Broken Crescent (47 page)

“But you crafted a spell?”

“Restricting myself to the part of the language I knew. Inefficient as hell, but it works.”

“Show me.”

Nate looked up into Uthar’s face, at the tracery of scars there. There was a terrible earnestness there, the eyes staring at him with an intensity that matched the ghadi’s.

Nate took back the book and opened it to a page near the end, where the pages still carried the words of the history text. In the corner was a short runic label. Nate had “named” each page in the book, to make the transcriptions easier.

Of course, there was only one real target to transcribe, so Nate used the spell named on Arthiz’s left cheek. Nate called on his one spell, and there seemed something more ritualistic, darker, to it now than there had been before.

After the words were spoken, the words on the page moved. It was as if the ink had become oil on an already slick surface. It blended, and twisted itself into long columns of figures. Uthar touched the page and shook his head. “This is what?”

Nate pointed at his face, and Uthar touched his cheek as if burned. “You peel secrets from the skin itself.”

“And deeper,” Nate thought of the long spell that infected the ghadi.

“And you think this cannot help me?”

“In battle?”

“Tell me, can this run likewise in reverse?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Can this spell carve the runes of the Gods’ Language as well?”

“Well, of course it could. It has.”

“Then you can give me an army to take Manhome.”

It was ironic, for all of Nate’s modern sensibilities, it was Uthar who recognized the implications of mass production first. Despite the presence of magic here, an enchanted item was still a rarity. It took inhuman discipline and stamina to engrave anything of any import in stone or metal, because any pause in the creation of the object would destroy the process, and possibly the caster. Even the ritual scarification of the College mages was done by masters with decades of practice. Creating something akin to the translation sphere had been beyond anyone for an age.

Uthar saw that, with Nate’s spell, if they had one enchanted sword, they could easily have a thousand. A single protective amulet could embrace a whole army.

Uthar took Nate down to the armory, where three mages waited. They were young, younger than Nate. They had survived the destruction of the Shadow College because they had not yet made it there when the attack destroyed it.

“Teach them what to do,” Uthar told him.

Nate did.

Without the pretense and the ceremony, Nate showed them the rudiments. How to name the source and the target, and the words to cast the transcription itself. Nate had to provide the three mages individually named copies of the spell, but that was easily enough done. The three took their paper copies, and the youngest—and the smartest—did something unexpected.

Once Nate had gotten the concept across, that one used the spell to etch itself into his own skin. Nate watched, horrified and fascinated as the long lines of the spell traced themselves in blood and then scarred over. The spell was so long, it took several minutes, even as fine as the lines it drew were.

The young mage stood, the pain clear on his face, sweat mixing with the blood as it dripped down his bare skin.

Then, it was over and the mage handed Nate back the paper. “Now this will always be mine.” The acolyte’s smile was disturbing, and Nate began to feel that some line had been crossed here.

But they did as Uthar wanted.

In his cache he had three swords that were enchanted. One would cleave through any metal, one would burn anything pierced by its blade, and one’s cut was poison to whatever bled upon its steel.

The end of that first day saw thirty such swords. The second saw another hundred.

Shields stacked up that would shatter any blade that cut against them, armor that provided speed and stamina, amulets that protected against hostile magic.

Less than half a dozen artifacts, a treasure that had been beyond any price before Nate had arrived at Uthar’s keep, became, in forty-eight hours, an arsenal to supply an entire army.

Uthar gave Nate a well-appointed room. He had a desk, a lamp, and a bed that was more luxurious than anything Nate had slept in, either in this world or his own. Nate had a chance to bathe, and to dress in new clothes. He was given meals and drink.

And Nate couldn’t sleep.

Were ghadi still gathering at the tower without him, or had they dispersed when Nate abandoned them? Every spare moment, Nate thought of the doom that marched on them and knew that he was in large part responsible for it.

Instead of sleep, Nate burned a lamp and studied the spell he had pulled from the ghadi flesh, the curse that muted them and made them chattel for Mankind. In the odd twists and loops of code, there had to be an answer, something to be undone.

The code didn’t like to be studied. It had more twists and jumps than a nest of rattlers. The logic was slick and evil, as if anticipating the eyes that might try to unravel it.

Nate was hunched over the evil spell, when Uthar knocked on the door to Nate’s chamber. Nate looked up and saw Uthar standing in the doorway.

“You should sleep. Conserve your strength.”

“I don’t have the time. Are you ready to move yet?”

“Within this sixday.”

Nate pushed his chair away from the desk and looked at Uthar. “You have what you need of me. I should go back.”

“You can do more for your ghadi by aiding me.”

“I have given you all I’ve learned, what else is there?”

Uthar nodded. “Then tell me if this is possible—can a man with no knowledge of the Gods’ Language cause a spell to be cast?”

“Of course—”
Not?

Even as Nate was about to say no, he remembered the counterexamples. The daggers the ancient Ghadikan used as keys, the traps where moving the wrong thing could immolate the trespasser. . . .

“Yes,” Nate said, “given the right artifact.”

“Do this for me, then go.”

Nate was about to object, but he already saw how it could be done. His transcription spell could read a spell into the air, and he had seen on the weapons how a spell could be targeted by mere contact with the spell-bearing artifact. Combine the two, and you could create an artifact that could cast a spell by merely touching the text of that spell. Nate had outlined two thirds of the code in his head by the time he said, “I can do this.”

Twelve hours of debugging, and Nate presented Uthar a wand. Runes wrapped the wand, microscopically small, spelling out a dormant spell like the booby trap in the ghadi tower door, or the code that awaited an enchanted dagger to open an ancient passage. This spell awaited the tip of the wand to touch the runes of another spell.

Uthar took the wand in one hand, and opened the other. Scars traced the palm, weaving some sort of incantation. Wordlessly, Uthar touched the wand to the surface of his palm. In response, the air around him began to glow, casting a deadly bright light.

Uthar laughed. “You do not know the miracles you work.”

The light faded as he withdrew the wand.

“Return to your ghadi. I have what I need to reduce the College of Man into nonexistence.”

“Thank you, Uthar.”

Uthar waved to a pair of guards. “Show our guest to his guide and his mount.”

Two armored men flanked Nate. Their weapons and armor reflected from thousands of intricately carved runes. Nate knew what the runes did, and he would not want to be on the wrong end of these guys in a fight. The College was in for a rude awakening.

Nate followed them out of the great hall and out into the courtyard of the keep. The troops were already on the march, so the keep was nearly empty. Nate expected to find Yerith, but she wasn’t to be seen.

“This way, sir,” said one of the guards, pointing toward one of the stables across the courtyard.

“Oh, yes.”
Sure, you keep a mount in a stable.
Nate hoped the trip back wouldn’t be as painful as the trip here.

Nate walked through the dark entrance and waited for his eyes to adjust. Something was wrong. There was no horse here, the stable was empty.

“What?” Nate said as he started to turn around.

Something solid and heavy fell across the back of Nate’s skull.

T
HE WORLD was moving. That was the first thing that Nate was aware of. The second thing was the vast cold blue sky arcing above him, empty of everything but a small, hard sun that hurt his eyes. He raised his hand to shade his eyes, and found himself chained.

“That fucking bastard!”
he called out in English, the words coming out more phlegm than voice. Nate sat up, coughing.

He was in the back of an open wagon, on a straw mat in the midst of barrels and sacks of grain. They were moving, and out the rear of the wagon, Nate could see a column of troops following.

“How are you feeling?”

Nate turned and saw Yerith, seated on a chest, in the back of the wagon with him.

“How do you think I’m feeling?”

“You need to understand—”

“Understand what? That I work with this guy and for thanks he clubs me on the head?”

“They couldn’t risk your capture.”

“And we just let the ghadi die? We let the College slaughter them?”

Yerith shook her head. “If we take Manhome, the army will break.” She said it forcefully, almost as if she was trying to convince herself.

“Then why stop me from going?”

She looked away from him. “This wasn’t what I wanted.”

Nate shook his hands and looked down at his shackles. The manacles and chains were gold, one set binding his wrists together, another binding his ankles. Outside of that, he could move around.

Looking closely at the manacles, Nate saw long runic inscriptions. He looked up at Yerith. “What are these?”

She didn’t respond immediately.

“Tell me, I know enough now that I could figure it out, so save us the time.”

“Don’t. Those are mage shackles. Any invocation will cause them to attack you. I don’t know how, but they have killed before.”

Of course, someone had to have built something like these a long time ago. Otherwise, how do you confine a mage short of killing him or performing an extreme mutilation like the College did to Bhodan?

Nate guessed the manacles were preferable.

“This is only until the army takes Manhome.”

Nate nodded. “You know this, how?”

“Uthar said—”

“Uthar is a liar. He said I could return.” Nate looked out at the column of troops. “Now he’s stolen any chance of me getting to them before the College does.”