Prince of Thorns

Princess? I didn’t care. Tomorrow, tomorrow I would find out. I let him lead me to my room. One of the guest rooms off the Red Corridor. The chamber could have housed many a tavern I’d slept in, but it was a studied insult nonetheless. A room for a country baron or distant cousin visiting from the protectorates.

I stopped at the door, reeling with exhaustion. Sageous’s spell bit deeper and my strength left me like blood from sliced veins.

“I told you it was time to choose, Robart,” I said. I forced the words out one by one. “Get Makin Bortha here. Let him guard my door this night. Time to choose.”

I didn’t wait for a reply. If I had, he’d have had to carry me to bed. I pushed the door and half-staggered, half-fell, into the chamber. I collapsed back against the door, closing it, and slid to the floor. It felt like I kept on sliding, deeper and deeper, into an endless well.

18

 

I woke up with that sudden convulsion you get when every muscle you own suddenly realizes it’s dropped off on duty. Next came the shock of realizing how deeply I’d been asleep. You don’t sleep like that on the road, not if you want to wake up again. For a moment the darkness would yield nothing to my confusion. I reached for my sword and found only soft sheets. The Tall Castle! It came back to me. I remembered the pagan and his spell.

I rolled to the right. I always left my gear on my right side. Nothing but more mattress, soft and deep. I might have been blind for all the help my eyes gave. I guessed the shutters were shut tight, for not the slightest whisper of starlight reached me. It was quiet too. I reached out for the edge of the bed, and didn’t find it. A wide bed, I thought, trying to find some humour in the situation.

I let go the breath I’d been holding, the one I sucked in so fast when I woke. What was it that made me start? What dragged me out of the pagan’s spell in this oh so comfortable bed? I pulled my hand back, drew my knees to my chest. Somebody had put me to bed and taken my clothes. Not Makin, he’d not leave me naked against the night. That somebody and I would be having a discussion soon enough. But it could wait until morning. I just wanted to sleep, to let the day come.

Only sleep had kicked me out, and it wasn’t about to let me back in. So I lay there, naked in the strange bed, and wondered where my sword was.

The noise came so quiet at first I could believe I imagined it. I stared blind into the darkness and let my ears suck in the silence. It came again, soft as the whisper of flesh on stone. I could hear the ghost of a sound, a breath being drawn. Or maybe just a night breeze fingering its way through the shutters.

Ice ran up my spine, tingling on my shoulders. I sat up, biting back the urge to speak, to show bravado to the unseen terrors. I’m not six years old, I told myself. I’ve made the dead run. I threw the sheets back and stood up. If the pagan’s horror was waiting in the darkness, then sheets would be no shield. With my hands held up before me, I walked forward, finding first the elusive edge of the bed, and then the wall. I turned and followed it, fingers trailing the stonework. Something went tumbling and broke with an expensive crash. I barked my shins on an unseen obstacle, nearly groined myself on a sideboard of some kind, then found the shutter slats.

I fumbled with the shutter catch. It defied me maddeningly, as though my fingers were frost-clumsy. The skin on my back crawled. I heard footsteps drawing closer. I hauled on the shutters with all my strength. Every move I made seemed slow and feeble, as though I moved through molasses, like in those dreams where the witch chases you and you can’t run.

The shutters gave without warning. They flew back and I found that I was standing high above the execution yard, drenched in moonlight. I spun around. Slow, too slow. And found nothing. Just a room of silver and shadows.

The window threw the moonlight on the wall to my right. My shadow reached forward in the arch of the window and fell at the feet of a tall portrait. A full length picture of a woman. I went numb: my face felt like a mask. I knew the picture. Mother. Mother in the great hall. Mother in a white dress, tall and icy in her perfection. She said she never liked that picture, that the artist had made her too distant, too much the queen. Only William softened it, she said. If she’d not had William hugging to her skirts, she would have given the picture away, she said. But she couldn’t throw little William away.

I pulled my eyes from her face, pale in the silver light. She loomed above me, tall in life, taller in the portrait. Her dress fell in cascades of lace-froth: the artist had caught it well. He made it look real.

The open shutters let in a chill and I felt a cold beyond any autumn frost. My skin rose in tiny bumps. She couldn’t throw William away. Only William wasn’t there any more . . . I took a step back toward the open window.

“Sweet Jesus . . .” I blinked away tears.

Mother’s eyes followed me.

“Jesus wasn’t there, Jorg,” she said. “Nobody came to save us. You watched us, Jorg. You watched, but you didn’t come to help.”

“No.” I felt the windowsill cold against the back of my knees. “The thorns . . . the thorns held me.”

She looked at me, eyes silver with the moon. She smiled and I thought for a moment she would forgive me. Then she screamed. She didn’t scream the screams she’d made when the Count’s men raped her. I could have stood that. Maybe. She screamed the screams she made when they killed William. Ugly, hoarse, animal screams, torn from her perfect painted face.

I howled back. The words burst from me. “The thorns! I tried, Mother. I tried.”

He rose up from behind the bed then. William, sweet William with the side of his head caved in. The blood clotted black on his golden hair. The eye that side was gone, but the other held me.

“You let me die, Jorg,” he said. He spoke it past a bubbling in his throat.

“Will.” I couldn’t say any more.

He lifted a hand to me, white with the trickles of blood darkest crimson.

The window yawned behind me and I made to throw myself back through it, but as I did something jolted me forward. I staggered and righted myself. Will stood there, silent now.

“Jorg! Jorg!” A shout reached me, distant but somehow familiar.

I looked back toward the window and the dizzying fall.

“Jump,” said William.

“Jump!” Mother said.

But Mother didn’t sound like Mother any more.

“Jorg! Prince Jorg!” The shout came louder now, and a more violent jolt threw me to the floor.

“Get out of the fucking way, boy.” I recognized Makin’s voice. He stood framed in the doorway, lamplight behind. And somehow I lay on the floor at his feet. Not by the window. Not naked, but in my armour still.

“You were jammed up against the door, Jorg,” Makin said. “This Robart fellow told me to come running, and here you are screaming behind the door.” He glanced around, looking for the danger. “I ran from the South Wing for your blasted nightmare did I?” He shoved the door open wider and added a belated, “Prince.”

I got to my feet, feeling as if I’d been rolled on by Fat Burlow. There was no painting on the wall, no Mother, no Will behind the bed.

I drew my sword. I needed to kill Sageous. I wanted it so badly I could taste it, like blood, hot and salt in my mouth.

“Jorg?” Makin asked. He looked worried, as if he was wondering if I’d gone mad.