King of Thorns

Jorg Ancrath has been gone close on a week. He took Sir Makin with him from the dungeons. I was glad for that, I liked Sir Makin and I cannot truly blame him for what happened to Galen: that was Jorg again. A crossbow! He could never have bested Galen with a blade. There’s no honour in the boy.

Friar Glen says Jorg near tore the dress off me after he hit me. I keep it at the back of the long closet in the bride chest Mother packed for me before we left Scorron Halt. I keep it where the maids don’t look, and my hands lead me back there. I run the tatters through my fingers. Blue satin. I touch it and I try to remember. I see him standing there, arms wide, daring the knife in my hand, weaving as though he were too tired to stand, his skin dead white, and the black stain around his chest wound. He looked so young. A child almost. With those scars all across him where the thorns tore him. Sir Reilly says they found him hanging, near bloodless, after a night in the thorns with the storm around him and his mother lying dead.

And then he hit me.

I’m touching the spot now. It’s still sore. Lumpy with scab. I wonder if they can see it through my hair. And then I wonder why I care.

I’m bruised down here too. Bruised black, like that stain. I can almost see the lines of fingers on my thigh, the print of a thumb.

He hit me and then he used me, raped me. It would have been nothing to him, a mercenary from the road, it would have meant nothing to him, just something else to take. It would rank small amongst his crimes. Maybe not the largest even against me, for I miss Hanna and I did cry when we put her in the ground, and I miss Galen for the fierceness of his smile and the heat he put in me whenever he came near.

He hit me, and then he used me? That sick boy, daring the knife, barely able to stand?


October 11th, Year 98 Interregnum

Ancrath. The Tall Castle. My chambers.


I saw Friar Glen in the Blue Hall today. I’ve stopped going to his services but I saw him in the hall. I watched his hands, his thick fingers and his thick thumbs. I watched them and I thought of those fading bruises, yellow now, and I came to the tall closet, and here I am with the torn satin in my hands.





Skin, bones, and mischief comprise Brother Gog. Monster born and monster bred but there’s little to mark him from Adam save the stippled crimson-on-black of his hide, the dark wells of his eyes, ebony talons on hand and foot, and the thorny projections starting to grow along his spine. Watch him play and run and laugh, and he seems too at ease to be a crack in the world through which all the fires of hell might pour. Watch him burn though, and you will believe it.





4





Four years earlier


I took my uncle’s throne in my fourteenth year and found it to my liking. I had a castle, and staff of serving maids, to explore, a court of nobles to suppress, or at least what counted as nobles in the Highlands, and a treasury to ransack. For the first three months I confined myself to these activities.


I woke soaked with sweat. I normally wake suddenly with a clear head, but I felt as though I were drowning.

“Too hot…”

I rolled and fell from the bed, landing heavy.

Smoke.

Shouting in the distance.

I uncovered the bed-lamp and turned up the wick. The smoke came from the doors, not seeping under or between but lifting from every inch of the charred wood and rising like a rippled curtain.

“Shit—” Burning to death has always been a worry of mine. Call it a personal foible. Some people are scared of spiders. I’m scared of immolation. Also spiders.

“Gog!” I bellowed.

He’d been out there in the antechamber when I retired. I moved toward the doors, coming at them from the side. An awful heat came off them. I could leave by the doorway or try to fit myself through the bars on any of three windows before negotiating the ninety-foot drop.

I took an axe from the wall display and stood with my back to the stone, next to the doors. My lungs hurt and I couldn’t see straight. Swinging the axe felt like swinging a full-grown man. The blade bit and the doors exploded. Orange-white fire roared into the room, furnace-hot, in a thick tongue forking time and again. And, almost as suddenly, it died away like a cough ending, leaving nothing but scorched floor and a burning bed.

The antechamber felt hotter than my bedchamber, char-black from floor to ceiling, with a huge glowing coal at its centre. I staggered back toward my bed. The heat took the water from my eyes and for a moment my vision cleared. The coal was Gog, curled like a new-born, pulsing with flame.

Something vast broke from the doorway leading to the guards’ room beyond. Gorgoth! He scooped the boy up in one three-fingered hand and slapped him with the other. Gog woke with a sharp cry and the fire went out of him in an instant, leaving nothing but a limp child, skin stippled red and black, and the stink of burned meat.

Without words I stumbled past them and let my guards help me away.