Emperor of Thorns

The Dead King smiled at me, a broken, ugly grin, my hands pale beneath his chin, the briar scars livid on wrist and forearm. The pain of those hooks burned again, and though a stone roof arched unbroken overhead it seemed that storm winds howled around me, that the rain lashed cold from black skies.

‘In the end,’ I said, ‘there’s no magic, only will.’

I struck at the Dead King, focusing upon him every piece of my desire to see his destruction. I have lived a life driven by desire, the desire for revenge, for glory, to have what is denied me, a simple directive, pure and edged like a weapon. And such desire, such concentrated wanting, is the foundation of all magic – so the Builder told me.

Through narrowed slits I saw the Dead King’s eyes grow wide, as if I really were choking him.

‘You failed against Corion, Luntar dipped into your mind at will, even Sageous played you.’ He coughed the words past my hands, still twisting that smile. ‘And you think you can stop me?’

I could have told him I was older now. I could have said that I hadn’t stood between those men and my son. But instead I answered, ‘Practised spells laid out in books work better than something laid out new. The runes and sigils used for centuries serve better than yesterday’s invention. They’re channels where men’s will has cut paths through what is real. I’ll beat you because a million stand behind me now. Because my desire to win now runs in the oldest channels.’ I told him because there’s a power in the telling of a truth, and because reason has a keen edge.

‘Belief? You’ve found God now?’ He laughed, untroubled by the seal around his throat. ‘The will of the faithful won’t serve you just because you killed the Pope, Jorg. It doesn’t quite work like that.’

‘People can believe in other things, dead man,’ I told him. Screaming all around us, red hands clawing, rich men dying.

‘There’s nothing—’

‘Empire,’ I said. ‘A million souls scattered across a vast and broken empire, praying for peace, praying for the day a new emperor will sit upon the throne. And it’s me.’

I struck again. Emperor in the heart of empire, unbroken. And the Dead King staggered, weakened, trapped in flesh.

‘I came for revenge,’ the Dead King said, though I’d no idea what revenge he spoke of. ‘To show you what I’d made of myself after you abandoned me. And look what I have wrought!’ Careless of my grip he spread his hands wide, to encompass the golden horde seething around us. ‘I brought you the kingdom of the dead. Let me join with you, Brother. Let me lead our armies, and I will take the empire out past all boundaries, in this world and in the next, and make it whole, entire, and ours. Set aside these friends, this unchosen wife—’ He glanced toward Miana.

I struck then with every fibre of my will. I struck with the strength of empire, with the strength of a million, in that holy place, the very heart of empire, where the might and majesty of emperors past and the faith of generations had scored the paths of my power into the fabric of reality. A wind howled around us, cold and swirling, Kai Summerson fighting for release, deep within his own body, for whilst the holy may fail in any moment, the damned may in any moment reach for redemption. The gale spoke and the Dead King fought back.

My will met that of the Dead King, neither of us with the slightest give in us. The vast and sleeping mind of empire behind me, lost hopes, broken dreams, all pushing, all pressing. The deadlands behind him, the desolation of lives ended, the need, the thirst to return. Impossible pressures built, and built, and built again. I felt the wheel turn, the fabric of everything and everytime start to tear. And in that instant I knew who stood before me.

In that second Kai Summerson learned to fly. He took the Dead King’s feet from the ground and the wind scoured the empty inches beneath them. A small victory but one that held my enemy prone.

One hard, cold instant and I knew who hung in my grasp, and even then, with William weak before me, vulnerable, open, even knowing that I traced my father’s path almost to the letter … I stabbed him.

I let slip a hand from his throat, took Kai’s knife from his belt, and drove it deep into his heart, the metal grating across ribs.

A single disbelieving laugh burst crimson from his lips, and then he fell, as if the knife had cut all his strings.

I released him and he fell, arms flailing, blood flooding from his chest. He fell and it took an age. My own brother. William, who I had failed in the thorns. Who I failed now. Whose death had cracked my life. Thorns held me once more. I couldn’t catch him as he dropped. Kai’s corpse hit the floor with the sound of ending, William already gone from him, back into the deadlands from where he had watched me for so many years, from so many dead eyes.

Luntar’s paper fluttered from my sleeve. I picked it up as the dead guards toppled, in scores, then hundreds, all around the room.

‘You can save him.’ Four words. The future-sworn see less than they think. I had stabbed my brother.

‘I don’t understand.’ Makin shouldered a corpse off him, rivulets of dark blood across half his face in three parallel lines. He spoke into the speechless moment. ‘How did you kill him?’

‘I watched him die.’ I muttered the words. ‘I stayed hidden and let them kill him.’

Makin half-climbed, half-crawled, to me.

‘What?’ He set a hand to my wrist, stilling the tremble in the dripping dagger. I let the blade fall.

‘I didn’t kill him. He was already dead. He died eleven years ago.’

Marten came from behind, shoulder laid open to the bone, an ear missing. He took the paper from me, awkward in trembling fingers. ‘Save who?’

‘My brother, William. The Dead King. Always quicker, more clever, stronger-willed. And yet it never occurred to me that death wouldn’t be able to hold him.’

‘Death isn’t what it used to be.’ Perhaps the wisest words ever to come from Red Kent’s lips. He lay dying among the dead, among the foe he had laid low, so torn there could be only minutes left to him. Makin went to his side.

‘Miana!’ As I shouted it I knew a hint of the pain I would feel were she not to answer. Fewer than half the Hundred still survived, many fewer. I saw no sign of Sindri, of my grandfather or uncle. Ibn Fayed I saw. At least I saw his head.

‘Here.’ And I found her, almost pinned to the wall behind Gorgoth’s bulk. The red trolls lay broken in the carnage. Gorgoth unfolded, dripping and ripped. In one hand he held my son against his chest.

Something struck through me, seeing my child, there in that moment. Something sharper than edges. A certainty. The knowing that my father had failed to mould me in his image. I loved that baby, small and bloodied and ugly as he was. The denial had run from me. And with that knowing came another: the certainty that I could only ever hurt him. That the taint of my father would drip from my fingers unbidden and make another monster of my son.

I staggered back and fell into my throne. An autumn leaf swirled around my feet, brought in with the dead. A single maple leaf, scarlet with the season’s sin. A sign. In that moment I knew myself too full of poison to do anything but drop. The fall had come for me. With numb fingers I undid the straps on my breastplate.

‘Still …’ Marten shook his head and crouched beside Kai. ‘A child. A boy. What was he? Ten?’