Sarmin closed his eyes turned away, his own mouth filling with bile. ‘You are right – he will tell us nothing,’ he said. ‘There is no point in continuing to torture him.’
Dinar led him into the hallway. ‘There is always a point to torture, Magnificence. These brave ones who last the longest – they come closest to Herzu before they die. Some even gain His favour. To offer two such men to the God in one month – this is a blessing.’ When Sarmin did not reply, he pressed him, saying, ‘When may I expect the other?’
Sarmin did not bother searching for Dinar’s features in the darkness. By ‘the other’ he meant Banreh. He swallowed the spittle that had collected in his mouth. ‘I have told you: when I deem it time.’
‘It will soon be time, I expect,’ Dinar said.
Sarmin wondered what he meant, but an emperor never asked such questions. He must never appear to lack knowledge. ‘High priest,’ he said, by way of goodbye.
But Dinar called after him, ‘Magnificence!’ and he turned as the darkness shifted, revealing the vague, wide form of a man. ‘I would have found it preferable to kill the Mogyrks – to root them out of their hidden churches and hovels and sacrifice them all to Herzu.’
Sarmin focused on where he thought the high priest’s eyes might be. ‘I made the decision to call their worship legal.’ As he was the emperor, that meant it was the correct decision. He turned away and left Dinar in the shadows. Herzu had been the patron god of the palace for more than a century, their priests gathering power and influence, their hands stained with blood and their ears filled with screams. He found it difficult to believe no emperor had ever questioned their presence at court, or what benefits the empire had of such a cruel god.
Sarmin met his guards in the main temple. Anxious to leave Herzu’s domain, he led them swiftly out into the corridor and through the entryway into the Great Hall. There on the floor sat the scholar Rahim, parchments spread around him. He dipped a quill into a pot of ink and looked upwards at the dome, where men on ladders were still working on the repairs. As Sarmin drew close he saw drawings of the beams that supported the ceiling.
When Rahim recognised the emperor he leapt to his feet, only to fall immediately to the floor again and prostrate himself, nearly knocking over his inkpot. ‘Your Majesty—’
‘Rahim. What are you doing here?’
‘Your Majesty, with the plaster and mosaics having fallen from the dome, it is an excellent time for me to study its construction. This dome and the one in the throne room are so wide and tall that they are true architectural wonders. It is not in my skill to build such things and so I thought I would come and take notes.’
‘How interesting.’ Sarmin had never wondered about the construction of the palace before. He had always lived in it, and so for him it had always just been here. Now he looked at the broken staircase, the doors leading off into various wings, and he realised that the palace could have been built in an entirely different way – maybe even several different ways. ‘Are there other scholars in the palace, Rahim?’
‘Yes, Magnificence – many.’
The presence of other men of learning caught Sarmin’s imagination. ‘How many, Rahim? What do they study?’
‘There are fifty of us, Magnificence, and our research encompasses the heaven and the earth. The movement of the heavens is as of much interest as the making of the human form. But lately we have been particularly interested in the construction of machines.’
‘I would like to see one of these machines.’
Rahim bobbed his head. ‘Of course, Magnificence.’ He frowned, and then added, ‘But as yet they exist only on parchment, Your Majesty.’
Of course. They would need workmen and materials and imperial permission to make any such works. Had his brother Beyon ever met with the scholars? ‘Send them to me,’ he ordered, and when Rahim had stammered his agreement, Sarmin smiled kindly on him and left him to his work.
The library was to be found in a forgotten corner of the palace. It was dusty, and filled with cobwebs. There were not as many volumes here as he had hoped. Perhaps over the years they had been borrowed or sent to scribes for copying and never been returned. He found several empty spaces. As for histories, he could find only two: one a recounting of Uthman’s founding and the other a detailed log of his father Tahal’s legal proclamations. He looked through it, curious about his father’s relationship with the temple of Herzu, but nothing was mentioned about that. He put it down and continued to search. He found nothing about Satreth or the Yrkman incursions. He was still wondering what Ashanagur had meant by Mogyrk blinds the Tower. Was it something the Yrkmen had done in the past, or something the Storm was doing now?