"Show no one. . . not even yourself. Reveal you have it only at your direst need."
Whatever this was, it must be powerful. And dangerous. So why give it to me? Why entrust such an item to a lowly scribe?
"To hide it," I whispered, my thumb letting go of the clasp. It clicked back into place. "To protect us from something that wants it." I lay the box across my lap, pushing down on it with my hands. "Or from whatever is inside. And what better place to hide something powerful than in the one place no one will suspect?"
I considered at that moment finding some place to hide it, some deep dark place no one knew of and secreting it away there. I banished that thought. If hiding it like that would have worked, Suyef wouldn't have given it to me.
"Unless he only needed me to use it to compel the Queen into action," I murmured, shaking my head at the possibilities. "Maybe now it's safe to hide it."
The possibility of what might lay inside tumbled around in my head like dust in the wind. History is replete with objects of power, items of lore that legends claim could do magical things. Chalices, swords, spears. Looking at the size of the box, another possibility came to mind: a dagger. I searched my mind for any knowledge of such an item, but none came to mind. At that moment, a network terminal would have been nice. A few moments of research and my answer could be found.
Do not trust any computer terminal you happen upon.
Suyef's final words in his cryptic note. I shook my head. Researching the item was out of the question, if he was to be believed. He had given me no reason so far to doubt his words. As mysterious as he may be, up to this point all his actions had led me to find an amazing story. Several of them. As a scribe, this was a dream come true. Perusing my notes revealed what a golden opportunity they had given me. A story that had all the trappings of something much grander than any of us could imagine.
And one of the sources was currently hiding from me. It was infuriating.
"Patience, Logwyn, patience," I whispered.
Suyef's words from the other day came back to me. "You're trying to fly before you've even sprouted wings."
He had to know. There was no other way. That comment hit too close to the mark. I closed my eyes, the day of my failure filling my mind. I'd thought it was done with, behind me. That I'd accepted it.
At that moment, I didn't know anymore. Looking down at the box in my lap, pondering the words of a Nomad I hardly knew, my mind filled with what I knew was going to become a tragic story of two friends driven from away from each other, and I just didn't know anymore.
Most of me wanted to, though. That compelled me to leave the room, the still-closed box safely tucked away in my sack.
"It's time we continue, Quentin," I said to no one, going to find where he was hiding and coax him into continuing.
#
There's an old saying, or at least I think there is. I tend to avoid using them, as I tend to mess them up. Anyway, the saying goes, “If you want to get something done, march into a place like you own it and start barking orders like you belong there”. I'd never seen this in action until Suyef marched into that Seeker outpost. Less than a quarter of an hour later, we rode away from that outpost fully outfitted with Seeker travel gear, the Seekers we'd left behind convinced we'd just returned from a top secret mission to the Nomad continent and needed supplies and mounts to get our information to our superiors. Only after we left did I realize none of them had asked why we didn't just transmit our data from their secure stations. To be honest, the entire incident was a blur. Suyef strolled in, demanded we be resupplied and given speeders and, before I realized it, we were on our way and gone. He'd even thought to leave orders for the entire requisition to be left off the books. Just to be sure, we stopped a short distance out of the settlement and watched for pursuit. None came, so we went on. Not wanting to draw attention to ourselves, we left, moving northward along the water pipe that dominated the skyline overhead. Suyef kept us moving most of the day and well into core-night before we reached our destination: a fork in the pipe. We followed the other fork away from the pipe we'd been following, passing the first several control stations before finally stopping at a station midway down the pipeline. Suyef surveyed the structure for nearly half a chron before we finally entered, confident it was abandoned.
Like most outlying water control stations, it had one control room on the main level, living quarters above, with sleeping quarters one level above that. This particular station looked to be low on supplies, meaning a resupply team would be by soon to restock the various medical items and foodstuffs Seekers and other Colberran government workers would make use of while about their duties. We helped ourselves to several nutrient and hydration packs, saving our own supply, as I started in on the network.
There, I encountered the first of many problems we would face as we searched. You see, even though the networks on each shell had the ability to work together, this did not mean they all used the same base language. The network all ran on the same primary coding language. The Ancients invented the language to better grasp the intricacies of the code they'd discovered below the building block level of existence. Still, variations did exist in how it was displayed. As with any language, until you find a key, or primer, these variations can render a language as an entirely different one. When I first keyed on the display at that workstation, it felt very much like I was looking at a tongue I didn't know. I felt I should, as it all looked familiar. I pored over the coding, looking for anything that would help me. Finally, I resorted to a desperate course of action: I started writing out my alphabets. It seemed so frustrating, to be hampered so when I could make the Nomad system virtually dance at my fingertips within the confines they'd allowed me. Suyef found the entire experience entertaining. Not in an outward, obvious way. Still, I could tell he was amused at my plight.
After a few days of work, I finally began to grasp how this version of the coding language worked. Right about then, Suyef decided we'd overstayed our welcome. We packed up and left the control station behind, heading westward out into the desert. We stuck to traveling during core-night using instrumentation. For a man that distrusts Seeker technology as much as he does, he wasn't shy taking advantage of it when he needed to, and the HUDs on the Seeker mounts were designed for travel at night. You could see the entire landscape painted out before you in shifting lines of terrain and altitude the computer could analyze in a flash and project the safest course through. This had the added advantage of freeing me to continue pondering the language. When we made our next destination (another control station along the water pipeline stretching out from the Citadel at the heart of the continent), I was able to get right to work.
Now that I had what seemed like the entire alphabet for this system laid out, experimenting with sentence structure was my next action. Thankfully, the confines of the Ancient's language compelled all variations to form their sentences the same way: vertically, bottom left upward, the central column holding all the nouns present in that part of the sentence, and branches off to either side containing all descriptors or clauses. Between each column sentence, you hung any verb that connected the various column parts of your sentence together. I often wondered what this language would look like printed on paper but, as that substance was even more rare than water, and as far as history can tell this language existed on computers and similar devices, we may never know. The writing environment for such a constructed language has a lot more fluidity when you're not limited to what you can fit on a sheet that's only so large. That's probably why all the connection points to the network have such large screens. It gives the user a lot of space to input coding. However, I digress....
It took me several more days and many more location changes to get a good enough grasp on the differences in symbology and sentence structure before I began to make progress. Suyef kept us moving around the shell's outer edge, backtracking sometimes. This would have been much more frustrating had I not discovered a small padd device at our thir
d stop that someone had left behind in the control station. It gave me portable access to the network, allowing me to take my work along. Suyef found this to be a great boon, insisting we rough it out on the cold, windy edge of the shell to lessen our footprint and decrease the odds we'd run into someone or get noticed. My aching back was not much of an argument against this. I only tried bringing it up one time and regretted it almost at once.
Suyef rolled me out of bed early the next morning. He’d won the battle over our sleeping arrangements the night before when he just shook his head and rolled over to go to sleep. This indicated the first watch belonged to me, and I'm convinced to this day that what he did next was his sadistic way of getting back at me for dragging him along to this shell. A slap across my head ripped me from fitful sleep riddled with dreams of uncomfortable things poking me in the back. I blinked my eyes open to see the Nomad standing over me, a staff in each hand. I opened my mouth to complain and he dropped one of the staves right at my head. Desperation alone awoke my reflexes to catch the long, smooth rod inches before it hit my face.
"If your back hurts, it's because you're soft," he grunted at me by way of explanation. "That we can fix while you figure out your pretty symbols."
"They're not just pretty symbols," I croaked at his retreating back, sitting up and blinking in the dim core-light shining through the night-shield. "What time is it?"
"You’ve slept enough," he called over his shoulder. "Now, get up and follow me."
I grumbled a few incoherent sounds at him as I pulled myself up, hand gripping the staff, and moved after Suyef. He stood in a flat, smooth area clear of rocks and the only brush plant that still managed to grow. He nodded for me to stand before him, his staff held parallel to the ground at his waist.
"Before we left, I obtained permission to train you as a Nomad warrior," he said, hefting the staff to chest level. "This is my preferred weapon."
"A Seeker's pulse gun isn't going to care about a stick," I said, holding mine up to match his.
"It will when I hit it out of the Seeker's hand," he retorted.
Sharp pain exploded in my hand a split second later as he struck. His staff had whipped out, sending my staff flying up over my head. I cried out in pain, grabbing my hand, my eyes watering.
"What the..." I whispered, eyes and jaw clenched shut. "What was that for?"
"Your first lesson." He pointed at my staff with his own. "Never lose your weapon. Now, try to pick it up."
I frowned at him, blinking away tears, shaking my hand and wriggling my fingers. Nothing seemed broken, but it was going to be sore for days. I turned to look for my staff and felt something crash into my back. The ground rushed up to meet my torso and all the air in my lungs rushed out as my chest and the ground became acquainted. I rolled to my back, gasping for air, and looked up. Suyef stood over me, staff in both hands across his body.
"Again, try to get your weapon!"
The next hour went much like the beginning, with me tumbling and sprawling around on the ground a lot and various parts of my body stinging from staff hits. I never once got near my staff, although once it's possible my finger brushed the tip. Suyef didn't say another word beyond his cry of "Again!" every time I failed. He never smiled, never frowned. His face was a blank slate, eyes focused in concentration on what must have been an easy task for him. Clearly this wasn't a challenge to him.
When the hour was over, he called a halt and collected my staff. He held the two up, eyes on me.
"You can try again this afternoon," he whispered, walking toward his mount and stuffing them into a slot I hadn't noticed on the far side of his mount. Once inside, they blended into the machine.
"Something tells me those aren't standard Seeker issue," I muttered, nodding at the staffs.
Suyef shook his head. "They're mine. Now, mount up."
The next several days, this pattern repeated. A lot. He'd toss my staff out on the ground and I'd try to get it. Complaining about the fairness of such a tactic would earn me nothing more than a strike from his staff. I'd like to think as the days went by I became a bit quicker at getting out of the way, but my body still felt a lot of sharp, tingling spots all over. One positive thing did come from it all: the pain in my back from camping out in the desert lessened. It was still there, mind you, but it's hard to notice when most of your body is already aching from being hit with a staff several times a session, three times a day.
On the fifth day, Suyef finally said something other than his incessant "Again!" at my failure to get the weapon off the ground. After another sequence of me flailing around like a baby unable to hold itself upright, Suyef shoved me to the ground and stepped across my body. The Nomad placed his foot on my chest and pointed the staff right at my eyes.
"You see, but you don't learn," he whispered, tapping my forehead. "See"—he tapped beside my eyes—"-then learn." He tapped my head and heart each once, then moved away.
I pushed myself up, spit out a bit of dirt, and stared at him. He stood a few paces away, my staff lying just beyond him.
"See?" He nodded. "See what?" No response. "See you?" He nodded. "You're standing there." He shook his head. "You're standing ready." He nodded. "You're standing ready to keep me from my weapon." No response. "You're standing ready for whatever I do?"
He nodded.
I pushed myself up and his weight shifted, his body focusing on mine as it moved. I lunged forward, feinting a bit and stepping back. He didn't move.
"How did you know I was faking?"
He shrugged. "You told me."
I frowned. "I didn't say anything."
Suyef chuckled at me, shaking his head. "You know a lot about languages, yet you know nothing." He held his hands apart, staff in one hand. "Do I only speak with my mouth?"
I cocked my head at him, pondering his words. He pointed with his staff at my face.
"You're curious, forming a question, thinking." I furrowed my brow. "Deeper thought," he went on, smiling.
"And you're amused," I responded, nodding at his face. "Non-verbal cues. But you aren't saying much with your face when you spar."
He raised each eyebrow at me, a small smirk touching at his lips. "So just your mouth and face can speak?"
I shrugged and shook my head, then paused. Suyef eyed me. I squinted my eyes and shifted my weight, preparing to send a kick with my right foot at his left hand, which was now holding the staff. As my body shifted, his eyes darted up and down and he moved in response, staff lowering to both hands, torso and legs turning to move his left side away from me. I reacted, preparing to strike with my left foot. He countered and I saw it, pointing at his waist.
"Your hips." He arched one eyebrow. "Your hips tell the tale. Watch the hips and they tell you where the weight is, giving you an idea of what I intend." I pointed at his shoulders. "Then watch those, see how they move." He remained still, eyebrow arched. "Ignore the head. It's the fake."
Suyef nodded once at me, then again at my staff behind him. "Now, pick it up."
I didn't. Not with that first attempt. Or the next. The next day, I realized Suyef was playing a trick on me. He may have been doing so all along and keeping me too busy to notice. Something strange seemed to be happening as my skill at reading Suyef's non-verbal cues improved. I never came close to even touching my staff, but I was making progress. One morning, midway through a vigorous session of cat and mouse, I found myself flipping through the air. The world tumbled around me as my body spun over Suyef's arm and hip to what would be an uncomfortable reunion with terra firma. My eyes happened to glance behind Suyef. My staff, which had been lying a mere meter behind him near a rock jutting from the ground, had vanished. Then, the aforementioned reunion occurred and all thought of what I'd been looking at exited in a thud and a whoosh of breath escaping from my lungs.
Chapter 7 - Cheating
Once my lungs had reacquainted themselves with normal breathing, I rolled over and sat there, staring at him.
"What game are you
on?"
He frowned at me, staff in hand. A quick glance behind him revealed my staff lying on the ground, a good ten paces from where it had fallen before we began. I pointed at it.
"My staff was not over there." I pointed off to my right. "It was over there. And you haven't had a chance to move it until just now when you flipped me. But it was already moved." I grimaced at him. "It was about the only thing I noticed before I landed."
The sides of his mouth quirked. "I don't know what you mean."
I pushed myself up, crossed my arms over my chest, and glared at him. "You're not playing fair."
"Most people don't in a fight."
I shrugged. "In a classroom, they do."
He looked around. "We aren't in one."
"You're teaching me, remember?" I pointed around us. "Classroom is a relative term, and you know it." I pointed right at his face. "You're cheating."
He cocked his head to one side, eyebrows raised. "And how am I doing that?"
"It's impossible to catch something that you keep moving!"
He shook his head. "Not impossible."
I grimaced, shaking my head. "Fine, improbable."
"No, not that either," he replied. "I was going to say difficult."
"It's hard enough already without you changing the rules on me!"
"How am I changing the rules?" he asked, placing one end of his staff on the ground and leaning on it.
"You're Scripting!" I exclaimed, jabbing a finger at him. "Plain and simple Scripting."
Suyef frowned. "Scripting?"
I looked around, lost for words for a moment. "You know, altering script." His face remained blank. "Coding?" No change. "Look, I don't know what word you Nomads have for it, but we call it Scripting or Coding here. You're changing the Code around us to move my staff!"
Suyef's eyebrows shot up as his eyes opened wide. "You know of this?" I nodded. "I thought such things were lost on this shell."
Rise: Paths (Future Worlds Book 2) Page 6
