CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

FARID

Acourier had delivered a scroll-case full of parchments from Duke Didryk, and Farid took them to the Tower library to examine them. The duke had drawn as many symbols as he could on the ten sheets—likely the ones most used by pattern mages—and Farid set to memorising them: Stone, Fire, Air, Blood, Water, Wood, Bone, and more— two hundred and forty in all—spread out under his fingertips. He judged that it would take him a few hours to get to know them, but once he’d done that, he could start to analyse the patterns Govnan had shown him, including the one he had drawn on the wall while dreaming. Those shapes surrounded him, intrigued him, teased him, but though his fingers itched, he refused to put the spell into action—not until he knew what it was he had built, for it might do anything, even destroy the Tower.

Mura was still at the wall. Moreth had returned and was now in the depths somewhere beneath Farid, meditating and practising self-control. Farid wanted nothing to do with the rock-sworn. He sat on a wooden chair and kept his feet from the floor. Never before had he been so aware that the city was built of stone, with barely any bricks or wood. The Tower was magically wrought stone: its floors were stone, its courtyard, stone. He remembered the two men Rorswan had killed, and he shivered.

The sun had set, but Govnan’s fire in the north gave Farid enough light to read by. He had only a short time before it was his turn at the wall, so he turned to the old parchments at last and began to translate them, using the duke’s notations as a guide, his attention entirely taken by patterns until the shapes and lines began to swim before his eyes.

The pattern he had drawn along the walls fluttered and dimmed; the floor undulated with dark warning. He pulled his legs further up onto the chair. Had Moreth lost control? Would Rorswan eat him? But this was no rock-spirit. Black threads twined across the stone, adding obsidian pattern-shapes as it moved: triangle, oval, square. It gleamed with an oily resonance, creeping towards him, its tendrils testing the legs of his chair. He climbed onto the table and looked around at the rest of the furniture. He could go no higher.

The pattern picked up speed, sensing him now, rushing across the seat of the chair and reaching out over the table’s surface. He edged away from it, concentrating on the shapes, on pulling them tight as the duke had taught him, but they seemed to slide out of his grasp, wiggling away from his intent like slippery fish. It touched the wood of the table and now it moved towards him in unhurried fashion, as if its wielder knew he had nowhere to go, until at last it hooked around his ankle. He hissed when it burned his skin. He could feel it winding up his leg and encircling his torso; it was cold now, colder than river water.

His sight went dim. His body relaxed from its fearful pose and his legs slipped from the table. These were not his movements; these were not his feet walking out of the door. “No,” he said. “Let me go.”

I cannot. There is work we must do. The voice whispered to him like a lover.

“Who are you?”

I am the voice of Mogyrk. I am death and life. I am the promise of rebirth.

He moved down the stairs now, his steps sure and confident, his robes no longer a concern.

The traitor Didryk freed you from your fate, but I cannot allow that.

He reached the bottom of the stair and passed the rock-sworn statues.

Here my enemies lie already vanquished. But it is not finished. Not yet.

“You can’t.” He hoped the doors might offer a challenge to his captor, but his body was made to heave against it until the left-hand one stood far enough open that he could slip through. Ahead of him he could see the destructive pattern in the courtyard, its shapes twisted, its lines closed. It was all ready to be fixed and pulled loose. The guards, standing along the walls, would not think he was casting a pattern; he would look as if he was out for an evening stroll.

“No!” he shouted, but no sound came from him.

The voice laughed and he felt a pull.

Farid came to himself in the courtyard. “No,” he whispered. He looked up at the curved wall of the Tower. Lights flashed up and down its length as ancient wards built into the stone were triggered. Farid felt sure the pattern mage had failed—but then he saw the stone shift, dust rolling from its edges. “No!” He reached for the other pattern, the one in the library. All he knew about that one was that it reached back in time, forwards and backwards. If it could stop this … He reached out with his mind and pulled that pattern too.

He heard the laughter again, fading into the distance. Thank you.

He had only accelerated the destruction. The smooth wall of the Tower crumbled downwards, its many windows collapsing like closing eyes. Moreth was in there, at the bottom, too far to warn, too late to save. The dust washed over Farid like a sandstorm and he scrambled backwards, coughing. A rumble sounded deep in the earth and the courtyard shook. But it was not just the courtyard; the whole city was shaking, reacting to the destruction of the Tower. The highest stones dissolved as they fell, transforming into a white cloud that hovered in the air, and the domed metal roof hit the courtyard floor with a great ringing crack. The bell separated from it and with a dull clang, fell over its collapsed ropes. The lintel around the great brass doors ran away like sand, and the doors fell into the dust without a sound.

All fell silent.

“Moreth!” Farid scrambled to the edge of where the Tower had been, but it was too dark to see anything. All the torches that had been lit inside had been snuffed out by the weight of the powdered stone.

“Moreth!” The same spell had been cast in the temple of Meksha, and the people inside it had suffocated. He scooped up the dust with his fingers, all the while knowing his efforts were futile.

“Moreth!” The Blue Shields ran towards him, shouting for ropes, shovels, wagons—Farid had blamed the rock-sworn for the death of those two thieves—and now he had killed Moreth. Now he knew what it was like to lose his will to another. They were the same, he and the mage, but it was too late to admit that in any way that mattered. He knelt by the pit of the ruined Tower and held his head in his hands. Time stayed still. He had been playing with the patterns as his sister once played with twine, even knowing they could destroy and kill—for they had killed his mother.

He might have sat there a minute, an hour, or an age, preparing the words he would say when he turned himself in to the Blue Shields who surrounded him.

But a plume of dust rose into the air, spurting like a fountain from the pit, spraying the eastern side of the courtyard, and he gave a great shout of delight. Of course: Moreth was rock-sworn. He could not be killed by stone.

“Moreth!” He leaned over the edge and looked at where the lower rooms of the Tower had once been. The dust continued to flow upwards, and slowly the edges of the pit took form. At last Farid caught side of the mage, pale as a ghost for all the dust that clung to his skin, standing in a pile of dissolved stone, wavering in exhaustion.

“Wait!” Farid shouted, and he ran to the bell. He started tugging on its ropes, but the enormous bell sat on top of them. At last, with the Blue Shields’ help, he managed to untangle a length long enough to throw to Moreth. Moreth gripped the rope, secured by the bell’s great weight, and puffing and panting, they pulled the mage up.

They all collapsed at the edge, coughing and thanking the gods, until Farid sat up again, a new awareness taking form. “What’s down there?” he asked Moreth.

“The crack—where the portals were.”

“The crack …” He looked over the edge. “Can you remove the rest of the dust?”

“Why?”

“Just—please?” Farid’s heart beat against his chest. He knew it wasn’t the crack; there was something else at the bottom of the pit now: something the ancient pattern had brought forth, either from the past or the future.

As the Blue Shields moved around them, looking for what might be salvaged, Moreth sighed and held out a hand, and once again the dust began to empty from the cavity. Farid watched until it was completely gone and Moreth collapsed against the flagstones.

With a jolt Farid realised he should not have overtaxed the mage—he could end up swallowed by stone—but Moreth was already recovering himself. His efforts had been successful. A circular pool was revealed at the bottom, yellow light dancing across its surface, but it was not water that rippled there. Power warmed Farid’s skin, power that drew him like the smell of food after fasting, or the thrill of queenflower, or the touch of the right woman—all of those things together and more. He would go to it. He must go to it. He tugged on the rope to make sure it was still held firmly by the bell, then lowered himself into the pit. The hair on his arms stood on end and his breath caught in his throat.

Above him he heard voices—the Blue Shields asking what he might be doing, Moreth attempting some explanation. Farid held a hand out over the bright circle. This was not molten rock, nor water, nor anything of nature. This was of heaven, powerful and bright, sweet as honey and strong as wine. He heard a Blue Shield shouting down to him, heard Moreth calling his name, but he would answer them later. He stepped up on the copper rim of the pool and looked down into its depths. There he saw glints of green and copper, swimming like fish in the bright haze. He jumped in.