As Grada took her place beside Sarmin and leaned down, examining the scroll, Sarmin looked up into the hall – and saw one of his sword-sons turn, place a hand on the hilt of his hachirah and begin to draw it.
‘Grada,’ he said, but it was too late for her to help; the man had already drawn his weapon and clashed blades with someone in the corridor. He heard Ne-Seth give a shout of surprise; in an instant Grada was at the door, the Knife in her hand. He heard a thud as someone fell to the rug in the corridor.
A sword-son entered, a bloody hachirah in his hand, his eyes black as night. A pattern, dark and malicious, had been laid over him, greasy, iridescent half-moons and circles rising from the floor to infect him like rot.
‘Ne-Seth!’ Sarmin called out, his stomach turning with worry, ‘Ne-Seth!’ He heard an answering groan from the corridor.
At the sight of Grada the infected sword-son slashed down at her, but hachirahs were heavy and slow to wield, and Grada was fast. She dodged away from his swing, spun and got inside the reach of his sword before he had even lifted it again. She slid the blade between his ribs with a grating noise.
The sword-son’s eyes cleared to brown as the pattern shrank away from him like a dying vine and disappeared into the floor. He blinked and looked at Sarmin, a question on his mouth, just as another sword-son came behind him and cut through his neck in a gleaming sweep of metal. His head toppled away and hid the floor with a thud, followed immediately by his body. Blood pooled around the man’s severed neck. Sarmin knew the sword-son had been himself in that last moment. He had not known what had been done with his hands, just as Sarmin had not known his own hands had murdered Marke Kavic.
Sarmin felt ill. He pressed a hand against his mouth, stood and turned to the window, taking deep breaths. To his right he could see Govnan’s fires, rising over wall and building, blinding against the night. He knew the blankness lay beyond them, a void against the stars. He closed his eyes.
‘Has the truce ended?’ Azeem asked. Sarmin remembered Arigu’s recommendation to attack first. Would anything have gone differently if he had?
‘Azeem: go, do as I asked and send the Blue Shields to the Holies.’ He did not hear the grand vizier leave, but he knew that he had. The buzzing filled his ears again; he shook it off and ran into the hallway to check on Ne-Seth. The sword-son was alive: a line of red ran from his shoulder to his groin, but it was a shallow cut.
‘Take him to Assar,’ he commanded, and the remaining sword-sons lifted him in their arms and carried him away.
He considered the spray of red on the wall. ‘Grada, I can no longer wait to question the prisoner.’ Didryk had said he did not know how to stop this kind of attack, and Sarmin believed him. But Adam was a second austere, and he might know secrets that were beyond the duke’s rank. The leader of the Mogyrk church – the ruler of Yrkmir – might be testing the Tower, and only Sarmin knew enough to begin to answer the challenge. He would have to try to meet it with all the force the Tower might have had in a better time. If the first austere had known how few the mages were, and how helpless, he would not have held back, testing and evaluating their abilities with his small offensives. He would have attacked outright, and he would have won. But Govnan’s fires in the north must give an entirely different impression of their power. Twice now the high mage had saved them.
Sarmin led his Knife to the dungeon, past the tapestries and mosaics and golden doorknobs, all of them two things now – what he saw, and the pattern that defined them – all the way to the servants’ halls and the steps down to the dungeon. The steps were long and dark and cold, and he remembered waking to himself in one of the oubliettes, a skull in his hand.
The Blue Shield guard lifted two lanterns from the wall and guided him down a row of cells. ‘Same one as the last prisoner, Your Majesty,’ he said, hooking one lantern on the wall. It lit the inside of the small cell, and Sarmin recognised the dirty pallet and the slop-bucket against the wall. But Adam did not recline as Banreh had; he crouched against the floor like a cat, his eyes alert and wary.
Sarmin made no small talk. ‘Why did you let my brother go?’
‘Because I could not allow him to be raised by Yrkmir as had been planned. The first austere is a heretic. He has no wish to bring souls to paradise, only to destroy them. He wants everything to end – all souls to be destroyed. I thought it better to let your brother go home, and to bring all of you to Mogyrk.’
Sarmin gave no indication how he felt about that. ‘Tell me: how does the first austere send a pattern to take over a man’s will?’
Adam cocked his head. ‘Don’t you know how Helmar did it, Your Majesty?’
In fact, he did not. He had known only how to remove someone from the pattern, as he had done with Grada – and now he could not even do that. ‘But the first austere has no great pattern to work with, as Helmar did.’
‘No. He can take only one man at a time, and it requires all his concentration.’
‘So you do know.’
‘Only in theory. I have never seen it.’ Adam stood and brushed the dust from his red robes.
‘Is there a ward against it?’
‘Will you ward every man in the palace now a second time, with Yrkmir at the gate and the first austere sending his attacks?’ Adam smiled. ‘I do not think you have the time. Your only choice is to kill him.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Somewhere in the city.’
That much Sarmin knew, and he hit the iron bars in frustration. ‘Where?’
‘That I do not know – but perhaps you could draw him out. The emperor would be a tempting target for him.’
‘That is why he came, Your Majesty,’ Grada hissed. ‘He wants to trick you into being killed or captured.’
‘Do I?’ Adam turned out his hands, palms up. ‘Or am I just seeing clearly? We will all die soon enough when the Scar takes us. The question is only how we will die. I would think an emperor of your quality would want to die well.’
‘There is no point to this, Your Majesty.’ Grada paced towards the iron bars, fingering the hilt of her twisted Knife.
‘Very well,’ said Adam, crouching again, ‘but if you want to know more about Mogyrk – about how your death can be transformed into everlasting life – I will be happy to talk with you again, Magnificence.’
Sarmin backed away. He thought the man sincere. That was what disturbed him.
47
Farid
A courier had delivered a scroll-case full of parchments from Duke Didryk, and Farid took them to the Tower library to examine them. The duke had drawn as many symbols as he could on the ten sheets – likely the ones most used by pattern mages – and Farid set to memorising them: Stone, Fire, Air, Blood, Water, Wood, Bone, and more – two hundred and forty in all – spread out under his fingertips. He judged that it would take him a few hours to get to know them, but once he’d done that, he could start to analyse the patterns Govnan had shown him, including the one he had drawn on the wall while dreaming. Those shapes surrounded him, intrigued him, teased him, but though his fingers itched, he refused to put the spell into action – not until he knew what it was he had built, for it might do anything, even destroy the Tower.
Mura was still at the wall. Moreth had returned and was now in the depths somewhere beneath Farid, meditating and practising self-control. Farid wanted nothing to do with the rock-sworn. He sat on a wooden chair and kept his feet from the floor. Never before had he been so aware that the city was built of stone, with barely any bricks or wood. The Tower was magically wrought stone: its floors were stone, its courtyard, stone. He remembered the two men Rorswan had killed, and he shivered.
The sun had set, but Govnan’s fire in the north gave Farid enough light to read by. He had only a short time before it was his turn at the wall, so he turned to the old parchments at last and began to translate them, using the duke’s notations as a guide, his attention entirely taken by patterns until the shapes and lines began to swim before hi
s eyes.
The pattern he had drawn along the walls fluttered and dimmed; the floor undulated with dark warning. He pulled his legs further up onto the chair. Had Moreth lost control? Would Rorswan eat him? But this was no rock-spirit. Black threads twined across the stone, adding obsidian pattern-shapes as it moved: triangle, oval, square. It gleamed with an oily resonance, creeping towards him, its tendrils testing the legs of his chair. He climbed onto the table and looked around at the rest of the furniture. He could go no higher.
The pattern picked up speed, sensing him now, rushing across the seat of the chair and reaching out over the table’s surface. He edged away from it, concentrating on the shapes, on pulling them tight as the duke had taught him, but they seemed to slide out of his grasp, wiggling away from his intent like slippery fish. It touched the wood of the table and now it moved towards him in unhurried fashion, as if its wielder knew he had nowhere to go, until at last it hooked around his ankle. He hissed when it burned his skin. He could feel it winding up his leg and encircling his torso; it was cold now, colder than river water.
His sight went dim. His body relaxed from its fearful pose and his legs slipped from the table. These were not his movements; these were not his feet walking out of the door. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Let me go.’
I cannot. There is work we must do. The voice whispered to him like a lover.
‘Who are you?’
I am the voice of Mogyrk. I am death and life. I am the promise of rebirth.
He moved down the stairs now, his steps sure and confident, his robes no longer a concern.
The traitor Didryk freed you from your fate, but I cannot allow that.
He reached the bottom of the stair and passed the rock-sworn statues.
Here my enemies lie already vanquished. But it is not finished. Not yet.
‘You can’t.’ He hoped the doors might offer a challenge to his captor, but his body was made to heave against it until the left-hand one stood far enough open that he could slip through. Ahead of him he could see the destructive pattern in the courtyard, its shapes twisted, its lines closed. It was all ready to be fixed and pulled loose. The guards, standing along the walls, would not think he was casting a pattern; he would look as if he was out for an evening stroll.
‘No!’ he shouted, but no sound came from him.
The voice laughed and he felt a pull.
Farid came to himself in the courtyard. ‘No,’ he whispered. He looked up at the curved wall of the Tower. Lights flashed up and down its length as ancient wards built into the stone were triggered. Farid felt sure the pattern mage had failed – but then he saw the stone shift, dust rolling from its edges. ‘No!’ He reached for the other pattern, the one in the library. All he knew about that one was that it reached back in time, forwards and backwards. If it could stop this … He reached out with his mind and pulled that pattern too.
He heard the laughter again, fading into the distance. Thank you.
He had only accelerated the destruction. The smooth wall of the Tower crumbled downwards, its many windows collapsing like closing eyes. Moreth was in there, at the bottom, too far to warn, too late to save. The dust washed over Farid like a sandstorm and he scrambled backwards, coughing. A rumble sounded deep in the earth and the courtyard shook. But it was not just the courtyard; the whole city was shaking, reacting to the destruction of the Tower. The highest stones dissolved as they fell, transforming into a white cloud that hovered in the air, and the domed metal roof hit the courtyard floor with a great ringing crack. The bell separated from it and with a dull clang, fell over its collapsed ropes. The lintel around the great brass doors ran away like sand, and the doors fell into the dust without a sound.
All fell silent.
‘Moreth!’ Farid scrambled to the edge of where the Tower had been, but it was too dark to see anything. All the torches that had been lit inside had been snuffed out by the weight of the powdered stone.
‘Moreth!’ The same spell had been cast in the temple of Meksha, and the people inside it had suffocated. He scooped up the dust with his fingers, all the while knowing his efforts were futile.
‘Moreth!’ The Blue Shields ran towards him, shouting for ropes, shovels, wagons—
Farid had blamed the rock-sworn for the death of those two thieves – and now he had killed Moreth. Now he knew what it was like to lose his will to another. They were the same, he and the mage, but it was too late to admit that in any way that mattered. He knelt by the pit of the ruined Tower and held his head in his hands. Time stayed still. He had been playing with the patterns as his sister once played with twine, even knowing they could destroy and kill – for they had killed his mother.
He might have sat there a minute, an hour or an age, preparing the words he would say when he turned himself in to the Blue Shields who surrounded him.
But a plume of dust rose into the air, spurting like a fountain from the pit, spraying the eastern side of the courtyard and he gave a great shout of delight: of course; Moreth was rock-sworn. He could not be killed by stone.
‘Moreth!’ He leaned over the edge and looked at where the lower rooms of the Tower had once been. The dust continued to flow upwards, and slowly the edges of the pit took form. At last Farid caught side of the mage, pale as a ghost for all the dust that clung to his skin, standing in a pile of dissolved stone, wavering in exhaustion.
‘Wait!’ Farid shouted, and he ran to the bell. He started tugging on its ropes, but the enormous bell sat on top of them. At last, with the Blue Shields’ help, he managed to untangle a length long enough to throw to Moreth. Moreth gripped the rope, secured by the bell’s great weight, and puffing and panting, they pulled the mage up.
They all collapsed at the edge, coughing and thanking the gods, until Farid sat up again, a new awareness taking form. ‘What’s down there?’ he asked Moreth.
‘The crack – where the portals were.’
‘The crack …’ He looked over the edge. ‘Can you remove the rest of the dust?’
‘Why?’
‘Just – please?’ Farid’s heart beat against his chest. He knew it wasn’t the crack; there was something else at the bottom of the pit now: something the ancient pattern had brought forth, either from the past or the future.
As the Blue Shields moved around them, looking for what might be salvaged, Moreth sighed and held out a hand, and once again the dust began to empty from the cavity. Farid watched until it was completely gone and Moreth collapsed against the flagstones.
With a jolt Farid realised he should not have overtaxed the mage – he could end up swallowed by stone – but Moreth was already recovering himself. His efforts had been successful. A circular pool was revealed at the bottom, yellow light dancing across its surface, but it was not water that rippled there. Power warmed Farid’s skin, power that drew him like the smell of food after fasting, or the thrill of queenflower, or the touch of the right woman – all of those things together and more. He would go to it. He must go to it. He tugged on the rope to make sure it was still held firmly by the bell, then lowered himself into the pit. The hair on his arms stood on end and his breath caught in his throat.
Above him he heard voices – the Blue Shields asking what he might be doing, Moreth attempting some explanation. Farid held a hand out over the bright circle. This was not molten rock, nor water, nor anything of nature. This was of heaven, powerful and bright, sweet as honey and strong as wine. He heard a Blue Shield shouting down to him, heard Moreth calling his name, but he would answer them later. He stepped up on the copper rim of the pool and looked down into its depths. There he saw glints of green and copper, swimming like fish in the bright haze. He jumped in.
48
Govnan
Govnan felt it, hot as a furnace, bright as the sun, and the efreet felt it too, leaving off their work a moment to turn their senses its way. The potent call of magic rose from the Tower’s courtyard, strong as a river, ancient as a mountain, brighter and more sweet than the spells
coiled into the walls of Nooria. He longed for it as a parched man longs for water, imagined filling himself with its light, wondered at the power he would have if he could only take hold of it. Metrishet let go of its work and flitted in that direction, but Govnan took hold of himself and willed the fire-spirit to stay.
Satreth’s hidden magic has been found.
‘The Reclaimer?’ The emperor who had fought his way back into Nooria and forced the Yrkmen out was the last to see truly powerful mages. Had Yrkmir hidden this magic from the Tower? If so, it was his by right. He turned away again, the temptation biting at him.
We eat. Ashanagur’s voice.
First Kirilatat, then Ashanagur turned from their tasks. Hungry.
Govnan struggled against them, but his will wavered.… Stay to our tasks. The magic will wait for us. But Ashanagur was ancient and clever, and he whispered to the others, just below Govnan’s hearing, urging them to let go, to follow their instincts, to search for the magic, to eat. He even began to whisper to Govnan about the flesh that waited for them to the west, and the bright magic for which he longed.
Desire shook the old man. He fell to his knees. I will bind you again. I will …
Eat?
Govnan ran his hands along Ashanagur’s molten form, feeling its power and emptiness. Yes. Eat.
Ashanagur came closer, his colours shifting with longing, tendrils gleaming violet and green. Yes. I eat. The fire enveloped Govnan in a cascade of light and beauty that he did not have time to fully grasp before his thoughts began to burn away, one and then the next, like leaves in flame.
49
Sarmin
They hurried through the dark, torches held high, the street-stones ragged and uneven under their feet. Grada kept an eye on those around them – any one of them could turn and become the tool of the first austere – and his sword-sons watched the roofs and high walls, wary of archers. They took too many risks in their breathless rush to the Tower, but Sarmin had insisted. He would see what the first austere had wrought.
Tower & Knife 03 - The Tower Broken Page 29