The Tower Broken(121)

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.





56



Didryk


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.