Mark Lawrence - Emperor of Thorns

To leave all this behind and dare old poisons, to risk an end like those I had given the people of Gelleth, made no sense. And still I would do it. Not for the hollowness inside me, nor the weight of the copper box that held what had been taken, not for the promise of old magics and the power they offered, but just to know, just to do more than skitter about on the surface of this world. I wanted more than I could see from a tower, however high, or even from the eyes the Builders set among the stars.

Perhaps I just wanted to know what it was that I wanted. Maybe that is all that growing up means.

Slow steps brought me from the tower, lost in thought. I waved Sunny to me and bid him lead me to the Lord House.

‘They won’t want the likes of-’ He glanced back at me, taking in the fine cloak, the silver-chased breastplate. ‘Oh.’ And remembering that I was a king, albeit of a realm he hardly knew of, he led on.

We passed the cathedral, the finest I’d seen, a stone confection reaching for blue skies. The saints watched me from their niches and galleries. I felt their disapproval, as if they turned to stare once we passed. The crowds thronged there, before the cathedral steps, perhaps drawn by the cool promise of the great hall within. Sunny and I elbowed our way through, pushing aside the occasional priest and monk as we went.

I came sweating to the doors of the Lord House. I would have stripped to the waist and let Balky carry my gear but perhaps that might have created a poor impression. The guards admitted us, a boy taking our animals, and we sat on velvet-cushioned chairs whilst a flunky in foolish amounts of lace and silk went to announce our arrival to the provost.

The man returned several minutes later with a polite cough to indicate that I might put down the large ornamental vase I had been studying and follow him. When my hands are idle they find mischief of one sort or other. I let the vase slip, caught it an inch from the floor and set it down. Polite coughs leave me wanting to choke out a cough of a different sort. I left Sunny to return the ornament to its niche and bade the servant lead on.

A short corridor took us to the doors of the reception chamber. Like the foyer, every inch of it stood tiled in geometric patterns, blue and white and black, fiendishly complex. Qalasadi would have enjoyed it: even a mathmagician would be hard-pressed to tease out all the secrets it held. High windows caught what breeze was to be had and gave a relief from the heat of the day.

The flunky knocked three times with a little rod he seemed to carry for that sole purpose. A pause and we entered.

The room beyond took my breath, complex in detail but a sparse and simple beauty on the grand scale, an architecture of numbers, very different from the gothic halls of my lands or the dull boxes the Builders left us. The provost sat at the far end in a high-backed ebony chair. Apart from two guards at the door and a scribe at a small desk beside the provost’s seat, the long chamber lay empty and my footsteps echoed as I approached.

She looked up from her scroll while I closed the last few yards, a hunched old woman with black and glittering eyes, reminding me of a crow gone to grey and tatters.

‘Honorous Jorg Ancrath, King of the Renar Highlands. Grandson to Earl Hansa.’ She introduced me to herself.

I gave her the small fraction of a bow her rank commanded and answered in the local custom. ‘You have the right of it, madam.’

‘We’re honoured to welcome you to Albaseat, King Jorg,’ she said through thin, dry lips and the scribe scratched the words across his parchment.

‘It’s a fine city. If I could carry it I’d take it with me.’

Again the scratching of the quill — my words falling so quickly into posterity.

‘What are your plans, King Jorg? I hope we can tempt you to stay? Two days would be sufficient to prepare an official banquet in your honour. Many of the region’s merchants would fight for the opportunity to bend your ear, and our nobility would compete to host you at their mansions, even though I hear you are already promised to Miana of Wennith. And of course Cardinal Hencom will require you at mass.’

I took pleasure in not waiting for the scribe to catch up, but resisted the temptation to pepper my reply with rare and difficult words or random noises for him to puzzle over.

‘Perhaps on my return, Provost. I plan first to visit the Iberico Hills. I have an interest in the promised lands: my father’s kingdom has several regions where the fire from the thousand suns still burns.’

I heard the quill falter at that. The old woman, though, did not flinch.

‘The fire that burns the promised lands is unseen and gives no heat, King Jorg, but it sears flesh just the same. Better to learn of such places in the library.’

She made no talk of postponing my trip until after her nobles and merchants had taken their bites of me. If I were bound for the Iberico Hills such efforts would wasted — money thrown into the grave as the local saying had it.

‘Libraries are a good place to start journeys, Provost. In fact I have come to you hoping that Albaseat might have in one of its libraries a better map of the Iberico than the one copied from my grandfather’s scrolls. I would count it a great favour if such a map were provided to me …’

I wondered how I looked to her, how young in my armour and confidence. From a distance the gaps between things are reduced. From the far end of her tunnel of years I wondered how different I looked from a child, from a toddler daring a high fall with not the slightest understanding of consequence.

‘I would advise beginning and ending this journey among the scrolls, King Jorg.’ She shifted in her chair, plagued no doubt by the aching of joints. ‘But when age speaks to youth it goes unheard. When do you plan to leave?’

‘With the dawn, Provost.’

‘I will set my scribe to searching for a map and have whatever he finds waiting for you at the North Gate by first light.’

‘My thanks.’ I inclined my head. ‘I hope to have some new tales to tell at your banquet when I return.’

She dismissed me with an impatient wave. She didn’t expect to see me again.

Five years earlier

Sunny and I made our way to the North Gate of Albaseat in the grey light that steals over the world before dawn. The streets thronged. In summer the Horse Coast bakes and only the earliest hours of the day offer respite. By noon the locals would retreat behind white walls, beneath the terracotta tiles, and sleep until the sun slipped from its zenith.

In the lanes leading to the gate and the wide plaza that lay before it, business had already started. Tavern doors stood open while men bore kegs in upon their shoulders, or lowered barrels into the cellars by the street-traps. Grey-faced women emptied slops from buckets into the gutters. We passed a smithy open to the road so that passersby could see the hammering and quenching and be tempted to purchase what took such sweat and force to craft. A lad hunched at the forge, poking life back into fires banked overnight.

‘Oh, to be still abed.’ Sunny yanked his packhorse away from some tempting refuse.

A cry turned us back toward the blacksmith’s. We had gone only a dozen steps beyond it. The smith’s boy lay in the street now. He pushed himself up from the flagstones, face grazed, shaking his head, unsteady. The smith paced out from his workshop and kicked the boy hard enough to lift him off the ground. The air left his lungs with a whuff. Under the dirt the boy’s hair looked fair, almost golden, rare this far south.

‘My money’s on the big fellow,’ I said. My brother Will had such hair.

‘He’s a big one, all right.’ Sunny nodded. The smith wore just a leather apron from shoulder to knee and leggings held up with rope. The muscle in his arms gleamed. Swinging a four-pound hammer from dawn till dusk will put a lot of meat on a man.