52 pages • 1 hour read
Mark LawrencePrince of Thorns
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 32-35Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 32 Summary
The group hurries up the Great Stair as ghosts rise after them. Jorg turns around and commands the spirits to die. He sees them erupt in pale flames, and then he rushes up after Makin and the rest.
When the group collapses to rest, Makin asks Jorg what his plan is for the Castle Red, where 900 veterans await them. Jorg answers that he thinks he’ll find what he needs in the under-vaults of the castle.
At the top of the stairs, they emerge into another Builder complex. Jorg orients himself from one of the maps he studied and leads them to a massive vault door, which he does not know how to open.
Chapter 33 Summary
Jorg puzzles over how to get through the door while the others grow impatient. He notices a section of wall that feels odd, and he has Gorgoth bash and peel it open. Jorg is disappointed to find an empty chamber behind the wall and begins to get frustrated.
As he reaches into the chamber, a disembodied voice begins to speak and asks him for a password. Jorg tries to engage the voice, asking how long the “spirit” has been trapped. It answers that it has been there for over 1,100 years. Jorg gets the voice to admit that it has been lonely and promises to end its existence in exchange for passage. The voice tells him that the door is unlocked, and Jorg drives his sword into a control panel, killing it.
Chapter 34 Summary
Beyond the door is a massive warehouse that Jorg identifies as an armory, one containing the poisons with which the Builders nearly killed the world on the day of the Thousand Suns. Jorg explains that leakage from the weapons seeps into the mountain water and causes the soldiers of the Castle Red to turn red and the Leucrota to undergo their transformations.
Jorg plans to bank a fire around one of the weapons so it will go off as they escape, but the objections of Makin and others cause him to revise his plan such that only one of the weapons will be activated rather than the entire armory.
Chapter 35 Summary
Back outside the mountain, the group anxiously awaits a sign of the weapon going off. Suddenly, the mountain lifts up in a giant ball of incandescent light. A shockwave knocks them all down.
As Jorg lays stunned, he hears a conversation between Chella, Sageous, and Jane. They notice Jorg and appear solidly before him. They demand to know how he has the power to see and hear them, since all the players in the game have been known for ages. Jorg learns that Jane is dying, crushed under stone beneath the mountain. He tells Chella that the necromancer is a coward, so afraid of death she clings “to carrion flesh and rot in the bowels of the earth” (278). As Jane’s presence fades, she asks Jorg to look after Gog and Gorgoth, who are the last of the Leucrota.
Sageous warns Jorg not to come home. When Jorg threatens him in response, Sageous shouts beyond him, telling Corion not to send Jorg against him.
Jorg is revived by his comrades and sees a massive cloud rising over the mountain. Gog is glowing intensely and is too hot to touch. He seems to be reveling in the effect of the weapon. Jorg tells them all that it’s time to go home.
Chapters 32-35 Analysis
Having successfully climbed the Great Stair, Jorg and his companions emerge into the lowest portions of the Castle Red. They are now in a part of the facility that is depicted on the maps Jorg consulted, so he orients himself and leads them to the armory. There, he reveals how he deduced that the ancient weapons are the source of the Leucrota’s mutations and the red skin of the guards in the castle above and that he will use the weapons to destroy the Castle Red. As the reader has likely expected, the armory is filled with leaking nuclear weapons.
With the destruction of the Castle Red accomplished, Jorg has once again sacrificed others in pursuit of his goals. The destruction of the mountain means the death of Father Gomst and all of the Leucrota except for Gog and Gorgoth. Jorg’s consumption of the necromancer’s heart proves valuable for a second time by making him privy to the conversation between Sageous, Chella, and Jane. Besides learning that he failed to kill Chella, he also hears Sageous address Corion, warning against sending Jorg to oppose him. Jorg’s burgeoning suspicions about the true nature of “the game” are mostly confirmed; the true players are powerful sorcerers.
