Mark Lawrence - The Liar's key

“When the needle is blooded you must taste it. Then whatever is to be revealed will come.”

“I’ve tasted my blood before. It didn’t tell me much.” I must have swallowed a gallon of the stuff when Astrid punched me. Once my nose starts bleeding it never wants to stop.

“This will be different.” Again that smile. “Hold out your hand.”

So I did. I wasn’t sure how deep the needle would prick but I steeled myself. Squealing like a little girl probably wouldn’t help me in my new quest to bed her.

Kara took my hand, fingers probing, as if to find the ideal spot. I sat still, content to have her hold my hand, feeling a heat build between us.

“Now. .” She circled the needle over my palm as if searching.

“Ow! Dear God! Sweet Jesu! The bitch stabbed me!” I yanked my hand away, transfixed by the needle that Kara had driven entirely through it in one smooth motion. “Jesu!” Six inches of crimson-beaded steel protruded from the back of my hand.

“Quick! Taste it. The longer you delay the further back the memories!” Kara grabbed my wrist and tried to steer the hand toward my mouth.

“You fucking stabbed me!” I couldn’t quite believe it. Blackness crowded my vision and I felt faint with shock. Curiously there wasn’t much pain.

“Help me with him.” Kara glanced at Snorri and used both hands on my wrist. The bloody needle lurched toward my face. Damned if I was letting her do it though. She’d stab the thing through my mouth given half a chance! I pushed back. “Stop fighting me, Jalan. There’s not much time.”

Snorri lent his strength to the task and a moment later the needle wiped the complaint off my tongue. Kara pulled the steel free then. That’s when it started to hurt-as the needle grated across the small bones in my palm.

“Concentrate now, Jalan! This bit is important.” She clamped my face between her treacherous stabby hands. She probably said some other stuff after that, but by then I’d fainted clean away.

• • •

I’m flying. Or I’m the sky. These things are equal. The day is ending and far below me the land folds, falls, and rises. The mountains still catch the sun, forests sweep out in shadow, rivers run, or dawdle, each according to their nature, but all bound for the sea. The ocean lies distant, crinkled with the dying light.

• • •

Lower.

• • •

The country below runs from plains, green with growing, toward arid hills, stone crested. Trails of smoke lace the air like threads, twisted by the wind. Fields lie blackened where the fire has consumed them. A wood, acres wide, stands ablaze.

• • •

Lower.

• • •

A castle sprawls across a high ridge, commanding views into two valleys that run toward the garden lands. A huge castle, its outer wall thick as a house, taller than trees, punctuated by seven round towers. Enclosed within this perimeter, a small town in stone and Builder-brick, then a second wall, yards thick and higher than the first, and within that, barracks, armouries, a well-house, and a keep tower. The keep I recognize-or think I do. It reminds me of the Ameroth Tower that stands on the edge of the Scorpions, a range of hills straddling the region where Red March, Slov, and Florence meet. I visited the tower once. I must have been ten. Father had sent Martus to be squired to Lord Marsden who keeps his household there. Darin and I tagged along as part of our education. The tower had been the tallest building I’d ever seen. It still is. A work of the Builders. An ugly rectangular structure, fashioned from poured stone, without windows or ornament. I recall that it had been surrounded by rubble and the village lay a mile off, the locals too fearful of ghosts to dwell any closer. Darin and I had ridden the surrounding hills, being still young enough to explore and play. I remember that the rocks thereabouts sported peculiar scorch marks. Geometric patterns fractured into them in ways I couldn’t explain.

• • •

Lower.

• • •

An army stands camped about the castle, arrayed for siege. An army so numerous that the tents of the different units colour the ground like crops in great fields. The horses for their cavalry are corralled in herds thousands strong. Forests have been felled to build the machinery that waits at the foremost edge of the host. Rocks are piled beside each in pyramids ten, twenty, thirty feet high. The throwing arms of trebuchet, catapults and mangols are drawn back, loaded, ready to unleash.

• • •

Lower.

• • •

The stink and the cacophony of the horde are intolerable. Such a press of humanity and animals in such close confines. On the higher ground pavilions stand, decked with crests of arms. The great houses of Slov are there. The high and the mighty have come with their knights and levies. Among the forests of standards are the arms of nobles from Zagre, Sudriech, even Mayar. There cannot be less than thirty thousand men here. Perhaps fifty thousand.

• • •

I’m falling. Falling. Toward the outer wall. Unseen I descend among the troops that crowd the top of the east-most wall tower. There are a hundred archers here, smooth iron skullcaps fluted across the neck, chain-mail coifs, leather jerkins set with iron plates, skirts of overlapping leather strips, iron-studded. I have seen such armour on stands along the long gallery of Roma Hall. As a child I used to hide behind one suit in particular, by the west stair, and leap out to shock the maids.

A scorpion bolt-lobber stands at the front of the tower, aimed out between the crenulations at the distant foe. The operating crew are holding back a respectful distance whilst gathered immediately behind the engine a small group of nobility debate some issue.

In a moment I stand amongst them. Next to me is a huge warrior in battered platemail, heavy-duty stuff fashioned in the old style from black iron. He glances my way but he sees through me.

“We can hold for relief. If it takes two months we can hold,” he says, eyes fierce and dark, set in a brutal face, a black beard bristling over his lantern jaw, threaded by a pale scar.

“Damn that!” The speaker whirls from her contemplation of the enemy. She stands four fingers over six foot, her build athletic, strong, young with it. . maybe eighteen. Her armour is gilded, and worked in enamels across it are the burning spears of the Red March. No vanity this though, the steel is full gauge and without ornament. A soldier’s armour. “If we let them bide here the Czar’s path west lies open. The Steppes will be at Vermillion’s gates before the harvest.”

I watch her face, broad and angular, pale for a woman of the March-beneath a shock of dark red hair, angry hazel eyes, full lips. I know this face.

“Contaph.” She advances on the knight beside me. Even a woman of her stature has to look up at the man. “Can we attack? Sally forth? They won’t be expecting an attack.”

An intake of breath at this from the men around her, knight captains and lords by their armour. I can understand this. There are not enough troops within the castle to challenge the host outside. I know this without looking. The castle could not hold so many.

“They won’t be expecting an attack, princess,” says Contaph. “But they are ready for one, even so. Kerwcjz is no fool.”

“A deputation!” This from a man at the wall, with a spyglass to his eye.

The princess leads the nobles to the battlements, archers parting to make space. “Tell me,” she says.

“Ten riders under a white flag. An emissary. And a prisoner. A woman. A girl-”

The princess snatches the spyglass and sets it to her own eye. “Gwen!”

“Kerwcjz has your sister?” Contaph’s fist tightens on the pommel of his sword, the iron plates of his gauntlet grating one against the next. “This means Omera has fallen.”