Broken Crescent (27 page)

But considered in the proper organizational framework, it was no harder to conceptualize than the numbers between 0 and 4095, or the subset of English words of six letters or less. That made it simple to come up with a mapping scheme that gave each symbol a unique label that Nate could understand almost instantly, but had none of the side effects of using the actual characters.

He started transcribing spells in his notebook in hexadecimal notation, lining the pages with columns of three-digit hex numbers that mapped to the twelve “digit” “numbers” of the Gods’ Language.

He stole what time he could. He began smuggling his own paper into the morning devotion, sliding it under the parchment they gave him for practice.

Then he could spend half the time copying the model, and the other half jotting down the hex equivalent of the spell, as well as the fragments of spells he saw carved into the skin of his comrades.

Making his own copy was a nerve-racking process, since everyone was so closely observed by the blue-belts. He only risked one number, sometimes only one digit, at a time. However, time was on Nate’s side here, since they spent several days on one string of symbols.

Into the fifth week, they had just begun Nate’s fourth spell.

So far, they had snuffed out a ritual candle, lit it again, and caused a pebble to rise to the surface in a glass of water. Also, with clockwork regularity, two days into the new study, he would be pulled aside to demonstrate to Osif and Bhodan that he was, in fact, absorbing the lesson.

Now they were returning to the candle-snuffing ritual. Nate had to suppress a groan, until he realized that the model he was working on was different from the first.

He copied the model dutifully on the parchment, as did the other acolytes, but he noticed that the spell was, in fact, several characters longer than the first spell they had taught here. It started with some minor variations, then copied the first spell almost exactly, then ended with a brand new sequence.

Then Nate noticed something about the new sequence.

In five weeks of surreptitious study, the single breakthrough Nate had managed in understanding the Gods’ Language was a small grasp of syntax, the idea that some of the runes existed for the purpose of punctuation.

The first punctuation symbols he found were from looking at what was inscribed on the candles, and the way that it was copied into the spells affecting that particular candle. On
all
the candles, Nate saw the same pair of symbols beginning and ending the candle’s “name.” To Nate, those symbols appeared to set off a string of symbols as a label, an identifier rather than part of a spell.

The second set of punctuation Nate found, after he had seen more than one spell, was a pair of symbols that seemed to mark the beginning and end of an entire spell, distinct from the symbols marking a label.

By week five, Nate had already modified his notation so that instead of the three-digit hex code, he was writing these two types of opening and closing symbols as square and curly brackets.

So, when he was near the end of marking up his own surreptitious copy of the spell, he saw himself writing a sequence:
. . . A32 05F B10
} {
1FF CD7 . . .

If he was right in his assumptions about how this language was punctuated, the sequence “}{” should never appear inside a spell. “{” was the opening character and “}” was a closing character.

There was a simple, quick way to test it, and he could do it without alerting the blue-belts. The nature of these spells was that, in order to work, they must be written in a continuous act. If there was a pause in the writing, the energies built up by the act would dissipate.

On his next copy of the model, Nate painted the symbols up until the first “}” symbol. There he stopped, and waited.

What he had just written was very similar to the first spell he had learned. The only differences were some additional symbols beginning the line. Whatever the difference was, it prevented this spell from behaving like its cousin. The candle snuffed itself immediately upon Nate finishing the effort of writing spell number one. Here, he went through the same mental effort transcribing these symbols, and nothing happened.

Nate counted silently a full sixty seconds.

Then he commenced copying the remainder of the model on a new line.

This part of the spell was only a few characters long, enclosed in its own set of “{}” symbols. Much of it, in fact, seemed similar to the additions at the beginning of the spell.

As soon as Nate completed the last brush stroke for the “}” symbol, the candle snuffed itself.

Nate relit the candle and looked at the guards. None appeared to be paying special attention to him.

Telling himself that it wasn’t random experimentation, Nate started a new line of transcription. This time, however, he only copied what appeared to be the second spell in the model.

He copied the short sequence of symbols, and the candle snuffed itself again.

“The marks have their own power, by themselves. If you know its name,”
Solis had said,
“you can invoke the whole by calling on its name.”

Late in the evening, during the short amount of free time he was allowed, Nate left the dorms and found a quiet spot where he could jot down notes in his journal. He had transcribed enough of the hex translation of these spells that he was able to see definite patterns.

There was a syntax to it, a grammar. He was just beginning to see something of the underlying structure, laid out by the punctuation marks he was unearthing.

He was so engrossed in divining the naming convention that was used when today’s spells invoked each other, that he didn’t notice Solis approach until the man spoke.

“What is it you do?” he asked.

Nate looked up, startled. “I am—” He didn’t have the words for “taking notes.” He thought a moment before he said, “I am studying.”

“It is not the time for study. You need rest, or tomorrow’s study will be lost on you.”

Nate set down his brush. “I am surprised you care how a stranger does here.”

Solis frowned. “What you learn is a—” another unfamiliar word. “I care that respect is given to it.”

“You believe I do not respect it?”

“I see you and think you do not respect the traditions.”

Nate didn’t say anything immediately. He couldn’t see any way to honestly contradict the guy. Nate
didn’t
respect the traditions that Solis was talking about. Nate was beginning to understand that the way he was translating the common tongue might not be strictly correct.

“The College” might just as easily be read as “the Church.”

“I come from a different place,” Nate said. “If I am to learn, there are ways I need to think, things I need to think about, and thoughts I need to write.”

“You do not write the sacred tongue . . .”

“No. I do not wish to invoke anything. I write about the sacred tongue.”

“About?” Solis looked puzzled. “You write about our devotions?”

“I write about what we are writing.”

“You are talking in circles.”

“No one is willing to explain what the symbols in the sacred tongue mean—”

“Why do you ask senseless questions? Does the air need explanation? The earth?”

“—so I need to discover them myself.”

Solis stared at Nate, then down at the journal in Nate’s lap. “What are you doing?”

“Learning the Gods’ Language.”

Solis actually looked afraid, as if Nate and his journal might burst into flame at any moment. “Do you know where you tread?” Solis whispered.

“If someone would tell me—” Nate started to say, but Solis had already left. There was little doubt that he was breaking some sort of taboo here by examining the spells too closely.

Nate didn’t know what to do. He was trying to work and play nice with others, but he couldn’t imagine going through this sort of training and
not
trying to decipher what he was being “taught.”

Nate picked up his brush and resumed taking notes.

Nate knew that it couldn’t last.

The sensible thing would have been to let them go through the whole training until he went through whatever graduation/promotion/rite of passage happened at the other end, and do it without drawing attention to himself. Occasionally, he would let it dawn on him that if he pissed off these guys, that would be it. Even if all they did was cut him loose, he was in a world where foreigners were taboo and there was no way he could look like a native, much less talk like one.

Not that they’d ever cut him loose. He knew way too many details of Arthiz and the anti-College. No one here could risk what he might tell the actual College before the masked scholars killed him.

Thinking that way, Nate would go a day or two without note taking. But he couldn’t turn off his mind. He needed to work on it. He needed to understand it. . . .

He needed to hack the damn language.

If anything, the taboo, the risk, made it
more
necessary for him to understand what it meant. It wasn’t just knowing. It was knowing what someone didn’t want you to know. For most of Nate’s life that had been his lifeblood—Azrael’s lifeblood.

So it wasn’t a complete surprise when the blue-belts walked into the transcription class one morning, and grabbed Nate, his “official” parchment, and the page he had smuggled into class, and marched him off without a word.

T
HE BLUE-BELTS took Nate into the room where Osif and Bhodan had been testing him. As before, they were waiting for him. This time, however, there were no tests.

Instead, on the table in front of Bhodan, Nate saw a handful of the crib sheets he had been smuggling in and out of class.

He also had Nate’s journal.

Nate wanted to shout something about invasion of privacy, but he doubted that privacy meant much in an environment where they didn’t put doors on the dorm rooms.

Bhodan bent over the pages, appearing like a twisted gargoyle. His eyeless face hovered over the pages as if he could actually see what was written on them.

The guards sat Nate down and he realized that this was the first time he hadn’t heard Osif and Bhodan arguing before he arrived. That couldn’t be a good sign.

Osif placed his fingers on a loose sheet of paper and said, “This is your work?”

It would be pretty useless denying it. Nate could see a surreptitiously transcribed spell, as well as his hexadecimal notation on the page under Osif’s fingers.

“Yes, it is.”

Osif touched another page, “And this?”

Nate sighed. “Yes.” Before Osif moved to the next document, Nate said, “Shall we save time? I don’t deny writing any of those papers. You took them out of my trunk. They are mine.”