Broken Crescent (18 page)

She led him around the beach, toward the boat. It was larger than it appeared at first, thirty or forty feet long, and had a mast that seemed to loom upward at least as far. It seemed to sit shallow in the water, narrow-bodied with a knifelike bow.

The boat was moored to a stone pier that emerged from the sand to extend halfway toward the center of the lagoon. The blocks that made the pier were five feet on a side, and must have weighed tons. They had been here long enough for the water to polish their edges smooth. The aisle down the center had been worn concave by long use.

A trio of grizzled, nasty-looking characters sat on the deck, watching them approach. They were bare chested and wore black canvas pants. Their hair was long and gathered into dozens of tight braids. Unlike Scarface’s ritual mutilations, the scars these guys wore were neither intentional nor followed any intellectual design.

One of them looked Nate up and down, staring at the alien clothes, and spat over the side of the boat, into the water. One spoke to Yerith. “All is well?”

“As well as the demons dwelling between the worlds,” she repeated.

The third one, who was missing the last two fingers of his left hand said, probably unnecessarily, “This is the stranger?”

“Yes,” Nate answered for Yerith. It probably wasn’t a good idea to surprise these guys, but Nate did get some amusement at how shocked they looked when he spoke.

The last one waved Nate forward with his mutilated hand, “Come then.”

Arthiz met Nate in a cramped room down below, in the back of the boat.

The room held a narrow bed that folded against the wall, allowing just enough room to seat one man at a desk that was little more than a ledge on the opposite wall. Nate stood, crouched in the doorway, until someone brought him a stool to sit on.

“I understand I did not need to bring this,” his host said, once Nate was seated. Arthiz turned toward Nate, and in his hand was a softball-sized sphere that shone metallic in the lamplight.

“You are one of them,” Nate said when he saw the white, featureless mask covering Arthiz’s face.

“You are an intelligent man, by Yerith’s account. But you suffer from incautious thinking.” Arthiz set down the sphere and patted a book that lay on the desk. Nate recognized the journal Yerith had given him. The one he had dropped when the ghadi had grabbed him in the catacombs.

“Do not think in haste. Do not talk in haste. Do not act in haste. Haste is the father of error, and error is the father of all misfortune.”

“Why am I here?”

“If I knew that, I would surely be a wise man.” Arthiz looked down at Nate’s journal. “What I know is that your presence frightens the College, and what frightens the College is of interest to me.”

Nate frowned. He wished he could think of a way to say,
Quit the metaphysical bullshit
. Instead, he told Arthiz, “You are an intelligent man. You know what I was asking.”

“You have an interesting manner of speech, Nate Black.” He flipped a page. His fingers were long and jeweled, and Nate could see engravings on the rings, as well as the gems mounted within them. “You are a stranger here, and all you’ve known of this world is violence, disease, and captivity. It must seem an awful place.” Arthiz made no concession to Nate’s linguistic skills, Nate had to concentrate to follow him, even though he wasn’t speaking particularly fast.

“I would rather be imprisoned in the country of my birth.”

“This world could be better,” Arthiz said.

“I would like to return to where I came from.”

Arthiz laughed. It wasn’t quite what Nate expected. Arthiz said, “And is it in your mind that such a thing is possible? The College of Man, the most powerful—” He used a word Nate did not know. “—in the world, the keepers of all of Mankind’s knowledge since we first trod the stones of Manhome, they want nothing less than to erase your existence from the face of their world. If such was possible, they would have granted you that wish out of their own fear.” He shook his head. “Again, you think in haste.”

Arthiz turned to face Nate, closing the journal.

“Why did you take me here?” Nate rubbed his temples. “What do you want from me?”

“I brought you here so I would know what you are. Do you know what the College of Man is?”

The name was familiar from the myth in Yerith’s book, but Arthiz went on before Nate could form a response. “They—” Arthiz picked up the sphere. “
We
bear the knowledge of the Gods’ Language. No one outside the College may write these glyphs or speak their names. These are words of power, of creation, of destruction. They remake the world to their pattern.”

“Meaning?”

Arthiz handed it to Nate. “This is an ancient artifact, engraved by many, many artisans.”

Nate saw the tiny inscription spiraling around the entire object.

“A single unbroken line, carved continuously over weeks.”

“I am impressed.” Nate hefted the thing, and to his surprise, it was hollow. There was no weight to it at all.

There was a hole in one end and Nate looked inside and saw no mechanism, just an inner shell where the engraving continued. He stared at the sphere in his cupped hands and said, “This spoke.”
How could this thing make any noise at all?

“Yes, it did.”

“How?”

Arthiz spoke some words in the alien tongue that Nate had heard Scarface speak. Like Scarface, Arthiz also gestured with the first three fingers of either hand. This time Nate realized that the gestures traced the rectilinear glyphs in the air.

Arthiz spoke—

As did the sphere in Nate’s hand.

“LANGUAGEALPHABETSYMBOL INCANTATIONPOWER CAUSERESULT MEARTHIZ TELLCOMMUNICATE YOUNATEBLACK.”

It wasn’t metaphor. Words of power meant,
words of power
.

Nate stared at the hollow sphere and his mind filled with the image of Scarface and the guardsman—the glyphs carved into the man’s chest, the green flames, the grotesque smell of charred meat. Somehow, he had allowed that memory to hide. He had pretended to himself that it was a fevered vision of a time when he had been too sick to be lucid.

Arthiz spoke and the sphere stopped vibrating.

Arthiz stayed several hours with Nate. Much of it was spent describing the College of Man, to which Arthiz admitted being a member.

The College was only nominally an organization of learning. It was actually dedicated to the
control
of knowledge. Its origins were ancient, dating back to the great war between Mankind and Ghadikan.

Because it was the sole repository of the Gods’ Language, the College could hold itself above any law, even the rule of the Monarch, who supposedly reigned over the Nation of Men. The scholars of the College could command anything of anyone, without fear of question. In the great city of Manhome, there wasn’t even a pretense of an independent civil authority. There were the guardsmen, and there was the College.

The acolytes of the College were required for much of the social infrastructure—medicine, public works, manufacturing, communication.

The College ran the educational system, a centralized network of primary and secondary schools with professional educators and a standardized curriculum, with universal and compulsory attendance.

A system that existed because of the College’s universal control over what subjects could be taught, and which subjects were forbidden. A control so absolute that deviation from the accepted path meant death or imprisonment for both teacher and students. A system that was used to fill the College’s own ranks.

Acolytes of the College of Man did not choose their fate. It was chosen for them. Anyone who had a demonstrable ability in areas the College deemed restricted was taken into the College with no chance of appeal.

And joining the College was a life sentence, an acolyte forbidden to leave except by death. They lost all contact with the rest of humanity, and their public face became, literally, a mask. Their family never saw them again, and no one would be informed even if the College’s draconian rules resulted in the acolyte’s execution.

For their small taste of power, the vast majority of the College lived a life of discipline and servitude. They endured ritual scarification that permanently separated them from the rest of humanity. They could not fraternize with people outside the College. They could not appear in public without wearing a mask. They could not even identify themselves as individuals. Bearing a name was a privilege only allowed to the most senior scholars.

To most members of the College, the miraculous Language of the Gods was composed of meaningless symbols, memorized by rote, with no context or explanation. It was taboo to deviate in execution, to change any of the set incantations.

Nate, of course, asked how anyone would discover a new effect, a new “spell,” if no one could change the rote incantations.

The answer was, no one did. The point of the prohibition was to
prevent
any such thing from happening. Change was the enemy. Too much knowledge about the nature of the Gods’ Language was evil and dangerous.

Of course, given the College’s totalitarian outlook, any stranger that came in contact with their regimented society had to be removed before the people became contaminated with alien concepts.

It seemed, however, that Arthiz didn’t share the worldview of the College.

“What the ghadi is to Man, Mankind is to the College. I would see this grip broken.”

“Why tell me?”

“So you will help us.”

“How can I do anything to help you?”

“There is a game of stones we play. It is called siege. A man can spend a lifetime learning mastery of the game. However, a master who plays the same opponents over and over can be undone by an unexpected move. Even a foolish move by a novice.” Arthiz leaned forward. “The College cannot think outside the walls of the rules they have imposed upon themselves.”

Arthiz picked a blade up from the desk, took Nate’s hand, and cut the bindings on his wrists. The move was unexpected, and it left Nate speachless, rubbing his wrists.

Perhaps Arthiz could afford to be a little more generous with Nate’s freedom. Even if Nate slipped away from him, the picture Arthiz painted of the College did not lead Nate to believe he could escape them for long. In a choice between Arthiz and the College, Arthiz won hands down.

Arthiz turned back to Nate’s journal. “Your arrival here was not simple chance.” He hefted it. “You were chosen.”

“What is it you want from me?”

He handed the journal back to Nate. “I am sending you somewhere where the Monarch rules alone, not the College.”

Nate looked at the journal in his hands. “Why do you believe I can help you?”

“You can, and you will. But, for now, knowing that you are being kept safe from the College should be enough.”

Nate stared at Arthiz, then at the sphere. “You were there when they questioned me.”

Arthiz steepled his fingers. “Do not think in haste. Do not talk in haste. Do not act in haste. Remember that creed. It will save you much grief.”

“
T
HIS IS YOUR sole duty now,” Arthiz had said. The implications were slow to sink in, but Yerith began to realize that she had cast her fate with something much larger than she was.

Up until Arthiz reappeared this morning, she had a very definite view of her place in the world. Her life, the person that everyone saw, was Yerith, the ghadi keeper for the College of Manhome. Somehow, she had come to see that person as being real. She did her job well, cared for the ghadi in her charge, and did what was in her power to make their lives comfortable.

The secrets she kept, her relationship with Arthiz, the thing—the man—called Nate Black; all of this was hidden, not really a part of her identity. She did it out of a desire to serve the Monarch, and a desire to punish the College that had erased her family so thoroughly that she didn’t even dare use her birth name. But it didn’t seem real, it was almost a game she was playing, removed from the world she actually lived in.