The sound of the Gods’ Language was unmistakable.
“No!”
Yerith vaulted up into the back of the wagon. Inside, she could barely make out Nate bent over in concentration, speaking the sacred syllables while staring at his chained hands.
“No, the enchantment will kill . . .” Her words trailed off. Nate was deep into the spell, sweat rolling off of skin so pale that it was almost luminous in the dark. Yerith had seen the scholar’s bindings before, her father had worn a pair in the months before the College removed him. Nate should not be able to speak the Gods’ Language at all. He should be writhing in pain, and his skin should be charred from the brands the manacles would become.
But nothing was happening.
How can he be doing this?
Yerith thought of what Nate had brought to Arthiz’s army, and remembered the legends of the Angel of Death.
My Angel can teach you more of my language than any man has ever known.
She was suddenly very afraid.
Nate finished speaking and Yerith expected him to collapse in a final spasm of pain as the enchanted bracelets sent a fatal jolt through his body. Instead, the manacles on his wrists and ankles glowed faintly blue for just a moment. Yerith briefly caught the scent of heated metal, then it was gone.
Nate looked up at her and rubbed the surface of the manacle binding his right wrist. She could see a half smile on his lips.
“Well, you seem to have found me out. Why are you here?”
Yerith took a few steps away from Nate. She couldn’t speak for the longest time, she kept thinking of all the tales of the gods and their creatures, and the terrible powers they wielded. Up to now, to her, Nate was just a strange man who resembled a ghadi. Now she saw what he was, a creature of Ghad.
Just talking to such a thing could bring horrible destruction in its wake.
“Well?” Nate asked.
“You’re wanted for an audience with the Monarch.”
Nate sighed. “Let’s go, then.”
As he climbed out of the back of the wagon, Yerith caught the reflection of the moon in one of his manacles.
She gasped.
Where the metal had once been carved with the intricate runes of the Gods’ Language, there was now only smooth, polished metal.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
“WE CANNOT be under attack!” the Venerable Master Scholar Jardan Syn shouted at Scholar Abad Karrik.
The words hung in the air of the meeting room as the dawn light impaled dust in diagonal shafts of air. Through the open windows, Karrik could still smell smoke and death in the air. Also rising in the air was the distant clank of metal, shouting, and running feet.
Karrik replied in a level tone, “All our guardsmen outside the walls are gone. They are either dead or abandoning us for the countryside.”
The red demon mask shook, the nose bobbing so abruptly that Karrik thought it might snap off. “The Monarch has no army left.”
“The main body of the force bear the livery of the Manhome Guard,” Karrik said.
“Traitors. All traitors.”
“Sir. If we retreat and recall our army from the field, we can retake the city—”
“You would have me abandon the College and its mysteries to these heretics? No.”
“Their force is too small to hold the entire city. The army from Zorion will easily—”
The Venerable Master Scholar slammed his fist on the table. “No. I see your plot. You are with them, aren’t you?”
“No!”
“No, Scholar Karrik? You would have me open the doors of the College of Man to an invading army and abandon our rear to a mass of rebellious ghadi that have tasted human blood. Your plots will see no fruit here. Guards!”
The shout received no response.
Karrik sighed and shook his head. “There are no guards, my Master. They have gone to defend the entry to the College. All they do is buy some time. If we escape now—” Karrik’s voice was cut short with a gasp as something slammed into his side, above the kidney. He looked down and saw the hand of the Venerable Master Scholar burying a dagger into his side.
As it withdrew, and the blood began to flow, Karrik began to feel the pain.
“I will not abandon my duty or the College of Man.”
Karrik clutched his side. “You. Fool.”
The blade slammed into him again.
“I will take words from the vaults myself. I will call the sky down on them, I will have the earth open under their feet.”
Karrik spat up blood. If there was only a spell he could think of, name . . . but he was too old and too slow, and his thoughts were spilling on the ground with his blood.
The Monarch had set his observation camp on a bluff overlooking the plateau of Manhome. With the wagons, tents, and officers crowding the area, it took a while before Nate recognized the spot—not until it was light enough for him to see some of the half buried white blocks that dotted the site.
He had come almost completely full circle.
Christ, if Yerith could have waited five minutes.
His plan had been to slip away in the dark, but that had gone to shit.
Because of Yerith’s appearance, all he seemed to have accomplished with his masterful hack of the enchantment binding him was to terrify her. He might have freed himself to cast whatever he might please, but he was still in the middle of an armed camp. And now he was flanked by two guards and couldn’t think of a single thing he could accomplish before someone clubbed him on the head again.
Worse, Nate doubted that Yerith was going to remain quiet about what happened until he had the privacy to cast something useful. She was staring at him now, obviously intimidated, but that wouldn’t last.
Fortunately, no one else seemed to notice his newly polished bracelets, and he tried as best he could to cover the lack of engraving with his hands.
“Our Angel is here,” the Monarch said finally, after Nate had been standing there for nearly an hour. The guards flanking him took that as a cue and walked Nate up to the edge of the bluff where the Monarch and Uthar stood, watching the city.
“A grand morning,” said the Monarch, smiling at him.
Nate looked off at the city-mountain of Manhome and had trouble sharing the sentiment. Fires were burning, throwing hellish billows of smoke into the dawn sky. Flashes silhouetted walls, followed by ominous rumblings. Lightning arced between towers, and explosions would occasionally cause the city to slough off a layer of stone like shed skin, opening a building’s interior to the sky like a wound.
“Thanks to you,” Uthar said, “each member of our force wields the same power as the most talented scholar. And each is protected against much of what the College can bring against them.”
“I see.” Nate looked at the city. It was in the midst of tearing itself apart, and all he could think was: I did this. . . .
How many people were dying in there who had nothing to do with the College? He had lived through hell at the hands of the scholars of the College of Man. Was this what he wanted to see?
Somehow, seeing the walls crumbling on the great old city, the fire crawling its streets, was different than anything he had imagined.
The wind shifted and he smelled smoke. He wanted to gag.
“Y-you have what you want. You’re in the city.” Nate shook his head. “Let me go back to the ghadi before it’s too late.”
The Monarch laughed.
“What is funny?”
“I am afraid it is too late,” the Monarch said.
“What do you mean?” Nate felt his gut sinking.
“You have great knowledge and power,” the Monarch said, “but strategy is not your forte. The ghadi are as much a threat to the Monarch as they are to the College. It is better to let them deal with the threat. That is why this attack is timed to coincide with theirs.”
“What?”
The Monarch shook his head. “In affairs like this, sentimentality is not a virtue. The Coll
ege’s army should be at your citadel as we speak.”
“But they aren’t supposed to be there for another—”
“We adjusted our estimate to encourage you to come.” The Monarch smiled and looked off at the city. “The troublesome ghadi should be exterminated by sunset.”
“NO!”
The scream came from the edge of the encampment. Nate turned with everyone else to see Yerith running forward, tears streaking her face, carrying a large fragment of white rock.
“Yerith, no,” Nate whispered.
Things slowed and became razor clear. The guards were the first to realize what was happening. The closest ones were the men next to Nate, who bolted forward to intercept Yerith. The guards beside the Monarch were a few steps removed and started to interpose themselves between the youth and Yerith.
Even in her rage, Nate could see that Yerith knew she wouldn’t make the last ten feet toward the Monarch. She started to reach back with the rock in her hand.
The Monarch smiled. It was an almost goofy expression, as if he was watching some play act put on for his sole amusement. As Yerith hurled the stone, he started to say something. “This will not—”
The words were cut short by the white stone slamming into his face.
Nate’s guards tackled Yerith, while the Monarch’s reached for their ruler. The Monarch stumbled backward out of the reach of his men. He was spitting blood and shaking his head, stunned, his face a bloody pulp.
Uthar stepped forward, a little too slowly, and said, “Watch out.”
The Monarch, unhearing, took another step backward.
Over the bluff.
Chaos reigned as everyone rushed the edge of the bluff. No one paid attention to Nate.
Here’s my chance, what do I do? What can I do?
He had only moments, with no spell book handy. He began wishing he had scarred himself. All he could think of was the code he had written to transcribe and unwrite spells. That and the damn candle spell.
What could he do with that?
If there was something castable around here . . .
Nate kept backing away from the crowd and tripped over one of the stones from the ancient ghadi ruin.
Nate stared at it.
Is there anything left?
Looking around, Nate saw a circular depression in the earth, not much, but it was ringed by mounds in a concentric pattern. It was almost unnoticeable. If he hadn’t seen the layout several times before, he would have ignored it.
Was it buried intact? Is there enough of it there?
Did it have the inscription in the first place?
He didn’t have long before the Monarch’s demise ceased being a distraction. If he was going to do it, he needed to do it now.
Whispering, Nate cast the spell, drawing out whatever code lived in the rock buried beneath the circular dip in the ground, where the ghadi once had their temple.
In response to his words, the ground around the buried pit erupted in circles of blue-green fire. The light traced the runes of the Gods’ Language into the dirt, the clay, and the rock beneath. Nate could feel the power of it as the lines wrote themselves. It was electric in the air.
He wasn’t the only one who felt it. Everyone in the area turned toward the buried pit as the force of the transcription caused the ground itself to recede, unearthing the remains of the ancient ghadi shrine. The soil drained down into the great pit, which was now circled in runes carved with fire.
No one moved, the Monarch’s fate forgotten.
“What are you doing?” cried a voice from the other side of the pit. It might have been Uthar.
“What I came here for,” Nate whispered.
As the guards started running toward him, Nate uttered the short, four-rune name that invoked the spell carved in the rock before him.
Armsmaster Ehrid Kharyn was the first to enter the doors of the College itself. He led a squad of a dozen men who, equipped by the Monarch with relics of unimaginable power, had fought like an army of a thousand. They had torn through all resistance like a thing out of legend, and there was no question left in Ehrid’s mind that the College would, in fact, fall this day.
As he stepped across the threshold, one of his men called to him.
“Armsmaster, quick! Something is happening!”
Frowning, he turned away from the splintered remnants of the siege-door and the crushed bodies beneath it, and walked back outside.
“What is it? A counterattack?”
“I don’t know.” The man led Ehrid up some stairs to the top of the outer wall of the College’s fortress within a fortress. From there, to one of the defensive towers. Here, all of Manhome was spread below them, but the guardsman pointed outward, beyond the city, and back toward the shore. “There.”
Ehrid looked, and felt his heart dry up.
Above the bluff where the Monarch had his command, storm clouds had emerged from the middle of a clear dawn sky. They swirled in a vortex that centered on an area of blackness beyond dark, beyond the absence of light. It was a darkness that opened into the abyss between the worlds. And even at this distance, even with no light to perceive it, Ehrid knew that, in the darkness, something moved.
Something older than the world and vaster than the space that contained it.
He had seen it, in old carvings, in tapestries and paintings. Never in his worst nightmares did he think he would live to face it. “May the gods between the worlds fail to take notice of us,” Ehrid prayed.
“What is it?”
“The eye of Ghad,” Ehrid said. “Let us hope we die before it sees us.”
Ehrid descended, assured as ever that the College of Man would fall this day.
It was no longer a comforting thought.
CHAPTER FIFTY
“YOUR PURPOSE is not fulfilled.”
Nate tumbled headfirst into the void before him. Above him, around him—and in some disturbing sense, within him—was the presence of the undulating, ever-changing Ghad. Nate was expecting it this time, so he managed to keep his thoughts rational and composed, and his breathing steady.
It wasn’t easy, with every fiber of his brain screaming out the sheer wrongness of the Ghad-thing enveloping him.
“Your purpose,” Nate said to the darkness.
“I give you your purpose.”
“Then help me, damn it! If you want the ghadi free, help me.”
“Knowledge is all I provide.”
Nate clutched himself against the alien thing around him. He could feel that he was leaking away, his self melting like ice in the sun. He grabbed on to the one kernel of emotion he had: anger.
“Bullshit! You brought me here, you can take me there.”
“You have your own door.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have walked outside the world. Go where you will to return.”
What?
Nate looked around, and suddenly he could see things in—or through—the darkness. He would stare at something, and it shot into focus.
He saw the Monarch’s encampment, the guards restraining Yerith as Uthar placed guards around the pit where Nate was now absent. Nate shifted focus, and Manhome came into relief with dizzying speed. He could see the face of the guardsman who had first captured him, walking through the ashes of a great library. An acolyte came from nowhere to attack him, but the guardsman took a familiar white wand and touched a phrase that was faintly embroidered in his cloak. The acolyte burst into flame.
Nate blinked and the image was gone, replaced by bodies bloated and floating in the shallows at the base of Manhome.
Blinked and he saw jungles. Then mountains. Then the streets of Zorion, absent of guards or any authority, an exodus of people fleeing a riot of looting and rape.
Then the citadel where the ghadi faced the army of the College. The walls had only held so long with Nate’s protective enchantment. They were falling, and the ghadi were falling with them.
“You sit at the center of power
. Words you speak now shall be heard by all you see.”
As Nate watched, he saw the ghadi run from the soldiers, being cut down by the dozens. What could he do to help them? He couldn’t halt a whole army. . . .
“Unchain my people.”
He could. He had shown himself how to erase a spell. That’s all that muted the ghadi, a spell that was encoded into their bodies, their biology. He had wasted so much time in studying the spell, trying to understand it, when all that was really necessary was to erase it.
As the ghadi retreated in front of the scholars’ army, Nate began to speak the Gods’ Language.
Here, in the presence of Ghad, the words flowed freer than they ever had before, the power behind them immense and terrifying. He had only been tapping a thousandth, a millionth, of the potential of these words. Each syllable seemed to twist the fabric of the universe as it passed, revising reality to conform to its presence.
I’ve been programming a Commodore 64, and Ghad just handed me a Sun Microstation.
The words tore through the streets of the burning ghadi village, finding the ancient curse within the bodies of the ghadi, alive and dead. In an instant, molecules and genes revised themselves a hundred million times over. The spell tore through the fabric of the planet itself, finding every corner, and everywhere, all at once, the ghadi awoke.
The scholar that Nate had once called the Red Skull was leading a squad of guardsmen after a trio of retreating ghadi. He was taking a personal pleasure in the attack. There were still scars where his flesh was healing from the fire that the ghadi’s savior had inflicted on him.
He had burned fifteen ghadi already this morning, and he would not be satisfied until he burned the white flesh of their leader.
Until then, seeing the ghadi suffer as he had would have to do.
“Over here!” called one of his guardsmen.
He followed to a makeshift hut where the trio of ghadi—male, female, and a child—huddled in a corner. Behind his mask, he smiled. “You shall see what defying the College means, even for brute animals.”
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