King of Thorns (The Broken Empire 2)

“Show yourself, Chella!” I shouted.

The weight of her necromancy pulled me around to stare at the mire where she rose. She emerged by degrees, black slime sliding from her nakedness, her hair plastered around her shoulders, over the tops of her breasts. Ten yards of dark and treacherous mud stood between us. Row had his bow across his back, the Nuban’s bow lay strapped to Brath’s saddle. Grumlow at least had a dagger in hand. In both hands actually. But he didn’t seem tempted to throw either. Perhaps he just didn’t want to draw her attention to him.

None of us spoke. Not one of us reached for a bow. The necromancer had a magic to work on the living as well as the dead. Or at least a magic to work on men. The mire had tainted the flesh that I remembered so well, leaving it dark but still firm. The slime that ran from her, that dripped and clung, seemed to guide the eye, to gild each dark curve and point.

“Hello, Jorg,” she said.

She used Katherine’s words from the graveyard. Maybe what is spoken in such places is always heard by those who have married Death.

“You remember me.” I wondered how long she had been leading me to this point. I had no doubt now that her creatures had torn down the bridge we hoped to cross.

“I remember you,” she said. “And the marsh remembers you. Marshes have long memories, Jorg, they suck down secrets and hold them close, but in the end, in the end, all things surface.”

I thought of the box at my hip and of the memories it held. “I suppose you’ve come to tell me not to stand against the Prince of Arrow?”

“Why? Do you think I have my hooks in him?”

I shook my head. “I would have smelled you on him.”

“You didn’t smell me here and this place reeks of death,” she said, always moving, slow gyrations and stretches, demanding the eye.

“To be fair, it reeks of so much more beside.”

“The Prince of Arrow has enough defenders, enough champions, he doesn’t need me. In any case, you don’t want to believe everything you read, and the older a book is the less reliable its stories.”

There were written prophecies too? That made me snarl. It was bad enough that every turn of the tarot card and toss of the rune sticks put Arrow on the throne. Now books, my oldest friends, had turned traitor. “So why are we here?” I asked. I knew, but I asked in any case.

“I’m here for you, Jorg,” she said, husky and seductive.

“Come and take me, Chella,” I said. I didn’t lift my sword but I turned it so the reflected light slid across her face. I didn’t ask what it was she wanted. Revenge doesn’t need explanation. “And how are you here?” A mountain had fallen on her in Gelleth and buried her deeper than deep.

She frowned at that. “The Dead King came for me.” And for a moment, just a moment, I swear I saw her shudder.

“The Dead King.” This was new. I had thought I understood—that she was after revenge, pure and simple, emotions I could appreciate. After all, I had dropped Mount Honas on her. “Did he send you?”

“I would have come anyway, Jorg. We have unfinished business.” Again the seduction, stilling the Brothers who had started to move.

“So who wants me more, Chella? You or this king of yours?”

A hint of a snarl in Chella now, the Brothers starting to shake her influence as irritation wore it thin.

“Or did he want me more than he wanted you, Chella? Is that it? Your new king only dug you up to find me for him?” I showed her my best smile. I had the truth of it: she couldn’t hide the annoyance that flickered across her brow. All to the good, an angry enemy is the best kind to have, but why this Dead King should have taken against me so I’d no idea.

“Come and take me.” I invited her again, beckoning, hoping to goad her into range. With my free hand I shoved Makin. “I know there’s a naked woman and everything, but if you could point the Brothers in more useful directions then we’re less likely to be eaten by her friends.”

“Come and take you?” Chella smiled, composure returned. She wiped her hand across her mouth, flicking mud aside, her lips blood-red. “I do want you. I do. But not for breaking. I know your heart, Jorg. Join with me. We can be more than flesh.”

The creature put an ache in my groin, true enough, as if that line between lust and revulsion had been erased as completely as the village. Part of me wanted to take her dare. Embrace what you fear, I had told Gog. Hunt your fears. And what is death if not the ultimate of fears, the final enemy? I had eaten the cold heart of a necromancer. Perhaps I should take Chella, take death by the throat, and make it serve me. I thought of the women burning in their house. “You are less than flesh,” I said.

“Cruel words.” She smiled. She stepped closer. The fluid motion of her held my eyes. The jounce of breasts, the jut of hips, the redness of her mouth. “There’s a magic between us, Jorg. Surely you must have felt it? Does it not echo in your chest? Doesn’t it underwrite the very beating of your heart, dear one? We were meant to be together. The Dead King has told me I can have you. Told me to bring you to him. And I will.”

“You’ll have a long wait for me in hell,” I said. “Because I intend to send you there right now.” A weak line perhaps but mention of the Dead King knocked me out of my stride.

She smiled and made a kiss with crimson lips. “Are you angry because I showed you your ghosts? It wasn’t me who made them, Jorg.”

That stole the certainty from me. I saw Ruth again, and her mother, scalded by the hot light of the Builders’ Sun. “I didn’t know—”

“You didn’t know a sun would burn them. You thought a cloud of poison would roll out and devastate the land. Isn’t that right? So, if Ruth and her mother and her child were choking on their own intestines, bleeding from eyes and anus, screaming different screams, that would be all right? That would be fine because that was the plan?” Chella stepped closer. Relentless.

I couldn’t answer that. I had thought to poison the Castle Red, and I had known it would be everyone in it, not just the warriors. And if the toxins had spread? I had no idea how far they might go. And I hadn’t cared.

“You know what men are really afraid of, Chella?” I asked.

“Tell me.” She ran her hands up her thighs, across her belly, smearing dark skin with darker mud.

Makin pressed the Nuban’s bow into my palm. I grasped it. The thing nearly too heavy to hold in one hand.

“Men are afraid of dying. Not of death. Men want it to be quick, clean. That’s the worst thing, the wound that lets you linger. Ain’t that right, Makin?”

“Yes,” he said. Makin isn’t a man of few words, but it’s difficult to break into a necromancer’s spell.

“Linger,” I said. “That’s a word that frightens the Brothers. Don’t let me linger, they say. And you know what undeath is, Chella? It’s the ultimate in lingering. A coward dies a thousand times, the Bard told us. And what about you? You’ve died just once but you’ve lingered a thousand times longer than you should.”

“Don’t mock me, child,” Chella said. Her ribs stood out now, her cheeks hollowed. “I hold more power—”

“You can show me my ghosts, Chella. You can try to scare me with death and with dead things, so that I’ll choose your path. But I have my own road to follow. My ghosts are my own and I will deal with them alone. You are a thing of rot and fear and you should find a grave that will take you.”