Chapter 7: Echoes in the Grey, 270 AC

Chapter 7: Echoes in the Grey, 270 AC

The weeks that followed the acquisition of Pate's life and Marwyn's notes were a period of intense, monastic devotion. To the patrons of The Quill and Tankard, Harys the merchant's son had become a recluse, a quiet, brooding figure who rarely left his room, seemingly lost in his failure and melancholy. They saw only a boy wasting away. In reality, within the confines of that small, dusty room, a god was methodically assembling his scripture.

Elias poured over Marwyn's folio with a ravenous hunger that dwarfed any physical appetite. The parchments became his world. He cross-referenced the Archmaester's jagged theories with the public texts he could access in the Citadel's libraries, using Pate's intimate knowledge of the institution to navigate its vast and labyrinthine halls with the ease of a veteran acolyte. He learned which scribes were lazy and could be bribed with a small coin for a glance at a restricted text, and which librarians were too sharp-eyed to be fooled. He became a ghost in the machine of knowledge, absorbing information at a prodigious rate.

His evenings were dedicated to practical application. The room became his laboratory. He started small, replicating the minor rituals Marwyn had documented. He learned to enhance his hearing to a terrifying degree, sitting in his chair with his eyes closed, able to pick out a specific conversation from the din of the common room two floors below, to distinguish the unique gait of every person who walked past his door. He practiced subtle illusions, learning to blur his features in a dim light, to make a coin seem to vanish from his palm when it had not moved at all. These were not the grand, face-changing abilities of the House of Black and White; this was something more fundamental, a manipulation of light and perception itself.

The most profound experiments involved the manipulation of life force, or what Marwyn termed anima. The notes spoke of it as a tangible energy exuded by all living things, a warmth that a trained sense could perceive. Elias, whose entire existence was now predicated on the consumption of this energy, found he had a prodigious, innate talent for it. He would walk through the crowded markets of Oldtown, and it was like swimming through a sea of invisible light. He could sense the bright, vibrant flares of the young and healthy, the flickering, guttering flames of the old and sick, and the cold, empty voids of the truly desperate. It was a new sense, as real and as vital as sight or sound, and it transformed the world around him into a landscape of power, a field of potential fuel sources.

During this period of intense study, his internal monologue shifted. The fiery, declarative sermons of his burgeoning godhood gave way to a colder, more philosophical contemplation on the nature of existence itself. He was planning the consumption of one of the world's great minds, and the gravity of the act forced a new level of introspection.

Men seek to cheat death in so many foolish ways, he mused one night, watching the distant beacon of the Hightower sweep across the city. They build monuments of stone, hoping their name will echo for a few centuries after their flesh has rotted. They write books, entrusting their thoughts to perishable paper, believing their ideas grant them a form of immortality. The pious pray for an afterlife, a paradise they have never seen, a promise whispered by priests who are as mortal as they are. Even the Archmaesters, for all their wisdom, seek legacy through their students, through the chains they help forge, a diluted, second-hand form of continuity.

They are all wrong. Legacy is a ghost. A memory is a shadow. True immortality is not about being remembered. It is about not ending. It is about continuing. The universe does not care for names, only for existence. These men build sandcastles against the coming tide. I am the tide. I do not leave a legacy; I absorb it. I do not build monuments; I become a living pantheon of every life I vanquish. When I consume Marwyn, his genius will not be a memory in a book. It will be a functioning part of my own consciousness. His seventy years of life, of study, of thought, will not end. They will be transferred, annexed, and put to a higher purpose: mine. This isn't murder. It is the ultimate act of preservation.

The plan to acquire Marwyn was the most complex puzzle he had ever faced. The Archmaester was a fortress. Pate's memories confirmed that Marwyn's chambers were warded. Not with guards, but with subtle, magical traps. An acolyte who once tried to pilfer a book found himself unable to speak for a week. Another who entered unbidden was struck with a bout of vertigo so severe he couldn't stand for three days. These were the tricks of a man who understood the subtler arts. A direct assault was suicide. Poison was unlikely to succeed against a man with Ormollen's knowledge and more.

Elias needed to draw the Archmaester out. Out of the Citadel, beyond his wards, to a place of Elias's choosing. He had to bait the trap with something Marwyn could not possibly ignore. The answer, as always, lay in the man's own obsessions. The notes were filled with frustrated passages about the difficulty of finding a "locus of significant anima," a place where the veil between worlds was thin or where a powerful magical event had left a resonant echo.

Elias decided to create one.

He spent a week gathering materials. He used Ormollen's knowledge of the black market to discreetly purchase a small, flawed obsidian sphere—a poor man's seer stone. He bought rare herbs and animal components from back-alley apothecaries. His plan was to stage a powerful necromantic ritual—or rather, the aftermath of one—in a carefully chosen location. He would use his own potent, multi-souled blood as the catalyst, combined with the obsidian sphere, to create a magical signature so potent and so unusual that Marwyn, upon sensing it, would be compelled to investigate personally.

But as his plan neared fruition, a new variable entered the equation. A cold, prickling sensation on the back of his neck. The feeling of being watched.

It began as a fleeting suspicion. A face in the crowd that seemed to appear too often. A shadow that lingered a moment too long. At first, he dismissed it as paranoia, a side effect of his heightened senses. But the feeling persisted, and it was a professional's touch. The surveillance was subtle, masterful, far beyond the capabilities of the City Watch or any agent of House Hightower. This was the touch of a Faceless Man.

Elias's mind raced, replaying the memory he had taken from Pate. The alchemist. The man with no face. He had been operating in Oldtown for weeks, seeking a maester's key. Why? What was the ultimate objective? Was it connected to him? Had the House of Black and White discovered his unsanctioned activities? His "detour" to Lys? His abandonment of the mission in Volantis?

He began to actively hunt his hunter. For three days, he engaged in a silent, deadly dance through the streets of Oldtown. He used every trick of evasion and counter-surveillance he had learned as a Faceless Man, amplified by his new abilities. He would enter a crowded market and use a subtle illusion to appear as if he had turned left when he had ducked into a doorway on the right. He used his enhanced hearing to listen for the footsteps that tried too hard to be silent.

On the third night, he confirmed it. He was standing on a bridge over the Honeywine, and he sensed him. Not with his eyes, but with his new, arcane sense. He felt a cold spot in the warm sea of life energy around him. A void. A place where a soul should be, but wasn't. It was the signature of a man wearing another's face, a man who was, in his own way, a master of being "no one."

Elias turned, his eyes piercing the gloom, and saw him. A man with the bland, forgettable face of a dockworker, leaning against a wall fifty yards away, pretending to watch the river. But his focus, his entire being, was locked onto Elias.

The silent acknowledgment passed between them. I see you. The dockworker gave no reaction, but the void of his presence seemed to intensify for a moment before he turned and melted into the shadows.

Elias's mind was a torrent of ice-cold calculation. This changed everything. He was no longer just the predator; he was also prey. He had to assume the Faceless Man was here for him. He had deviated from his mission, a crime for which the only punishment was death. His plan to acquire Marwyn now had a ticking clock and a second, equally deadly opponent in the field. He could abort, flee Oldtown, and spend the rest of his unnaturally long life looking over his shoulder.

The thought was dismissed as soon as it formed. Flee? Surrender the greatest prize he had yet encountered? Unacceptable. This did not derail his plan. It simply added a new, exhilarating layer of complexity. He would have to deal with both of them.

His chosen location for the ritual's aftermath was an old, abandoned septry on the coast, a few miles outside Oldtown, known locally as the Septry of the Drowned God due to its precarious position on a cliff face slowly being eroded by the sea. It was isolated, structurally unsound, and perfect.

The night he chose was moonless, the sky a blanket of impenetrable black velvet. He traveled to the septry, a ghost moving through the night. Inside the crumbling main hall, where the sea spray misted through gaping holes in the wall, he began his work. He drew a complex series of runes on the floor with a mixture of salt and powdered iron—runes copied directly from Marwyn's notes, meant to contain and focus magical energy. At the center, he placed the obsidian sphere.

Then, he took his knife and sliced open his palm. He let his blood, thick with the life force of five souls, drip onto the sphere and into the center of the circle. The effect was instantaneous and violent. The air grew cold, a biting, unnatural chill that had nothing to do with the sea. The obsidian sphere began to glow with a faint, sickly purple light, pulsing like a diseased heart. The runes on the floor flared with a brief, intense blue fire, then faded, leaving scorched marks on the stone. A low hum filled the air, a sound that seemed to vibrate directly in the bones.

Elias had created his magical crime scene. It was a beacon, a lighthouse for any with the senses to see it, and he knew Marwyn would not be able to resist its call. He then retreated to the cliffs overlooking the septry, concealing himself in the rocks, his body and mind a coiled spring of readiness. He was a spider waiting in the center of its web.

He did not have to wait long. Just before dawn, as the sky began to bleed from black to a bruised purple, two figures approached. The first was Marwyn, just as he'd predicted. The Archmaester was cloaked and hooded, carrying a staff of gnarled black wood, and he moved with a cautious, deliberate purpose. He held a small, glowing crystal in his hand, evidently a tool for detecting the residue of anima.

But he was not alone. Trailing him at a distance, moving with a silent, fluid grace that was terrifyingly familiar, was the Faceless Man, still wearing the face of the dockworker.

Two flies with one web, Elias thought, a thrill of pure, predatory joy coursing through him. How wonderfully efficient.

Marwyn entered the crumbling septry, his glowing crystal held aloft. He knelt, examining the scorched runes, his posture one of intense, scholarly fascination. This was the moment. Elias prepared to move, to descend upon his prize.

But the Faceless Man acted first. With a speed that was almost supernatural, the assassin darted from the shadows, a long, thin blade appearing in his hand as if from nowhere. His target was not Elias. It was Marwyn.

Elias's mind processed the new reality in a nanosecond. The Faceless Man's mission was the same as his own. The House of Black and White had also sentenced the Archmaester to death.

Just as the assassin's blade was about to find its home in Marwyn's back, the Archmaester moved. Without looking, he slammed the butt of his staff onto the stone floor. A wave of concussive force, invisible but devastating, erupted from the point of impact. The Faceless Man was thrown backward as if struck by a battering ram, his lithe body tumbling through the air and crashing into the far wall.

Marwyn spun around, his face no longer that of a curious scholar, but a hardened, dangerous mage. His eyes glowed with a faint inner light. "Did the Many-Faced God send you?" he snarled, his voice a low growl. "Or was it the grey sheep in their towers?"

The Faceless Man rose to his feet, seemingly unharmed, his borrowed face a mask of chilling neutrality. He and Marwyn began to circle each other, two apex predators about to engage in a battle of steel versus sorcery.

And from his perch on the cliffs above, Elias watched them both, a cold smile spreading across his lips. His carefully laid trap had yielded an unexpected, magnificent result. His two greatest obstacles were about to try and eliminate each other. It was a perfect scenario.

He settled in to watch the show, his mind already calculating the optimal moment to intervene, to strike, and to claim not one prize, but two. The board was set. The pieces were in motion. And he was the only one who could see the whole game.