The Emperors Knife - By Mazarkis Williams Page 0,90
in the mages’ Tower. You are separate, again, and whole, or as whole as I can make you.” The deep voice had the crackle of age in it.
Sarmin rolled his head towards the speaker and realised he was lying flat, on his own bed. His fingers sought out the tear in his tunic, and the wound below, but they found nothing, just tenderness, and the crusting of dried blood on silk.
The man stood beside the bed. Sarmin’s eyes refused to focus, giving him only a smeared impression of a figure wreathed in light, alive with the ghosts of flame. Sarmin kneaded his eyeballs and looked again, seeing an old man now, shadowed, with wisps of white hair haloing a bald head.
“I have no skills for healing,” the man spread his hands, and for a second the wraith-fire played across them again, “but I spent thirteen years in the desert, in the Empty Quarter. There is a rock there, a rock that bleeds. I used a little of that blood to knit your flesh and call you back to it.”
“I don’t know you.” Sarmin felt weak. He felt empty. He wanted Grada. “My name is Govnan. I am High Mage of the Tower.”
“You are two pieces. A puzzle of two pieces.” Sarmin still felt lightheaded; he spoke the words without thinking. “Fire and flesh.”
Govnan raised a brow at that and stepped closer to the bed. Sarmin struggled to sit.
“As the slave carried you within her, I too carry another. It is not the same magic, but similar—simpler. Ashanagur is bound within me, and his strength is mine. At one time he danced across the molten sea before the City of Brass where efreet dwell, but now he dwells in me, until the day comes when he consumes me and I will live inside the fire.”
“I remember the Tower. The high mage was Kobar, before… when I was a child. He made us laugh. He knew tricks, made talking faces in stone walls… He touched Pelar’s red ball and it grew so heavy we couldn’t lift it.” Sarmin smiled at the memory.
“High Mage Kobar was rock-sworn. The time came for the earth-spirit bound to his flesh to find its freedom. For ten years I have held the Tower for Emperor Beyon.”
“Beyon.” Sarmin remembered his brother, the patterns on his skin, the dead guards outside the door. “There are assassins—you must save him!”
“Grada came for you, Sarmin. There are no others. Beyon’s enemy seeks to break him. If he fails to break him, he may try murder, but he is not failing. Even with all the protections we have woven around him, the pattern closes in.”
Sarmin stood. His legs felt strange beneath him. He walked on stilts once as a child, and this was not so different. He found himself taller than Govnan, an odd feeling, as he had been sure the mage would loom over him.
“You’re wrong. Broken or whole, Beyon serves his purpose for the enemy. I have seen that enemy.” Sarmin’s blood had turned black and clotted on his silks. For a moment he felt it again, running hot down his side. “I saw him behind the Many, the Carriers: a Pattern Master.”
Govnan bowed his head. He focused his gaze upon his hands, his knuckles large, and whiter than skin should be. “You have the talents of your line, Prince Sarmin. The throne was purchased with such skills in the earliest of days, and the potential runs through your dynasty. Beyon’s potential has helped to keep the pattern at bay. Your potential kept the emperor’s Knife from your throat.”
“You? You put me here? In this room?”
“No—the Tower spared your life, no more. Envy put you in this room: ambition.”
“How many?” Sarmin asked. “How many boys have lived out their lives like this, under this curse?”
“It is a gift, Prince. Life is always a gift.” Govnan met his stare, and Sarmin could feel the heat of the man. “And there have been no others in my lifetime. There was a child in the time of the Yrkman incursions, but his quarters were sacked when Nooria was overrun.”
“I want Grada.” And as he spoke the words Sarmin knew that he did want her, more than his lost years, more than close-held memories of stolen things, more than his mother or brother.
“Grada is at the Tower, and it is best that she remain there. She has been a tool of the enemy. I will return her knife and—”