#59 The King of Thorns
The Wight King's rictus visage exuded ancient malice and eternal resentment. The empty eye sockets were filled with rage and frustration. Yet deep inside the hollow cranium did she detect the faintest hint of something that might just possibly have been gratitude?
"The Warden bid me follow you." His voice was the wind blowing through thorn bushes.
"Yes." Beauvoir studied his aura carefully. This was a delicate situation. Her conference with Elohiim the Warden had been surprisingly productive. He appeared to have instructed the Wight King to obey her every command, but she realised he was only in her thrall so long as Elohiim permitted it. The Warden was a strange and powerful creature, and Beauvoir did not yet understand his motivations. All she really knew was that it was Elohiim whom Nagash had made guardian of the King of Thorns all those centuries ago, to keep him ever faithful to the Supreme Lord of Undeath.
But now she finally faced her true quarry. "Are you the one who was named Gulaab Kaphool?'
The King of Thorns hissed like a sandstorm in a graveyard. "I am one part of him."
"So the necromancer's tale is true.”
"I am of the Cinquefoil.”
“One soul shattered into five parts. What became of the other four?” She knew the answer in part but wanted to fill the gaps in her understanding.
“They called the one who was four...” He paused for an age, as if searching deep in the vaults of ancient memories. “...‘Mad Kaphool’.”
A sundered spirit: four fifths of a soul. No wonder he lost his mind. “I know what happened to him. Well, I believe I can deduce part of his story anyway.”
No Rose has three petals. The Pontifex Surrexit had told her. How had she not spotted it before? The symbol of the Society of the Sanguine Rose had had how many petals? Five. And the Reformed Society's? Five. The blood roses of Barfunweltz, beloved of the Procession of the Foolish Martyrs, always have a multiple of five petals. Even the crude blood-daubed mark of the Raptured Court consisted of five petal-shaped smears.
The Cinquefoil: the key to the mystery of Barfunweltz.
One soul split into five shards, a five-petalled rose: The first had been this King of Thorns, Nagash’s own. Three others she knew of, all derived from the False Apostle: the Soulblight Pontifex Surrexit, the malignant Empty Hearse and the abhorrent False Messiah. But that left one more soul shard unaccounted for, one petal unidentified...
“Return to Barfunweltz with me and we shall reunite the Cinquefoil. The prophecy shall be fulfilled.”
The King of Thorns remained silent, tattered robes billowing in the still, stuffy air of Ghyran. But even as Beauvoir stared back at him the army of the Lost Thorns gathered behind him. Serried ranks of armoured skeletons, black knights on skeletal steeds, and the King’s own grave guard. The only sound they made was the faint clack of dry bones as they moved.
The Wight King turned and spoke once more, his voice a gust of wind in the branches of a rotten tree: “To Barfunweltz!”
The Lost Thorns were returning to Shyish.
* * *
From high above, on mighty wings, the Warden watched unseen.
And followed.
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