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Copyright © Mark Lawrence 2012
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This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007439034
Ebook Edition © April 2012 ISBN: 9780007439041
Version: 2017-10-18
I found these pages scattered, teased across the rocks by a fitful wind. Some were too charred to show their words, others fell apart in my hands. I chased them though, as if it were my story they told and not hers.
Katherineâs story, Aunt Katherine, sister to my stepmother, Katherine who I have wanted every moment of the past four years, Katherine who picks strange paths through my dreams. A few dozen ragged pages, weighing nothing in my hand, snowflakes skittering across them, too cold to stick.
I sat upon the smoke-wreathed ruins of my castle, careless of the heaped and stinking dead. The mountains, rising on all sides, made us tiny, made toys of the Haunt and the siege engines strewn about it, their purpose spent. And with eyes stinging from the fires, with the windâs chill in me deep as bones, I read through her memories.
From the journal of Katherine Ap Scorron
October 3rd, Year 98 Interregnum
Ancrath. The Tall Castle. Fountain Room.
The fountain room is as ugly as every other room in this ugly castle. Thereâs no fountain, just a font that dribbles rather than sprays. My sisterâs ladies-in-waiting clutter the place, sewing, always sewing, and tutting at me for writing, as if quill ink is a stain that canât ever be washed off.
My head aches and wormroot wonât calm it. I found a sliver of pottery in the wound even though Friar Glen said he cleaned it. Dreadful little man. Mother gave me that vase when I came away with Sareth. My thoughts jump and my head aches and this quill keeps trembling.
The ladies sew with their quick clever stitches, line stitch, cross-line, layer-cross. Sharp little needles, dull little minds. I hate them with their tutting and their busy fingers and the lazy Ancrath slurring of their words.
Iâve looked back to see what I wrote yesterday. I donât remember writing it but it tells how Jorg Ancrath tried to kill me after murdering Hanna, throttling her. I suppose that if he really had wanted to kill me he could have done a better job of it having broken Motherâs vase over my skull. Heâs good at killing, if nothing else. Sareth told me that what he said in court, about all those people in Gelleth, burned to dust ⦠itâs all true. Merl Gelletharâs castle is gone. I met him when I was a child. Such a sly red-faced man. Looked as if heâd be happy to eat me up. Iâm not sorry about him. But all those people. They canât all have been bad.
I should have stabbed Jorg when I had the chance. If my hands would do what I told them more often. If they would stop trembling the quill, learn to sew properly, stab murdering nephews when instructed ⦠Friar Glen said the boy tore most of my dress off. Certainly itâs a ruin now. Beyond the rescue of even these empty ladies with their needles and thread.
Iâm being too mean. I blame the ache in my head. Sareth tells me be nice. Be nice. Maery Coddin isnât all sewing and gossip. Though sheâs sewing now and tutting with the rest of them. Maeryâs worth talking to on her own, I suppose. There. Thatâs enough nice for one day. Sareth is always nice and look where that got her. Married to an old man, and not a kind one but a cold and scary one, and her belly all fat with a child that will probably run as savage as Jorg Ancrath.