The Tower Broken(24)

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.