by Rick Field
Nadia probed the Great Barrier, whispering incantations even though her innate magical sense could do the work by itself. The blurred edges of the Barrier erected by anchors number 37 and 39 firmly overlapped. She could take anchor 38 offline and work on it.
The Pillar lifted her staff of office, and intoned her authorization to the waves, the air, and the sands. She was Pillar, she was Nadia of the Black Marsh.
The noise of playfully crashing waves stilled and the salty tang in the air disappeared; a large square drew itself in the sands as if a huge invisible hand took the finest blade to it. The lines were straight and fine, and slowly the optical illusion was shattered when it was revealed that no, a square had not been drawn in the sands.
Instead, a square was rising out of the sand, a square of loose material sitting on top of a massive cubical stone that was now slowly being lifted out of the ground.
Ward Anchor number 38 rested firmly in front of her, a cube twice as tall as she was, finely inscribed with runes and glyphs and magical symbols on every side. Slowly, she circled it, ignoring how the black wet sand stuck to the bottom of her Pillar's robes. The runic paragraphs glowed red to her magical sight, an angry, bloody red that showed their malicious delight in protecting the island that was their home.
After coming full circle and coming to a complete stop, Nadia frowned at the anchor once more. She could not see anything wrong, it should function as expected and at full power. Yet the readings at the capital had shown a significant drop in output from this particular anchor. Most unusual.
Knowing that anchors 37 and 39 were operating at full power, she approached number 38. Other Pillars would have to do this the hard way. Nadia was not like other Pillars.
After a quick scan of the deserted beach, she assured herself that she was alone. Throwing her hood back, Nadia became Liane, and placed one hand on the massive rune stone in front of her.
She found herself no longer on a deserted beach on the other side of the island. No longer was she near the sea, standing on black volcanic sands, staring at a ward anchor. Instead, her mind was filled with the image of the island of Kiria, all the knowledge of the Great Barrier available to her.
She knew the exact amount of people living on the island – one million, one hundred fifteen thousand, nine hundred forty-eight – knew the exact amount of Nobles – ten thousand two-hundred ninety-five – and could even pin-point the Druids living on the upper half of Mount Sina.
At the same time, she also knew that all this information wasn't really hers. No human mind could encompass the entire island, know every blade of grass and bird in the air; know each vein of ore and pasture of grain. All this information was present in the Great Barrier, and it was merely made available to her upon request, vanishing as soon as her next request was registered. Like a giant library of information, only the facts she specifically requested were made available to her, and it was up to Liane to decide what to do with it.
Stopping her momentary bout of surprised curiosity, the MagicWarper focused back on her task. Anchor number 38 was not performing to its optimal ability, and she needed to figure out why.
Immediately, her overview of the island vanished, and ward anchor thirty-eight replaced it. The Great Barrier supplied her with information at a moment's request, and Liane's mind twisted, turned, and spiraled around each of the cube's six sides, trying to determine what had gone wrong. It was unsettled that her initial inspection had not found anything, and she wanted – needed – to know why.
Her more in-depth scan did not reveal anything obvious. Her frown deepened, the solution of the mystery continued to elude her. Forget unsettling, this was deeply disturbing. A sudden drop in the output of an anchor indicated a malfunction. Yet, no malfunction was evident even with a more in-depth scan and with the full power of the Great Barrier itself behind her search.
The implications were unheard of. Unconscionable.
The Great Barrier itself could not detect a malfunction in Ward Anchor number thirty-eight... because there was no malfunction.
This was sabotage. For just a moment, Liane refused to believe her conclusion. For someone, some Noble, to deliberately target the Great Barrier and damage it, sabotage it, place the entire island nation at risk, it could not be true. And yet, time and again, every scan and effort she expended brought her to the same inevitable conclusion. Barrier anchor number thirty-eight was not damaged. It was sabotaged.
Forgetting the upsetting implications of her discovery, she set about fixing it. Taking thirty-eight offline, letting the overlapping fields of thirty-seven and thirty-nine fill in the gap, she was glad that the designer of the Great Barrier had orchestrated it in such a way that it would not create gaps in the coverage should a single anchor fail.
Comparing the runic sequences of anchor 38 with the sequences found on numbers 37 and 39, she finally found the source of her problems. As she had feared, as she had hoped she would not find, a couple of the paragraphs had been subtly altered. By themselves, the drop in performance of thirty-eight would not have done anything.
It was the subtle modification in the self-updating, perpetuating runic instances that would do the damage. Whoever modified anchor 38 was an expert in Runes, Glyphs, and Magical Symbols, probably as great an expert as Liane herself was.
It was lucky for everyone on the island that the person in question was merely an expert at runes, yet did not know the peculiarities and procedures of the Pillar Service. Whoever sabotaged 38 had obviously thought that the drop in performance would be solved by passing a 'synchronization' command through the Barrier, an overriding, administrative command that would have forced the anchors to update each other with new modifications. Usually, the command would be passed with a master sequence, normally the reference anchor located underneath the Imperial Palace. It took a major authorization to perpetuate a synchronization and the saboteur obviously had been unable to start one themselves.
The alterations made to the update sequences on 38 would have forced the sabotage on it to become the new 'master' sequence regardless of the command, and perpetuate through the entire network.
It was the Pillar Service's procedure of investigation that had prevented this from happening.
Liane undid the modifications, resetting both the sabotaged sequences and undoing the modifications to the perpetuating update code to ensure that anchor 38 performed at the peak of its performance once more and to ensure that the self-updating code would not take anchor thirty-eight as the master code regardless of the synchronization command's settings.
She brought it back online an hour later, after confirming that she had successfully repaired the damage. And yet, she did not disconnect. Instead, she continued to stare at the barrier anchor, despite it functioning correctly. She wanted to prevent this from happening again, prevent anyone without sufficient clearance from ever attempting to modify a barrier anchor.
It had been thought that the required knowledge in runic writing was sufficient protection in itself. Raising the anchor required some esoteric spells that was thought to only be known to the Pillar Service, but any Mage or Warlock could cast them if they knew them. This saboteur had obviously known them, and had known enough about Runes and Glyphs to affect the sabotage.
More disturbing implications. How had the saboteur gotten hold of the anchor spells?
Liane frowned. This would not do. She needed to protect the Great Barrier, and protect it she would. The Barrier helpfully supplied her with information regarding the Pillar Service, up to their names, cover names, locations, and various assigned duties. She dismissed the extra information, and took number thirty-eight offline again.
Adding in a verification tied to the Barrier's knowledge of the Pillar Service was simple in theory, yet it took her nearly half a day's work to implement. Finally, she took 38 online again. The moment she did so, she felt a pulse rebound through her core as anchor thirty-eight balanced her against the Barrier's knowledge of the Pillar Service.
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The pulse was hard and fast, and it hurt. Strands of her protective shell unraveled as the Barrier's identification pulse tore through her body and magic.
She was identified and the anchor behaved as normal. She drew a breath, and forced an update synchronization through the Great Barrier network.
Numbers 37 and 39, on the edge of her peripheral knowledge, pulsed, went offline, and updated themselves. The update was fairly large, and Liane was aware of them sitting for close to five minutes before coming online again. She could not feel anchors 36 and 40, they were not connected directly to anchor thirty-eight, but she was assured that they, too, would update themselves. It would only take an hour or two to update all the anchors and make the network impenetrable to anyone not on the authorized access list.
At this point, that was the Pillar Service, the Emperor, and the Crown Prince. Only Liane herself, the Pillar Overseer, the Emperor, or the Crown Prince could modify the access list itself.
Finally, she disconnected from the anchor, and allowed it to reset itself in position underneath the sands of the beach. The sun's light was almost completely gone and Liane finally realized just how long she had been standing here, working on the anchor. Her legs felt like rubber from standing still for so many hours on end, and she fairly dragged herself to the dunes framing the beach.
She sat down, put up her hood, and lifted her hand. She whispered a connection spell to the Overseer.
A flaming circle appeared above her hand, the center of which turned an opaque black. For twenty long seconds, the center remained such, until the Overseer's face appeared.
“My apologies for the late disturbance, Overseer,” Nadia said. “I bring grave and unsettling news from ward anchor 38.”
“Is this upsetting news related to the forced update synchronization that has been implemented on the Great Barrier Network, Pillar?” the Overseer asked. Although framed politely and with Decorum, Liane could pick up the angry undertones of the question.
“It is, My Lady. Ward Anchor 38 was sabotaged,” the Pillar said, coming straight out with the truth and letting the Overseer make up her own thoughts. The austere woman in the flame-circle blinked, looked surprised for all of two seconds, before she got control of herself once more.
“Sabotage?” the Overseer asked, catching herself. “That is most disturbing, My Lady. I hope you have collected ample evidence of your allegation.”
Nadia nodded deeply enough to show through her hood. “Anchor 38 had no damage, even after an in-depth scan. Instead, evidence was discovered that the anchor was deliberately modified to reduce its effective operation, and a change was made to the updating scripts to take number thirty-eight as master in a synchronization command, regardless of the master given by the update. The next time a synchronization was affected, the changes in number thirty-eight would have spread across the network. The Great Barrier would have been significantly weakened, to the point where anchors no longer overlapped and a single defective anchor would have breached the Great Barrier.”
The Overseer remained silent during Nadia's explanation, and for quite some time afterward. The Pillar did not say anything, allowing the woman to think through the implications.
“The more you speak, the more I find myself disturbed, Pillar,” the woman finally said. “What was the synchronization that was affected?”
“I modified the ward anchors to only accept modifications from those on an authorized access list, My Lady. The Great Barrier knows more about this island than previously realized. As such, I tied access to it to the Pillar Service, the Lord Emperor, and the Lord Crown Prince. The anchors will now verify the identity of the person accessing anchors and violently reject anyone unauthorized trying to modify them,” Nadia spoke, calmly explaining her decision to protect the Barrier.
The Overseer was silent once more, and the Pillar again gave her time to think. “That was an appropriate decision, Pillar. I will support it if need be,” she finally said. “Excellent work. Please return to the capital as quickly as possible, a report on your actions will be needed as soon as possible. The implications of this are disturbing.”
“Of course, My Lady,” the Pillar said. “I shall return as quickly as I am able. Please keep in mind that I am almost on the other side of the island, so even traveling hard, it will take me five or six days to return.”
“I will be expecting you then, Pillar,” the Overseer said, closing the connection. Nadia sighed, and dropped against the dune. She wouldn't set out tonight. The sun had set, and it was nearly an hour's walk to the nearest town.
A vague wave of her hand rose a small hut made of compacted sand and earth from the ground. Most Nobles sincerely disliked the practice of 'camping', and would never have been caught dead doing it. Liane, on the other hand, found that she had liked the experience when she had been forced to rely on it during her rescue of Milor.
Her compact dwelling had ample breathing holes in it. She wouldn't make the same mistake of creating a fire in an area that was airtight.
The night was longer than she would have liked, and by the time the sun rose the next morning, she was already on the road. She walked briskly into the nearest town, found the tavern, and bought herself some food. After having skipped multiple meals the day before, and doing a lot of magical work, she was famished and the innkeeper had a rather knowing smile on his face when he brought her seconds, thirds, and fourths.
Nadia ignored him, it didn't matter that he knew she was hungry and ate slightly faster than normally polite, in greater quantities than what was normally acceptable. After filling her stomach, and enjoying the sensation of her happy digestion, she rented a horse. A cart would be too slow; she had been asked to return swiftly. A single horse would be the quickest way.
Knowing well that she had only learned to ride late in life, and that she was not very practiced in it, she made sure to request a good-natured horse. Lifting herself into the women's saddle, she spurred the animal on. If the horse was in as fine a shape as she had been told, it would be able to go considerably faster than a horse drawing a cart, especially since she traveled light.
There was very little a Pillar needed that a Pillar couldn't create by magic while on the road, so most Pillars traveled with the robes on their backs and a pocket full of gold.
Then again, Nadia reasoned as her horse took her quickly down the road that would take her around Mount Sina toward the capital, most Pillars traveled from one inn to another, planning their voyages to only include the best and most high-class inns where they could rent whatever they needed as they needed it. Very few of them actually traveled the way Nadia did.
Her horse trotted nicely, yet it did not take Nadia long to develop discomfort from her inexperienced body. She had been taught how to 'ride the trot', yet with her lack of useful experience she failed more often than not at canceling out the horse's bouncing gait.
When her right wrist vibrated, she took the excuse to stop her horse and slip down to the ground. Her legs, stomach, and back hurt like she hadn't felt in a long time. She lifted her wrist, and spoke a small acceptance incantation.
The flare of the fire-circle extended from her right palm, and Nadia looked straight into the face of her Overseer.
“Overseer, good morning,” Nadia greeted.
“I see you have already started your journey back, Pillar,” the Overseer spoke, and Nadia realized that the horse must be visible behind her. “Unfortunately, I must ask you to turn back.”
The Pillar blinked. “Was I not to return to write my report, My Lady?” she asked her superior, trying to hide the confusion in her voice. She more than likely failed.
“I presented your preliminary findings to Imperial Oversight, and the highest priority has been given to this development. You are to return and present yourself to the country home of Lord Marcel of the Rising Trees. His estate encompasses the lands upon which anchor 38 is located, he may know more of what has happened. If he does not know directly, he may have mor
e information regarding who might be attempting to discredit him. Please remain vigilant, Lord Marcel is one of the Generals of the Imperial Army. He is a very powerful and influential man, attempt to remain diplomatic.”
Nadia hated diplomacy and politics both. Things were so much easier if she could act freely. “Very well, My Lady. I will change direction, and make for the estates of Lord Marcel. I will also attempt to remain... diplomatic.”
“I am well aware that diplomacy is not your strongest suit, My Lady. I ask merely that you make every attempt to remain so,” the Overseer said.
“I will do my very best, My Lady,” Nadia promised.
“Very well, My Lady,” her superior replied over the connection. “Nadia of the Black Marsh, your assignment has been extended. Please make for the estates of the Lord Marcel of the Rising Trees and inform him of your discovery. Request his assistance in this matter, and determine whether he is directly involved or has any information. Return with this information to us.”