Broken Crescent

by S. Andrew Swann

“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.

  So we can quit pretending we’re anywhere near Kansas, Toto.

  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.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “THIS 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.

  She had discovered it was more than a game. “Leaving?” Yerith had told Arthiz when he had appeared unannounced this morning. She had spoken the word as if it was some bizarre syllable in Nate Black’s language.

  Arthiz’s robes and white mask had been waiting for her when she had gone down to feed the ghadi. He stood in the center of the aisle, the mere presence of his masked and robed figure intimidating the ghadi.

  “You cannot stay here. You will accompany Nate Black to Zorion. It is the Monarch’s city. We cannot leave you here.”

  “You need me here,” Yerith waved at the ghadi. “You cannot lose everything we’ve worked for. My ghadi obey me, they walk freely through the College of Man. How can you abandon—”

  “These are the words of the Monarch himself,” Arthiz snapped at her. “You do not choose how you
r service is used.”

  “But—”

  “Nate Black is more important than your service here. It is too much of a risk to take him, and leave you here with the knowledge of what has happened to the College’s demon. You must both leave.”

  “What about the ghadi?”

  “The ghadi are not our present concern.”

  In an instant, the careful life she had pieced together here at Manhome was wiped away. As she took Nate Black through the secret ways down to where Arthiz was waiting, she found herself wishing that this creature had escaped. What faced her now? She was abandoning everything she knew for the second time in her life, and she didn’t even know why.

  No, that was a lie. She might not know Arthiz’s mind, or why Nate Black was so important to the Monarch, but she knew why she led the unworldly creature down to the hidden cove where the Monarch’s men waited. She did it for her father.

  She stayed on deck while the men took Nate Black downstairs to meet Arthiz. She studied their reactions to her charge, perhaps to find some clue to Nate Black’s importance. It was unenlightening. The sailors, who probably knew what to expect, looked at Nate Black with suspicion. They spat into the water, and were reluctant to touch him, as if his strangeness was some sort of contagion.

  When the men returned, without Nate Black, they looked at her with almost the same suspicion. Perhaps it was contagious. Yerith stared into the water and tried to be beneath their notice. Two spoke, making no effort to hide their conversation from Yerith, or include her in it.

  “I do not like this thing.”

  “I know. We’re paid to avoid the notice of men, not the Gods.”

  “A true demon, you think? Not just some malformed ghadi?”

  “Would the Monarch pay as well, just for a ghadi?”

  “What use could it be?”

  “What use are any of the broken acolytes we ferry for the Monarch? I swear he is building an army of the crippled and the dead.”

  The third sailor walked up to them. “Perhaps both of you can prepare for departure? The tides do not wait on your pleasure.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sir, aren’t you concerned about this creature we’re taking on board?”

  “Son, if you are fretting about the cargo, you are in the wrong line of work.”

  The sailors started work and Yerith kept thinking about their words.

  An army of the crippled and the dead.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ARTHIZ LEFT Nate with Yerith and the trio of tough-looking sailors.

  He wasn’t allowed on the deck, but Nate could stand in a doorway and watch their progress. The sailors untied the boat and let it float free to the center of the lagoon. Nate wasn’t sure how they were to proceed. There seemed to be no wind to fill the sails in this sheltered area, and no one seemed in a hurry to grab an oar.

  Beyond the breakers Nate saw the sliver of sky visible to them, purple and shining with a wealth of stars. The cavern around them was lost in blackness, the boat itself only illuminated by a dim lantern that shone through smoky red glass.

  He wanted to ask Yerith questions, but she had passed him and closed herself inside the lone private cabin.

  So Nate watched the sailors. For an hour or two, the sailors did inscrutable things with rope and canvas. None of which made any particular sense to Nate. They scrambled up and down the boat, half visible and ghostlike in the ruddy light. They shouted to each other with words that Nate didn’t understand.

  After a time, Nate realized that, despite the calm surface, there was a current in the water, drawing them toward the great crack in the rock, the sky, and the breakers.

  Tides, Nate thought, this place was engineered to be accessible only at high tide. What was happening around him was that the sailors were scrambling to steer the craft out of the lagoon as the tide slid out.

  The progress was slow, the crack in front of them gradually opening up to unfold the sky in front and above them. The sound of the breakers grew louder, and Nate could feel salt mist in his face.

  Gradually, their progress speeded until the great rock walls of the lagoon shot forward to embrace them. They were in a sudden channel barely wide enough for the boat that carried them. Either side, seemingly close enough for Nate to touch, slick rock shot up into the sky.

  Under the boat, the water became quick and violent, sending spray up between the hull and the rock. The sailors’ shouts became louder and more urgent, as somehow they kept the boat to the center of the rushing channel.

  Suddenly, above them, sky. The rock walls no longer shot upward without limit. They now broke off into rocky outcrops two or three times a man’s height above them. As Nate looked up, one of the massive ocean breakers struck those rocks from the opposite side. The wave towered over him, briefly, then collapsed into a white foamy rain that slammed across the rock above him, and the deck in front of him.

  The boat made a turn that Nate would have thought impossible in the confined space, and suddenly they were paralleling the great plateau. The sheer side of the rock rose above them to the right, a black wall blocking out the stars. To the left was a broken jumble of rocks that seemed barely enough protection from the breakers.

  Slowly the channel widened as the rocky barrier peeled away from the plateau. There was an element of navigational prestidigitation that Nate couldn’t quite follow, and they were suddenly rocking on the waves of the open ocean. It wasn’t until they furled the sails completely and made a wide turn, that Nate could see the great plateau city of Manhome, blocking out the stars, and receding in the distance.

  Within a few hours, to the great amusement of the crew, Nate was bedridden again. He had never been on a boat for any extended period of time, and he had never been on a craft this small. At some point, as he watched the shadow of Manhome recede against the night sky, some part of his brain realized that the motion wasn’t going to stop.

  The only bright spot was that he had been to enough serious parties to recognize the signs before it had been too late to make it to the rail, and he had run to the leeward side of the boat so the wind didn’t throw his rejected dinner back up onto his pants.

  To his horror, Nate discovered that this was the first time in his life when throwing up didn’t at least make him feel better. It, in fact, made the rocking nausea even worse. Even after he stumbled into one of the bunks that formed the majority of the common area belowdecks, the sickness didn’t ease.

  This was worse than the illness that afflicted him in the College’s dungeon. Here, there was no fever softening the edges of his mind. Every lurch of his bowel, every acidic belch, every ripple inside his abdomen, he felt with the crystal clarity of someone in complete command of his senses.

  After the first few hours, he decided that permanent confinement within the ghadi catacombs would be preferable.

  Nate curled up in the bunk, staring at the rough weave of the sheet underneath him. It seemed to be the only thing he could focus on without making things worse. Looking at anything else in the cabin seemed to amplify the sense of motion.

  At some point the next day—Nate could tell it was day because the quality of light changed on the bit of fabric that filled his field of vision—Yerith came out of the master cabin and stood by him.

  “They tell me you’re sick.”

  “No, I actually enjoy trying to squeeze my insides out through every hole in my body.”

  Yerith didn’t react, probably because it was hard for Nate to be ironic in a language where he barely made sense in the first place.

  Nate squeezed his gut and closed his eyes. “I only want it to stop moving. Just a moment.”

  “This is a fast boat,” she said. “We have caught the current. Our journey should only last a sixday.”

  Nate groaned. “You’re not saying that to make me feel better, are you?”

  “You talk strangely, Nate Black.”

  “By all accounts I am strange.”

  Nate felt the back of
her hand on his face, as if checking for fever. “Don’t worry,” Nate said, “I am only sick with the moving.”

  She kept examining him. Nate decided he was thankful. He didn’t really want one of those sailors to be in charge of his well-being. After a few moments, she said, “You will live.”

  Thanks for the good news.

  Six days went by as slowly as the three months Nate had spent buried in a hole under Manhome. He made one or two attempts to study, but his physical state made it impossible to concentrate. So what time he spent not dwelling on his seasickness he spent talking to Yerith.

  Fortunately for his state of mind, if Yerith was still upset over his attempted escape, she didn’t show it. Also, his linguistic skills had finally progressed to the point where he could hold a conversation with someone who comprehended his accent.

  “Tell me about the place you come from,” Yerith asked him. “What did you do? Where did you live?”

  “There is a lot to explain. It is very different, so much that I still don’t have enough words—” Nate shook his head. If she was trying to get his mind off his illness, she’d picked the right topic. Any mention of home still brought a tidal wave of memories and emotions. “At the moment I am a student. I was a student—”

  Nate spent several hours describing the contemporary United States to her. It wasn’t as difficult as he thought it would be. For all the technology that didn’t translate, he could describe it as a machine that did such-and-so. It came out in a rush, an endless stream of description. As if telling someone else about it, even in the alien language, validated it. Made it real.

  The hardest things to explain were cultural differences. The fact that the university where he studied was not an arm of the government, really, even though the Feds did spring for a loan or two. It was, in fact, alien to her how little the government did control things. Nate did explain that the US was an exception, and went on a tangent explaining Europe, colonialism, the American revolution, and constitutional government.