King of Thorns

I knew I would have appreciated Grumlow’s quick sharp mercy back in the Heimrift rather than a slow exit accompanied by Father Gomst’s moralizing.

We walked along the pathway, cleared of the dead, but not the grease of burned flesh, the pieces of skin, the charred outlines of men. No one spoke; even Rike looked grim. It was appropriate though. My uncle, the Duke of Renar, had been a burner. He had spread his own terror that way. And I had come to take the place from him with Gog at my side, filling the courtyard with cremations. The Prince of Arrow had it right when he called the Ancraths the darkest branch of the Steward tree. I had long wondered if I would stand against Orrin of Arrow when he came a-calling. He was perhaps the brightest fruit from the branches of the emperor’s line. In the four years since I claimed the Highlands I had walked the empire, returning at last to suppress cousin Jarco’s uprising in the west, then battled less tangible foes, sickness in my people and in the economy. In the same span the Prince of Arrow had built his strength and taken five thrones. It was perhaps only the repeated whispering of the wise, telling me I must cede him the empire throne, that made me think of opposing his march to the Gilden Gate. I do not like to be told.

Now though, with the copper box torn open and my memories and sins returned to me, I felt that more had been restored, as if I had been a shadow of myself, almost me, but with something vital stolen away, something so bonded to my crimes that Luntar had been forced to set it also into his box of memories. I might not live to see the sun set on this day of blood, but if I did, four years would not pass again and find me no closer to my goals.

We walked out through the ruins of the sprawl-town where burning chunks of the Haunt’s outer walls had left only wreckage in their path. No trace of Jerring’s stables where Makin had once rolled in dung to be ready for the road.

Even now I could end this. The Prince would accept a peace: his progress was too important to him not to. And who would say that he would make a worse emperor than I? I could match the very worst of his crimes with my own then trump them with darker deeds.

There had been times aplenty, in the clarity of high places among the peaks, when I had thought to leave Orrin of Arrow a clear path. But things change. A different Jorg approached the duelling ground, a different Prince of Arrow. This wedding day had seen Jorg Ancrath remade in an older mould. I had that old thirst on me once again. Blood would flow.

Music rose around me, faint at first. A piece my mother used to play on the piano. A rare instrument, a complex thing of wires and keys and hammers, ancient, but the notes she scattered from her right hand were clear and high, pure like stars against the black and rolling melody from her left. Sometimes just a single ice-pure note can catch the breath in your lungs, and a second, off tempo, thrown into the void, can command chills across your skin. A small run, a flutter of the hand over the blue notes, can take you any where, any time, make you feel new, or settle the press of years upon you, heavy enough to stop you drawing breath.

We walked through broken stone, charred timbers. The melody pulsed under the crackle of flame, her left hand running through the deepest notes. Rike towered above me on one side, my uncle walked on the other. I felt the high refrain. I saw my mother’s hand finding the high notes, the black keys, the ones that made me ache inside my chest, like the cries of gulls above wild seas. After so many years of watching her hands play in silent memory, I heard her at last, I heard her music.

Down the mountainside, down toward the serried expanse of the Prince’s army. Still the music, the deep slow melody, the high and broken counterpoint, as if the mountains themselves had become the score, as if the glories of hidden caves and secret peaks had been wrapped around the ageless majesty of the ocean and turned into the music of all men’s lives, played out by a woman’s fingers, without pause or mercy, reaching in, twisting, laying us bare.

To the level ground before the grey bulk of Rigden Rock. The music slowing now, the notes scattered, just the counterpoint played out in the highest octave, sad notes, faltering, faint. I glanced at Makin, remembering that first day when he handed me a wooden sword. All those earnest boys of his ready to learn his game. I’d shown them that it wasn’t play, that it’s always about winning, but I don’t think they understood it even then, even with the best of them lying choking on the floor.