Something exploded from the floor around the dais. Somethings. In half a dozen places the flagstones shattered into sharp chunks and red blurs tore through the remains while they still hung in the air. It took long moments even to focus on the creatures as they ripped into the Dead King’s troops. Trolls, but red of hide, akin to Gorgoth rather than their cousins beneath Halradra, and of larger build. The first of them picked up an armoured man and threw him over the heads of the legion behind to strike the wall above the Gilden Arch. Claws scythed through the next man’s neck, mail links sheared away. Descendants of the emperor’s bodyguard, defending the throne. Six of them, terrible but too few.
I saw Kent snatch the sword of a fallen man just before another bore him to the ground. The dead swept round us, making the dais an island, cutting into the Hundred behind us.
‘Run!’ the Dead King said again. ‘They’ll let you go.’
‘No.’
‘No? But isn’t that what you’re good at, Brother? Jorg? Aren’t you well-versed in leaving the child to die while you run off to hide? Perhaps you could find another bush to cower in?’
‘What— who are you?’ I stared into Kai Summerson’s eyes, trying to see past them.
‘You’ve left mother and son to die before, Jorg, slip away again. I won’t tell.’ Acid on every word as though I’d done him some deep and personal hurt.
Somehow I had my hands on his throat, though I knew he didn’t need to draw breath, though I knew he could snap my arms. ‘You know nothing of them, nothing!’ I spun him around and he offered no resistance.
Over his shoulder Gorgoth, up against the wall, some small figure behind him, something dark in one hand, clutched against his chest. Two of the six trolls fought around him, an extravagance of violence, impossible speed, strength, skill, against impossible odds. Limbs, guts, armour, flying in crimson arcs, and still the dead rushed on. Gorgoth bent over his tiny burden, shielding it from the dead with his own body, crouching lower, lower, lost in the melee. Miana’s white face now seen above his shoulder.
The Dead King smiled at me, a broken, ugly grin, my hands pale beneath his chin, the briar scars livid on wrist and forearm. The pain of those hooks burned again, and though a stone roof arched unbroken overhead it seemed that storm winds howled around me, that the rain lashed cold from black skies.
‘In the end,’ I said, ‘there’s no magic, only will.’
I struck at the Dead King, focusing upon him every piece of my desire to see his destruction. I have lived a life driven by desire, the desire for revenge, for glory, to have what is denied me, a simple directive, pure and edged like a weapon. And such desire, such concentrated wanting, is the foundation of all magic – so the Builder told me.
Through narrowed slits I saw the Dead King’s eyes grow wide, as if I really were choking him.
‘You failed against Corion, Luntar dipped into your mind at will, even Sageous played you.’ He coughed the words past my hands, still twisting that smile. ‘And you think you can stop me?’
I could have told him I was older now. I could have said that I hadn’t stood between those men and my son. But instead I answered, ‘Practised spells laid out in books work better than something laid out new. The runes and sigils used for centuries serve better than yesterday’s invention. They’re channels where men’s will has cut paths through what is real. I’ll beat you because a million stand behind me now. Because my desire to win now runs in the oldest channels.’ I told him because there’s a power in the telling of a truth, and because reason has a keen edge.
‘Belief? You’ve found God now?’ He laughed, untroubled by the seal around his throat. ‘The will of the faithful won’t serve you just because you killed the Pope, Jorg. It doesn’t quite work like that.’
‘People can believe in other things, dead man,’ I told him. Screaming all around us, red hands clawing, rich men dying.
‘There’s nothing—’
‘Empire,’ I said. ‘A million souls scattered across a vast and broken empire, praying for peace, praying for the day a new emperor will sit upon the throne. And it’s me.’
I struck again. Emperor in the heart of empire, unbroken. And the Dead King staggered, weakened, trapped in flesh.
‘I came for revenge,’ the Dead King said, though I’d no idea what revenge he spoke of. ‘To show you what I’d made of myself after you abandoned me. And look what I have wrought!’ Careless of my grip he spread his hands wide, to encompass the golden horde seething around us. ‘I brought you the kingdom of the dead. Let me join with you, Brother. Let me lead our armies, and I will take the empire out past all boundaries, in this world and in the next, and make it whole, entire, and ours. Set aside these friends, this unchosen wife—’ He glanced toward Miana.
I struck then with every fibre of my will. I struck with the strength of empire, with the strength of a million, in that holy place, the very heart of empire, where the might and majesty of emperors past and the faith of generations had scored the paths of my power into the fabric of reality. A wind howled around us, cold and swirling, Kai Summerson fighting for release, deep within his own body, for whilst the holy may fail in any moment, the damned may in any moment reach for redemption. The gale spoke and the Dead King fought back.
My will met that of the Dead King, neither of us with the slightest give in us. The vast and sleeping mind of empire behind me, lost hopes, broken dreams, all pushing, all pressing. The deadlands behind him, the desolation of lives ended, the need, the thirst to return. Impossible pressures built, and built, and built again. I felt the wheel turn, the fabric of everything and everytime start to tear. And in that instant I knew who stood before me.
In that second Kai Summerson learned to fly. He took the Dead King’s feet from the ground and the wind scoured the empty inches beneath them. A small victory but one that held my enemy prone.
One hard, cold instant and I knew who hung in my grasp, and even then, with William weak before me, vulnerable, open, even knowing that I traced my father’s path almost to the letter … I stabbed him.
I let slip a hand from his throat, took Kai’s knife from his belt, and drove it deep into his heart, the metal grating across ribs.
A single disbelieving laugh burst crimson from his lips, and then he fell, as if the knife had cut all his strings.
I released him and he fell, arms flailing, blood flooding from his chest. He fell and it took an age. My own brother. William, who I had failed in the thorns. Who I failed now. Whose death had cracked my life. Thorns held me once more. I couldn’t catch him as he dropped. Kai’s corpse hit the floor with the sound of ending, William already gone from him, back into the deadlands from where he had watched me for so many years, from so many dead eyes.
Luntar’s paper fluttered from my sleeve. I picked it up as the dead guards toppled, in scores, then hundreds, all around the room.
‘You can save him.’ Four words. The future-sworn see less than they think. I had stabbed my brother.
‘I don’t understand.’ Makin shouldered a corpse off him, rivulets of dark blood across half his face in three parallel lines. He spoke into the speechless moment. ‘How did you kill him?’
‘I watched him die.’ I muttered the words. ‘I stayed hidden and let them kill him.’
Makin half-climbed, half-crawled, to me.
‘What?’ He set a hand to my wrist, stilling the tremble in the dripping dagger. I let the blade fall.
‘I didn’t kill him. He was already dead. He died eleven years ago.’
Marten came from behind, shoulder laid open to the bone, an ear missing. He took the paper from me, awkward in trembling fingers. ‘Save who?’
‘My brother, William. The Dead King. Always quicker, more clever, stronger-willed. And yet it never occurred to me that death wouldn’t be able to hold him.’
‘Death isn’t what it used to be.’ Perhaps the wisest words ever to come from Red Kent’s lips. He lay dying among the dead, among the foe he had laid low,
so torn there could be only minutes left to him. Makin went to his side.
‘Miana!’ As I shouted it I knew a hint of the pain I would feel were she not to answer. Fewer than half the Hundred still survived, many fewer. I saw no sign of Sindri, of my grandfather or uncle. Ibn Fayed I saw. At least I saw his head.
‘Here.’ And I found her, almost pinned to the wall behind Gorgoth’s bulk. The red trolls lay broken in the carnage. Gorgoth unfolded, dripping and ripped. In one hand he held my son against his chest.
Something struck through me, seeing my child, there in that moment. Something sharper than edges. A certainty. The knowing that my father had failed to mould me in his image. I loved that baby, small and bloodied and ugly as he was. The denial had run from me. And with that knowing came another: the certainty that I could only ever hurt him. That the taint of my father would drip from my fingers unbidden and make another monster of my son.
I staggered back and fell into my throne. An autumn leaf swirled around my feet, brought in with the dead. A single maple leaf, scarlet with the season’s sin. A sign. In that moment I knew myself too full of poison to do anything but drop. The fall had come for me. With numb fingers I undid the straps on my breastplate.
‘Still …’ Marten shook his head and crouched beside Kai. ‘A child. A boy. What was he? Ten?’
‘Seven.’
‘A boy of seven. Lost in the deadlands. Fought his way out? Became king?’ With each question he shook his head. I could see the possibilities bubbling inside him.
You can save him. Luntar’s words. A man who saw the future.
‘I’ll bet he gave them hell.’ A grim smile tugged at me. I wondered if that same angel, the one that came to me past death’s doorstep, had visited little William. I wondered what short shrift he gave her. ‘I’ll bet he took the hardest path.’ Like the Conaught spear, William would have hauled himself deeper, aimed for the heart of darkness, found the lichkin. The rest lay beyond my imagining.
Kai sprawled, shattered and empty, William gone, the dead fallen, only Chella standing amid the gleam of their armour. My enemies defeated, and yet the sorrow remained, keener, more true, more clean, for I had always owned it. It echoed back to the thorns, the tone of a bell resounding through the years. We’re fashioned by our sorrows – not by joy – they are the undercurrent, the refrain. Joy is fleeting.
‘I let the thorns hold me, and a crack has run through all my days, deeper than the feelings it divides.’ The calligraphy of those scars lay writ across me still, white upon my flesh. ‘To everything there is a season.’ I spoke Ecclesiasticus. ‘A time to be born. A time to die.’
‘He will return: you can’t destroy him.’ Chella from the heaped corpses, her former troops. She sounded neither happy nor sad. More lost.
‘I don’t want to destroy him,’ I said. ‘He’s my brother. It was given to me to save him.’ I knew what to do. I had always known. I set a hand to the throne. ‘I hadn’t known how bitter-sweet this would taste.’ Across the hall my son cried in his mother’s arms, both of them beautiful. My brother would always return and my boy would never be safe, for our pain had become a wheel and the world lay broken. My brother, my son, my fault.
A tear made its slow passage across my cheek.
I stood somehow, though the strength had gone from me. And joined Makin, standing above him as he knelt with Kent. Marten at my shoulder. Rike came across, bloodied but whole, a gold chain decorated in diamonds and gore hanging from one fist, almost an afterthought.
‘I don’t want to destroy him,’ I said. ‘I want to save him. I should have saved him back when the thorns held me. Nothing has been right since then.’ Fear shook me, sudden, fierce, fear of what I had to do, fear that I hadn’t the courage.
‘No.’ Marten behind me. Marten would always be the first to understand. Marten who failed his son, who let his boy die. There are no rights and wrongs in such matters. Only wrongs. ‘Don’t.’ The word choked him.
‘Death isn’t—’ And Red Kent died amid the circle of his brothers who did love him each in our way. ‘Isn’t what it was,’ I finished for him.
Chella stepped closer. No one moved to stop her. ‘He’s gone where you can’t follow, Jorg.’
‘You can’t.’ Marten’s voice thick with knowing.
‘Even now they tell me “can’t”, Makin,’ I said, half in sadness, half in the joy of ending. The bitter and the sweet. ‘They tell me “no” and think there must be something I won’t sacrifice to get what I want.’ What I need.
Makin looked up at that, confused but understanding we none of us were speaking of Kent. He struggled to rise and that’s when I hit him. A man like Makin you have to catch off-balance. I struck him hard enough to break my hand, and did. He fell boneless, one arm flopping out almost to Chella’s feet.
‘What?’ Rike took his gaze from Brother Kent, amazed.
‘He would have tried to stop me. Tell him he’s to be steward. An order, not a choice.’ I cradled my hand, let the pain sharpen away sorrow. ‘He would have tried to stop me. Even with his little girl gone all these years, he wouldn’t understand. Not Makin.’
‘Fuck Makin. I don’t understand.’ Rike bristled, the sword in his fist still dripping.
Movement at the Gilden Arch. Katherine, a sword clutched across her, unsteady.
‘Rike, glorious Rike! I knew I kept you around for a reason, Brother.’ I pulled the breastplate from me and opened my arms. ‘Do it.’
‘What?’ He stared as though I were mad.
‘I need to follow him, Rike. I need to find my brother.’
‘I—’
‘Kill me. You’ve threatened it often enough. Now I’m asking.’
Rike just stared, eyes wide and bright. Behind him Katherine had started to run toward us, shouting, begging me to stop or urging me on – I couldn’t tell.
‘I’m your fecking emperor. I command you.’
‘I—’ And the big idiot looked at his sword as if it were a foreign thing. ‘No.’ And dropped it.
And that’s when Chella stabbed me. My brother’s knife, taken from his corpse, stuck near enough into the wound that father gave me. She went one better though, and twisted the blade. Our final kiss.
‘Go to hell, Jorg Ancrath.’ The last words I ever heard.
53
On the road my brothers spoke of death many a time. The stranger who walked with us. But more than they talked of death they talked of dying, and often the business of avoiding it. Brother Burlow would speak of the light. The light that came to a man lying in his blood, when more of it lay out than in.
‘I’ve heard men say it starts so faint, like a dawn, Brothers. And you look and you find yourself in the tunnel that’s your life, that you’ve walked in darkness all your years.’
Burlow was a reader, you understand. It doesn’t pay to trust a lettered man on the road, Brothers, their heads are full of other men’s ideas.
‘But don’t look into that light,’ he said. ‘For sweet as it might be, there’s no coming back from there, and it will draw you in, yes it will. I’ve sat by too many men, laid broken on the verge, and heard them whisper about that light through dry lips. They none of them walked the road again.’
At least that’s how Fat Burlow had it. And maybe his light was sweet, Brothers. But I’ve looked into that light and it comes at first as a cold star in the dark of night. Closer and more close it draws, or you are drawn – these things are equal in a place without time – and you come to know it for what it is. A white hunger, Brothers, the incinerating incandescence of the furnace mouth, ready to consume you utterly.
That light took me in and it spat me out, far from the world.
I thought I knew death. I thought it dry. But the death I fell into was an ocean, cold and infinite and the colour of forever. And I hung there, without time, or up, or down. Waiting, always waiting, for an angel.
This death fell wet upon me.
I spat the water from a dry mouth. A cry escap
ed me and the pain came again, too deep to be endured. Lightning flashed and the thorns and coils of the briar made sharp black shapes against the sky. The rain lashed cold, and I hung in its embrace, unable to fall.
‘The thorns.’ My senses had left me for a moment.
A second crack of lightning, across the rolling thunder of the previous stroke. The carriage lay beside the road, figures moving all about it.
‘I’m in the thorns.’
‘You never left them, Jorg,’ she said.
She stood beside me, my angel, she of warmth and light and possibilities.
‘I don’t understand.’ The pain still lanced me, my flesh tenting crimson around a hundred barbs, but with her beside me it was only pain.
‘You understand.’ Her voice nothing but love.
‘My life was a dream?’
‘All lives are dreams, Jorg.’
‘Was— was none of it real? I’ve been hanging in the thorns all my life?’
‘All dreams are real, Jorg. Even this one.’
‘What—’ My arm twitched and red agony flooded me. I found my breath again. ‘What do you want of me?’
‘I want to save you,’ she said. ‘Come.’ And she offered me her hand. A hand in which colour moved like the faintly-shadowed skin on molten silver. To take that hand would end all pain. She offered me salvation. Maybe that was all salvation had ever been. An open hand waiting to be taken.
‘I bet my brother told you to go to hell,’ I said.
Lightning struck once more and there was no angel, just a Renar soldier carrying William by the ankles like a hunter’s kill. Carrying him toward that milestone, carrying him to dash his head open.
Nature shaped the claw to trap, and the tooth to kill, but the thorn … the thorn’s only purpose is to hurt. The thorns of the hook-briar are like to find the bone. They do not come out easy. If you make a stone of your mind, if you thrash and tear, if you break and pull and bite, if you do these things you will leave the briar for it cannot hold a man who does not wish to be held. You will escape. Not all of you, but enough to crawl. And crawling, I left the briar. And reached my brother.