‘I think you had best take the mark, Magnificence.’ There was urgency in the grand vizier’s voice as he looked at the bodies on the floor.
‘I …’ He watched the duke’s expression change from fearful to curious. ‘Will it protect me against that?’ He motioned to the two dead men.
‘I do not think so,’ said Didryk. He looked shaken. ‘But it would protect you against other attacks by lesser austeres.’
‘I will go first,’ Azeem offered, and stepped before the Fryth duke, who stood almost a head taller. Didryk looked down at Azeem, and after a pause he bent down to pick up his pot of greasepaint, dipped his finger in it and marked Azeem’s forehead.
As Sarmin watched the black marks disappear into his grand vizier’s skin he felt uneasy.
‘If you are prepared, Your Majesty?’ Didryk asked, turning his way.
Sarmin waved him forward and Didryk touched his forehead with the cold grease. ‘Just a line here, and this one … There – finished, Your Majesty.’ Didryk stepped back and the world changed.
Sarmin blinked and the room came into focus, altered and beautiful. Tangled shapes and skewed lines revealed themselves to him, resolving in his vision, shifting into place with a flash of blue. Symbols shone from each guard’s forehead, bright and clean, finished with twists that led into tendrils of light, and beyond all that, the world itself, tangible and real but also defined by twists and curves, formations, structures.
Sarmin took a breath. The touch of the warding symbol against his forehead had woken his eyes to the pattern. He saw the mark gleaming on Didryk’s wrist and the sickly green that was Banreh’s health, weighing it down, and the duke’s wide, knowing eyes.
Now Sarmin knew what Didryk had wanted – why he had come here. All those tendrils of light led back to him. This was what he had hoped for, to be allowed to mark everyone, to link each person to himself. But what he had meant to do with it – whether he had Helmar’s strength to twist each person’s will to his own – that Sarmin could not tell. Was Didryk responsible for the attack that had just occurred?
He raised a hand, intending to cut those tendrils away, to leave Didryk isolated – but he found he lacked the power to do so. To his dismay he found not everything had been returned to him. He could see the designs, but he could not alter them. He needed Didryk as much as he had before.
Sarmin stood, disguising both his new knowledge and his powerlessness. ‘Join me,’ he said. ‘I would show you something.’ With that he turned and led the Fryth from the throne room, Ne-Seth and the other sword-sons falling in behind them as Sarmin began the long walk to his old tower. He offered no explanation to the duke as they travelled through the palace, and his own mind wandered along other paths, including to Mesema. She had been right about this – the pattern had returned to him – but she had been wrong about trusting Didryk.
The damage done by the earthquake was not noticeable where they walked unless one knew where to look: here, a patched wall, there, a new pillar, carved with images of Mirra, set to right the floor above.
At the base of Sarmin’s old tower Didryk hesitated, looking at the charred steps and the gathered sword-sons, perhaps wishing he had not left his guards behind. ‘Where are we going, Your Majesty?’
‘I want to show you my room, where I met your cousin the marke.’ Sarmin waved the sword-sons off. ‘Wait here.’
‘Your Majesty,’ interjected Ne-Seth, tugging at his well-shaped beard, ‘at least let me ensure the room is safe. After what just happened—’
‘Of course.’ Sarmin waved Ne-Seth ahead and he ran up the stairs. Very soon he was out of sight above them and Sarmin began his own climb.
Didryk followed him up the long, curving stair. Sarmin paused to rest from time to time, looking out of the narrow windows set into the curved walls. Each turn lent him a different glimpse of courtyard, wall or city, with no context in which to place the brief views. He thought that even when his view was constant and of wide breadth it did not give him any context either.
At last he reached the top, where Ne-Seth opened the door to him, letting him know the room was safe. He stepped in and looked about at the dusty carpet, the ruined walls, bare of gods, and the bed-ropes now hanging slack. Didryk followed him in, looking around curiously, and he shut the latch.
‘This is where I was imprisoned during the time of my brother’s rule. On the night of my father’s death they brought me here, and from this window I saw my other brothers die in the courtyard.’ He stood at the still-bare window lined with pieces of jagged alabaster. Grada had broken this window more than a year ago, but he never had it repaired.
Didryk said nothing, just listened as Sarmin kept talking.
This was his moment to Push and hope the tiles fell in his favour. There was no more time. ‘When my brother died, my cousin Tuvaini became emperor and after him, Helmar, the Pattern Master. It was he I killed to take the throne for myself.’ Sarmin turned to face the duke. ‘But this was my room: it was where I was formed, where I became Sarmin the Saviour, where I first met my bride. And here I remained until the demands of the palace forced me elsewhere. It was here I spoke with your cousin Marke Kavic, and hoped to become his friend. But he died before those hopes could grow into truth.’
Didryk blinked. ‘Azeem said that my cousin fell to the pale sickness that swept your palace.’
‘Kavic was murdered,’ said Sarmin, and the duke made a noise in his throat, his hand held open at his side as if readying for the touch of a weapon. Sarmin continued, ‘I thought that by killing Helmar I had vanquished the pattern, but it was not so. It used my hand to kill your cousin, and it opened a wound in the city that threatened to destroy us all.’
‘You … killed my cousin?’
‘Not me. One of the Many.’ My false brother.
Didryk let out a breath and seemed to waver, his right hand still hovering near his empty sword-sheath, the left pressed over his heart. ‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because I do not wish to lie to you. Because I want you to understand the dangers we have faced – the dangers we still face. Yrkmir approaches, but we are threatened by much more now. I stretch out my hand to you in friendship, knowing that you may bite.’ He held out Tuvaini’s dacarba, hilt-first: an offering. ‘If you are going to bite, then bite now.’
Didryk took the weapon. First he laid it in his palm, then he flipped it in the air and caught it with a fighter’s expertise. ‘For a long time I have dreamed of carving open the Cerani emperor,’ he said, his blue eyes far away. ‘When my austeres were tortured to death, I imagined this. When my city burned, I imagined this.’
Sarmin stepped up to him and pushed his chest against the three-sided tip of the blade. He looked up at Didryk. ‘I must fix the god’s wounds. They spread through my empire like open sores. I must find Austere Adam and those he has taken from me. I must hold off Yrkmir, protect the Tower and create a lasting peace so that my people – my wife, my son – may live. And to do so I must put all of my tiles on the board right now and make my Push. If I cannot succeed, if you will not help me, I might as well die, and at your hand as any.’
Didryk held the weapon against Sarmin’s chest, his gaze on the place where the metal pressed against skin. ‘This is not what I had planned.’
Sarmin did not move, did not back away from the sharp end of the blade. ‘What did you plan, Duke? You have all those people tethered to you – what would you have had them do? Was that attack in the throne room yours?’
Didryk looked into his eyes. ‘It was not. My plan was to destroy your city after you had destroyed Yrkmir,’ he said. ‘I would have had your people tear down every brick and stone with their bare hands.’
‘As Yrkmir did to Fryth after the defeat of the Iron Duke.’ It made sense. ‘Your cousin Kavic told me. Here in this room.’
‘Did he?’ Didryk’s breath whispered against Sarmin’s face. Sarmin nodded, and Didryk lowered the dacarba. ‘As soon as I met you, I knew – if you
had been like Arigu, I never would have hesitated, but once I met you I knew that I would – hesitate.’ He flipped the dacarba, grasped it by the blade and held it out to Sarmin hilt-first. ‘Your turn.’
‘I would not kill you.’ Sarmin tucked the blade into its sheath. ‘I will not even pretend to that.’
Didryk fell to his knees, his hands over his eyes.
‘Will you help me?’ asked Sarmin.
‘Will you release Chief Banreh?’
‘I cannot – but he will remain alive for now; Arigu and I are in agreement on that.’
Didryk leaned back on his heels and lowered his hands to his sides. Sarmin had thought him in tears, but his eyes were dry. ‘When you were imprisoned here, you must have felt that your world had been lost – one day you were a boy, playing with your brothers, and the next, here you were, trapped in this room.’
‘And when I came out, everything was different.’
‘I have lost my world, too,’ said Didryk, ‘and my brothers. Even if I go back, it will never be the same.’
‘You meant to die for this.’
‘That was what I expected.’
A slight – though important – difference in meaning. Sarmin noticed Didryk’s black hair shone in the sunlight the same way as Nessaket’s did.
‘I never wanted a war – any war.’ Sarmin stepped forwards. ‘Are we allies, then?’
Didryk held out his right hand in a gesture Sarmin did not understand, but after a moment he grasped it in both of his.
‘We are allies,’ said Didryk. Then his eyes went towards the window and he frowned.
‘What is it?’ asked Sarmin, following his gaze but seeing nothing other than sky.
Didryk stood very still as if listening to a distant conversation. At last he turned back to Sarmin and pulled his hand away. ‘You do not sense the patterns moving? Yrkmir has arrived.’
38
Sarmin
Sarmin stood on the outer wall, the second pillar of empire, a guarantee the ancients had built for themselves with stone and prayer. These ramparts gave the empire the time and leverage to outwait any threat. With the river inside and the enemy out on the sands, Cerana had time to hide, to call for aid, to pick off soldiers with arrow or catapult. Only one army had ever breached the walls and looted Nooria, and that enemy was Yrkmir.
But now the Great Storm threatened too; the northwest horizon had gone, replaced with a blankness that he could look at only from the corner of his eye. He felt its hunger even from this distance.
Sarmin had been out of the palace only a few times since his release from the tower room, and each time had brought sorrow: Beyon’s tomb, dissolving; Pelar growing pale on Qalamin’s deck; the crack in the Tower. Now he stood on the wall and waited for Yrkmir. His gaze fell beyond the market-stalls and the last well, beyond the rise of the great dunes, all casting dark shadows. On his left Moreth crouched, using Rorswan’s senses, and on his right, Mura reached out her arms, her wind-spirit Yomawa seeking any disturbance in the air. Behind him stood Grada. He was never without her now, not since the first austere had shown he could turn anyone, even a Blue Shield, to his will.
Moreth spoke in a voice like tumbling stone. ‘Movement in the sands.’
‘Where?’ Around him the archers readied their bows and soldiers stood by their loaded catapults; everywhere he looked he could see men ready for a fight, their hands set, their eyes carefully turned away from the north. Didryk’s protective wards gleamed from their foreheads. And yet the desert lay smooth and undisturbed before them. Sarmin squinted against the afternoon sun, but still he saw only sand.
Where was Yrkmir?
Mura made a noise in her throat and he lowered the glass. Rivers of blue light ran before the walls, flowing together, dividing and rejoining once again, retreating towards the distant dunes. Shapes of green and red lit and died beneath the sun, and the desert shifted and wove into the shapes of a thousand men with eyes, mouths and noses formed of sand. At first Sarmin thought them golems, but they stepped forwards, shedding their earthly veil and revealed themselves to be men of flesh, wearing uniforms and brandishing weapons.
‘They moved through the sand,’ said Moreth, ‘but they came from the Storm.’ From all parts of the wall Sarmin heard murmurs, his soldiers losing their nerve in the face of Yrkmir’s magic, but he heard their officers too, their voices strict and calm, showing themselves unafraid.
‘Moreth,’ said Sarmin, keeping his voice low, ‘can they travel through our walls that way?’
‘No; they can only move through the desert that way because the sand moves. Stone will not part for them as it will for me.’ He was still speaking with the voice of Rorswan.
And yet they had travelled through the Storm: that meant he knew for certain now that it was possible for a human – not just water or fire – to enter the Storm and not be harmed by it.
An austere stepped out from a line of red-clad soldiers. He was all white – white hair, white robes, white skin – and he took a long look at the walls, considered the men who pointed their arrows his way and turned his face to Sarmin. The moment stretched. The archers’ arms began to tremble. Finally the austere lifted a white flag that had been hidden among the folds of his pristine robes.
‘He wants to talk.’ Sarmin breathed a silent sigh of relief for the delay in fighting, but the strange austere worried him. Adam had looked like a warrior; Didryk looked like a duke. This man looked a full mage – perhaps he was the mage: the first austere.
He motioned to Mura. ‘Come. You will protect me from arrows.’
‘We need Farid, Magnificence,’ she said. ‘He will know if they cast a pattern against you.’
In truth he did not require Farid for that now, but it would look well to have two mages standing behind him. The Tower had not lost its reputation yet, and the gesture would not be lost on the white-clad austere below him. The young pattern mage appeared, breathing hard as he came running up the steps to the wall. He looked as if he had not slept for days.
Seeing Sarmin, he fell on his knees, pressing his forehead to a stair.
‘Rise. You are late,’ Sarmin said, ‘but not too late to join me and watch for patterns.’
‘Magnificence,’ said Farid, and fell in behind him with Grada and the wind-sworn. Sarmin looked back at the wall where Moreth stood. He had three mages left and he was about to take two of them outside the wall, leaving the inexperienced rock-sworn as the sole guardian of the Tower should anything go amiss.
Let us hope it does not come to that.
At the base of the wall stood the great Western Gates – three doors in all, with murder-holes above the paths between them – but Sarmin knew from the Book of War that more than thick stone protected the city. Ancient and powerful spells guarded the wall. It took some time to pass through the gate, walking through the shadows, with the desert ahead of him, the sun, sitting low in the west, blinding.
At last Sarmin stepped out into the light and found the austere waiting there. Even the man’s eyes were pale. There were no wards on him that Sarmin could discern, no patterns in the sand.
‘Emperor Sarmin.’ He bowed. ‘I am Second Austere Harrol.’ Behind him, a host of archers held their bows at the ready. Sarmin could see no other austeres; either they crouched beyond his sight, drawing patterns in the sand, or the Yrkmen had not brought them. He thought it unlikely they had been left behind.
‘Second Austere? Not the First?’
Harrol smiled, his thin lips stretching over white teeth. ‘The First is concerned with things greater than earth and sky and men. I am the one sent to speak to you.’
‘So speak. What is the meaning of this aggression?’
‘We assail you? What did Cerana mean when it burned Mondrath to the ground?’ Harrol’s eyes focused somewhere beyond Sarmin, as if there were a truth more compelling, a world more appealing, than the one that stood before him. ‘Let us not play those games, Emperor. I come to make you an offer.’
&n
bsp; ‘Make it, then.’
Behind him Farid was silent; he must not see any patterns either. Grada was also silent, but that was her way. If she had to cut someone down she would do it with little noise.
The second austere gave a bow. ‘We offer you a chance at paradise: to accept Mogyrk’s path. You have three days.’
Sarmin did not reply.
‘We know you are keeping Second Austere Adam prisoner. We want him returned, and our Duke of Fryth also.’
‘You are mistaken; Second Austere Adam is not my prisoner.’ Sarmin wondered what it meant that Yrkmir did not know the man’s whereabouts, but he used his words to make them wonder even more, throw them into confusion if possible. ‘Nor is the duke. If they prefer to join you, of course I will allow it.’
‘We will expect them,’ said Harrol with a slight bow. ‘Three days, Emperor.’
‘You will have my answer in two,’ Sarmin replied. With that he turned and made his way through the dark passage back into Nooria. The mages said nothing as they walked.
Suddenly he remembered Ashanagur’s words: Mogyrk blinds the Tower. Was there something here the mages could not see? He wished Mesema were with him.
Arigu fell in with him and Grada as they walked to the carriage. ‘My recommendation, Magnificence,’ he said.
‘Speak.’
‘We wait until night, and then attack them.’
‘We are in a three-day truce,’ said Sarmin.
‘Why do you think they want three days? Never give the enemy all the time they ask for. They will move south, try to cross the river and surround us. I say we take them off-guard now. We’re ready for it. All my soldiers are marked and protected.’
It was dishonourable, but such attacks were discussed thoroughly in the Book of War, along with full consideration of the ethics and benefits. The question was what Yrkmir might do in those three days.
Arigu waited for an answer. Sarmin was disinclined to take the man’s advice, but he knew it to be sound – that was why he had wanted the general returned to him in the first place.
Tower & Knife 03 - The Tower Broken Page 24