Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3) by Mark Lawrence Page B
Authors: Mark Lawrence
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in coin by the abbot.
‘Watch yourself up there, Jorth,’ Elban lisped. The old man worried too much. You’d have thought as a man’s years ran out he’d worry less – but no.
And so I started along the road and let the fog swallow the brothers behind me.
An hour brought me mist-damp and muddy-footed to the bend in the road where we first studied the monastery. I walked another few hundred yards before the fog admitted a dark hint of the building, and in ten strides more it slipped from suggestion to fact, a sprawl of buildings to either side of the River Brent. The waters’ complaints reached me as they tumbled through the millwheel before escaping to the farmlands further down the valley to the east. Wood smoke tickled my nostrils, the faintest scent of frying, and my stomach rumbled obligingly.
I passed the bakehouse, brewhouse, and buttery, grim stone blockhouses identified by the aromas of bread, malt, and ale. All seemed deserted, the matins prayers requiring even the lay brothers from their labours in the fields, at the fishponds, or at the piggery. The path to the church threaded the cemetery, headstones all askew as if at sea. Two great trees stood amidst the graves, shouldering the most weathered stones aside. Two corpse-fed yews, echoes of an older faith, standing proud where men played out their lives in service to the white Christ. I stopped to pick a pale red berry from the closer tree. Firm and dusty-skinned. I rolled it between finger and thumb, an echo perhaps of the lost flesh those roots drank, sunk in the ichors of the rotting faithful.
Strains of plainsong reached across the cemetery, the monks coming to the close of matins. I decided to wait.
Burlow had plans to head north with St Sebastian’s treasures. To make the coast, where on a clear day a man could look out across the Quiet Sea and spot the sails of a half dozen nations. The port of Nemla might pay tax to Reams but it paid no attention to Lord Ajah’s laws. Pirate lords held power there and a man might sell anything in such a place, from holy relics to human flesh. More often than not the buyer would be a man of the Isles, a Brettan from the drowned lands, sailors all. They said that if all the men of Brettan left ship at once the Isles would not have space for them to stand.
The Nuban once rumbled me a song from the Brettan Isles. Hearts of oak it said they had, but the Nuban told it that if their hearts were of the oak then it was from the yew that their blood had been brewed, a darker and more ancient tree. And from the yew come their longbows, with which the men of Brettan have slain more men in the long years than were felled with bullet or bomb in the short years of the Builders.
I waited by the church doors when the songs ran out, but despite the scraping of pews and the mutter of voices, no one emerged. All fell silent and at last I set hand to the doors and pushed inside into the quiet hall beyond.
One monk remained at prayer, kneeling before the pews, facing the altar. The others must have left through another exit leading into the monastery complex. The light from windows of stained glass fell around the man in many colours, a patch of green across his head making something strange of his baldness. It occurred to me as I waited for him to finish bothering the almighty that I didn’t know
how
to ask for sanctuary. Acting had never featured in my skill set, and even as the words I would need sprung to mind I could hear how false they would ring, falling bitter from a cynical tongue. Some tell it that ‘sorry’ is the hardest word, but for me it has always been ‘help’.
In the end I decided to go with my strengths. I didn’t wait for the monk to quit his silent moaning and I didn’t ask for help.
‘I’ve come to be a monk,’ I said, with the silent proviso that hell would freeze and heaven burn before I let them give me the haircut.
The man stood without haste and turned to face me, the window colours sliding
‘Watch yourself up there, Jorth,’ Elban lisped. The old man worried too much. You’d have thought as a man’s years ran out he’d worry less – but no.
And so I started along the road and let the fog swallow the brothers behind me.
An hour brought me mist-damp and muddy-footed to the bend in the road where we first studied the monastery. I walked another few hundred yards before the fog admitted a dark hint of the building, and in ten strides more it slipped from suggestion to fact, a sprawl of buildings to either side of the River Brent. The waters’ complaints reached me as they tumbled through the millwheel before escaping to the farmlands further down the valley to the east. Wood smoke tickled my nostrils, the faintest scent of frying, and my stomach rumbled obligingly.
I passed the bakehouse, brewhouse, and buttery, grim stone blockhouses identified by the aromas of bread, malt, and ale. All seemed deserted, the matins prayers requiring even the lay brothers from their labours in the fields, at the fishponds, or at the piggery. The path to the church threaded the cemetery, headstones all askew as if at sea. Two great trees stood amidst the graves, shouldering the most weathered stones aside. Two corpse-fed yews, echoes of an older faith, standing proud where men played out their lives in service to the white Christ. I stopped to pick a pale red berry from the closer tree. Firm and dusty-skinned. I rolled it between finger and thumb, an echo perhaps of the lost flesh those roots drank, sunk in the ichors of the rotting faithful.
Strains of plainsong reached across the cemetery, the monks coming to the close of matins. I decided to wait.
Burlow had plans to head north with St Sebastian’s treasures. To make the coast, where on a clear day a man could look out across the Quiet Sea and spot the sails of a half dozen nations. The port of Nemla might pay tax to Reams but it paid no attention to Lord Ajah’s laws. Pirate lords held power there and a man might sell anything in such a place, from holy relics to human flesh. More often than not the buyer would be a man of the Isles, a Brettan from the drowned lands, sailors all. They said that if all the men of Brettan left ship at once the Isles would not have space for them to stand.
The Nuban once rumbled me a song from the Brettan Isles. Hearts of oak it said they had, but the Nuban told it that if their hearts were of the oak then it was from the yew that their blood had been brewed, a darker and more ancient tree. And from the yew come their longbows, with which the men of Brettan have slain more men in the long years than were felled with bullet or bomb in the short years of the Builders.
I waited by the church doors when the songs ran out, but despite the scraping of pews and the mutter of voices, no one emerged. All fell silent and at last I set hand to the doors and pushed inside into the quiet hall beyond.
One monk remained at prayer, kneeling before the pews, facing the altar. The others must have left through another exit leading into the monastery complex. The light from windows of stained glass fell around the man in many colours, a patch of green across his head making something strange of his baldness. It occurred to me as I waited for him to finish bothering the almighty that I didn’t know
how
to ask for sanctuary. Acting had never featured in my skill set, and even as the words I would need sprung to mind I could hear how false they would ring, falling bitter from a cynical tongue. Some tell it that ‘sorry’ is the hardest word, but for me it has always been ‘help’.
In the end I decided to go with my strengths. I didn’t wait for the monk to quit his silent moaning and I didn’t ask for help.
‘I’ve come to be a monk,’ I said, with the silent proviso that hell would freeze and heaven burn before I let them give me the haircut.
The man stood without haste and turned to face me, the window colours sliding
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