“He’s the one who got Gormin expelled from the House of the Issola.”
She turned and looked at me again, and this time didn’t look away. “Why would he do that?”
“He’s in love with you.”
The look on her face was mostly disgust, with an overlay of disbelief. I turned my head so I was facing the stage and waited while it sank in.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. It seemed like something you should know. Besides, I sort of liked Gormin before he drugged me and tried to interrogate me.”
“I can’t believe he’d do that.”
“He was acting under orders.”
“When did this happen?”
“A few hundred years ago. Or earlier today, depending on how you look at it.”
“Gormin,” she said. “He…”
“Is it hard, living under the same roof as him?”
She cleared her throat and turned back to the stage. “That’s a little personal.”
“We got more personal than that, back before.”
“Did we? I don’t remember. And I can’t think why I would.”
“Neither can I. It didn’t seem very Issola-like.”
“Perhaps that was close to”—she looked for the words to get around saying what she didn’t want to say—“to when things happened with Gormin. I wasn’t myself, then. What is it?”
“Hmmm? What is what?”
“Your fingers are twitching.”
I looked at them and made them stop. “I feel like killing someone, but there’s no one I’m sure needs killing. Harro’s a bastard, but not enough of one for me to put a knife into his eye.”
“I … can’t imagine what that must feel like.”
“Really? You can’t? You’ve never been angry?”
“Well, yes, of course I’ve been angry.”
“That’s what it feels like.”
“All right.”
We didn’t speak for a little while after that.
“Back then,” she said at last. “Did you ever explain what you were doing?”
“Sort of.”
“Want to try again? If I can help you, I will.”
“All right. Do you know about the mirrors?”
“The practice room? Of course. I work out there every day.”
“No, the other mirror room.”
“Oh. I’m not to go in there.”
“It’s pretty much the magic focus for the entire place.”
“I guess it could be. But I don’t know any details. I haven’t made much of a study of sorcery, beyond what everyone knows.”
It’s hard to explain to someone what you don’t understand yourself. “Okay,” I said. “I’ve got some of it. The manor wasn’t built here, it appeared here. I put that together when I saw all the dead plants—never mind. I found a cave, with sorcerous markings on it, that was, well … think of it as an anchor, all right? They built it, and one of the parts of it had to—”
I broke off.
“What?” she said after a moment.
“I think I have it,” I said. “Paths, hallways, doors, necromantic mirrors. The mirrors provide a way to turn physical motion into motion through worlds, which sometimes means through time. That’s how it got here. There are places it is anchored—like the cave under the cellar, and the Halls of Judgment, and the place in the past where they started construction. The mirrors work like Morrolan’s windows—”
“What?”
“Uh, never mind. The thing is, all the pathways in the manor, controlled by the mirrors, are sort of, well, think of it like they’re stacked on top of each other. Zhayin’s idea is to be able to make additional pathways to different worlds, that you can reach just by opening a door or walking down a hall.”
I felt myself frowning. “Only, he hasn’t done it yet. All he has is a way to reach the Halls, the future out from the courtyard, and the past—the anchors. He hasn’t built any of the pathways, just a lot of places where they can go, which is why right now they turn into just odd rooms placed in strange places; it’s like he set up a bunch of sheaths but hasn’t put the daggers in them yet. Why hasn’t he? Oh, right. Harro said the manor had just recently been completed.
She nodded. “Two days ago is when we shifted. I’ve been living in the manor for years and years, but it was next to the old castle, by the river, and then we were suddenly here.”
“That’s it, then,” I said. “Time.”
“Pardon?”
“Pathways in space are pathways in time, when you’re going between worlds. I’m sure if the Necromancer were here she could explain it so it made sense, but that’s the best I can do.”
“I don’t—”
“It’s all about Tethia, and you, and Harro, and Gormin.”
“I’ve never met Tethia.”
“Yes, exactly. Because she died, you see.”
“When?”
“Yes, exactly. When. When and where. That’s the part that’s hard to wrap my head around, but it sort of makes sense.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“Tethia died here, in the manor, in the past, but was trapped in the now.”
She shook her head.
“Try it this way: Tethia was involved in casting those spells for a couple of hundred years. You never met her, because her part of things involved being in the future.”
“The future?”
“Uh, the then future, the now now.”
“I don’t, wait, I think I see what you mean. She did her work here, near Adrilankha, in the time and place where the manor was going to be.”
“Yes, casting the spells that would allow it to exist.”
“But how did she get here? How did she move through time that way?”
“My head hurts.”
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. I’m working it out, I think. Try this: She didn’t really move through time. In the Halls of Judgment, there are a lot of times and places to choose from, maybe an infinite number, I don’t know. But while Zhayin was overseeing the building of the physical structure, Tethia was spending her time in the Halls of Judgment, making the magical connections that corresponded to it. When they were both done, the manor appeared here.”
“But Tethia was…”
“Yeah, okay. She was in the Halls of Judgment, with her spells following pathways to here and now, and she was here and now, with spells sending pathways to the Halls.”
“But you said she wasn’t traveling in time. That’s where I’m lost.”
“Yeah, me too.”
I really did feel like I was on the verge of a headache. You know that feeling that hits you when you put the pieces of a puzzle together and it all instantly makes sense? I like that better. “Okay,” I said, speaking slowly as it worked its way through my skull, “In the Halls, in the travel between worlds, time and place are part of the same thing. So, if she was in the Halls, she could find a place that was a time. That’s what she was connecting the manor to. You can think of it as a place and a time above us, that touches our own. That’s why she kept calling it a platform.”
“That sort of makes sense. But then, what happened to her?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out.”
She nodded. “There’s a sorcerer here. Maybe—”
“Discaru. Yeah. He wasn’t helpful. And I’m pretty sure he’s no longer around.”
“Oh?”
I took that as an invitation to tell her more and declined by not saying anything. She seemed to think that was an excellent choice, and did the same. I broke first. “How are you?”