Mazarkis Williams: Knife Sworn

“Shush, shush, little one,” she whispered, coughing herself, turning towards the Great Room. She would head for the big doors; surely they would be safe if she could get to the other side. But what of the empress, and little Pelar? No time to think of them. Must get out. She ran, a dozen concubines running with her. But the doors were blocked. The guards struggled to pull them open, panic in their voices. “Open at once!” they shouted, “The royal princes are trapped inside!”

Someone on the other side shouted, “Mogyrk’s will!”

The guards kicked and clawed. Smoke billowed into the room, hot in Rushes’ lungs, burning her eyes. Barely able to see she stumbled against the wall. The baby coughed again and she clutched him to her chest, heart beating fast. We must get out! Screams echoed around her. A hot wind blew against Rushes’ cheek, accompanied by a rush of flame. She jumped back asthe fire burst from the jewel-coloured cushions. It was then she saw Gala, pale as winter snow, run through the room, mouth open in a skeleton’s grin, laughing like a demon from Herzu’s hell. Not just Gala; something rode on her back, drove her through the crowd of screaming concubines like a war-horse. A ghost. This was what they had been waiting for-for Gala, and others, to be empty enough for them to ride. The horror of it filled her lungs as much as the smoke, stopping her breath.

The guards drew their swords and moved in on Gala, coughing and wiping at their eyes. Only one remained with Rushes and Daveed now, one faithful protector, but against fire he could do nothing. She had to save Daveed. The moving shelves! She hurried to them. “I can take the prince this way, down to the Little Kitchen,” she told him, taking out the shelves as she spoke. He helped her climb in, knees up, Daveed cradled against her chest. “Release the brake and lower me,” she said.

“I can’t protect the baby in the Little Kitchen,” he said, suddenly doubtful of the plan. He was an older man, fatherly, and she wondered if he had children or grandchildren, if he protected them as he protected Daveed.

“Quickly! He will burn!”

He frowned, finally nodded agreement and closed the door, leaving her in darkness. It reminded her of Gorgen, in the pantry, and she clamped her lips together to keep from screaming. Just a minute or so. It would take only a minute to get down to the Little Kitchen. She prayed that Empress Mesema had found a way out, away from the flames.

The guard lowered her in jerks and bounces, every time feeling as if she would fall and break her bones and the baby too. But then she was there, pulling up on the door that Old Hagga always stood by, where Mina used to put the trays, and she slid out onto the floor of the Little Kitchen. She gave a sigh of relief and gathered Pelar against her breast. His coughing began to subside, and he looked around the room with interest. That was a good sign he was feeling better. Her eyes on the baby, Rushes took a step forwards and nearly crashed into Mylo.

Mylo smiled at her, but not with the beatific smile she had come to know. This smile was the smile of a wolf or a grass-cat. “Good! I knew you’d figure it out,” he said. “and you brought me something precious. Is that Prince Pelar?”

Rushes backed away, holding Daveed to her chest. Mylo was supposed to be in the courtyard, or locked in the dungeon along with his priest. “No. It’s Daveed.”

“Where’s Pelar?”

“With his mother.” She looked around. “I thought you would be in the courtyard.” I thought I would be safe in the Little Kitchen. But no place is safe.

“Soon,” he said. “Give me the baby.”

“I’ll carry him,” she said.

He lifted a club, sticky with blood. Whose? “Give him to me.”

“No!” Others wandered into the kitchen now, some curious, others angry, kitchen knives and fire pokers in their hands. Hagga was not here. Had they hurt her? She turned back to Mylo. “Why-”

The blow came, sharp and quick, a cracking against her skull. Daveed! But she did not drop him. The last thing she felt as her knees buckled and her sight grew dim were gentle hands, lifting the silk bundle from her arms, and Daveed kicking, protesting, beginning to realize he was not safe any longer. The lesson came too early for him. Not fair… Daveed!

“Aie can also be true?” Sarmin scratched more of his pattern into the wall, scoring the plaster in white lines. “What help is that?” The truth of his own pattern ached around him, each stroke cutting something more substantial than the surfaces about him, a flat light leaking through them to bathe the room in that glow which settles before the worst of storms. “A lie can also be true?” He saw the pattern everywhere now, each exposed brick a mesh of earth symbols, fire symbols, the coded geometry of its construction, the ancient waters where silt settled, the imprints of the men that shaped it. His bed no longer held form but shaped itself from patterns enumerating trees, branching, folded, self-referencing, remembering days when twigs and leaves had danced to please the wind.

For the year since Helmar died on the Knife Sarmin had drawn no pattern, made no study of the magics.

“These enchantments are your heritage, my emperor,” Govnan had told him. “The skill for such seeing is found so rarely-a gift of your blood.”

“What good ever came from Helmar’s work?” Sarmin had asked, and the high mage had no answer.

Sarmin had never craved the power of the Petal Throne, let alone desired to claim still deeper control with patterns new or old. Helmar’s need to rule a nation of puppets, a world slaved to his will… it had always seemed the miserable ember of lost ambitions, of a hope turned sour.

Sarmin closed his eyes, unsteady with exhaustion. He pressed the heel of his hand hard against his forehead. For the thousandth time the image of Pelar swum before him, lying white and unmoving on the flagstones. He shook it away, shook away the pain, opened his eyes to focus on the symbols before him. He’d been wrong; patterns could speak of more than men, but whatever they spoke of they told only a story, not the truth. The pattern of fire held heat and light but the vital essence of fire, the wildness, vitality, endless variety, all that lay too deep for the pattern to catch.

Sarmin found he could write the stories of many things within his patterns, but he could craft no symbol for the nothing. The end of all things lay in the heart of the desert, and now because of Helmar it devoured the palace and threatened everything Sarmin loved. And though the pattern had brought this curse to their doorstep, not in all of its language were there words to speak of what attacked them.

“Gods help me.” He saw Pelar again, still as pale, still as small.

Ta-Sann knocked and entered, a silver tray in hand. Sarmin would admit no servants now. “You must eat, my emperor.”

“Eat?” The tray spilled patterns, fire signs chasing water signs coiling up where steam should rise, the life of a fish written limp across a plate, corrupted with other stories, stories of salt and spice, even the tray itself a dense mesh of symbology speaking of the deep places where ore is mined, the furnace in which the silver sweated from the rock.

“For your strength, my emperor.” Ta-Sann himself glowed with the essay of his life written through him, making a ghost of his flesh, his loyalty, memories, wants, all coded there in threaded lines woven into bones.

“I have no strength.” Only the stone held no pattern, simply a stone, black and uninspired, scooped no doubt from some turn of the Blessing where the river piles up its discarded toys. The stone and the nothing held no pattern, the unwriting from the desert.“Nothing I do here matters.” Sarmin spat the words and rolled back against the wall, shoulders pressed flat against it. “Helmar’s patterns are false. Their language is too crude, too blunt. Men cannot be written into it. Not all of a man. Not the core. Not what matters most. That was not my brother.” He stared at Ta-Sann as if the man had contradicted him. “That was not my brother. Beyon loved me.”