King of Thorns

I tried to visit Orrin’s dreams as I have done every night since I discovered the capacity for it. Tonight I could find no trace of him, just a space in the dreamscape where I sought him, just blankness and the memory of the spice, the coriander seed that the heathen seems to breathe.

In desperation I sought out Egan in his sleep but found no trace of him either. The others in Orrin’s retinue I haven’t enough familiarity with to find among the hundreds of thousands who shape the dream-stuff.

I’ve a new physician, a dirty little man from the Slav steppes, but his infusions calm my head. He’s older than old and what words he has of Empire Tongue are oddly shaped. Even so, Lord Malas makes good report of him and his medicines work.


June 26th, Year 102 Interregnum


I found Orrin dreaming! I couldn’t walk in his dream, a golden thing of many layers, but it seemed to me that he has fought off whatever attempts Sageous has made to control him. Maybe he was right about being the one to hold the strings. It troubles me though that I am kept out. Perhaps it is a barrier fashioned by the heathen, or a defence of Orrin’s own making, whether by conscious will or natural resistance to direction.

Where Jorg kept me out with thorns and lightning, Orrin used a calm and simple refusal. I hope he has sent Sageous scampering back to Olidan Ancrath in the Tall Castle.


July 12th, Year 102 Interregnum

Arrow. Greenite Palace. Ballroom.


This palace has stood for almost two years and no one has danced in the ballroom. Orrin would host a ball to please me, have his lords and ladies descend upon the palace in their carriages. Hundreds would come in satin and lace. He would dance with the precision and grace that amazed his tutors, be attentive to my needs, compliment the musicians. And all the time I would know that behind his eyes grander thoughts were circulating, plans, philosophies, letters being written, and that when the last revellers had been taken home dead drunk across their carriage seats, Orrin would be found in the library scribbling notes in the margins of some weighty tome.


Egan has written to me from the celebrations after the capture of Orlanth’s last castle. I say it is Egan but I have never seen his hand before. It would surprise me if he has ever written a letter until now. Perhaps a scribe set it down for him, for the characters are formed with practised skill, but the voice is Egan’s. He wrote:

Katherine,


We have Orlanth from the western plains to the borders of the Ken Marshes. Orrin concerns himself with plans for Baron Kennick. He will play politic, offer terms, massage the old man’s ego. We should just roll through there without pause and leave it smoking in our wake.

Orrin has sent me to Castle Traliegh in Conaught, it stands in the middle of nowhere. After the excesses of East Haven he says he worries for me. He says I need rest.

I need rest like I need poison. What I require is to be tempered in the forge of war and to pitch exhausted into dreamless sleep each night.

Conaught is a haunted place. I dream such dreams here. I stare at the walls and fear the night. Even though I dream of you. They are not good dreams.




I don’t know what to do. Orrin will hear no wrong of his brother. I have seen it before. Somehow he always finds an angle from which Egan’s deeds can be viewed as excusable.

I’ve never done anything to encourage this passion, this obsession, in Egan. I favoured Orrin from the start. If I had wanted a savage I could have smiled on Jorg of Ancrath, and what a creature I would have been tied to then.

Orrin needs to send Egan away, to give him some castle on a disputed border, some war to occupy him. It can’t be that he needs his brother always at his side. One blade can’t turn a battle, surely, no matter how skilled.


July 18th, Year 102 Interregnum


I have searched for Egan in the dreamscape and he is still hidden from me. The messages I send go unreplied. I don’t even know if the riders are reaching Orrin’s army. Report has it that he is closing on the Renar Highlands. Part of me wonders if Sageous is Jorg Ancrath’s tool. Has he unleashed his father’s pet upon my husband?


October 28th, Year 102 Interregnum


I found Egan’s dreams but they were dark and closed to me. I sensed the heathen’s handiwork and worry at his plans. Has Orrin proved too difficult to steer? Egan would be easier, like a bull goaded this way and that by the fluttering of rags. It’s maddening to be closeted in this palace with all that matters unfolding three hundred miles away.


October 29th, Year 102 Interregnum