‘Take up the helmet, Baron Glass.’
Thorin shook his head. ‘Not yet.’
‘It is time. The sun comes quickly.’
‘I have questions,’ said Thorin softly.
Kahldris looked surprised. ‘Now? It’s not the time to be pensive.’
‘I want to know things. Before I become a butcher again, I want to know what you know, Kahldris.’
‘You know everything I know, Baron Glass. I have never hidden anything from you.’
‘No, it’s not so simple.’ Thorin stalked back to the window, biting his lip as he looked toward the horizon. Already Daralor’s forces were on the move, slowly cantering into the city. The start of the march made Kahldris uneasy, but Thorin held firm. ‘I am unstoppable in this armour, but they will try to stop me anyway,’ he said. ‘And I’ll be forced to kill them. You will blind me to their agonies and I’ll feel nothing, but right now my mind is clear, Kahldris, and I know what they are facing.’
Kahldris’ old face twisted. ‘Get on with your question.’
‘My question is this — what will happen to them?’
‘You know what will happen,’ growled Kahldris. ‘They will die. Why do you care? They come to kill you, Baron!’
‘No,’ Thorin argued, ‘that’s not what I mean.’ He looked imploringly at the spirit. ‘I mean what will happen to them after they die?’
Kahldris reared back, looking thoughtful. ‘Ah. .’
‘I need to know this, Kahldris. Ease my conscience. Tell me what will happen. They will live on, yes? I send them only to their glory?’
‘Is that what you have believed?’ The Akari’s tone was slightly mocking. ‘All our time together, and now you want enlightenment.’ He shook his head doubtfully. ‘I wonder, Baron Glass, if you have truly looked outside that window.’
‘I know what we’re facing,’ said Thorin calmly. Truly, it hardly mattered to him. His mind was full of questions, because his hands were full of blood. ‘I killed Jazana and all those others. What’s happened to them? They live on, yes?’
Kahldris smirked with impatience. ‘Yes, they live on. You know this already.’
‘Where do they live on? In a world like this? Or in the kinds of worlds you’ve shown me?’
‘The world of the dead is different for everyone,’ said Kahldris.
‘But they do live on. Minikin told me that once. It’s not just Akari who go on.’
‘Why do you ask me this now?’
‘Because I’m going out there!’ Thorin raged. ‘Because I’ll kill a thousand men today. Do I send them to hell or to heaven? Tell me, Kahldris, please.’
Kahldris glanced away, turning from Thorin to stare contemplatively out the window. The pull on him was mighty; Thorin could see him struggling. ‘My brother is coming,’ he whispered. His voice cracked with nervousness. ‘There’s just no time to unravel this mystery for you. It is unknowable.’
The answered vexed Thorin. ‘How can that be? You exist in their world. Do you not see them, encounter their spirits?’
‘I am in your world as much as their worlds,’ Kahldris explained. He put his unearthly hands to the window, leaving no mark at all as he looked longingly at the armies ready to clash. ‘Let us go, Baron Glass.’
‘How is this unknowable? You have said there is a world beyond this one.’
‘Yes, yes. .’
‘And what is beyond that? What gods are there? What angels or heavens?’
‘It is unknowable!’ shrieked Kahldris. ‘I have no answers for you! I live, and that is all. Those you kill will find their own worlds. Or they will not. I cannot know everything!’
Thorin stared in amazement. ‘You don’t know what lies beyond your world? What gods rule you?’
‘I rule myself,’ said Kahldris, desperate to end the talking. ‘You rule yourself. We are our own gods! We decide who lives and dies. Do you not see that? That is the power I have given you’ He fixed on Thorin, trying to make him understand. ‘Today, you will be the only god who matters to those men out there. Forget the Great Fate, Baron Glass. This day, you are a god.’
His awesome words left Thorin dumbstruck. It was a terrible gift he had taken from Kahldris, one that had rotted his mind and his morals both. There was no turning back from it; he knew that plainly. Liiria still needed him. There was still good he could do in the world, surely. Suddenly, more than anything, he wanted to see his son again. Thorin swallowed down the questions plaguing him, glancing one last time at the vision through the window. Kahldris, satisfied that he had convinced Thorin, dissolved into the air. His wordless voice rippled through the baron’s mind.
Now, Baron Glass. It’s time.
Thorin agreed reluctantly. Despite everything he’d done, only Kahldris had carried him so far. It was time to repay the demon’s kindnesses. As Thorin turned from the window, however, he spotted Gilwyn at the end of the chamber, the boy’s face partially hidden in shadows. Thorin had not heard him come in. Gilwyn stared at Thorin with a hopeless frown. His empty hands hung at his sides. Every other man in the library was dressed for battle, but not Gilwyn. Attired in his usual shirt and trousers, his boot with the special hinge wrapped around his clubbed foot, he looked as if the day was like any other, to be spent studying the library’s vast shelves. His gaze told a different story, though, penetrating Thorin with his odd mix of love and shelter. Despite Kahldris’s insistence, the baron could no longer rush away.
‘You shouldn’t have come,’ he told Gilwyn gently. ‘This is my quiet time. I won’t have any more of it today.’
‘It’s dawn,’ said Gilwyn. ‘I had to come.’
Thorin made his way to the table where his helmet waited. There he paused, reaching for it then stopping. The death’s head face of the thing leered at him, taunting him to pick it up.
‘I wish you had listened to me,’ said Thorin. ‘I wish you had gone when I told you, left when you had the chance. Now. .’ He shrugged. ‘You’re stuck here.’
‘I’m not afraid,’ said Gilwyn. He managed to smile at his old friend. ‘I told you, I’m not leaving you.’
‘You should have given up on me, instead of trapping yourself here,’ Thorin groaned. ‘I can’t change, and the dead are dead.’ Finally, he picked up the helmet, holding it by one shining horn. ‘After all this, how can you still see the good in me?’
Gilwyn’s face darkened with sadness. ‘I remember it. So I know it’s there. But I failed you, Thorin. I thought I could break the hold Kahldris has over you, but I can’t. I tried to find a way in the library, but. .’ He shrugged hopelessly. ‘Maybe there is no way, not if you don’t help me. You have to fight him. You have to want to give him up.’
‘Then I am doomed,’ said Thorin with a crooked smile. ‘No matter how I try to explain this, I don’t think you could ever understand. I cannot give up Kahldris, Gilwyn. He’s part of me now.’
Gilwyn made no effort to argue with the baron. Instead, he simply stepped aside and let Thorin leave the room.
Dawn’s light splashed colour on the yard of Library Hill, illuminating the men gathered there for Thorin’s arrival. A huge, black charger awaited the baron, held by stable hands whose mouths fell open as Baron Glass entered the yard. Duke Cajanis, patiently waiting near his own horse and surrounded by Norvan bodyguards, straightened to attention as Thorin approached. Dressed completely now in the Devil’s Armour, his head encased in the frightful helmet, Thorin’s visage froze the waiting men. The long road leading up to the library bristled with men and weapons. At the base of the hill a thousand Liirians were positioned, ready to defend the stronghold. Throughout the city other divisions were scattered, all carefully positioned to rebuff the Nithin and Reecian advances. A cool breeze reached Thorin through his armour, which rested on his body as lightly as a feather. Kahldris pumped magic energy into his blood and muscles. His sword, an Akari weapon he had stolen from the cellars of Grimhold, bounced at his thigh. Thorin wasted no time as he bee-lined to Duke Cajanis.