Broken Crescent Read online

  Nate saw armed guards watching from up near the tops of the towers. Like his escort, the preferred colors seemed to be scarlet and black.

  Past the guardian towers, and on to the area beyond, Nate saw at least half a dozen ways into the city itself. The flat area was roughly circular, half of it looking over the open ocean and the last blood-red glimmer of sunset, the other half butting up against the side of the plateau and fifty-foot walls that were now obviously man-made.

  There were six more towers on the plateau side, built into the massive walls. Between the towers were doorways and portals leading inside. The largest gate filled the whole space between the two rightmost towers. Looking beyond, it seemed that it was a continuation of the great spiral road, now carving gradually into the plateau rather than hugging its side. Instead of blank sculptured walls to the left, beyond the gate Nate could see structures that could be store-fronts or houses, piled over each other in a crowd for space.

  While the plateau area outside the gates could accommodate hundreds, the only people here other than Nate and his escort were those with six carts queued up for the large gate. From the droppings on the stone beneath him, Nate figured this place was a lot more crowded during the day.

  He naturally gravitated toward the largest gate, but he was corrected by a sharp tug on the rope binding his hands. He turned and the guy with the rope looked as if he was preparing to hit him again.

  Nate tried to look nonthreatening and they headed to the leftmost gate, little more than an iron door set into the wall next to the plateau-side tower they had just passed on the way up. The officer leading them pulled on a chain that hung from a small hole in the wall above the door. Nate heard a distant bell ring.

  They waited.

  As the stars came out above them, the gates around them began closing. It started with the first gate, between the towers flanking the spiral road. A giant iron portcullis slid down from above, blocking the way they had come. Then, on the opposite side of the circular clearing, wooden gates closed behind the last of the wagons entering the city.

  Nate watched as the other gates into the city closed themselves against the night. Nate noticed that with each gate closing, the space out here grew darker.

  Soon, they stood in blue-black twilight, the only illumination the flicker of the stars and of tiny windows too high above them.

  After what seemed like hours, the door in front of them creaked open. The light from a torch spilled flickering upon them as a man in crimson and black dress stepped out.

  After a short conversation with the lead officer, the man stepped aside and let the five of them enter. The door led into a hallway that had been carved out of the rock. The walls were solid stone, polished smooth as concrete. The floor was stone as well, but a depression was worn down its center, stained green in places where water had collected. The air was thick and smelled of damp.

  After about a hundred feet, the walls opened up into more traditional masonry, and the air became a little fresher.

  Nate couldn’t follow where they went after that, or exactly what was happening. They moved through a warren of corridors, past several checkpoints manned by the scarlet and black guards. The passages were gray and utilitarian, with little to distinguish them except the occasional sign written in the alien script Nate had seen on the aqueduct.

  After what seemed like miles of sameness, they led him to a narrow staircase. This was the third one, and—like all of them—it took them downward. At this point, Nate felt that they must have walked halfway back down to sea level.

  The stairs led them through a Gothic archway, and into a long chamber whose arched ceiling was supported by squat columns that bore writing in a script even more alien than the writing Nate had already seen.

  Light came from iron candelabra that bore up under decades’ worth of wax drippings. Two flanked the entrance, two more flanked a rectangular stone object that could have been a desk, an altar, or a sarcophagus. Behind it, a man stood at a wooden podium on which a large leather-bound book rested in an open position.

  Unlike everyone else they had met so far, this man wasn’t wearing the scarlet and black that Nate associated with the guardsmen. This man wore a plain brown robe, with a hood resting on his shoulders. A blue cord was wrapped around his waist. He looked like the driver of the black wagon that had passed them on the way up the side of the plateau.

  He was also different, because the officer in charge, the man with the two gold braids, did not approach him, or even speak. Every time up to now, this guy, the man who had bought Nate from Grandpa, had acted like the man in charge. Everyone had shown the guy some sort of deference. He spoke first, and told the people what to do.

  Not here. Here, the officer waited for the robed man to acknowledge him.

  After a few minutes, at least a full minute beyond the point where he knew he had visitors, the robed man took out an elaborately-embroidered ribbon and laid it across his book. With the bookmark placed, he closed the book and turned to face his visitors.

  The man was old, with the same semi-Asian features as Nate’s handlers. His skin was maybe a shade lighter. Like the man who drove the black wagon, this man wore a multitude of rings. Also, his face was scarred. The scarred flesh looked as if it was intentional. The scars resembled the patterns on the columns surrounding them. Nate didn’t get a good look because the man lifted his hood up. He did it quickly, shadowing his face as if he was trying to hide his disfigurement.

  Only then did the man speak, and he didn’t sound happy at being interrupted.

  The officer responded, saying something and pointing at Nate.

  The two of them went back and forth with some sort of Q A.

  While they talked, Scarface walked up to Nate. The new guy was tall, Nate only had about an inch on him. He grabbed Nate’s chin and pulled his face so he could look in Nate’s eyes. Nate winced since the rings dug in where he’d been backhanded.

  There were scars on the guy’s hands as well. The scars were based on a grid pattern that reminded Nate of pictures he had seen of the I Ching. The guy’s face was still too shadowed for Nate to get a look.

  Suddenly, the man let go and shook his hands as if they’d been soiled. He barked something at the officer and held out his hand. The officer produced the pouch that had held all the things they had taken from Nate.

  Scarface didn’t even look in the pouch. He just walked over and placed it on the altar/sarcophagus. Then he turned around and pointed at Nate, barking something at the guards.

  There was a quiet pause, and the robed figure shook his head as if he couldn’t believe the locals. He barked again, and this time he sounded pissed. Nate understood nothing he said, but the impression he got was, Listen to me, you bastards, or there’s going to be trouble.

  Nate’s officer didn’t want trouble. He shouted orders to the rest of his crew, and Nate was suddenly surrounded by a trio of naked swords, all pointing at him.

  The lead officer took out his dagger and stood behind him. Nate felt the ropes cut free from his wrists. Nate stood there a moment, not quite sure what he should do. Pins and needles raced across his palms as blood rushed back into his hands.

  Very slowly, he brought his hands forward and started rubbing the feeling into them.

  The swords still pointed at him.

  “What?” Nate asked.

  In answer to his question, a brown robe was tossed at his feet. Nate stared at it until he felt a sword poke his side. Nate looked at the guard who’d poked him—big surprise, it was the same guy who had backhanded him—who said something, gesturing with his sword, first at Nate, then at the robe.

  “You’re kidding . . .”

  They weren’t.

  They made it very clear that they now considered his clothing as much contraband as the stuff they’d emptied from his pockets. After repeated sword pokes, Nate had to strip off everything from his bomber jacket down to his jockeys.

  They didn’t even let him keep his socks
.

  Standing naked in the still, cold air made Nate realize just how much of an alien he was in this place. His tall angular body, pale skin, and auburn hair was completely at odds with the appearance of the folks surrounding him. He got more than a few stares from the guardsmen, and he suspected they’d be chattering away if it wasn’t for the presence of Scarface.

  Nate saw, uncomfortably, that the swords had dropped to point below his waist. It made him wonder if circumcision was practiced here.

  He picked up the robe. It was damp and smelled of piss and mildew. He would have preferred going naked, despite the stares, but he doubted that he could convince his hosts.

  The rough-woven fabric itched against his skin, and after thirty seconds, Nate was convinced that the fabric was host to some insect colony that found him rather tasty.

  Scarface picked up everything Nate had worn, and piled it next to the pouch the officer had given him. Then he walked around the sarcophagus/altar and bent down. When he straightened up, he held a red mask in his hands. Facing away from them, Scarface lowered the hood of his robe and placed the mask on his face.

  Scarface had white hair that was thinning enough that Nate could see the rectilinear patterns carved into the skin of his scalp as well as his face. The mask had its own hood of black fabric that covered the back of Scarface’s head, so Nate only had a glimpse.

  Scarface turned around and faced them.

  The mask was blood red and decorated with inlaid gold and ivory. It had bulging eyes and a gaping, fanged mouth. The nose was long and hooked, the chin pointed. Nate noticed a change in the room when the mask was on. The guards around him, straightened somewhat. Scarface’s posture was more formal, his body language lost the characteristics of annoyance and disgust—and if anything, the loss of those human characteristics made Scarface seem much more intimidating.

  Scarface spoke something in a language that Nate swore was not the tongue he had heard everyone speak until now. Scarface didn’t speak above a conversational tone, but something in the words made Nate feel sick. The liquid vowels reminded him too much of the thing that had occupied the darkness between the Case campus and the world he was in now.

  As Scarface spoke, Nate saw him gesture with his hands. The motions were almost too quick to see, made, arms lowered, with the first three fingers of each hand. Almost typing in the air.

  The words themselves were odd, monosyllabic, spoken with no emphasis or inflection. As if someone was sounding out a random string of letters, or chanting from memory.

  Scarface spoke that way for less than ten seconds, but the words seemed to add a physical weight to the air around Nate. Nate looked around and saw that the guards had backed all the way to the entrance to the chamber.

  This can’t be good. . . .

  Nate didn’t want to be left with Scarface. With the guards he at least had some clue as to what was going on. Scarface was frightening and alien. . . .

  Nate saw lights flicker in the rear of the long chamber, on the other side of the columns. The lights soon resolved into torches carried by other robed, masked figures. In a few minutes Nate was faced by a semicircle of brown-robed men and women. All wore masks, though none as elaborate as Scarface’s. Their masks were blocked out in basic primary colors, mostly red and yellow. All had prominent noses and chins, some had fangs, some had beards, some had long tongues. All variants on the devil face that Scarface wore.

  “Okay, guys,” Nate whispered, “If we’re doing a virgin sacrifice, I have bad news for you. . . .”

  Scarface barked something. Unlike before, his tone wasn’t bitchy and irritated. The tone was one of command. Nate turned to see the guards back away, closing a set of massive doors behind them. When the doors slammed home, Nate felt the impact in his chest.

  Oh, fuck. . . .

  He considered running, but there was the problem of where, exactly he’d run to. The masked congregation might not be carrying obvious weapons, but there were a dozen of them, half with torches. He couldn’t outrun all of them, and he didn’t think it would be fun being beaten with a flaming club.

  Two of Scarface’s followers carried in a heavy wooden trunk where they placed Nate’s possessions. Scarface shut the box solemnly. They closed it with an elaborately carved padlock. Nate could see hints of the patterns that he had seen carved in Scarface’s skin.

  They really got happy with that motif.

  Scarface spoke some more of that other language when he closed the padlock. To Nate’s eyes, the lock closed seamlessly and had no obvious keyhole. He tried to get a better look at it, but when he took a step, the people surrounding him pressed together and held their torches in his direction.

  Once Scarface was finished with the trunk and his cronies had hauled it away, he walked around the parameter of the crowd that now completely encircled Nate. He started talking in the speech Nate was beginning to think of as the “common tongue” to distinguish it from the disturbing liquid monotone that Scarface had used earlier.

  Scarface walked around, talking to the gathering as if he was a professor giving a lecture, or a staff sergeant telling the troops how to use a bayonet. Nate knew that Scarface was talking about him, because, while Scarface never made a motion in his direction, his audience studied Nate with every word.

  After about ten minutes, class was over, and about two thirds of the audience filed away. A pair of them grabbed Nate’s upper arms and faced Scarface as their leader gave a few more instructions. The pair holding Nate nodded sagely, the noses on their masks bobbing in a manner Nate would have found comical if it wasn’t so obvious that he was in deep shit.

  “You guys don’t speak English either, do you?”

  They ignored him.

  A torch-bearing trio took the lead, while the pair holding Nate brought up the rear. They walked toward the back of the long chamber, where there were six doorways leading off in various directions. Of course, they led Nate down the darkest, dankest looking corridor.

  The air was damp and smelled of mold. The floor was slimy under Nate’s bare feet and every part of his body was starting to itch.

  This was the point where any action hero worth his salt would overpower his guards and escape. Nate ran through a number of movie scenarios. None seemed particularly doable at the moment. In his head he took the pair holding his arms, and swung them together so their skulls collided, rendering them conveniently unconscious. Then he’d grab one of the torchbearers and head butt him insensible and throw the limp form at the remaining guy—

  Of course, even in the fantasy, this was when the last guy brought the torch down on Nate’s head.

  When it came down to it, Nate wasn’t Arnold Schwarzenegger. He only had one take, and the fight choreographer didn’t know who was supposed to win. So Nate was the model prisoner all the way down. He chatted up his new guards, but the conversation was completely one-sided.

  They took him down one stone corridor after another. The torches were the only light. After the third set of stairs going down, they came to a hallway lined with large wooden doors. They stopped and one of the torchbearers pulled a door open.

  “Oh, shit, guys. You aren’t going to put me in there?”

  The room was eight feet square, with no furniture. The floor was covered with straw that looked black and green in the torchlight. Nate could see rats scurrying away from the light.

  “No, you fuckers, I’m not—” Nate surprised himself at how suddenly the action hero option seemed viable. Probably because he’d been docile up to this point, he caught his captors by surprise. He managed to tear his right arm free to slug the guy on his left. He felt the mask crack as the parts of it sliced open a knuckle.

  The one on the right grabbed at him, and Nate elbowed him in the forehead. The move actually dropped the guy.

  Nate was free of his handlers for all of two seconds. Then a burning weight slammed across the back of his neck, something kicked him in the face, and three sets of hands were tossing him into the fetid
straw of the cell.

  Nate scrambled to his feet as the door shut out the light. Nate fell onto the door, pounding on it with his fists.

  “You motherfuckers. I didn’t do shit to you. You can’t leave me in here.”

  He pounded against the unyielding wood. “You can’t leave me in here!”

  Of course, they could.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHIEF ARMSMAN Ravig Kalish held his scarlet cape around himself. He stood in one of the tiny open gardens of Manhome, a struggling patch of green that nestled in the plateau of the city like a spot of lichen. The ocean spread below him, reflecting the many lights of the city in imitation of the nighttime sky above.

  The chills he felt were deeper and stronger than the sea wind that blew against him. Ravig had always been a practical man. A guardsman had to be. Myths and angels were the province of those poor souls who entered the College. Ravig would happily live his entire life without once considering anything except the law and the world beneath his feet.

  But what was a practical man supposed to do when the College’s angels walked the same earth he did?

  “Armsman Ravig?”

  Ravig turned to face the Armsmaster of Manhome.

  “Master Ehrid.”

  Ehrid Kharyn walked to the stone railing that separated the garden from a sheer drop to a cobbled street below. “You’ve served well Manhome and the Monarch today, my friend.”

  “Your praise is welcome, but unearned. A farmer found the wretched beast, not I. And the College is not pleased with me.”

  “I know.” Master Ehrid shook his head and stared out at the water. “Their scholars believe that any contact with your ‘wretched beast’ is too dangerous. They want trials and hearings and executions.”

  “We only did what they asked of us.”

  “A point repeatedly made.” Ehrid sighed. “Fortunately, I think they may realize that we are as essential to them as their ghadi. They only want one example.”