Emperor of thorns (the broken empire, book 3)

EMPEROR OF THORNS Book Three of The Broken Empire Mark Lawrence Table of Contents Title Page Dedication Map The Story So Far Prologue Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 An Afterthought Acknowledgments About the Author Also by Mark Lawrence Copyright About the Publisher Dedicated to my son, Bryn The Story So Far For those of you who have had to wait a year for this book I provide a brief synopsis of books and 2, so that your memories may be refreshed Here I carry forward only what is of importance to the tale that follows Jorg’s mother and brother, William, were killed when he was nine: he hidden in the thorns and witnessed it His uncle sent the assassins Jorg’s father, Olidan, is not a nice man He killed Jorg’s dog when Jorg was six, and stabbed Jorg in the chest when he was fourteen Jorg’s father still rules in Ancrath, married now to Sareth Sareth’s sister Katherine is Jorg’s step-aunt and something of an obsession for him Jorg accidentally (though not guiltlessly) killed his baby step-brother Degran A man named Luntar put Jorg’s memory of the incident in a box Jorg has now recovered the memory A number of magically-gifted individuals work behind the many thrones of the Broken Empire, competing with each other and manipulating events to further their own control We left Jorg still on his uncle’s throne in Renar The princes of Arrow lay dead, their army shattered and the six nations gathered under Orrin of Arrow’s rule ripe for the picking We left Jorg the day after his wedding to twelve-year-old Queen Miana Jorg had sent men to recover his badly-wounded chancellor, Coddin, from the mountainside 10 Katherine’s diary was found in the destruction outside the Haunt – whether she survived where her baggage train did not is unknown 11 Red Kent was badly burned in the fight 12 Jorg discovered there are ghosts of the Builders in the network of machines they left behind 13 Jorg learned from one such ghost, Fexler Brews, that what he calls magic exists because the Builder scientists changed the way the world works They made it possible for a person’s will to affect matter and energy directly 14 The gun Jorg used to conclude the siege on the Haunt was taken from Fexler Brews’ suicide 15 The powers over necromancy and fire were burned out of Jorg when they nearly destroyed him at the finale of the battle for the Haunt 16 The Dead King is a powerful individual who watches the living from the deadlands and has shown a particular interest in Jorg 17 Chella, a necromancer, has become an agent of the Dead King 18 Every four years the rulers of the hundred fragments of empire convene in the capital Vyene for Congression – a truce period during which they vote for a new emperor In the hundred years since the death of the last steward no candidate has managed to secure the necessary majority 19 In the earlier thread ‘Four Years Earlier’ we left Jorg at his grandfather’s castle on the Horse Coast The mathmagician, Qalasadi, had escaped after failing to poison the nobles The Builder-ghost, Fexler, had given Jorg the view-ring that offers interactive views of the world from satellites and other optical resources Prologue Kai stood before the old-stone, a single rough block set upright in the days when men knew nothing but wood and rock and hunting Or perhaps they knew more than that, for they had set the old-stone in a place of seeing A point where veils thinned and lifted and secrets might be learned or told A place where the heavens stood a little lower, such that the sky-sworn might touch them more easily The local men called the promontory ‘the Finger’, which Kai supposed was apt if dull And if it were a finger then the old-stone stood on the knuckle Here the finger lay sixty yards across and at the edges fell a similar distance to meet the marsh in a series of steep and rocky steps Kai took a deep breath and let the cold air fill his lungs, let the dampness infect him, slowed his heart, and listened for the high, sad voice of the oldstone, less of a sound than a memory of sound His vision lifted from him with just a whisper of pain The point of Kai’s perception vaulted skyward, leaving his flesh beside the monolith He watched now from a bright valley between two tumbling banks of cloud, watched himself as a dot upon the Finger, and the promontory itself a mere sliver of land reaching out into the vastness of the Reed Sea At this distance the River Rill became a ribbon of silver running to the Lake of Glass Kai flew higher The ground fell away, growing more abstract with each beat of his mind-born wings The mists swirled, and the clouds held him again in their cool embrace Is this what death is like? A cold whiteness, for ever and ever amen? Kai resisted the cloud’s pull and found the sun again The sky-sworn could so easily lose themselves in the vastness of the heavens Many did, leaving flesh to die and haunting the empty spaces above A core of selfishness bound Kai to his existence He knew himself well enough to admit that An old strand of greed, an inability to let go Failings of a kind perhaps, but here an asset that would keep him whole ‘Go to hell, Jorg Ancrath.’ The last words I ever heard 53 On the road my brothers spoke of death many a time The stranger who walked with us But more than they talked of death they talked of dying, and often the business of avoiding it Brother Burlow would speak of the light The light that came to a man lying in his blood, when more of it lay out than in ‘I’ve heard men say it starts so faint, like a dawn, Brothers And you look and you find yourself in the tunnel that’s your life, that you’ve walked in darkness all your years.’ Burlow was a reader, you understand It doesn’t pay to trust a lettered man on the road, Brothers, their heads are full of other men’s ideas ‘But don’t look into that light,’ he said ‘For sweet as it might be, there’s no coming back from there, and it will draw you in, yes it will I’ve sat by too many men, laid broken on the verge, and heard them whisper about that light through dry lips They none of them walked the road again.’ At least that’s how Fat Burlow had it And maybe his light was sweet, Brothers But I’ve looked into that light and it comes at first as a cold star in the dark of night Closer and more close it draws, or you are drawn – these things are equal in a place without time – and you come to know it for what it is A white hunger, Brothers, the incinerating incandescence of the furnace mouth, ready to consume you utterly That light took me in and it spat me out, far from the world I thought I knew death I thought it dry But the death I fell into was an ocean, cold and infinite and the colour of forever And I there, without time, or up, or down Waiting, always waiting, for an angel This death fell wet upon me I spat the water from a dry mouth A cry escaped me and the pain came again, too deep to be endured Lightning flashed and the thorns and coils of the briar made sharp black shapes against the sky The rain lashed cold, and I in its embrace, unable to fall ‘The thorns.’ My senses had left me for a moment A second crack of lightning, across the rolling thunder of the previous stroke The carriage lay beside the road, figures moving all about it ‘I’m in the thorns.’ ‘You never left them, Jorg,’ she said She stood beside me, my angel, she of warmth and light and possibilities ‘I don’t understand.’ The pain still lanced me, my flesh tenting crimson around a hundred barbs, but with her beside me it was only pain ‘You understand.’ Her voice nothing but love ‘My life was a dream?’ ‘All lives are dreams, Jorg.’ ‘Was— was none of it real? I’ve been hanging in the thorns all my life?’ ‘All dreams are real, Jorg Even this one.’ ‘What—’ My arm twitched and red agony flooded me I found my breath again ‘What you want of me?’ ‘I want to save you,’ she said ‘Come.’ And she offered me her hand A hand in which colour moved like the faintly-shadowed skin on molten silver To take that hand would end all pain She offered me salvation Maybe that was all salvation had ever been An open hand waiting to be taken ‘I bet my brother told you to go to hell,’ I said Lightning struck once more and there was no angel, just a Renar soldier carrying William by the ankles like a hunter’s kill Carrying him toward that milestone, carrying him to dash his head open Nature shaped the claw to trap, and the tooth to kill, but the thorn … the thorn’s only purpose is to hurt The thorns of the hook-briar are like to find the bone They not come out easy If you make a stone of your mind, if you thrash and tear, if you break and pull and bite, if you these things you will leave the briar for it cannot hold a man who does not wish to be held You will escape Not all of you, but enough to crawl And crawling, I left the briar And reached my brother We died together As we always should have A cold stone hall Echoing The ceiling black with smoke Whimpers of pain Not human pain, but familiar nonetheless ‘One more,’ Father said ‘He has a leg left to stand on, does he not, Sir Reilly?’ And for once Sir Reilly would not answer his king ‘One more, Jorg.’ I looked at Justice, broken and licking the tears and snot from my hand ‘No.’ And with that Father took the torch and tossed it into the cart I rolled back from the sudden bloom of flame Whatever my heart told me to do, my body remembered the lesson of the poker and would not let me stay The howling from the cart made all that had gone before seem as nothing I call it howling but it was screaming Man, dog, horse With enough hurt we all sound the same I looked into the flame and found it that same incinerating incandescence which had waited for me at the end of my tunnel, blind, white hunger, blind, white pain Flesh knows what it wants and will refuse the fire whatever you have to say about the matter But sometimes flesh must be told ‘I.’ I couldn’t it, Brothers ‘Can’t.’ Have you ever dared a jump, perhaps from some untold height into clear waters and found that at the very edge you simply cannot? Have you from four fingers above an empty span of yards, by three fingers and by two, and known in that moment that you can’t drop? While any grip remains, your flesh will save itself in the face of all odds The heat of that fire The fierceness of the blaze And Justice twisting in its heart, screaming I couldn’t it I could not And then I could I leapt I let myself drop I held my dog I burned A dark sky, a tugging wind It could be anywhere or any when, and yet I knew I had never been here ‘You found me, then?’ William, seven years to him, golden curls, soft child’s flesh, Justice curled at his feet The old hound lifted his head at the scent of me, his tail beating once, twice against the ground ‘Down, boy.’ William set his hand between those long ears ‘I found you.’ We shared a smile ‘I can’t get in.’ He waved at the golden gates towering behind us I walked across and set a hand to them The warmth filled me with promises I pulled away ‘Heaven is over-rated, Will.’ He shrugged and patted our dog ‘Besides,’ I said ‘It’s not real It’s a thing we’ve made A thing that men have built without knowing it, a place made out of expectation and hope.’ ‘It’s not real?’ He blinked at that ‘No Nor the angel Not a lie, but not real either A dream dreamt by good men, if you like.’ ‘So what is death, really?’ he asked ‘I think I have a right to know I’ve been dead for years And here you are, five minutes in, knowing it all What is real if it’s not this?’ I had to grin at that The older brother all over ‘I don’t know what real really is,’ I said ‘But it’s deeper than this.’ I waved at the golden gates ‘Fundamental Pure And it’s what we need And if there’s a heaven it’s better than this and requires no gates Shall we find out?’ ‘Why?’ Will lay back, still scratching between Justice’s ears ‘Did you see your nephew?’ I asked Will nodded, hiding a shy smile ‘If we don’t this, he’s going to burn Him and everyone else And it will get pretty crowded around here So help me find it.’ No half-measures No compromise Save them all, or none ‘Find what?’ ‘A wheel That’s how Fexler thought of it And expectations seem to matter here.’ ‘Oh, that?’ Will hid a yawn and pointed The wheel stood on a hilltop, black against a mauve sky, horizontal on a raised shaft that sunk down into the stone We walked across to it The sky lightening above us, fractures spreading across it through which a whiter light bled From the hilltop we could look down over the dry lands, sloping away into darkness ‘I’m sorry I left you, Will.’ ‘You didn’t leave me, Brother,’ he said, shaking away some fragment of a dream I put both hands to the wheel, cold steel, gleaming Builder-made Buildersteel ‘We need to turn this back and lock it off It will take both of us to it.’ I hoped I had the strength My arms looked strong, smooth and corded with muscle For some reason that smoothness surprised me, as if there should be something written there, old scars perhaps Had there been scars once? But that was the past and I had let it go It had let me go ‘We need to turn it.’ ‘If anyone knows how to push, it’s us.’ Will set his hands to the steel ‘Can this save them?’ ‘I think so I think it can save them all All the children Even the dead ones Even Marten’s son, Gog, Degran, Makin’s daughter, let loose from the dreams of men and given over to whatever was made for them ‘At the very least the Builders’ machines won’t scorch everyone we ever knew from the face of the Earth.’ ‘Sounds good enough.’ And so we strained to turn the wheel There was no wheel of course, no golden gates, no hill, no dry lands Just two brothers trying to right a wrong 54 And we must assume I succeeded We are, after all, still here I’m writing this journal, rather than being poisoned dust blowing on a sterile wind And the magic that joined us at the last, that let me see beyond death with his eyes, that magic is ended All magic is ended, cut off at the source, the wheel turned, the old reality from which we strayed so long, restored again I set the words here in Afrique-ink, dark as the secrets they ground up to make it My hand traces its path across the whiteness of the page and the black trail of my days can be followed Followed from the day I shook that snow globe, and understood that sometimes the only change to matter must be worked from without Followed from that day to this day – this day that woke with the morning sun over Vyene, with the blue Danoob flowing silent and swift through the heart of the Unbroken Empire Little Will runs into the room He comes often now, though his mother tells him not to ‘Jorg!’ he says, and I appear ‘Yes.’ ‘You’re not my daddy Marten says so.’ ‘I’m a memory of him And men are made of memories, Will.’ It’s the best I have to tell him ‘Uncle Rike says you’re a ghost.’ ‘Uncle Rike is something that fell from a horse’s backside, crudely fashioned into the shape of an ugly man,’ I say Will giggles at that Then serious, ‘But you’re white like a ghost Nana Wennith says you can see through ghosts and I can see—’ ‘Yes, my emperor,’ I say ‘I am a ghost A data-ghost, an extrapolation, a compilation A billion moments captured Your father lived much of his life in a building made a thousand years ago.’ ‘The Tall Castle.’ He smiles ‘I’ve been there!’ ‘A building with many ancient eyes and many ancient ears And in later life he carried a special ring He watched through it, and it watched him A man … a ghost, called Fexler, needed to understand your father, needed to know if he could be trusted to save the world.’ ‘He wanted to know if he was good enough,’ Will says I hesitate and hide my smile ‘He wanted to know if Jorg was the right man So he did what machines when they have a complicated question to answer He built a model And that model is me.’ ‘I wish I had my real father,’ Will says He is only six Tact may yet arrive ‘I wish you did too, Will,’ I say ‘I’m only an echo and I feel only an echo of the love he would have had for you But it’s a very loud echo.’ He smiles and I know then that not all magic is gone from the world The kind that burns – that has gone Men will no longer fly, or cheat death of its due But a deeper, older, and more subtle enchantment persists The kind that both breaks and mends hearts and has always run through the marrow of the world The good kind Will grins again and runs out of the room Small boys have little patience I watch the doorway through which he ran, and wonder what might come through it next I could predict of course I could build a model But where would the fun be in that now? One thing I know is that it won’t be Jorg of Ancrath who walks in through that doorway Men are supposed to be scared of ghosts, not ghosts of men A man may fear his own shadow, but here is a pale shadow that fears the man who cast him Jorg of Ancrath will not return though The magic has been shut off, enchantment has run from the world Death is, once again, what it was I watch the door but no one comes I make Miana sad She spends her time watching the young emperor grow Katherine thinks me a nothing, just numbers trying to count themselves, trying to measure a man who was beyond measures, perhaps beyond her dreams even I watch the door then give up Fexler will watch it for me He watches them all Instead I sink down into the deep and endless seas of the Builders Wheels within wheels, worlds within worlds, possibilities without end All of us have our lives All of us our moment, or day, or year And Jorg of Ancrath assuredly had his, and it has been my place to tell it He has gone beyond me now though, and I have no more to say Perhaps somewhere Jorg and his brother have found the real heaven and are busy giving them hell It pleases me to think so But the story is done Finis An afterthought If you’ve got this far then you will have read three books and several hundred thousand words on the life and times of Jorg Ancrath It will now be apparent that you’re not going to be reading any more – and you might, with some justification, wonder why I have chosen to shoot what could well have been a cash cow squarely between the eyes The easiest and best answer is that the story demanded it I acknowledge that I could have told the story to go jump off a bridge and turned events in a direction that allowed me to produce a book 4, a book 5, etc In years to come when I’m eating cat food cold from the tin I may wish that I had The truth is though, that I wanted you to part company with Jorg on a high I would rather readers finish book wanting more than wander away after book feeling they have had more than enough There is a tendency for characters who march on past their sell-by date to become caricatures of themselves – to tread the same ground, growing more stale with each step I hope Jorg avoided that fate and that together we’ve built something of worth I also very much hope you’ll buy my next book! Acknowledgments I need to thank my reader, Helen Mazarakis, for reading this whole trilogy one chunk at a time over the course of many years and telling me what she thought Sharon Mack who poked me into submitting my Prince of Thorns manuscript deserves another shout out Thank you, Sharon My editor, Jane Johnson, is a marvel and has helped my career immensely on many fronts – very likely on occasions I know nothing about as well I’ve also loved reading her books Also at Voyager, Amy McCulloch has worked hard on my behalf I wish her great success with her first fantasy novel, due out this year And finally a round of applause for my agent, Ian Drury, for getting my work in front of people who were willing to take a chance on it, and for continuing to sell my books across the world Gaia Banks and Virginia Ascione, working with Ian at Sheil Land Associates Ltd, have also exceeded all my hopes by getting Jorg’s story into so many translations About the Author Mark Lawrence is married with four children, one of whom is severely disabled His day job is as a research scientist focused on various rather intractable problems in the field of artificial intelligence He has held secret level clearance with both US and UK governments At one point he was qualified to say ‘this isn’t rocket science … oh wait, it actually is’ Between work and caring for his disabled child, Mark spends his time writing, playing computer games, tending an allotment, brewing beer, and avoiding DIY http://www.facebook.com/MarkLawrenceBooks Twitter: @mark lawrence Also by Mark Lawrence Prince of Thorns King of Thorns Copyright This novel is entirely a work of fiction The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk Published by HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2013 Copyright © Mark Lawrence 2013 Mark Lawrence asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Source ISBN: 9780007439065 Ebook Edition © August 2013 ISBN: 9780007439072 Version Map © Andrew Ashton All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins About the Publisher Australia HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia http://www.harpercollins.com.au/ebooks Canada HarperCollins Canada Bloor Street East – 20th Floor Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada http://www.harpercollins.ca New Zealand HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited P.O Box Auckland, New Zealand http://www.harpercollins.co.nz United Kingdom HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 77-85 Fulham Palace Road London, W6 8JB, UK http://www.harpercollins.co.uk United States HarperCollins Publishers Inc 10 East 53rd Street New York, NY 10022 http://www.harpercollins.com .. .EMPEROR OF THORNS Book Three of The Broken Empire Mark Lawrence Table of Contents Title Page Dedication Map The Story So Far Prologue... Far For those of you who have had to wait a year for this book I provide a brief synopsis of books and 2, so that your memories may be refreshed Here I carry forward only what is of importance... Bishop of Hodd Town?’ I asked The Gilden Guard have little respect for the church of Roma either, a legacy of centuries punctuated by vicious squabbles between emperors and Popes For the emperor s