I held up a hand for him to pause. “Wait. I thought you were a Whisper of Wydd?”
Tenjin smiled. “That part came later. An offer came to do some work for the Whispers of Wydd. I accepted, of course, but remained in Tenjin’s retinue the entire time.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“By that point, I’d been working for Tenjin a few years, and I’d already seen the unfairness in the spires’ designs.”
“Unfairness?”
Tristan shook his head. “It seems humorous at first, when a room subverts expectations. It’s much less funny when a group of climbers does everything right, and everyone dies. Because they were set up to fail. I know this, because I followed orders. I helped build those unfair tests. I watched the results — until I could watch no longer.”
“But some people do reach the top…don’t they?” My voice was quiet, uncertain.
“Every few decades, perhaps. Someone who is exactly what the visage is looking for. Someone who shows the right loyalties. The right amount of faith in the goddess. Someone powerful, but easy to manipulate. Reaching the top of the spire has never simply been about being the best. It’s about being someone the visages believe they can use.”
Tristan smiled. “Your friend Keras, for example, would never reach the top of this spire. They know his goals, and they would not wish for him to succeed. It doesn’t matter how powerful he is; they’d simply put in a room with no exits.”
“That’s…” I shook my head. “Why wouldn’t they want Keras to reach the top of the spire?”
“Because they’re afraid of the changes he’d cause if he managed to find a way to speak to the goddess herself. That is one of the few things I actually agree with the visages on.”
I blinked. “Why? What would happen?”
Tristan folded his hands in front of him. “Keras plans to ask the goddess to do something active in the world. I don’t know exactly what it is, but if he succeeds in drawing Selys back into world affairs, it could be catastrophic. I’m not convinced she’s even alive, but if she is, it’s better for her to remain uninvolved in world affairs. That is preferable to a being with her degree of power that may decide we’ve all been a failed experiment.”
That’s a grim way of looking at it, but he has a point.
I wanted to believe that if Selys was real, and she was made aware of our problems, maybe she’d make things better.
But I wasn’t the one who had been trapped in a spire of Selys’ design for the last five years. I could see why Tristan might be less excited about the goddess taking any further steps to intervene in human affairs.
If Selys was powerful enough to create the God Beasts and the visages, she was clearly much more powerful than they were, at least as individuals. If she didn’t like how a nation developed, would she simply wipe them off the planet?
I didn’t want to find out.
But I still had many other questions. “Wait. So, why switch allegiances to Wydd, then? They’re still a visage.”
“Knowledge. Forbidden knowledge, to be specific.” Tristan folded his hands. “I learned a great deal from working with the Whispers of Wydd. Things about the inner workings of the spires. The functionality of attunements. Monsters. Bits of information that could be used as tools to aid in my plans.”
“So, you learned these things…and what, started a revolution?”
“Ah, I wish I could take credit for such a thing, but no.” Tristan shook his head. “I’m relatively new to all this. People have been watching the terrors wrought by the visages for centuries. Planning. Paving the way for future generations to act. I am only one participant in this, and I am not even one of the leaders of the current movement.”
“How did you get involved, then?”
Tristan smiled. “Mother, of course.”
“Mother? She’s one of the people causing all this?”
He shook his head. “No, not exactly. Only in the loosest sense. She did not organize anything — that was already happening before I even was recruited into the spire. It started with Orden and her ilk, working within the Whispers, and other powerful organizations. They recruited high-ranking priests and government officials who knew the truth.
“No, Mother’s life changed when she reached the halfway point of the spire, and she was offered a deal.”
I frowned. “A deal?”
“As I said, the visages do not wish for anyone to reach the top of the spire unless they have the proper characteristics. Mother was powerful, influential, and dedicated. She had a singular goal. She would have pursued it to her dying day if she needed to.” He turned his head to the side. “But it was not to be.”
“What was this deal?”
Tristan turned back to me. “Tenjin came to her directly. He praised her for her achievements, having reached higher in the spire than anyone had in decades. And he offered her a gift — a boon that he would grant himself if she would never set foot in the spire again.”
I felt my heart sink. “And she asked for him to bring you back.”
“Indeed.” Tristan laughed. “It was her goal from the beginning. Tenjin knew this; he had watched her, and she had mentioned it often to the others who climbed with her from time to time. He told her that I was alive, and in his service. She was overjoyed at first, until she learned that Tenjin would not allow me to leave.”
“Tenjin’s compromise was that he let us meet. He believed that I was loyal, and that simply knowing that I was alive and healthy would be enough for mother.” Tristan shook his head. “We were allowed to talk within the spire for a single hour. Ostensibly in private, but I knew that we’d be watched. I could not tell her the truth there, but I was able to pass her a seemingly innocuous book.”
“A book like mine?”
Tristan nodded. “Precisely. It’s possible Tenjin realized what I’d given her and simply chose not to act. But I took the risk, and it worked. I wrote to her. I explained what I knew. And she began to plan, recruiting more people outside the spire to our plan. She became instrumental to our efforts, since few of those who know what I do are ever allowed to leave.”
“But why did Tenjin allow the meeting at all? Why not just tell her that you were dead, and beyond his abilities to revive?”
“It is unwise for the visages to admit to weaknesses or limitations. It undermines their authority. Moreover, I believe Tenjin thought she could be manipulated. Perhaps, up until the point where he was captured, he believed everything was still going according to plan. Even beings as ancient as they are have the ability to make mistakes. In fact, an inability to accurately anticipate how humans think is perhaps one of their greatest weaknesses.”
“Couldn’t he have just let you leave, then? Only letting you speak for an hour must have seemed like a poor reward for all of Mother’s years of climbing.”
Tristan shook his head. “I should probably explain something else. There would have been an uprising long ago if those of us within the spires had the freedom to do as we chose. But we are carefully watched and, of course, limited by other factors.”
He lifted up his shirt.
His entire chest was covered with a massive runic inscription. “Is that…a brand? Like the one Katashi had put on me?”
“Precisely. A much more complex variation. The more knowledge and access a Whisper is given, the more is added to our brand — and the more things we’re restricted from. In my case, the core function is to prevent me from ever leaving the spire. It would explode if I did, and I assure you that would be quite fatal.”
“Couldn’t Tenjin just have removed it? Maybe removed your memories?”