Shit- Burning to death has always been a worry of mine. Call it a personal foible. Some people are scared of spiders. Im scared of immolation. Also spiders.
Gog! I bellowed.
Hed been out there in the antechamber when I retired. I moved toward the doors, coming at them from the side. An awful heat came off them. I could leave by the doorway or try to fit myself through the bars on any of three windows before negotiating the ninety-foot drop.
I took an axe from the wall display and stood with my back to the stone, next to the doors. My lungs hurt and I couldnt see straight. Swinging the axe felt like swinging a full-grown man. The blade bit and the doors exploded. Orange-white fire roared into the room, furnace-hot, in a thick tongue forking time and again. And, almost as suddenly, it died away like a cough ending, leaving nothing but scorched floor and a burning bed.
The antechamber felt hotter than my bedchamber, char-black from floor to ceiling, with a huge glowing coal at its centre. I staggered back toward my bed. The heat took the water from my eyes and for a moment my vision cleared. The coal was Gog, curled like a new-born, pulsing with flame.
Something vast broke from the doorway leading to the guards room beyond. Gorgoth! He scooped the boy up in one three-fingered hand and slapped him with the other. Gog woke with a sharp cry and the fire went out of him in an instant, leaving nothing but a limp child, skin stippled red and black, and the stink of burned meat.
Without words I stumbled past them and let my guards help me away.
They practically had to drag me to the throne-room before I found my strength. Water, I managed. And when Id drunk and used my knife to trim away the burned ends of my hair, I coughed out, Bring the monsters.
Makin clattered into the hall still pulling on a gauntlet. Again? he asked. Another fire?
Bad this time. An inferno, I said. At least I wont have to look at my uncles furniture any more.
You cant let him sleep in the castle, Makin said.
I know that, I said. Now.
Put a quick end to it, Jorg. Makin pulled the gauntlet off. We werent under attack after all.
You cant let him go. Coddin arrived, dark circles under his eyes. Hes too dangerous. Someone will use him.
And there it hung. Gog had to die.
Three clashes on the main doors and they swung open. Gorgoth entered the throne-room with Gog, flanked by four of my table-knights, who looked like children beside him. Seen in amongst men the leucrota looked every bit as monstrous as the day I found them under Mount Honas. Gorgoths cat-eyes slitted despite the gloom, blood-red hide almost black, as if infected with the night.
What are you, Gog, eight years now? And busy trying to burn down my castle. I felt Gorgoths eyes upon me. The great spars of his ribcage flexed back and forth with each breath.
The big one will fight, Coddin murmured at my shoulder. He will be hard to put down.
Eight years, Gog repeated. He didnt know but he liked to agree with me. His voice had been high and sweet when we met beneath Mount Honas. Now it came raw and carried the crackle of flame behind it as if he might start breathing the stuff out like a damned dragon.
I will take him away, Gorgoth said, almost too deep to hear. Far.
Play your pieces, Jorg. A silence stretched out.
I wouldnt be sitting in this throne if Gorgoth hadnt held the gate. Or sitting here if Gog hadnt burned the Counts men. The skin on my face still clung tight, my lungs still hurt, and the stink of burnt hair still filled my nostrils.
Im sorry about your bed, Brother Jorg, Gog said. Gorgoth flicked his shoulder, one thick finger, enough to stagger him. King Jorg, Gog corrected.
I wouldnt be sitting on the throne but for a lot of people, a stack of chances, some improbable, some stolen, but for the sacrifice of many men, some better, some worse. A man cannot take on new burdens of debt at every turn or he will buckle beneath the weight and be unable to move.
You were ready to give this child to the necromancers, Gorgoth, I said. Him and his brother both. I didnt ask if he would die to protect Gog. That much was written in him.
Things change, Gorgoth said.
Better they find a quick death, you said. I stood. The changes will come too fast in these ones. Too fast to be borne. The changes will turn them inside out, you said.
Let him take his chance, Gorgoth said.
I nearly died in my bed tonight. I stepped down from the dais, Makin at my shoulder now. The royal chambers are in ashes. And dying abed was never my plan. Unless twere as emperor in my dotage beneath an over-energetic young concubine.
It cannot be helped. Gorgoths hands closed into massive fists. Its in his dena.
His dinner? My hand rested on the hilt of my sword. I remembered how Gog had fought to save his little brother. How pure that fury had been. I missed that purity in myself. Only yesterday every choice came easy. Black or white. Stab Gemt in the neck or dont. And now? Shades of grey. A man can drown in shades of grey.
His dena. The story of every man, written at his core, what he is, what he will be, written in a coil in the core of us all, Gorgoth said.
Id never heard the monster say so many words in a row. Ive opened up a lot of men, Gorgoth, and if anything is written there then its written red on red and smells bad.
The centre of a man isnt found by your geometry, Highness. He held me with those cats eyes. Hed never called me Highness before either. Probably the closest to begging he would ever come.
I stared at Gog, crouched now, looking from me to Gorgoth and back. I liked the boy. Plain and simple. Both of us with a dead brother that we couldnt save, both of us with something burning in us, some elemental force of destruction wanting out every moment of every day.
Sire, Coddin said, knowing my mind for once. These matters need not occupy the king. Take my chambers and well speak again in the morning.
Sire, Coddin said, knowing my mind for once. These matters need not occupy the king. Take my chambers and well speak again in the morning.
Leave and well do your dirty work for you. The message was clear enough. And Coddin didnt want to do it. If he could read me I surely could read him. He didnt want to slit his horses throat when a loose rock lamed it. But he did. And he would now. The game of kings was never a clean game.
Play your pieces.
It cant be helped, Jorg, Makin set a hand to my shoulder, voice soft. Hes too dangerous. Theres no knowing what hell become.
Play your pieces. Win the game. Take the hardest line.
Gog, I said. He stood slowly, eyes on mine. Theyre telling me youre too dangerous. That I cant keep you. Or let you go. That you are a chance that cant be taken. A weapon that cant be wielded. I turned, taking in the throne-room, the high vaults, dark windows, and faced Coddin, Makin, the knights of my table. I woke a Builders Sun beneath Gelleth, and this child is too much for me?
Those were desperate times, Jorg, Makin said, studying the floor.
All times are desperate, I said. You think were safe here, on our mountainside? This castle might look big from the inside. From a mile off you can cover it with your thumb.
I looked at Gorgoth. Maybe I need a new geometry. Maybe we need to find this dena and see if the story cant be rewritten.
The childs power is out of control, Jorg, Coddin said, a brave man to interject when Im in full flow. The kind of man I needed. It will only grow more wild.
Im taking him to Heimrift, I said. Gog is a weapon and I will forge him there.
Heimrift? Gorgoth relaxed his fists, knuckles cracking with loud retorts.
A place of demons and fire, Makin muttered.
A volcano, I said. Four volcanoes actually. And a fire-mage. Or so my tutor told me. So lets put the benefits of a royal education to the test, shall we? At least Gog will like it there. Everything burns.
5
Four years earlier
This is a bad idea, Jorg.
Its a dangerous idea, Coddin, but that doesnt have to mean its bad. I laid my knife on the map to stop it rolling up again.
Whatever the chances of success, youll leave your kingdom without a king. He set a fingertip to the map, resting on the Haunt as if to show me my place. Its only been three months, Jorg. The people arent sure of you yet, the nobles will start to plot the moment you leave, and how many men-at-arms will you take with you? With an empty throne the Renar Highlands might look like an easy prize. Your royal father might even choose to call with the Army of the Gate. If it comes to defending this place I dont know how many of your uncles troops will rally to your cry.
My father didnt send the Gate when my mother and brother were murdered. My fingers closed around the knife hilt of their own accord. Hes unlikely to move against the Haunt now. Especially when his armies are busy acquiring whats left of Gelleth.
So how many soldiers will you take? Coddin asked. The Watch will not be enough.
Im not going to take any, I said. I could take the whole damn army and it would just get me into a war on somebody elses lands. Coddin made to protest. I cut him off. Ill take my Brothers. Theyll appreciate a spell on the road and we managed to traipse to and fro happily enough not so many years ago with nobody giving us much pause.
Makin returned with several large map scrolls under his arm. In disguise is it? he said and grinned. Good. Truth be told, this place has given me itchy feet.
Youre staying, Brother Makin, I told him. Ill take Red Kent, Row, Grumlow, Young Simand Maical, why not? He may be a half-wit but hes hard to kill. And of course Little Rike-
Not him, Coddin said, face cold. Theres no loyalty in that one. Hell leave you dead in a hedgerow.
I need him, I said.
Coddin frowned. He might be handy in a fight, but theres no subtlety in him, no discipline, hes not clever, he-
The way Id put it, said Makin, is that Rike cant make an omelette without wading thigh deep in the blood of chickens and wearing their entrails as a necklace.
Hes a survivor, I said. And I need survivors.
You need me, said Makin.
You cant trust him. Coddin rubbed his forehead as he always did when the worry got in him.
I need you here, Makin, I said. I want to have a kingdom to come back to. And I know I cant trust Rike, but four years on the road taught me that hes the right tool for the job.