Broken Crescent

by S. Andrew Swann

  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.

  Unless these are two separate spells.

  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.”

  What do you know?

  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.

  I shouldn’t have tried to explain myself.

  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.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE 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 spe
ll, 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.”

  “All of them?” Osif asked.

  “Yes.”

  Bhodan spoke without raising his face. “For what purpose?”

  “I am trying to understand what you are teaching me.”

  They both nodded, as if they had expected his answer. “Do you know the path you tread?” Bhodan tapped the pages with one of his hooks. “Well trod, by the mad and the dead.”

  Nate looked from one to the other, and the expression on both their faces was grave. The fact that Osif didn’t even look satisfied at Nate’s predicament made the atmosphere even more ominous.

  “What is it I’ve done? I am supposed to be learning here, that’s how I learn . . .”

  Osif tapped the desk. “A single step into the mysteries as an acolyte and you’ve indulged in the most dangerous of heresies.” Nate’s mental translation of heresy was a guess.

  “How am I to know what is a heresy—” Nate stumbled over the word, “—and what is not? I was a student, but what you have here is more worship than learning.”

  Bhodan leaned back and faced the ceiling. “I wonder sometimes if our patron Arthiz is much wiser or much more foolish than we.”

  “Will you at least explain what I did wrong?” Nate asked.

  “The College of Man had a purpose once,” Osif said. “Its law was meant to defend man from the mind of the gods.”

  “Originally,” Bhodan said. “Much of that law now exists only to serve the College and the scholars within it.”

  Osif shook his head. “Staring too deeply into the mysteries will destroy a man and those around him.”

  Nate got the vibe. He had screwed up and alienated the only folks on this planet who seemed willing to cut him a break. For all the excuses he might make about no one telling him the rules, he knew it was so much bullshit. If you thought it was okay, why did you try and hide your notes, huh?

  “What do you want me to do?” Nate asked.

  “That is our question,” Bhodan said. He pointed a hook at the remains of his face. “This you see before you was payment for a much more minor heresy—valuing the acolytes I taught as more than human ghadi.”

  Nate swallowed. “What are you going to do with me?”

  “You cannot remain with the acolytes,” Osif said.

  “Your influence is disruptive to their study. You would encourage them to gain just enough understanding to destroy themselves. What is it you think our acolytes learn here?”

  “I thought—”

  “They learn discipline. Self-control. The skill to stay on the path in front of them without losing themselves.”

  “However,” Bhodan said, “I cannot be unsure that this is not what Arthiz and the Monarch expected from you.”

  “What?”

  “We are all heretics here, Nate Black. The existance of this Shadow College is a heresy. You are here not because this—” Bhodan tapped the papers, “violates the laws of the College of Man. You are here because this is dangerous. I suspect you have little idea how dangerous.”

  “I have been careful.”

  Osif laughed.

  “You do not understand.” Bhodan said. “Even a careless thought about the mysteries you have here can kill.”

  “I have not been careless.”

  Bhodan nodded and waved a hook at Osif. Osif called to the guard by the door, “Bring in the other one.”

  Other one?

  Nate turned around to face the doorway and saw a pair of blue-belts walking Solis into the room.

  What?

  “Why is he here?”

  “We cannot be careless either,” Bhodan said. “Arthiz may want to see what your curiosity gains. Perhaps he wants a fool to bear the consequences of his own curiosity—but those consequences will begin and end with you. And him.”

  Nate shook his head. “Why Solis? He didn’t do anything.”

  Osif walked around the edge of the desk. “He saw. He talked to you.”

  Solis looked at Nate with fear in his eyes.

  “You shouldn’t punish him for something that isn’t his fault.”

  “This isn’t punishment,” Osif said, “we are protecting our students from the consequences of your actions.”

  A pair of blue-belted guards escorted Nate and a very subdued Solis to a twin of what Nate had been thinking of as the dorm. It was deeper, and aside from being empty, the only major difference between this place and where they housed the students was the presence of a heavy, barred iron door.

  When the guards brought them in, a quartet of ghadi was just finishing placing lamps, cots and the few possessions Nate and Solis had been allowed in their dorm rooms.

  “Could be worse,” Nate muttered to himself in English as the guards left them alone in the room with the ghadi.

  Solis stared at Nate. The look was a dangerous mix of fear and anger. Guess you have a right to be pissed.

  “I didn’t intend for you to be caught up in this.”

  “Do not talk to me,” Solis said coldly. He walked over and sat on the cot in the alcove where the ghadi had placed his chest and clothing. He picked up the unfinished mask from one of the piles and threw it against the wall.

  “Solis—”

  “Begone, demon!” Solis shouted at him. “Just by talking you’ve tainted me. I do not want to hear anything more from the Angel of Death.”

  “What?”

  Solis refued to respond, or even look in his direction.

  Nate wasn’t even sure he was translating what Solis had said correctly. Given what little he’d already found out about gods and such, the word Angel could mean Demon or Devil. . . .

  Now that Nate thought about it, the word could apply to anything from another world. The more he thought, the more the implications began to sink in. . . .

  No, there’s no way . . .

  “Solis, look at me.” Nate stepped up, grabbed Solis’ shoulder and turned the man around. “Why did you call me that?”

  The fact was, Nate’s old hacker handle, Azrael, wasn’t just a name picked out of a hat or made up at random. The name was specifically a Judaic name for the Angel of Death.

  “Don’t touch me!” Solis cringed and struck out in such desperation that it might have been comical if the blow didn’t lay Nate out on his ass in the aisle.

  Solis looked down at Nate and the anger seemed to have won out over the fear. “Arthiz might be willing to take the council of Ghad’s own demon. Not me.”

  Nate shook his head. It had to be some sort of superstitious nonsense. Yeah, but why the sudden change of mood—

  Unless he had heard something from Osif or Bhodan.

  You’re being paranoid.

  Even as he tried to second-guess himself, he remembered an exchange from when he had arrived here:

  Osif: “Do you actually believe that he is who Arthiz thinks—”

  Bhodan: “This is not the time. Raise such questions to me, alone.”

  Who, exactly did Arthiz think Nate was?

  When the College had imprisoned him, he had told them his handle, Azrael. But they wouldn’t know anything about what the name meant.

  No, I told the sphere. . . .

  What if that golden sphere had “translated” Azrael?

  Nate pushed himself up. Solis had turned away again, and Nate decided that pushing him any further wouldn’t be productive. The man was going to be his roommate for who knew how long. If he was lucky things might cool down enough for them to be on speaking terms again.

  Nate stood up and brushed stone dust off his robe.

  The ghadi, finished with their work, filed by him. When the door opened to let them out, Nate saw a familiar face.
>
  “Yerith!”

  “Osif finally agreed to allow me to see you.” Yerith sat on Nate’s cot while he sorted through the items the ghadi had brought him. Solis was a dark silence on the other side of the hall, by the iron door. “It seems that I won’t disrupt the students’ studies now that you are here.”

  Nate shook his head. “From one cell to another. It’s all beginning to look the same to me.”

  “I’m supposed to take care of you,” Yerith said. “Just let me know and we can arrange to go outside. They just want to keep you from interacting with the students.”

  Nate opened his mouth, but he decided it would take too long to explain why supervised, guarded excursions did not exactly make it feel less like a prison. Besides, belief systems aside, the powers that be did have a point. Given Solis’ reaction to him, his isolation might serve his own safety more than the students’. Nate decided to change the subject. “They have you keeping the ghadi here?”

  Yerith nodded. “This is a small enclave, made entirely of scholars and acolytes. They have the ghadi to do most of the labor, but they only had acolytes to tend the ghadi. They might be wise in many ways, but they knew little about caring for them.”

  “I guess it worked out for you.”

  “Your phrases are still strange, Nate Black.”

  “I am strange,” Nate said, putting away the last book—the myths that Yerith had given him. “Can you tell me something?”

  “What?”

  “Do you know any stories about something called ‘The Angel of Death’?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  F OR CENTURIES after the great war between Mankind and Ghadikan, men worked to rebuild the broken crescent of the world. The College of Man who spoke the Gods’ Language, seeing what had been wrought, closed the tomes that held the most terrible words so that no person who walked the earth might speak them again.