It came to her, briefly, hesitantly, a memory came of the fisherfolk Ben and Hana bent over their child’s cradle, frightened of what would happen if Marith’s soldiers came. “Ben’s young enough and strong enough to go for a soldier, My Lady,” Hana had said apologetically, “so you… you can’t stay, see?” A poor household, and the man must go out every day in his boat on the cruel sea, and the Army of Amrath paid an iron penny a head…
No. Do not think on that. Watch the flames. Watch them cleanse it away. The fire rose in a great sheen of gold. It billowed like a sail. It swelled like muscles flexed beneath golden skin. The towers of Malth Elelane must be fallen, the grey towers of Joy, the golden tower of Despair. Eltheia’s jewel that shines at the summit of the tower, winking out to call home the fishing boats and the war ships… the tower burns like a torch in the darkness, the jewel is cast down. The earth beneath opens molten to swallow it up. Sheets of fire. Skeins of fire like long hair. Eddies and currents of fire, drifts of fire, walls of fire; a new cityscape rising, towers and domed rooftops, great trees, figures, vast beasts. They writhed like dreams. Like watching clouds on the wind. Landra’s hands ached and her heart ached. She wept for joy and grief. The town is burned and the pestilence is purged from one small corner of the earth. It is gone, all of it.
Benth, that is safety from disease,
Anneth, to ward off the lice and other parasites.
Eth, that is destruction,
Tha, that is hope.
Bel, for love,
Ri, for hate.
The moon disappeared behind a cloud. It began to rain. Hard and heavy, very cold. Beating the fires down. The stone hissed and steamed. The flames fought with the rain. Landra threw back her head so that the water soaked into her burn-scars. The rain spat and steamed on her red raw hands. Soothed them. The sea and the sky were lost in smoke and mist. She stood alone in the world in the blind darkness. This, she thought, is how the world was before the earth rose from the waters, before all that is real was made. Before men’s poison came. Ah, gods, she trembled before it. Inside her, dead voices rose in glorious song.
It’s worse. It’s worse than he is.
No. Do not think that. They have to suffer, she thought. All of them.
The fires were quenched. The town sat blackened, damaged, the towers of Malth Elelane rose up proud, the town’s walls were strong and unharmed. People stumbled about in the wreckage. Those who had fled where beginning to turn, go back to their homes. Voices called in joy, as people recognized each other, embraced family and friends and neighbours in the streets.
“Look, look, the house is still standing! Eltheia be praised!”
“The Gate Inn’s survived! Mostly! Gods, I hope the beer’s not too singed…”
“Our house is gutted. But Mum and Dad’s is fine, just a bit of smoke damage, nothing they can’t sort out.”
“Gods, I’m sorry. We’re fine, the fire never got near us. If you need anything, do please say.”
“The house is salvageable; we got the valuables out with us. But Dan’s forge is rubble, ironically.”
“And to think we’d only finally got everything straight after the storm four years ago. Finished painting the children’s bedroom, like, literally last week. Gods. Gods.”
“Praise be to King Marith, the money lender’s shop is cinders!”
“That’s a cheap and tasteless joke.”
A kind of party beginning, people in their nightclothes in the cold and the wet, laughing, crying, hugging, bewailing their losses. Taking each other in, fussing over lost children, sharing blankets and hot soup. Lining up burned bodies. Rejoicing over how few there were.
“Praise the king! Praise the king!”
“Eltheia is merciful!”
“We survived! Oh, oh, the world is a good place!”
A sickness in Landra’s heart. She felt herself drained, wearied, broken down. Futile. Pointless.
The dead of Illyr, laughing. The gabeleth, licking bloodied lips. The gestmet Raeta crying out in fury, as Marith stumbled unharmed to his feet, in a tent on a mountainside in the Empty Peaks, while a dragon looked on and laughed at the absurdity of it. Bile rose up in her throat. It struck her cold in her heart so that she put up her raw red hands, cried out.
She had seen Marith fall, seen him jerk and then lie still. She had seen his face, smiling, peaceful, dust in his teeth. But she had not seen him die.
In her mind, she saw it. Osen Fiolt with tears running down his cheeks, his heart breaking in his breast. “Marith, Marith. No. Please. No.” The swords coming down, bronze and iron, black iron axes, an ashwood spear with a cruel barbed iron tip. Arrows overhead, clattering, a rain of arrows, they have bright ribbons tied to their shafts, coloured streamers like god spirits dancing, they whistle as they come on. There is a red mist over the battlefield, blood mist from the bodies trampled there. The air is filled with metal dust where iron has ground against iron, bronze against bronze, metal against living bone. The magic of the killing, the alchemy that translates love and joy to bitter death. Ryn Mathen running, kicking his horse faster, faster, get away, get away, flee; Alleen Durith casting around him, lashing out at those he so recently had laughed and drunk and joked with, “Kill the demon, cast it down, put out its filth”; Kiana Sabryya wounded and crying, killing, killing, “I have sworn him my loyalty, I have turned my coat once, I will not do so again, I am a good and loyal soldier, a woman of honour, I swore him an oath and I will not be forsworn now when the end comes.” Soldiers of the White Isles and of Ith, whose homes Landra has burned, whose loved ones she has destroyed, they fight and fall dying, and they will never know what she has done to punish them. And they die. And they die. And the darkness comes for them.
But Osen is running towards Marith, as Marith lies in the dust his body bloodied from the crest of his helmet to the soles of his boots. Marith’s hands scrabbling for his sword, even as he smiles up waiting for the release of his death. His eyes are lover’s eyes, welcoming, delighting, as the sword blades come down and down at him. He is soaked through with others’ death. Drowned in others’ deaths. But Osen is running towards him, weeping, screaming, snot and tears streaming down his face. “Marith. Marith.”
Marith’s lips moving. Whispering, “No.” Osen with his sword raised casting about him furious, a storm of love and fury, single-handed he cuts them down more and more and more, their bodies fall like a wall to shelter Marith’s broken limbs. Marith whispering, “No. Please.” The arrows fall like rain, swords, axes, the thrashing hooves of a black horse as huge as a mountain, its mouth and its hooves pouring out blue fire that freezes the blood-mire around it to black ice. And Osen kills them, and kills them, and a wall of corpses grows to shelter Marith Altrersyr from his enemies’ blades. Dead men forming a cradle to rest and shelter him.
Osen pulls at Marith’s body, drags him upright. “Marith, Marith, come on. Come with me.” Carrying Marith’s body. The ranks of the enemy part before them. Fall back in fear at the look on Osen’s face. There is Kiana Sabryya, her girl’s face happy and smiling, reaching down slender fingers sticky with blood to receive him. Pulling him up onto her horse. And they are riding, with Osen running beside, still lashing out with his sword to ward the enemy off.
The enemy hold the killing ground. The Army of Amrath is cast down and slaughtered. But Marith Altrersyr is not dead.
PART FIVE
THE RUINS
Chapter Thirty-Five
Marith
The Mountains of Pain. A sick joke
This is not a good place.
They had found him a hut to sleep in. Crude stone walls, the roof so low he had to crouch. No windows, but the gaps in the walls and under the door let in a bit of light. It reminded him of being in the hold of the ship dragging him back across the Bitter Sea to Third: sometimes, lying trying to sleep, he seemed to rise and fall as though moving through waves. The feeling was pleasant, until he thought of being on the ship. Beams of light came in through th
e cracks in the walls, and that made him think of something too, another memory, light moving in long fingers across a wall, raising his hand to stir up dust to watch it move in the light. Couldn’t remember where that had been, or why, or why the memory frightened him. He closed his eyes, rolled over to bury his head in the pillow they had made him. It had been made out of a horse blanket, and stank. The bed beneath it was made of dried leaves. His shoulder still hurt like fire, constantly, endlessly, sometimes the skin seemed to be crawling, the pain got down into his back, his ribcage, strained all the muscles in his body as he tried to hold himself to avoid the pain. Sleeping rough like this wasn’t helping it and wasn’t helping it.
It was still very early, he’d guess from the light and the sounds. You can always tell, somehow, the feel of early morning. Birdsong. People trying to move silently, outside the hut, not wanting to wake him. Then someone dropped something, very close to the wall of the hut; a voice shouted, “Be quiet! You’ll wake him! Come away from there.” “What does it matter now?” another voice, Kiana’s voice, said.
“Because it matters,” said the first voice. It might be Brychan.
He pushed back the cloak he was using as a blanket—Brychan’s cloak—groped around in the gloom for his jacket and his boots and his sword belt. A spasm of pain across his shoulders. Bit it back, clenched his teeth. No one can know. No one must know. The jacket was too disgusting to wear, as it had been the previous morning, and the previous morning before that. The boots were lying on the floor, and he thought of Rate finding a scorpion in his boots one morning and shrieking. The ruby in his sword’s hilt winked at him. Joy! He wrapped the blood-clot cloak around himself, his hands trembling on the brooch as he fastened it. The ruby in the brooch winked at him too as he looked down to do the clasp, the dark flaw at its heart jumped. He pricked his finger on the pin, as he often did. He took up his knife from beneath the pillow. It occurred to him that he should have taken it up first, before anything.
You see, Marith? Go outside and enjoy it.
It was indeed only early morning. The grass outside the hut was wet with dew. It made a lovely pattern on his boots, like a flower pattern, black wet on the scuffed black leather. He kicked his foot back and forth on the grass, enjoying the sheen of the dewdrops. Should have gone out in bare feet. The morning warmth was bringing the dew up as mist, hazing everything pale golden. Under the trees a cookfire was trying to burn, all smoke and no heat because the wood was too damp. The smoke did not rise, mingled in a pool with the dew mist.
Over the door of the hut Osen Fiolt’s head stared towards the fire. It had been hung in wood smoke to keep it from rotting but a crow had pecked at it, giving it a lopsided look. Stupid. Comic. Grumpy couldn’t give a toss. Sort of like Osen sometimes looked when he was very, very drunk. The eyes were sunken, withered up, the lips cracked and peeling back from the teeth. Actually, it looked more the way Osen did when he was very, very hungover.
“Good morning, My Lord King.” Brychan was sitting neatly beside the hut doorway, a drawn sword in his lap. Shadows in his face, grey, stiff, the dew soaked into him. Got up, stretched; a crack from his knees like dry twigs snapping, another crack from his back. Leaned on the wall of the hut bent over.
“Careful you don’t knock the hut over,” Marith said.
Brychan coughed. “I’ll try not to, My Lord King.”
“Go to bed, Brychan.”
Brychan looked around them. Fading mist and wood smoke and the trees pressing in close around the clearing, and maybe ten men. Gods, the man looked dreadful. Grey-skinned, red-eyed, his shoulders hunched, he moved and his knees cracked again.
Alis Nymen came up close beside Marith. A sword on his hip, two knives at his waist, armed. He looked slightly better than Brychan, except for the dirt in his hair from sleeping on the ground. Nodded at Brychan.
“Thank you, My Lord King,” said Brychan. “I’ll go to bed.” He shuffled off behind the hut.
“Brychan?”
Stopped, looked back, looked… frightened? “My Lord King?” Sounded frightened. Looked down at the ground as he spoke.
Marith said, “Take your cloak, Brychan. It’s in my hut, go and get it. You can take the pillow, too.”
Brychan seemed to hesitate. Looked at Alis Nymen, at the hut door, at his feet. “Thank you, My Lord King.”
There were twenty of them, camped in the clearing around the woodsman’s hut. The King of All Irlast, the World Conqueror in His Glory, the Light of the World, the King of Dust, the King of Shadows, the King of Death; Lord Nymen the wealthiest fish merchant in Toreth Harbour; Lady Kiana Sabryya; the guardsman Brychan; fifteen soldiers; one terrified camp boy. Three horses, one of them lame and they really should kill it like they should kill the camp boy and at least three of the soldiers. Sixteen swords, ten helmets, thirteen wearable cloaks, no alcohol. Osen Fiolt’s severed head.
Osen Fiolt’s body was buried off in the woods somewhere. He’d ordered Brychan not to tell him where. Made Brychan swear it. Even if he begged the man later on.
Stupid.
“Some breakfast?” Kiana asked him. Badly roasted woodrat. Yum. You could live very well out in the wilds in the summer warmth, on fresh meat and wild plants and fresh meat and wild plants and that’s it. How happy I am: I’m free of it! I’ve put down my burden, taken off my crown, my empire is fallen, my army is slaughtered, all that I built is thrown down in the dust. Here I sit beneath the vault of heaven, myself alone, stripped, scoured, naked before the darkness, I have nothing no burden no weight. All I ever wanted, to be nothing. Such longing! How I waited, how much I yearned for this. I do and I did I did I did.
Three kingdoms I had that were mine, and I sat by the fire like an old man like my father, Osen was going to grow a beard, we could have sat growing old while our children and our grandchildren played on the floor at our feet. I had a father and a mother and a brother I loved, I had a lifetime stretching out ahead of me.
I’d give all five fingers of my right hand and the lives of every single one of these useless fuckers around me for a cup of something. The thing about being the lord of the world is how quickly you miss it once it’s gone.
He sat down next to Kiana. One of the fifteen surviving soldiers of the Army of Amrath passed him a lump of badly roasted woodrat. It was skewered on the blade of a knife. The tip of the blade had snapped off. That was somehow almost the final insult.
“Do we have anything to drink?” he asked no one in particular. No. Obviously. But there’s this thing called deluded hope… If you’ve based your life on it, you can’t help still hoping. It’s all right, Marith. Everything’s all right: so why shouldn’t someone have found a barrel of firewine and a dozen vials of hatha abandoned under a tree?
“No,” said Kiana. If Brychan and Alis looked bad, she looked indescribable. Hard as stone. Her eyes huge because her face had grown so taut and thin. “There’s water, in a wineskin.” She passed it over. He drank. The water tasted of leaves, a metallic aftertang, it had a brown tint to it that they were trying not to see. The nearest stream was probably tainted with something. Blood. Piss. Pus. But it was the nearest stream.
Kiana said, “Please let me bury it, Marith.”
“What?”
Kiana pointed. “Osen’s head.”
Marith said, “No. It stays with me.”
It struck him suddenly that he owed poor Valim Erith an apology. Valim Erith might even have been telling the truth when he swore blind it wasn’t him who was betraying them. Thus justifiably upset when he was accused of it all. Those hate-filled eyes, the rage in his voice: “Curse you, Marith. You deserve this.” Well, now, actually, thinking about it, Valim Erith just being upset about being accused for no reason… that was almost a relief. Valim hadn’t hated him at all, hadn’t schemed against him, hadn’t wanted him dead. Just half-asleep and confused and understandably upset.
Alleen Durith that treacherous bastard didn’t hate me either, he thought then. Certain of it. Alleen
just wanted to be king of somewhere for himself. He’ll be King of Ith by now, if he’s really unlucky. Planning his own wars, raising his own men. If he’d asked me, I’d have warned him. Don’t do it, Alleen. Look at me. Think about it.
“We should move on,” said Kiana.
“Why? We have the hut, the stream, woodrats… Yes.” Marith sighed, itched at his eyes. “Give the order, then.”
Kiana looked at him oddly. Snorted with laughter. She clapped her hands: “We are moving on. Get everything ready. An hour till we march. Get everyone awake.” Ten weary faces blinked at her.
They marched perhaps two hours later. Kiana and Marith mounted, the rest on foot limping. The third horse was dead. One of the men was dead. “I did it quickly,” the dead man’s friend said, when Alis asked about it. The wretched camp boy trailed at the back in silence. Alis said he hadn’t spoken since they encountered him. Brychan walked beside Marith’s horse with a sword in one hand and a knife in the other, his shoulders hunched up, yawning. Kiana looked happy, at least, now she was back on the horse. Osen’s head jolted along in a bag hanging from Marith’s saddle. He could feel it knocking against his left leg. Marith took a last look at the hut in the clearing. Three nights.
“Where did you bury him, Brychan?”
Brychan looked pained. “You made me swear not to tell you, My Lord King.”
“I know I did. Where did you bury him?”
Brychan sighed. “Back there. In the other direction, a hundred paces from the clearing, maybe. Near the stream.”
Looked over his shoulder. Goodbye, Osen.
“There was a young tree near where I buried him,” said Brychan. “Looked like it might flower soon. I dug a good deep hole, don’t worry.”
The ground here was soft, good to walk on, trees for cover and shade, dappled light; they kept to the lower ground where streams ran west to the river Essern or south to the river Isther, through belts of pines that left the earth bare and dusty beneath them, glades of wild myrtle and star flowers, sana trees heavy with poisonous red fruit. Marith rode on absently, the horse chaffing under him. It had been one of the soldiers’. Seemed to dislike him. One of the soldiers, whom he was beginning to imagine was the soldier the horse had belonged to, hummed occasionally as they walked, one of the Amy of Amrath’s favourite marching songs. It was warm, almost but not quite too hot, almost pleasant in a cool breeze. Marith rubbed his eyes. Itching. He thought: should I send someone out to look for Thalia again? The last man he sent had not come back.
The House of Sacrifice Page 30