The House of Sacrifice

by Anna Smith Spark

  “Your great-great-great etc grandma got knocked up by your great-great-great etc grandpa. Get you! Astonishing achievement, having ancestors, isn’t it? Very rare thing.”

  “That’s not fair, Tobias.”

  “Oh, no, I’m sorry, his great-great-great-grandpa having knocked up his great-great-great-grandma certainly means he’s entitled to all this.” That had been on the day of Marith’s coronation. Tobias had spread his arms wide, taken in all the towers of the fortress, the cheering crowds, the banners and petals and jewels, taken all of it into his outstretched embrace. “His birthright. His destiny. For being able to reel off a list of his ancestors’ names.” As Tobias said it, the sun had put out golden beams that had struck Marith’s face perfectly, lit up his face and his eyes and his crown, made him shine.

  “Honey cakes! Saffron! Curd cakes! Dried plums!” Landra shook her head. A foodseller positioned himself opposite her window with a tray of cakes, his own face thin and hungry. The children came running back with their mother to buy some. Workers were swarming up a great tower of ivory beside the north gates shouting to each other in a babble of languages, up ropes and ladders, calling, whistling.

  “Get on! Get on! Get it built!”

  A great spike of carved sweetwood was rising there: Landra watched the workers struggle with it, drag it awkwardly up the building. Ropes flailing. Many curses. It almost slipped, three men almost fell. It was carved to look like a garland of flowers, gilded in silver leaf, skeletal faces staring empty-eyed between the blooms. They got it upright, finally, struggled and fought with it. Almost done it… then a scream, as a man did fall. His arms flailing as he came down. Horrified cries from his fellows. Landra could not see him hit the earth but turned her face away anyway. Such a long sickened pause. All the men looking downwards, each must be thanking all gods and demons that it had not been him. The foreman shouted at them to get back to it. The carved wood shuddered; they got it steady again, slotted it finally into place. The thud of a mallet on wood. Landra breathed a great sigh of relief. The tower looked beautiful, with the wooden spike at its height. The morning light caught the gilding; from her window, Landra could see the flowers and the faces clearly, like one of Marith’s skull towers, blossom growing up over dead faces all those dead eyes. At the base of the spire, workers scrambled with blocks of marble to build a parapet. I wonder whose palace that will be? she thought. And if they will live to see it? Osen Fiolt? Valim Erith? Alis Nymen, who had once sold fish to the kitchens of Malth Salene? The new lords, his new friends, from all over Irlast. He betrayed Carin’s memory, surely, by making these fine new friends from every corner of Irlast.

  A block of stone was being hauled up now, carved with a pattern of hunting beasts. There seemed to be an argument going on over it, the foreman waved his arms, seemed angry, the workers lifting it shrugged and gestured back. The block was lowered down again. The foreman climbed down a ladder, began to argue with someone else, pointed at the block. The two of them disappeared from Landra’s sight, still arguing. The thin-faced cake seller, she noticed, was now eating one of his own cakes. He looked delighted by it. Two men came hurrying up with a bier, to cart off the remains of the workman.

  Anyway. Things to be done. She adjusted the headscarf covering her burns. Went down out into the city.

  She went first to the tomb of Amrath. Already crowds were gathered there to leave offerings. Just to see it. Amrath’s bones. The tarnished shards of Amrath’s sword and helmet and armour, twisted and boiled with dragon fire, eaten into lace by dragon blood. Marith had killed his brother Tiothlyn; the first Amrath had killed His brother that was a dragon, been killed by it as He died. Ever were the Altrersyr fratricides and parricides and cursed men.

  The bones of an arm. The bones of a hand. A shattered ribcage. A shattered skull case. Blind eye holes, a hole where the nose had been, white pearly teeth but missing its lower jaw. Yellow old dry bare cold bone. A man who died and lay dead and unburied. A man who had no one left at the end to mourn for him. Marith had gathered up the bones in his own arms, laid them with reverence on a bier of white samite in a coffin of cedar wood in a coffin of iron in a coffin of gold. Over them a temple of black onyx had been raised, sat glaring in the shadow of Marith’s fortress. The doorway was high and narrow, like the doorway of the Great Temple in Sorlost. The whole tomb building, Landra thought with pity, was modelled on the Great Temple in Sorlost. Inside, the floor was black iron, the walls smooth stone. The gold coffin stood on a plinth of white marble. It was huge, to look as though the bones inside it had been huge as a giant. Braziers burned all around it, sending out smoke that was rancid with incense. The smoke made the air dry.

  A woman leaned forward to kiss the coffin. A man placed a knife in offering at the base of the plinth. “Amrath,” voices murmured. “Amrath. Amrath.”

  Landra’s hands itched. The skin red and dry, her fingers puffed up, swollen, the skin cracked. She followed the woman worshipper, reached out and placed her hands on the gold. They ached. The metal felt very cold. She could feel herself shaking. Hear her fast shallow breath.

  What do I expect to happen? she thought.

  The air in the room whispered. Something will happen. Waiting. Her face reflected in the gold. Wait a little longer, and you’ll see, something will come, the face there will change, the dead will rise. Stare and her reflection is changing, no longer can she recognize that face.

  Pity. My ancestor, Amrath, cruel hateful man of anger: unmourned, unburied, raw bones. You, also, would not have chosen this. Did not want this. The face there, so close, thinking it, feeling it: you trampled the world beneath you, who would ever wish this for their life? Everyone in the world, and no one. Amrath, my ancestor, you had what all hearts desire, all it ever can be is grief. To be touched by the gods is cruelty and suffering. To be as a god is to be nothing but death.

  My ancestor, Amrath, help me. Grant me strength.

  The face in the gold, a different face not her face. Eyes open, mouth open wide, it will speak, it will speak, tell me, help me… Pressed her hands onto the gold. Closer. Closer. Amrath, my ancestor, Your bones lie here, show me what to do, help me. A ringing in her body, a pulse there tolling. The heaviness of it. Trying to reach the surface, swimming, and the surface of the water hanging out of reach. The cool of swimming with open eyes, seeing another world.

  There, a face, a mouth opening in the gold, sinking up through the gold towards her. Help me.

  A man beside her jostled her, bending awkwardly forward to press his own forehead to the coffin.

  Broken. Landra backed away. Dead old bones.

  The man who had jostled her was garlanded in flowers, he took them off and threw them in offering. “A son, Amrath, World Conqueror, Lord of Irlast, grant me a son.” His voice was sad and cracked.

  Voices, echoing around the black walls, babbling.

  “My wife is sick,” another man said, “let her be healed.”

  “Let him marry me. Let him love me again.”

  “Heal the pain in my leg, the wound there, Amrath, World Conqueror, I was wounded fighting for our king, heal me.” Smell of flesh rotting. Swirl of incense smoke.

  A woman stood silent, staring at the coffin, her face rigid. A man beside her stared not at the coffin but at the people praying there. A man beside him wept.

  Mourning?

  Rejoicing?

  The woman cut off a lock of her hair, laid it before the tomb. “Amrath, Amrath, World Conqueror, keep the king safe. That is all I pray. All that any of us pray.”

  A note of sorrow then, Landra thought, in the air, in the gold of the tomb.

  The red pain in her hand felt no different, if she had hoped that coming here would help it. Touching the bones had caused it, could not now cure it. Dead old yellow bones without power for anything. “Tear it down,” she whispered. And a pain stirring inside her. Itching like lice across her heart. Grief. Pain. Rage. Hope.

  Such ordinary things, they wanted, these p
eople, that they must be punished for.

  Outside the tomb the city was churning with people. Thalia’s temple was empty, almost ignored; the doorway of Marith’s temple was crowded with soldiers making dedications and prayers.

  “A strong right arm, my Lord Marith Ansikanderakesis Amrakane.”

  “A strong right arm and my sword coated in blood.”

  In the temple forecourt, a horse’s head had been raised up on a pole of bleached white wood. It grinned through skeletal jaws. Sinews drying curling back its lips. Its eyes were almost still alive. Its mane moved in the wind. Landra found herself staring at this, also. Disgusting thing. A sacrifice. To Amrath. To Marith. Imagine it, making a sacrifice to yourself.

  “The luck horse,” a woman said, seeing her staring.

  Landra nodded. “Yes. I know.”

  “The king killed it,” the woman said, “on the day he rode out to rebuild Amrath’s empire. Jet black, it was, with a blaze of white on its forehead like a star. The most beautiful horse I’ve ever seen.”

  The woman was dressed in tatters, her hair matted and filthy. She had a strip of rotting horsehide wrapped around her right arm. A bone that might have been a part of a horse’s backbone hanging on a chain around her neck.

  “You saw it?” Landra asked her.

  “I held the horse’s bridle,” the woman said, “while he killed it.”

  Landra thought: she’s mad.

  “It was a wild horse,” the woman said. “Running loose on the shore out to the north, where the land is dead. Left over from the army that fought him here, the traitors, the blind ones who did not follow him. His enemy’s horse, that fled when the battle was lost, its rider dead. On the day the army was to march my husband found it, out on the shore there where the traitors’ bones lie. He brought it to the king and the king sacrificed it for luck. To bless his army as they marched. Four years ago. Now I sit here beside his temple. To guard it.”

  A horror of something gripped Landra. She said, “And your husband?” But before she had finished speaking, she guessed.

  “The horse killed him,” the woman said. “When the king drew his sword it reared up, its hooves shattered my husband’s skull. He lay there dying while the sacrifice was made: his blood and his life, as well as the horse’s, they marched through, to bless the army and the king. Now I sit here. Guarding it.” She looked at Landra keenly. “They say that if you give me a coin, any prayer you made in the king’s temple will be more likely to come true.”

  “I haven’t been into the king’s temple,” Landra said. She reached into her pocket to hand over a coin. The horse woman raised her hand to thank her. Stepped back. Grimy eyes blinked at Landra.

  “Any prayer,” the horse woman said. “Any prayer, and it will be granted. Think on that.”

  “What happened to the horse’s body?” Landra asked. Why she asked that she had no idea.

  “They sold it for meat,” the horse woman said.

  Landra went back to the inn, ate a meal, paid the innkeep’s boy a handful of copper to saddle her horse. Rode out of the north gate of the city, along the banks of the Haliakmon river, towards the shore of the Bitter Sea. Silt-blackened water, rushing down fast from the hills, singing as it ran. Fields on the riverbanks, stubbled with winter wheat. Apple trees, plum trees, ghost leaves and ghost fruit still clinging to their branches. Yellow broom flowers, wild clematis down like wool in the hedges. Beside the river the land became marshy, irises on the riverbanks, bulrushes, willows, alder, the banks of the river smelled of rotting leaves and of mint. Water fowl in great numbers. Herons, still and grey as godstones, long long legs, their wings raised over their heads. Kingfishers, perfect blue. An arrow flight of white geese. Red cattle in the meadows, shaggy and long-horned, raising their heads from the grass watching with dark liquid eyes; sheep on the hills beyond with thick wool for war cloaks. A herd of deer come down to a sheltered pool in the marsh to drink.

  The plain of Illyr where no grass grows. He did this, Landra thought, dazzled. He brought this land back to life.

  Where the land rose in a hillock a village had been founded, the house timbers still raw, everything clean and new. Good, big houses; bigger, Landra thought, than the houses of most of the peasant folk back home on Third Isle. The air smelled of roasting meat and new-baked bread. A child came out to stare, ran along the road behind her horse. Landra waved to her.

  The first few months when Marith had been with Carin, the first summer, when he had come to Malth Salene… He had seemed to her like a man sick and dying but standing warm in the beauty of the sunlight. Like a woman dying in childbirth but she holds her baby safe in her arms, kisses it, names it, rejoices in it.

  He will never come back here to see this, Landra thought. What a waste it all is.

  After perhaps an hour’s ride the sea appeared, a thin line of grey on the grey horizon. The fields and the trees ended. Here, still, no grass grew. The earth was grey and sallow. Flabby-looking. Diseased skin. There were cracks and folds in the ground, eruptions of soil, broken lumps of rock. Seashells and sand. More tarnished broken weapons. More human bones. The Illyian army had camped here at the end of the world before Marith destroyed them.

  The horse would go no further. It snorted, stamped, restless. Landra patted its neck.

  “It’s fine, horse. This is bad place, I know it is.” She took it back a few paces. Hobbled it. She took an apple out of her pocket and fed it to the horse. The horse pissed loudly while it ate.

  She walked carefully on through the rubble of a world’s dying. To the very edge of the Bitter Sea. Looked out over the waters. Low cliffs sinking down into the waters, rotten seaweed heaped on the black rocks. More bones. A single gull floated in the grey sea and as she watched it lifted into the sky and circled, shrieking; a seal broke the surface, seemed to stare at her. Dark eyes like a baby’s eyes. It was gone again in an instant. The gull settled back on the water, further out into the endless sea.

  The end of the world. There was a seacave in the cliffs somewhere, she could hear the waves as they sucked at the cave mouth.

  The end of the world. Where the luck horse had come from.

  She had crossed and recrossed Irlast with Marith’s army. She had screamed and raged at the people of Irlast to resist him, to fight him, to hope. They resisted and they were destroyed. They fought him and they died. They hoped and they saw him, shining, glorious. They believed in him, those that lived, in all their hearts and their souls. Or they did not care, those that lived. Or they did not know. A thousand thousand miles away from them. Rich black earth, flat flocks, fat herds, their children healthy with strong clean limbs.

  She turned her face up to the sky. The waves broke and broke on the rocks like whispering.

  Voices. Always voices.

  She whispered back to them, “Vengeance.”

  The water and the air began to stir. The earth began to stir. Rattle of bones.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A man and a young woman, alone in a tall narrow room in a fortress.

  “Of course I won’t agree to him! Osen Fiolt! But Mother wants me to accept him,” Landra says with bitterness.

  “His is rich,” her father says. “Already a lord in his own right. You would be Lady of Malth Calien.”

  “I would be nothing,” she says. “I would rank lower than my own little brother.” One day Carin Relast will be Lord of Third Isle. And Landra Relast will be wife to someone. “I will not marry some minor lord,” she says. “You tell her I won’t.”

  Her father says, “I have told her I forbid it. I will tell her again.” He looks tired. She is older now, and wiser, and she knows that she caused her parents to argue when she set her father against her mother like this. Chipped away at both of them.

  “But Lan,” her father says, “your mother’s right that you need to marry soon.”

  “I won’t be some petty lord’s wife! You tell her!” Landra shouts. Her father’s favourite child. He looks at his own wife,
he wants more for her than that. She can see.

  “Lan.” Her father takes her hands to speak to her very seriously. “If you marry well, you will have land and people to manage, you will share your husband’s responsibilities. You will be a lord, almost, you will rule all your husband’s lands when your husband is away. Your mother wants you to marry Osen Fiolt because you would be near us.”

  “You’d be a far better Lord of Third Isle than I will be,” Carin her brother says to her. He’s useless, their father despairs of him. “I’m the feckless younger son,” he says wretchedly.

  Yelling and shouting, she’s tried to help him enough times, poor little brother. “Why do you find it so hard? It’s Immish grammar, not Itheralik. You just need to learn it. Recite it over until you can get it.” She says, helplessly, to him, “Just… think about it.”

  He throws up his hands: “Why does he make me do all this?”

  “Because he wants you to be a good Lord of Third Isle. And because he wants the people of Third Isle to have a good lord ruling over them. Come on, look, gods, Carin, just concentrate. Copy it out a few times. Recite it.”

  “I do. I try. I can’t do it.”

  He’s still a child, really, three years younger than her. “Come on, look, I’ll help you.”

  He says hopefully, “You could do it for me? No one has to know. And Father would be pleased I’d done it well.”

  Their father sees it at once, of course, it’s so obvious. Is furious with them both, but laughs too. His laughter baffles them. Now, older, wiser, she wonders whether the disaster that struck them all was there, already, in these things.

  “This is not helping me, Carin,” she says.

  “You need to marry an old sick man,” Carin jokes.