“I-” Sarmin frowned. An image came to him, a man in red, hair white, feet bare, hands empty. Mountains rose about him, mountains such as could never exist, huge beyond imagining. Surely between sky and ground no space sufficient for such enormity existed.
“Emperor Sarmin?” Govnan reached his side before Lurish, unexpected strength in the clawed hands offering support, a shiver in them too, as if he were cold despite the heat.
“I-” He could not speak of the Many he held within his flesh. The council would count it sickness, Helmar’s taint. Already he lacked information others thought he had, was forced to listen carefully for the answers to his missing time.
But he gained memories in recompense for those he did not have, unasked, uninvited: the vision rose again to cover his sight. On the slopes high above the red-robe something moved-a goat? Too large, but as quick, as sure-footed. A man with leather shield, leaping between rocks, diving for the shelter of a crag. With one finger the red-robe traced a symbol, part of a pattern, flicked out before him, quick as quick. Dry bones clattered across the rocks. Dry bones, rags, and a leather shield. Dust hung in the air. “I have heard that they can turn a man’s flesh to dust,” Sarmin said as they helped him into Govnan’s chair.
“Hearing and seeing are different things, my emperor,” Lurish said. “Tales grow in the telling. If the Yrkmen have such power why are they not here, ruling over us?”
A good question to which Sarmin had no good answer. At last he said, “It may be that they were waiting for an invitation. Our war on Fryth may be that invitation.”
Lurish snorted, then remembering himself, bowed low. He spoke facing the flagstones. “No Yrkman has stood with the men of Fryth. They have pulled back at every turn, or simply failed to come to their aid. I tell you that they are weak, Magnificence. An old nation senile before its time, rotten at the core.”
The Book of War directs that when pressed an army that must fall back must not only fall back. Locked in his high room Sarmin had studied that book longer than any general. He knew the work better than the men who wrote it. Always counter-attack.
“I came seeking the high-mage’s wisdom. Why are you here, General Lurish? What are the dry secrets of the Tower to a man of action?” Sarmin struck from a new direction.
Govnan coughed. “I sent word to request the general’s presence, Sarmin. I have something to show him and a request to make.”
“Show me,” Sarmin said.
Govnan bowed as if he had expected no other answer. “There will be steps. I could call on Moreth to help you?”
Sarmin nodded. Better to admit his frailty than to break his neck tumbling down the stairs. Govnan drew a small black stone from pockets on either side of his robe and clacked them together. Moreth entered the room seconds later, a dark and thick-limbed man in the greys of a rock-sworn acolyte. He looked strong enough to carry Sarmin and Govnan both. In the end though he walked the narrow stair a step behind Sarmin, supporting him by elbow and wrist.
They came to the end of the winding stair where Ta-Sann and the sword sons waited. “Perhaps you should wear this, Your Majesty,” Govnan said, offering a dark, hooded cloak that Sarmin pulled up to shadow his face. They left the tower compound and came by gate and plaza to a narrow street, where market-sellers packed their goods and guardsmen told their jokes under the darkening sky. Sarmin marvelled at their freedom and easy ways, but he knew each one had some hurt they nursed in the darkness, some secret they kept from the light. The Many had taught him that.
Hashi the wind-mage joined them on the street, his eyes on the roofs of buildings, watching for assassins and spies. They turned down one street and then another, Sarmin flanked by three mages, Govnan, Hashi and Moreth, the last with a hand still on his elbow. In time he knew they headed for Beyon’s tomb.
Sarmin had visited Beyon’s tomb only once. Beyon had not been there. Perhaps his bones lay inside but they held no meaning. The tomb had been the last anchor point of Helmar’s grand pattern and it echoed still with the impersonal malice of that design. Sometimes it worried Sarmin that Pelar had been conceived there, the timing dictated by old wives among the Felt, so Mesema said. An intersection of plans in time and in space. Plans whispered to the Windreaders by their hidden god, and plans laid across centuries by the Pattern Master. What changes might be wrought in the new seed of a child by such a conjunction? It had never been something Sarmin chose to dwell on.
The long walk soon took its toll on Sarmin, sapping his strength, leaving him sweating in his silks, and robbing some of his urgency. They came to the tomb through older portions of the city where the streets wore their years more plainly, the sword-sons always choosing to steer Sarmin along unexpected paths against the dangers of predictability. The emperor’s swift passage amid his tight knot of bodyguard dropped more than a few jaws and provided enough fuel to keep the gossips busy for weeks to come. When they reached the tomb he felt regret to be leaving the open air and sky of the streets, being among ordinary people, the many who lived under his rule.
The chamber rang with the echoes of many feet, from marble floor to vaulted ceiling, as Sarmin and his guard marched in. The austere lines of the room contrasted the intricacy of the tomb itself, pierced screens of whitest alabaster surrounding the heavy marble box on all sides, set back two yards to allow a slow private circuit. The decoration tended to fish and fruit, strange choices which Sarmin felt would have found little favour with his brother. Beyon had planned the structure but died within it before its completion. In the confusion that followed, the artisans set to finish the work had let their own aesthetic guide them. Sarmin had been unconcerned. Beyon lived in him and in Pelar, not in cold stone. Azeem had even brought plans before him for his own tomb. Sarmin had waved them away. “Let the next emperor do with my remains as he sees fit. I’m sure you have more pressing matters to put before me, vizier?”
A polite cough brought Sarmin from his recollections. His feet had led him to the arched entrance through the screens. Notheen waited there, the lean nomad towering above Govnan.
“High mage?” Sarmin tilted his head in question.
Govnan said nothing but looked away, through the arch. The sepulchre beyond, in which Mesema had once hidden for a night with Beyon, had almost gone. It looked as if it had melted away like a block of butter with a hot coal placed at its centre. The stonework towered at the four corners, eaten away elsewhere, and in the midst of it all a blankness, the colour of forever, blinding the eye. Sarmin couldn’t say if it were grey or white, perhaps black. The emptiness of it filled his mind and drowned out the screams of the Many as they hid behind his thoughts.
“Do not look too long, my emperor.” Govnan’s words came from a distance.
“It takes, my emperor.” Notheen, still further away. “It will hollow you.”
Sarmin tore his gaze from the space within Beyon’s tomb. Hours seemed to pass as he shook its bonds, days.
“My emperor?” And at last he looked away, meeting Govan’s eyes, dark with concern.
“What is that?” Sarmin stepped away, not wanting to look, not wanting his back to it.
“Nothing, my emperor.” Govnan bowed his head. “There is nothing there. That’s all my magic can tell me. Notheen’s people know more of this.”
Sarmin took a step closer to the nomad, veiled, hung about with white as if he rode the desert rather than walked the corridors of a palace. “Tell me.”
“This is of the desert.” Notheen waved towards the tomb. “This is the unwriting that grows in the dead heart of the sands, beyond even the djinn. It spreads from the secret.”
“What secret?” Sarmin remembered his dream, the pale boy, the tent falling into dust. An emptiness that devours.
Notheen bowed his head. Sarmin pressed the heels of his hands to his forehead, forcing back a growing terror. The two of them stood alike now, the high mage and the nomad headman, neither meeting his gaze. The faintest of sounds injected itself into the silence-the sound of
trickling sand.
“What secret,” Sarmin repeated. “You knew from the moment you spoke of it that I would require explanation.”
“May we speak alone, my emperor?” Notheen let the words slip quietly to the floor.
“We are alone!” Sarmin looked about, exasperated.
“The two of us. This truth is dangerous. Many lives balance upon it.”
“The two of us then.” Sarmin motioned the sword-sons away.
Ta-Sann hesitated. “My emperor, the nomads-”
“Away!” Sarmin waved him off with his objections and the island men retreated towards the main entrance, Lurish following, deep in thought.
When his guard reached the far side of the chamber Sarmin spoke again. “You have me to yourself, Notheen, me and the old man. Will you enlighten me or stab me? Govnan could not stop your knife.”
Again Notheen paused before answering, stretching the silence until Sarmin thought he would not speak. “We have among our people wise men, just as with all the tribes of man. They read the signs written among the dunes, listen to the wind, treat with the djinn who ride to the outer desert on sandstorms. Held among the wise of my people is a tale, a secret learned long ago and kept close.”
“I will not share this secret.” Even as Sarmin said the words he thought of his lost time, wondered to whom he spoke and with what voice. A man who commands an empire but not his own mind should not promise discretion. Notheen, however, nodded, touched his fingers to his lips through the cloth of his veil and spoke.
“The heart of the desert is a place of death. All men know this. They know of the heat, the storms, and that there is no water. But the nomad tribes know that there is more. A god went into the sands. A god walked the dunes until in every direction two weeks of travel would not bring a man to water. And there in the dry heart of the Cerana Desert that god chose to die.”
“Mogyrk!” Sarmin stepped back in shock. He lowered his voice. “Mogyrk?”
Notheen nodded. “The dead god. The desert was where he came undone.”
“If the Yrkmen know of this…”
Notheen set the length of a finger to his forehead in acknowledgement. Govnan answered with a question. “Do you know how the Yrkmen invaders were driven from Cerana?”
“The desert beat them.” Sarmin had read it in the Reclaimer’s histories. “Supply across the desert proved impossible without the co-operation of the nomad tribes, and the defeated Cerani waged war from the sands where the Yrkmen troops feared to follow them.”
Govnan nodded. “It’s true, the desert defeated them. They lived in fear of it, and with good reason. Because of Mogyrk they understood the desert better than we did. Let us hope they have not forgotten that fear.”
“Why have you told me this, now and here by my brother’s tomb?” Sarmin glanced back, wondering if the screens had always looked so white, so brittle, or was the nothing within stealing both colour and substance from them as in his dream.
“The emptiness in the desert has been spreading. Slowly at first, so slow that it was not noticed from one year to the next. The dead god made a hole in the world and our sands are running through it. Faster this year than the last, faster today than yesterday.”
“W-” Sarmin glanced between Govnan and the nomad. “Why? Why now?”
“The Pattern Master spurred the advance. Our deep routes have been swallowed, even oases have been consumed. The salt paths my fathers rode are gone.”
“Helmar made my brother’s death his last anchor point for the pattern. This place, that time, Beyon’s death. It made the pattern whole.”
“And now the dead god’s Undoing is spreading from the wound.” Notheen paused as something crumbled and fell behind the screens. “Like new fires spreading where embers from the great fire have fallen.”
“This… this will spread?” Sarmin asked. “This could consume the palace!”
Notheen bowed his head. “It could erase Nooria, from wall to wall. We call it the Great Storm. It was foretold.”
“You must be able to stop it?” Sarmin let the question hang between them. He had looked into the tomb and seen nothing, not even hunger, no pattern, no hint of substance or flaw upon which a pattern-working might find purchase. Looking into that void had left him drained. The Many felt fewer in his mind.
Govnan looked worried. “I had hoped you might-No? Maybe that is best. If Helmar’s pattern made the fracture through which this bleeds then perhaps more pattern working would only tear the hole wider still.”
“What can the tower do, then?” Sarmin asked.
Govnan frowned, starting at the screens as if in search of inspiration. His body hunched, shoulders raised in the effort to will a solution. At last he shook his head. “It takes substance. Perhaps a rock-sworn mage might strengthen the stone to resist it. A wind-sworn mage might teach the air to hold its essence more tightly.” A shrug. “If it is hungry and we feed it, the void might lose its appetite for other things… a water-sworn mage might steer a stream from the Blessing and seek to drown this thing, if we had one.”
Notheen said nothing, only his eyes showed above the veil and beneath his cowl, and yet he managed to look unimpressed. “In the end there will be only desert. My people have always known this.”
“And that’s the total of nomad wisdom on the subject?” Sarmin kept the frustration from his voice.
“Even if the high mage can slow this advance, it is not good to be near this.” He waved his hand at the tomb. “The emptiness spreads beyond the boundary where all things are undone. Djinn will feel its pull and come to haunt this place. The nothing will echo in some of those who serve you, they will fall empty and sicken… There is no good thing here now. The wisdom of my people is in our name. Nomads. Seccan Thaleen we call ourselves, “blown before the storm”. You should find a new place, Sarmin emperor. This one is undone.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
GRADA
Rorrin and Grada occupied themselves with the stalls outside the Blessing Gate. Many merchants traded within the shadow of the walls, enjoying city trade without the full requirement for licenses and tax. Some said stall-holders bribed the gate guards to keep the queue for entry near stationary so that visitors would buy their wares out of boredom if nothing else.
“It’s copper coloured, I grant you.” Rorrin flipped the pot over in one hand and flicked the base to make it chime. “Doesn’t sing like copper, though. I find its voice sharp and lacking melody.” He shopped with heart although he bought only citronel pods and later some roasted ground nuts sprinkled with the pollen of desert rose. To watch him Grada could believe Rorrin had no greater desire than to bilk the traders of their profit.
Rorrin put the cooking pot back with the others and allowed himself to glance at the approaching caravan. It had been turning heads for a little while, some citizens stopping to stare, little boys clambering up the palms lining the approach to the Blessing Gate.
“Foreigners,” he said, spitting for good measure.
“How can you tell?” Grada wondered if the slave wagons were rumbling 76 along in the wake of this new caravan or whether they had changed course as she feared.
“The covers come to a peak. It’s the style in Fryth and Mythyck. The cloth is faded but hints at blue-which more than hints at Fryth. Someone important going on the size of the escort. Those White Hat are service units in from seeing action, they’re not dressed for show. I’d say we’re looking at royal prisoners, or some kind of envoy.”
They watched the approach. Outriders came in to disperse the queue at the gates, showing no patience with anyone who objected. Close up Grada could see dented shields, torn clothing, rusty blood stains, and short tempers in evidence. “It’s an envoy,” she said. “Our forces must have been repulsed.” Some among the crowd started to hoot, to call down curses upon the Frythian devils. For a moment Grada bristled at the idea of any defeat, her blood rising with the anger of the crowd. Cerani troops driven back by mere Fryth! It took a moment t
o recall that Sarmin had wanted peace, had demanded this very thing. She took control of herself, shocked at how infectious the mob’s mood was-at how easily people put aside reason in favour of taking sides.
The White Hats dealt out blows with fist and spear haft until the crowd fell into sullen silence. The caravan commander clearly had orders to make this a welcome. Preventing it from being a stoning was perhaps the most he could hope for.
The wagons drew closer now and Grada could see the Fryth wagons with their faded blues and narrow wheels among the Cerani army wagons, and further back along the column, flanked by White Hat spearmen, two carriages, each decortated with angular carvings exotic to her eye, blued and gilded.
That Rorrin had recognised their origin and deduced so much in so short a time reminded Grada that whatever favours she might have she was still an untouchable, with all the lack of education and ignorance that entailed. Her early life had been spent focused on survival in a particular handful of alleys, before Sarmin the sum total of her life had been played out within perhaps a single square mile of Nooria. And here was the world arriving at her doorstep once more, reminding her how very large and how very strange it was.
The carriages passed, the first less grand, with shades closed. White Hat guards marched briskly beside, spears over their shoulders.
“Scribes and personal servants, most like,” Rorrin said. “Maybe an honour guard.”
The second carriage rattled by, a golden eagle spreading gleaming wings atop its finial. The carriage windows stood open to catch the air and Grada stared at the men within. The closer man met her gaze between the passing spears as he went by, leaving her with an impression of indigo. A larger man sat to his left, broad cheekbones, a brutal face. And they were gone.
“What did you see?” Rorrin asked.
“Two men. They were gone so-”
“Don’t speak. Close your eyes and see them. They are still there on the back of your eyelids. Describe them to me.”
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