The Tower Broken(41)

The prince—? But Farid had no time to ask, for no sooner had the high mage spoken than the Tower shuddered and swayed as if rocked by a great wind and Govnan stumbled and fell. His staff rolled across the room and came to rest under the window.

‘Mura! Moreth!’ the high mage cried, ‘all of you, get out of the Tower at once! The crack has widened!’

Farid looked at the curved stone wall in fear. The big mage had said the great Tower was cracked – could it really be so damaged that it would begin to fall?

Mura answered his thoughts in the negative. ‘No,’ she said, picking up the high mage’s staff and looking out the window. ‘No, the whole city has been rocked.’

Farid helped Govnan to stand and together they walked to the window. The Tower overlooked all, and from where he stood, Farid could see the empty courtyard and beyond it, the dark city spreading south towards the palace, lit here and there by torchlight, illuminating a piece of a wall, the curve of a turret, the edge of a guardhouse. He could not make out what Mura had seen; perhaps her bound spirit offered extra sight.

The high mage looked out into the night and gave a heavy sigh, though whether it was from relief or sorrow Farid could not tell. ‘Mura,’ said Govnan.

‘Yes, high mage?’

‘The bell has rung. Please go downstairs and let the young prince inside.’





19



Sarmin


The council table sat in a corner of the throne room, overlooked by most petitioners and unused on most days. Nobody knew its age. Its grain revealed the wood’s origins in the southern forests, but it had grown dark over the intervening years, time, lantern-smoke, ink and the hands of hundreds of men having marked it day by day. The table never would be sanded down and polished, though it showed dull and old against the bright cushions and fixtures of the room. Those scratches and dents upon the surface had been made by the great leaders of old, generals who had defeated powerful armies and priests who had called down the favour of the gods. They gave the men who settled around the table today a sense of purpose and distinction. General Hazran, with white hair surrounding a kind face, took his chair, while his opposite in the White Hat Army settled beside him, anxious and sharp. General Lurish glanced at the vacant chair meant for his second, General Arigu. High Priest Dinar, his eyes cold, sat across from Assar, High Priest of Mirra, whose fingernails were black with soil. Herran, head of the Grey Service, his face shadowed beneath his hood, took his place next to the silent, far-seeing desert headman Notheen. Above them stood Azeem at his writing-stand, hand poised over his stack of parchments. High Mage Govnan had not yet arrived.

‘Report, Lord High Vizier.’ Sarmin watched the men’s faces as Azeem spoke.

‘The palace engineers have finished their assessment. The greatest damage is in the main hall, where the ceiling cracked and fell fifty feet to the floor. Those mosaics have been destroyed, but many of the tiles can be recovered. The staircase leading from the Great Hall to the second level is no longer safe for use. The west wing, where the scribes and money-counters are currently housed, shifted on its foundations. In the other wings there is naught but minor damage to the plaster.’

‘And what of the city?’ asked Lurish, leaning forwards.

Sarmin already knew the answer to that. From high on Qalamin’s Deck he had seen the devastation, the jagged paths of collapsed roofs reaching from the Blessing, where bridge-stones poked their heads from the surface, up into the Holies where noblemen stood stunned in the wreckage of their gardens. It continued down into the twisting alleys of the Maze, now filled with rubble and broken bodies, and all the way south to the Low Gate. The lines of destruction came to a sudden stop just short of the outer walls.

He had not yet been told how many were dead.

‘There is extensive damage,’ Azeem answered.

The men muttered among themselves until Hazran’s voice rose and silenced the others. ‘But was this an attack?’

‘I have invited one of our palace scholars to speak on the possible cause.’ Azeem gestured to the guards and a balding man in worn velvet hurried down the silk runner with such haste Sarmin feared he might trip.

‘Your Majesty!’ The scholar knelt and touched his head to the floor.

Azeem said, ‘This is the palace scholar Rahim. He studies rocks and the earth.’ He made it sound a simple thing, but Sarmin sensed a lifetime of study could never encompass all the things there were to learn about stone. He wondered what other scholars the palace contained, and the worlds they explored on his behalf.

‘Rise,’ Sarmin said, curious. ‘What news have you, Rahim?’