Tower & Knife 03 - The Tower Broken (31 page)

‘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.’

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.’

‘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.

‘I will consider it.’ He climbed into his carriage and looked out at the general, who put on a diffident air.

‘And the other thing, Your Majesty. Have you considered my offer?’ Grada climbed into the carriage and sat next to Sarmin, but the general paid her no heed.

‘That was only yesterday, General. I have hardly had the time.’

‘But I—’

Impatience overcame him. ‘If you must have an answer now, then it is no.’

The general bowed with a grim expression. ‘Magnificence.’

Sarmin closed his carriage door and the horses began to move. He had never been in a carriage before, more of a hot box that swayed and made him ill. He should have been more politic with the general; he needed Arigu more now than ever before. But he had said he would never raise another woman to Mesema’s position. She was Pelar’s mother, his princess, the woman he loved. But he remembered that his mother had warned him of love, and the air inside the carriage stuck in his throat. Would he be an emperor tossed aside by his own emotions, left alone on the rocks like Satreth II or Kamrak, Uthman’s son? He had no choice but to wait and see.

Govnan had been walking towards the Storm, not quickly, for his old legs did not allow that. With every step he had to consider Metrishet, Ashanagur and the others; he had to control them, watch their movements. He had estimated that he would reach the void in another half-day, but while the sun was high in the sky the emptiness rushed forwards as if answering the call of a great pattern-work. He froze, expecting to be consumed by the Storm and for his efreet be loosed upon the world, but it stopped several lengths away. He faced west, not looking at the vast Storm, which would fill his vision and empty his mind if he turned his eyes north – but he could
feel
it, against his skin and deep in his bones.

It
wanted
– it
craved
– it
searched
. The blankness begged for colour, form, vitality.

The elementals would survive as Meksha’s water did, unseen and unclaimed by the Storm. Metrishet, Ashanagur and the others would form a barrier between the god’s wound and Nooria, their flames spinning a net of heat and colour. Govnan presented the image to the fire-spirits and willed them to make it so. They would need to spread their fire both wide and high, standing between the Storm, the northern wall and the river road that led down to the Storm Gate. Govnan set his will
against theirs, and reluctantly, the spirits complied, weaving threads of fire so bright against the dullness that Govnan was forced to keep his eyes closed. He did not know whether the work took an hour, a day or an entire week; his own senses, joined with the efreet’s, had become alien to him.

The wound met the first fiery web-piece and probed, searching for something to deconstruct, to undo – but it found nothing, as if it had reached the end of the world. In fact, it had only reached something the god did not recognise, so the fire worked only as a barrier. To heal the wound would require something more.

Govnan’s legs shook. It felt a year since he had bound Ashanagur for the second time, though he knew it could not be that long. The sun was so distant and yet its power so close, warming his shoulders, hot on the skin of his face, and he knew what he controlled now was only a small part of what fire promised and threatened; so small was man against the forces of earth and sky.

His mind had wandered, and already Ashanagur moved – only a finger-span, a test of Govnan’s will – but it had abandoned its work on the net and the emptiness flowed through the space like water through a broken dam.

We must not be distracted. The web must be unbroken
. He spoke for all of them, his voice foremost, but not alone.

Metrishet answered,
We are hungry. To the west there is flesh
.

Govnan explored the sense of his bound spirits, not with sight, smell or hearing, but an inner one that rushed along the sands, picking up on love-charms buried deep within the dunes, pattern-marks and old wards. As he reached out, the city’s wall flared to life, its ancient spells gleaming with power. The efreet sensed magic above all else besides fuel: anything
combustible they perceived with a yearning, and during his many years with Ashanagur he had developed the ability to sniff out the many forms of its food. Now Govnan sensed the meat Metrishet desired to the south and west: row upon row of soldiers, a thousand and a thousand more.
Yrkmir
. And beneath them were patterns, not one great design, but a thousand small marks and circles, lighting his mind with the full force of the One God. He gasped, at last realising why the Storm had shifted so rapidly.

It is not Cerani flesh
, Metrishet continued.
You will not mind if we eat it
. Not a question.

Govnan could not allow it; there would be no Nooria to protect if he allowed the void to flow past the Worship Gate. Sarmin had been clear with his orders, and so Govnan sent a negative along his bond to Metrishet.
We stay here
. But he wondered whether the emperor had a plan, and what magical defences he had managed. Helmar had come close to destroying them once before; now all of Yrkmir’s power stood in the desert outside the western wall. He shivered, though the late afternoon sun beat down on him. He had made his choice. He would remain at his station.