Maester Rooney's voice was dry, his throat bobbing. "How do you know these things?"
He was no longer looking at a lord, but at some unknown entity. This young man could not possibly know of the glass candles.
Suleiman stared at the Valyrian steel links around Maester Rooney's neck and countered, "In the Citadel's cellars, on an acolyte's final night, aren't they made to sit vigil before an obsidian candle?"
Maester Rooney immediately defended himself, as though trying to prove something. "That is meant to warn us that knowledge is not omnipotent."
"It is meant to...
Suleiman cut him off. "No.
"Perhaps it is meant to select."
"To select those... capable of lighting it."
Maester Rooney's face turned deathly pale, his lips trembling faintly.
He instinctively took half a step back, putting distance between himself and Suleiman.
Suleiman did not care. The question had only occurred to him because he had suddenly realized the value of such a thing.
Seeing sights a thousand miles away, speaking with people across any distance.
This was not magic. This was the ultimate tool of power.
In an age when ravens and messengers ruled the speed of information, what would a device capable of real-time communication mean?
It would mean he could remain in Oldstones while commanding armies far away.
It would mean he could see through any rebellion before it erupted and snuff out conspiracies in the cradle.
It would mean he could establish contact with subordinates on the distant continent of Essos and command events from a thousand miles away.
What glass candle was this?
This was a telephone belonging solely to rulers, a network cable laid exclusively for kings.
Perhaps those old men at the Citadel did not seek to destroy magic.
They sought to monopolize information, to monopolize a power