They walked on, Thalia clutched in Marith’s arms, shaking with cold and exhaustion. He almost felt the pain in her, the weight of this land pressing on her, like shouting in the head or the roar of water in the ears. So much walking. All he ever seemed to have done was walk, through desert and wasteland and heat and cold, thinking and changing and feeling and trying to hide from things. Towards it. Always and forever, he had been walking towards it.
‘I love you,’ he whispered to Thalia. For you, he thought. All for you. You’ll see what I’ll give you, soon enough. The rope jerked tighter at his neck and Mandle laughed. Landra laughed too, but too harshly, as though she was trying to find some comfort in what she knew was only pointless and cruel. They walked on, over the lich road, in the cold wind, across the moor.
When Thalia awoke the next morning, the landscape was silver with frost.
Marith had tried to explain it to her, in the desert outside Sorlost, his eyes closed as he spoke. Trying to shape into words the beauty of it, the breath-taking sense of purity and hope and pain it brought. She had not been able to comprehend it, she who had lived all her life in the walls of her Temple, in the heat. The dawn in the desert had been astonishing, joyous, perfect with life. This was different, more terrifying, so beautiful it tore her heart from her breast, so remorseless it brought tears to her eyes. The trees furred thick with ice, ice crusting the ground, picking out every blade of grass, turning it into something like nothing she could imagine, a world made of glass and diamond where nothing could live. In the strange pale light the bare trees were even darker, against the new whiteness of the ground. A stream showed black and gold, reflecting the first sun, a gaping scar of light, heavy and solid as skin. And cold. Cold as the Small Chamber. Cold as Marith’s eyes.
God is here, she thought, looking at the frost. God is here in this place, but not my God. Not Great Tanis, who is the Lord of Living and Dying, who is hungry and fierce and loving and strong and burns with light and dark. Other gods, gods of silence. Gods like the taste of cold salt water. Gods of the living world. No power, save the power to astonish and make one weep at the beauty of them, and the knowledge that they are deadly and terrible and beautiful and nothing, and have no care for man or sunlight or hope or despair. Gods that simply are.
A bird broke the stillness, its wings beating up, loud as trumpets in the frozen air. The spell was broken: the people around her began moving about, talking, tending the fire. So futile, their actions seemed, against the frozen world.
They had camped in a small stone hut built low down in a valley nestled between the sweep of the moors. Very old and tumbledown, one side open to the air and looking out over mossy grass, a hearth in one corner and stone shelf beds raised up from a stone floor. Birds had nested in the roof, but were flown for the winter, leaving only thick trails of green-white filth down the walls and onto the floor.
Not a good place. Thalia felt it with a shudder as she entered. A smell of blood, old and faint. But not the blood of dying. She saw Marith twitch as he crossed the threshold, his face lit for a moment. He shook his head, wearily, as she had seen him do once or twice when he had been drinking and a shadow came over him and made him sigh. He sat down quietly in the corner, the rope still around his neck, wrapped her in his arms as she sat beside him. Landra sat in the further corner from them, by the hearth, as Mandle began to build up a fire and prepare a camp. All she had known, Thalia thought, of life beyond the walls of the Temple: campfires and camp cookery and hard-faced men who set about their work whilst looking at her with bitter eyes.
She was left free, but with wrists bound behind her back. Marith, Mandle bound hand and foot, then tied the rope to a stone standing just outside the threshold of the hut.
‘I swore I wouldn’t run,’ Marith said, the first words he had spoken since he had knelt on the ground at Landra’s feet. ‘I swore, and I do still swear.’
‘You’ve lied and you do still lie,’ Landra said shortly. Marith laughed. The fire sputtered into life with a crackle and a pungent burst of smoke.
‘Let’s get the tea on, then,’ Mandle said. ‘Bloody freezing, I am.’
In the light from the fire the night outside was suddenly darker, the stone at the entranceway more clearly picked out. Not a good thing, it was, squatting there, god-charmed and blood-reeking, half as tall as a man and with the look of a man to it. It did not seem well omened, that Marith was bound to it.
‘What is this place?’ she asked him, taken with fear.
‘A way house,’ he answered, before Mandle jerked the rope and shouted, ‘No talking.’ And then they unbound her to eat, and bound her again, and she was asleep huddled next to Marith in the cold, shivering even as she slept but too exhausted not to sleep dreamlessly and wake wishing she could sleep longer. And the frost was there before her, cruel and beautiful and utterly unknown to her, like a language she had never before heard chanting out a song of prayer.
Marith whimpered in his sleep beside her, his body twitching. Pity, it moved her to. Why, she thought, why could he find no peace? She’d thought herself so much more worn down than him, so much more broken and driven to exhaustion and pain. But she saw now that he had been living on nothing, going on and going on crushed down to dust. She watched him wake as weary as he had been before he slept, eat hard bread and hot tea in the ice-cold morning light, his hair rumpled, his face pinched with a look of pain now always around his eyes. He gasped with relief when they unbound his hands, rubbed madly at his face. He must be in agony, she realized, unable to claw at the itching that ate at him.
‘Come on then. Up.’ Mandle jerked her roughly to her feet, then took up the rope that haltered Marith like an animal. Landra looked worn out, tired and pained, dirty and crumpled, but her face was set with grim determination. She seemed so endlessly resolved to torture them. Were they all like this, in the east? Hard and remorseless and cruel? Savage, Thalia thought. Savages. Her own body felt exhausted beyond exhaustion, the cold so deep in her bones she would surely never be warm again. No gain could come of this, no benefit to Landra or her kin, only more grief. No joy. No purpose.
Their footsteps crunched on the icy grass, still almost the only sound; their breath puffed out in white clouds. Thalia thought again of the dragon, breathing smoke and steam. She had seen her breath condense like this in the desert, in the night and the dawn; yet it was different here, in full morning sunlight, in a white silent world. She could see why Marith had spoken of it with yearning.
They walked for hours. The sun melted the frost. The road took them over a great high curve of barren hillside, brown with dry heather, down a steep incline into a narrow pass verdant with grass and moss. Pebbles slipped and clattered underfoot, very loud in the silence of the place. The walls closed in, grey stone rearing up out of the green earth. A stream coursed down the rocks, staining them black, running off across the ground clear as bright glass. The pebbles of the path gleamed brown beneath the water when they crossed.
Then up again, the land rising back up to tawny moorland and great outcroppings of dark rock. No one else walked the path, they saw nothing living. An empty land, as empty as the sea. And yet beautiful. Marith’s face shone as he looked around him.
Ansikanderakesis, she thought. A king in his kingdom indeed.
Mandle stopped suddenly, holding up his hand.
‘What is it?’ Landra said. She sounded almost nervous. Marith caught it too, looked ahead curiously.
‘Horses.’ They could all hear them now, thundering hooves like that terrible day outside Reneneth.
‘Horses?’ Landra frowned. ‘From Malth Salene, it must be. Nobody else would be out here.’
‘Unless it’s brigands, My Lady,’ said Mandle.
‘Not brigands,’ said Landra. She sounded frightened. ‘Not so close to Malth Salene. Someone must have brought word.’
Marith had raised his head, staring into the distance at the riders coming closer. Green and gold pennants fluttering, that put Thali
a in mind of the kites she had seen sometimes in the square of sky above the Temple that had been her world. Green and gold, that Marith had said were the Relast colours. A flush rose in Landra’s face, her throat worked and her lips moved.
As they had once before, the horses rode down upon them and stopped almost in a circle, great dark things and one white. Armed men, in heavy bronze helmets. Three horses, led on long reins, saddled and harnessed in scarlet leather. An older man, perhaps forty, greying, heavy-faced, in plainer clothes but wrapped around in power.
‘Uncle—’ Landra began. The older man turned his face to her, then dismounted and came towards Marith. The whole group stiffened, an indrawn breath held as sharp as the frost.
The man bowed his head awkwardly, then went down slowly on one knee. ‘My Lord Prince,’ he said.
‘Aris.’ Marith looked at him. Confused.
‘You will forgive … What has been done here,’ the man said in a strained voice. ‘My Lord Prince. Lord Relast did not countenance this.’
‘Deneth …’ Marith still seemed utterly lost.
‘We are here to escort you to Malth Salene, My Lord Prince.’ The man turned to the other men, gesturing for them to dismount. ‘Attend to them. Cloaks, and wine.’
Marith gazed dully at the grey-haired man. As if none of this was entirely unexpected yet also as unreal as a dream.
Landra argued and shouted, stamping her foot and almost spitting.
‘He killed my brother! Your future Lord! He deserves nothing but pain.’
‘He is the rightful heir to the White Isles,’ the grey-haired man said. ‘A Prince of the Altrersyr.’
‘He’s an exile and a murderer! A dead man! When my father hears of this—’
‘Your father sent me, you fool. We lathered the horses half senseless to get to you.’
‘He killed Carin!’ Landra cried again.
‘Yes.’ The faces locked; Thalia could see familial resemblance in the square jaws and the pale blue eyes. ‘Have some wine, Landra. You look half dead yourself.’ He came over to Marith and Thalia. ‘Are you fit to ride, My Lord? We have horses for you and … and the lady.’
‘Lady Thalia.’ Marith’s arm tightened on Thalia’s waist. ‘You will accord her every courtesy you accord me. Treat her as you would an Altrersyr princess.’ He must have seen Thalia glance nervously at the horses. ‘She will ride with me, on my horse.’ Laughed dryly. ‘Tempted as I am to make Landra walk, we’ll make better time if she rides. Mandle, however …’ He shook his head, rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘No. He can have the other horse.’
Marith swung up easily into the saddle, lifting Thalia and helping her arrange herself before him. He pressed his face into her hair for a moment, sighing with pleasure or pain, then commanded the horse forward at a rush, breathing out with a little ‘ha’ sound as it leapt at his words and ran the bare landscape into the wind, its mane flying, Thalia’s hair flying, her eyes watering, the air suddenly brighter around them, the sky pale with light. Birds, for the first time in this place, black against the pale sky. The first sign of life here. Everything felt more alive. ‘Ha,’ said Marith again. He slowed the horse a little, waiting for the rest to catch them.
‘Not afraid, are you?’ he asked. The wind caught his words.
‘No,’ Thalia said in reply, half-lying.
‘Good.’ He whipped up the horse again and made it run faster. Distant voices behind them shouted. A thunder of hooves as a couple of the men raced to follow them, Marith laughing, then pulling the horse in to allow them to catch up.
‘I swore I wouldn’t run,’ he said. The old man, Aris, snorted and muttered something under his breath.
‘Who is he?’ Thalia asked after a little while. Her shock and confusion was wearing off, the numb feeling in her mind easing a little.
‘He? Oh. Yes. I never actually introduced you, did I? Aris Relast. Some kin of Deneth’s. A servant, though he pretends otherwise.’
‘Deneth?’
He sighed. ‘Gods, I forget. Denethlen Relast. Lord Relast. Landra’s father. And Carin’s. My enemy, or so I thought. Curious, that he should send all this. Almost a hero’s welcome.’ She could hear the amusement in his voice for the first time in many days, wry and self-mocking. ‘Well, we shall see in a while, now. He may just think it entertaining, to wrap me in status and then kill me. It entertained him no end to see the state to which he and his son reduced me, I’m sure.’
A pause, and then, more seriously but still with mockery, ‘You are the only woman I’ve ever knelt for, you know. To you, and for you. All this, for you, Thalia.’
It was full night when they reached the great fortress of Malth Salene, their horses lathered and worn. Thalia saw it approaching, rising up dark against a darker sky, yellow firelights glowing in narrow window slits. Rough and angular, so different from Sorlost with its domes and towers of gold. It had no houses around it, rose up sheer and sudden, a rock jutting from the thin soil like the rocks on the moor. The land narrowed, a track like a neck with the sea far below. Cold, and the sea was trying to swallow it, batter down the cliffs, reach up its claws to them. The air smelled of salt. Marith had said it was a beautiful place. The most beautiful place in all his kingdom.
Gates were thrown open: they had come, she saw, to an outer wall, high as the walls of her Temple, giving onto a courtyard aflame with torchlight. Marith spurred the horse forward, racing in through the gates in a great clatter of hooves. A voice behind them shouted ‘The Prince! The Prince comes! Amrath! Amrath and the Altrersyr!’ Marith threw back the hood of his cloak and wheeled the horse about.
Every person present in the courtyard fell to their knees, heads bent.
They hung for a moment frozen, the two of them on the great horse, the people kneeling. The courtyard was very much like the courtyard of the caravan inns that were all Thalia really knew of the world of men. It seemed to her, therefore, disappointing as the entrance to a great noble’s fortress, dirty and crowded, not much larger than the courtyard at the inn in Reneneth, straw on the ground, horse shit, dogs, small doorways and narrow windows with metal bars. The back entranceway, the stables and service areas, though she did not know it then.
The other riders came in after them and the gate was closed. Aris Relast swung down and knelt again at Marith’s feet.
‘My Lord Prince. Welcome to Malth Salene. On My Lord Relast’s behalf, I bid you enter and be welcome here.’
Chapter Forty-Nine
Marith looked around the courtyard slowly, then dismounted and helped Thalia slide down into his arms. She shivered at his embrace, then pressed herself against him. I don’t know, she thought, I don’t know what to do. Do I even want to stay with him, now? She yawned in exhaustion. The warm windows looked so inviting. There was a smell of wood smoke in the air. Tonight, she thought, I do.
‘Deneth not coming to greet me in person, then?’ Marith said with his boy’s grin. ‘No, no, it’s late, no one knew quite when I’d arrive, he would hardly be waiting out here half the night in the cold by the midden heap. Of course I understand, he’ll see me in the morning when I’m clean and presentable, and spare us both the indignity of having to talk to me in the rags his daughter dressed me in.’
‘We have your chamber prepared—’ Aris Relast looked for a moment at Thalia, his eyebrows raised, something questioning between him and Marith ‘—baths, food, hot wine will be ready shortly. If you will follow me, My Lord?’
‘I think I probably know where I’m going. Could get there blind. Have done repeatedly, in fact.’ Marith took Thalia’s arm and led her through a small doorway into the bulk of the building itself, down a small corridor which opened out into a wide hall, brightly lit with torches, and then up a wide flight of stairs. Aris Relast followed behind them, flicking wide-eyed, panicked servants out of their way with a frown and a wave of his hand. Thalia gazed at it all in exhausted confusion. A world so different to her own. Bare polished stone on the floor, green and gold panels on the wall
s painted with a blazon of suns. Wall sconces of verdigrised copper. Oppressive, she found it.
At the top of the stairs, another hallway, stone walls hung with tapestries depicting pastoral scenes, lords and ladies in shining dresses hunting or dancing in green woodlands, a feast spread in a meadow carpeted with flowers. Marith stopped and looked at one for a moment. It showed a group of young men out hunting, counting up their kills. Two men rode slightly apart, their faces turned away from the rest, the necks of their horses close together like swans’ necks.
More stairs, a spiral staircase with a banister of carved wood. Marith laughed a little as they climbed it. Another hallway, a carved door. ‘This one, I assume?’ he said lightly. Avis Relast nodded. Marith reached out to open the door, his hand pausing a moment then the door pushing open. He made a noise that might have been a laugh, or a sigh, or a murmur of pain.
A grand suite of rooms. Richly furnished. The bedroom itself was large and striking, dominated by a great bed hung with red cloth. Marith strode over to a painted chest and threw it open, revealing a mass of dark clothing neatly folded, smelling of herbs.
‘Still here.’ He laughed again. ‘You didn’t burn them, then? Everything as I left it, my clothes, my chamber, even after I’ve been dead all these months.’
He looked around the room again, his eyes very wide, and Thalia looked and saw the ghosts of two young men looking back at him. She shuddered, and he shuddered too, and shook his head.
‘I need a drink. Something to eat. A hot bath.’ He gestured to Aris. ‘See to it.’
Aris left, bowing his head and muttering ‘My Lord Prince’ again as he went. So strange, it sounded. Marith sat down on the bed and Thalia joined him. Soft. Comfortable. She hadn’t slept in a comfortable bed for a long time. Tiredness overwhelmed her, thundering in her eyes. She sank into Marith’s shoulder, exhausted. Hard even to understand what they said, in their fast soft lilting Pernish, her mind so stunned with it all.
‘Don’t fall asleep yet, beautiful girl,’ Marith said softly in Literan. Safe and familiar. Thalia smiled half-asleep.
The Court of Broken Knives Page 38