Tower & Knife 03 - The Tower Broken (41 page)

He held out a hand to keep his sword-sons from attacking.
Not yet
.

The first austere smiled, holding his arms out to either side. His grey hair was still difficult to see against the street-stones, and Sarmin wondered whether that was even his true colour. It struck him that although he could see into men’s souls, he could see nothing in the first austere.

The man’s pale eyes swept over their group. ‘Adam. Come to me.’

But Adam did not move; he was frozen in place, as if torn between kneeling to his superior and killing him.

Sarmin felt a shift in the street, a tug along his consciousness. ‘No!’ There was yet another pattern hidden beneath them – but the first austere gritted his teeth with effort, for Farid was working against the pattern even as he attempted to loose
its destructive power. The newly risen symbols wavered and crumpled.

The first austere lifted a hand, and from it flowed a torrent of lines and shapes, red and menacing, sharp as razors. Sarmin dodged out the way, but the pattern grazed his shoulder, drawing blood.

Finally Adam reacted, spreading his fingers and causing a circle of shapes and lines to appear around them, though he had drawn nothing. He stumbled; it had not been easy.

Their attacker renewed his efforts, lifting his other hand and beating against the ward with a sickly-yellow stream of shapes, and Adam fell to his knees, beaten back by the onslaught. The austere had not yet been able to harm them, but neither could they harm him, stuck as they were within Adam’s hastily constructed circle.

‘I will kill him,’ Grada murmured and stepped forwards, her Knife held out in front of her like a shield. But she had put too much faith in the spells wound into that ancient blade, for as she stepped past Adam’s shapes, the yellow pattern-stream lashed out at her. She dodged, jumping sideways to avoid the worst of it, but it a crimson line appeared above her sash and spread rapidly, staining the grey linen of her robes. She fell, a stunned look on her face.

‘No!’ Sarmin cried, and drew Tuvaini’s dacarba from its sheath, but Grada shook her head at him from where she lay on the street-stones, trying to stop him from running towards the first austere and being killed. He knew he could not send his sword-sons either.

But Farid stepped out before Sarmin could stop him, his eyes narrowed in concentration. The enemy focused his attacks on the young mage, the yellow and red patterns melding together,
but the shapes fell away, bent and broke apart before they could harm him.

Farid could not last long; sweat had already broken out on his brow and his whole body was trembling.

‘Now!’ Sarmin shouted, and the sword-sons rushed as one, their weapons raised, and Adam rushed forwards too, though he held no weapon, and his green and blue shapes scattered apart across the stone. But the first austere’s skin mottled brown and grey and his pale blue eyes changed to rusty pebbles. Half a moment later he had faded into the walls and road behind him. When the men reached where he had been standing, they found nothing but street-stones.

The sword-sons turned in a slow circle, looking for a sign of movement, listening for a footfall. But after a time they lowered their swords. The first austere was gone.

Nobody spoke when they re-entered their carriage. The emperor was lost in thought, his copper eyes shining with frustration as he helped Grada into her seat. She pressed a hand against her stomach. The bleeding had slowed, but she looked pale. Adam appeared shaken, and for the first time Farid felt some sympathy for him. Attacking the first austere must have been to Adam what attacking the emperor would be to him.

Before climbing up into the carriage Farid looked north – and he drew in his breath; all the pattern-work of war had drawn the Storm over the northern wall. It now stretched out over a third of the city and west across the dunes, taking up half of the world, and he realised it did not matter if they won, for the emptiness would take them all, just as Adam had predicted. He entered the carriage still staring at the wall, lost in the realisation that his life was likely over.

‘You must pledge yourself to Mogyrk now,’ Adam said, addressing no one and everyone. ‘The end is near.’

The emperor ignored him and directed the driver towards the Storm Gate.

They travelled in silence. Farid told himself to be brave. He had faced down the first austere, but the advancing void frightened him even more, and now they were heading straight for it.

At long last the carriages stopped. Farid was nearest the door. He did not know the protocol when travelling with the emperor, but he thought that on this day it did not matter. He let himself out into a group of wounded soldiers being tended to by a round priest. The emperor climbed down beside him. Farid bowed and said, ‘With your permission, Your Majesty, I will join my fellows on the wall.’

Sarmin dismissed him with a wave and he ran up the stairs, dreading what he might see. Before he had reached the top he heard screams, high and desperate, and several men ran past him down the stairs, their eyes wild, running in fear. His stomach clenched in terror, but he continued to the top and looked out over the parapet. As he expected, there were no heroic soldiers standing out on the dunes; no flags had been planted in victory. But the Yrkmen were moving away – whether from the Storm or from the walls, he could not tell. Charred corpses, bloody corpses and patches of sand melted to glass covered the land beyond the wall. He saw the white-clad austere with whom the emperor had spoken; an arrow was sprouting from his chest. In the distance, the larger elementals rested on the dunes as if sated, ignoring those retreating soldiers forced to pass nearby. Farid looked away from the one that had taken the form of a shapely woman; it disturbed him.

But the smaller efreet were not resting; they were making a meal of the Cerani on the wall. He heard a crackle to his right and ducked just as a ball of flame, bright as a tiny sun, darted over him. The elementals took a running archer here, a crouching captain there, their movements teasing and malicious. Soldiers scattered before the grasping fires.

Farid crawled over a charred patch of stone, his mind coiling with dread as he wondered who had been standing there – the
captain who had spoken to him? An archer collecting arrows? Mura or Moreth?

With relief he saw his fellow mages standing unharmed beside the barrel, now empty. The arrows had been used up and there had been no one to replace them. As he quickened his steps he saw the rock-sworn press one hand into the stone. Mura held Moreth’s other hand, and together they brought forth a churning wall of sand towering high over the parapet, running so far north that it nearly intersected with the Storm and so far to the south that Farid could not see the end of it. Grit stung his face and he covered his eyes with both hands. But the fire was on the other side, giving their soldiers a reprieve.

‘I can trap them,’ Farid shouted. ‘I remember the pattern the Yrkmen used.’

‘I can trap them.’ It was not Moreth’s voice but Rorswan’s.

‘Moreth,’ said Mura, looking down at the rock-sworn. ‘let me talk to Moreth.’

But the sandstorm shifted, concentrating around the forms of the small efreet, and denser and denser it churned, hissing as it adhered to their shapes, trapping them inside spinning cages. The sand turned to molten glass, gleaming violet, green, and orange, the colours of the fire inside, and with a pop the glass turned into stone and fell to the sand.

Moreth sighed with delight, his spirit pleased with its meal, but the two larger spirits now stirred, their attention focused on the wall, and the protective sandstorm was gone.

‘Moreth,’ said Farid, ‘I can trap these two.’ But sand rose up in a rush around the burning forms of the efreet, shifting and falling upwards until the fires were no longer visible, not the green-and-black of the eldest, nor the molten brass of the other. Farid wondered how something so changeable as sand
could hold the ancient efreet, but with a loud snick it solidified, became smooth, reflecting the light of the sun in its gleaming, pink-brown surface. Moreth made a grating sound deep in his throat, like two rocks rubbing together, and when Farid turned to look at him he had gone still.

‘Moreth?’

Mura turned as well, and shook the rock-sworn’s shoulder. ‘Moreth!’

His colour faded, and at first Farid believed it to be the pale sickness, but it was a different hue: the colour of his stone, the colour of Kobar and the other statues that had once graced the Tower’s hall. Moreth had been taken by his elemental.

Mura fell to her knees.

Farid kept a hand on the rock-sworn’s shoulder as if comforting him. Perhaps he was still aware, trapped inside the rock as the rock had been trapped inside him. ‘He saved us from the flame,’ he said through numb lips.

Mura nodded and took Moreth’s stony hand in hers. ‘He didn’t have long enough – he never learned …’

Farid put his other hand on her shoulder. ‘What will we do?’

But Mura had no answer for him. Even if they fought off Yrkmir and stopped the Storm there would be no Tower, and only two mages remaining. With the fire gone the soldiers on the wall resumed their business with a disturbing calm, returning the odd shot from persistent Yrkmen archers or preparing their stations for the next attack.

Farid sighed. They had not defeated the first austere, but his army was broken, at least for now. Bodies burnt almost to cinders were scattered across the sands, but he knew the morning had been won by more than just fire; it had also been the archers, Moreth and Mura, and the overall hard work of
Cerana’s army. He had helped too, by destroying their wards. But most of all there was the Storm, obscuring the sky and rushing forwards at each use of the pattern. Surely that had affected Yrkmir’s morale and made them hesitate to use their main strength – their patterns – against Cerana. Whatever they believed, the austeres were only human.

He took Mura’s elbow and helped her up. Their work was not yet done.

Didryk had set up his station by the Storm Gate, where he had been busy wrapping wounds and setting minor patterns to start the soldiers’ own bodies healing, but every time he glanced over his shoulder, the Storm looked closer. Now he helped to load the men onto wagons and move them further south, though he knew they could not outrun it forever. His hands shook as he gathered up his bandages and pushed them into the chest High Priest Assar had brought him. It also contained needles and thread, herbs and queenflower for pain. Just as he shut the lid someone pulled at his arm, and he turned to see the emperor.

‘Your Majesty!’ He looked past him for Azeem, but saw only his sword-sons, each one of them nearly tall as himself and more muscled. Even the woman who normally followed Sarmin like a ghost was not there.

‘You are a physician, Didryk.’

‘Not …’

‘I need you to heal Grada.’ Sarmin motioned to the carriage.

‘What has happened?’ Didryk stuck his head inside and saw the woman laid out across a bench, her robes stained with blood, a hand pressed to her abdomen. She blinked at him, her eyes dull.

Sarmin jostled his arm as he too pushed his head in to look
at Grada. It struck Didryk that he cared for her more than an emperor should care for a guard or an assassin. ‘The first austere cut her,’ Sarmin said, his own face pale. ‘We did not defeat him.’

Didryk felt a twinge of fear: so the first austere still walked the city, laying his patterns … he could take one of them at any moment, or worse.

Instead, he concentrated on the task at hand. ‘Get her into the light.’ Ignoring the approaching Storm, he allowed the sword-sons to pull Grada from the carriage and lay her out upon the stones. Gingerly he opened her robes and examined the cut, then looked up at one of the guards, a brown-eyed, thin-nosed young man. ‘Get me needle and thread from that chest.’

‘Do you not have a pattern that will fix it? I would have—’ Sarmin stopped, biting his lip.

‘It does not work that way. It takes time.’

The sword-son handed Didryk his tools and he probed the wound, checking to make sure nothing vital had been damaged. ‘Our main concern here is keeping the wound from turning foul. I will lay what patterns I can—’

‘I could have done it before I lost my ability. I need you to try.’ Sarmin took a stone from his pocket and pressed it into Didryk’s hand.

Didryk turned it in his palm. Set into the stone in tiny crystals was a butterfly, rendered in a rainbow of colours, the patterns of its wings in perfect, patterned detail. Someone had spent months, perhaps years, making this. ‘What—?’

‘It’s the key – the key to healing the wound. All wounds. Show her how to be whole.’

Show her how to be whole
. That was what Didryk did whenever
he healed. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know how to hold an injury on one side and the healed image on the other.’

‘The truth of destruction and the lie of being healed.’

‘Yes.’ All of this Didryk had learned years ago from his stolen books, though not in those words. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. It dripped down his back and chest and filled his palm where he held the butterfly-stone. The Great Storm had not stopped the heat of the sun, though it obscured the northern sky.

Sarmin tapped the stone again. ‘Try.’ And then, in a lower voice, ‘Please.’ His men looked up and down the street and at one another, hands on the hilts of their weapons, eyes sharp and wary.

Didryk closed his eyes and sent his pattern-sense into the wound, a neat-edged cut across the flesh. If it had been any deeper she would be dead already. He clasped the stone in his hand and imagined her stomach healed – no, smooth and undamaged, as if she had never met the first austere. He looked at the skin around the wound and imagined it whole, imagined how she had looked to him in the throne room, athletic and full of health. But he felt nothing, only the street-stones beneath his feet, leading into those now gone, lost in another, greater wound, their constituent parts of rock and gem and iron unwound and fading into the Storm.