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‘And when did I start taking your advice, Jorg?’ Katherine turned those eyes on me, and that foolish notion I might be a better man, that I could change, swept over me once again.
‘The gate will reject you, lady. And its rejections are not gentle.’ No rejection is gentle.
She frowned. ‘Why?’
‘My father didn’t know you as well as I do, as well as the gate will know you should you try to pass. You’re dream-sworn. Tainted. It will reject you and it will hurt.’ I tapped my temples.
‘I— I should try.’ She believed me. I don’t think I’d ever lied to her.
‘Don’t,’ I said.
And she moved away, shaking her head in confusion.
‘Rike,’ I said, and one after the other the brothers entered Congression. Marten, Sir Kent, Osser, and Gomst followed. Lord Makin with Duke Bonne.
Katherine sat on a marble bench, hands folded in her dark skirts, watching the last of us, Gorgoth, Taproot, and me.
‘I don’t know what will happen,’ I told the leucrota. ‘The gate might reject you, it might not. If it does, then you’ll be in good company.’ I nodded toward Katherine.
Gorgoth flexed his massive shoulders, muscle heaped beneath red hide. He bowed his head and moved forward. As he reached the gate arch he slowed, as if stepping into the teeth of a gale. He moved one step at a time, gathering himself before each. The effort trembled across him. I thought he must fail but he kept on. The strain drew a groan from him, very deep. He moved into the arch. I could imagine the set of his face from the taut line of his shoulders. And as he stepped through the Gilden Gate it creaked and flexed, resisting him but in the end admitting his right. He slumped when he crossed into the throne hall, almost falling.
‘I should try.’ Katherine stood, uncertain.
‘Gorgoth has dipped his toes in the river. You swim in it.’ I shook my head.
Over her shoulder I saw three figures entering the far end of the antechamber, preceded by a pair of guards. They drew the eye, this trio. Three more different delegates it would be hard to imagine. I kept my gaze on them and let it turn Katherine.
‘The Queen of Red, Luntar of Thar, and the Silent Sister.’ Taproot whispered it from behind me, using my body to shield himself from their view. Katherine drew a sharp breath.
Luntar and the sister flanked the Queen of Red, a tall woman, raw-boned but handsome once. She had maybe fifty years on her, more perhaps. Time had scorched rather than withered, her skin tight across sharp cheeks, hair of the darkest red scraped back beneath diamond clasps.
‘King Jorg!’ she hailed me still twenty yards away, a fierce grin on her. The black swirl of her skirts flashed gem-light as she strode toward us, her collar rose behind her, whalebone spars fanning out a crimson crest that spread above her head.
I waited without comment. Luntar I had met but held no recollection of. He boxed my memories in the cinders of Thar. Next to the queen’s splendour he looked dour in a grey tunic and white cloak, but few would remark on his clothing: his burns demanded the eye. I imagined that Leesha might have looked this way before the hurts done to her in the Iberico Hills closed over with ugly scar. Luntar’s wounds lay wet. Thin burn-skins parted with each movement to reveal the rawness beneath.
‘The Silent Sister is the one,’ Taproot hissed. ‘Watch her! She slips the mind.’
And true enough, I had forgotten her already, as if it had been just the two of them, Luntar and his queen, approaching. With an effort, the kind you use when confronting an unpleasant duty, I forced myself to see her. An old woman, truly old, like the wood of the Gilden Gate, a grey cloak rippling around her, almost fog, the cowl hiding most of her face: just wrinkles and a gleam of eyes, one pearly blind.
‘King Jorg,’ the Queen of Red said once more as she stood before me, my equal in height. She rolled my name on her tongue – unsettling. ‘And a princess I’m thinking. A Teuton from the look of her.’ She glanced at the Silent Sister, the briefest flicker. ‘But her name can’t be taken. Mind-sworn? A dream-smith perhaps.’
‘Katherine Ap Scorron,’ Katherine said. ‘My father is Isen Ap Scorron, Lord of the Eisenschloß.’
‘And Dr Taproot. Why are you cowering back there, Elias? Is that any way to greet an old friend?’
‘Elias?’ I stepped aside to expose Taproot.
‘Alica.’ Taproot made a deep bow.
‘Had you been hoping to slip through the gate without seeing me, Elias?’ The queen smiled at his discomfort.
‘Why no, I …’ Taproot lost for words. That was a new one.
‘And you’ll be staying outside with us, Katherine dear.’ The queen left Taproot searching for his reply. ‘With the “tainted” as the Lord Commander likes to call us.’
I caught myself thinking ‘us’ was the two of them, slipping into the conviction then jerking back as you do when sleep is trying to snare you. Focusing on the Silent Sister was hard, but I fixed my eyes on her and set a wall about my thoughts, remembering Corion and the power of his will.
‘I’ve heard of you, Sister,’ I told her. ‘Sageous spoke of you. Corion and Chella knew of you. Jane too. All of them wondering when you would show your hand. Are you showing it now perhaps?’
No reply, just a small, tight smile on those dry old lips.
‘I guess the clue is in the name?’
Again the smile. Those eyes had a draw on them, like a rip-tide. ‘Keep at it old woman and I’ll let you pull me in – then we’ll see what happens, won’t we?’
She didn’t like that. Looked away sharpish, smile gone.
‘And Luntar. I don’t remember you. And that seems to me to be your fault, no? Perhaps you did me a favour with your little box, perhaps you didn’t. I’m not decided yet.’
His face cracked as he opened his mouth to speak, clear fluid leaking over burn-skin. The echoes of old agony rang in my cheek, just as the Gilden Gate had woken them years ago when I first tried it. The fire still scared me, no two ways about that.
‘Would you like to remember me, Jorg?’ Luntar asked.
I really didn’t want to. Would I like to burn again? ‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Take my hand.’ He held it out, wet and weeping.
I had to bite down, to swallow back bile, but I met his grip, closed my fingers around the hurt of his, felt the broken skin shift.
And there it was, a glittering string of recollection, the madness, the long journey tied to Brath’s saddle, raving whilst Makin led us south into the scarred land they call Thar.
Schnick. I’m staring at a box, a copper box, thorn-patterned. It has just closed and the hand that closed it is burned.
‘What?’ I say. Not the most intelligent query but it seems to cover all bases.
‘My name is Luntar. You’ve been sick.’ A smack of lips after each word.
I lift my head from the box, my hair falls to either side and I see him, a horror of a man, a mass of open sores so dense that it is one sore.
‘How do you stand the pain?’ I ask.
‘It’s just pain.’ He shrugs. His white cloak, smeared with dust, sticks to him as though he is wet beneath it.
‘Who are you?’ I ask, although he has said his name.
‘A man who sees the future.’
