The Complete Broken Empire Trilogy: Prince of Thorns, King of Thorns, Emperor of Thorns. Mark Lawrence

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СКАЧАТЬ himself the name Dead Burlow, I turned and went back to the secret compartment. Just enough space to hold a folded corpse. Empty save for dust. I drew my sword and reached in to check the back of the compartment. As I did a strange chime sounded.

      ‘External sensors malfunctioning. Biometrics offline.’ The voice came from the empty cupboard, the tone calm and reasonable.

      I looked to either side, then back to the space before me. The brothers looked up and started to get to their feet.

      ‘What language is that?’ Makin asked. The others were looking for ghosts, but Makin always asked good questions.

      ‘Damned if I know.’ I knew a few languages, six fluent enough for conversation and another six well enough to recognize when spoken.

      ‘Password?’ The voice came again.

      I recognized that. ‘So you can speak Empire Tongue, spirit.’ I kept my sword raised, looking all around to find the speaker. ‘Show yourself.’

      ‘State your name and password.’

      Beneath the dust on the back wall of the compartment I could see lights moving, like bright green worms.

      ‘Can you open that door?’ I asked.

      ‘That information is classified. Do you have clearance?’

      ‘Yes.’ Four foot of edged steel is clearance enough in my book.

      ‘State your name and password.’

      ‘How long have you been trapped in there, spirit?’ I asked.

      The brothers gathered around me, peering into the compartment. Makin made the sign of the cross, Red Kent fingered his charms, Liar pulled his self-collected reliquary from beneath his mail shirt.

      A long moment passed while the green worms marched down the back wall, a flood of light beneath the dust. ‘One thousand one hundred and eleven years.’

      ‘What’s it going to take for you to open that door? Gold? Blood?’

      ‘Your name and password.’

      ‘My name is Honorus Jorg Ancrath, my password is divine right. Now open the fecking door.’

      ‘I don’t recognize you.’ Something about the spirit’s calmness infuriated me. If it had been visible I’d have run it through right there and then.

      ‘You haven’t recognized anything but the back of this panel for eleven hundred years.’ I kicked the panel in question for emphasis and sent it skittering across the room.

      ‘You are not authorized for chamber twelve.’

      I looked to the brothers for inspiration. A more blank sea of faces is hard to imagine.

      ‘Eleven hundred years is a long time,’ I said. ‘Wasn’t it lonely there in the dark, all those long years?’

      ‘I was alone.’

      ‘You were alone. And you could be again. We could wall you up so you’d never be found.’

      ‘No.’ The tone remained calm, but there was something frenzied in the pattern of lights.

      ‘… or, we could set you free.’ I lowered my sword.

      ‘There is no freedom.’

      ‘What do you want then?’

      No reply. I leaned into the compartment, far enough that I could set my fingers to the far wall. The surface beneath the dust felt glassy and cool.

      ‘You were alone,’ I said. ‘Trammelled in the thousand-year dark with only memories for company.’

      What had it witnessed, this ancient spirit, trapped by the Builders? It had lived through the Day of A Thousand Suns, it had seen the end of the greatest empire, heard the scream of millions.

      ‘My creator gave me awareness, for a “flexible and robust response to unforeseen situations”,’ the spirit said. ‘Awareness has proved to be a weakness in periods of prolonged isolation. Memory limitations become significant.’

      ‘Memories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you’ll find an edge to cut you.’ I looked into my own darkness. I knew what it was to be trapped, and to watch ruination. ‘Each day the memories weigh a little heavier. Each day they drag you down that bit further. You wind them around you, a single thread at a time, and you weave your own shroud, you build a cocoon, and in it madness grows.’ The lights pulsed beneath my fingers, ebbing and flowing to the beat of my voice. ‘You sit here with your yesterdays queuing at your shoulder. You listen to their reproach and curse those that gave you life.’

      Veins of light spread through the glass beneath my palm, miniature lightning reaching across the wall. My hand tingled. I felt a moment of kinship.

      ‘I know what you want,’ I said. ‘You want an end.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Open the door.’

      ‘The EM-bolts failed over six hundred years ago. The door is not locked.’

      I drove my sword into the panel. The glass shattered and a brilliant flash lit the compartment. I pushed on, through a softness yielding like flesh, and things that crunched and gave like the bones of birds. Something hit me in the chest and I staggered back, caught by Makin. When I’d shaken the after-images from my eyes I could see my sword standing from the rear wall, smoking and blackened.

      ‘Open the damn door!’ I shook Makin off.

      ‘But—’ Burlow started. I cut through his objection.

      ‘It’s not locked. Gorgoth, Rike, give it a decent pull. Burlow, get in there and make that lard work for us for once.’

      They did as I said, setting their bulk to the task, well over a thousand pounds of dumb muscle between them. For a moment nothing happened. Another moment, and then, without the slightest whisper from the hinges, the massive door stole into motion.

       The road may go ever on, but we don’t: we wear out, we break. Age makes different things of different men. It will harden some, sharpen them, to a point. Brother Elban has that toughness, like old leather. But in the end the weakness comes and the rot. Perhaps that’s the fear behind his eyes. Like the salmon, he’s been swimming upstream all his life, and he knows there’s no shallows waiting for him, no still waters. Sometimes I think it would be kindness to make a swift end for Elban, before the fear eats up the man he was.

      34

      ‘What is this place?’ Makin stood at the entrance with me.

      The vault stretched beyond sight. On the ceiling ghost lights flickered into life, some obedient to the opening of the door, others struggling into wakefulness, tardy children late for the day’s lesson. I could see little of the floor past the crush of treasures. No Hollander grain-master owns a warehouse СКАЧАТЬ