Mazarkis Williams: Knife Sworn

“My emperor?” Govnan peered at Sarmin’s fingers, seeing only flesh.

“Man is more than that. Beyon was more than that.” He shook his head and the pattern-sight left him. “Azeem, go to my wife and son. Make sure they are defended. We will go to the right. Ta-Sann, take me to the tomb.”

“There is no tomb, my emperor.” Ta-Sann watched him. “There are no tombs. Just the nothing. It has taken them all.”

“Even so. We will go there.”

And Ta-Sann set off to the right without further reply. Sarmin envied him his loyalty. Loyalty can remain when even faith has gone, a view so narrow it makes every choice seem simple. Azeem they left, finding his way in the dark.

They crossed the chasm where Grada had fought and killed imperial guards on her way to murder him. Sarmin felt the pull of that drop to either side of the narrow span of stone. Djinn lurked in those depths now, willing him to fall.

From chasm to rough-hewn corridor, next steps, then a long side-ways shuffle following some natural fissure in the rock. Behind them, at the edge of Govnan’s illumination, the shadows seethed. Djinn filled the darkness, following, as if sensing some threat to their feasting.

At last, dry and dirty they reached the long stair that would take them up to a store-room near the door to Satreth’s Plaza where the tombs of the emperors had stood. The Ways would take them directly to several of the tombs but Govnan had reports of collapse in those tunnels.

The storeroom held a musty scent of disuse and rat droppings. Ta-Sann had to force open the door from the Ways, toppling several sacks of millet flour, sliding others across the floor. He moved into the room with hachirah held across his body in a two-handed grip, his shadow swinging before him in the steady glade of Govnan’s white flame.

“Come.”

And Sarmin moved out, Govnan at his back. Ta-Sann opened the door to the corridor beyond, a broad servants’ avenue leading past storerooms left and right on its way to the main kitchens. Shafts of sunlight struck down through skylights along the length of the passage, dust motes caught the light in the shaft closest and Sarmin paused in the doorway to watch. “A pattern.” Some inner engine sought to attach meaning to the motes’ slow swirl, to the brief brilliance given to each, and the obscurity that followed. He drew a deep breath and smelled smoke.

“My emperor?” Govnan trapped behind him. “Sarmin?”

“Sor-” Sarmin caught himself. An emperor does not apologise. He stepped into corridor and the high mage followed. The sound of distant screaming reached them along the passageway, terror, but more than that, shouting too, anger and pain. “I hear fighting?”

“More trouble with the slaves,” Govnan said. “The hollow ones have everyone terrified. It wouldn’t surprise me if half the servants are gone by morning, fled downriver.”

Sarmin shook his head. “None of that will matter unless we can end this. Not the war, not what happens here.” Not even if the palace is burning.

“If you would give me an hour I could assemble the tower mages…”

Sarmin turned towards the door that opened onto the plaza. The wood had a fragile look, pale like driftwood abandoned by the river and bleached in the sun. “Would they help? These… how many mages is it now? Four? They can’t save my son and he hasn’t touched the nothing, just been lapped by its outer waves.” He pointed to the door. “What’s out there is so much worse.”

Govnan shook his head, such a small motion it almost wasn’t there. “What can any of us do? The nothing unwrites the elements, unpatterns, undoes.”

“We can try.” Sarmin managed a smile. “That’s all we can do. Running won’t save Pelar. And, whatever the books might say, an emperor should sometimes apologise. But what he should never do is run-certainly not from his capital. Notheen and his people are an idea set in motion, the nomads carry their world with them. Cerana though, it is an idea fixed around a centre. And if the centre gives, the rest will not hold.

Open the door, Ta-Sann.”

The sword-son reached out for the black iron ring of the handle. It tore free in his grip, the wood crumbling around the fixing plate as if devoured from within by dry mite. He made a tentative jab at the middle of the door with his hachirah and the whole structure collapsed, falling in sections, pieces exploding into dust as they hit the floor.

Through the doorway Sarmin could see nothing, not darkness or light, no hint of the sky, just a space that refused to register on his eye, as if the corridor neither ended nor continued but simply denied inquiry. Along with the sense of an endless fall just waiting to seize him Sarmin felt the nothing’s touch, feather-light, searching for any loose end by which he might be unravelled. Ahead of him Ta-Sann’s huge form seemed diminished, his darkness shaded to grey.

Sarmin advanced on the doorway. He reached up for Ta-Sann’s shoulder and pulled him away. The warrior slumped back, easily turned, no protest in him.

“No!” Govnan’s cry behind him, too late, as if he too had been spellbound by the nothing, a moth bound to its flame. “No.” Weaker this second time. And Sarmin turned to face his undoing.

Through the Many Sarmin knew what it was to be blind. Staring into the midst of nothing made less of his eyes than those of a man who has never seen, and yet it seemed vision was all that remained to him. The nothing filled and hollowed him, he fell into it, or felt he did, with the unwriting all around him, seeking out stray threads of his life and starting to unwind them.

This is a power that can undo stone, dismantle wind and water, break fire into pieces and devour each part. There is nothing I can do.

The Many had been wiped from Sarmin and yet somehow he knew the voice that echoed in him was not his own. “Out!” and he drove the djinn from him. Impossible or not his task might be, but the spirits would try to stop him, for the nothing sustained them, they would ride its destruction until the last moment of time was devoured and they too found oblivion. They would allow no threat to it, however small.

Sarmin tore his vision from the nothing and glanced back along the corridor. Ta-Sann stood with Govnan, neither of them able to watch him. In the distance figures moved, not with the broken gait of hollow men but with speed and purpose, drawing closer. Closer still and Sarmin saw that some had the pale flesh of the hollowed, temple guards, imperial guard, a concubine, silks tattered and streaming, her white hair wild, others were slaves bearing crude weapons and no sign of the nothing’s touch. All of them ran without cries or threat, eyes fixed on their emperor.

“They’re possessed!” Govnan raised his staff, though it could be small defence against so many.

Sarmin saw it in the same moment as Govnan-the djinn riding on each man’s back, invisible yet somehow made known through the sheer malice radiating from them.

“Stay clear.” Ta-Sann drew his hachirah and stepped forward to block the corridor. He took the heavy blade two handed and rolled his head as if getting the cricks out of his thick neck. The walls to either side allowed for an uninterrupted swing but with no room to spare.

The swiftest of the attackers died first, the hachirah decapitating him as he came within its arc. He fell in two pieces showering pale blood. Behind him another man, then two more, then a multitude. Ta-Sann turned with the scimitar’s momentum, his foot lashing out to strike the second man beneath the chin with force enough to separate vertebrae in his neck. That man fell boneless and the two followed tripped over the corpses before them.

Even for Sarmin, echoing with the threat of the nothing, the scene held a fascination that pinned him. Ta-Sann jerked the hilt of his scimitar into the face of the next man, the iron pommel making a ruin of the slave’s forehead, the cutting edge followed on a descending arc to sever a reaching arm. The sword-son mixed brutality with grace, each blow underwritten by rippling muscle, driven not only by corded arms but the thick power of his torso, the strength of his legs.