by C H Duryea
“You gotta be kidding me,” Narissa said behind him.
As the cloud of runes spread away from the center, Zeke saw that they resolved into a more ordered pattern of vertical slashes and circles. And as his eyes picked out one of those lines of slashes and circles, he followed it outward, and his breath caught in his throat. He staggered back and dropped to his knees beside Harbinger.
Vibeke moved in closer to examine the markings, an unmistakable arrangement of slashes and circles.
Of ones and zeroes.
“Hell’s bells!” she exclaimed. “It’s binary!”
“When you’ve run as many games as I have, you get tired of having to make up whole new worlds all the time.”
Dr. Charles Harbinger spoke with the air of someone who had been ordered to start making sense, which was, in fact, exactly what had just happened. Whether or not he actually did make sense to his companions—that was up for debate.
“I’m sorry, Chuck,” Zeke said, “I still don’t follow. How does that explain the presence of binary code, incorporated into a fresco, in an ancient temple, on a world two universes removed from Earth?”
“On a world we just happen to crash land on,” Vibeke added, “by random chance.”
Narissa sat with her eyes narrowed, her finger making slashes in the air as if she were scribbling equations on a whiteboard only she could see.
“That, I’m afraid,” she said, “is where we’re getting this all wrong.”
“Meaning what?” Vibeke asked.
“The Heisenberg corollary,” Augie said patiently. “In the matter of our arrival on Inverketh, there is apparently nothing random at all.”
“Just in case the painting of me on the opposite wall wasn’t quite clear enough on that point,” Zeke added. “And I don’t even want to start thinking about those implications. But what are the implications for you in these lines of old code?”
“And why didn’t you say something before?” Vibeke asked.
“I did,” Harbinger said defensively. He turned to Zeke. “I told you my suspicions when we were riding into the city.”
“He did,” Zeke confirmed when the others looked at him.
“And you didn’t think to say anything?” Narissa asked.
“I was too busy trying not to be gnoll kibble. And besides, at the moment, it seemed… incidental at best. I thought maybe Chuck was projecting a bit of his own imagination on the setting.”
“Give me some credit, Zeke,” Harbinger shot back. “I built the Frogger’s logic matrix. I think I can recognize my own code.”
“Then why do you say you had ‘suspicions’?” Vibeke asked. “You weren’t sure?”
“I wasn’t sure which version we had landed on. That’s what I was trying to explain. I was always recycling worlds. When you run a campaign that works, you file the stats on the world—later, you pull it back out, tweak it a bit, and use it again. When you game as much as we did, you have to. And trust me—Inverketh is one of them. Until now, I just didn’t know which.”
“And does that matter?” Zeke asked.
“If we want to stay alive? Yes, it matters.” Harbinger took out his percentile dice and began nervously rolling them in his fingers.
“Why?”
“That,” Harbinger said, indicating the glowing shape at the center of the cloud of binary code, “is extremely bad news.”
“Lord Rattus,” Mica said, “do you mock the Star of Inverketh?”
Harbinger turned to the Regent. “Is that what you call it?”
“What name would you give it?” she retorted.
The programmer stood, the percentiles clicking away in his fingers. He began to pace.
“We never really settled on one,” he said. “Most of the time we just called it the Dodecahedron of Doom.”
“The what?” Vibeke guffawed. “Not very creative. You could have gone with the Rhombus of Ruination or the Parallelogram of Perdition.”
“Charles,” Augie asked quietly, “what is the nature of this construct?”
“It’s something I cooked up to bring down another player’s big bad. I pulled out every spell and enchantment I knew and poured it all into a single weapon. One that would channel an unstoppable torrent of force. And it worked—but it had a price.”
“Which was?” Zeke asked.
“It inverted the morality stats of the user. A saving throw was necessary if the user wanted to return to their original moral alignment. Or if you were already on the lower frequencies of the moral spectrum—it cubed the stat. No saving throw.”
“If you’re Luke Skywalker,” Narissa said, “it turns you into Vader. If you’re already Vader, it makes you Palpatine.”
“Speak English, Narissa,” Zeke complained. “Chuck, what does any of this have to do with what’s going on here—right now?”
“It might help if I explain how it got here. See—once I had defeated the adversary the Dodecahedron was built for, we had to get rid of it somehow. But it was too powerful for any of us to wield, let alone destroy. We made a gentleman’s agreement to seal it up it somewhere good and insulate any environment from its corrupting power.
“We ran a whole campaign just to accomplish this. I took the template of a world we had used before, but with nothing added. Everything on the sheet was blank. All the way through, it kept trying to insinuate its malice into any or all of us. But eventually, we prevailed. We found a cave deep in a mountain range where no one could find it, even if there were people to look—which there weren’t. And to make doubly certain its power could influence nothing around it, I created a warding.”
“What’s that?” Vibeke asked.
“A protective spell. In this case, I based the spell on standard firewall codes. I even wrote the spell in binary.”
“And you think this Dodecahedron is here?” Zeke asked.
“I know it is,” Harbinger answered. “What’s more, I’m reasonably certain it’s the source of the Inverkethi magic system.”
Lady Mica spat a curse in a language Zeke didn’t understand. “Then it is you, Lord Rattus, to whom we owe so much history—and suffering.”
“I wish I could say it wasn’t my fault.”
“So how does this corrupting uber-weapon of yours,” Zeke asked, “account for the local deviations in energy dynamics?”
“You mean how does it power Inverketh’s magic?”
“Call it what you will.”
“The warding,” Harbinger explained, “works like an old-school firewall. But there’s also a subroutine that works a bit like a Tesla coil—a resonant transformer to ensure the Dodecahedron’s power didn’t overload the field containing it. It would step it up to a radically different frequency, and then it would bleed it off into the native rock.”
A thought rudely and insistently shouldered its way into Zeke’s head. One he wished he hadn’t had. He stood staring up at the fresco, then turned to the prince.
“Feldspar,” he said. “You said that your enemies, these recent invaders of yours, have been seen in these hills?”
“Yes,” the prince replied. “We assume they are scouting positions from which to launch their next attack. Our forces have yet to locate them. But be not worried—they are nowhere within the cordon established by my aunt’s security forces.”
“It’s not us I’m worried about,” Zeke turned back to Harbinger. “Chuck, say this theory of yours holds water. What would happen if the Tozzk got ahold of this object?”
Harbinger groaned. “Aw, man. Picture the Phoenix Energy, the Illearth Stone, and the One Ring all boxed up inside the Ark of the Covenant.”
“I’m not even going to pretend I understand any of that. Just tell me—is it bad?”
“About as bad as bad juju gets.”
“What are you inferring, Zeke?” Augie asked.
“We may have mistaken the Tozzk’s intent. We assumed they were after us. What if they’re really here looking for this Dodecahedron of Doom?”
“How would they even know about it?” Harbinger asked.
“How did they know about us?” Narissa countered.
“If it is this item they truly seek,” Qaant Yke intoned, “you would be ill-advised to let them succeed.”
“If the Dodecahedron is moved beyond the warding,” Harbinger warned, “it’s going to unleash holy hell. Unless—”
Harbinger froze in the middle of his sentence as if crystallized by a single thought.
“Chuck?” Zeke asked. “Unless… what?”
“The rule of ignorance,” the coder mumbled, almost to himself.
“The rule of what?” Narissa asked.
“Remember earlier, Chuck,” Vibeke asked, “when we asked you to start making sense?”
“The rule of ignorance,” he repeated, louder this time.
Zeke said nothing—he only looked expectantly at his colleague.
“It was part of the Dodecahedron’s matrix of binding spells. It was necessary for me to implement it—and to place it in the cave after we were done—without my going mad with power. The rule of ignorance, once invoked, compels any magical object to stop working whenever someone who understands its workings comes into contact with it.”
“And this matters—” Zeke asked.
“If I can get to it before the Tozzk do, I can render it defunct and rob them of their prize—assuming that’s what they’re after.”
“You?” Vibeke asked. “You think you can deactivate it?”
“I invented it. Who else to better invoke the rule?”
“But we don’t know where it is,” Narissa said.
“Of course we do,” Harbinger said, jerking his thumb at the fresco. “The directions are written into the code. It’ll take us right to it.”
Prince Feldspar spun to face the painting, his eyes wide and mouth agape.
“But, guys,” Harbinger went on, “you’re missing the bigger picture.”
“Which is?” Zeke asked.
“Think about it. The Dodecahedron is the engine of the Inverkethi magic system, right?”
“Right.”
“And if I get my hands on it—”
Zeke suddenly knew where Harbinger was going. “It goes out.”
Feldspar and Mica exchanged an urgent glance.
“As does Inverketh’s magic,” the Lady said.
Augie sucked in a long whistle of breath. “By Klono’s Carballoy Claws.”
Narissa’s eyes narrowed. “I see, said the blind man as he picked up the hammer and saw.”
“What?” Vibeke asked. “What do you see?”
“If Chuck can shut down the magic in this place—” Narissa began.
“Then maybe the Friendly Card will come back online,” Zeke finished, “and we could get off this rock.”
Twenty-Two
Harbinger led the group like a hunting dog following a scent. From a secret passage in the back of the temple, a tunnel opened out to a long canyon leading farther up into the hills. Layers of eroded rock poking through the tree cover formed the bones of the canyon’s steep walls up ahead, and a fast-moving river raced down its spine.
“The headwaters of Lankshale Falls,” Prince Feldspar said. “They cut under the temple and emerge on the city side. These hills are riddled with such cavities.”
“Limestone,” Augie explained, “carved out by millennia of groundwater and carbonic acid.”
“Calcium carbonate!” Qaant Yke exclaimed. “Who else is hungry?”
The alien leapt ahead, bounding up the banks of the river, scooping up clawfuls of rocks as he went. Soon Zeke heard a crunching sound that made his teeth hurt.
“Perfect oxide balance,” Qaant Yke called. “Just the way I like it!” The crunching resumed.
The party made their way down the rocks towards the rushing water. The prince uneasily eyed the tree-lined ridge overhead.
“Are you still worried about an ambush?” Zeke asked.
“Don’t worry, Your Lordship,” Harbinger called from the head of the pack. “We’ll be underground before the Tozzk even know we’re here.” Then he turned and continued with two of the prince’s men following.
Feldspar turned back to Zeke.
“The invaders are not of immediate concern to me,” he said, “but rather this foolhardy experiment. If Lord Rattus speaks the truth, then his actions would disrupt every aspect of Inverkethi life. The consequences of extinguishing our world’s magic—”
“Not extinguishing,” Zeke corrected. “A short interval of interruption. If Chuck is right, then the lights’ll be back on soon.”
“And besides,” Vibeke remarked, “Lady Mica didn’t seem too worried. In fact, I’d say she thought it was downright on the beam.”
“I do not understand this ‘beam’ to which you refer. But remember that it has not been long since her father the king was assassinated by theurgistic methods. My aunt would gladly see the world’s magic snuffed out—leaving us defenseless.”
“By all appearances, yes,” Zeke conceded. “But if, as you say, the Tozzk have adapted the use of magic during their incursions here, this will be a perfect opportunity to catch them off guard. They won’t have their magic or their standard weapons. They’ll be about as unarmed as it’s possible for a Tozzk to get.”
“Until they discover what has occurred,” the prince protested. “Then they will return with their own otherworldly weaponry.”
“At which time we’ll be done with the Dodecahedron. We put it back, your magic kicks back on, and your mages will make scrap iron of the rest of them.”
“All in a day’s work for the Defender of Inverketh,” Vibeke said, slapping Zeke on the arm.
But Feldspar was unconvinced. “For a man of science,” he said, “you are leaving the fate of my world to some terrifying uncertainties.”
Zeke smirked and exchanged quick glances with Augie and Narissa. The three laughed.
“Remind me when this is all over,” Zeke said, laying a hand on Feldspar’s shoulder, “to tell you about a guy from my world named Heisenberg.”
The prince flinched slightly at Zeke’s touch, and his expression grew dark for a split second. But then he smiled and laughed along with the others.
They walked along the banks of the river for some time. Harbinger stayed out front with the prince’s two attendants, following the path detailed in the temple’s binary code. As they walked, the walls of the gorge steepened and rose in height until they blotted out the afternoon sun. As Zeke scanned the cliffs overhead, two distant dragons swept into view, their screeching roars echoing against the rocks.
“Pests!” one of the prince’s men called out. Just the same, one of the undermages cast some kind of spell that surrounded the party with a greenish glow.
“Keeps them from smelling us,” the undermage explained.
“Magical deodorant,” Vibeke noted. “What’ll they think up next?”
“Hey, Feldspar?” Zeke asked, pointing to the craggy ridge. “Is that the same eyrie where we crashed?”
The prince squinted up at the cliffs. “It is likely the same. But there are many such nests, so it is difficult to tell.”
“It is the same,” Qaant Yke affirmed. “The striations in the cliff face are so obviously identical. Don’t you softshells notice anything?”
“Here!” Harbinger shouted. He had stopped at the dark mouth of a large cave. The others caught up to him until the entire party stood at the entrance’s shadowy verge. “This is the way in.”
The descent into the caves wasn’t as long as the trip up the valley, but it was definitely more arduous. Even though the prince’s mages cast effective torch spells, the way was difficult, and to Zeke, no amount of magical light could lift the feeling of darkness that permeated the rock.
Some of the going was easier—through large limestone caverns festooned with all manner of dripstone, crystals, and other speleogems. But much of the way was also through passages so constricted they had to pass in single file. Qaant Yke, bri
nging up the rear, was hard-pressed to follow at a few cramped junctures, but there was always just enough flexibility in his shell segments to allow him to squeeze through.
When the passage allowed them to walk side-by-side, Vibeke paced him, her hand in his. Where she touched him, his skin tingled in a way that didn’t strike Zeke as the usual simmer of pair-bonding hormones. His mind jumped back to the worktable in the library, and Vibeke’s seeming influence over Inverketh’s natural elements. He tried not to think too much about that—but the feeling was pleasant and that was enough. It made him feel like the relief of some new bright and open space was just a few paces ahead.
“You never told me you were claustrophobic,” Vibeke said.
“I was saving that for our fourth date,” he said. “You know—for an after-dinner game of ‘Would You Rather.’”
“That would have been fun. But maybe unnecessary after all this.”
“Or possibly a lot more interesting. Would you rather eat from the Friendly Card’s autoslop, or die in the cold, dark vacuum of space?”
“Ew. Tough one. Let’s table that till date number four.”
“Deal.”
Up ahead, the party stopped, and Zeke heard a rumble of voices in the dark. They picked up the pace to catch up.
The party faced a rough rock wall. Apparently, some long-ago seismic event had produced a subterranean fault and caused this fractured rock mass to bisect the chamber. Part of the wall was obscured by a large rockfall of shattered, jagged stone.
“This,” Harbinger breathed, “was not part of the message. It had to have occurred after the Dodecahedron’s placement. There’s a passage beyond these rocks.”
Prince Feldspar stepped forward. “Mages,” he called.
“No magic,” Harbinger said. “If the warding code has been compromised by this collapse, I have no idea what would happen if any Inverkethi magic came in contact with it. We have to clear this by hand.”