spies. They turned down one street and then another, Sarmin flanked by three mages, Govnan, Hashi and Moreth, the last with a hand still on his elbow. In time he knew they headed for Beyon’s tomb.
Sarmin had visited Beyon’s tomb only once. Beyon had not been there. Perhaps his bones lay inside but they held no meaning. The tomb had been the last anchor point of Helmar’s grand pattern and it echoed still with the impersonal malice of that design. Sometimes it worried Sarmin that Pelar had been conceived there, the timing dictated by old wives among the Felt, so Mesema said. An intersection of plans in time and in space. Plans whispered to the Windreaders by their hidden god, and plans laid across centuries by the Pattern Master. What changes might be wrought in the new seed of a child by such a conjunction? It had never been something Sarmin chose to dwell on.
The long walk soon took its toll on Sarmin, sapping his strength, leaving him sweating in his silks, and robbing some of his urgency. They came to the tomb through older portions of the city where the streets wore their years more plainly, the sword-sons always choosing to steer Sarmin along unexpected paths against the dangers of predictability. The emperor’s swift passage amid his tight knot of bodyguard dropped more than a few jaws and provided enough fuel to keep the gossips busy for weeks to come. When they reached the tomb he felt regret to be leaving the open air and sky of the streets, being among ordinary people, the many who lived under his rule.
The chamber rang with the echoes of many feet, from marble floor to vaulted ceiling, as Sarmin and his guard marched in. The austere lines of the room contrasted the intricacy of the tomb itself, pierced screens of whitest alabaster surrounding the heavy marble box on all sides, set back two yards to allow a slow private circuit. The decoration tended to fish and fruit, strange choices which Sarmin felt would have found little favour with his brother. Beyon had planned the structure but died within it before its completion. In the confusion that followed, the artisans set to finish the work had let their own aesthetic guide them. Sarmin had been unconcerned. Beyon lived in him and in Pelar, not in cold stone. Azeem had even brought plans before him for his own tomb. Sarmin had waved them away. “Let the next emperor do with my remains as he sees fit. I’m sure you have more pressing matters to put before me, vizier?”
A polite cough brought Sarmin from his recollections. His feet had led him to the arched entrance through the screens. Notheen waited there, the lean nomad towering above Govnan.
“High mage?” Sarmin tilted his head in question.
Govnan said nothing but looked away, through the arch. The sepulchre beyond, in which Mesema had once hidden for a night with Beyon, had almost gone. It looked as if it had melted away like a block of butter with a hot coal placed at its centre. The stonework towered at the four corners, eaten away elsewhere, and in the midst of it all a blankness, the colour of forever, blinding the eye. Sarmin couldn’t say if it were grey or white, perhaps black. The emptiness of it filled his mind and drowned out the screams of the Many as they hid behind his thoughts.
“Do not look too long, my emperor.” Govnan’s words came from a distance.
“It takes, my emperor.” Notheen, still further away. “It will hollow you.”
Sarmin tore his gaze from the space within Beyon’s tomb. Hours seemed to pass as he shook its bonds, days.
“My emperor?” And at last he looked away, meeting Govan’s eyes, dark with concern.
“What is that?” Sarmin stepped away, not wanting to look, not wanting his back to it.
“Nothing, my emperor.” Govnan bowed his head. “There is nothing there. That’s all my magic can tell me. Notheen’s people know more of this.”
Sarmin took a step closer to the nomad, veiled, hung about with white as if he rode the desert rather than walked the corridors of a palace. “Tell me.”
“This is of the desert.” Notheen waved towards the tomb. “This is the unwriting that grows in the dead heart of the sands, beyond even the djinn. It spreads from the secret.”
“What secret?” Sarmin remembered his dream, the pale boy, the tent falling into dust. An emptiness that devours.
Notheen bowed his head. Sarmin pressed the heels of his hands to his forehead, forcing back a growing terror. The two of them stood alike now, the high mage and the nomad headman, neither meeting his gaze. The faintest of sounds injected itself into the silence-the sound of trickling sand.
“What secret,” Sarmin repeated. “You knew from the moment you spoke of it that I would require explanation.”
“May we speak alone, my emperor?” Notheen let the words slip quietly to the floor.
“We are alone!” Sarmin looked about, exasperated.
“The two of us. This truth is dangerous. Many lives balance upon it.”
“The two of us then.” Sarmin motioned the sword-sons away.
Ta-Sann hesitated. “My emperor, the nomads-”
“Away!” Sarmin waved him off with his objections and the island men retreated towards the main entrance, Lurish following, deep in thought.
When his guard reached the far side of the chamber Sarmin spoke again. “You have me to yourself, Notheen, me and the old man. Will you enlighten me or stab me? Govnan could not stop your knife.”
Again Notheen paused before answering, stretching the silence until Sarmin thought he would not speak. “We have among our people wise men, just as with all the tribes of man. They read the signs written among the dunes, listen to the wind, treat with the djinn who ride to the outer desert on sandstorms. Held among the wise of my people is a tale, a secret learned long ago and kept close.”
“I will not share this secret.” Even as Sarmin said the words he thought of his lost time, wondered to whom he spoke and with what voice. A man who commands an empire but not his own mind should not promise discretion. Notheen, however, nodded, touched his fingers to his lips through the cloth of his veil and spoke.
“The heart of the desert is a place of death. All men know this. They know of the heat, the storms, and that there is no water. But the nomad tribes know that there is more. A god went into the sands. A god walked the dunes until in every direction two weeks of travel would not bring a man to water. And there in the dry heart of the Cerana Desert that god chose to die.”
“Mogyrk!” Sarmin stepped back in shock. He lowered his voice. “Mogyrk?”
Notheen nodded. “The dead god. The desert was where he came undone.”
“If the Yrkmen know of this…”
Notheen set the length of a finger to his forehead in acknowledgement. Govnan answered with a question. “Do you know how the Yrkmen invaders were driven from Cerana?”
“The desert beat them.” Sarmin had read it in the Reclaimer’s histories. “Supply across the desert proved impossible without the co-operation of the nomad tribes, and the defeated Cerani waged war from the sands where the Yrkmen troops feared to follow them.”
Govnan nodded. “It’s true, the desert defeated them. They lived in fear of it, and with good reason. Because of Mogyrk they understood the desert better than we did. Let us hope they have not forgotten that fear.”
“Why have you told me this, now and here by my brother’s tomb?” Sarmin glanced back, wondering if the screens had always looked so white, so brittle, or was the nothing within stealing both colour and substance from them as in his dream.
“The emptiness in the desert has been spreading. Slowly at first, so slow that it was not noticed from one year to the next. The dead god made a hole in the world and our sands are running through it. Faster this year than the last, faster today than yesterday.”
“W-” Sarmin glanced between Govnan and the nomad. “Why? Why now?”
“The Pattern Master spurred the advance. Our deep routes have been swallowed, even oases have been consumed. The salt paths my fathers rode are gone.”
“Helmar made my brother’s death his last anchor point for the pattern. This place, that time, Beyon’s death. It made the pattern whole.”
“And now the dead god’s Undoing is spreading from the wound.” Notheen paused as something crumbled and fell behind the screens. “Like new fires spreading where embers from the great fire have fallen.”
“This… this will spread?” Sarmin asked. “This could consume the palace!”
Notheen bowed his head. “It could erase Nooria, from wall to wall. We call it the Great Storm. It was foretold.”
“You must be able to stop it?” Sarmin let the question hang between them. He had looked into the tomb and seen nothing, not even hunger, no pattern, no hint of substance or flaw upon which a pattern-working might find
