The Emperors Knife - By Mazarkis Williams Page 0,141
and she fell still, barely breathing. She didn’t want to open her eyes.
“I won’t make it to Sarmin, Zabrina.”
We should have gone yesterday. Last night.
“The Pattern Master is strong; I can feel him. Find Sarmin—I can tell they don’t know about him—”
“But we were all going to fight together.” She could still taste the salt of his skin, feel the wetness between her legs where he had been inside her. “You’re the emperor.” Perhaps the father of my child.
“Not any more.” He released her shoulder. “In the secret ways, go straight until you reach the double bridge. Then climb the stairs, turn right and cross two more bridges. Use your dagger to open the door.”
“Listen. You said that your men wait in the desert, in the hidden spot where the zabrina flowers. We can go—”
“Repeat the path to Sarmin’s room to me.”
She let a sob escape, then repeated his directions. “Straight to the double bridge, all the way up, right, two bridges. Use the dagger.”
“Good.” She felt his lips on her forehead, warm and soft. Alive. “I’m glad I met you, Mesema Windreader.”
Silence.
“Beyon?” She kept her eyes shut tight. “Your Majesty?”
Now she opened them, and watched the sunlight play on Beyon’s halfcarved face upon the ceiling. He had turned the lid again, opened it so that she could get out and leave him behind. “Beyon. Listen. Listen.”
She heard a liquid sound that did not belong in this place of stone and silk.
“Beyon.” She did not want to look, but she had to.
Beyon lay at the other end of the tomb, one hand covering the gash in his throat. Blood pulsed over his robes and soaked into the silk that lay across their marble bed. The ruby-hilted dagger dropped from his other hand. He tried to wave her off, but it was as if his arm had grown too heavy. As their eyes met, his lost their focus and grew dark: Carrier eyes. Dead eyes.
“Beyon!” Tears wet her cheeks. There was so much blood, more blood than had come from Jakar or Eldra. It ran through the valleys in the silk and pooled around her knees. Even knowing it was too late to save him, she put her hands to his throat, pressing down, trying to keep the blood from leaving him. The pattern spiralled around her skin, climbing to her elbows, purple, red and blue—
She fell into it.
A roar filled her ears, grand and terrifying, like the sound of a flood coming down the mountain.
The Tower— Govnan— Find another way— Kitchens and hot bread— It hurts too much, so much— I was pretty, I had a lover— No way in, continue digging, always— The Tower— Beyon is gone— Find another way— My little girl ran there, among the— So much blood— The horsegirl—
Mesema reached out for a way back to Beyon’s tomb, to find some thread to pull herself from the river of voices, but the current took her, careless of her strength, dragging her under and through the darkness, passing her from eye to eye, body to body, seeing corridor, desert, river, alley, and church. She tossed through a cascade of lives, searching for a set of words or images she could put together into a pattern that made sense. And then she heard a cool, amused voice, rising above the incoherence to address her.
“You have lost control, visitor. With Beyon’s sacrifice my power has become too much for you at last. Come to me now and show yourself.”
She drifted, gathering the bits of herself together as the images paraded past her eyes.
The speaker became angry. “You can no longer hide from me, Govnan. My Carriers will find a way into your Tower. They will tear it down from the inside.”
He is guessing! He does not know who I—
“Not Govnan, then?”
Mesema was shocked into silence, afraid to think lest the Master hear her.
“It matters not.” The Master affected boredom, but she sensed something wrong in him—something had not gone to his plan. She did not allow her mind to reflect on what that might be. “Your self will soon disappear within us. You will take your form and your place as the design requires.”
“No,” she said, surprising herself, “I do not belong in your pattern.” “A girl!” The Master laughed.
“What did you mean, Beyon’s sacrifice?” she asked. “How did you make Beyon climb in his tomb and kill himself?”
“I didn’t. He did that because it had to happen, because the pattern required it.”