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.”
“Sch
olars 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.”
Yerith shook her head, dissatisfied.
“That is the only answer I can provide you,” Osif said.
As he walked away he turned and told her, “You keep the ghadi well.”
What else do I have to do?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
AFTER A FEW days, Nate was desperate for anything approaching an actual class.
Nate wanted an instructor, a lecture, a textbook, a syllabus, something that gave him some sort of guidance to what they were trying to accomplish. His days were filled with activity that seemed more appropriate to a monastery than a college. They copied their model text, then after a meal they spent as much time chanting and gesturing the same string of—
Nate didn’t even know if “words” was the appropriate term. What they had them memorize was so divorced from context that it could have been language, mathematical symbols, or machine code.
The day would end with all of them standing in a large amphitheater that was open to the sky. The first time Nate had the vain hope that they were going to get their lecture, finally. But after about twenty minutes of sitting in silence with his other classmates, Nate realized that wasn’t going to happen.
He looked at the others and saw that most had their eyes closed, and a few moved their lips as if they were chanting silently. Nate shook his head and rubbed his temples. He wasn’t looking at an institute of learning, he was looking at a place of worship.
By day three, Nate knew two things.
First, he didn’t have the patience for this, and unless these guys radically altered the agenda in the next couple of days, he would probably go nuts.
Second, he still had to go through the motions.
Nate racked his brain trying to think of some way to reconcile those two facts. He needed something to keep the oppressive routine from making him crazy.
If only there was some way to figure out what the “words” they’re studying actually mean. If they aren’t just a string of arbitrary symbols . . .
Day three ended the same as the first two, with another ritual bath. That marked the end of the regimented part of the day. Nate walked back into what he thought of as the “dorm” with most of his classmates. A few people wandered off toward other areas after the baths.
Nate was tempted to wander off himself, but he deferred his curiosity for when he had a better mental picture of the floor plan here. At the very least, getting lost would be embarrassing. And, with the blue-belted chaperones everywhere, Nate suspected that there were places they didn’t want him to go.
Back in the dorm, Nate stood facing his alcove, mentally exhausted and still trying to figure out what was expected of him. He didn’t see the point of dropping him in here without any instruction at all. Right now he wanted to question Arthiz. Or Bhodan. Or Yerith. Or even Osif, if the guy would lower himself to answer him.
He needed to talk to someone, anyone, at this point.
Nate looked around, and saw Question-mark sitting on the chest at the foot of his own bed. It looked as if he was sewing something.
Nate walked over to Question-mark’s alcove. When he approached, Nate saw that the sewing project was an elaborate mask. It was half complete, the outside a mass of twisted wire forming some sort of superstructure, the inside a layer of quilted padding that Question-mark was busy sewing into place.
“Shall I talk to you?” Nate asked. His language skills still gave him trouble, and the question didn’t come out exactly right.
Question-mark looked up from his mask and looked at Nate with an expression that had become too familiar to Nate—
Yeah, the creature talks, get over it.
“You wish to talk to me?”
“I wish to talk to someone.” Nate looked around.
“You are here. You talked to me before.”
“I did,” he answered, looking as if he regretted the decision. He looked down at his project and said. “Then talk to me, ghadi.”
“You know my name.”
“There are no names here.”
“Then what name do you not have?”
He glanced up at Nate, hesitated a moment, then told him, “Solis. But it would not be proper to address me by it.”
“Why not?”
“Do you know where you are?”
“That may be the only thing I do know.” Nate knelt down and looked at Solis. “I am a stranger here. Not just to this place. To everything. I don’t know why I was taken here. I don’t know what I am expected to do here. I don’t know the meaning of anything I have done here.”
Solis stared at him.
“Help me,” Nate said.
The silence was uneasy. For a few long moments, Solis stared at him. Nate was afraid that his fumbling efforts had been pointless.
Finally Solis spoke, his voice a little above a whisper. “If the gods brought you from Outside, the College should have destroyed you. An alien is—” Solis used an unfamiliar word.
“They almost did,” Nate said. “But they seemed to want to question me first.”
“And you have nothing of our ways?”
“When I came here, I didn’t even have the language.”
Solis stood, setting the mask on his bed. “Perhaps we should take a walk.”
Solis led him through several corridors, until they reached open air. They walked through overgrown vines and bushes into a small clearing, and at first Nate thought they had left the underground city completely. However, around the edges of the clearing, Nate could still see stone walls rising above the foliage on every side and they walked past piles of overgrown mossy stone, the remains of an ancient cave-in.
Solis sat on a broken column and looked up at the emerging stars. The clearing was silent except for the sound of insects chirping.
After a long time, Solis said, “Do you know what you are?”
“Just a man,” Nate said, hoping they weren’t going into the deformed ghadi nonsense again.
“You are a stranger.” The way Solis said it, the word carried more sinister connotations. “The College of Man will not abide a stranger. You are a tool of the gods.”
“I could be a tool of your god.”
Solis stared at him. “You are very strange if you think a man can possess a god. Stranger still if you think I am such a man.”
Nate shook his head in frustration. “No, that’s not what I meant—” He was about to add, “and you know it,” when he realized that maybe Solis didn’t.
“What else could you possibly mean?”
“Maybe I don’t understand. I come from a different place. A different language. I know what the gods are there. What are the gods here?”
Solis still looked as if he was trying to get his head around the concept.
“How would you explain it to a child?” Nate asked, hoping to glean some information.
Solis nodded. “The world is the gods’ siege-board and we are the stones they play with. They dwell between the worlds, playing their games. Mere men are fortunate if they never attract their attention, or worse, become part of their game.”
“No temples or offerings? No one worships any gods here?”
“No one sane. Long ago, men made offerings to the gods. Longer still, before the—” Solis used a word that Nate couldn’t immediat
ely translate. It was familiar though, from the book of the local mythos that Yerith had given him. It seemed to refer back to the war between the Ghadikhan and Mankind. “—then the ghadi ancestors worshiped such a god. All believed that they might receive some measure of favor.”
“Did they?”
“Any fortune brought by the gods brings sixfold of misfortune with it. Including you, I suspect.”
“Arthiz does not seem to believe I am a misfortune.”
“He may believe that your misfortunes will plague our enemies rather than ourselves.”
What an optimistic thought.
“What happened to the men who worshiped the gods?”
“The College of Man,” Solis said.
“What do you believe, Solis? Why are you here?” Nate walked over to a large stone block and sat down himself.
“The College was founded to protect Mankind from the whims of the gods, and the power of the Gods’ Language. It is corrupt now, more interested in serving its own power.”
“And Arthiz would replace it?”
“The Monarch would.”
Nate nodded. For all his hope at progressive reform, it was probably too much to ask for a fundamental revolution spontaneously erupting in a totalitarian dictatorship. Without war or an economic collapse, a factional war was probably all anyone was going to get.
“Can you tell me what we are doing here?” Nate asked.
“You do not know?”
“I was told that I would be taught.”
“That is so.”
“This is . . .” Damn his vocabulary. “This is how we are taught?”
“This is how you become a scholar. This is how you receive the . . .” He used an unfamiliar word, though Nate gathered it was something like “mysteries.”
“Just by repeating things over and over, without guidance?”
“The effect on the world is enough guidance.” Solis touched his forehead where the line of symbols carved its arch above his eye. “To use the Gods’ Language, it must be carved in your mind, and your heart.”