“Prince Sarmin of the Petal Court,” he whispered to himself. “Vizier Sarmin.” He thought another moment. “Emperor Sarmin.”
Nobody answered.
He didn’t know when Beyon would be back. How long would it take? Longer than a ride from the Felt? Longer than Tuvaini’s trips through the secret passageways? Longer than the reach of their mother’s arms?
Sarmin stood and pulled his knife from beneath his pillow. I will not betray you, brother.
He turned his desk upside down and hunched over it, intent. With fevered concentration he began to work. The point of the dacarba scored the wood time and again as he recreated the pattern: crescent moon, underscore, diamond within diamond, crescent moon, overscore. He missed no detail. Breath escaped him in slow rasps. There’s a secret here, for those with eyes to see.
Chapter Ten
Eyul woke with a start. The last of the sun’s heat sank through the cloth of his tent.
Something is wrong. He knew it, blood to bone. Sometimes it was like that. He knew better than to startle into action. He lay at rest, straining his senses, reaching for the wrongness. The sand between his fingers felt warm and gritty. Wrong. He sat up and moved to the tent flap. Veins ran across the dune, faint but visible in the low light of the setting sun: lines in the sand, raised little more than the thickness of a coin, no wider than his hand. Hundreds of them were stretching out in geometric profusion, crossing, intersecting, repeating.
He hurried out under a pink and orange sky. Amalya crouched by the remains of the fire, watching the lines at her feet.
“Amalya.”
“It’s a pattern,” she said, staring at the shapes around her, diamond, halfmoon, triangle, circle, square. “He has found us.”
“Who has?” Eyul’s fingers tightened on his Knife hilt. He didn’t remember drawing it; his hands had made the decision.
“The enemy.”
“I thought you said we were safe.” Eyul stood scuffing at the lines of the pattern. They reformed as the sand fell.
“I thought we were,” Amalya said. “My master told me he would hide us.”
She sounded defeated.
The pattern centred on the next dune, almost two hundred yards away.
The heart was formed by interlocking diamonds arrayed around a sixpointed star. From each point, a design more complex than any palace carpet swept out across the slopes.
Eyul gasped as an electric tingle ran through him. Amalya gave a low moan and struggled to her feet at his side.
“The pattern is complete,” she said.
The sands started to move. The entire facing dune began to flow, from the centre of the pattern, shifting with impossible speed, like water racing across a marble floor. He saw the tops of pillars first, then stone roofs, then archways from which the sand flooded, emptying long-buried halls. Within moments a lost city lay revealed before them, temple, tower and tomb.
Sarmin scored a line across the wood. One more stroke and the pattern would be complete. In his mind’s eye he saw again the symbol-geometry emblazoned across his brother’s chest, blood-red and blood-blue. He laid his dacarba on the floor and stretched his hands, noticing the ache in his thumb, the blister on his forefinger, and the sting of the old cut across his palm.
Sarmin’s carved pattern contained what he had seen on Beyon’s skin, but it reached out across the underside of the overturned desk to cover as much space again. He’d filled in the remainder as he would complete a circle twothirds drawn, or fill in a mouth missing from the sketch of a face.
He sat back against his bed and rested his eyes on the more familiar intricacies of the walls. He’d long ago discovered all the watchers dwelling in the scroll and swirl of the decoration. Some of the faces he’d not found for the longest time, even after years of gazing, whole days spent staring, lost in the depths from daybreak to sunset, floating on strange and distant seas. He’d found them all before he’d grown his beard, though, the angels and the devils both. The wisest and most fearsome dwelt deepest in the patterning, hidden in plain sight, written in the most subtle twists. They had watched him grow, advised him, kept him sane.
Sarmin sought out the grim-faced angel whose gimlet eyes stared from the calligraphic convolutions above the Sayakarva window. “What will happen, Aherim?” He took up his knife again. “Should I complete it?”
Aherim held his peace. Sarmin frowned. The gods might watch in silence, but he expected answers from their minions at least. Aherim seldom missed a chance to offer advice if asked.
Sarmin set knifepoint to wood.
“It will be a stone dropped into a deep pool. No pattern can be made whole without a ripple.”
He stared at Aherim. “Someone will notice? Who? Tell me who.”
Silence. Sarmin felt unnerved. “I will ask Him.” It was not a threat to be made idly, but surely one that would coax Aherim to speak further.
Sarmin waited. He pursed his lips. He had found Him last of all: Zanasta, eldest of the devils, speaker for the dark gods. He showed only as the light failed and grazed the east wall at its shallowest angle. Even then Sarmin had to unfocus his eyes to reveal Him.
“Tell me of the Felting girl. The bride Mother has chosen.” There was time to kill before sunset.
“She comes.” Aherim spoke again at last, his voice the dry whisper of fingers on silk.
“Is she pretty? Is she kind? Does she smell good?” Sarmin sat up and leaned forwards.
“She is sad, she is strong, she smells of horses.” Aherim fell silent. He only ever answered three questions, and generally not the ones Sarmin asked.
“She is riding to me. That’s why she smells of horse.” Sarmin picked up his dacarba and sighted down the blades at one of Aherim’s faces. “But why is she sad? Perhaps they have told her bad things about me. Maybe I’m ugly. Or is she worried that she will have to stay in this room with me? Maybe she will miss her horse.”
Sarmin remembered camels, though not with fondness. His father had horses, but the princes were never allowed among them. “They kick worse than camels,” he remembered a groom telling him. Still, he liked the way they looked. Perhaps a horse would be a good pet.
“I will make her happy, Aherim.” Sarmin tilted the knife so that light danced along the blade’s edges. “I will…” He tried to think how he might entertain her. When they came at all, people came to him with a purpose. He couldn’t recall a time when someone had come to his room simply to speak, simply to be with him. “Perhaps I will not make her happy, Aherim. Maybe I will share her sorrow. I will listen and hear of her life in the sandless wastes.”
Eyul took one uncertain step, then another. Under his feet a thin layer of sand covered something solid: old stone, undisturbed by the passage of time or the magic that brought it to the surface. Amalya kept by his side, moving so close her sleeve rubbed against his. Eyul touched her elbow with his fingers and they each took another step forwards.
“Nothing could be alive in here,” she whispered.
Neither of them wanted to test that idea too quickly. They took two more small steps. Sandstone houses lined the road. Square gaps in the walls showed where carved window-screens once had been mounted. Eyul could see nothing but darkness through them. Like Carriers’ eyes, they watched their guests with quiet malevolence.
The sun was sinking towards the west, but still it blazed with heat. They wandered, separate from their shade and water. Eyul’s leg ached with every step. This was a fool’s game. He shook his head. “Let’s get our camels and leave this dung in our wake.” They turned in unison, for the first time moving with speed.
A stone wall had risen behind them, ten feet high and scoured by sand. It stretched to either side, curving out of sight in an unbroken arc.
Amalya let out a breath.
“Is there nothing you can do?” he asked her.
