King of Thorns

I frowned at that. If I’d had three brothers die in the Heimrift then I would have an account to settle with the man who ruled there. The Danes though seemed to think of Ferrakind in the same terms as the volcanoes themselves. To take issue with him would be the same as feuding against a cliff because your friend fell off it.

I took us back to Halradra, along the paths and slopes that we first followed. As we gained height the wind picked up and took the sweat from us. The sun stayed bright and it seemed a good day. If this was to be our last one then at least it had been pretty so far. We trailed along a long valley of black ash and broken lava flows, ancient currents still visible in the frozen rock. Far above us a lone herders’ hut stood dwarfed by the vast heave of the mountains around it, built in days when grass must have found a way to grow here. Unseen in the blue heavens a cloud passed before the sun and its shadow rippled across the expanse of silent sunlit rock arrayed east to west. Gorgoth made a deep sound in his chest. I liked that about travelling with Gorgoth. He hoarded his words, so you wouldn’t know his thoughts from one moment to the next, but he never missed anything, not even those rare occasions when the myriad parts of this dirty, worn-out world of ours come into some fleeting alignment that constructs a beauty so fierce it hurts to see.

Where Gorgoth held his silence, Gog normally provided enough chatter for two. In the most part I would let it flow over me. Children prattle. It is their nature and it is mine to let it slide. Climbing Halradra for the second time though, Gog said nothing. After so many weeks of, “Why do horses have four legs, Brother Jorg?” “What colour is green made from, Brother Jorg?” “Why is that tree taller than the other one, Brother Jorg?” you would think I’d appreciate a rest from it, but in truth it grated more when he said nothing.

“No questions today, Gog?” I asked.

“No.” He shot me a glance then looked away.

“Nothing?” I asked.

We carried on up the slope without speaking. I knew it wasn’t just fear that kept his tongue. As a child there’s a horror in discovering the limitations of the ones you love. The time you find that your mother cannot keep you safe, that your tutor makes a mistake, that the wrong path must be taken because the grown-ups lack the strength to take the right one…each of those moments is the theft of your childhood, each of them a blow that kills some part of the child you were, leaving another part of the man exposed, a new creature, tougher but tempered with bitterness and disappointment.

Gog didn’t want to ask his questions because he didn’t want to hear me lie.

We came to the caves that I had failed to see before, wrinkled our noses at the troll stink, and passed on into the darkness.

“Some light if you will, Gog,” I said.

He opened his hand and fire blossomed as if he’d been holding it in his fist all along.

I led the way, through the great hall of the entrance cave, along the smooth passage rising for fifty yards to the cathedral cave, almost spherical with its potholed floor and sculpted walls.

The trolls came quickly this time, a half dozen of them insinuating themselves into the shadowed circle around Gog’s flame. Gorgoth stood ready to set his strength against any of the new ones who doubted him, but they crouched and watched us, watched Gorgoth, and made no attacks.

“Why are we here?” Gorgoth asked at last. I had wondered if he would ever crack.

“I’ve chosen my ground,” I said. “If you have to meet a lion then it’s better if it isn’t in his den.”

“You didn’t look anywhere else,” Gorgoth said.

“I found what I wanted here.”

“And what’s that?” he asked.

“A faint hope.” I grinned and squatted down to be level with Gog. “We have to meet him sometime, Gog. This problem of yours, these fires, they’re going to pull you down sooner or later, and there’s nothing I can do, not even Gorgoth can help you, and the next time will be worse and the next worse still.” I didn’t lie to him. He didn’t want to hear me lie.

A tear rolled down his cheek then sputtered into steam. I took his hand, very small in mine, and pressed the stolen rune stone into his palm, closing his fingers about it. “You and I, Gog, we’re the same. Fighters. Brothers. We’ll go in there together and come out together.” And we were the same, all lying aside. Underneath it, brushing away the goodness in him, the evil in me, we had a bond. I needed to see him win through. Nothing selfless about it. If Gog could outlast what ate him from the inside out, then maybe I could too. Hell, I didn’t come halfway across the empire to save a scrawny child. I came to save me.

“We’re going to call Ferrakind to us,” I said. I glanced at the trolls. They watched me with wet black eyes, no reaction to Ferrakind’s name. “Do they even understand what I’m saying?”

“No,” said Gorgoth. “They’re wondering if you’d be good to eat.”

“Ask them if there other ways out of here, ones that lead out higher up the mountain.”

A pause. I strained to hear what passed between them and heard nothing but the flutter of Gog’s flame.