She jumped up and gathered a sheet around her nakedness. The markings still covered her skin from fingertips to elbows. Beyon lay before her, his skin grey, his head tilted back, and all around him glistened the pattern- half-moon, crescent, triangle, star, two lines, circle-all in shades of red, shimmering in the unstained silk and lighting the rubies of Sarmin’s dagger. She grabbed the blade, found the bundle of food and drink, and stood over him. “Goodbye, Beyon.” A fierce memory of him, golden, vital, clutched her, but Beyon had gone beyond blood and broken flesh. Nothing held her to his remains.
She climbed over the side to where the pattern spread across the tiles and ran for the secret ways.
Sarmin felt it, the spilling of blood, the rushing loss of life, the death of his last brother. “Beyon!” he cried, rousing the assassin from his deathlike sleep. “He is gone, then, the emperor.” Eyul’s voice creaked. He did not open his eyes.
“My brother!” Sarmin tore at his hair, hit his forehead against the wall.
Eyul spoke again. “You are the emperor now. The Knife… evil. You must find the centre…” Eyul, near-dead, trailed off. He was as still as everything else in Sarmin’s room.
“Do not speak to me of evil! I know what evil is!” Where is Mesema? Is she hurt? “My friend needs help-the empire needs help, and I am stuck in this room.”
Eyul didn’t answer.
Grada is just one person. The Master commands a multitude. He could feel the pattern closing around him, suffocating him. It would not be long before the Master found him. With a groan he fled from the Master, from his tower room, from Eyul’s pain and Beyon’s death, from his failings and inabilities… He ran, and he found Grada.
Grada saw the vultures late on the sixth day of her journey: a distant spiralling of birds, black dots against the wideness of the sky. She watched them as she drew closer. So many. How many were dead, to summon such a host? The vultures circled and descended, and more flew in to take their place in the air. Circle first, once, twice, then descend in a third loop. A pattern.
The watchtowers of Migido came into view, black against the red eye of the setting sun. Grada walked on, her feet sore, her mouth dry, and an acid weight in her stomach.
No smoke. Sarmin had joined her, though his mind darkened with grief. Who had died? He did not say.
There should always be smoke, for cooking, for firing clay, for all the things a town needs. The shadows of Migido reached towards her, but no smoke rose from its chimneys, no lights shone from the windows. There were no beggars, no children, no dogs. Those were the outer layers of any town…
Grada reached the first house. It was dark, the door ajar.
“Hello?” Her voice sounded thin.
Don’t go in. Her thought, and Sarmin’s.
She walked on, along the deserted street. A soft wind rustled the leaves of fig trees as she passed. Her feet shuffled in the sand that rippled here and there over the cobbles.
The twilight thickened. The heat of the day ran from her as the sun’s glow died in the west.
Silence.
“You should go around,” Sarmin said. No more pain, I can’t “I don’t want to see.” The horror of it crawled on Grada’s cooling skin. She didn’t want to see what the vultures were feasting upon, but she had to.
She moved towards the main square, the rough stone catching at her robes as she edged along the side of a building.
“I came through Migido when I was a little girl-my mother and I were on our way to Nooria. I remember a festival, and dancing. An old lady was kind to me.” She approached the building’s corner slowly, one hand brushing over the stonework.
“You should go around…” Sarmin wavered. They both treasured kindnesses. They both held a store of such precious moments, and returned to them, time and again. Please, you should go around.
“I-” Grada spoke out loud, not meaning to, and a dark explosion burst before her in a great rushing and screeching. Grada screamed too Vultures. They are just vultures.
Somewhere in his distant room, Sarmin had shouted in terror. Grada stepped around the corner, and more vultures launched themselves skywards, squawking their annoyance. They would return at first light. The gloom hid all detail. Grada could see the town square, clear of stalls.
One camel pulled at the tether holding him to a post, but no people. It looked for a moment as though a caravan had been unloaded with the sacks laid carelessly here and there.
“No.” Sarmin took it in through her eyes, and his dread and grief fell on her so hard that her legs sagged beneath her. She felt him try to turn away.
“There is-” His voice broke. “There is a pattern to it.”
And Grada saw it: the pattern to the bodies. The vultures had disturbed it a little, leaving a spill of entrails here, an arm yanked out there. A small child had been dragged from her position, and half a baby had been left in the open, where the birds had been clustered.
Half a baby? She felt Sarmin choking; he had seen death only twice before now. Once it had been at a distance, and the other had been a Carrierdream.
All of a sudden the stench hit Grada, and she bent double, retching. It was as if she’d forgotten to breathe before now.
So many?
She wiped her mouth and straightened, looking around. She couldn’t leave them and she feared to walk among them.
“Why?” she asked aloud. Twice a hundred corpses lay before her, arranged in a tiled pattern of square and triangle that spread out to form a circle, a mandala, like a stylised flower from a mosaic.
“The Grand Pattern needed it.” Across a hundred miles she could feel the tears roll down his face.
“I don’t understand!”
Sarmin showed her the Pattern Master’s design, how it pierced the world, how it spanned years and miles.
“It needs to be anchored.” His voice was slow now, like a litany. “The pattern needs to be anchored in the world if it is to stand; for it to endure things must be done, acts undertaken, moments that must fall just so. The patterns on the Carriers’ skin are part of it, and so is this.
“And there is more.” Other deaths, other patterns on sand, on grass, in blood. Even Sarmin’s brothers, the last one falling just today-the source of his great sadness-all to anchor the Grand Pattern, all to give it foundation.
All so a lost prince could return in triumph.
Sarmin’s anger rose, and the hairs on Grada’s neck stood on end. She felt it grow, a quiet storm at first, within him, within her, and the beating of her heart became a drum, a pounding on the walls of her chest.
“Oh Helmar!” She backed away from the square, a snarl on her lips. “Oh Helmar.”
This cannot stand. Her thought, and Sarmin’s.
“How can it be stopped?”
“A magic of many parts.”
“Tell me,” Grada said, as she turned and fled from the square. She reached the road and began her trek through the encroaching sands, circling around the dead town. “Tell me, Sarmin.”
“A magic of many parts,” he repeated, and his thoughts filled her, golden and complex. “Blood against blood. I’ve been gathering the pieces, and you’ve shown me nearly everything I need.”
“How can-? It isn’t possible.”
“I will try-and you, Grada, you must find the Mogyrk church.” He sent images, vague directions based on what others had told him. “That is the source of his power. I need to see it.”
“Then I shall go.” A new determination rose within her and she returned to the town. She made her way to the camel. The memories she carried would show her how to ride it.
Sarmin listened: there it was again, a scraping on the other side of the secret door. He remembered when he heard the noise for the first time, so many weeks ago, when Tuvaini came through, bringing with him the promise and horror of the outside world. Then Beyon came. He felt Beyon’s loss as a physical pain. He squeezed shut his eyes and gritted his teeth.