The Liar’s Key. Mark Lawrence

What’s to be learned watching him swing his axe?’

      ‘You’ll go with him, Kara.’ Skilfar became stern. ‘A warrior? Today he is a warrior. Tomorrow, who knows? A man casts a million shadows, and yet you trap him within such a singular opinion. You travelled here seeking wisdom, girl, but all that I have here on these scrolls is information. The wise come into their majority out in the world, amid the muck and pain of living. It’s not all the dropping of runes and the wrapping of old platitudes in gravitas. Get out there. Go south. Burn in the sun. Sweat. Bleed. Learn. Come to me older, tempered, hardened.’ She tapped a finger to the scroll case on her lap. ‘These words have waited here an age already – they will wait on you a little longer. Read them with eyes that have seen the wideness of the world and they will mean more to you. There is a singular benefit in Snorri’s choosing of Kelem to show him the door. A thousand-mile benefit. On such a journey a man might grow, and change, and find himself a new opinion. Perhaps you can help him.’

      Snorri stretched beside me. ‘And that was that.’ He stood, the boat shifting beneath his weight, and glanced at Kara. ‘Skilfar shooed us out and her little dog followed to see that we left. Kara followed on minutes later. She said there were men hunting us on the mountain and that we’d find you near the crater on the west face.’

      I looked between them, Snorri, Tuttugu, Kara – the madman, the faithful hound, the baby witch. Three of them against the Dead King, and if he didn’t take them then Kelem waited at the end of their journey. And the prize if they won was to open death’s door and let hell out…

      ‘Florence, eh? The best path to Florence leads through Red March. You can drop me off there.’