Road Brothers

by Mark Lawrence

  Gomst swallowed. “May I ask the nature of the lesson you taught your son, Highness?”

  “An eye for an eye, that’s what your bible says. The boy took from me. I took from him.” King Olidan frowned.

  “Not-”

  “No, not his eye. I killed his dog.”

  Father Gomst settled into his quarters that evening, a small room close to the royal chapel. He would instruct the faithful in the castle church out in the compound but for the king and his family the chapel served. Like his room the chapel too was small, and although well-appointed with sufficient gold upon the altar, the place had an air of neglect about it, the dust thick upon the pews.

  The last incumbent, Father Hermest, had succumbed to a winter flu two years earlier and it seemed his ghost had been considered sufficient moral guidance for the Ancraths up until the king’s recent epiphany that religion might actually be useful in controlling his apparently murderous offspring.

  Father Hermest had left nothing to mark his decade of service save an abundance of incense packed into a large cupboard in Gomst’s room, a bible, and a sampler on the wall bearing the instruction ‘Know Thyself’.

  Before he laid down in his narrow bed Gomst went to bolt his door. The sampler caught his eye. Two words. Temet nosce. They said it was Socrates who first uttered them, though who could say after such a span of years. Socrates died for honour, he drank his draft of hemlock and went to the shores of the Styx long before Jesus was birthed of a virgin. Know thyself. Sound instruction for men of honour perhaps, but poison when poured into the ear of the ignoble. Gomst knew too much of himself for his liking.

  Morning found Gomst shivering beneath his thin blanket. He put on his priest’s robe and stood once more the impostor, claiming the authority of the almighty whilst knowing himself a fraud at every moment, weak, impure, unworthy.

  He broke his fast in the great hall, dining with Friar Glen, a brother from the monastery out in Vieux who had been brought in after Father Hermest’s death to keep order in the castle church until a replacement arrived.

  “I’m to see to the princes’ religious instruction, Brother.” Gomst brushed crumbs from his beard and reached for another roll. “Where might I find them at this hour?”

  “Those two devils? You’ll need the patience of an angel there, Father. And a stout cane.” The friar made an ugly smile as if imagining applying that cane himself. “They should be with their nurses up by the queen’s quarters, but most likely you’ll have to join in the hunt for them. The dungeons might be able to hold them but I’m not even sure about that.”

  Whatever else Friar Glen might be he proved a good teller of fortunes. The princes weren’t with their nurses and half the castle guard were engaged in a desultory search. Father Gomst found himself co-opted into the effort and traipsed about the upper floors with a guardsman named Geffin who suggested that the boys would be discovered when they felt like it and not before.

  “Probably around lunchtime.” Geffin turned over a chair cushion in the queen’s parlour, as if Prince Jorg might be hiding beneath. “Unless they managed to steal food too.”

  Gomst slipped away after an hour and returned to the steps that Geffin had said led up to the roof. The view from the heights of the Tall Castle’s keep would offer an unparalleled view of Ancrath and give Gomst a better feeling for the layout of the rest of the castle.

  With everyone roaming the keep in search of errant children nobody thought to oppose the new priest’s exploration and Gomst set off up the spiral stairway that would take him to the battlements. He made it two turns of the stair before fetching up against a heavy iron gate with a formidable lock. Gomst puffed out his disappointment and was about to descend when he noticed half a bread roll resting on a step beyond the gate. One step higher and the turn of the spiral would have hidden it.

  Gomst took hold of the gate. No matter how good at ratting a castle’s cats may be no dropped food will lie unmolest for long. He pulled and the gate swung toward him on oiled hinges. Gomst went on up.

  The top of the tall castle sported a bell tower, a water tank, an observatory, and three mouldering siege machines of a sort that Gomst couldn’t name. No sign of the missing boys. The keep itself had been a work of the Builders. Various more recent dynasties had squatted in the structure since God’s judgement wiped the Builders’ pride from the world, along with their lives. The Ancraths had been the ones to add battlements to the truncated building but the walls did little to tame the wind at this elevation. Gomst went to lean against the stonework and stare out across Crath City. To the south the River Sane snaked its way silver through the urban sprawl. Gomst could see the Cathedral of Our Lady down beside the waters and the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart up on its hill. To the west the city surrendered to salt fens and the brown vastness of the Ken Marshes where the rising sea had finally abandoned its march inland.

  After half an hour Gomst turned from the view, eyes watering with the wind. He wandered across to the bell tower that stood precariously at the front edge of the square keep, older than the wall and interrupting it. A large iron bell hung in the belfry some forty feet up. Gomst came up to the door, craning his neck to watch the tower scrape against a grey and moving sky. He pushed the door, a weathered collection of planks, and it swung open. With a shrug he followed up the creaking wooden stairs beyond.

  Immediately Gomst reached the top of the steps he saw the rope, tied to the stair-post and straining out over the low guard wall. Gomst edged into the belfry, open on all sides with the bell taking up most of the space. If it swung it might knock him over the guard wall to a messy reunion with the roof of the keep. He inched around to where the rope went across the wall at the front of the tower and peered over.

  A small, dark-haired boy stood horizontally about a yard down, feet against the outer wall, the rope about his chest. He faced down over the drop of two hundred feet or more to the courtyard before the keep’s main entrance. The child had his head raised a little, as if looking out toward the stables block opposite rather than at the scene directly below him.

  Gomst debated whether to speak. If he startled the boy he might slip and possibly come free of the rope harness.

  “I heard you on the stairs.” The boy made the decision for him.

  “What in God’s name are you doing out there, Prince Jorg?”

  “I’m trying to kill my father. In my name, not God’s. William is going to signal me when he sees him coming. He’s not to wave the flag until Father draws level with the Belpan armour standing in the hall. Then if I let this rock go it should hit him just as he comes out. If I waited to see him it would be too late.”

  Gomst hadn’t seen the rock, hidden as it was by Jorg’s body, but he could see the tension in the boy’s arms, held beneath him. “And what do you think will happen if you succeed? You’ll be a murderer! Do you know what they do to murderers? Do you know what happens to them in Hell?”

  “I’ll be king,” Jorg replied, still calm, focused on the distant windows above the stable stalls. “I will pardon myself.”

  “God won’t pardon you, Jorg!”

  “Kings rule by divine right. I read that. If it is my right to sit on the throne then God has to approve how I got there.”

  Gomst considered the rope. Would he be strong enough to haul the boy in? The child was supposed to be six. He didn’t sound six. He looked bigger than a six year old should too. And what if he struggled, dropped the stone and killed someone, or worse, slipped out and left Gomst holding the rope that the king would hang him with? He took hold of it with both hands.

  From the stable block window a red cloth fluttered and suddenly Gomst was hauling on the rope with all his strength. Jorg came up with a strangled cry, still clutching the rock he had intended to drop on his father. Gomst grabbed the boy under one arm and heaved him into the belfry, clutching the rope with the other. They fell together, Gomst panting, Jorg furious. The boy found his feet and raised his rock overhead. Gomst, who had bee
n relieved that the child had had the presence of mind not to drop his missile when hauled up the wall, now reversed that opinion rapidly.

  “Who are you?” The anger on the boy’s face, combined with the size of the stone he had hold of, quite unmanned Gomst.

  “Gomst! F-father Gomst!”

  “Why are you dressed like a priest?” The boy frowned and lowered his weapon.

  “I am a priest.” Gomst’s voice lacked conviction. He sat up and brushed at his robe. “I’m to instruct you and your brother.”

  “To save our souls?” Jorg seemed unimpressed. He set the rock down and sat on the wall, his back to the empty yards below.

  “I just saved you from killing your father. If you’d dropped that rock and missed then the very best you could have hoped for would be being sent away to a monastery. Probably on some desolate rock. Did you want that?”

  “I wouldn’t have missed.” Jorg scowled. “But living out in the wilds surrounded by brothers doesn’t sound much fun. William is pain enough by himself.” Jorg pinned Gomst with a dark stare. “He won’t be happy you stopped me.”

  “He’s four! He will have forgotten by tomorrow.” Gomst got to his feet. It made him feel better, towering above the child.

  “Not William.” Jorg shook his head. “He won’t give up. Father killed our dog. We have to kill him now.”

  “And how will that help? Will it bring the dog back?” Gomst went to the steps, hoping to lead Jorg from the tower or at least get him off the wall. Looking at him balanced there in the wind made Gomst’s stomach turn. “It won’t make you feel better. You might think it will, but it won’t. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. Vengeance is God’s, Jorg. Not because he is greedy, but because he is saving us from it. Taking upon himself a cancer that eats those who try to hold to it.” Gomst shook his head. “Killing your own father. I ask again: how will that help?”

  Jorg dropped into the belfry. “It would stop him killing more dogs.”

  Gomst tried another tack. “You could stop stealing instead.” Guilt was a weapon the bishop favoured and though Gomst recognised its power he always felt dirty when wielding it. “Was it not your sin that prompted your father’s actions?”

  The boy scowled and looked down. In the hand he had taken from his pocket he held a tuft of brownish fur bound with gold wire. “I’m not without sin. But that stone I was about to cast wasn’t the first one.”

  “Your father taught you a lesson about right and wrong, prince. A hard lesson, but kings often teach hard lessons. The king knows you will sit on his throne one day and if you are not strong enough to keep it then someone will take it from you…” Gomst put a conviction into his words that he didn’t feel, the same conviction with which he delivered the sermons that so long ago ceased to hold meaning for him. To save the child from disaster he must dress up the actions of a monster as something reasonable. A mental shrug. Gomst had told bigger lies for worse reasons. One could hardly rise in Roma’s church these days without a crooked tongue.

  “If you kill your father it will be a stain on your soul your whole life, Jorg. And what of your mother? Will it make her happy? How would she look at you then?” Gomst had no insight into Queen Rowan’s marriage but he suspected that her relationship with King Olidan was as much of a mystery to young Jorg. The bond between their parents is hard for any child to fathom.

  “William will do it by himself.” Jorg frowned.

  “He’s four!” Gomst threw his hands up. “Olidan’s table knights can fend off a four year old!”

  “He won’t always be four,” Jorg said.

  Gomst stared at the boy before him, six years in the world, looking closer to nine, speaking as if he were twelve. “He’s like you? This brother of yours?”

  “Worse.” Jorg started down the stairs.

  Gomst met William that evening. Gomst had turned Jorg over to the castle guards and the errant youngest prince had been discovered an hour later then returned to the care of his nurses, four tough-looking women with no-nonsense expressions. The one who now opened the door to Gomst’s knock appeared to be rather harried by the responsibility of keeping two small boys where they were supposed to be.

  “Prince Jorg! Prince William! The new priest is here to see you.”

  William, golden and cherubic, trailed his dark-haired brother as he came across for the introduction. Gomst sank down on his knees to be on a level with the young boy. Seeing the child first hand he found it hard to believe Jorg’s claims.

  “Father Gomst.” Jorg nodded and stepped aside, revealing William who stood clutching a rag doll, albeit that the rags were satin and velvet.

  “Prince Jorg, good to see you. And Prince William, pleased to make your acquaintance.” Gomst shot a quick doubting look in Jorg’s direction.

  In response Jorg snatched the rag doll from William and yanked its head aside to reveal the point of a meat skewer gleaming amid the satin.

  “Oh no, Prince William!” A nurse crossed swiftly to take the doll from Jorg. “Not another one!” She extracted the six-inch skewer and put it into an apron pocket where the metal-on-metal chink suggested she might have a significant collection of similar implements.

  Gomst returned his gaze to William and frowned. “Did Jorg not explain to you how bad it would be to hurt your own father? Didn’t he tell you about the lesson he had to learn?”

  “Father killed my dog.” The boy’s brows knitted in a scowl.

  “I told him,” Jorg said. “He won’t listen. He said I needed the lesson but he lost his dog.”

  “I see…” Gomst rubbed his chin, finding himself unwilling to look away from William. It doesn’t do to offer the other cheek to a furious infant with a talent for hiding sharp object about his person.

  “I told him he wouldn’t be king even if he killed Father,” Jorg said. “I think that made him even angrier.”

  “I will be king!” William turned his glare on Jorg.

  “It’s me that will be king, and not just of this castle!” Jorg faced the boy, ready to fight. “King of the whole world!”

  Gomst got to his feet. “This really isn’t helping. Come with me, both of you.”

  Waving the nurses aside Gomst led the two princes from their quarters, down the steps, across the next floor, down more steps, then more steps.

  “Where are we going?” Jorg tugged at Gomst’s robe.

  “The catacombs.”

  “Don’t want catacombs, want Justice!” William stopped in his tracks.

  Gomst frowned. “Justice? I don’t-”

  “Our dog, Justice,” Jorg said.

  “Oh.” Gomst considered a lie but settled on evasion. “Well we’re going where they put the dead.”

  Both boys followed on without further questions. Gomst had discovered the catacombs on a map tucked into his predecessor’s bible. Father Hermest had annotated it with the identities of those lying within the current sepulchres along with the chambers provisionally reserved for living members of the family.

  In the basement they passed the kitchens where a fat cook in a floury apron waved at the princes, addressing them with none of the proper deference.

  “That’s Drane,” Jorg said. “He gives us pastries.”

  “Well he has no business doing so.” Gomst found the way down into the wine cellars, opening the door with a key that Friar Glenn has given to him, accompanied by the advice that copious Ancrath red would help deal with the stress of tending to the princes’ souls. Gomst had brought a lantern with him and now turned up the wick, letting the flame light their way.

  The route led along avenues flanked by barrels and eventually down more steps. They entered the catacombs through a doorway paved with mahogany planks. The ironwork suggested an enormously thick door had once stood there, but no sign of it remained.

  “Can you smell them?” Jorg sniffed.

  “Who?” William asked.

  “Dead people!” The prince made his voice waver as if telling a story of ghosts and ghou
ls.

  A surprising length of corridor and several turns at last brought them to the vaults in which the Ancraths waited out eternity. None of them had been waiting particularly long yet. Gomst led the way past half a dozen chambers to the end of the long vault where a black marble tomb displayed in gruesome relief the armoured likeness of the skeleton of the man beneath.

  “This, my princes, is the last resting place of your great-great-grandfather Caine Ancrath who took these lands and this castle from the House of Or. He died at the age of forty-nine.”

  The two princes came in close. Before Gomst could protest Jorg had hauled himself up onto the lid, standing on the carved skeleton.

  “Prince Jorg! That’s hardly seemly!”

  Jorg ignored Gomst and reached down for William’s outstretched hand. “Baby!” And pulled him up.

  Gomst straighten his robes then raised the lantern to afford the boys a better view.

  “So, you know where Caine Ancrath’s bones have been these past one hundred and fourteen years … but where has his soul been?”

  William shrugged.

  “Over there?” Jorg pointed to a nearby tomb whose lid depicted a well-proportioned queen.

  “In paradise!” Gomst raised his hand to clout the boy around the head, then lowered it, recalling that the head belonged to a prince. “In paradise, cavorting with angels and feasting on ambrosia!

  And where would it have been had he murdered his own father – for whatever reason?”