The Book That Broke the World by Mark Lawrence

Author:Mark Lawrence [Lawrence, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2024-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

A story is how you tell yourself truths you’re not brave enough to hear.

Carved into a desk by Livira Page

CHAPTER 23

Livira

Livira found herself once more encased in iron, jolting along on the back of a white stallion. She narrowly avoided a tumble into the heather this time by dint of leaning forward and embracing the horse’s neck. Fortunately, it seemed a patient animal, quite unlike the skittish warhorses she’d read about in other stories. In her version of the tale the knight’s steed was named Amble, and was fond of apples, sunshine, and standing still.

In the end Livira did fall off, but during the act of dismounting, and it was a less violent affair than toppling from the saddle of a moving horse. She fell backwards into the springy arms of a gorse bush, one spur caught in the left-hand stirrup. After untangling herself and stretching out the kinks in her back, Livira struggled to remove her helm. She tossed it aside, wondering what Malar would have made of all this armour. She could imagine him as a particularly foul-mouthed knight in battered old mail, leaving a trail of shiny-armoured corpses behind him.

On a nearby ridge Livira sat down and watched the tower, still half a mile off. This was her take on the princess in the tower, a story that rattled through the millennia, told in a near infinity of tongues, told by species that you wouldn’t mistake for human on even the darkest and foggiest of nights. Livira had wanted to explore what it really meant to be trapped and what it really meant to be rescued. The prison could be anything: a library chamber, a well in the Dust from which you couldn’t stray, or just a life that—however luxurious—had made you its captive, struck away the legs of your independence one after the other. She had wanted to examine the role of the rescuer and the rescuee. Neither was easy. Sometimes one was hard to tell from the other. Sometimes the knight’s armour was their own iron tower from which a rescue was also required.

In the end she had just written a story and hoped that it would prompt the reader to do the hard work. She’d spent most of her time on the witch, truth be told. The witch tended to get overlooked in these tales.

Livira sat with her iron-clad knees drawn up to support her iron-clad arms. The tower stood like a dark finger of stone raised against a slate sky. She watched the white-capped waves applaud the cliffs to the west. To the east, the green patchwork of agriculture began to assert itself over the wilds.

Livira ignored the tug of the wind, sinking her roots into the story, claiming it page by page without so much as taking a step towards the tower. She thought about going down and knocking on the door. Asking the witch what she thought about the whole business. But it seemed that wouldn’t be necessary. She’d come to claim her book and as the author she didn’t need to follow the plotline down the hill.

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