“No, sire.” I did of course. But it is a fool who tells a king not to speak, even if that king is dying.
“The Black Sorcerer they called him, boy. They like such names, and it was apt in its way. See the hill?” He raised a hand from within his nest of blankets. His fingers were swollen and bent, incapable of holding a blade but use enough to point out a rise in the yellow of the western sourlands. “From the crest of that hill running south all the way to the pine copses lay my forest, she was thick with boar and wild mounts. The Black Sorcerer set himself up at the forest edge; him, four hundred pikemen and thirty Riders, all marked with shields that had his signs of safety on them.” His hand moved slightly northwards. “Fields and grasslands it was there, all of it. In yearsbirth it would be mottled red and blue with flowers, and in yearslife it would turn golden with ripening corn.” He turned his head to me. It seemed to be a tremendous effort. “Even in that year, when the Birthstorm had not come and we were stricken with drought, the land was gold, boy. It was a golden land, not the bile-yellow it is now.” Breath wheezed in and out of him. “My army stood looking up at the sorcerer from the valley. Five thousand they were. The largest army the Tired Lands had seen since the gods died. Eight kings and one hundred and fifty free knights. Two hundred Landsmen stood with us and four hundred men-at-arms, all mounted and armoured. With them were two thousand soldiers with pike, blade and shield. The rest were free men and women—the living, the thankful come of their own will and with whatever they had at hand as a weapon. And we even armed the slaves—can you imagine? We were that desperate. People left their families and travelled from all over the Tired Lands, so strong was the horror at another sorcerer having risen.”
I tried to imagine so many people in one place. They must have filled the valley, and yet it had almost not been enough. What must it have been like to know you faced the old horror again? I fought down a shudder.
“They say, boy, I led the charge.” King Doran ap Mennix coughed. A racking cough that twisted him in his chair. His breath smelled of mint. “It is a lie, boy. So many lies. If I had led the charge I would be dead.” Breath wheezing in and out of his lungs. “Have you ever been in a battle, boy?”
“No, sire.”
“It is frightening. If you meet a man who says it is not he is a liar or a fool. It is exhilarating too, I will not lie—” his voice, which had risen, fell again “—but mostly it is frightening. The men and women waiting down there were brave beyond imagining. They should be celebrated, not me.” He let out another long breath. “I realised that too late.” Doran ap Mennix went quiet and I thought he had fallen asleep, but the king was only gathering strength to speak again. “I was in the forest behind the Black Sorcerer with my fifty best. The Landsmen had copied the sorcerer’s filthy protections onto as many shields as they could, it was hurried work and we did not know if it would be successful in protecting us. I watched my army charge. I watched my army die. The first thousand came at him accompanied by a hundred Riders. The Black Sorcerer turned to the man by him, a Rider named Dyrun. I had known him, trained with him. I heard Dyrun say, ‘Not yet.’ I was near enough to see that the sorcerer was shaking. I put it down to his power but maybe he was as frightened as we all were. Then our second thousand committed and the valley was full of dust thrown up by feet and claws. It was a hot day and a beautiful day. Until he cast.”
“You saw it?” I was so intrigued by his story I forgot to say “sire.”
“Yes. It was not like they say. He made no grand gestures; there was no feeling of building power. He raised his hands and then threw them forward with a great shout. A battle cry, I suppose. It had no words. It was as though the world took a breath, and then … and then the colour of the land was gone. There was no gradual leeching away of life, no wave of death spreading around him. The grass simply died.” His voice, already quiet, was barely audible, and his eyes no longer looked into the world I shared with him. “In the Landsmen’s hurry to draw the sigils, mistakes were made. Not all were properly protected. Ten of the men around me died without a sound. The trees around us melted. They sucked in their leaves and stalks and branches, leaving only bare trunks pointing at a yellow sky that stretched away as far as I could see. The Black Sorcerer took all the life he had stolen and he threw it at my army. He ripped the land apart, ended five thousand lives and created a souring thirty miles long. When the land stopped shaking we were all stunned by it—the suddenness, the death. Even the sorcerer stood there with his hands still raised as if unable to believe what he’d done. My men and I were no longer hidden—the trees were gone. If any one of the Black Sorcerer’s group had turned we would have been seen, but they were all mesmerised by the crevasse in the land where there had been an army only moments before. We hit them then. From behind, and they never had a chance. Didn’t notice us until we were among them. I cut down the Black Sorcerer myself. He was young, terrified. Not only of the death I was bringing but of what he had done. Three years before he’d been a blacksmith forced into the desolate because the Landsmen believed there was magic in his grandmother. Now here he was, the destroyer of lands, about to die at the hand of a king.”
“What of his Riders?”
“Most dropped their blades and gave up, horrified by what they had been a part of. They were idealists, you see. They thought that sorcerers were persecuted.”
“The same way murderers are persecuted,” I said and I tried not to shake, tried not to let him see that he could be talking about me.
The king shook his head.
“I am old now. I have become softer, mellowed maybe. Do you know what I have realised?”
“No, sire.”
“They were right. In a way we created the Black Sorcerer, but my pity changes nothing. If the sorcerers were welcome among us they would still sour the land. If they did not believe joining the desolate an easier way of dying than the blood gibbets and we let them be free then one would come, one who saw the opportunity for power.” He looked me in the eye. “I mourn for those afflicted with magic, boy, and I am saddened by what must be done.” I saw the ghost of what the king must once have been under his worn-out flesh. Something hard and unforgiving. “But it must still be done,” he whispered, sounding scourged. Then he screwed up his face and beckoned me closer. “You are one of my squires?” he said. I nodded, and he reached out bent fingers to take gentle hold of my jerkin and pull me closer “I do not recognise you. You must be new. What is your name?”
“Girton, sire.”
“Girton what?”