by Sam Bowring
‘Come,’ he said to his captains. ‘I wish to inspect the new goods. See if there are any tasty morsels.’ They laughed, and he led them towards the wagons.
Crows clustered in the bare branches of the few lonely trees that remained, or flapped down into the quarry to perch on rocks. They were a constant threat that kept slaves working – anyone lying down on the job ran the risk of losing an eye. There was more that one hollow socket down there in the dust and grit, serving as a reminder. Some of the birds preceded Karrak as he rode along the slave train, inspecting the sorrowful faces that peered out of cages. Usually this kind of thing warmed him, yet today he found the experience strangely empty. He’d already seen it many times – maybe too many, for the expected satisfaction did not come. It made him angry and he snarled, sticking his sword randomly through a wagon’s bars. There came an answering cry inside, a thump and a child began squealing.
‘Lucky dip,’ he told his captains, wiping his blade, and they laughed.
They always laughed.
Two figures stumbled along behind the wagon, tied to it by their wrists. An older man, whose rangy hair and beard were streaked with dried blood, and a slip of a woman, her eyes so crinkled with worry that they drew in the freckles from her cheeks.
‘This looks promising,’ muttered Karrak.
The man – her father, he guessed, by the similarities in their features – almost fell, and she shoved her bonded wrists under his arm to lend balance. Suddenly a crow swooped upon him, beating its wings about his head and stabbing at his face. He cursed and struck out, powerful even with his hands tied, and sent the crow to the ground, to lie with one wing flapping uselessly.
‘Well,’ said Karrak, sliding from his horse, ‘time to teach this new lot the pecking order. Stop the wagon!’
The driver obeyed, and the wagons following also drew to a halt.
‘Look at me,’ said Karrak, bringing his sword up under the man’s chin, forcing him to raise his head. Fearful eyes met his, though there was anger there too.
‘Who am I?’ said Karrak.
The man ran his tongue over cracked, parched lips. ‘Karrak,’ he croaked. ‘The … wretched … Lord of Crows.’
‘And what have you just killed?’ asked Karrak.
Without waiting for an answer, he slid the sword into the man’s throat. The daughter screamed as blood poured down her father’s chest and he pitched into the dust.
‘Let that be a lesson to you!’ roared Karrak, his voice booming along the wagon train. ‘I am your master now, these crows worth more to me than you!’
‘Damn you,’ cried the woman, tears clearing the dirt from her hate-filled eyes. ‘You are nothing but a disease, come to blight the land.’
‘Watch your tongue,’ said one of his captains, stepping forward with a raised hand.
Karrak blinked … and he saw.
Never before, or since, had patterns aligned like they had that day. A rush of imagery filled his mind, showing him how things could have been, if he had never been changed on the Spire roof, never inherited Regret’s stolen threads – showing him the life that had been his to lose, an alternative to what it had become.
He would have kept on being the good Prince of Ander, would never have murdered his father and brother for the throne. On a diplomatic mission to the Plains Kingdom, he would have met King Alcrane in a different way, met his family, including his niece – a dainty girl with freckles whom he would have adored from the moment he’d seen her. He’d have found an excuse to speak with her after the official meeting, and then again the next day, lingering after negotiations had been amicably sorted. Alcrane would have watched with amusement as a royal union blossomed, giving his blessing when it was publicly declared.
In those few moments of seeing his lost past, Karrak felt something he had never known. What an amazing phenomenon it was, to care so much for someone else, to be so invested in their wellbeing, and to have someone care about him that way too, to know such togetherness and abiding friendship. The way it made him light, made him float … this thing was called love, he knew, and what miraculous wealth it was.
There followed a glimmer of the real past, of the night just gone – the wagon driver cackling as he raped the woman who would have been Karrak’s wife, in the dirt.
Karrak came back to his surrounds as one of his captains backhanded her across the cheek. The captain gasped as Karrak’s sword crunched through his spine. In a rage Karrak spun on the wagon driver, who froze like a mouse in lantern light. He brought the sword down so heavily on the man’s head it sank all the way to his stomach.
Through swimming vision, he saw that his other captains were fearful, some backing away, others fighting the urge. What was he doing? He clutched his brow, trying to make sense of it – what madness had he just experienced?
‘Bring her to the castle,’ he growled, gesturing without daring to look. ‘Unharmed,’ he added and, trying not to shake, pulled himself up onto his horse.
Karrak sat in his chambers at the top of Ander Castle, the pipe in his hand long ago smouldered out. Some nights it pleased him to sit here in his armchair, staring into the fire, drifting off to sleep. There was no sleep to be found this evening, however. Not when he could all but sense her locked in a room far below, a bright glow on the edge of his thoughts.
She would never love him now, he knew that for certain. He had destroyed her home, murdered her father, and was the root cause of violation done to her. She had fallen for a Karrak in another life, a man who was not him and never would be.
What do I care? he wondered, turning the pipe to tip ash on the armrest. He could order her brought to him and do whatever he wished with her. He could speak to her, warp her mind with threaded words until she really believed she loved him – but that, he knew, would not evoke the feeling he’d had, which now haunted him. Oh, how he wanted it back, as much as he’d once wanted battle, and control and domination. All his jewels, minions and castles now seemed like hollow trophies. He had eaten the finest food, bedded the finest women, watched kings kneel before him and beg for their lives … and yet, for all of that, this one simple thing, this basic human experience, available to all from the lowliest peasant to the highest lord, was not available to him.
He pondered his alternative self – a smiling man, benevolent and charming. Was that who he had been? He had always seen his transformation as a glorious gain, of newfound direction and aspiration to greatness. He had never questioned the fact that ever since the change, he had been driven to grind and burn and kill and conquer, consumed by a hatred for weakness and vulnerability which gave him the strength to achieve what meeker, kinder men could not. Now he wondered if he had actually been robbed.
What if he deigned to become something like who he should have been? Surely that man was still somewhere inside, hidden amongst the anomalous threads that altered his pattern. Yet, even if he could discover him and bring him to the surface, it did not matter.
She would not love him, ever.
I should kill her. I am the Lord of Crows, not to be brought down by a lowly slave.
He rose, but the action was without conviction. He knew he could not destroy her. Even if he killed her body, her memory would live on forever.
He slumped back into his seat.
Was it the work of Regret? Some curse upon him, a leftover of the battle on the Spire? Something that had waited for the perfect moment to maliciously show him the path untaken? It certainly was in keeping with Regret’s style, and Karrak did not think it unlikely, though such conjecture did little to reduce the impact of the result. Maybe it was even a sending from the Great Spell itself, as if it sensed the right of things across a great crevasse, as threads that should have found each other flapped loosely and untied.
Had she been meant for him?
He stood again and began pacing to ward off panic. If they had been meant for each other, had he no chance to ever rediscover that feeling? Now that he knew what he was missing, he
could eat curltooth stew for the rest of time and it would never come close to satisfying him. Would the Spell ever deliver him another of her quality, or was he entirely removed from its tapestry – an aberration, a glitch, a wine stain in the corner? What if his true self was long dead, and he was nothing more than a distorted shadow? It had never crossed his mind before that nobody could love someone like him.
‘Everything is not preordained,’ he said, trying to believe it.
If he tried to become like the man he should have been, would he be rewarded? What if he reinvented himself, gave up this empty illusion of control in the hope that, one day, he might find her again?
He had the rest of time to try it.
A good man, he thought. He knew what such a thing looked like – he had put the mask on himself when it had suited his purposes. Could he put it on long enough to make the world believe that he was good?
Not from this starting point. He needed to begin anew. And he would lose her in the process, but it was the only way to find her again.
‘What are you moping about, brother?’
Karrak spun about, for he hadn’t heard anyone enter. There stood Forger, a full head and shoulders taller than he, dressed in his patchwork ensemble of leather. Looking at him now, he seemed both familiar and unfamiliar. Forger was his cohort, his confidant, a companion ruler in neighbouring Tallahow. They called each other brother – but now Karrak thought of his real murdered brother, and wondered who this strange creature was. Someone as twisted and broken as he?
Forger held out a bottle. ‘I thought you’d want to toast your success!’
Karrak wished he had not come this night, yet he could not tell him to go away. Especially, he could not say what was on his mind. It would be seen as frailty, and rightly so.
‘Of course.’ Karrak waved at Forger’s armchair, next to his own. It was larger than most, having been made specifically by the castle’s master craftsman.
Forger sank into it, took a big swig of the bottle and handed it over. ‘A clever piece of work,’ he said, ‘turning Alcrane and Cordahl against each other.’
‘Yes,’ said Karrak. ‘Weak-willed mortals that they were.’
Forger chuckled. ‘You’re so morose. Looked like you were pacing a trench in the floor when I came in. You must learn to savour these accomplishments.’
‘Indeed,’ said Karrak, and took another swig.
‘Look at me, for example,’ said Forger. ‘I’m blistering with power, and could have more, yet I’ve grown this big, and maybe it’s enough. Any more and I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the world, for I could no longer fit through its doors, let alone into its women! So instead I inflict a level of pain upon my people calculated to maintain my strength, and do not seek for more or less.’
‘What are you saying?’ said Karrak incredulously. ‘You are content?’
‘Perhaps. What more could a man want? Wine, maidens, a choice of castles, a chorus of suffering in his name … oh, I know, they are out there, working to take it all away. So mean, they are! Yet that’s part of it too – without a little struggle a man would grow bored, don’t you think?’
‘You wish for conflict?’ said Karrak, drinking more wine.
‘Not really. But you do.’
‘What?’
‘Well, look at you. Since the moon was last full, you have conquered two kingdoms. Walls that stood for centuries have been ground to dust, yet I find you listless. For you, it is not enough to have conquered. You need to be conquering. You’re like a hunter after the fox – the thrill is in the chase, but in the end what do you have?’
Karrak smacked his lips. ‘What do I have, Forger?’
‘A dead fox. The thing that made it enticing to you – its speed, its cunning, the challenge it represented, is gone. That said, I suppose there are ways to keep yourself entertained in the meantime. Punishing slaves, keeping the army focused. Killing your men today.’
Karrak scowled. ‘You heard about that?’
‘I’m not being critical, brother. I’ve been known to do some harm myself. Just strikes me as odd, when I know how hard you’ve worked to hone your captains’ loyalty, to then punish them for no good reason. The mood amongst your closest will be confused, whence previously they felt exempt from your temper.’
‘I do not care a jot how they feel.’
It was true. He did not care what anyone felt, not even Forger. No one except himself, and now her. But caring about her was almost the same as caring about himself, because she was something that he wanted. It still came down to his own selfish core.
With that realisation came decision. If all his trappings and influence and power, did nothing to satisfy him anymore, they were just a waste of time. Having earned them for himself, it was his right to leave them behind.
‘You have been hanging onto that bottle for a while,’ observed Forger.
Karrak took another swig and passed it over.
Forger raised it to the fire. ‘To our continued success!’
‘I thought you claimed to be content,’ said Karrak, moving to a cabinet where more bottles waited.
‘That is not to say I don’t enjoy a good fox hunt! We just need to find a new fox. Like, oh, I don’t know … the west?’
Karrak considered Forger, languishing there, jolly and tipsy and too big for his skin. He did not want to fight the man, as he would surely have to if he tried to release his slaves and give everyone their kingdoms back. Forger would see such acts as betrayal, and then Karrak would not be free.
The ground began to shake, glasses in the cabinet vibrating. Karrak reached to steady a bottle, waiting for the rumbling to pass. After a few moments, it did.
‘Because of us, Yalenna claims,’ said Forger. ‘That’s why they want us dead.’
‘It’s one of the reasons.’
‘Do you believe it, Karrak? The streaks we now see around sunset, the quaking ground, the melted trees, the leaves that spin and never stop, never touch the ground … It’s not our fault, is it?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Aftershocks of Regret, that’s all.’
‘But we took the threads, my friend. From the Great Spell.’
‘Yes! And look how great we have become!’
‘Indeed,’ said Karrak, unstoppering another bottle.
Once Forger had gone to collapse in his chambers, Karrak looked at himself in the mirror.
‘Good,’ he said, mulling the word over, seeing how it tasted on his tongue.
It was a question, to himself. Could he be good?
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m bored as it is. Might as well give it a try.’
He shed his armour without ceremony, letting it clank to the ground around him. At his weapons rack, his hand lingered for a moment over his usual sword, but it was showy and distinctive enough to be recognised. Instead he chose a plain broadsword, strong and nondescript, and slid it into the scabbard across his back. From the cabinet he took a bag of gold, finished the remaining wine in two big gulps, and smashed the bottle in the fire. Then he went out the door.
In the kitchens, servants were startled by his presence.
‘Forget I am here,’ said Karrak, spinning threads into their minds, and they stopped their cringing and left him be. He set about packing himself enough food for a few days.
As he walked the bright, colourful corridors of Castle Ander, he wondered if he would see them again. Maybe all he needed was a couple of days to think, and realise what was really important. The lump-like feeling in his chest would fade. Was that why he did not dismantle his empire? Or go to a window and tell his crows: disperse.
Did he safeguard against the possibility that this was naught but a brief and stupid mistake?
His breath shortened as he approached the room where she was being held. There were two smirking guards at the door.
‘She’s been cleaned up for you, lord,’ one said.
‘Go to bed,’ said Karrak, and the guards stiffened, and nodded. ‘And kil
l yourselves,’ he threaded, as an afterthought.
Was that good? he wondered, as they marched off. Aorn would be rid of two violent men, Karrak’s army that little bit weaker.
He opened the door and went inside. She jumped up from her pensive spot on the end of the bed, her hair still damp, her shoulders speckled with moisture. Karrak found himself turning cold at the abhorrence in her eyes, a foreign feeling he did not care for.
She could still be his, he told himself. He could make her think she loved him. They could live in the castle together, she his doting wife.
‘You’re going to cast a spell on me, aren’t you?’ she said accusingly.
Karrak gritted his teeth. It wouldn’t be the same.
‘While my mind is still intact,’ she said, ‘I want to tell you that … that … ah! I cannot even find the words to describe what a loathsome burden you are to the world! No worse a monster ever slithered from its mother, would that she had birthed you off a cliff! And one day, one day, someone will succeed in killing you.’
Her ire was astounding.
‘I saved Aorn from Lord Regret,’ he said, wondering at the fact that he was driven to defend himself.
‘And how would you save a baby from drowning? By throwing it to a slavering wolf?’
Karrak took a step forward, and she flinched.
‘What makes you think,’ he said, ‘that I’m going to place you under any spell? Perhaps I won’t do you that kindness. Perhaps I like my women unwilling.’
She paled at that, and he chastised himself. He had only wanted to quiet her, but threatening habits were hard to curtail.
‘Come here,’ he said, threading his words.
Surprisingly she resisted him – her will was very strong.
‘Come with me,’ he tried again. ‘Take my hand. I mean you no harm.’
Finally his command sank in, taking tenuous root in her mind. He did not think it would last forever. Maybe he could not have made her love him, after all.