Prince of Thorns

What had it witnessed, this ancient spirit, trapped by the Builders? It had lived through the Day of a Thousand Suns, it had seen the end of the greatest empire, heard the scream of millions.

“My creator gave me awareness, for a ‘flexible and robust response to unforeseen situations,’” the spirit said. “Awareness has proved to be a weakness in periods of prolonged isolation. Memory limitations become significant.”

“Memories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you’ll find an edge to cut you.” I looked into my own darkness. I knew what it was to be trapped, and to watch ruination. “Each day the memories weigh a little heavier. Each day they drag you down that bit further. You wind them around you, a single thread at a time, and you weave your own shroud, you build a cocoon, and in it madness grows.” The lights pulsed beneath my fingers, ebbing and flowing to the beat of my voice. “You sit here with your yesterdays queuing at your shoulder. You listen to their reproach and curse those that gave you life.”

Veins of light spread through the glass beneath my palm, miniature lightning reaching across the wall. My hand tingled. I felt a moment of kinship.

“I know what you want,” I said. “You want an end.”

“Yes.”

“Open the door.”

“The EM-bolts failed over six hundred years ago. The door is not locked.”

I drove my sword into the panel. The glass shattered and a brilliant flash lit the compartment. I pushed on, through a softness yielding like flesh, and things that crunched and gave like the bones of birds. Something hit me in the chest and I staggered back, caught by Makin. When I’d shaken the after-images from my eyes I could see my sword standing from the rear wall, smoking and blackened.

“Open the damn door!” I shook Makin off.

“But—” Burlow started. I cut through his objection.

“It’s not locked. Gorgoth, Rike, give it a decent pull. Burlow, get in there and make that lard work for us for once.”

They did as I said, setting their bulk to the task, well over a thousand pounds of dumb muscle between them. For a moment nothing happened. Another moment, and then, without the slightest whisper from the hinges, the massive door stole into motion.





The road may go ever on, but we don’t: we wear out, we break. Age makes different things of different men. It will harden some, sharpen them, to a point. Brother Elban has that toughness, like old leather. But in the end the weakness comes and the rot. Perhaps that’s the fear behind his eyes. Like the salmon, he’s been swimming upstream all his life, and he knows there’s no shallows waiting for him, no still waters. Sometimes I think it would be kindness to make a swift end for Elban, before the fear eats up the man he was.





34




“What is this place?” Makin stood at the entrance with me.

The vault stretched beyond sight. On the ceiling ghost lights flickered into life, some obedient to the opening of the door, others struggling into wakefulness, tardy children late for the day’s lesson. I could see little of the floor past the crush of treasures. No Hollander grain-master owns a warehouse so well packed. To describe it fully would require all the vocabulary of shape and solid so kindly furnished by Euclid and by Plato. Cylinders longer and wider than a man, and cubes a yard on each side, lay stacked to scrape the Builder-stone above, and against the wall—cones and spheres in wire cradles, all skinned with dust. Row upon row, stack upon stack, marching beyond sight.

“It’s an armoury,” I said.

“Where are the weapons?” Rike came to join us from his struggles with the door. He wiped the sweat from his brow, and spat into the dust.

“Inside the boxes.” Makin rolled his eyes.

“Let’s get ’em open then!” Burlow said. He pulled a small crowbar from his belt. It never took much encouragement to set the brothers to looting.

“Surely.” I waved him in. “But open one at the back please. They’re all filled with poison.”

Burlow took a few steps into the vault before that sunk in. “Poison?” He turned round slow-like.

“The best the Builders could make. Enough to poison the whole world,” I said.

“And this will help us how?” Makin asked. “We sneak into the Castle Red’s kitchens and slip some in their soup? That’s a plan for children’s games, Jorg.”

I let that slide. It was a fair question, and I didn’t feel like falling out with Makin.

“These poisons can kill by a touch. They can kill through the air,” I said.

Makin put a hand to his face and drew it down in a slow motion, pulling at his cheeks and lips. “How do you know this, Jorg? I looked at that old book of yours, there was nothing about this in there.”

I stabbed a finger toward the piled weapons. “These are the poisons of the Builders.” I pulled the Builders’ book from my belt. “This is the map. And that,” I pointed to Gorgoth, “is the evidence of their potency. Him and the Blushers of the Castle Red.”