It took a moment, but Nate got the idea. Physical therapy. He had been sick and immobile for so long that he probably would have to exercise at least as long to get back to where he had been. Maybe longer.
“Okay, sister. I get it.”
Nate shook his leg free and did the bending motion himself, raising the knee above the bed. It was harder than it looked, and he couldn’t hold it up as far as she’d been raising it, but he managed.
Keeping time, he imitated her. “Phi. Ghno. Ka. Lek. Dho. Shin.”
She stared at him as he dropped the first leg and started on the other. “Phi. Ghno. Ka. Lek. Dho. Shin.”
By the end, he was covered in sweat. “Okay, how many reps am I supposed to do before I lose consciousness?”
She still stared at him, a look of fascination on her face.
“What?”
She held up a finger and said tentatively, “Phi.”
Nate held up his left index finger and repeated, “Phi.”
The look of surprise on her face was comical, as if she had just run across a Shetland pony that quoted Shakespeare. She held up a second finger and said, “Ghno.”
Nate repeated it with his own finger.
“Ghno.” Nate smiled at her reaction. “You like that? You’ll love this.” Nate went through the fingers of that hand. “Ka. Lek. Dho.”
“Ka. Lek. Dho,” she repeated.
Nate held up the thumb on his right hand, “Shin.”
She laughed. He liked her laugh.
He held up his right index finger and wagged it, arching his eyebrows in what he hoped was a quizzical expression.
“Phishin,” she told him.
“Phishin,” Nate repeated. Phi Shin? A base six counting system? Why not, it’s as weird as anything else here.
Nate held up his right middle finger and, before she could prompt him, he said, “Ghnoshin?” Looking quizzical again.
Her eyes widened and she said, “Ghnoshin” as if she was correcting him. As far as Nate could tell, it was the same word.
“Ghnoshin,” Nate repeated.
She clapped her hands together and laughed again. Nate used up the rest of his fingers on “Kashin,” and “Lekshin.”
Conan goes to Sesame Street, Nate thought.
His keeper was mighty pleased with him. It was as if the possibility he might pick up on part of her language never occurred to her. Nate was happy he managed to correct that idea, because if he was going to survive once he left this bed, he had better be able to understand the natives.
“Let’s see just how far your mathematics has gotten,” Nate told her. He held up both hands toward her, and started lowering fingers, the reverse of what they’d been doing. He counted backward, stumbling a little when he confused “Ka” and “Lek.”
“Ka,” Three.
“Ghno,” Two.
“Phi,” One.
With both his hands curled into fists, Nate gave her the quizzical expression again. Her face looked blank, so Nate repeated counting down, “Ka, Ghno, Phi . . .” This time she slapped her forehead and said, “Tga.” She held out her hand and counted down the last three fingers, “Ka, Ghno, Phi, Tga.”
Zero.
Nate tried to pronounce it, but “Tga” seemed more phlegm than word. It came out sounding more like “Ka” than anything else, which amused his nurse.
“Yeah,” Nate said to her, laughing himself. “Let me see what your learning curve in C++ is, huh?”
She shook her head and came over and, business-like, started showing him exercises for his arms.
“Phi. Ghno. Ka. Lek. Dho. Shin.”
Though, for practice, and out of a perverse hacker’s sense of humor, when he counted the reps he started with “Tga.”
Over the days, as Nate recovered, he thanked God for the diversion of his exercises and the task of learning a new language. Deep in his soul Nate was a problem solver, and having something to keep his mind occupied held at bay the slow rot of depression.
During visit “Dhoshin” Nate discovered his nurse’s name was Yerith. He was also able to get across his own name, Nate. While she was obviously fascinated and pleased that Nate was picking up words in her language, her ability to teach was strained by time. Nate could have kept her at his side for hours, pulling words into his vocabulary, but she was obviously worried about staying too long.
Nate tried to be gallant about it, but it was frustrating when she could only stay fifteen minutes or so, though now that he could feed and clean himself, most of that time was devoted to language and keeping tabs on how well his recovery was going.
During the time between visits, Nate would push his body as far as he could manage, while chanting foreign words to himself, trying to make sense of things. He had a goal of being able to speak a complete sentence by the time he was ambulatory.
His recuperative powers exceeded his linguistic ability.
By the middle of his second week of lucidity he managed to struggle out of bed, but he was barely at the “Me Tarzan, You Jane,” stage.
Again, he seemed to have surprised his angel of mercy. They both startled each other when she pushed in the door while he was pacing next to the bed, supporting himself on the wall. He fell on his ass on the bed, and she spilled his dinner—which by this point consisted of pieces identifiable as meat, bread, and a tankard of some weak beverage that in a previous life might have been warm beer.
“I walk.” Nate said, using what parts of the alien tongue he had learned so far. He felt as if it still sounded as if he was trying to cough up a hairball. He knew his accent was absolutely horrible.
Yerith understood him. “I see,” she responded in kind. She knelt to retrieve the items she had dropped. The floor was piled with threadbare carpets, and the broth along with about half the grog had soaked into them. She managed to save the bread, and a hunk of meat. She looked at him and he saw concern in her face. She pointed to the door and said, “No.”
It wasn’t harsh, the way she said it, and her eyes looked at him to see that he understood.
Nate understood, and he wished he had the ability to explain it to her. He wanted to leave, but he also knew that on the other side of that door lived a group of men with masks who seemed bent on making him disappear. The most he could manage at his level of comprehension was, “I hear you.”
He smiled and hoped she knew what he meant. He was okay staying here until . . .
Until we can communicate enough so you can explain to me why I shouldn’t. Until you can explain why I’m here in the first place.
He didn’t try to explain that he had already tested her goodwill. Of course he had tried the door. While it was latched, he could see a dark corridor beyond the small barred window. He had stared out there for a long time, reminding himself that there was a world beyond the four walls he saw every day.
Yerith did appear relieved as she set what was left of his dinner on the table. Then she sat down, waiting for Nate to start the lesson.
Probably because Yerith wasn’t trained to be a teacher, she let Nate lead. That was okay. Of anyone, Nate was the best judge of how quickly he was picking things up. He still wished that she could give him some guidance. He was certain that he didn’t know what questions he should ask.
He decided that, now that he was upright, he would attack a subject that had been a pet peeve since he had gained consciousness down here. While he had long outgrown any shyness—he couldn’t really feel embarrassed being naked in front of a woman who had wiped diarrhea from his ass and who’d shaved his lice-infested pubic hair—being naked 24/7 was getting kind of old.
He started by reaching over and taking her sleeve. Her clothes were a little more normal-looking to Nate as far as style went. Probably because they were more utilitarian. She had a blouse and a bodice that fit close at the waist and then fell into a skirt. The colors were somber. It was only rarely that he’d see a hint of color peek out from the grays and browns.
Today there was a little color. S
he had a patterned blue scarf around her neck.
He rubbed the fabric of her sleeve and said, “You have.” Then he slapped the skin of his arm. “No have.”
Sometimes she looked at him like he was spouting gibberish. This was one of those times. He repeated himself with a number of different items of clothing until she got it.
She responded with one word that she repeated until he could make a shot at pronouncing it.
“Clothes,” Nate repeated his newest noun.
“Yes,” she said.
Nate pointed at the table and said, “You bring food.”
“Yes.”
“You bring drink.”
“Yes.”
Nate pointed at himself. “You bring clothes.”
She got it the first time, Nate could see it in her eyes. However, it took her a long time to respond.
Long pause. Then, “Yes. I will bring you clothes.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
YERITH COULD not stop thinking about the stranger.
Long ago, when she had agreed to become part of Arthiz’s conspiracy, she had never thought she would be in such intimate contact with something so alien. His long pale body, hollow face, and bizarre atonal gibbering dominated her mind even as she walked the market.
Around her, life went on, completely unaware of the secret that preoccupied her. Farmers stood in front of their carts, calling at her to just look and see that this was the largest eggfruit, the finest blood-melon, the most aromatic herbs from the most pampered of gardens, the rarest of spices. . . .
Every farmer acted as if he knew her. They probably did. She walked through the market twice a sixday, buying food for the College’s ghadi. The fact that she represented the College and, more importantly, spent large sums of the College’s money, made her a person of some notoriety.
Several times, she stopped and purchased grains or vegetables to maintain the College’s stock of ghadi.
More than usual, she felt the weight of her dual allegiance. In her heart she had hated the College of Man ever since the death of her father. However, here she was keeping enslaved ghadi of the Manhome College healthy and fed. Ghadi for the scholars of the College to consume like rats feeding on an overripe eggfruit.
It was hard to keep her ambivalence out of her voice as she haggled over the price of salt beans. Even so, she did her job.
The market itself seemed endless. The merchants were spread over three of Manhome’s widest boulevards in an ever-changing chaos. Not just food, but cloth, jewelry, livestock, and—in the public square where all three boulevards met—ghadi.
Yerith passed by the ghadi auction and stopped. The ghadi stood, long-limbed and mute, as their keeper pulled them to the stage, one by one. The interested buyers were encouraged to approach the stage and examine the ghadi in question.
He is tall as a ghadi. As thin as one.
But he spoke. He even named himself. Yerith couldn’t understand that. Speech, language, that was part of the mind. There was the language of Man, and the language of the Gods.
But the gibberish her charge spoke was neither. And, somehow, like an infant, he was learning the language of Man. How could this thing do that, and not be a man himself? No ghadi could ever speak, or even understand, human words, no matter what was spoken in their presence. At best, Yerith could train them to understand hand signals and whistled commands. Something as basic as a name was beyond their comprehension.
But they were more than brute animals. Yerith knew that, and in the end, that was what made her dangerous to the College, and that was why she was valuable to Arthiz, the Monarch’s pet acolyte. The ghadi were invisible to the scholars of the College, mute and interchangeable.
In other words, they were perfect spies.
The third ghadi was brought to the stage. A male whose skin was a faded rose-violet. The lower knee on either leg was swollen, as was the second elbow, the first stages of arthritis. Yerith saw the callused hands and feet and shook her head. This ghadi was trained for heavy labor, but was probably only a year or two away from being crippled. She hoped his new owner would use him for domestic tasks, maybe make things easier for him.
A vain hope. Those rich enough to have domestic servants didn’t buy ghadi at a street auction. The people bidding here were merchants and farmers who needed laborers, or acolytes who needed blood and power. In either case, this ghadi did not have long to live, and the life wouldn’t amount to much.
“So, can you offer an opinion of the goods they’re selling?”
Yerith turned to see Arthiz, his blank mask a blazing white in the midday sun. She felt a slight relief at seeing him. She hadn’t seen him since the day she had brought his creature down to the secret chambers under Manhome.
“You’re late.” She spoke quietly.
Arthiz made an act of studying the ghadi onstage, then looking down at her. “There is a place where we can talk, down the Avenue of Gods. There is a temple with a red door beyond the end of the marketplace. Go there after they’ve sold two more ghadi.”
Before Yerith could respond, he slipped back into the auction crowd.
As the name would suggest, the Avenue of the Gods was once a place for temples and altars and offering houses. That time had passed centuries ago. The current crowded street now bore little resemblance to the broad avenue that showed in some old paintings and tapestries that Yerith had seen. There were no public altars, or marble statues lining the street. The buildings pressed to the edge of the avenue now—boardinghouses, inns, residences, shops.
Several centuries of construction had built over and around Arthiz’s ancient temple, so that it was completely absorbed into the stone flesh of the city. Even the cobbled avenue itself passed above it, so Yerith only spotted the red doors because she was looking for them.
The doors had once been part of a grand entrance. Yerith could see signs of a great arch and a broad stairway, both ending as they met newer walls. The elaborately carved doors themselves had been cut, now ending midway up, truncated by the first floor of an alehouse.
Yerith climbed the makeshift stairway down to the doors and saw that they were still half again as tall as she was.
The doors weren’t locked or barred, so she walked inside.
“Arthiz?” Beyond the doors was a large room that was dark and smelled of damp.
“Here.” Inside, Arthiz lit a lamp, illuminating a small area of the old temple. It felt as if they were between worlds here, the floor was smooth marble, the ceiling rough-hewn timbers supporting the alehouse above. One side of the room was dominated by truncated stone columns, the other by black wooden casks that were just as wide.
“Why did we leave the auction?” Yerith asked. She was nervous about deviating from the pattern they had established. The only places that Yerith was free to mingle with acolytes from the College and not arouse interest or suspicion was either at the market auction or inside the College itself. She might be employed by the College, but she was still an outsider who was only permitted contact with actual members of the College within very strict limits.
Exchanging words at the auction might be passed over as a chance meeting. If anyone became aware that she was here with an acolyte, alone, she could easily find herself in one of the cells under the College.
“There is growing suspicion within the College itself. We need to meet in places unobserved.”
“What has happened?”
“Nothing that was not anticipated. How is the creature?”
Yerith shook his head. “The thing talks.”
“Talks?”
“Barely a sixday passed and it spoke words to me. It counts. It has a name. This is no strange ghadi. I am thinking it may be human.”
Arthiz was quiet for a long time before he spoke. “It learns the Language of Man?” He spoke quietly, mostly to himself. He looked up and nodded at Yerith.
“You are right, of course. He is human. A stranger so removed from us that he does not even know the Language
of Man. His name was given as Nateblack.” Arthiz twisted the odd syllables with his tongue, but it was recognizably the words spoken by the creature.
“Nate Black.” Yerith corrected in a neutral tone, placing the pause in the appropriate place. “You told me none of this.”
“You did not need to know this to keep him alive and hidden.”
“What else have I not been told?”
“Yerith, you are valuable to me and the Monarch. The more I tell you, the more danger you are in.”
“And if the College discovers me now, who will my ignorance protect?” Yerith looked at Arthiz. “It, he, wants to learn. Am I wrong to teach him?”
“No. Though I wonder what this implies.”
“He wants clothing.”
“What?”
“He has told me he wants clothing. Shall I get him some?”
“No,” Arthiz said. “I will bring his clothes to you. There are things I must do.”
Yerith nodded. “Is there anything else you would have me or my ghadi do?”
“This is your sole duty now. After our next meeting I will travel to confer with the Monarch. You will keep Nate Black well and safe in my absence. I am trusting to your discretion.”
“Thank you.”
“Do not thank me.” Arthiz extinguished the lamp. “Talking to this thing is the most dangerous act anyone could ask you to do.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE CLOTHES she brought him were the same ones that he had worn here. That raised a whole host of questions that Nate didn’t have the linguistic skill to express yet. They also raised a sickening wave of emotion that Nate wasn’t prepared for.
In the days he had spent here, recovering, his method of coping with the loss of his world, his family, real food, his stupid cat, was denial. He had managed to half convince himself that his life before captivity had been some sort of delusion. He never directly questioned his own perception of reality, but seeing his leather bomber jacket, jeans, even his old cotton jockeys, shattered some protective illusions that Nate didn’t even know he was building.
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