“An elegant phrasing, and proper advice,” I said. “However, simple comes in a variety of sizes and colors. We’re assuming, for example, that all those zombies are the work of one necromancer.”
“What, you think it’s like an army of the bastards? Because those guys aren’t exactly team players, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes. Under ordinary circumstances, it’s more probable to meet one spectacularly powerful necromancer than an organized band of several hundred ordinary ones. But where this framework breaks down is when you consider why this necromancer-no matter how insanely powerful-is spending so much of that power to solve the Crystal Labyrinth, and why it’s happening now.”
“Solve it?” Baltrice and Doc said together.
“Those zombies cannot be there for defense, nor to discourage intruders; anyone out here in the Glass Desert will have more than enough power to simply avoid them-fly over them, teleport or gate past them, or if we’re talking about someone like you, burn hundreds of thousands of them to ash and walk in before the survivors can reach you. No: I am fairly certain that what we’re looking at here is an attempt to reach the heart of the Labyrinth.”
Baltrice frowned “How do you figure?”
Doc said, “BFI, right?”
“Exactly,” I said under my breath, then spoke up for Baltrice’s benefit. “We artificers and mechanists of Esper have a pet acronym of our own: BFI. It stands for Brute Force and Ignorance. Let’s say, to Keep It Simple, that we’re looking at one and a half million zombies. The Crystal Labyrinth is reputed to have fourteen thousand four hundred rooms, which means the necromancer has at his disposal more than one hundred and four zombies per room. Zombies don’t need to eat, drink, or sleep; in fairly short order, even working at random, they will have explored every possible path. Once every path is known, the necromancer can just bloody well teleport in.”
“Hey, I can probably do that!” Doc chirped. “I can teleport, remember? It’s like the only actual thing I can actually do. Except hurt you. And there’s only one place I can teleport you to. But still.”
“There is nothing about you that I have forgotten,” I reassured him.
“Put like that, it sounds easy,” Baltrice said, grim. “Hells, the bastard could have done it already.”
I shook my head. “If he has, why are all the zombies still here?”
“Holiday decorations,” Baltrice said. “How in the hells should I know?”
“And we still haven’t answered the main question: Why is our necromancer working so hard to reach the heart of the Crystal Labyrinth? And why now?”
“I don’t get you.”
“There’s no treasure,” I explained. “There has never been even a legend of treasure. All that lies at the heart of the Crystal Labyrinth is a single ancient sphinx-who may or may not be alive, if he ever existed.”
“Well, that sphinx and-if you’re right-some clue to lead you to Crucius.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Why tells us who.”
“Yeah?” Her face cleared. “Oh, I get it. You’re thinking about that snotty little clockworker from the Seekers, right?”
“Silas Renn,” I said. “Beyond the three of us and Sharuum, who knows that the path to Crucius might be found through the Crystal Labyrinth? Who’s rich enough to hire however many necromancers he might think he needs? Who would sacrifice his entire family’s fortune and all of his remaining body parts to discover the key to creating etherium?”
“Huh. ‘Why tells us who.’ Huh.” Baltrice shook her head. “And all those years, you kept telling everybody with ears that why means nothing at all.”
“Did I?” I said. “I can’t imagine what I must have been thinking.”
“You should have let me kill him back in Vectis.”
“Perhaps.” At the time, I had been unwilling to upset Sharuum, nor did I wish to spark an all-out brawl with the Seekers of Carmot-especially not when the city’s defenses included apport interdiction, so we couldn’t teleport out if things went bad. And if I’d tried to planeswalk, Doc would have dumped me back in that sangrite cave on-in-Jund. And I had discovered myself unwilling to destroy Silas Renn. Despite the danger he represented, he was not trash.
He was something I had not yet found a use for.
“So, it’s this Renn guy who’s got you all worked up? He’s not so much of all that.”
“Renn is tremendously powerful. You caught him by surprise, distracted by the arrival of Sharuum and her retinue. Do you remember how powerful I was? Back when I had my arm?”
“Yeah.”
“Renn and I studied together for three years. I fought him at least once every examination period-thirteen times, in fact. I never beat him.”
Baltrice frowned. “Never?”
“And he wasn’t even allowed to use clockworking,” I said. “At the Academy, clockworking is forbidden in sanctioned duels unless both participants agree to it beforehand.”
“For real? How come? I mean, sure, chronomancy is kind of weird, but it’s hardly-”
“Chronomancy is not even on a nearby plane to clockworking. A clockworker can actually control time. You understand teleportation. To a clockworker adept, time is simply another spatial dimension. They can jump forward and backward in time as easily as you or I might teleport across a room.”
Her frown turned into a scowl. “So if I hit him with something that rocks his world, he can just, like, jump back to right before I hit him and deliver a preemptive smackdown?”
“It’s more complicated than that-clockworking is fiendishly difficult and, no pun intended, time consuming-but essentially, yes. He can also control your own personal temporal flow in ways no magic at our command can counter. No shield will stop you from getting old. And that’s not all.”
She winced. “It gets worse?”
“A good clockworker-which Renn is-can, with proper preparation, move sideways in time.”
“What in the hells is that supposed to mean?”
“You’d have to ask a clockworker for the details,” I said. “I’ve never looked deeply into the theory, and so I have only a layman’s knowledge. The best I can understand is that time isn’t a single straight line-it’s more like a big rope, braided and rebraided out of an infinite number of different temporal strands. Every time you make a choice-turn right instead of left-you split off a new temporal strand. If the choice you make doesn’t affect other nearby main lines-if you arrive at your destination at the same moment you would have if you’d turned the other way-your strand gets braided back into the main cable and everything proceeds as usual. But a clockworker adept can sense the nearest strands of other main lines and decide which one he wants to be in. In other words, he can pick and choose the outcome he wants, and move himself into the time line where that’s what happens. And he can take you with him.”
“Wow.”
“Yes. The only limitations of clockworking are the power of the adept and the dictates of probability-the more improbable the outcome the adept is looking for, the more power it takes to get himself into that alternate line. Even though it’s not something he can pull off on the spur of the moment, the only real defense against a good clockworker is another clockworker.”
“And he got here first,” Baltrice said, “and brought all his friends.”
“Yes.”
“And he knows we’re coming, so he’s had time to prepare.”
“Yes.”
“And he might be inclined to be a little stern with both of us.”
“That’s it. See any holes?”
“Other than the bleeding ones that are about to start opening up all over both our bodies?” She stood for a long moment, staring grimly at the stark reality clustered at the bottom of the Netherglass. When finally she spoke again, her voice was hoarse and harsh. “This was what you were talking about, when you said you won’t survive.”
“Not specifically.”
“How about we walk away? Just pitch it. Because I’m looking down there, Tezzeret, and all I’m seeing is an assload of undead that you and I will probably be joining. I think we are way out of our league.”