Road Brothers by Mark Lawrence

Author:Mark Lawrence [Mark Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

Footnote

I enjoyed writing this one. We see the father of Snorri ver Snagason (from The Red Queen’s War trilogy) and the Nuban as a young man. We see some similarities between the young Firestone and the young Jorg, and perhaps understand the relationship between them a little better.

Choices

‘They say knowledge is power. But I know everything and have no power.’ Jane gazed out across the dark lake. Her reflection burned there and the surface threw her glow at the cavern roof, each ripple written in light across the stone.

‘You know everything that will happen. You could rule the world.’ Gorgoth sat upon the shingle beach beside his sister, the water at his heels. ‘Instead we hide among the roots of a poisoned mountain.’ Jane almost never spoke. She hadn’t answered a question in years, and though he loved her, her silence made him grind his teeth. To find her almost talkative filled him with both hope and fear in equal measure. ‘Are you going to tell me where Alithea has taken her babies?’

‘Did you know that it is impossible for me to be good or evil, little brother?’ She looked up at him, her eyes full of sunlight, her skin like molten silver across which shadows flowed.

‘That’s not true,’ he said. Time had burned its fingers on Jane and left off touching her after her tenth year. Gorgoth stood twice her height and outweighed her ten times over, but still his older sister awed him. Among all the leucrota she alone was perfect, formed in Eve’s shape, not a single deformity. Just the light that shone from her. He had always taken it for goodness – no matter what Jane had to say about it. ‘You have choices.’

‘I’ve seen the choices I will make. It’s not in me to act otherwise. They are the right choices. But they were made before I opened my eyes to the world.’

‘And Alithea?’ Gorgoth asked without hope of an answer.

‘You know why she ran.’ Jane’s light flickered and for a heartbeat the cavern’s ancient night restored itself. There was a lesson there. Darkness is patient, always waiting for its chance, and swift to take it.

Gorgoth nodded to himself. ‘I know.’ The boys were changing too swiftly. Every leucrota changed as they grew – save for Jane – but if the changes came too swiftly the child would die horribly and that death would be dangerous for everyone around them. Gorgoth remembered his own changes, the thickening and reddening of his skin, the alteration of his face. At least the poison had compensated his appearance with great size and strength. He just had to look at his fellow leucrota to see the winning hand he had been dealt: no sores, no weakness, no limbs withered or twisted.

‘I should go and hunt for her.’ Gorgoth stood, the shingle clattering beneath him.

Jane said nothing, only sat, small and bright, beside the darkness of the lake.

A growl rose in Gorgoth’s chest. ‘Jane!’

Jane looked up, and Gorgoth’s pupils narrowed to slits against the brilliance of her regard.

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