But the crystal wall remained, a bright scar upon the mountain that could not be healed with the greening, no matter the gentle song of the breeze. A gust of air rattled the open shutters, dissipating instantly. Inside the village wall, Samor's large house began to cool in the long shade of a grove of date palms, their slender shadows playing through the high windows and over the blue-tiled floor. Samor wiped the gleam from his brow as he absently pondered his impossible choice, looking up from his untouched curry to find himself alone at the table, the patient steward waiting to clear the dishes and clean the room. Slightly embarrassed, Samor abandoned the cold dish and climbed the stairs to his study, looking in on his small daughter before shutting himself behind the heavy teakwood door for the night.
The girl lay sleeping in her bed, her exhausted nurse sprawled across the threshold, snoring softly, while one black-clad juma guard, her golden eyes glowing, sat alert in a darkening corner near the window. Samor hummed the girl's namesong as he stepped over the nurse and adjusted the netting over Claria's bed. The guard never changed her position, but the Collector saw her eyes on him and her hands flexing in the dying light, repeating the endless motions of the exercises she and her company constantly practiced.
The juma could kill with the flick of a finger, or the small quick thrust of an elbow. Samor bowed to the guard a silent goodnight and left his daughter to her sleep. A moment later, in the confines of his cluttered study, he sank his solid build comfortably into a red silk pillowed chair, the little tune still upon his lips.
Samor's only wife, Lesta, had busied herself downstairs in the sheltered courtyard with her women, their bright music now competing with the jewel-eyed parrots' talk and the gurgle of the pink-and-turquoise tiled fountains. The noise and the music rose and fell pleasantly. But as always, in a little while, the only sound Samor would notice would be the constant machinery of his chroniclave, its brass pendulum swinging back and forth like a heartbeat. The chroniclave, an odd combination of timepiece and music box, was the only thing he had from his homeland and the only remembrance of his freedom.
Though he had not enjoyed it for a while now, this was the Collector's favorite time of the day. He loved this wondrous building; loved this odd country with its chill, dry evenings, the spicy fragrance of night-blooming jasmine floating on a gentle breeze, and in the hazy distance, the rocks of his desert homeland, Halquina, glowing redly. No movement troubled the dunes, no sound stirred the air other than a near-constant chorus of heat-loving cicadas. Eastward, darkness already mantled the Grand Artificer's glorious palace, its soaring white towers outlined by thousands of everburning torches. But here in the fortified city of Sumifa, where Mishra had positioned Samor, his historian and sometime ambassador to Almaaz, there was a little light remaining, despite the sifted hourglass in the time god's western hands.
Samor checked the chroniclave for the hour. He could delay no longer. His gaze returned to the window as he took in a last look westward before the long night ahead. His forehead creased a bit when he noticed a small puff of dust, outlined by the sunset, dancing at the base of the red rocks. Maybe a chariot, or a seasonal wind squall, but it was too early for them by nearly a fortnight.
He chased a darker thought from his mind. The Circle often traveled by whirlwind, and one other- the betrayer-knew what Samor was doing about Mishra*s demand. Though Samor had no proof or witness, he knew it surely in his heart: Porros, his favorite, known among them as the Raptor, the prince and future king of Sumifa, and too impatient, too proud, to wait for Samor to give him the leadership of the secret magical brotherhood, had broken his vow. The puff of dust disappeared from the horizon.
Ah, no. Samor rubbed his eyes. I am tired and my imaginings are perhaps groundless. You could not know more than you saw on the Day of the Beast. There will be a better moment for you to try to take me, I am sure. Samor made a warding sign and rebuked the darkness from his thoughts.
The insistent ticking of the chroniclave brought him back to his immediate purpose. Turning the delicate machine sideways and inserting the amulet he wore around his neck into its keyhole, he wound the music box, waited a moment, and then listened carefully as the bright tune chimed. He sang along, searching for harmonies and variations on its theme, letting his mind be calmed as the pendulum's smooth movements kept time with his improvisations. The chroniclave's machinery always gave him a feeling of steadiness-of tightness.
He relaxed, beginning to believe that he would make Mishra's impossible deadline and could, in just a few hours, meet Mishra's messenger with the news that he had found a way to give the Artificer what he had asked. Then Samor could rest as easily as his daughter slept. The small chroniclave ticked steadily in the room's sudden stillness.
The mage pushed his thoughts away, rang for the steward, who came immediately and poured him a cup of tea laced with visionbright, then left as silently as a shadow. The Collector lifted the dagger's-length of absolutely clear stone from under the false panel of the chroniclave's base.
He had decided that the glittering obelisk, the first key to Mishra's 'clock' would be Claria's naming totem. As Mishra had ridden away from the desolation, Samor had asked permission and the Artificer, distracted, had granted it, asking only if she was old enough, having escaped the Nine Horrific Infant Diseases, to have one. Mishra cared not how or where Samor hid the spell, only that he have it.
The stone block tapered gracefully from base to blunted tip, a perfect prism, now catching the very last of the sun's strong rays in its crystalline heart and separating their colors, bouncing a rainbow off the gold rings on his left hand, magnifying it under the chroniclave's dome, and finally losing the bright beam in the thick scroll of Jerubian carpet at his feet.
The Collector hummed his tune again, adding the magic of his four-stone ring. The gemstones glowed, and the rainbow danced in response, its colors dividing and springing up into tendrils and curls in the air, weaving themselves through his song like the ribbons Claria wore in her long black hair. The Collector gave the song full voice, singing Claria's name in the glyph language, and the colors wove themselves into a woman's graceful handprint, the distinct shape of his beloved Lesta's hand, the fingers long and beautiful, the first and second fingers slightly crooked at the first joints. In Lesta's family, once in each generation a woman displayed this peculiar trait-the archer's hand, her family called it; no one knew why anymore. From the way her small fingers already curled over, Samor knew Claria's hand would fit this print someday, too.
The Collector ended the song and smiled as the rainbow rejoined and settled into its tight beam once more. He polished the smooth, cold stone with a soft cloth, removing his own fingerprints from its surface, but carefully leaving the thumbprint Claria had pressed upon it near the base. He placed a jeweler's loupe over his eye, and from under his scarf brought forth the chroniclave's key again, comparing its engraved print with the fresh one. Exactly the same. He took a clamp, a delicate hammer, and a miniature diamond chisel from the top desk drawer and laid them on his desk.
The breeze gathered strength, making for a sudden chill in the study. The end of even the most scorching day could leave one cold here in upper Sumifa. Could make you shiver and make your hands shake. It had to be the cold. The Collector took a sip of the hot, fragrant tea to settle his nerves and focus his eyes, pulled his rich purple robes more tightly around him, and concentrated on the shape of the names of his ancestors before he began to cut them into the totem. Even if none of the old ones would, one day maybe Claria, or one of her children, could understand what he had done. Maybe by then, if he hadn't found it himself, they would know how to kill the beast. The Collector allowed himself a glimmer of hope.
He placed the diamond chisel to one side of the prism's perfect face and began to carve, sending the rainbow into a kaleidoscopic dance. At the window, the wind picked up the white linen curtains and puffed them rhythmically with its tide, rocking the cedar shutters on their hinges. The musical clock chimed its tune again.
A few minutes later, little by exact little, the six glyphs covered one side of the totem, taking the history of his family down through the known generations, their ancient nameshapes purling the tribe together with the signs of sunshadow, sky boat, lightning, sword's edge, river, adding his own chosen sign of the basket, until he reached Claria's fingerprint, the pattern for the last glyph. In the intricate whorls of her left ring finger's print lay the actual letters of her name, marked upon her hand with the namesong at her birth. The print was small to begin with, the intricacies tedious to carve, even with the visionbright.
Pushing aside the loupe, the Collector looked up and rested his eyes on the book by his hand. He stretched his arms above his head and rose to pull the shutters over the large window; the breeze had risen considerably and it felt as though the sand squalls were indeed coming. The thought nagged at him again that it was early for the scouring storms-and there was an odd, high-pitched note to the sound of the wind. The Collector shut the cedar slats over the window and lit an oil lamp. Deciding to give his carving a bit of a rest before attempting the last glyph, he picked up his quill, turned to the last two pages in the Holy Book. Here, for the Circle, he would hide the only written record of the keys and their true mechanism.
