The next day they saw smoke rising, a village appeared perched high up on a crag of white rock, looking down over a river that must run on to the sea. The village looked well-made, strong houses of stone, cut into the living rock. Between the houses there were trees heavy with unripe fruit. Wheat grew in terraces on the slopes below, was already turning from green to gold. It was a very warm day, thin clouds over the sun giving the world a gentleness. Everywhere there seemed to be the droning hum of bees. Around midday, they came upon the child’s body. His throat had been cut.
Thalia stopped by the body. Knelt. Very straight and proud, with her hair falling over her face. A river, Tobias remembered Marith saying about her hair. A cool river to swim in on a hot day. Not that Tobias was supposed to have heard that.
Said: “Nice chaps, aren’t they, the conquerors of the Army of Amrath that is the pestilence, the plague, the killing tide, that all good men must strive to wipe out? These heroes the conquerors of the monster the King of Death.”
Thought: yeah, yeah. Point made. What do you want anyone to say?
“Bury him,” said Thalia.
“The blokes what killed him might come back.”
“Bury him,” said Thalia. “Please. Please, Tobias. Please, Naillil.”
Naillil said, “Perhaps you should bury him yourself.”
Tobias said, “Have you ever buried someone you killed before? Any idea how long it takes to dig a hole that big?”
“Shut up, Tobias.” Lenae knelt down beside Thalia. “We can’t bury him, Thalia. It would take too long, it’s not safe. Tobias is right, they might come back. But… look.” Lenae took off a bracelet she wore, a pretty thing of silver and pearls she bought after they sacked Issykol. She fastened it carefully around the boy’s thin wrist. Broke off a long stem of yellow grass flowers and laid them carefully over the body. Adjusted the head, arranged the long dark curls, until the wound was almost hidden. “There,” Lenae said. Rovi watched her do it. Perhaps envious.
Naillil also placed a spray of flowers on the body. Thalia drew a ring from her finger and bent to put it on the boy’s hand.
“No!” Panic in Lenae’s voice. Lenae’s hands reaching out over the corpse in a gesture to ward off ill-luck.
Thalia froze. Recoiled. Her hand clenched around the ring.
“I… I mean…” And Lenae’s face too was filled with fear and grief.
“I know what you meant.” Thalia got up, very slowly, very graciously, carefully brushed the dust from the skirt of her dress. “I’m sorry. I should have thought.” She put the ring back on her finger. It had a blue stone that caught the light.
“We should get out of here now,” Tobias said. “They might come back. All this noise.”
It got hotter and hotter, dusty and sticky, a warm wind was blowing making Tobias’s skin feel dry. His eyes felt sore, full of dust. After the village the landscape got wilder again, the mountains they walked through steeper, sharper, harsher. They seemed to cut at the soles of his feet with every step. His knees ached. His back ached. His shoulder ached. His head ached. But the sound of their feet on the stones of the mountains was almost calming, a pleasant dry sound. The sound of my life, he thought.
Another conversation in the dark that night, voices whispering:
“That was cruel. I—”
“I should have thought about it more carefully.” A long sigh. “He gave me that ring as a Year’s Renewal gift.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“You did. You were right. It—he—he hacked it off a dead woman’s finger, I should think. Or someone did, anyway, for him. I will throw it away, when we get to the sea. I should have thought.”
“No—yes—but…”
Four bloody years, Tobias thought, and you finally realized that. Come on, Lenae. Say it.
Thalia said, “It doesn’t matter. Thank you,” she said, “for refusing to let me do it.”
Lenae said, “Are you thinking about my offer still?”
Tried to block up his ears to them. In the day, he noticed, they largely ignored each other. Lenae walked with him. Thalia walked alone apart from all of them.
Skirted wide around a couple more villages. Another party of soldiers, dragging along two men as prisoners. A group out hunting, young men and women, who might be nothing to do with anything, but must be avoided because this was an enemy place.
Crested a ridge one morning and there suddenly before them was the sea. It was silver, gleaming, so near already that Tobias could see white froth where the water was stirred up over hidden rocks. Joy, wonder, thankfulness, various things. They walked right on to the very edge, where a cliff tumbled down sheer like a face looking out, staring at nothing, for there was nothing beyond to see.
Because you would, wouldn’t you?
Walk to the end.
Lenae shouted. “Look!” Below them, where the water broke against the grey cliff face, a disturbance in the water. Thrashing, splashing sound. In the sky, back shapes of birds gathering. The water churned white. Foamed and frothed. The birds wheeled across the sky shrieking. A neck like a dragon’s neck, rising from the Sea of Tears. A beaked head, hooked and curved. Glistening wet flaccid as seaweed. All red and black. It roared. It sounded like the waves that the boy’s weather mage called up. The sea beat with ripples. White waves crashed against the grey cliffs. A smaller creature rose up beside it, flashed silver in the water. The head came down all raw, it looked like it had been hacked out of rotten driftwood, worm-eaten, the rotting figurehead of a rotting dead ship. The beak opened. All lit up inside, rainbow colours, the inside of the thing’s mouth glowing. The water, glowing.
Foaming, thrashing water. Churned around itself. Tobias saw somewhere in his mind the dyeing vats, the dyer’s pole trampling the cloth into the water, the water boiling with it, waves and foam, twisting shapes. Lenae cried out wildly, “They are fighting? They are fighting. Why are they fighting? What are they?”
“Creatures,” said Rovi. “Sea things.”
A red sea dragon and four huge silver fish with long teeth. The sea dragon surfaced, screamed, dived in a rush of water, a wave that broke so high against the cliff the water stung on Tobias’s face. The fish dived down after it, flashing beneath the surface of the churning water. Like the dyer’s vat, a growing patch of vivid red.
Slowly the sea calmed. Red foam sinking away. Birds landed on the water, fighting over shreds of red and silver skin.
The map that Skie had owned, the Company Map, beautifully drawn, greasy and tatty and used to buggery, had a border of real gold leaf until some former commander of the Free Company of the Sword picked the gold leaf off… that map had pictures of sea dragons and sea beasts on it. Only nobody had believed in them. Fancy artistic messing around map-maker’s touch.
Thalia said, “A red dragon. Red-black.”
Tobias said, “Yeah. Talk about omens.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
When the sea beasts have gone, we find a path that leads down to the shore. A narrow valley, a gorge where a stream runs down to meet the sea. We walk in the bed of the stream over wet stones that shine like glass, that move and rock beneath my feet. My shoes are sodden. We walk down where the water runs in a miniature waterfall, holding onto the rocks with our hands. The gorge is very narrow, it reminds me of the corridors in my Temple. Of course it does. Where the sides are less steep there is earth and green grass and white flowers. The air smells of salt water, soft, clear, soothing. Very suddenly the gorge opens out onto a beach and the sea and the sun. As I knew it would. The sand is perfect gold. The sea is deep brilliant blue. Where it meets the sky there is a haze, a film of white cloud, and then the sky is blue as the sea. Everything is bathed in light. So much light. Not harsh like the light in the desert. Clean on the eyes. Soft.
I walk down to the shore and the sea is warm, I had no idea that the sea could be warm. On the White Isles the sea was cold as ice, Marith swam in it, danced and shouted because it was so cold. Now I bathe my
feet in warm water, wash off the dust of the mountains, I sit with the waves breaking over my skirt. The sand is warm like it is alive. The air is warm. I close my eyes and my vision is all red and golden, and it is warm behind my eyes like nestling under a thick blanket to sleep. The waves break very soft and gentle. Sleepy. Shushing laughing murmuring sound on the sand. A woman’s voice whispering a lullaby to a child. I dig my hands in the warm sand. Beneath the gold, where my hand moves the sand grains, the sand is black and wet. For a moment, the clear water looks black.
I have missed the sea. I remember the first time I saw the sea. “You’ll like it,” Marith said. “You’ll like the sea, Thalia.”
These things are the way of the world: betrayal, pain, suffering, grief. My life. And others’ lives. Others’ pain. Others’ grief. I have done terrible things, and I have done wonderful things. I feel nothing but shame, and I feel nothing but joy in it. It was glorious. No one can say it was not that. Yet I feel also as though a weight has been lifted from me. A relief that it is gone.
So many died for me. On and on forever. Never stop.
I am glad, I think, that he is dead. I hope that he is at peace.
I…
He wanted to die.
He was so very afraid of death.
I was the Queen of the World. Eltheia Returned to Us. Feared and loved. I was the Chosen of Great Tanis Who Rules All Things, child-killer, the holiest woman in all Irlast. If I had drawn the black or the white or the green lot, I would have died as a child. If I had drawn the yellow lot, I would have spent my life lighting candles, gathering flowers, singing hymns to the rising sun. A dull life, my friend Helase always said.
I bathe in the warm ocean, sit on the yellow sand in the clean light, washing it all away from me. Today we saw the sea beasts fighting. Tomorrow we will walk up the coast, back north, and I will find somehow some other way to live. If I cannot be queen, I would like, still, to live.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Landra Relast, the destroyer, she will dance on their graves in triumph
Seneth Isle, the King’s Isle, where she once felt something that was almost happiness
In a cold spring rain Landra stood at the gates of Morr Town, looking up at the walls.
Still it caught in her heart, to see the high stone walls, the open gateway, the red cloaks of the guards, the central tower of Malth Elelane shining, Eltheia’s diamond blazing at its height. The Tower of Joy and Despair indeed. A long time, since she had last seen these walls. A great deal had happened in the world. And yet it felt as though she had never left. She went in through the gates quickly, her heart beating very loud. The guards looked at her without interest.
What do you want in Morr Town?
Nothing. I want nothing.
The town was bustling, crowded with people even in the rain. But, like the villages she had passed through, it had a ragged look to it. Stretched and thin. Like Ethalden it was filled with new building, the first thing that met her as she passed through the gateway was a building site, the foreman cursing his workers for slacking off in the rain. But the man’s voice was forced, as though speaking from a script, the workmen in their rags ignored him, shuffled on slowly without looking up.
They are slaves, Landra thought. War captives. All they had in their lives is dead. When they die here, they will be glad. As she watched, a worker’s hand slipped on a wet rope and the beam she was hauling fell. A scream and a crash. The foreman and two workers lay dead. The woman whose hand had slipped began to shriek.
Good, thought Landra. He deserved it. Dead voices inside her whispered: kill them and set them free. The scaffold the workers were standing on began to tilt. The rain, so sudden and heavy, soaking the earth beneath, turning it to mire, the building had no foundations, had been thrown up in haste, the struts of the scaffold, the stones of the wall, slipping, slipping, the wet earth was opening sucking the wood and the stone down and sucking the workers’ lives down. The rain, turning the earth to mire; like the temple of Amrath in Ethalden the building was cheaply and badly made.
The whole town will come down. All of them must die. Fall in the streets vomiting where they have gorged themselves on human blood. Let their bodies wither, where they have not risen up to stop this. Let them be struck dumb and witless, where they have not spoken out. Let the pain they have unleashed consume them.
Landra walked through the town looking at them, the townspeople’s worn faces, narrowed eyes, the new buildings, the traders’ stalls overflowing with looted wealth. A slave auction was taking place in the courtyard before the gates of Malth Elelane. This was a new thing. A young woman was dragged up before the crowd, beautiful, black skin and black hair falling loose down her back. She stared furiously out at the crowd. “Five in gold,” the slave dealer shouted, but the woman’s eyes were so full of hate.
“Look at her!” the slave dealer shouted, tearing the woman’s dress to show her naked body. “Five in gold! A bargain!”
In a place where all the men are off at war, Landra thought, who wants a woman for five in gold? And look, there behind her another waiting her turn, a girl still barely out of childhood with long red curls and a pretty milk-white child’s face. The woman sold for three in gold in the end, the child for two in gold and an iron piece. The child’s buyer was a man with half his face missing, his left hand a ruined lump of meat. He wore a brocade cloak fastened with a jewelled brooch, that must be worth more than the girl’s life and the woman’s life.
I wonder, thought Landra, if he would give up the cloak and the brooch and the girl to get his hand and his face back? He walked quite near her, leading the child, who was whimpering, and Landra thought: no. I do not think that he would. He would say that he would, perhaps.
She smiled as the child walked past her. The child looked back and opened sea-green eyes very wide. Their eyes met. Then the child was gone. The woman went past with her hands bound, her new master pulling her on a rope like a beast. Her eyes stared left and right. From her, even Landra drew back in fear and sickness.
There were slaves everywhere, now she looked. Their masters dressed in an absurd jumble of wealth from everywhere in the world. But the poor folk of the town were yet poorer, she realized, because there were slaves now to do the work.
She spent the day walking the town, remembering. The harbour, where Marith had lost a battle and then sailed in in triumph to be crowned; the rich houses with their backs to the sea; the hovels dirty and tumbled; the inns where Marith and Carin had drunk themselves stupid; the market place. Remember it all, she told herself. Etch it into your heart. The shadows of Malth Elelane’s towers falling onto the water of the Heale river; the sweep of Thealan Vale where the fields were churned from the ploughing, but where she noticed that many of the trees had been cut down; the vista across the town to the Hill of Altrersys that was the burial ground of the Altrersyr kings. Dark mounds, cairns scattered all over the hillside, all the way back to Altrersys and Eltheia. Landra craned to see it clearly: there, that patch of newer, rawer stone—that must be the grave of King Illyn. She had travelled the world, she thought, but this place would always be the most beautiful place.
From one of the rich houses near to the Thealeth Gate, a man’s scream came up and was suddenly cut off. Then another scream, shriller, angrier, a child’s shriek not of pain but of fury and triumph. Then it too was cut off.
Landra smiled. Yes. Good. These people who lived here their smug lives on the spoils of war and bloodshed. Guilty. All of them. She pressed her raw red hands onto the stone of the town walls. Deep within her a dead voice began to sing. In her mouth was a taste of fresh sweetness like apples. Her hands felt as though she held a sword. The heat from her hands was painful.
By nightfall the whole of Morr Town was burning. The flames rose higher than the town wall. Higher than the towers of Malth Elelane, perhaps, had the air not been so choked with smoke that they could no longer be seen. Stone burned like dry tinder. The water of the Heale itself burn
ed. It was not the violent red of dragon fire, not banefire green or maggot white; it was not the same as the fire that Marith used to destroy. It blazed up with the flames reaching to the stars, the light of the fire stained the moon golden-red. Purifying fire. Cleansing. Like the fire that the men brought around at Sunreturn, the luck fires that burned away evil spirits, cleared the air of curses and malice things. Like the fire in the fields when the stubble must be burned out before the new corn is sown.
“Burn,” Landra whispered to the fire. Her voice croaked in her throat from the smoke. Her hands hurt her. The skin on them was almost black. The burns on her scalp and face felt very raw. Hurt her as they had when they were first made. Her home burning, her hair burning away, the skin on her face burning, her sister Savane screaming in terror as her dress caught fire, her sister’s silver dress and silver pale hair burning up in a column of flame. “Burn,” Landra whispered. It is not the same, it is not, she thought.
People were dying in the fire, she could hear them, shrieks of fear, faces thrust at the windows of upstairs rooms, shrieking, pleading, gasping. Sometimes one of them would jump. She thought she saw the face of the slave woman, very briefly, at a high barred window, clawing at the bars. So the woman had not had to endure slavery for long. People flooded out of the town, half naked, some of them, in their bed robes, stumbling under the weight of their possessions, throwing their burdens down to run on as the fire leapt. Sometimes someone would fall, be trodden down by those running behind them. At the gate there was a great crush of people fighting to escape, though the gate itself was burning, a mass of people churning and pushing, she saw people go down under the trampling feet.
Those that got through were running into the fields of Thealan Vale or up the slope of the Hill of Altrersys. Strange feelings, watching them.
Some of them must be good people, she thought. Some of them must have wept at what he did. Cursed him, in the depths of their hearts. Tried not to be part of it. Perhaps that is why they are spared.
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