The Tower Broken(49)

‘I do not know where the duke is,’ said Banreh, ‘but I can find him. With this.’

Sarmin put away his dacarba, surprised to feel relief more than anything else. Banreh would go into the desert. He would not be killed – not yet. The day when Mesema would hear of Banreh’s death at his hands or his word had been moved into the future. ‘Can the duke hear us?’ he asked, drawn in by the unfamiliar shapes.

‘No. He knows only where I am, and whether I am alive.’

‘Well, Chief,’ Sarmin said, turning away, ‘you shall live a bit longer. Do not become accustomed to it.’





23



Farid


Govnan laid a fifth parchment before Farid. Each was covered with an inked pattern different to the last. ‘This was transcribed from a spell cast by Yrkmir invaders in the time of the great defeat,’ the high mage said, ‘when Helmar was taken from the palace.’

‘I told you, I don’t recognise any of these.’ Farid slid back his chair and looked out of the window. They sat in an airy room near the top of the Tower, with a view spreading over the courtyard and the north quarter of Nooria. Between the Tower walls and the Worship Gate stretched long streets of houses and temples that crushed up against the Blessing, their dark alleys crisscrossing like the nets his sister once made with twine. The Blessing continued north, beyond the walls, towards the mountains. Farid had never been so high up. He felt like a bird soaring over the landscape and looking down – except that far in the distance, part of the northlands were obscured from his sight; they were greyish, as if covered by mist. He squinted and tried to see what was there, but his gaze kept sliding away from it like oil from water.

When Emperor Beyon’s tomb had collapsed, he had heard strange rumours about what had been inside: a nothingness, an impenetrable nothingness impossible to look at. And Govnan continued to glance out the window, his eyes returning again and again to the same spot.

With an uneasy feeling Farid turned back to the parchments. All of these patterns were much more complicated than those he had learned in Adam’s cramped house.

Govnan was sending him to the desert, to a Fryth pattern mage. Farid knew the mage had offered to train him, but if he was anything like Adam, he expected to learn very little. Why the lofty Tower was showing interest in these witch-marks eluded him. Perhaps the Tower was sending him only because he was already stained by Mogyrk’s hand. The thought sparked anger – it was not his fault he had seen the pattern that day in the marketplace.

The high mage pointed at one of the shapes with a claw-like hand. ‘What does this shape mean?’

Farid folded his arms over his chest. ‘I don’t know what it means.’

‘Marke Kavic suggested that each of these formations names something. Water, bird, wool – is it like that?’ Govnan shifted the parchments. ‘If I could just learn the key to these patterns …’

Farid pointed at an elongated diamond near the centre. ‘That one I know: Hiss-nick,’ he said. ‘Adam only gave me the Fryth words.’

Govnan wrote down the word and placed a smaller parchment before him. This one was not so aged, and the design on it was thickly inked. ‘What about this?’

Farid turned it in his fingers. The shapes tickled his memory. ‘Where did this come from?’ he asked.

‘It was on our prisoner’s wrist.’

Farid turned it from left to right, but that was not the problem. He needed a mirror. ‘I don’t know what it is, but I think it’s only half of something.’

‘You are correct. It is a binding. But what are its properties?’

Farid stared, then shook his head. ‘Maybe the Fryth mage will teach me.’ He meant it sarcastically, but Govnan nodded in his patient way.

‘How many symbols did Adam teach you?’

Farid could take no more of sitting. He stood and paced to the end of the table, feeling his new robes swirl around his feet. He felt naked in them, with the air brushing against his skin with every movement. He thought for a moment, then said, ‘Fifty-two, and I guess that wasn’t even a tenth of them.’ When Govnan frowned, he said, ‘I never wanted to learn these evil things. I still don’t. But words are not the key.’

‘What is the key?’

Farid turned it over in his mind. Finally he picked up one of the complicated designs drawn by the ancient Yrkmen. ‘It’s the way they work together,’ he said, running a finger along a line of triangles. ‘No single part can hold the spell – they need to work together.’

‘Words have no meaning, then?’ asked Govnan, frustrated, but Farid kept his eyes on the parchment. He had been looking at it wrong. These symbols were not meant to rest on a flat plane. Instead they ordered themselves above and below, forwards and backwards, into the storied ages of Nooria itself. The parchment set his fingers tingling and a longing to imitate the pattern on the stones around him almost overcame him, the need to surround himself with gleaming lines and interlocking shapes.