Broken Crescent (24 page)

Breakfast was after devotions—Nate had mentally stopped calling it a class. From their morning devotions, the acolytes were led into a large hall set with long wooden tables. They sat on long benches in roughly the same order they had stood for their transcriptions.

For Nate, it was just a relief to get off of his feet. He caught a whiff of something cooking, and he felt his stomach tighten. He had worked up one hell of an appetite during the morning.

Once everyone was seated, tall ghadi in togalike outfits walked in, bearing large platters. Each table received one on each end. The platters were metal ovals nearly four feet long, piled indiscriminately with stewed fruits, well-done meats, and starchy vegetables mashed into a lumpy paste. Beside the pile of food were stacks of thick, flat bread.

At first, Nate was at a loss due to the lack of utensils, until it became obvious that the bread was the utensil. He watched as the people next to him used one flat piece as a plate and another to scoop food from the massive platter. People tore at the bread, used chunks of it as a spoon, or used their hands. Nate watched the others eat and didn’t gather his own food until he was certain what the rules were.

The lack of silverware was strange to him, but after the brain-deadening exercise this morning, it was probably a good thing that the students weren’t given anything that could be used as a weapon.

While they ate, more ghadi came by and set down tankards by each student. When Nate tasted his, it was some sort of dark fruity wine that had been warmed slightly above room temperature. Nate didn’t care for it, but he needed to drink something.

At the tables around him, the students all babbled at each other. In the mass of overlapping words, it was very hard for Nate to make anything out. That was fine, since no one seemed to be talking to him. His entire table seemed to be making a point of ignoring him.

The new kid,
Nate thought. He wondered if everyone got this treatment, or if his appearance inspired a special effort. The people at other tables didn’t make any effort to hide their stares, and several pointed at him while they talked.

Nate looked down at his hands.

He had always been something of a loner. He had spent way too much time on the computer, and inside his own head. This certainly wasn’t the first time he had sat in a room full of strangers with whom he had no connection. It
was
the first time he had felt so alone.

. . .
as far as I know, they’re right.

T
HE HIGHEST scholars of the College of Man filled the audience chamber at the heart of the College’s home in the city of Manhome. Most sat behind the U-shaped table that dominated the center of the room, and all of them wore their most intricate masks and robes.

All but one.

One of their number wore no mask at all. Polan Ostiz had once been as high in the College as anyone aside from the Venerable Master Scholar himself. Now Polan was stripped of his jeweled mask and robes, blindfolded, sitting bound upon the interview chair. Guards held blades at Polan’s throat, lest he attempt to speak any words of power.

Between the seated scholars of the College, and the bruised, scarred and half naked form of Polan Ostiz, strode Scholar Uthar Vailen. When Uthar talked, he had the habit of facing the smiling half of his clown mask at Polan, the frowning half toward the scholars in the audience.

“Are you a loyal servant of the College of Man, Polan Ostiz?”

“Y-yes.”

Uthar nodded. “You are sworn to live a life with a single duty.”

“Yes.”

“State that duty for us.”

There was a long pause while Polan swallowed and licked his lips. The prisoner’s voice was raspy and his lips scabbed and bloody from the studded leather gag that had filled his mouth for much of the week since his capture.

“A scholar of the College lives only to protect Mankind from the secrets he possesses, known and unknown.”

Uthar picked up a leather-bound book from the desk where it rested in front of the Venerable Master Scholar Jardan Syn. “And you chose to deny that duty.”

“No.”

“Lies only compound your sins, and will only prolong an already unpleasant process.”

“I have done nothing.”

Uthar opened the journal and read, “
‘It seems apparent that the Gods’ Language itself must, in fact, have grammar and meaning within itself. Each rune within a sequence we utter must own its own meaning, contributing to the whole in an unknown, but not unknowable manner,’
These are your words?”

“Y-yes, but—”

“And you wrote,
‘We could divine meaning within the Gods’ Language by taking a simple invocation, such as used for an acolyte’s initiation, and changing a rune therein. If done in a methodical manner, with the results of the acolyte’s devotion carefully observed, one could begin to understand the structure of the invocation as well as the runes themselves.’
”

“I did nothing but write down—”

“Enough,” Uthar slammed the journal shut. “You protest you have done nothing, but you do not even attempt to deny writing such heresies.
‘Unknown, but not unknowable?’
You presume that we can know the mind of the gods. More, you suppose that we should!”

Polan shook his head, ignoring the blades at his throat even when his motion caused them to draw thin lines of blood. “Please understand. I only wrote down ideas on how the College could proceed.”

“The College?” Uthar said. “Is it in your mind that this is how the College of Man should perform its duty? Shouting random runes at the gods and hoping they grant us more power rather than destroy us? Would you risk all of Mankind for your own vain desires? What is the knowledge you seek worth?”

“I have done nothing.”

“If you have done nothing, where then is the stranger that the hand of Ghad inflicted upon us?”

“I don’t know . . .”

“Lies will not serve you well. We found a decade’s worth of your writing. You documented well your obsessive curiosity. You even wrote of what we might hope to learn from this creature, what insights there might be from questioning Ghad’s Angel himself.”

“We were questioning him.”

“But it would have suited you better to have him for yourself,” Uthar looked up at the scholars watching the questioning. “Only one of us could have taken the stranger as well as its possessions. If not you, then tell us who did.”

“I don’t know . . .”

Uthar remained facing away from Polan. “Not even a suspicion? You protest your innocence, but you cannot even suggest someone with a fraction of the desire you had for such a prize?”

“I do not know anything of it. Nothing.”

Uthar nodded. “I will yield to the Master Scholar now. I have contributed all I can.”

The scholars’ deconstruction of Polan Ostiz lasted several hours. Uthar watched as the seeds he planted in the fertile soil of the College’s paranoia grew, flowered, and bore their poison fruit. Right now, truth was beside the point. The College needed a sacrifice for the loss of the stranger. Nate Black. Ghad’s Angel of Death.

Polan could have been anyone. He just happened to be convenient to Uthar. Uthar had long known about the man’s heretical thoughts, the volume of which made the man an easy distraction for the scholars of the College.

For the living fossils that sat at the table with the Venerable Master Scholar, it was obvious that the traitor responsible for the theft of Nate Black would be a heretic. Polan was just enough of one to draw the full force of the scholars’ attack, despite the fact that no evidence aside from his unconventional thoughts was forthcoming.

Uthar knew none would be. None was necessary.

After the scholars were finished with the wreck that was Polan Ostiz, Uthar had an audience alone with the Venerable Master Scholar himself. Uthar spent some time reassuring his master that eventually the questioning of Polan would reveal the fate of the missing Nate Black, or, at the very least, reveal the threat of other heretics within the body of the College.

The threat of the spread of heresy within the walls of the College was enough to make the Venerable Master Scholar forget about the stranger, the nominal reason for the imprisonment of Polan Ostiz.

Uthar left his audience with a feeling of satisfaction.

After leaving the Venerable Master Scholar, Uthar walked down through the corridors of the College of Man. He descended below the barracks where the acolytes slept, below the cells where Polan Ostiz was imprisoned, below the chambers where the ghadi were kept.

He slid behind a dusty tapestry that was of an age with the stone corridor around him, through the rooms hidden behind it, and into a passage that few people still knew about.

Uthar walked deep into the ancient ghadi corridors, the way lit by an incantation that gave the air around him a deep green glow. He stopped in front of a stone panel that appeared to have rested in place for millennia.

The appearance was deceiving.

Uthar spoke the incantation that moved the grinding stone aside. With the way open, he walked through into a wide chamber dominated by a single stone chair. On the chair lay a brown robe and a plain white mask. He dismissed the green light that had followed him as the stones above him began to glow.

Uthar waited for the door to grind shut behind him before he walked to the chair and traded Arthiz’s mask for his own.

“Why can I not see him?” Yerith stood in front of the Scholar Osif. He shook his head. His expression seemed to say that coming down to the ghadi quarters was not a good idea.

Osif stepped around her, and continued walking down the corridor, looking in the rooms.
As if he was actually concerned with the living conditions of the ghadi down here.

“I deserve an answer,” she continued.

Osif stopped in front of the birthing room, empty at the moment. Empty and not really necessary. They were close enough to the wild ghadi population here that Yerith doubted that there was any intentional breeding here.

Osif stared into the empty chamber. “Your service to the Monarch does not give you the right to question us here.”

“The workings of the College are not open to question.” Yerith spat at Osif’s feet.

Osif turned to look at her with an expression of shock.

“All you have done is take off the mask,” Yerith told him. “You could be the Venerable Master Scholar himself.”

She turned and started walking away from him.

This is your sole duty now,
Arthiz had said. The words rang weak and hollow. What was the point of fighting the hold of the College of Man, when the scholars here showed the same arrogance, the same absolutism as the scholars in the College itself?

“You don’t understand,” Osif told her.

“What’s to understand?” Yerith turned around and glared at him. “Nate Black was placed in my charge by the Monarch himself. By Arthiz. But apparently the words of the Monarch mean as little here as they do within the College of Manhome.”

“You question my loyalty.”

“Scholars are only loyal to each other.”

Osif shook his head and looked down at the straw bedding in the birthing room. “We both serve the Monarch,” he said finally. “But Nate Black is a dangerous creature.”

“I’ve been told.”

“You have no idea how many heresies we commit simply by housing him here, much less allowing him in with the students.”

“But I cannot see him.”

“If Arthiz wishes him as an acolyte, we must treat him as an acolyte,” Osif said. “Their isolation is not without reason. Until a student’s concentration is developed, until they can read the Gods’ Language empty of thought or meaning, any distraction is a danger. You would endanger him as well as yourself.”