“How many nations does your world have?” she asked after a while.
“I don’t really know. A lot. Over a hundred.”
“How many people?”
Nate spent five minutes with her going through the orders of magnitude of the number system before he could tell her, “About six or seven billion.”
That, she couldn’t grasp. It was clear to Nate that the population here was much less, more like a few million.
What she found even harder to comprehend was the idea of a democratic government. Not only did the logistics of a popular vote among three hundred million people stretch her imagination, she couldn’t understand why those in power would accept a change in government every four years.
“We sometimes wonder about it ourselves.”
She asked him what he studied, and that was hard to explain. He told her about machines that followed instructions, as long as you could speak to them in their language. Nate understood several of those languages, and was studying how to professionally tell them what to do. He had Yerith open his journal and he pointed out a few pages where he had been jotting down code just to amuse himself. The lines of formal symbols stood out from the rest of the haphazard note taking.
She looked at it and said, in a rather hushed tone, “Like the scholars of the College.”
“From what I understand, there’s a similarity or two. But the languages spoken by our machines were invented by man.”
“But you would speak it and these machines would do your bidding?”
“Yes.”
“Are they alive?”
“No, they aren’t . . .” Like Arthiz’s sphere.
For good or ill, Yerith’s comment got Nate thinking.
Of course, in return, Nate questioned her about her world, and herself. Especially how she came to be his baby-sitter.
Yerith came from a distant town that had been ruled by a powerful family for a few hundred years. Yerith’s family. Her father was head of the local government, a popular and well-loved leader according to her. Nate mentally translated the title as “baron.”
The baron had been too creative for his own good. He was tired of sending the College money and resources for every little thing, so he encouraged, or at the least allowed, the local citizens to work around the requirements of the College in local commerce.
For example, one butcher found that he could preserve his meat by packing it in salt rather than by paying a hooded mage to scrawl glyphs on a carcass. A smith could heat iron just as well without the incantations of an acolyte. Fishermen could fill their nets and farmers could sow their seeds without aid from the College.
None of this was strictly against the rules of the College, so they did nothing. Not until a teacher in one of the apprentice schools said that it was not necessary to have a mage present when slaughtering meat. That single deviation was enough pretext for the College of Man to declare Yerith’s family, and the city, a rogue regime.
The College came in force and not only imprisoned Yerith’s family, but burned the farms, the fisheries, the smithies, any place that had engaged in heretical practices. Her father had saved her by sending her away to friends of his who lived far away, before the College came to take them away.
To stay safe from the College, she had to change her name and live as someone else’s child. Her family—mother, father, brothers, everyone—had been put to death by the College. If they discovered her and her parentage, she would be executed as well, simply for being the child of a man who defied them.
In her village, her family name had been erased. Speaking their name, or referring to their history was forbidden. The College had even gone so far as to take the Stalinesque step of renaming the village. According to Yerith, the practice was not uncommon. Enemies of the College didn’t just disappear, their whole existence was erased.
Nate asked her about Arthiz, but she didn’t reveal anything more than he already knew. Arthiz was a man from within the College who worked for the Monarch. Apparently, he was the point man in a brewing civil war between secular civil society and the rigid theocracy of the College of Man. Even with that sort of backing, the opposition was very circumspect, the College seemed more than powerful enough to replace the Monarch himself.
Nate asked her about the ghadi. She told him about her favorite ghadi, how they were trained and how you commanded them. She talked about them the way people talked about dogs or horses. A smart animal that could be trained to do some useful tasks.
Nate asked her about the ghadi statues, and the catacombs, obviously made by an intelligent and sophisticated species—
All of which—she pointed out—were created a long time ago. Before the great cataclysm. The ghadi that cleaned the streets today were only the dimmest shadow of that past, they couldn’t even speak anymore.
She then went on at great lengths about how proud she was of the ghadi that had taken him from the hole where the College had imprisoned him. The College and its masters made extensive use of ghadi servants since they could do all the menial chores without risking the betrayal of any secrets. The ghadi who had rescued Nate had been, long past, servants to Yerith’s father. To the College, the ghadi were simply property to be disposed of. Property that was seized by the College.
But Yerith’s ghadi had been well trained and were loyal. Even after many years, when she found them, she could command them and they would treat her as their mistress. In serving Arthiz and the Monarch, the ghadi became a great asset in slipping things in and out of sealed College enclaves.
While Yerith obviously saw the ghadi as little more than trained animals, she did care about them. She talked about what her ghadi had done with pride, but Nate saw that she was on the verge of tears. When he asked why she seemed upset . . .
“I am afraid for them. They are such gentle creatures, but if anyone at the College discovers their disobedience . . .” She sucked in a breath. “They will be made ghadon.”
Nate didn’t understand the word, so he asked her to explain.
The College consumed ghadi, and not just as servants. To write or speak the Gods’ Language required energy. Not just physical energy, but energy from the mind and soul of the person casting the incantation. Also, once started, the incantation could not stop. Even something as elaborate as the language sphere had to be engraved as a single unending spell. Casting words of such permanence could fatigue, age, and even kill the one investing the effort.
But the masters in the College didn’t need to expend their own energy. The ghadi, as a race, had much deeper reserves of such energy, even though they couldn’t use the Gods’ Language themselves. To inscribe such a spell, the caster could suck the required energy from a nearby ghadi.
The ghadi that were used for such purposes were called ghadon. They were usually those no longer useful for anything else, too old, sickly, infirm. . . .
“It destroys them from the inside out. They are in such pain before they finally die. They don’t even know what is happening to them. All so the College can be carefree in flaunting their power.” She shuddered. “I once saw a ghadi die so one of them could light a fire. The chamber was cold, but rather than taking a brand to the kindling already in the fireplace, the acolyte wanted to impress my father. He waved and spoke a word, and the logs erupted into flame. I was spying on the adults from the corridor, and I saw that, when the acolyte spoke his spell, one of his ghadi servants shuddered and collapsed. I was too frightened to scream. I watched as the acolyte’s other ghadi servants picked up the body and carried it out of the house.”
Yerith shook her head. “Such cruelty. When he left, the man didn’t even question where his servant had gone.”
“I hope that doesn’t happen to your friends,” Nate said.
She shook her head. “It happens to all of them. I only hope it doesn’t happen now, because of what I’ve done. They deserve a longer life.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
WHEN THEY arrived at their destination, Zor
ion, Yerith told Nate to come up on deck.
He had expected them to come in under the cover of darkness. He certainly wasn’t inconspicuous. However, he walked out into full sunlight for the first time in months.
Above him, the sky was so blue it hurt, and below, diamond daggers of light lit the water as if someone had scattered broken glass. The deck only moved slightly as Nate blinked at the glare. It took several minutes for his vision to adjust enough for him to see Zorion.
Blinking tears from his eyes, it became clear why no one was overly worried about being seen. The ship had lowered sail and set anchor about three or four miles down a marshy coast from the city. South of them, dominating a massive bay, squatted a city as imposing as Manhome. Black stone walls held in buildings that piled around the shoulders of a single massive ziggurat like an architectural landslide.
At this distance, and half blinded by sunlight, Nate had no decent sense of scale until he realized the black specks of flotsam he saw bobbing in the waters of the bay were ships five to ten times the size of the vessel he stood on.
The central building had to approach four or five hundred feet high. A pyramid of steps and pillars as large as anything Nate’s world had produced. Maybe larger.
They were more than far enough away from the city to escape notice. Even someone on top of that massive building would need pretty good optics, and would have to know where to look, to see their little smuggling party.
While Nate studied Zorion, the sailors were busy lowering bags and boxes over the side. They were anchored next to a low stone pier that resembled the one they’d moored against by the catacombs. This one looked more weathered, and was missing sections along its length. Where gaps occurred, makeshift bridges of logs crossed the water.
The pier didn’t lead anywhere obvious. It went deeper into the marsh, and was quickly overtaken by dense tropical foliage. Nate couldn’t see any obvious sign that there was a way to pass farther inland.
Above them, a sea bird screeched.
Nate didn’t hesitate when Yerith asked him to leave the ship. He would have gotten off on the wrong side of the River Styx, if it meant his feet would be on solid ground.
The rope ladder they used, as well as the stones, was wet and slippery. That, combined with vertigo from nearly a week of seasickness, meant that Nate almost fell on his ass several times as he climbed down. And when he had both feet on solid ground, the world lurched and he had to sit on one of the boxes that the sailors had already off-loaded.
Nate leaned back and stared up at the sky. It was deeper and wider than he remembered.
Yerith joined him, leaving the boat with considerably more grace.
“I think I could stay here forever,” Nate muttered in English.
“What?”
“I am happy to get off that boat,” Nate told her. He tried to shake the feeling of the ocean out of his head as he looked around. Sitting on the low-lying pier, he lost sight of the city. The pier and its makeshift repairs became the only man-made object in sight, outside of the boat itself.
The sailors didn’t waste much time. Once Yerith had disembarked, the ladder came up, followed by the anchor.
They raised the sail and the boat pulled away.
Nate suddenly felt like a contestant on a Fox Network reality game show.
“Where are we?” Nate asked. He closed his eyes and turned his face to the sun. It had been a long time since he had felt sunlight on his skin. He was surprised at how much he had missed it.
Yerith didn’t answer immediately.
Nate stretched and sucked in a deep breath. Along with the sunlight, it was the first real taste of being outside in quite a while. The air was free of the smell of mildew, of sweat, of his own old clothes. The air was cool and salty, and carried a rich collage of plant smells.
She still hadn’t answered him.
He opened his eyes, his brain feeling clearer than it had in weeks. “What do we do now?” Nate asked her.
She stood, slightly removed from him, at the edge of the cargo the sailors had unloaded. Her arms were folded, and she faced the dense tangle of jungle that was all they could see of the coast. The end of her long pigtail bobbed over the small of her back as her head moved, very slightly, side to side.
“Yerith?”
“Where are they?”
Nate yawned.
She spun around to face him. “Why are you so calm?”
“I can see the sun. I can breathe the air. After everything, I might be happy spending the rest of my life sitting on this crate, on this rock.” Nate looked back at the ocean, at the boat shrinking in the distance. “And I will be happy never to set foot off of solid ground again.”
She made a frustrated sound and turned back to face the jungle.
You’re out of your element, aren’t you? She was acting nervous, and that should be scaring him. He looked at her and tried to decide if she was a draftee or a volunteer. She had spoken to him about Arthiz and her own past as if she was a true believer, but she acted as if standing here, with Nate, was not something she had planned to be doing.
In fact, for once, Nate was looking at someone who seemed as out of place as he was.
Nate understood Arthiz’s reasoning. Yerith wasn’t a bodyguard, a guide, or a warden. She was here with him because she knew about Nate. Nate couldn’t make much sense of what was happening to him, but he did know that something about him made him important to the College of Man, if only because he frightened them.
If Arthiz wanted to keep Nate out of the hands of the College—a goal Nate supported—the fewer people who knew of Nate and what happened to him, the better. Yerith knew too much to hang around the College safely. If Nate was Arthiz, he’d send her into hiding, too. If there was one thing he understood from his days as Azrael, it was paranoia and covering your own tracks.
Nate just wished he knew why he was so important and so threatening to these people.
All he had was a partial explanation of why the College of Man wanted him imprisoned; he just had the bad luck to walk into a culture with a taboo on foreigners so draconian that it made fifteenth century China look welcoming. But there had to be more to it than that if Arthiz’s intervention was to make any sense. The man wasn’t in a position to be altruistic.
The man wanted Nate to “help” his cause, and while Nate could sympathize with people fighting a totalitarian regime—and until he found a way back to the world he knew, it made no sense to cast his lot with anyone else—Nate couldn’t see what Arthiz got out of the deal. He simply didn’t buy Arthiz’s vague references to games. A person in Arthiz’s position had to be pragmatic. Nate doubted that what he added to Arthiz’s side of the equation was purely hypothetical. He had to mean something specific to Arthiz.
None of which informed Nate what he was bringing to the table, or what he meant to any of these people. He was an alien here, and the rules were so different that it could be anything.
Nate’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of rustling foliage. He looked at where the pier met the jungle, and for a long time didn’t see anything. Then, some tropical bird exploded from the bush, propelled by a flutter of primary colors.
Nate stared at where the bird had come from and saw a shadow in the midst of the leaves. The shadow seemed to have eyes.
He kept looking and decided that the shadow also held a wicked-looking crossbow pointed at them.
“I think your friends are here,” Nate said.
Now that he was looking, he could make out half a dozen people hidden just inside the tree line, attention focused on Nate and Yerith. Yerith was still looking around, as if she didn’t notice the men in the woods. Maybe she didn’t.
Nate was surprised at exactly how calm he felt. This kind of episode would have easily fired off his panic reflexes pre-“@.” Guess I lost that particular reflex, along with everything else.
After a few more long moments where Yerith became visibly more tense, someone pushed aside the foliage
where the stone pier met solid land, about sixty or seventy feet away from them. The man who walked out carried a long machete. His skin was as dark as anyone’s Nate had seen in this world, which made the scars that marked his skin all the more apparent.
Unlike Scarface, this man was young, and the detailed ritualistic inscriptions did not cover every inch of skin. Words rolled across his forehead, and down his cheeks, but the skin of his arms, neck, and the visible portions of his chest were unmarked.
He wore sandals and the baggy black canvas pants that seemed to be the universal peasant garb here. Over it he wore a short robe that made him look like a refugee from a martial arts movie. As the guy strode down the pier to meet them, Nate realized that their welcoming committee had waited until the boat had completely vanished in the distance.
The man stopped about ten feet from them, and looked Nate up and down. For the first time in quite a while, Nate was self-conscious about his appearance. His hair and beard had grown out the past three months or so, and were both at about the same length. And both probably looked like hell. His skin was an awful, dead-looking, pasty white. The only touches of color were ropy blue veins under the skin on the back of his hands. Not to mention clothes that hadn’t been washed in how long?
“So this is his stranger?” The man asked Yerith.
“You are Bhodan?”
The man snorted. “Bhodan is too important to waste on frivolities like this. I am Osif. I am to guide you and our prize back to the mountain.” Nate wasn’t quite adept at reading subtext in the new language, they didn’t use tone to carry emotion, but Nate received the distinct impression of sarcasm.
Yeah, kid, like I want to be here, too.
Yerith said. “I was told—”
“I am sure that you were told many things,” Osif interrupted. “We were told to fetch this dubious creature.” Osif sighed. “Does it take instruction?”
Yerith opened her mouth, and it was all Nate could do to keep from laughing. The bastard had no clue. Nate stood and walked up to Yerith, who was busy watching Osif as he looked at all the cargo the ship had off-loaded.