Broken Crescent (34 page)

The ghadi chambers were a slaughterhouse. The College had been here. Yerith stood a long time in the doorway, trying to make sense of the scene.

The bodies of the ghadi had been slit open, their blood soaking into the straw bedding. Until now, she had only heard rumors of some of the College’s more perverse rituals—how some scholars discovered that there were more gruesomely efficient ways to drain the power from their ghadi servants.

The bodies here were too few. They had dozens of ghadi housed here; most must have escaped or been taken.

A burning anger replaced the fear she had felt up to now. To do this to a creature that could not even defend itself. . . .

Someone groaned.

Yerith suddenly realized that some of the bodies here were human, and by the masks, scholars of the College. If it wasn’t clear enough what they had been doing here, the ghadi blood on their hands told her.

One was alive and stirring.

By the time Yerith realized she had picked up a staff, the surviving scholar had stopped stirring. She pulled the end out of the man’s face and dropped the staff. She couldn’t quite believe what she had just done.

Nate Black was only a short distance away.

Yerith ran.

The Monarch had timed his betrayal with a precision worthy of the scholars he wished to displace. He had taken Uthar in at just the moment when it appeared impossible to moderate the damage. But as soon as Uthar was left alone in the Monarch’s apartments, he tried to contact Bhodan.

When Uthar had been elevated to a full scholar of the College of Man, he had been given a choice of a phrase in the Gods’ Language to become a permanent part of his body to commemorate the event. The far-speaking spell had been cut into the few remaining areas of unmarked flesh on his body. The only spell he had chosen himself.

Even then, before he had begun planning the overthrow of the College, he knew that communication was the most important tool of power.

Unfortunately, this time, it did him little good.

“We are under attack!” Bhodan’s voice came from a spot on the floor in front of Uthar. The floor itself was smooth marble and spotless. The voice sounded far away, even though Bhodan was yelling as loud as he could. Under the voice, Uthar could hear sounds of fighting.

“Can you get out of there?”

“Only retreat is the jungle. They’re between us and the City.”

“The jungle, then!”

“Cave-ins. Half our people are cut off. We can’t . . .” Bhodan was interrupted by a loud crashing noise. Suddenly Uthar was hearing several different muffled voices, and the sounds of something burning.

“Bhodan.”

No answer, but Uthar heard a muffled scream.

“Bhodan.”

Nothing but the sound of fire.

The situation was moving quickly there. Bhodan might just have retreated from the area that Uthar had contact with. The hope wasn’t very likely. The College’s punishments had left the man incapable of defending himself. His only defense had been being deep inside the warrens where they had set up the Shadow College. If the College of Man was already that deep inside, there really was no hope of salvaging anything.

Over a hundred handpicked acolytes who would have been loyal against the College itself, gone. Years of work and training, gone in a single stroke.

Uthar sat down on an embroidered couch and held Arthiz’s mask in his hands. The blank white face shook until he lifted it up and threw it at the marble floor.

The mask shattered.

Uthar cursed the Monarch for a fool. There would be nothing left. Without a trained loyal cadre to take the College’s place, a void would be left for Ghad only knew what kind of chaos. And when things went out of control, the only people who could restore order would be the displaced members of the College themselves. It would take years to create new scholars. . . .

It
had
taken years.

He looked down at the shattered white mask.
Nothing but the empty shell of the Monarch’s agent, Arthiz. . . .

Again, too late.

Yerith stood in front of the chambers where they had housed Nate Black. The strange man she was charged to protect, and his reluctant roommate, were both gone. The iron door hung open and the chambers were empty except for slowly settling dust.

And the corpse of another ghadi.

Yerith stared for long moments, trying to make sense of the body. It lay sprawled on the floor, gray from loss of blood, clutching a massive wound in its side.

Yerith answered her own question. It was obvious that the ghadi hadn’t bled to death in this room. From the amount of blood on the floor, it had obviously been near to death when it collapsed in here.

Yerith looked around the door and saw blood on the ground, leading back where she had come. Ghadi blood also covered the outside of the door. At first she thought that the wounded ghadi had just leaned against the door, but as she examined the door, she realized that there was a very distinct handprint on the latch.

The ghadi had opened the door. As a final act, it freed Nate Black.

She walked in and knelt down next to the ghadi. She recognized it as one of the ghadi who had been serving Nate Black and the other person here, Solis. It had been bringing food and water, emptying waste.

Yerith had worked with ghadi most of her life. She knew how intelligent they could be when given the proper direction. Even so, she had never seen one show anything approaching this kind of sacrifice of its own volition. Until now, she wouldn’t have believed they could.

She was so absorbed in the ghadi and its implications that she didn’t realize anyone else was in here until she felt an arm wrap around her neck.

She dropped the lantern and started screaming and kicking as the man behind her lifted her up.

Then a familiar voice called, “Let her go, she isn’t from the College!”

Her attacker let her go, and she collapsed, gasping, almost on top of the ghadi corpse. She looked at the doorway through watering eyes. “Osif?” she managed to croak.

“Yes, may the gods continue to ignore us.” He turned to the acolyte who had grabbed her. “Help her up. We don’t have time to waste.”

Yerith managed to scramble to her feet without help.

“You wouldn’t know where our stranger is?”

She rubbed her neck and shook her head.

Osif cursed.

“What is happening out there?” she asked.

“The end of the world,” Osif said. “Come with us, we’re retreating to the jungle.”

She walked out into the hallway, where about a dozen men and women stood, tensely watching for any activity back toward the ghadi chambers. She started to ask where Bhodan was, or the rest of the acolytes. But she already knew the answer.

This was what was left.

“You take care of the three back there?” asked the acolyte who escorted her out of the room.

Yerith didn’t know what to say, so she just shook her head.

Osif started leading them deeper into the tunnels.

Armsmaster Ehrid Kharyn knew that a catastrophe was brewing. Over the past two sixdays he had seen the College mass an unprecedented force, pressing Ehrid’s most able-bodied guardsmen into service, forcing on them the circlet of direct bondage to the College. The better part of the civil guard in Manhome had departed with the better part of the College itself.

Ehrid had never seen the College mass such a force. They had never needed to. The threat from the mysteries they held was, in itself, enough to overwhelm any adversary. That they had gone to such lengths meant only one thing—

Someone had risen up in opposition to the College of Man.

Of course, Ehrid knew of only one place from where such opposition might come. And this was not how that opposition was supposed to reveal itself.

As small a part as he played in the Monarch’s conspiracy, Ehrid knew the plan as Arthiz explained it did not call for large armies to clash outside of Manhome. Not now. The College was supposed to rot from inside, collapse almost before the first move was made against them.

Something had gone very wrong, and Ehrid was fearful that he and his men would suffer for his support of the Monarch. He stood on his balcony overlooking the sea and tried to consider options.

He didn’t have any.

As he leaned on the stone rail and stared into the tumult of gray that beat at the base of Manhome, the wind spoke to him.

It was a voice he hadn’t heard for quite a while. Not since his men had seized the College’s pale stranger. It was a voice that, at the moment, he cursed ever hearing in the first place.

“What calamity do you present me with now?” Ehrid whispered. He glanced back at the balcony, but the accursed white-masked acolyte wasn’t there. Only his voice.

“Now?” Ehrid frowned. “The College prepares for war as we speak, sending armies into the wilderness to battle.”

“It is a feint.”
The disembodied voice sounded unconvinced.
“It has drawn the main force of the College away from the defense of Manhome.”

“You tell me now, why?”

“But here we can aid in the siege, seize power—”

Ehrid thought of the bulk of his men, wearing collars of servitude that made a mockery of a soldier’s discipline. He would defer to the Monarch’s wisdom in this instance. “How do I accomplish this without alerting the College of an imminent attack?”

“And then?”

S
OLIS WASN’T in the big chamber.
Where would he go?

Maybe he wanted to look around this hidden ghadi temple. Corridors lit and unlit snaked away from the pit chamber. There was certainly more to see.

What did the bastard think he was doing?