The Tower Broken(29)

She let her lantern shine over the steps and began her long climb. She would have to speak with many men, census-takers and taxmen and money-counters, for one of them would surely know about an influx of slaves from the north. One of them would have collected a portion of a sale, written down a name or noted the addition of slaves to an important household. She hoped it was so; she did not want to discover that Banreh had lied to her. He had been a traitor, but let him not be a traitor to her.





14



Govnan


Govnan lowered himself down the last step and faced the tower wall, taking a moment to catch his breath. At some point in the last month going down had become harder than going up. He placed his lantern behind him on a stair; it irked him, even now, that he required such a thing to light the dark. But he had lost Ashanagur that day in Sarmin’s tower, when Sarmin had seen him and his elemental as nothing more than two interlocking patterns and pulled them apart. Though he was old, some experiences were new to him – the sensation of cold, the frustration of conjuring flame like a novice, the touch of a lantern’s handle. The shock at seeing the crack in front of him.

It had grown since he first saw it two weeks before. Then, it had been about three hairs wide, looking as if someone might have drawn it there, and he had hoped that was the case. But now it had begun to yawn, showing teeth of crumbling stone, its throat a great rent in the Tower wall. He rubbed his finger along its rough edges. He knew an old building could crack; the rock-sworn always had fixed the foundations of old tombs and palace outbuildings. But the Tower had been created with the magic of Meksha herself and blessed by Her, and it had always been impermeable to time and weather. Until now.

Though the light was poor he could see this was not the same kind of damage that had been done to Beyon’s tomb; that also had begun as a crack, but it had spread out into … nothing. That had been without colour or form, a blankness that drew the eye and demanded payment. It had been the result of Helmar’s work and the death of the Mogyrk god, and it had not yet ended; more wounds were growing. The one formed in Migido drew ever closer, called by the use of the pattern in the marketplace attack, and the place where the Mogyrk god had died loomed large in the east.

But this was something new.

Once it might have felt like a challenge, but today it served only to remind him of the failings of his tenure. The Tower had long been in decline: each generation produced fewer mages with less talent, and yet there had always been moments of greatness, of creation and brilliance. Govnan was beginning to fear he would be noted in the history of the Tower only for presiding over its end. And yet he could take joy in the time remaining him, for Mura had been returned.

He could still remember bringing her up the Blessing. She had been a tiny southern girl then, barely past his knee, clinging to a ragdoll. Her eyes, a deep brown before she was bound to Yomawa, had taken in everything – the crates and barrels tied to the boat, the mast and its sails, the poles tied carefully to the deck – and she had made him explain all of it. At every trade-town he bought her something new, here a pomegranate, there a tiny ring made of copper and agate. He always doted on the young recruits, for their lives would be utterly changed once they reached Nooria, where childish things would be put aside for ever. But Mura never outgrew her ragdoll; it rested on a shelf above her bed, guarding over her while she slept. She had left it behind when Sarmin sent her to Fryth, and Govnan had picked it up many times since and held it against his chest. He had never imagined giving it back to her as he had done the other day. A tear pricked his eye.

He wiped it away when he heard Moreth above him.

‘You called for me, High Mage?’ The rock-sworn took the stairs heavily, but with the ease of the young.

‘Yes. I want you to see this. Bring the light closer.’

Moreth held the lantern high as he approached. Govnan might have done the same, except that his shoulder would have complained. ‘You came down the stairs without calling me,’ Moreth scolded.

‘I am your high mage,’ Govnan reminded him. ‘Now, look.’

Moreth leaned so close to the wall that his nose nearly touched it. He closed his eyes and put a hand to the stone. After a moment he hissed and pulled back. ‘Rorswan cannot fix this,’ he said. ‘This crack does not come up from the earth, or by way of water, or through a flaw in the design.’

‘I did not think so. Did he say anything else?’

‘No, but he does not always speak when there is a thing to say.’

Govnan knew it well. Whether fire, water, rock or wind, the claimed spirits rebelled. They did exactly what was mandatory as part of their binding and no more. A favour might sometimes be granted, but always at an extra cost – sometimes one a mage did not wish to pay. ‘Why did you jump away?’