Prince of Fools

We stood for another ten minutes, unspeaking in the main, some princes yawning, others shifting weight from one foot to the other, or casting sour glances my way. I do try to keep my misadventures from polluting the calm waters of the palace. It’s ill advised to shit where you eat, and besides, it’s hard to hide behind one’s rank when the offended party is also a prince. Even so, over the course of the years, I’d given my cousins few reasons to love me.

At last the Red Queen came in, without fanfare but flanked by guards. The relief was momentary – the blind-eye woman followed in her wake, and although I turned away quicker than quick, she saw me looking. The queen settled herself into her royal seat and the guardsmen arrayed themselves around the walls. A single chamberlain – Mantal Drews, I think – stood ill at ease between the royal progeny and our sovereign, and once more the hall returned to silence.

I watched Grandmother and, with some effort, kept my gaze from sliding toward the white and shrivelled hand resting behind her head on the throne’s shoulder. Over the years I’d heard many rumours about Grandmother’s secret counsellor, an old and half-mad woman kept hidden away – the Silent Sister they called her. It seemed though that I stood alone in knowing that she waited at the Red Queen’s side each day. Other people’s eyes seemed to avoid her just as I always wished mine would.

The Red Queen cleared her throat. In taverns across Vermillion they tell it that my grandmother was once a handsome woman, though monstrous tall with it. A heartbreaker who attracted suit from all corners of the Broken Empire and even beyond. To my eye she had a brutal face, raw-boned, her skin tight as if scorched, but still showing wrinkles as crumpled parchment will. She had to have seventy years on her but no one would have called her more than fifty. Her hair dark and without a hint of grey, still showing deepest red where the light caught it. Handsome or not, though, her eyes would turn any man’s bowels to water. Flinty chips of dispassion. And no crown for the warrior queen, oh no. She sat near-swallowed by a robe of blacks and scarlets, just the thinnest circlet of gold to keep her locks in place, scraped back across her head.

‘My children’s children.’ Grandmother’s words came so thick with disappointment that you felt it reach out and try to throttle you. She shook her head, as if we were all of us an experiment in horse-breeding gone tragically astray. ‘And some of you whelping new princes and princesses of your own I hear.’

‘Yes w—’

‘Idle, numerous, and breeding sedition in your numbers.’ Grandmother rolled over Cousin Roland’s announcement before he could puff himself up. His smile died in that stupid beard of his, the one he grew to allow people at least the suspicion that he might have a chin. ‘Dark times are coming and this nation must be a fortress. The time for being children has passed. My blood runs in each of you, thin though it’s grown. And you will be soldiers in this coming war.’

Martus snorted at that, though quiet enough that it would be missed. Martus had been commissioned into the heavy horse, destined for knight-general, commander of Red March’s elite. The Red Queen in a fit of madness five years earlier had all but eliminated the force. Centuries of tradition, honour, and excellence ploughed under at the whim of an old woman. Now we were all to be soldiers running to battle on foot, digging ditches, endlessly practising mechanical tactics that any peasant could master and which set a prince no higher than a pot boy.

‘… greater foe. Time to put aside thoughts of empty conquest and draw in …’

I looked up from my disgust to find Grandmother still droning on about war. It’s not that I care overmuch about honour. All that chivalry nonsense loads a man down and any sensible fellow will ditch it the moment he needs to run – but it’s the look of the thing, the form of it. To be in one of the three horse corps, to earn your spurs and keep a trio of chargers at the city barracks … it had been the birthright of young nobles since time immemorial. Damnit, I wanted my commission. I wanted in at the officers’ mews, wanted to swap tall tales around the smoky tables at the Conarrf and ride along the Kings Way flying the colours of the Red Lance or Iron Hoof, with the long hair and bristling moustache of a cavalry man and a stallion between my legs. Tenth in line to a throne will get you into a not-insignificant number of bedchambers, but if a man dons the scarlet cloak of the Red March riders and wraps his legs around a destrier there are few ladies of quality who won’t open theirs when he flashes a smile at them.

At the corner of my vision the blind-eye woman moved, spoiling my daydream and putting all thoughts of riding, of either kind, from my head.

‘… burning all dead. Cremation is to be mandatory, for noble and commoner alike, and damn any dissent from Roma …’

That again. The old bird had been banging on about death rites for over a year now. As if men my age gave a fig for such things! She’d become obsessed with sailors’ tales, ghost stories from the Drowned Isles, the ramblings of muddy drunkards from the Ken Marshes. Already men went chained into the ground – good iron wasted against superstition – and now chains weren’t enough? Bodies must be burned? Well the church wouldn’t like it. It would put a crimp in their plans for Judgment Day and us all rising from the grave for a big grimy hug. But who cared? Really? I watched the early light slide across the walls high above me and tried to picture Lisa as I’d left her that morning, clad in brightness and shadow and nothing more.

The crash of the chamberlain’s staff on flagstones jerked my head back up. In fairness I’d had very little sleep the night before and a trying morning. If I hadn’t been caught a yard from my bedchamber door I would have been safely ensconced therein until well past noon, dreaming better versions of the daydream Grandmother kept interrupting.

‘Bring in the witnesses!’ The chamberlain had a voice that could make a death sentence boring.

Four guardsmen entered, flanking a Nuban warrior, scar-marked and tall, manacled wrist and ankle, the chains all threaded through an iron ring belted around his waist. That perked my interest. I misspent much of my youth gambling at the pit-fights in the Latin Quarter, and I intended to misspend much of what life remained to me there too. I’ve always enjoyed a good fight and a healthy dose of bloodshed, as long as it’s not me being pummelled or my blood getting spilled. Gordo’s pits, or the Blood Holes down by Mercants, got you close enough to wipe the occasional splatter from the toe of your boot, and offered endless opportunity for betting. Of late I’d even entered men on my own ticket. Likely lads bought off the slave boats out of Maroc. None had lasted more than two bouts yet, but even losing can pay if you know where to place your wagers. In any event, the Nuban looked like a solid bet. Perhaps he might even be the ticket that could get Maeres Allus off my back and silence his tiresome demands for payment for brandy already consumed and for whores already fucked.

A weedy half-caste with a decorative arrangement of missing teeth followed the Nuban to translate his mumbo jumbo. The chamberlain posed a question or two and the man answered with the usual nonsense about dead men rising from the Afrique sands, elaborating the tales this time to make it small legions of them. No doubt he hoped for freedom if his story proved sufficiently entertaining. He did a fine job of it, throwing in a djinn or two for good measure, though not the normal jolly fellows in satin pantaloons offering wishes. I felt tempted to applaud at the end, but Grandmother’s face suggested that might not be a wise idea.

Two more reprobates followed, each similarly chained, each with a more outrageous fable than the last. The corsair, a swarthy fellow with torn ears where the gold had been ripped from him, spun a yarn about dead ships rising, crewed by drowned men. And the Slav spoke of bone men from the barrows out in the grass sea. Ancient dead clad in pale gold and grave goods from before the Builders’ time. Neither man had much potential for the pits. The corsair looked wiry and was no doubt used to fighting in close quarters, but he’d lost fingers from both hands and age was against him. The Slav was a big fellow, but slow. Some men have a special kind of clumsiness that announces itself in every move they make. I started to dream about Lisa again. Then Lisa and Micha together. Then Lisa, Micha and Sharal. It got quite complicated. But when more guards marched in with the fourth and last of these ‘witnesses’ Grandmother suddenly had all my attention. You only had to look at the man to tell the Blood Holes wouldn’t know what had hit them. I’d found my new fighter!

The prisoner strode into the throne room with head held high. He dwarfed the four guards around him. I’ve seen taller men, though not often. I’ve seen men more heavily muscled, but seldom. I’ve even on rare occasions seen men larger in both dimensions, but this Norseman carried himself like a true warrior. I may not be much of a one for fighting, but I’ve a great eye for a fighter. He walked in like murder, and when they jerked him to a halt before the chamberlain he snarled. Snarled. I could almost count the gold crowns spilling into my hands when I got this one to the pits!

‘Snorri ver Snagason, purchased off the slave-ship Heddod.’ The chamberlain took a step back despite himself and kept his staff between them as he read from his notes. ‘Sold in trade exchange off the Hardanger Fjord.’ He traced a finger down the scroll, frowning. ‘Describe the events you recounted to our agent.’

I had no idea where the place might be, but clearly they bred men tough up in Hardanger. The slavers had hacked off most of the man’s hair, but the thick shock remaining was so black as to almost be blue. I’d thought Norsemen fair. The deep burn across his neck and shoulders showed he didn’t take well to the sun, though. Innumerable lash marks intersected the sunburn – that had to sting a bit! Still, the fight-pits were always in shadow so he’d appreciate that part of my plans for him at least.

‘Speak up, man.’ Grandmother addressed the giant directly. He’d made an impression even on her.

Snorri turned his gaze on the Red Queen and gave her the type of look that’s apt to lose men eyeballs. He had blue eyes, pale. That at least was in keeping with his heritage. That and the remnants of his furs and sealskins, and the Norse runes picked out in black ink and blue around his upper arms. Writing too, some sort of heathen script by the look of it but with the hammer and the axe in there as well.

Grandmother opened her mouth to speak again but the Norseman pre-empted her, stealing the tension for his own words.

‘I left the North from Hardanger but it is not my home. Hardanger is quiet waters, green slopes, goats and cherry orchards. The people there are not the true folk of the North.’

He spoke with a deep voice and a shallow accent, sharpening the blunt edges of each word just enough so you knew he was raised in another tongue. He addressed the whole room, though he kept his eyes on the queen. He told his story with an orator’s skill. I’ve heard tell that the winter in the North is a night that lasts three months. Such nights breed storytellers.

‘My home was in Uuliskind, at the far reach of the Bitter Ice. I tell you my story because that place and time are over and live only in memory. I would put these things into your minds, not to give them meaning or life, but to make them real to you, to let you walk among the Undoreth, the Children of the Hammer, and to have you hear of their last struggle.’

I don’t know how he did it but when he wrapped his voice around the words Snorri wove a kind of magic. It set the hairs pricking on the backs of my arms, and damned if I didn’t want to be a Viking too, swinging my axe on a longboat sailing up the Uulisk Fjord, with the spring ice crunching beneath its hull.

Every time he paused for breath the foolishness left me and I counted myself very lucky to be warm and safe in Red March, but while he spoke a Viking heart beat in every listener’s chest, even mine.

‘North of Uuliskind, past the Jarlson Uplands, the ice begins in earnest. The highest summer will drive it back a mile or three but before long you find yourself raised above the land on a blanket of ice that never melts, folded, fissured, and ancient. The Undoreth venture there only to trade with Inowen, the men who live in snow and hunt for seal on the sea-ice. The Inowen are not as other men, sewn into their sealskins and eating the fat of whales. They are … a different kind.

‘Inowen offer walrus tusks, oils sweated from blubber, the teeth of great sharks, pelts of the white bear and skins. Also ivories carved into combs and picks and into the shapes of the true spirits of the ice.’

When my grandmother interjected into the story’s flow she sounded like a screeching crow trying to overwrite a melody. Still, credit to her for finding the will to speak – I’d forgotten even that I stood in the throne room, sore-footed and yawning for my bed. Instead I was with Snorri trading shaped iron and salt for seals carved from the bones of whales.

‘Speak of the dead, Snagason. Put some fear into these idle princes,’ Grandmother told him.

I saw it then. The quickest flicker of his glance toward the blind-eye woman. I’d come to understand it was common knowledge that the Red Queen consulted with the Silent Sister. But like most such ‘common knowledge’ the recipients would be hard pressed to tell you how they came by their information, though willing to insist upon its veracity with considerable vigour. It was common knowledge, for example, that the Duke of Grast took young boys to his bed. I put that one about after he slapped me for making an improper suggestion to his sister – a buxom wench with plenty of improper suggestions of her own. The vicious slander stuck and I’ve taken great delight in defending his honour ever since against heated opposition who ‘had it from a trusted source’! It was common knowledge that the Duke of Grast sodomized small boys in the privacy of his castle, common knowledge that the Red Queen practised forbidden sorceries in her highest tower, common knowledge that the Silent Sister, a parlous witch whose hand lay behind much of the empire’s ills, was either in the Red Queen’s palm or vice versa. But until this brutish Norseman glanced her way I’d never encountered any other person who truly saw the blind-eye woman at my grandmother’s side.

Whether convinced by the Silent Sister’s pearl-eyed stare or the Red Queen’s command Snorri ver Snagason bowed his head and spoke of the dead.

‘In the Jarlson Uplands the frozen dead wander. Corpse tribes, black with frost, stagger in columns, lost in the swirl of the frostral. They say mammoth walk with them, dead beasts freed from the ice cliffs that held them far to the north from times before Odin first gave men the curse of speech. Their numbers are unknown but they are many.

‘When the gates of Niflheim open to release the winter, and the frost giants’ breath rolls out across the North, the dead come with it, taking whoever they can find to join their ranks. Sometimes lone traders, or fishermen washed up on strange shores. Sometimes they cross a fjord by ice bridges and take whole villages.’

Grandmother rose from her throne and a score of gauntleted hands moved to cover sword hilts. She cast a sour glance toward her offspring. ‘And how do you come to stand before me in chains, Snorri ver Snagason?’

‘We thought the threat came from the north: from the Uplands and the Bitter Ice.’ He shook his head. ‘When ships came up the Uulisk in depths of night, black-sailed and silent, we slept, our sentries watching north for the frozen dead. Raiders had crossed the Quiet Sea and come against the Undoreth. Men of the Drowned Isles broke amongst us. Some living, others corpses preserved from rot, and other creatures still – half-men from the Brettan swamps, corpse-eaters, ghouls with venomed darts that steal a man’s strength and leave him helpless as a newborn.

‘Sven Broke-Oar guided their ships. Sven and others of the Hardassa. Without their treachery the Islanders would never have been able to navigate the Uulisk by night. Even by day they would have lost ships.’ Snorri’s hands closed into huge fists and muscle heaped across his shoulders, twitching for violence. ‘The Broke-Oar took twenty warriors in chains as part of his payment. He sold us in Hardanger Fjord. The trader, a merchant of the Port Kingdoms, meant to have us sold again in Afrique after we’d rowed his cargo south. Your agent bought me in Kordoba, in the port of Albus.’

Grandmother must have been hunting far and wide for these tales – Red March had no tradition of slavery and I knew she didn’t approve of the trade.

‘And the rest?’ Grandmother asked, stepping past him, beyond arms’ reach, seemingly angled toward me. ‘Those not taken by your countryman?’

Snorri stared into the empty throne, then directly at the blind-eye woman. He spoke past gritted teeth. ‘Many were killed. I lay poisoned and saw ghouls swarm my wife. I saw Drowned men chase my children and couldn’t turn my head to watch their flight. The Islanders returned to their ships with red swords. Prisoners were taken.’ He paused, frowned, shook his head. ‘Sven Broke-Oar told me … tales. The truth would twist the Broke-Oar’s tongue … but he said the Islanders planned to take prisoners to excavate the Bitter Ice. Olaaf Rikeson’s army is out there. The Broke-Oar told it that the Islanders had been sent to free them.’

‘An army?’ Grandmother stood almost close enough to touch now. A monster of a woman, taller than me – and I overtop six foot – and probably strong enough to break me across her knee. ‘Who is this Rikeson?’

The Norseman raised an eyebrow at that, as if every monarch should know the tawdry history of his frozen wastes. ‘Olaaf Rikeson marched north in the first summer of the reign of Emperor Orrin III. The sagas have it that he planned to drive the giants from Jotenheim and bore with him the key to their gates. More sober histories say perhaps his goal was just to bring the Inowen into the empire. Whatever the truth, the records agree he took a thousand and more with him, perhaps ten thousand.’ Snorri shrugged and turned from the Silent Sister to face Grandmother. Braver than me – though that’s not saying much – I’d not turn my back on that creature. ‘Rikeson thought he marched with Odin’s blessing but the giants’ breath rolled down even so, and one summer’s day every warrior in his army froze where he stood and the snows drowned them.

‘The Broke-Oar has it that those taken from Uuliskind are excavating the dead. Freeing them from the ice.’

Grandmother paced along the front line of our number. Martus, little me, Darin, Cousin Roland with his stupid beard, Rotus, lean and sour, unmarried at thirty, duller than ditchwater, obsessed with reading – and histories at that! She paused by Rotus, another of her favourites and third in line by right – though still it seemed she would give her throne to Cousin Serah before him. ‘And why, Snagason? Who has sent these forces on such an errand?’ She met Rotus’s gaze as if he of all of us would appreciate the answer.

The giant paused. It’s hard for a Norseman to pale but I swear he did. ‘The Dead King, lady.’

A guard made to strike him down, though whether for the improper address or for making mock with foolish tales I couldn’t say. Grandmother stayed the man with a lifted finger. ‘The Dead King.’ She made a slow repetition of the words as if they somehow sealed her opinion. Perhaps she’d mentioned him before when I wasn’t listening.

I’d heard tales of course. Children had started to tell them to scare each other on Hallows Night. The Dead King will come for you! Woo, woo, woo. It took a child to be scared. Anyone with a proper idea of how far away the Drowned Isles were and of how many kingdoms lay between us would have a hard time caring. Even if the stories held a core of truth I couldn’t see any serious-minded gentleman getting overly excited about a bunch of heathen necromancers playing with old corpses on whatever wet hillocks remained to the Lords of the Isles. So what if they actually did raise a hundred dead men twitching from their coffins and dropping corpse-flesh with every step? Ten heavy horse would ride down any such in half an hour without loss and damn their rotting eyes.

I felt tired and out of sorts, grumpy that I’d had to stand half the morning and more listening to this parade of nonsense. If I’d been drunk too I might have given voice to my thoughts. It’s probably a good job I wasn’t, though – the Red Queen could scare me sober with a look.

Grandmother turned and pointed at the Norseman. ‘Well told, Snorri ver Snagason. Let your axe guide you.’ I blinked at that. Some sort of northern saying, I guessed. ‘Take him away,’ she said, and her guards led him off, chains clanking.

My fellow princes fell to muttering, and me to yawning. I watched the huge Norseman leave and hoped we’d be released soon. Despite the call of my bed I had important plans for Snorri ver Snagason and needed to get hold of him quickly.

Grandmother returned to her throne and held her peace until the doors had closed behind the last prisoner to exit.

‘Did you know there is a door into death?’ The Red Queen didn’t raise her voice and yet it cut through the princes’ chatter. ‘An actual door. One you can set your hand against. And behind it, all the lands of death.’ Her gaze swept across us. ‘There’s an important question you should ask me now.’

No one spoke – I hadn’t a clue but was tempted to answer anyway just to hurry things along. I decided against it and the silence stretched until Rotus cleared his throat at last and asked, ‘Where?’

‘Wrong.’ Grandmother cocked her head. ‘The question was “why?” Why is there a door into death? The answer is as important as anything you’ve heard today.’ Her stare fell upon me and I quickly turned my attention to the state of my fingernails. ‘There is a door into death because we live in an age of myth. Our ancestors lived in a world of immutable laws. Times have changed. There is a door because there are tales of that door, because myths and legends have grown about it over centuries, because it is set in holy books, and because the stories of that door are told and retold. There is a door because in some way we wanted it, or expected it, or both. This is why. And this is why you must believe the tales that have been told today. The world is changing, moving beneath our feet. We are in a war, children of the Red March, though you may not see it yet, may not feel it. We are in a war against everything you can imagine and armed only with our desire to oppose it.’

Nonsense of course. Red March’s only recent war was against Scorron and even that had fallen into an uneasy truce this past year … Grandmother must have sensed she was losing even the most gullible of her audience and switched tactics.

‘Rotus asked “where”, but I know where the door is. And I know that it cannot be opened.’ She stood from her throne again. ‘And what does a door demand?’

‘A key?’ Serah, ever eager to please.

‘Yes. A key.’ A smile for her protégée. ‘Such a key would be sought by many. A dangerous thing, but better we should own it than our enemies. I will have tasks for you all soon, quests for some, questions for others, new lessons for others still. Be sure to commit yourselves to these labours as to nothing before. In this you will serve me, you will serve yourselves, and most importantly – you will serve the empire.’

Exchanged glances, muttering, ‘Where was Red March in all that?’ Martus perhaps.

‘Enough!’ Grandmother clapped her hands, releasing us. ‘Go. Scurry back to your empty luxuries and enjoy them while you can. Or – if my blood runs hot in you – consider these words and act on them. These are the end days. All our lives draw in toward a single point and time, not too many miles or years from this room. A point in history when the emperor will either save us or damn us. All we can do is buy him the time he needs – and the price must be paid in blood.’