Broken Crescent
S. Andrew Swann
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
BOOK TWO
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
BOOK THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
BOOK FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
BOOK FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
“AZRAEL. IT IS TIME . . .”
“Who are you?” Nate yelled into the darkness at the voice. The sound seemed to die as it left his mouth, to vanish without an echo.
Something had changed in the darkness around him. It wasn’t void any longer, there was a thick sense of presence around him, as if he might reach out a hand and feel slick skin and undulating flesh. He felt as if any moment something heavy and damp might wrap around his throat, strangling him.
“Which road?” The words were heavy, cloying, and came from organs that were not meant for human speech.
The darkness resolved into something. Two some-things. Behind him, he could dimly see a corridor in the classroom building. In front of him was what might have been a hill or a lawn, backed with blue sky. Both views seemed incredibly distant. At the same time they felt intense enough that he need only reach out to one or the other to touch it.
The sense of alien presence was overwhelming, on all sides, as if cascades of rippling flesh were about to engulf him.
“CHOOSE!”
DAW Novels from S. ANDREW SWANN
Fantasy:
BROKEN CRESCENT
THE DRAGONS OF THE CUYAHOGA
GOD’S DICE
Fiction:
ZIMMERMAN’S ALGORITHM
Science Fiction:
HOSTILE TAKEOVER:
PROFITEER (#1)
PARTISAN (#2)
REVOLUTIONARY (#3)
THE MOREAU NOVELS:
FORESTS OF THE NIGHT (#1)
EMPERORS OF THE TWILIGHT (#2)
SPECTERS OF THE DAWN (#3)
FEARFUL SYMMETRIES (#4)
Copyright © 2004 by Steven Swiniarski.
All Rights Reserved.
DAW Book Collectors No. 1293.
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BOOK ONE
Long after the great and terrible battles, long after the world had been broken by the forces Ghad himself had created, Ghad walked between the world and the shadow of the world to see what there was to be seen. At length he came across a man-child crying in the wilderness. Ghad took on the form of an old woman and approached the man-child.
“Why do you cry such bitter tears?” asked Ghad.
“I cannot work the fields, and the College will not take me. My parents abandoned me here.”
Ghad frowned. “Listen, child, and I will teach you what the College will not.” And, because it pleased Ghad to do so, he taught the man-child words of power beyond the knowledge of the most learned of men.
The man-child returned to his village and spoke such words that the houses of his parents, his uncles, and his grandfathers were consumed with fire.
And, because Ghad hated man, Ghad was pleased.
—The Book of Ghad and Man,
Volume II, Chapter 105
CHAPTER ONE
ARMSMASTER Ehrid Kharyn was the highest civil authority in the city of Manhome. His offices reflected that authority. They occupied an entire floor on top of the tallest tower in the city outside the College itself.
Either side of the Armsmaster’s office opened onto a balcony circumnavigating the tower. The great balcony overlooked the mainland on one side, the ocean on the other. From this spot, Ehrid Kharyn had almost complete autonomy to act in the Monarch’s name, deploying forces, guarding the borders, enforcing the laws of man in an area that stretched beyond either visible horizon.
Almost.
Standing in front of Ehrid was an elderly man, masked and robed, who was busy demonstrating the limits of the Armsmaster’s power.
“Need I remind you that you are pledged to aid the College of Man in all things?” The old man’s voice was flat and lacked emotion. It was a tone that the scholars of the College tended to affect. The masters more so than the acolytes. And this old man wore the elaborate inlaid mask of a master.
Ehrid knew the mask, if not the person behind it. The jeering demon face fixed a crimson scowl at him, inlaid with gold and ivory. It was the unique mask of the Venerable Master of the Manhome College—by extension, the entire College of Man.
“I understand the prerogative of the College in matters of theology. But your request goes beyond that prerogative.” Ehrid was a bear of a man, nearly six feet tall and, dressed as he was in the full crimson and black regalia of his office, at least two thirds as wide. Diplomacy did not come easily to him, and if he had faced anyone else, the hard edge of his words would cause opposition to shrivel, and his adversary to make an abrupt obsequious retreat.
Unfortunately, to the College of Man, a chosen representative of the Monarch was only slightly better than a ghadi servant.
Worse, the ghadi have no pride to swallow.
“There is no call for emotional displays, Master Ehrid.”
There were no appeals, even to the Monarch himself. Something both of them were quite awa
re of. Ehrid knew that he was lucky that they allowed him even the illusion of power. The Venerable Master Scholar could, literally with a single word, remove Ehrid from his position as Armsmaster of Manhome, if not from existence itself.
But it wasn’t in Ehrid’s nature to simply acquiesce.
“This isn’t emotion. It is good sense. I cannot have my men searching for demons under every ghadi rock. Who will man the gates, keep the watch, maintain the peace when I have half my force scattered from here to Zorion?”
“You will manage normal operations.”
Much as Ehrid might pretend differently, he knew that even the Monarch himself would not directly oppose the College in anything. Still, Ehrid tried to influence his visitor. “You expect a stranger, but you cannot describe him. With the powers you have, I would think you could find this stranger yourself.”
“Think what you may. We need your men.”
Ehrid bit back his words. He wasn’t a diplomat, but he did know where the limits were. No one could achieve any secular rank, especially in Manhome, without knowing exactly how far the College could be pushed.
He had reached that point. “Of course, my guard is fully at your disposal. I just wished you to be aware of the consequences of reassigning so many guardsmen.” The words were conciliatory, but it was beyond Ehrid to sound pleased with the outcome.
“We are aware. The College will finance the hire of additional men if they are needed. However, the men on patrol outside the city must be experienced, competent, and know well the law.”
“Of course.” Ehrid gritted his teeth. “Is there anything else the College desires?”
“No.” The Venerable Master turned and strode from Ehrid’s chambers, descending the stairs without once looking back. Not even offering a token gesture recognizing Ehrid’s authority or the authority of the Monarch.
Please, may Ghad avert his gaze.
When the Venerable Master was gone, another figure appeared, walking in from the balcony. He wore the robes of an acolyte, and a featureless mask that normally indicated someone of the lowest caste of the College of Man—though, even if Ehrid did not know the man, he would have known better just from the acolyte’s confident bearing.
“The College asks for no small service,” spoke the acolyte in a half amused voice.
“You observed?”
“You expected any less from me?”
Ehrid grunted. “I will defer to you in the arcane arts, but it strikes me as reckless for you to stand so close to an officer of the College. Much less the Venerable Master himself.”
“Trust, dear Ehrid, they are so comfortable in power that the opposition of one such as I simply does not occur to them. Even should old Red Mask suspect any treachery, I am more adept and longer studied than he is. Settle your fears.”
“I have been wrapped in your web too long to have those fears. But I fear losing use of my guard in a half blind ghadi hunt. What phantoms do they chase nowadays?”
The plain-masked acolyte shook his head. “Do not dismiss the College’s phantoms lightly, Master Ehrid.”
Ehrid frowned and walked past the acolyte and leaned on the railing overlooking the ocean. Below him, half of Manhome sprawled and spilled over itself, crowding the plateau beneath Ehrid’s feet. “I have seen much lost because the College fears the invisible. I believe in threats I can touch and see. But the College will go to the World’s End to capture a thought, a myth, a dream. How should my guards arrest a dream?”
“I know what they seek, and I suspect it should be more tangible than a dream.”
“What should the Monarch have me do, then?”
“Do as the College bids you. But, of course, inform me of anything your guard might find on their behalf.”
“What do you expect us to find?”
“Perhaps nothing. Perhaps something.”
CHAPTER TWO
SOMEONE was stalking Nate Black. What do you do now? Nate thought while he stared at the flickering screen. The apartment was dark, his roommate asleep. The only sounds were the soft whir of the trio of fans on Nate’s over-clocked Athalon PC, the sound of Chuck snoring to himself deep in the bowels of the apartment, and the soft purr of Tux curled up in Nate’s lap.
It was three-thirty in the morning, and the windows were all dark, except the one window facing the street. From that window came the sterile mercury glow of a streetlight.
Nate read the e-mail for the tenth or fifteenth time.
Subject: warning
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 00:00:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: @
To: Nate Black [email protected]
they know azrael, take the road that is offered.
A single one-line message.
Nate’s hands shook, and he rubbed his temples. It’s been over six years . . .
Tux stretched and let out a feline yawn before snuggling deeper into Nate’s lap.
“Mind games, it’s only fucking mind games.”
Nate carefully looked at the header of the message, to assure himself that, like the last two, it had no header information at all. Nothing.
@ was good at covering his tracks. Not only did he delete everything but the cryptic “@” sign from his return address—no grand achievement, any idiot could spoof the From: line in an e-mail—but he also methodically erased all the header information. That was scary. It also shouldn’t have been possible. The only way Nate could imagine someone eliminating all the routing information from an e-mail would be to hack the mail server at Case and write the message directly in Nate’s inbox.
That meant that either @ was a good hacker in his own right, which did not reassure Nate. Or @ was on the Case Western IS staff, which would probably be worse.
Nate was very careful to delete the message from his machine. Then he telnetted to the mail server, and checked to make sure that it had been erased from there as well. Just having the name, Azrael, on his hard drive—anyone’s hard drive—made Nate nervous.
Azrael had done stupid, dangerous things and hadn’t been caught. Even though Azrael had ceased to exist six years ago, getting caught was the thing that Nate was most afraid of.
He shut down the computer. Firewall or not, he wasn’t leaving his box up on a live DSL connection unsupervised, not with @ out there.
“Mind games,” Nate whispered to Tux.
Chuck was still snoring in the back somewhere.
He shooed Tux off his lap and walked over to the kitchen. He opened the fridge and stared inside. On his shelf was a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew, rye bread, cold cuts, and a box of Velveeta. On Chuck’s shelf was a 12-pack of Budweiser, a bottle of Heineken, a six-pack of Zima, and a paper bag from Taco Bell.
Nate grabbed the Heineken. He didn’t drink, but for once he felt he needed one. Besides, Chuck still owed him a five spot for the gas bill.
Since the bulb was out in the kitchen, Nate held the fridge open with his foot so he had light to hunt down a bottle opener.
He walked out into the living room and sat down on the couch, under the glare of the streetlight. He popped the top off the beer and it bounced off his knee to rattle on the hardwood floor. Tux shot by him, chasing after the bottle cap as if it was suddenly the most urgent thing in his life.
Nate took a long pull from the bottle, then he held it up against his forehead.
“What do you do?” he asked no one. “What do you do when someone is after you and you can’t call the cops?”
Damn @.
Damn Azrael.
“I’m fine, Mom,” Nate lied. He shouldered the phone to his ear as he pulled on a pair of black jeans.
“I just haven’t heard from you all week.”
“I’m in the middle of midterms, you know that.”
Nate rummaged in the pile of clothes next to his bed and pulled out a red T-shirt that looked the least grungy. It advertised a local band called “The Electric Flaming Jesus Baby.” The initials E.F.J.B. hovered over a Derek Hess rendering of a burning nativit
y scene.
“You’re still planning on coming home for Thanksgiving?”
“Yeah.” He wanted to get off the phone, but he didn’t want to let on that he had anything on his mind other than midterms.
Mom, you know all those years you were worried that I spent too much time in my room? Well, you see, I was committing a whole host of felonies, some of which might carry a twenty-to-life sentence since they rewrote the rules after 9/11.
“How’s Sis?” Nate said, desperately changing the subject.
“Oh, Natalie just got acceptance letters back from Antioch and Oberlin. She’s so excited. . . .”
Nate nodded and made appropriate monosyllabic noises as he listened to his sister’s academic progress. There was a surreal element to it. The six-year gulf between them had seemed vast all his life, and now it struck him that some of the girls he’d dated recently were only a year older than Natalie, at most.
That realization actually made him feel farther away from home.
“She’ll be there, right?”
“Where?”
“Thanksgiving dinner.”
“Of course? Why wouldn’t she be there?”
“She’s eighteen now, she might have made other plans.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Sure I am, Mom. I got to get to class, though. Love you.”
“Love you, too. Are—”
“Bye, Mom.”
“Bye.”
Nate hung up half convinced that his mother knew all about Azrael.
Azrael was dead, six years dead.
Nate kept telling himself that.
He had methodically erased all his own records of Azrael, down to formatting and overwriting all his hard drives—twice—as well as shredding and burning the hard copy associated with his alter ego. Nate even hacked on to the ISPs where Azrael kept accounts, deleting all record of the handle. He had delved into archives, trying to erase any messages that had him as a sender or recipient.
