Broken Crescent (48 page)

The army marched fast, aided no doubt by some artifact or other that Nate played some part in distributing. They marched without stopping until several hours after nightfall, and after that they camped in only the most abbreviated fashion—eating cold rations and sleeping on their shields without any fire.

With no lights at all, and a moonless night, Nate wouldn’t have known that there was an army surrounding the wagon if it wasn’t for the sound of multitudes breathing. Nate stayed in the wagon, even though he was only chained to himself, the straw mat he had looked to be the most comfortable bed available.

Nate couldn’t sleep, so he saw Uthar approach. Nate sat up as he climbed into the back of the wagon. “Yerith tells me that you are unhappy.”

“You wouldn’t be in my place?”

“Perhaps not,” Uthar looked out at the army. “Understand me. I had little choice. This is our opportunity to strike, I cannot cede any advantage. Too much is lost already.”

“So you deceive me and chain me and kidnap me?”

“I am protecting you. Right now your safest place is with me. Anywhere else and you may fall into the hands of the enemy.”

“I was doing all right before I joined with you.”

“When Manhome falls, we can part ways, if you still desire it.”

Something about the way Uthar said that made Nate feel chilled. “If I still desire it?”

“Consider well. Rule the ghadi if you must, a broken and dying race. But you could also share in the rule of Man.”

“What does the Monarch think of this?”

“I am past the point of troubling the Monarch with such ideas. The men here fight for the Monarch, not the youth who holds that title. There are those better suited to fill such a role.”

Uthar saw Nate’s expression and smiled. “Do not think it odd. Those who lead men must always be marked separate, or they do not command respect. But, as I advised you once, do not talk in haste.”

“I will consider what you said.”

“I do not wish to be an ungrateful host. You have helped me mightily. Can I do anything to ease your stay?”

Nate held up the chains. “Remove these.”

Uthar shook his head. “No, I cannot set you free just yet. Not while Manhome is over the next rise.”

“Then give me my papers, my books, and my brushes.”

Uthar shook his head. “I know what you are capable of, even if you do not.”

Nate snorted.

“Perhaps I can abide a more realistic request.”

“Is it too much to ask for a blanket, and maybe a ride in a wagon that has some cover from the sun.”

“This much I can grant you.”

“And I do not want Yerith’s company.”

“She has done much for you.”

“If I’m captive again, I’d be captive alone.”

“I am a reasonable man.” Uthar stepped away and paused. After a moment he added, “You will see the wisdom of this path.”

Nate had no real hope of getting his freedom, or his papers, or so much as a pencil. He had asked for those first so that his last request, privacy, was more likely to be granted.

He got what he wanted, a berth on a wagon covered from the eyes of the troops, and a blanket to cover what he did.

To someone who composed C++ code in his head, a pen and paper were more a convenience than a necessity. To study the spell on these gauntlets, all he really needed was a loose nail, a semi-flat board, and an absence of prying eyes.

The problem of the gauntlets was a timing issue. When did these manacles do their dirty work?

To find out, Nate transcribed the spell in hexadecimal notation so he could study the thing. That took several hours, hiding his scratches under his blanket. When he was done, he was almost too tired to study what he had written.

Almost. However, as with many a coding problem before, fatigue only sharpened his resolve.

He stared at his scratches and tried to make sense of them.

The chains were triggered when their captive spoke, gestured, or wrote any runes of the Gods’ Language. There were several layers to the code. It would burn, becoming more intense based on the number of characters the victim tried to write or speak. If the runes were completed by successfully invoking a spell, a jolt would be sent though the victim, strong enough to kill. There was even code that punished the captive for invoking other artifacts.

It took some long pondering before Nate thought of a possible loophole.

Of course, the wearer of the manacles was free to activate the manacles themselves. In theory, the person wearing these things could simply invoke the punishment routine directly.

Or any spell named the same as the punishment routine.

If Nate was coding this, at the very least he would have tried to come up with a check-sum, or the MED equivalent. However, the mages who wrote this code weren’t that sophisticated. Like most security holes, the people responsible for it probably couldn’t even see that it was a hole. After all, the wearer wasn’t about to compose anything in MED; four runes in and he’d probably be suffering from third-degree burns. The only thing available to cast was the code on the manacles themselves.

At least the only thing in MED.

The author hadn’t anticipated that there might be an alternate way to compose a spell.

Nate knew enough now to compose a hack of the manacle’s code without writing a single rune of MED. If he wrote code in hexadecimal, there was, in theory, no reason it needed to exist at all in MED until he cast it. Nate already
thought
of MED in his own notation; it required less effort to think about.

As long as the code he wrote matched the beginning of the manacle spell, he shouldn’t trigger anything when he cast it.

Nate sat in the darkened back of the wagon, contemplating what he was going to do.

That was a bit of an understatement. He could kill himself with what he planned on doing. He could easily sit back here and let events roll on, in relative safety. . . .

On the floor of the wagon, he sketched several columns of hexadecimal code to replace the body of the punishment routine.

It was a variant of the one spell he had invented himself. One of the few working spells he could remember entirely. Sketching it out, he worked out how to make it do exactly the opposite of what he had written it to do. The effect was elegant and strangely devastating.

When he was done, he smiled, thinking of the expression on the ghadi’s faces when he had left them.

“Okay, guys, I haven’t forgotten you.”

While he still had light, he began the arduous task of memorizing the new spell.

Before dawn, Uthar Vailen sent Yerith to fetch the stranger. The attack on Manhome was about to commence, and the scholar wanted the Angel of Death with him and the Monarch, overseeing the battle.

Yerith didn’t know what she was supposed to think. This creature, this
man,
had started her questioning things she had been avoiding questioning. She had seen the mass of ghadi that came to serve him. How could it be right to take Nate Black away from them?

She kept thinking of what Uthar had told her, that the College’s army would break when the College fell.

What if it didn’t?

Was it that easy to deceive herself? Did she believe Uthar because he was right, or because she needed to? Was she, after everything, willing to sacrifice the ghadi to see her revenge against the College?

She was disturbed to find herself thinking Uthar’s arguments as if they were her own.

Nate knew better, apparently. He had seen through her enough to ask Uthar to keep her away. She wanted to be angry at him for that, after all that she had done for him.

Somehow, the only anger she could come up with was for herself.

She reached the back of the wagon where they had moved Nate and stopped. Dawn had yet to touch the sky, and no light made it inside the dark, covered interior of the wagon. She couldn’t see anything, but she heard something. Even with the sounds of troops massing around her, the clank of armor and the crunch of hundreds of boots on gravel, she could hear Nate Black’s strangely accented voice.

The sound of the Gods’ Language was unmistakable.

Yerith vaulted up into the back of the wagon. Inside, she could barely make out Nate bent over in concentration, speaking the sacred syllables while staring at his chained hands.

“No, the enchantment will kill . . .” Her words trailed off. Nate was deep into the spell, sweat rolling off of skin so pale that it was almost luminous in the dark. Yerith had seen the scholar’s bindings before, her father had worn a pair in the months before the College removed him. Nate should not be able to speak the Gods’ Language at all. He should be writhing in pain, and his skin should be charred from the brands the manacles would become.

But nothing was happening.

Yerith thought of what Nate had brought to Arthiz’s army, and remembered the legends of the Angel of Death.

She was suddenly very afraid.

Nate finished speaking and Yerith expected him to collapse in a final spasm of pain as the enchanted bracelets sent a fatal jolt through his body. Instead, the manacles on his wrists and ankles glowed faintly blue for just a moment. Yerith briefly caught the scent of heated metal, then it was gone.

Nate looked up at her and rubbed the surface of the manacle binding his right wrist. She could see a half smile on his lips.

“Well, you seem to have found me out. Why are you here?”

Yerith took a few steps away from Nate. She couldn’t speak for the longest time, she kept thinking of all the tales of the gods and their creatures, and the terrible powers they wielded. Up to now, to her, Nate was just a strange man who resembled a ghadi. Now she saw what he was, a creature of Ghad.

Just talking to such a thing could bring horrible destruction in its wake.

“Well?” Nate asked.

“You’re wanted for an audience with the Monarch.”

Nate sighed. “Let’s go, then.”

As he climbed out of the back of the wagon, Yerith caught the reflection of the moon in one of his manacles.

She gasped.

Where the metal had once been carved with the intricate runes of the Gods’ Language, there was now only smooth, polished metal.

“
W
E CANNOT be under attack!” the Venerable Master Scholar Jardan Syn shouted at Scholar Abad Karrik.