CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

SARMIN

Sarmin entered the temple of Herzu with Ne-Seth and the other guards at his back. He had forgotten how confusing it was here: statues and chairs covered the floor in no order at all and he had to pick his way through them in the near dark, the only available light resting at the foot of the great statue of the God on the far side of the temple. He squeezed between an eight-foot gryphon and an empty soapstone basin and found something of an aisle that ended at the feet of Herzu. There he paused, looking up at the terrible, cruel, fanged visage. Something glistening and bloody had been placed in its outstretched hand and Sarmin felt a wave of nausea. He looked away, not wanting to know whether they were teeth, fingernails, or something else. They had likely come from Mylo.

Dinar emerged from the private halls behind the altar, wiping his hands on a rag, leaving dark stains. “Your Majesty,” he said, smiling, in a fine mood. “I have been questioning our Mogyrk prisoner.”

“Indeed. I have come to find out what you have learned.” Sarmin looked down at the rag and felt strong misgivings. He had heard no screams, no begging; he thought if he were being tortured he would not be so stoic.

The high priest sighed. “He speaks of nothing but going into the light, Magnificence. He says we will all be destroyed, and Mogyrk will take him to paradise. No matter how I cut him, he will say nothing of the austere, Adam.”

“He is brave, then.” So the man had one admirable quality. He had attacked his mother and stolen his brother away, but at least he had courage. That would not be enough to spare him, though. “I want to see him.”

Dinar smiled and turned towards a dark hallway, saying, “This way, Magnificence.”

Sarmin followed. At times the high priest looked like nothing more than a shadow among shadows, so dark was the corridor, but at last he opened a door into a well-lit room.

“The sacrifice,” said Dinar.

Mylo lay naked upon a great golden hand. His head rested in the crook of the middle finger and the wide palm cupped his hips. His feet hung at odd angles over the edge where the broad wrist rose from the floor. Sarmin took that in quickly and made a point of not looking at what lay between those three points. Blood dripped from the hollow of the thumb onto the tiles, and Sarmin moved his feet away, his eyes taking in cuts, stripped muscle, and twisted fingers before he could turn his head to meet Mylo’s gaze. Mylo looked back at him, his eyes calm.

“Where is Adam?” asked Sarmin.

Mylo looked at Dinar before he spoke. “Mogyrk will bring light to all of Nooria,” he said.

At this Dinar made a sound of impatience and picked up a hammer. Mylo swallowed, but kept on, “There will be a rebirth. After the destruction—”

The high priest brought the hammer down on Mylo’s foot but the man did not scream. He tensed, then turned his head to the side to allow thin yellow vomit to flow from his mouth. After several moments had passed he said, “After the destruction, we will go into the light.”

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?

His brother Beyon had obviously been no scholar—judging by the state of this room it had been used seldom in the last twenty years; he doubted it had ever been guarded. So the curious must have taken the books and scrolls that caught their interest and carried them off to the far corners of the palace to read in the comfort of their private chambers, then never returned them. The palace was large and whole wings that had once been inhabited now lay empty. Setting slaves to search every room for missing books was a demanding task, especially considering he did not have enough people even to meet the palace’s basic needs.

Sarmin tapped his fingers on a shelf and looked out at the sun, which had moved from early morning to late morning. Duke Didryk waited on him in the throne room.

“Come,” he said to Ne-Seth, but as he turned towards the door, a gilt-edged tome caught his eye. He picked it up and blew dust from the cover. The Gods of Cerana. He leafed through it. The gods painted upon the ceiling of his tower room had kept him company for so many years: Ghesh, walking between the vast spaces between the stars; Keleb, clutching His books of law; Mirra, watering a pomegranate tree, rendered in tiny sweeps of paint; Torlos, cutting down his enemies in bold, thick strokes. Herzu had been one of many looking down upon his bed, but here in the palace, he overpowered them all.

Mylo’s pain still made Sarmin feel sick from shame. Death in itself was not the worst; compared to his short time on earth a man’s time in heaven was endless, and a knife only brought it closer. But Herzu’s ways did not reflect the empire Sarmin wanted to shape, the man Sarmin wished to be. He should not have allowed it.

But what would the courtiers say—what would the army say—if they thought him soft?

With the book in his hand and followed by his sword-sons he walked to the throne room.