The House of Sacrifice

by Anna Smith Spark

  Every hour, every day, what do you think I think about every night, every morning, every time my wounds ache?

  “You will want this back.” Yanis held out the ring to her.

  Landra took it, put it back in her pocket. “Thank you.”

  “You know what happened this morning? He will curse me for it, blame me. Everyone in the city wants to know what it means, and what can I say?”

  Landra thought, Yanis Stansel, afraid!

  “He ordered them to build it too quickly,” said Yanis. “The city walls, the temples, this fortress itself will crack and fall down one day soon. The workmen toiled until they fell dead from exhaustion. He shouted at them to work harder, faster, offered them more and more gold. He will blame me, of course. Have me killed. I killed the men who built it. He will blame me for that, say I should not have done it. But if I had not done it, what would he have said? All four of my sons are dead now,” Yanis Stansel said to Landra. “Did you know that?”

  It was written there in his face, as he said it. Landra said, “No. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

  “One of them died in the first battle, in Morr Bay, before Marith was even truly crowned. One died here, taking Ethalden, after the battle had all but been won. One died of fever, outside Bakh, the water there was bad. The last fell at Balkash. A spear point took out his left eye, the wound mortified… I did not see him die. I could not bear to see it.”

  Bees droned among the roses, a calm sound that made Landra think of sleeping in the warmth of the sun. And a butterfly, with scarlet wings. Even in the midst of the winter. There is death beneath the ground here, Landra thought, the roses grow on blood and flesh. Marith had thought perhaps of the beehives in the orchard at Malth Salene, the wild roses in the scrub on the headland, looking down over the sea. A good place to sit and think.

  “Have a cake?” Yanis said to her

  Landra took one, ate. Curd cheese, almonds, honey, lemon. The wine was flavoured with lemon and rosemary. Taste of home.

  “The servants here think I am mad, drinking it,” said Yanis Stansel. “I had to send for my own servants from home, to cook for me. Walk with me, Landra.”

  He pushed himself along fast, Landra had to walk fast to keep up with him. The wheels of the chair creaked. Into the palace, back through the marble halls. When they came to a flight of steps in the garden Landra had to help him push the chair: a ramp had been placed there, but the slope was steep. Yanis Stansel cursed as they pushed the chair up. She had to help him again when they came to a thick carpet stretched over jade tiles, where the wheels stuck.

  “Look.”

  On the wall of the chamber a picture had been painted. A great battle, rank upon rank of men in armour, a tangle of sarriss points and swords and helmet plumes, rows of gurning faces, splayed muscled arms and legs. Lovingly painted wounds. In the foreground, a river ran in spate; in the background, grey mountains rose into a blue sky. In the very centre of the picture, larger than life-size, Marith was caught mid-slaughter, his sword raised. He was wearing a crown of real silver, the hilt of his sword and the brooch fastening his cloak were set with real rubies, pressed into the wall. A vast man in black armour was falling back before him, blood bursting artfully out of his cut throat. The dying man’s mouth was wide open, yelling, his eyes crumpled up in terror. Marith’s face was calm, a ghost of a smile on his lips.

  Behind Marith, much smaller and less radiant, she could recognize Osen Fiolt, also caught in the act of cutting a man into bits of meat. Men of the White Isles she knew and remembered. Nasis Jaeartes. Valim Erith. Yanis Stansel himself, his horse rearing up as his sword came hard down.

  “The battle of the Nimenest,” said Yanis Stansel. “I enjoyed that battle. It was a close-run thing, for a while. But none of us doubted him.”

  The sound of battle rang in Landra’s ears, the crash of men together, screams, cries of pain, trumpets, horses, the sound of bronze striking bronze. A singer telling the tale of the battle, sweet-voiced, his companion playing a lyre, stamping his feet to mark the beat. “I have heard the song of it told all over Irlast,” she said.

  “It really did look like that,” said Yanis. “The light in his face as he was fighting, the joy in him as he led us. That certainty he had, that he would win; the trust he had in us, that we would win for him. All our lives, we’ve dreamed of Illyr. You, Landra; your father; your brother… Your father dreamed of conquering Illyr, sighed with regret that he was too young to have fought for Nevethlyn. The shame of failure, in every story of the White Isles. It should be ours. It belonged to our god. Curse them, the fools who cast Him out, who ceased to love Him. What did they want that He could not give them? He made them lords of the world. They tore it all apart rejecting Him. And Marith stood before us, promised us…” Yanis Stansel shook his head “I have never seen anything like his face, when he spoke about Illyr. Even in the worst days, in the Wastes, on the Field of Shame, I did not doubt him. It was like being in the brilliance of the world’s new making, riding into battle beside him.” Pointed at the picture. “I have never felt such happiness as I did that day.”

  “Since Marith was a child I knew I would follow him to the end of the world. We were all so amazed by him, so horrified by him. He would lead and all would follow: I swore I would follow no matter what the cost. Your father knew, Landra. King Illyn his own father knew. He would bring us joy beyond imagining. And pain beyond imagining. When she was pregnant with him, Queen Marissa dreamed that fire burned in her womb. It terrified her. She tried to abort him. Or so my wife said.”

  “I felt the breath taken from my lungs sometimes, thinking of what he would bring. Sometimes now I wish that I had died at the Nimenest. Or… no: that I had died the day after I saw Marith crowned. That was the greatest moment in all our lives. Would that this whole palace had collapsed around us, when it was done.”

  Yanis pointed to a table, its legs wrought-silver dragons, the table top decorated with images of dragons carved in green jade, dancing over each other, interlocking together, the space behind one dragon’s wings forming another’s claws or head. On it was a silver tray with wine cups and a white dish of yellow apples, speckled brown like robin’s eggs. “Do you know what that is?”

  Confused. His mind is wandering. Landra said carefully, “No?”

  “The table came from the King’s House in Balkash. One of the greatest treasures of the Minol kings. It came originally from one of the kings” tombs in Tarboran. No one can say how old it is. The dish is from the altar of a temple in Ander. It held offerings of salt water to the god spirit of the Sea of Grief. Marith had the King’s House and the temple looted, carted all the things of value off here to furnish his palace. Dumped it all here. Your face says that I should feel ashamed.

  “I thought we were building an empire to his glory.” Yanis said, “You’ve come here to kill me, haven’t you, Landra?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  They both stood and looked at the wall painting.

  Confess, Landra. Tell him. Unburden yourself. Landra said, “I was in Balkash ahead of Marith’s army. I stood in the square before the King’s House. I begged the people of Balkash to stand and fight. They listened to me. I went to Ander, on the edge of the Neir Forest, I stood in the shadow of their temples, I begged them. They listened to me. They were strong and confident. Death or freedom! Never surrender! We are not afraid! I begged them, they listened, they called their armies out.”

  “Balkash is destroyed. Ander is destroyed. The Neir Forest is a thousand miles of white ash.”

  “I went to Arunmen, ahead of his army, I saw them welcome Marith in as their king, kneel to him. There was a man there who listened to me. A young man, tall and handsome and clever. Filled with joy and hope.”

  She looked at the wall painting. Marith’s perfect face.

  “The young man is dead now. His body hangs above the King of Arunmen’s throne. Everyone I met in Arunmen is dead. Yes, Yanis. I have come to kill you. That is all that is
left to me, to kill old unarmed men like you.” She heard her voice crack with self-pity as she spoke.

  Tobias, on the day Marith was crowned, as they stood together looking up at the golden towers of Ethalden: “If your brother had been alive at his side, if you and your father had lived in this stupidly OTT place… There’s not a man or woman alive who wouldn’t burn the world if it meant they could eat off plates of silver and sleep in a massive solid gold bed. And if they wouldn’t . . . it’s only cause they want to bask in the warmth of being a morally superior better than thou arsehole. ‘Oh oh, look at me, what a good man I am, I’ve got a precious shining soul where you’ve just got power and wealth.’”

  Rattle of bones, whispers of dead voices, I am nothing, I have nothing left but my hate. He deserves this. They all do. No mercy for anyone.

  She did not have to do anything. Move. Speak. The dead of Illyr, shrieking for vengeance. The gabeleth, the demon of vengeance that had never lived. Every life that a man’s hand has casually destroyed. The raw wound of her own heart. Landra stood and looked at Yanis Stansel. His throat opened in a bloody gash, his heart burned up in his chest. His eyes, that had seen violence. His mouth, that had ordered violence done. His hands, that had killed. He burned and he bled. Landra bent, touched his dead body. It crumbled away into dark rot. She looked around the room and sighed, pressed her hands against the marble wall. The stone moved beneath her hands. Sighed back to her. It was made of bones and blood and tears and sweat. Marith’s portrait smiled over her, his sword raised, his face flushed with triumph, looking off into a sunlight world of glory and happiness.

  A hard winter rain was falling when Landra left the fortress of Ethalden. The cloth binding her head was soaked, heavy and unpleasant. Through the raindrops, as through a veil, she could see a troop of soldiers marching in through the gateway, grey and sullen in the rain. Water dripped from their helmets. A flash of red from a man’s cloak, a helmet plume nodding soaked black. How long, I wonder, she thought, before they find Yanis is dead? Those empty rooms… hours, days, perhaps. Time enough. She went down into the city, fetched her horse from the stable of the inn.

  “He’s been groomed, see, My Lady?” the innkeep’s son told her. “Cleaned his hooves, even, he had a stone in one of his frogs, he’ll be happier for it, you’ll see.” She thanked him and paid him, although she suspected he was lying about the stone to charge her for it. Paid the innkeep, praised the boy to him profusely, took her bag and left. The rain had stopped, just about, the sky ran with thin winter light. The streets were streams of dirty water. People tiptoed through it stained dark with wet. The smell of damp things drying: she did not like that smell now, the smell of the world after a storm has gone.

  Landra rode down to Marith’s bleak iron temple. The horse woman sat in a huddle beneath the luck horse, looked up at Landra tired and cold. Water dripped from the horse’s skull. The door of the temple was closed against the weather. Landra dismounted, went up close to them. The iron felt hot, close up to it, as though it was newly drawn from the forge. Sick feeling inside her. Insects crawling on her skin. If I hold out my hand, Landra thought, touch it, it will be rotting. Maggot-eaten. Inside, it is not iron, it is bleeding weeping flesh. The door of the temple opened, two men came out, soldiers in armour, everything about them fresh and clean. New boots that squeaked: “Damned things are still rubbing,” one of the soldiers muttered as they walked; arms and armour new raw-edged. “Time for a beer?” the soldier with the rubbing boots asked his friend. When they opened the door the world should have been flooded with blood. A young woman walked past her, pushed the door open, stopped in the doorway to shake the rain from her cloak.

  In the square beside the temple a merchant with a stall of cloth had not got his wares covered over before the last rainstorm, was wringing out bales of bright-dyed wool.

  “Going cheap, mistress,” he called to Landra, half-rueful, half-laughing. He held up pale hands. “Look how good the dye is. Hardly runs.”

  “My horse won’t want to carry a wet bundle of cloth on his back,” she called back, trying to be friendly.

  “Tell him it’s for a horse blanket,” the merchant said. He squeezed out another bolt of cloth, this time brilliant scarlet, and pink water gushed over him.

  “I don’t want a pink-dyed horse, thank you,” Landra said, also laughing.

  “A shame, a shame, he’d look fine, that horse, with more colour on him.” The merchant held up another bale. “Or green might suit him better, perhaps?”

  Trees and flowers and rushing clear river water, all laughing within her, childish, foolish. “He’d look very fine, my horse,” she said gravely, “dyed green, I think you’re right.” He had a bolt of creamy white wool that was dry, having been sheltered beneath the red and the green; she bought enough for a blanket.

  A baby was yelling from a nearby house, a gull shrieked high above her, a builder’s hammer began to ring. A woman frowned up at the noise of the baby. “I’m sorry,” she wanted to say to the woman and the cloth-merchant and the builder and the baby. She rode on to the harbour rising on the Jaxertane’s bank.

  She could smell the river before she could see it. Water stink, the filth of the new city. The tide was out and wading birds and mud fishers picked across the flats. The mud was littered with the new detritus of the city, wood and stone and rubbish; human bones, ancient weapons. The hull of an old boat, itself looking like a dead thing. On the far bank there were fields stained with standing water from the rain. But the river was alive with ships, rang with voices calling in every language. Warships with bronze rams and red-painted eyes; fast black galleys from the White Isles; huge round-bellied craft from the south, Medana and Mar, with two or even three rows of oars; little trader ships that relied only on sails, being too poor to purchase oarslaves; fishermen in hide and wicker coracles.

  “No one in their right minds sails to Illyr.” Nevethlyn Altrersyr sailed to Illyr with a war fleet, his ships were driven all the way around Illyr, into the Sea of Grief, wrecked on the south coast. His army was destroyed. One of his ships made it back to the White Isles. Spared to tell. Hilanis the Young sailed to Illyr with a war fleet. Every one of his ships was destroyed. No one knows if he even reached the Illyian coast. “Glorious they sailed, a mighty host in golden ships. I alone came back.” Since the coming of King Marith the seas around Illyr were calm and untroubled. Ships plied their waters every day.

  A ship was coming in now, edging its way through the mudflats up to the harbour place. A fishing vessel, not large, its sail dyed the Altrersyr red for luck. Its men were laughing, shouting to the people on the riverside. Piled on its deck was a huge catch of silver fish.

  “Monsters, we’ve caught! Monsters!” a man shouted from the ship. “Tell the people of Ethalden that we have more food here than a city can eat in a lifetime! Tell the people of Ethalden to start planning how to cook it!” A fish longer than a man hung from the mast.

  “Where did you go to catch that?” a sailor on another ship shouted over.

  “North,” the man shouted back. “North out of sight of land, beyond the flight of birds, into the wild sea that goes on to the end of the world. There are mountains of ice there rising out of the water, sea mists so thick I couldn’t see my hand held touching my face. But the fish and the whales came up to the bows of our ship in wonder, having never seen a man before, we could almost pick them out of the water with our hands.”

  A cargo ship was waiting drawn up on a mudflat beach. A wooden causeway leading from the deck to the riverbank. The ship had a dark red sail. The sign palle was painted on its bows. The White Isles rune for the smooth sheen of a calm sea. Ah. Landra’s head swam, looking at it. The crew rushed back and forth loading the cargo, bundles wrapped in goat hides bound up with leather thongs. Landra approached, called over to them.

  “Are you bound for the White Isles?”

  One of the sailors left off his work, came over to the bows of the ship. A youngish man with
a dark beard plaited with red ribbons. Breathless from hurrying to ready the ship. “Morr Town, yes.”

  She fought down sickness in her throat. Her heart must beat so loud it would make the sea shake. “Can you take a passenger?”

  The man looked Landra up and down. “Perhaps.”

  “One in gold?”

  “Two.”

  “Two. You are sailing now?”

  “A few hours still.” He shrugged at the water. “We’re getting loaded now, but the tide will need to turn. Come back here in an hour, and we’ll see.”

  “Thank you.” The words were a lie in her throat. The man nodded back at her.

  So… what to do until then? She glanced back towards the silver spire of the fortress. They would have found him, she thought. They would be frightened and angry, they would be looking for her. “Landra Relast!” Tolan would be shouting. “Landra Relast killed him!” Soldiers, running out of the gate of skulls, looking for a woman in a green dress with burns on her white face and her hair covered over with a cloth. “Find her. Kill her. Keep her alive and make her suffer.” They would look to the ships at once, thinking of ways she might be trying to escape them. Fast horses, their riders with drawn swords, the horses’ hooves throwing up the wet earth as they came. “Close the gates and watch the ships.”

  She put it all to the back of her mind, very calmly. It will be well.

  “Is there somewhere near I can get something to eat?” she asked the sailor with the black beard.

  “There.” He jerked his head. “It’s expensive.”

  Landra looked where he gestured and there was an inn set back from the riverside, new and brash and large, welcoming sea travellers to Ethalden with strong beer and hot meat. Landra walked her horse over. The horse was stabled, she sat by the window with a cup of spiced beer, looking out. The sea coming in slowly, silvery water sliding up over the mudflats. Too fast. Too slow. The boats loading, unloading—carts triumphantly carrying off the fishing boat’s huge catch. Her own ship was being well stocked with food and water. Waste thrown overboard sending the seabirds into a frenzy. Two gulls fought in the air over something, screaming; Landra closed her eyes, tried to look away into the inn’s common room.