose family had sent him to Oldtown with hopes he would find a place as an acolyte at the Citadel, a hope he was squandering in taverns and gambling dens. Harys was bitter, in debt, and, most importantly, of a similar age and build to the body Elias inhabited. He was insignificant. His absence would cause a ripple, not a wave.

Elias trailed him from a tavern as Harys stumbled through the darkening, labyrinthine streets. The kill was silent, brutal, and efficient, executed in a narrow, piss-stained alley. It was a purely functional act, devoid of malice or pleasure, like a farmer slaughtering a pig for meat. He took the boy's face, his clothes, and his purse, leaving the body in the shadows for the City Watch to find in the morning. A moment later, Harys walked out of the alley, his posture straightened, his gaze clear and sharp, his mind a crystalline lattice of terrifying ambition.

As Harys, Elias rented a modest room in an inn called The Quill and Tankard, a known haunt for Citadel novices and scribes. It was the perfect listening post. For a week, he played the part of the disillusioned merchant's son, spending his days in the public areas of the Citadel, his nights in the common room of the inn, absorbing the rhythm of the city and its great institution.

The Citadel was even more of a closed, hierarchical world than he had imagined. It was a city within a city, a sprawling complex of libraries, lecture halls, and dormitories, all revolving around the central pursuit of knowledge. He watched the endless parade of brown-robed novices, grey-robed acolytes, and the maesters themselves, their chains of office clinking with every step, each link representing a mastered discipline. The air was thick with intellectual arrogance and the quiet, vicious politics of academia. He saw the way the archmaesters were spoken of in hushed, reverent tones, each a king in his own court of knowledge.

It was here, surrounded by the greatest concentration of scholarship in the world, that Elias's internal philosophy on power and knowledge reached a new, chilling clarity.

They are like dragons sleeping on a hoard they can never truly possess, he thought, sitting in the scriptorium, pretending to read a tome on the lineages of the Reach while he observed the novices meticulously copying manuscripts. They collect, they catalog, they curate. They build walls of stone and tradition around their knowledge, dispensing it in carefully measured doses to the world, believing this makes them the masters of truth. They think power lies in the library. What a pathetic fallacy.

A book is a dead thing. A static, imperfect vessel for a thought. The knowledge within it is passive, inert. To truly possess knowledge is not to read it, but to become it. To absorb it so completely that it becomes an inseparable part of your being, as natural as a limb. These maesters spend a lifetime forging a single link for their chain, mastering one small sliver of reality. I can take their entire lifetime of work, their chain, their very mind, in a single, silent moment. They are curators of a museum. I am the fire that consumes the museum and emerges with its essence burned into my very soul. They seek to serve the world with their knowledge. I will own the world with it.

His target, the key to this treasure house, was the novice Pate. Ormollen's memories had been specific: a pale, soft-handed boy with a weak chin and a perpetually dissatisfied expression, known for pilfering small items and selling them for coin. Elias spotted him on his second day. Pate was exactly as described, a picture of youthful resentment, his eyes always scanning for an opportunity or an angle. Elias recognized the archetype instantly from his past life's reading: this was the boy who would one day cross paths with an alchemist, a man with no face, and trade a key for a golden dragon, a trade that would cost him his life.

Hello, little key, Elias mused, watching Pate ineptly trying to flirt with a serving girl at the inn. You think you are a player in a small game of coin and kisses. You have no idea you are a pawn in a game for the world itself.

Observing Pate was an exercise in contempt. The boy was lazy, clumsy, and driven by the most pedestrian of desires: a bit of coin, a bit of affection, and the dream of a maester's silver link, a prize he lacked the intellect or the discipline to ever earn legitimately. He was the perfect tool: desperate, predictable, and stupid. The challenge wasn't in manipulating him, but in doing so with the right degree of finesse to get exactly what he wanted without raising the alarm of the Citadel's formidable internal security.

Elias needed to get to Archmaester Marwyn. Marwyn the Mage. The man who dabbled in the forbidden, who consorted with shadowbinders and warlocks, whose ring and rod and mask were of Valyrian steel. Marwyn was the true prize. His knowledge of magic was a gaping hole in Elias's growing arsenal of skills, a deficiency he intended to correct. But an Archmaester was a fortress. Elias needed a way in, a key to the lock. Pate was that key.

He began to subtly weave a web around the boy. As Harys, he struck up a conversation with Pate in the common room of The Quill and Tankard. He presented himself as a fellow failure, a merchant's son with no head for numbers, now adrift in Oldtown. He bought Pate ale, listened to his endless complaints about the drudgery of his duties, and sympathized with his frustrations. He became Pate's friend, his confidant.

"It's Archmaester Walgrave who's the worst," Pate slurred one night, deep in his cups thanks to Elias's generosity. "The old man's half-senile. Has me cleaning his chambers, and he can't even remember my name. Calls me 'boy' and raps my knuckles if I spill a single drop of his ink."

"And what of Marwyn?" Elias asked casually, keeping his tone light. "I hear whispers about him. They say he's…unconventional."

Pate's eyes widened with a mix of fear and conspiratorial glee. "The Mage? He's mad. His chambers are filled with…things. Glass candles that won't light, queer old books from Asshai. The other Archmaesters don't trust him. But he pays well for rare items. Books, maps…if they're strange enough."

This was the opening Elias had been crafting. The perfect bait for a boy like Pate. Greed, mixed with a dash of intrigue.

A few nights later, Elias approached Pate with a proposition. He took him to a quiet corner, his expression a mask of nervous excitement. From a satchel, he produced an object he'd spent days creating. It was a scroll, but the parchment was made from a supple, paper-thin sheet of Lysene wood, and the text was written in High Valyrian, in the elegant, flowing script he had absorbed from the tragic slave girl, Lyraka. The text itself was a fabrication, a piece of lurid, esoteric nonsense about the properties of obsidian and its connection to dragonlore, designed to sound exactly like the sort of thing Marwyn would find irresistible.

"My father…he traded for this years ago," Elias lied, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. "He thought it was a curiosity. But I've heard the stories about Archmaester Marwyn. A scroll like this…written in the high tongue, from before the Doom…it must be worth a fortune to a man like him."

Pate's eyes were glued to the scroll, his breathing shallow. He could almost feel the weight of gold coins in his hand. "Where did you get this?"

"That doesn't matter," Elias said, his voice firm. "What matters is that I can't approach him myself. I'm nobody. But you…you work in the Citadel. You could get this to him. We could split the payment. Enough gold to buy your silver link ten times over. Enough to have any girl in the city."

Pate was hooked. The fish had not only taken the bait but was trying to swallow the entire fishing rod. But Elias had no intention of letting Pate meet Marwyn. The boy was a key, not a messenger.

"There's a problem," Elias said, pulling the scroll back slightly. "A man like Marwyn…he won't just buy this. He'll want to know where it came from. He'll have questions I can't answer. He might even take it and have me thrown out." He let that sink in, watching the greed on Pate's face war with his innate cowardice.

"So what do we do?" Pate asked, his voice whining slightly.

Elias leaned in closer, his plan now entering its final, critical phase. "We don't sell it to him. We trade it. For something much, much more valuable."

"More valuable than gold?"

"Knowledge, Pate," Elias said, his eyes gleaming with feigned fanaticism. "Marwyn is studying the glass candles. The obsidian candles from Valyria that allow men to see across the world and into the minds of others. His private notes on his research…imagine what they would be worth to the other Archmaesters who fear him. Or to his rivals in the Free Cities."

He was selling Pate a new fantasy, a more dangerous but far more lucrative one. He was painting a picture of espionage and high-level intrigue that made the boy's chest puff out with self-importance.

"Steal from an Archmaester?" Pate whispered, aghast, but Elias could see the calculating gleam in his eyes.

"It would be simple," Elias pressed, his voice a hypnotic whisper. "You have access to his chambers. You clean them. While he is lecturing, you swap this scroll,"—he tapped the beautiful fabrication—"for his research notes. You leave this on his desk. He will be so fascinated by it, it might be days before he even realizes his notes are gone. By then, we are far away, and very, very rich. No one will ever suspect you."

He let the silence stretch, watching the gears turn in Pate's simple mind. He was offering the boy everything he ever wanted: wealth, escape from his dreary life, and a sense of power and importance he had never known. It was an irresistible cocktail.

Pate swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. He looked from the exquisite scroll to Elias's intense, waiting face. The decision was written there before he even spoke the words.

"When?" Pate breathed, his voice trembling with a mixture of terror and exhilaration.

A cold, triumphant smile bloomed in the hidden depths of Elias's mind. The key was turning in the lock. He was one step away from the mind of Marwyn the Mage. He looked past Pate, out the grimy window of the inn. In the distance, the light of the Hightower burned, a silent beacon in the night sky.

Soon, he thought. Soon, I will climb you. Not with my feet, but with my mind. And all the knowledge you guard will be mine.