Emperor of Thorns

by Mark Lawrence

  ‘The doors …’ said Norv. I resisted the temptation to beat him around the head.

  It took maybe a count of ten for the doors to seal themselves, metal to stone, and without pause they began to retreat at the same rate. Guards came pouring through as the doors lifted, summoned by the squeal of the mechanism. For some minutes men of the guard rushed this way and that, set on diverse missions by the Lord Commander to establish that no attack was taking place, to see what other changes may have been wrought, to calm the servants, to set at ease the minds of other guard units, and the like.

  All that frenzy came to a dead halt when they brought the Custodian in, the real man whose data-ghost we’d seen in the moment before Fexler wrestled him away again. He came in escorted by four men of the guard, with more crowding behind, discipline lost, curious children trailing a stranger in the market. Fexler had broken the Custodian’s stasis.

  ‘Well there’s a thing,’ I said. To Sindri’s party the Builder was a stranger in strange clothes carrying a stick crested with a mass of short red ribbons. They would have to be sharp to recognize him from the brief look at his ghost on the dais. To the guards, however, a legend walked among them. To Lord Commander Hemmet a saint approached, his revered ancestor and a part of the foundation of his authority. Hemmet raised a hand and the chatter died. ‘Welcome, Custodian! Welcome!’ A broad grin on his face.

  The Custodian looked bewildered and perhaps fearful, but he had been asleep for a thousand years I supposed, so I allowed him that.

  A pause, and then he spoke. But what language I couldn’t say. A harsh tongue, guttural, it seemed to sit on the edge of understanding. I caught one word that sounded like ‘alert’: he said it more than once.

  ‘Perhaps he speaks another language,’ I said. ‘I read that there were many tongues among the Builders, almost as many across the empire as there are kingdoms. And even if he speaks the empire tongue it may be that it has changed over the course of centuries. Things move on, nothing stands still, words least of all.’

  Hemmet scowled at me but the anger didn’t last, a cloud across the sun. ‘You did this, you woke him up, brought the light back to the palace. And I won’t forget it, King Jorg.’ He set a hand to the Builder’s shoulder, then moved beside him, the arm around him, protective. ‘I will speak with the Custodian in private. Captain Kosson, afford our guests all possible courtesy and escort them from the palace when their needs have been met.’

  And Hemmet left us, taking his saint with him.

  I bent and scooped up the view-ring. ‘Well Father Merrin, you were right. Hemmet loves me now.’ I frowned. ‘I thought someone once told me … I thought I heard that you couldn’t tell a man his future because telling him changes it.’

  Merrin smiled and turned those milky eyes on me. ‘It depends on the future, Jorg, and how much you tell them. My own visions are so hazy that there’s little detail to relate.’

  ‘So what else can you tell me about my future, Father?’ I stepped closer so what sight remained to him might capture me.

  ‘You don’t want to know, Jorg,’ he said. ‘The future is a dark place. We all die there.’

  ‘Tell me anyway.’

  And, perhaps because he knew I would wear him down – that future being plain to both of us – he answered, ‘You will kill and kill again, do the darkest deeds, betray those you should love, destroy your brother, and lead ruin to us all.’

  ‘So, no real change then?’ I ignored the look on Elin’s face, on Sindri’s. Disappointment put an edge on my tongue. I had thought I might grow, might be better, might be more. ‘Tell me, Father.’ And here I used ‘Father’ as though I meant it. ‘Why doesn’t every man of consequence find himself a future-sworn seer and plan a path to glory?’

  A stillness came over the man. The type of regret that cannot be manufactured. He spoke with a gentle, self-deprecating humour but I knew he spoke true. ‘To look into what will be isn’t unlike self-abuse. To watch yourself march through possibilities, to follow the truth through all those twists and turns. Just a little might stunt your growth.’ I thought of Jane, tiny and older than Gorgoth. ‘Or make you go blind.’ His cataracts seemed opalescent in the Builder light. ‘And if you look too far, if you look to see what waits for us all at the end …’

  ‘Tell me.’

  Father Merrin shook his head. ‘It burns.’

  And for an instant I glimpsed a skinless hand holding a copper box.

  47

  With the Pope’s corpse lying out amid the slaughter, we advanced on the emperor’s palace, a vast dome fashioned from thousands of huge sandstone blocks, fitted one to another without mortar and only gravity to hold them in place. A hundred guards from my retinue remained to stand watch over the dead whilst Captain Devers pondered his options.

  ‘It’s big.’ Makin’s eloquence, vanished at the city gates, had yet to return.

  ‘What it would be to have ridden here at the head of an army. To have a hundred thousand spears at my back. To just take it rather than to seek approval.’

  None of them answered: there was only the cold tugging of the wind and the clatter of hooves on stone.

  On that long slow ride across Vyene’s great square my father’s death at last caught up with me. It had been given out in dribs and drabs. A ghost displayed by the lichkin, a dream of the Tall Castle invaded, the commiserations of a cleric. Nothing as solid or as sudden as seeing him fall, looking down upon his corpse. Nothing so final or so damning as striking the blow to end him, wiping at the blood on my hands as if it might never come off.

  I felt … hollow. His death had struck me as a hammer strikes a bell, and I rang with it, a broken tone speaking of broken days.

  ‘Nothing can be made right, Brother Makin.’

  Makin looked across. Said nothing. The wisest words.

  I could have fixed my hands around that old man’s throat. Choked and watched the light die from his eyes. Shouted my complaints, railed against old injustice. And it would have rung me just as hollow. Nothing would be right of it.

  I ran a fingertip across the hand that held the reins, down to the scars across my wrist. ‘I could take the all-throne. The priests would write my name for the ages. But what the thorns wrote here – that’s my story – what was taken, what can’t be changed.’

  Makin frowned, and still he had no answer. What answer is there?

  My name for the ages? What ages? Marco Onstantos Evenaline of the House Gold had been a test, not the start, not the beginning. A test to learn from. For years Michael and those of his order had been positioning their weapons. The fires of the Builders, the poisons and the plagues. And here we were, the new men, born from ashes and cracking the world open as we played with our magic, with the toys Fexler’s kind had left us. Crack it but a little further and it would tip Michael’s hand: the ghosts of our past would rise again, bearing a final solution to all problems. And what followed me? What dogged my heels? An army of the dead, a wedge of necromancy driven after me and aimed at Vyene. A wedge big enough to split us all open. No wonder Father Merrin was blind. Our future was too bright for him. Rain fell, a cold autumn drizzle, lacking challenge. It filled my eyes. I had let the thorns hold me, taken what they offered, and lost the first of my brothers. Flesh of my flesh, his care the first duty I had set upon myself. I betrayed him and left him to die alone. And though there was no price I’d not pay to undo that wrong, even an emperor hadn’t the coin to set it right.

  The palace dome, once so distant, engulfed us in its shadow. I shook off those memories, left mother, father, brother behind me in the rain.

  Around the dome’s perimeter a dozen and more low entrances, slots high enough for a man on horseback, wide enough for thirty. The guards stationed themselves there as each of the Hundred arrived, their escorts breaking off to occupy the halls behind those slots. If any enemy threatened – me perhaps with my hundred thousand spears – they would sally forth to defend Congression.

  Marten tapped my sh
oulder and pointed off west. A column of smoke rose, slanting with the wind, black smoke.

  ‘There are a lot of chimneys in Vyene,’ I said.

  Marten swung his arm to a second column, further off, rising to join the louring cloud. I wondered if there were dead gathering at the city gates already, fresh-woken perhaps ahead of the Dead King’s advance. Even the swiftest of his main force must be a day or more away. And yet an uncommon pall of smoke hung above those distant roofs. Were the outer parts of the city aflame?

  ‘Maybe somebody has beaten me to it and come with an army,’ I said.

  The guard stations around the palace are filled in order, the furthest from the grand entrance first. Our hundreds filed into the closest to the royal gates. It might be that the Drowned Isles delegation behind us would be the last of all the Hundred to arrive. Some have it that to be first through the Gilden Gate at Congression is to win the favour of dead emperors. The more practical suggest that it gives additional days in which to sway your fellow rulers and strengthen your faction. I say it just gives them time to grow heartily sick of the sight of you. On my previous attendance I had had to wait outside the throne room, too tainted to be admitted, and the only glimpse the Hundred had of me was of the occasional dire looks I slotted in at them through the Gilden Gate.

  We dismounted. Osser Gant emerged from the carriage, then Gomst and Katherine climbed down, and Miana with William wrapped in furs against the wind. Dwarfed by the cavernous mouth of the Royal Gate we marched inside, just an honour guard of ten men in gold to guide us through. Captain Allan led them, Devers having remained outside to keep the Pope’s carcass under consideration.

  The ceremonial gates stood open, monstrous things of age-blackened timbers bound with brass. It would take a hundred men to close them – if the hinges had been kept oiled. We passed through and walked the Hall of Emperors where each man stood remembered in stone, fathers, sons and grandfathers, usurpers, bastards-reclaimed-to-greatness, murderers and warlords, peace-makers, empire-builders, scientists, scholars, madmen and degenerates, all rendered as heroes, armoured, clutching the symbols of their rule. Builder-lights, a hundred bright spots on the ceiling, leading into the distance, made each statue an island in its own pool of illumination.

  ‘And you want to stand at the end of this line?’ Katherine spoke at my side. I hadn’t heard her draw close.

  ‘Orrin of Arrow wanted to,’ I said. ‘Is my ambition less worthy?’

  She didn’t need to answer that.

  ‘Perhaps the empire requires me. Maybe I’m the only man who can save it from drowning in horror, or from burning on the bonfire of its past. Did you ever think of that? Set a thief to catch a thief, I said that to you once. Now I say set a murderer to stop black murder. Fight a fire with fire.’

  ‘That’s not your reason,’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  And we came to the end of the statues, past Emperor Adam the Third, past Honorous in his steward’s chair, serious, watching infinity. Up ahead an antechamber with more guards and, by the look of it, other travellers.

  ‘Your weapons will be taken from you and stored in safe keeping with the utmost respect.’ Captain Allan’s glance fell to Gog at my side then made a nervous flicker toward Rike. ‘You will be subject to various searches, necessary for entry into the throne room during Congression. If you don’t return through the Gilden Gate before the final vote then the searches will not need to be repeated. You will of course appreciate that these precautions ensure your safety as well as the safety of the other delegates.’

  ‘Would you feel safe, unarmed, next to Rike here?’ I nodded Allan in Rike’s direction.

  ‘Y-your weapons will—’

  ‘Yes, we understand.’ I stared past him. ‘By God, is that? Is that? Taproot! Get over here, you old trickster!’

  And breaking away from the party ahead came Dr Taproot, his quick, erratic walk unmistakable, arms flying up, broad grin on a narrow face. ‘Watch me! If it isn’t King Jorg himself! Lord of nine nations! My condolences on your father, dear boy.’

  ‘Your condo—’

  ‘I assumed you would have wanted to kill him yourself, but time has its own way with us, we burn in time’s fire. Look at me.’ Hands flitted to his temples. ‘Going grey. Ashes, I tell you. Burning in time’s fire. Watch me.’

  ‘I am watching you, old man.’

  ‘Old? I’ll show you old! I’ll—’

  ‘And why is it that you’re here, good doctor?’ I asked.

  ‘Is the circus in town?’ Rike loomed over us, huge and hopeful. We both ignored him.

  ‘It’s Congression, Jorg. Every fourth year a man who knows things finds himself in great demand. Yes he does. Lucrative demand. Watch me! I’m paid to whisper. Whisper this duke likes boys, that lord has a sister married there, this king thinks his line sprung from Adam the First. Little golden whispers for eager ears. Watch me! If only it could be that way each year, all year.’

  ‘You’d grow bored without your circus, Taproot. Bored men wither and die. Fuel for the fire.’

  ‘Still, it’s nice to be wanted, even now and again. Nice to be in the know.’ His hands shaped abstracts, as if he could sketch his knowledge in the air.

  I reached out, quick – you have to be quick with Taproot – and caught his shoulder. ‘Let’s see just how much you know, shall we?’

  Taproot met my gaze, still for once, not a tremble in him.

  ‘Be my advisor. One of father’s delegates had an accident. You can replace him.’

  A fat man in slashed velvets, black with crimson lining, approached us, his gold chain swinging to match his hurry. ‘Taproot! What’s the meaning of this?’

  ‘This man wishes to acquire my services, Duke Bonne.’ Taproot didn’t look away. Quick, dark eyes he had, as if they were too busy for colour, drinking in the world.

  ‘He may wish all he likes.’ Duke Bonne cradled his stomach. A short man but shrewd if looks could be believed. ‘What’s his name, what’s your advice? Earn your keep, man. Let him see what he’s missed out on.’

  Makin and Marten came to stand at my shoulder now. Rike off to one side. The rest of my party watching beside the steward’s statue.

  ‘His name is King Honorous Jorg Renar, King of Ancrath, King of Gelleth, King of the Highlands, of Kennick, Arrow, Belpan, Conaught, Normardy, and Orlanth. You should know that he is not a good man, but neither is he a man that can be turned, and should all hell wash against these walls, as I believe it might very well do, and sooner than any of us desire, King Jorg will stand against that tide.

  ‘My advice to you, Duke Bonne, is to put yourself in his service as I am about to do. If any man is capable of releasing the lion of empire to roar once more, it is the man you see before you.’

  I grinned at the ‘lion of empire’. Taproot hadn’t forgotten his tawny bag of bones and fleas that I let loose from its cage.

  And so we let our blades be taken. They took the view-ring too, my daggers, a bodkin in my hair, a garrotte in my sleeve. Miana’s iron-wood rod they tried to take but I clicked my fingers and Father Gomst – Bishop Gomst – came forward with the heavy tome I had entrusted to him in Holland’s carriage. We perused Ecthelion’s record of Court Judgments, Adam II and Artur IV, Year of Empire 340-346 together, Gate Captain Helstrom and I, with Dr Taproot all eyes at my shoulder. And after a modicum of sharp debate I won the day – I could, as Lord of Orlanth, carry my rod of office (wooden) wheresoever I damn well pleased! By imperial order.

  The Duke of Bonne harrumphed and snorted and favoured me with dark looks, but he waited for our party so I sent Makin his way with a nod and a wink, knowing there aren’t many who won’t fall to his charms.

  And within the hour we were once again before the Gilden Gate, the ancient frame of wood that had kept me from my rightful place at the last Congression. My taint of course was burned out of me at the breaking of the siege at the Haunt. Even so, I didn’t relish approaching that gateway. A hand that’s been sc
orched won’t want to return to the iron, even when every sense but memory is telling you the heat has gone from it.

  ‘After you, my dear.’ And I ushered Miana through with the baby. It turned out that another ruling, recorded by the dutiful Ecthelion in YE 345, provided that although children were not permitted to be designated as advisors they may be brought to Congression if accompanied by both parents. Handy things, books. And by-laws. If applied selectively.

  ‘I’d advise against it, advisor,’ I said as Katherine moved to follow my wife.

  ‘And when did I start taking your advice, Jorg?’ Katherine turned those eyes on me, and that foolish notion I might be a better man, that I could change, swept over me once again.

  ‘The gate will reject you, lady. And its rejections are not gentle.’ No rejection is gentle.

  She frowned. ‘Why?’

  ‘My father didn’t know you as well as I do, as well as the gate will know you should you try to pass. You’re dream-sworn. Tainted. It will reject you and it will hurt.’ I tapped my temples.

  ‘I— I should try.’ She believed me. I don’t think I’d ever lied to her.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said.

  And she moved away, shaking her head in confusion.

  ‘Rike,’ I said, and one after the other the brothers entered Congression. Marten, Sir Kent, Osser, and Gomst followed. Lord Makin with Duke Bonne.

  Katherine sat on a marble bench, hands folded in her dark skirts, watching the last of us, Gorgoth, Taproot, and me.

  ‘I don’t know what will happen,’ I told the leucrota. ‘The gate might reject you, it might not. If it does, then you’ll be in good company.’ I nodded toward Katherine.

  Gorgoth flexed his massive shoulders, muscle heaped beneath red hide. He bowed his head and moved forward. As he reached the gate arch he slowed, as if stepping into the teeth of a gale. He moved one step at a time, gathering himself before each. The effort trembled across him. I thought he must fail but he kept on. The strain drew a groan from him, very deep. He moved into the arch. I could imagine the set of his face from the taut line of his shoulders. And as he stepped through the Gilden Gate it creaked and flexed, resisting him but in the end admitting his right. He slumped when he crossed into the throne hall, almost falling.