Tower & Knife 03 - The Tower Broken

by Mazarkis Williams

He looked east over the sands until a bright pain pierced his eyes, but saw no colours cut out from the unending brown, no plume of dust that would indicate movement from Nooria. A reluctant glance towards the north showed no sign of Yrkmir either. Would Yrkmir pass by the same wound, or would they be caught by it and torn apart, unravelled?

  He looked down at his camp, blinking away the dark spots in his vision; it was surprisingly far below. Coming from the mountains as he did, he should be used to gauging heights, but these dunes tricked the eye.

  ‘Didryk.’ A crimson-robed figure made the crest and ambled towards him as if this were a calm summer day in the courtyard at Mondrath. Didryk knew him for Adam even before the pointed hood fell back, revealing white-gold hair, and he backed away before thinking better of it.

  ‘Adam.’ Didryk’s instinct was to protect himself, but their talk would not go well with weapons in hand. ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘You are my student,’ Adam said with a smile. ‘I will always be able to find you.’

  ‘I was your student,’ Didryk corrected, his mind racing. Adam must have marked and bound him long ago, when he was a child. Why had he never realised it?

  Adam spoke with conspiratorial pleasure. ‘I felt your hand in the marketplace. I would not have recommended that, my Duke. Now the Blue Shields are inspired to seek us everywhere – why do you look so surprised? Did you think I would not know your careful pattern-work?’

  Didryk knew nothing of any marketplace, but he looked stonily at the man, willing him to stop, to leave, but Adam continued, still behaving as if they stood over his mother’s rose bushes outside his long-lost home. ‘But now we shall have some assistance. I have a new student now. Of all the desperate and downtrodden Cerani I have brought into the light only one shows any promise. That is how weak I have found the stock of Nooria to be, and yet they enslave our people. Yes’ – he nodded with emphasis as if Didryk did not believe him – ‘I saw Fryth slaves in the palace.’

  His mention of the palace brought only one thing to Didryk’s mind. ‘Did you kill my cousin Kavic,’ he asked, ‘or was it the Cerani who killed him?’

  Adam pressed a hand to his heart. ‘Of course I did not kill him. Why would you come to Cerana looking for me if you believed I had done such a thing?’

  ‘Perhaps I was not looking for you.’ As ever, Didryk could not gauge whether the austere spoke true, but it did not matter. He had not wanted the peace and he had let Kavic die, and Didryk would have his revenge either way.

  ‘Don’t be embarrassed, child. Why else would you come so close to the lion’s mouth, except to join with your old teacher? I heard what you did to the White Hats. The Cerani will turn the desert inside out looking for you, but I can offer protection. It was wise of you to find me.’

  ‘I play my own game.’ And a mad one at that: one that depended on gaining the trust of the emperor before turning all of his people against him, one that pitted him alone against the Tower, the priests and all of Cerana’s soldiers. But it was one he would rather try than join with the second austere.

  Down in the camp, Didryk’s men began to shout and point upwards towards Adam. Some of them began the torturous climb up the dune, not well-aided by the heavy swords they carried.

  Adam ignored the soldiers. ‘You are still stubborn. Like the Cerani.’ He crouched over the sand and ran his fingers along the surface. ‘How stubborn a man must be, to make an empire of this. Yes, they have great pride, but their leader is weak, and he shrinks from fighting. The Tower has been drained of its talent. Yrkmir will soon come, and the first austere will bring us all into the light, as was foretold.’

  The first austere. Once those words had invoked awe, the image of a man close to a god on his high, cold throne, but now Didryk felt nothing but hatred. Adam remained faithful to Yrkmir, but if he were not such a prideful fool, he might have asked what had driven Didryk so far from home. Despite himself, anger coloured his next words. ‘As Mondrath was brought into the light?’

  Adam looked up at him, his brows forming a question.

  ‘You did not hear? Yrkmir set a pattern around our great city. We lost two-thirds of our people and the rest have scattered into the mountains. Mondrath is no more. Whatever their design, it does not include us, Adam.’

  Adam stilled, his gaze on the shifting sands of the dune. ‘What of your grandfather, the Iron Duke? Kavic’s wife and their children?’

  ‘Dead.’ He pushed the word from his mouth. It had not become easier to say.

  ‘I see.’ The austere came as close to expressing regret as Didryk had ever seen, and did not speak for a long while. He did not meet Didryk’s eyes as he asked, ‘What is your plan, then? Will you turn against your church?’

  ‘It is your church. It was never mine.’

  ‘Mogyrk gifted you with His skill. Whatever Yrkmir has done, He has not abandoned us.’

  ‘Mogyrk is dead.’ He knew it was not true; the power he felt around him, shifting on the breeze, belied those words – but he would say them nonetheless.

  Adam rose from his crouch. Sand trickled away from his feet, slithering down the dune the soldiers were struggling to climb. ‘How could he be dead when we may still draw our patterns? It is that attitude which killed your people. Now look at you, so full of rage, and there is no comfort for you, Didryk.’

  ‘Mogyrk offers no comfort.’ The apostate words caught in his throat.

  ‘You cannot take on both Yrkmir and Cerana without our God. If I may offer a former student some advice, leave. Now. Go to the west.’

  ‘And the Great Storm?’

  Adam held his arms wide. ‘It is destined to sweep Cerana from this world. We must save whom we can before that happens. Will you help me do that?’

  ‘Do you think Cerana will satisfy the Storm, appease the Scar? That the God’s wounds will not look north?’ Didryk shook his head. ‘It is foretold He will take all of us into death with Him.’

  ‘You never understood the teachings of Mogyrk – you did not care enough to learn.’

  ‘You have no idea what I care about,’ Didryk said.

  ‘Perhaps you are right. My old student would not have killed those souls in the marketplace before they had a chance to be saved.’

  Didryk covered his confusion by focusing on the pile of sand Adam had left on the dune. If neither he nor Adam had laid that pattern, then there was another austere. ‘Yrkmir must be very close.’

  Adam backed away. ‘There are souls to save before they get here. Don’t lay another pattern.’ He slid downwards, putting the dune between himself and the soldiers, then called out, ‘You need a new outer ward. I have broken the one you set.’

  Didryk cursed to himself and waved his soldiers back down to the camp. ‘The prisoner!’ he shouted, and his men began moving as he ran headlong down the steep incline and pounded across the sand, sweat flying from his skin. He pushed aside the tent-flap. Arigu sat in the centre, a cup held by both hands, surrounded by Fryth guardsmen.

  The general took in the relief on his face and laughed. ‘Make no mistake, Duke. I will be free soon enough.’

  ‘But not today,’ said Didryk, ‘blessed Mogyrk, not today.’

  11

  Sarmin

  In sketches and tapestries, the Tower appeared as a spike in the great city, casting a shadow on the domes below it, commanding a view far into the distance, all the way to its enemies. While it was the highest structure in Nooria, it overtopped the towers of the palace by only one storey, and its view might have swept the dunes, but it never advanced the mages’ sight across the sea to icy Yrkmir. The legend of the Tower and its reality had grown even more distant in recent times. The stories told of a legion of mages, immortal and unconquerable, commanding all four elements. Now there were just three mages, one for rock, two for wind, and an old man who was their teacher.

  Govnan met him at the first landing, looking flustered for the first time since Sarmin had met him. ‘Have you come to interview Mage Mura, Magn
ificence?’

  ‘I came to see the Megra,’ said Sarmin, pausing for breath, ‘but I will speak with Mura, in time.’ He would need to learn from her what this duke could do, get a sense of whether his offer was in earnest. He dared not hope. All of him stirred at the idea of regaining his pattern-sight – though that was not part of the deal.

  Relief broke over the high mage’s face. ‘Of course. I will lead you to her room.’ After that he fell silent. They continued to climb, and Sarmin considered the carvings that lined the walls. They were not on the traditional themes of war and victory, but rather, showed men and women in poses of intense concentration and purpose. The carvings outnumbered the mages in the Tower by a factor of ten; that was why Sarmin must leave Mura’s discipline to Govnan. They could not lose another mage. She had defended the traitor, but with the high mage’s guidance she would soon remember her captivity with less emotion – and then he would speak with her again.

  At last they reached a landing covered in thick carpet – the better to ease tired feet – and Govnan opened the door to a bright, sunny room. ‘Here she is, Magnificence.’ The window faced the river, and Sarmin’s gaze followed the line of boats going south, hoping to catch sight of Pelar’s. Failing, he sighed and turned back to the bed. The Megra lay there, looking older than he had remembered, all bones and onionskin and eyes looking out from deep hollows. But she recognised him.

  ‘Sarmin.’ Just his name. He demanded no honorifics from her, no false respect, no obeisance. He sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand. ‘Megra.’

  ‘I have been waiting for you,’ she said, and then fell silent for a time, watching birds flutter past the window.

  Sarmin said, ‘I have lost the pattern, Megra. I cannot see it any more.’

  She smiled and patted his hand. ‘You cannot change what you are.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘More than just one thing.’ She looked at the goblet of water by the side of the bed, and he held it to her lips. When she was satisfied, she leaned back on the pillow, momentarily spent. Then she said, ‘I’ve made a friend. Sahree. You know her?’

  ‘I met her, yes.’ Mesema doted on the old servant – Sahree had brought her in from the desert, and then Beyon had thrown the old woman into the dungeon for the crime of knowing that. Now she was free and did as she wished, and mostly she wished to be in the Tower.

  ‘She says what’s coming is Mirra’s work. I think she may be right.’

  ‘Mirra is a goddess of Cerana, but Helmar’s work …’ Helmar’s work was of Yrkmir.

  ‘Yes.’ She patted his hand once again. ‘But you should know … he was only a man.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Just a man …’

  Of course Helmar was just a man, as was Duke Didryk. Two pattern mages, one dead, one living, and each holding a promise that ate at him. Sarmin fiddled with the butterfly-stone he still kept in his pocket. Megra stirred and opened her eyes again. ‘There was a wound in the Hollow,’ she said. ‘Helmar’s making, turning men pale. That makes five.’

  For the fifth and final wound to be so far away in Fryth, beyond his reach, was a blow. ‘What should I do?’ he asked, but she had drifted off to sleep. Sarmin adjusted her coverings and stared down into her face, the face that Helmar had loved.

  Govnan was gone, most likely to his newly returned mage. Sarmin turned from the bed and left the room. As he began down the stairs, his Knife detached from the wall and fell in with him, giving no greeting or obeisance, as if she had been with him the entire time.

  At the ground floor she said, ‘May I suggest the Ways, Your Majesty – it seems you left your sword-sons in the palace.’ Her tone reprimanded him.

  As Grada worked the key to open the dark passages, Sarmin watched her dark, intelligent eyes, her agile hands. Since coming free from his own tower he had learned that women such as Grada were not thought to be desirable. Wide-shouldered and capable, arms strong after years of work, she was no delicate flower to wrap in silks and lay upon a cushion. But she drew him, flesh and bone: she drew him.

  Guilty, he turned his mind to his wife. Mesema was insightful and kind, and he had come to depend on her standing at his elbow in the throne room, but she was impulsive and now he worried what would happen with her old love Banreh in the palace dungeon. He knew the chief would die, knew it as well as he knew every score and dent in the walls of his old room, and also that Mesema would do whatever she could to prevent it. That knowledge had hardened within him until it formed a hard, cruel point that he knew he might yet have to wield.

  Since that first night when Tuvaini opened his secret door, Sarmin had been learning the art of influence. He took Tuvaini’s dacarba that night and he wore it still, as a reminder that he ruled over every man and woman in Cerana. He had no qualms ruling over the court, but he shrank from doing the same to his wife, even to protect her. With Mesema he did not want to be the emperor – but nonetheless his weapon was sharp and ready.

  They had walked a third of the way back to the palace in silence, the dark of the Ways pressing against them, when he asked, ‘Why did you come to see me, Grada?’

  ‘Satrap Honnecka was nearly turned out of his carriage as he passed the Maze today. His guards got him out safely. Now he prepares to flee to his own lands.’ She thought a time. ‘There are seven times as many Mogyrks in the Maze than came with Marke Kavic or escaped from the palace.’

  ‘Our citizens are converting.’

  ‘In all our searching we have not found Austere Adam, yet he has found many Cerani. He looks for the hungry, the poor, the desperate, and turns them to his purpose.’

  ‘Untouchables.’

  ‘Many like me, yes. For a time they contented themselves with starting fires in the Maze, but now they turn their eyes to the wealthier citizens, and the city entire. The attack in the marketplace frightened everyone. Eventually all will flee, except for the Mogyrks.’ She paused. ‘The Knife cannot cut them all.’

  ‘What do you suggest, Grada?’

  She walked for a time in silence. ‘I suggest you do not make them hate you.’

  Twice the palace had been attacked in Sarmin’s time, once by Helmar, once by rebellious slaves led by Adam. Each time too many sacrifices had been made. Now the workings of the government, the council’s faith in his ability to rule, the balance of his own mind – they all risked collapse under the strain of a third attack. ‘Grada,’ he said, stopping to catch his breath, one hand against the dark wall, ‘you must find Adam and bring him to me.’

  ‘Yes, Your Majesty,’ she said. They had reached the door to his halls and he drew Tuvaini’s dacarba from his belt to work the lock. When it clicked open, he turned back to her, to say goodbye, to hear her voice one last time, to remember that bond that had once existed between them – but she had already shuttered her lantern and slipped away into the dark.

  12

  Farid

  Farid sat against the wall, watching the floor in the flickering candlelight. It had taken him a few days – he thought it was days – to realise the stains were blood, then another to begin to see shapes in the light and dark of them. He watched the stains as a child watches clouds. That one looked like a mango; that one, a monkey. And beneath them, the whorls and eyes of the wood itself, drawing him in.

  It kept him from looking at the unfinished pattern scratched into the wall. That pattern left him wanting more, like a song with no ending or the touch of an apple’s skin against his teeth. He had traced its shapes for many hours, followed its lines to their abrupt ends, and yet he had no sense of what it was supposed to contain. He had decided to ignore it. Adam had left him that puzzle, and to finish it would only please the austere.

  He was a Cerani fruit-seller. His father would have come up the river already, his boat full of mangoes and lemons. He would already have heard of what happened in the marketplace. He probably thought Farid dead.

  There was a shuffling outside the door, and then a burst of sunlight that made him squint. So it was d
ay; he had guessed night because the baby next door had gone quiet.

  Adam squatted at the threshold, watching him, and it struck Farid that the man was always near to the ground, like a cat preparing to strike. Adam balanced his elbows on his knees and laced his fingers together. Farid noticed dark shadows under his eyes. ‘You have been calling water to yourself,’ he said.

  ‘I had to. If I didn’t, I would die.’

  ‘How did it feel?’

  Farid did not reply. He did not want Adam to know how good it felt. He listened, trying to gauge how many men might be guarding the hallway.

  ‘I showed you the pattern only once, but you built it again, with nothing but your fingers.’ Adam looked at the scratches on the wall. ‘Most of my students take weeks to memorise that pattern, and they are all chosen for their excellent recall.’

  ‘I’m not your student.’

  ‘No, no you are not.’ Adam sighed and looked at someone in the hallway, who handed him a platter of bread and cheese. ‘I think you must be hungry.’ He put the food down on the floor. ‘Though the end is near, we must take care of ourselves.’

  ‘The end?’

  ‘Mogyrk comes to claim all of us, Farid. I have come nearer to the place where He died so that I may guide souls to His paradise.’

  ‘You mean to kill people.’

  ‘You do not understand. Here, eat.’ As Farid took a reluctant bite Adam said, ‘Everyone here will die no matter what I do. The Scar waits to the east and the Storm is coming. But it is foretold: Mogyrk will first shed light upon Nooria.’ He watched Farid eat. ‘You do not understand that, nor, does it appear, do my superiors.’

  Farid pushed his plate aside. ‘Why do you hold me prisoner here?’

  ‘You can leave any time you wish. I want only for you to use what you have learned.’

  ‘By doing what? What will you make me do before I can leave?’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ Adam unfolded himself, standing to cast a shadow over the stains on the floor and the dirty pallet, and the shadows around his eyes deepened. ‘You will help me, but first you need to escape.’