Prince of Thorns (17 page)

The Nuban once told me about a tribe in Nuba that ate the heart and the brains of their enemies. They thought it gave them their foes’ strength and cunning. I never saw the Nuban do it, but he didn’t dismiss the idea.

I held the heart up to my mouth.

“Prince!” Makin stepped toward me. “That’s evil meat.”

“There is no evil, Makin,” I said. “There’s the love of things, power, comfort, sex, and there’s what men are willing to do to satisfy those lusts.” I kicked the ruin of the necromancer’s corpse. “You think these sad creatures are evil? You think we should fear them?”

I took a bite, as big as I could manage. Raw flesh is chewy, but the necromancer’s heart had some give in it, like a game bird hung until it’s ready to drop off the hook. The bitter gall of the blood scoured my throat. I swallowed my mouthful and it slid down, slow and sour.

I think for the first time Burlow watched me eat without the green eyes of jealousy. I threw the rest of it down. The brothers stood mute, eyes watering from the torch-smoke. That’s the problem with tar-torches, you have to keep moving. I felt a touch odd. I had the feeling you get when you know you really should be somewhere else, as if you’d promised a duel that morning or some such but couldn’t quite remember what it was. Chills ran up my back and along my arms, as if ghosts trailed their fingers over me.

I opened my mouth, then closed it, interrupted by a whisper. I looked around. Whispers came from every corner, just at that maddening level where you can hear the words but not understand them. The brothers started to look around too, nervous.

“Do you hear it?” I asked.

“Hear what?” Makin said.

The voices came louder, angry but indistinct, louder, a multitude advancing, louder. A faint breeze disturbed the air.

“Time to climb, gentlemen.” I wiped my hand across my mouth, scraping away purple muck on the back of my gauntlet. “Let’s see how fast we can do this.”

I picked the necromancer’s head from the floor, half-expecting the eyes to roll down and fix me with a glare. “I think our heartless foe has friends coming,” I said. “Lots of friends.”

Everyone likes to eat. One man marches on his stomach as much as an army does. Only Fat Burlow didn’t much take to marching, and took too much to munching. And some of the brothers were apt to hold that against a man. Still, I had more time for old Burlow than I did for most of my road-kin. Of all of them, save Makin, he was the only one who owned to reading. Of course he bore watching for that. There’s a saying on the road, “Never trust a lettered man.”

32

We ascended the Great Stair with the screams of ghosts rising beneath us. They say fear lends a man wings. None of the brothers flew up the Stair, but the way they scrambled over the slickness of that rocky throat would teach a lizard plenty about climbing.

I let them lead the way. It was as good a means as any to test the footing. Grumlow first, then Liar and young Sim. Gog scrambled behind them, followed by Gorgoth. I guessed the leucrotas’ accord with the necromancers might be somewhat broken.

Makin was the last of them. He could feel the dead coming. I saw it in the pallor of his skin. He looked like a dead thing himself.

“Jorg! Get up here! Climb!” He grabbed at my arm as he passed.

I shook him off. I could see ghosts boiling along the tunnel toward us, others stepping from the walls.

“Jorg!” Makin took my shoulders and pulled me toward the Stair.

He couldn’t see them. I knew from the wild sweep of his gaze. His eyes never touched them. The closest of them looked to me like chalk drawings half-erased, hanging in the air. Sketches of corpses, some naked, some clad in rags, or pieces of broken armour. A coldness came from them, reaching for my flesh, stealing warmth with invisible fingers.

I laughed at them. Not because I thought they had no power to harm me, but because they had. I laughed to show them what I cared for their threat. I laughed to hurt them. And they suffered for it. The taste of dead heart-meat lingered at the back of my throat, and a dark power ran through me.

“Die!” I shouted at them, spitting away the laughter. “A man should at least know how to stay dead!”

And they did. I think. As if my words held them to obey. Makin had me dragged away, nearly round the corner, but I saw the spirits stop. I saw pale flames light upon their limbs, the ghost of fire. And, oh, the screaming. Even Makin heard it, like the scrape of nails on slate, cold wind on a migraine. We both ran then, close enough to flying.

It was hours before we stopped, a thousand feet or more up the Stair. The downward tumble of the long-vanished river paused here to scour out a bowl, set about with smaller sinkholes and decorated with the frozen tracery of stone that graces the deep places of the world.

“Fuckit.” Fat Burlow collapsed in a boneless heap and lay motionless.

Red Kent sat back against a stalagmite, his face coloured to match his name.

Close by, Elban spat into a sinkhole pool, then turned, wiping mucus from his wizened lips. “Heh! You looks like one o’ them Blushers, Kent.”

Kent just gave him mean eyes.

“So.” Makin hauled in a huge breath and tried again. “So, Prince, we’re climbing up. Well and good. But if we keep on up we’re just going to reach the Castle Red.” Another breath. A long climb in armour will do that for you. “We might surprise the hell out of them, coming up out of their vaults, but we’re still twice a dozen men against nine hundred.”

I smiled. “It’s a dilemma ain’t it, Brother Makin? Can Jorg work the magic one more time?”

The brothers all had an eye on me now. All save Burlow, after that climb he wouldn’t turn his head for anything less than the Second Coming.

I pulled myself to my feet and gave a little bow. “That Jorg, that Prince Jorg, he’s got a madness in him. A stranger to reason, a little in love with death perhaps?”

Makin had a frown on him, worried, wanting me to shut up.

I strode around them. “Young Jorg, he’s apt to throw it all away on a whim, gamble the brotherhood on wild chance . . . but somehow, just somehow, it keeps turning out a-right!”

I clapped a hand to Rike’s greasy head and he gave me a bruise-faced scowl.

“Is it luck?” I asked. “Or some sort of royal magic?”

“Nine hundred o’ them Blushers up there in the Castle Red, Jorth.” Elban gestured at the ceiling with his thumb. “No way we can turn them out of there. Not if we were ten times the number.”

“The wisdom of age!” And I crossed to Elban and threw an arm around his shoulders. “Oh my brothers! I may have given our priest away, but it sorrows me that your faith departs so swiftly on his heels.”

I steered Elban to the Stair. I felt the tension in him as we neared the point where the floor fell away. He remembered the Watch Master.

I pointed up the stepped river course. “That’s where our path lies, Old Father.”

I let him go and he drew in a sigh. Then I turned to face the brothers once again. Gorgoth watched me with his cat’s eyes, Gog with strange fascination from behind a pillar of rock.

“Now I’m thinking that I’ll find what I’m looking for before we reach the under-vaults of the Castle Red.” I put a little iron in my voice. “But if it turns out we have to murder us a quiet path to Duke Merl’s bedchamber, and I have to plant him on my sword like a puppet on a stick to get him to sign the place over to me . . .” I swept my gaze across them, and even Burlow managed to look up. “Then . . .” I let my voice fill the chamber and it echoed marvellously. “Then that is what you will fecking well do, and the first brother that doubts my fecking luck, will be the first to leave this little family of ours.” I left them in no doubt that such a parting would be ungentle.

So we climbed again, and in time we left the Great Stair behind us, finding once more the box-halls of the Builders. Gorgoth’s knowledge reached only to the Stair’s foot so I led the way. Lines danced in my mind. Rectangles, squares, precise corridors, all etched into scorched plasteek. A turn there, a chamber on the left. And with sudden certainty, like one of Lundist’s potions turning to crystal at the addition of the smallest grain, I knew where we were.

I pictured the map and followed it. The Builders’ book sat in my pack, and I’d returned to its pages many times on our journey from The Falling Angel. No need to dig it out now. Let the brothers have their magic show.

We came to a five-way intersection. I put one hand to my forehead and let the other wander the air as if seeking our path. “This way! We’re close.”

An opening on the left, edged by the ancient rust-stain of a long vanished door.

I paused and lit a new torch of tar and bone from the blackened stick of my old one.

“And here we are!”

With my best courtly flourish I pointed the way, then stepped through.

We entered an antechamber to the vault I sought from my map. The door that blocked the way from our chamber into the vault stood maybe ten foot tall, a huge circular valve of gleaming steel, set about with rivets thick as my arm. Damned if I know what Builder spells kept it from rusting away like the rest, but there it was, big, shiny, and implacably in my way.

“So how’re you going to open that?” Rike’s words came out mumbled. I’d mashed his lips up pretty good.

I hadn’t the slightest idea.

“I thought we could try knocking it down with your head.”

I named him Liar the day I put a knife through his hand. The knife came out, but the name stuck. He was a mean bit of gristle wrapped round bone. Truth might burn his tongue but his looks didn’t lie.

33

“Looks pretty solid to me,” Makin said.

I couldn’t argue. I’d never seen anything more solid than that door. I could hardly even scratch it with my sword.

“So what’s the plan?” Red Kent stood with both hands on the hilts of his short-swords.

I held the gleaming wheel at the centre of the door and leaned back. The door loomed above me. It looked like silver, a king’s ransom in silver.

“We could dig through,” I said.

“Builder-stone?” Makin raised an eyebrow.

“Try anyway.” I released the wheel and pointed to Burlow then Rike. “You two. Start over there.”

They moved forward with shrugs. Rike reached the spot and kicked the wall. Burlow held his hands out before him and studied them with a speculative pout.

I had picked them for strength, not initiative. “Makin, give them your flail. Row, let’s put that war-hammer of yours to good work.”

Rike took the hammer in one hand and set to pounding on the wall. Burlow took a swing with the flail and nearly got both the spiked iron balls in his face as they bounced back.

“My money’s on the wall,” Makin said.

After five minutes I could see we’d be there a while. The wall fell away not in chunks but in scatters of pulverized stone. Even Rike’s furious attack left only shallow scars.

The brothers began to settle, leaning back against their packs. Liar set to cleaning his nails with a small knife. Row put down his lantern, Grumlow took out cards, and they hunkered down to play a hand. Lost most of their loot that way, Row and Grumlow, and practice never made them better. Makin pulled out a stick of dried meat and set to chewing. “We’ve a week’s rations at most, Jorg.” He got the words out between swallows.

I paced the room. I knew we weren’t going to dig through. I’d given them make-work to keep them quiet. Or at least as quiet as men wielding hammers can be.

Perhaps there’s no way through
. The thought gnawed at me, an unscratchable itch, refusing to let me rest.

The hammering made the room ring. The noise struck at my ears. I walked the perimeter, trailing the point of my sword along the wall, deep in thought.
No way through
. Gog crouched in a corner and watched me with dark eyes. Where the brothers lay, I stepped over them as though they were logs. As I passed by Liar, I felt a change in the texture of the wall. It looked the same, but beneath my blade it felt like neither stone nor metal.

“Gorgoth, I need your strength here, if you please.” I didn’t look to see if he got up.

I sheathed my sword and pulled the knife from my belt. Moving in close, I scratched at the strange patch and managed to score a line across the surface. It left me little wiser. Not wood.

“What?” The torches threw Gorgoth’s shadow over me.

“I hoped you could tell me,” I said. “Or at least open it.” I struck my fist on the panel. It gave the faintest hint at some hollow behind.

Gorgoth pushed past and felt out the edges. It was about a yard by half a yard. He struck it a blow that would have caved in an oak door. The panel hardly shook, but the edge on the left lifted ever so slightly. He set the three thick fingers of each hand to the edge, digging in with dark red talons. Beneath his scarred hide the muscles seemed to fight each other, one surging over the next in a furious game of King of the Mountain. For the longest time nothing happened. I watched him strain, then realized I’d forgotten to breathe. As I released my breath, something gave inside the wall. With a snap and then a tortured groan the panel came free. The empty cupboard behind it proved to be somewhat of an anti-climax.

“Jorg!” The hammering had stopped.

I turned to see Rike wiping sweat and dust from his face, and Burlow beckoning me over.

I crossed the room slowly, though half of me wanted to run, and the other half not to go at all.

“Doesn’t look like you’re through yet, Burlow.” I shook my head in mock disappointment.

“Not going to be neither.” Rike spat on the floor.

Burlow brushed the dust from the shallow hole their labour had forged. Two twisted metal bars showed through, bedded in the Builder-stone. “Reckon these run through the whole wall,” he said.

My eyes strayed to the knife I held clenched in one fist. I have, on occasion, punished the messenger. There are few things more satisfying than taking out your frustrations upon the bearer of bad tidings.

“Reckon they might at that.” I pushed the words through gritted teeth.

Quickly, before Fat Burlow could open his mouth again and earn himself the name Dead Burlow, I turned and went back to the secret compartment. Just enough space to hold a folded corpse. Empty save for dust. I drew my sword and reached in to check the back of the compartment. As I did, a strange chime sounded.

“External sensors malfunctioning. Biometrics offline.” The voice came from the empty cupboard, the tone calm and reasonable.

I looked to either side, then back to the space before me. The brothers looked up and started to get to their feet.

“What language is that?” Makin asked. The others were looking for ghosts, but Makin always asked good questions.

“Damned if I know.” I knew a few languages, six fluent enough for conversation and another six well enough to recognize when spoken.

“Password?” The voice came again.

I recognized that. “So you can speak Empire Tongue, spirit.” I kept my sword raised, looking all around to find the speaker. “Show yourself.”

“State your name and password.”

Beneath the dust on the back wall of the compartment I could see lights moving, like bright green worms.

“Can you open that door?” I asked.

“That information is classified. Do you have clearance?”

“Yes.” Four foot of edged steel is clearance enough in my book.

“State your name and password.”

“How long have you been trapped in there, spirit?” I asked.

The brothers gathered around me, peering into the compartment. Makin made the sign of the cross. Red Kent fingered his charms. Liar pulled his self-collected from beneath his mail shirt.

A long moment passed while the green worms marched down the back wall, a floos of light beneath the dust. “One thousand one hundred and eleven years.”

“What’s it going to take for you to open that door? Gold? Blood?”

“Your name and password.”

“My name is Honorous Jorg Ancrath, my password is divine right. Now open the fecking door.”

“I don’t recognize you.” Something about the spirit’s calmness infuriated me. If it had been visible, I’d have run it through right there and then.

“You haven’t recognized anything but the back of this panel for eleven hundred years.” I kicked the panel in question for emphasis and sent it skittering across the room.

“You are not authorized for chamber twelve.”

I looked to the brothers for inspiration. A more blank sea of faces is hard to imagine.

“Eleven hundred years is a long time,” I said. “Wasn’t it lonely there in the dark, all those long years?”

“I was alone.”

“You were alone. And you could be again. We could wall you up so you’d never be found.”

“No.” The tone remained calm, but there was something frenzied in the pattern of lights.

“. . . or, we could set you free.” I lowered my sword.

“There is no freedom.”

“What do you want then?”

No reply. I leaned into the compartment, far enough that I could set my fingers to the far wall. The surface beneath the dust felt glassy and cool.

“You were alone,” I said. “Trammelled in the thousand-year dark with only memories for company.”

What had it witnessed, this ancient spirit, trapped by the Builders? It had lived through the Day of a Thousand Suns, it had seen the end of the greatest empire, heard the scream of millions.

“My creator gave me awareness, for a ‘flexible and robust response to unforeseen situations,’” the spirit said. “Awareness has proved to be a weakness in periods of prolonged isolation. Memory limitations become significant.”

“Memories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you’ll find an edge to cut you.” I looked into my own darkness. I knew what it was to be trapped, and to watch ruination. “Each day the memories weigh a little heavier. Each day they drag you down that bit further. You wind them around you, a single thread at a time, and you weave your own shroud, you build a cocoon, and in it madness grows.” The lights pulsed beneath my fingers, ebbing and flowing to the beat of my voice. “You sit here with your yesterdays queuing at your shoulder. You listen to their reproach and curse those that gave you life.”

Veins of light spread through the glass beneath my palm, miniature lightning reaching across the wall. My hand tingled. I felt a moment of kinship.

“I know what you want,” I said. “You want an end.”

“Yes.”

“Open the door.”

“The EM-bolts failed over six hundred years ago. The door is not locked.”

I drove my sword into the panel. The glass shattered and a brilliant flash lit the compartment. I pushed on, through a softness yielding like flesh, and things that crunched and gave like the bones of birds. Something hit me in the chest and I staggered back, caught by Makin. When I’d shaken the after-images from my eyes I could see my sword standing from the rear wall, smoking and blackened.

“Open the damn door!” I shook Makin off.

“But—” Burlow started. I cut through his objection.

“It’s not locked. Gorgoth, Rike, give it a decent pull. Burlow, get in there and make that lard work for us for once.”

They did as I said, setting their bulk to the task, well over a thousand pounds of dumb muscle between them. For a moment nothing happened. Another moment, and then, without the slightest whisper from the hinges, the massive door stole into motion.

The road may go ever on, but we don’t: we wear out, we break. Age makes different things of different men. It will harden some, sharpen them, to a point. Brother Elban has that toughness, like old leather. But in the end the weakness comes and the rot. Perhaps that’s the fear behind his eyes. Like the salmon, he’s been swimming upstream all his life, and he knows there’s no shallows waiting for him, no still waters. Sometimes I think it would be kindness to make a swift end for Elban, before the fear eats up the man he was.